The Matter App Has Potential (Yet Still Needs Some Work).
I recently started using a new reading application called Matter (getmatter.app). The application is in an early beta.
It is both brilliant and a bit confusing.
The application collects articles to read later, either online or offline. In that way it is similar to Instapaper and Pocket. It has a browser extension to collect articles.
One great feature is that you can subscribe to newsletters or forward newsletters to Matter. I read these newsletters like I read a blogpost or an article online.
With an Apple Pencil in hand, I highlight interesting passages in the articles. I am not limited to a number of highlights as has been the case with free edition of Pocket.
Sharing highlights is very easy. A clear image with the highlighted text is created that you can then share via social media.
Thus far, the Collect - Read - Highlight - (optionally Share) works well.
The team working on Matter is responsive to feedback, and has an easy way to provide it into their slack channel.
There are a few things which confuse me, don’t work yet or are lacking. (I realize this is still an early Beta product).
- There is a concept of Discover, Inbox and Queue. The navigation between them, how to process them, or move things needs from fine tuning. E.g., In discover-new-articles mode, you can not swipe to dismiss an article. I keep seeing the same discovery list. Also the add-to-queue swiping action didn’t work yet in the Beta.
- You can add “Writers” to your list of people to follow. It is not clear where the list of writers comes from. From my twitter feed? From a list curated by Matter? How can I find more?
- When sharing a snippet, the imagine only contains the highlight and not a link to the article containing the highlight.
- It wasn’t immediately obvious to me to see all my highlights in one place, or to search through them. You can export them Notion or Readwise. I presume you can search through them there. I would love to just see them all within Matter.
- The most important missing piece are privacy settings. I don’t want to share everything I read. Currently, all your highlights are visible to others who follow you. Rather, I want my highlights and the articles I read to be private by default, and public by choice. (Btw - How does this work when I share a highlight to the paid newsletter? Are people able to access the paid newsletter content this way? That would run afoul with those companies quickly, no?)
Regardless of the current shortcomings, this application has potential for the avid reader and curator-type of person.
September 13, 2021
The Anton Ego Among the Sport Journalists
Many years ago, I read Karl Vannieuwkerke’s book Renner willen worden. It is a great story of what it takes to become a semi-professional bicycle racer. Procycling is the hardest sport on earth. It takes an immense
With the world championships cycling in Belgium this year, television maker Otto-Jan Ham and former Olympic runner Eloise Ouedraogo put on their spandex to become time trialists. They will race against the clock with the best in the world. It is a futile endeavor to take on professionals who train for this for years.
Nevertheless, it is wonderful television: the sweat, the tears, the meals, the professional guidance.
Then, today I read a column (in Dutch) by a Belgian sports journalist.
He makes a few similar remarks how big of a challenge it is. That’s obvious. But it he doesn’t leave at that. There is a lot of critique, even ridicule about the most recent performance statistics of Otto-Jan Ham. Why do columnists default to the negative? It reminded me of Anton Ego, the food critic in Ratatouille.
It really doesn’t matter how they will fare in Knokke. What matters is setting a big, hairy and audacious goal - a BHAG. Then enjoy the journey attempting it. That’s why the show is called “The Time of our Life”, and not “The road to victory”.
September 12, 2021
Twenty Years Ago
A little while after 6am Pacific time, we were awoken by a phone call. The phone never rang in our apartment, let along at this early hour of the day. Unlike today, we were not accustomed to start our day this early. It was my mother in law calling from Argentina.
“Are you all ok?”
I had no idea what she was talking about. Did we miss a California earthquake? What was going on?
“Turn on the television. An attack on New York.”
My wife, then 7 months pregnant of our first child, joined me in the living room to watch the news coverage. We were in shock.
When we saw the first tower collapse, I was in utter disbelief of what I was witnessing. Those feelings were quickly replaced, not by anger (I skipped that stage), but by the knowledge that many in the United States were already lacing up. This is going to escalate quickly.
That’s my earliest recollection of what transpired on September 11, 2001.
Later the day, I recall standing huddled with my colleagues at Sun Microsystems in Menlo Park around a television in the break room. Somebody had set one up, and hung an antenna on the window. Nobody was doing any work. We were all glued to the news, all day long.
Only much later did we learn that one of our Menlo Park colleagues was on the hijacked flight from Boston. The company placed a small memorial bench in the campus court yard.
September 11, 2021
Heisenruling
In quantum mechanics, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle points out that there is a limit to the accuracy with which we can observe physical quantities of a particle.
In software, a Heisenbug is a software bug which disappears when we start debugging it. (This often means that a debugger or the addition of debug messages alter the timing of the program execution sufficiently to avoid the problem to occur.)
Listening today to Preet Bharara’s Cafe Insider podcast about the Texas Senate Bill (SB8) on abortion, I realize there is also such a thing as a Heisenruling. A Heisenruling is a favorable ruling which can not be celebrated by the plaintiff, as the celebration would lead to the undoing of the ruling.
I enjoy Preet and Joyce breaking down the cases and rulings. Perhaps I missed a career in law somewhere. Can you combine engineering and law, other than when practicing patent law? I digress.
In the podcast episode, Preet points out that the majority Supreme Court opinion has not been covered a lot in the conservative media.
There was a report that FoxNews barely covered this decision.
He points out that this could create a big backlash, which could set in motion the undoing of the ruling. Hence a Heisenruling.
September 9, 2021
Donald Trump’s legacy is not the America-first mantra, the wall, the cozy relationship with Putin, the economic shadow fight with China, bleaching COVID-19, nor the two impeachments. It isn’t even the takeover of the GOP and the surrender to the right-wing lunatics in this country.
Trump’s legacy is three-fold. First of all, Trump enabled the Mitch McConnell judiciary take-over, beyond a conservative Supreme Court. A much more conservative judicial branch will have a long lasting impact in the US.
Secondly, Trump eroded key functions of the US federal government. Michael Lewis details this in his book, The Fifth Risk. For example, in his contempt for reason and science, and in his fight against climate change, Trump gutted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, NOAA. The scientists which worked tirelessly to provide critical weather information for air traffic, ships and farmers, and were forced out, aren’t coming back. There are many more such dramatic changes in the government.
Thirdly, Trump enabled the dismantlement of any reasonable discourse. “Fake news!” “They are out to get me!” “The radical left.” “Alternative Facts” We will suffer the impacts from this for years, starting with the prolonged Covid pandemic. We lost critical analysis, in-depth reporting and civil debate. We lost a scientific debate.
Instead, we got groups of Google-enabled pseudo-scientists, talking heads, conspiracy-theorists, all amplified by Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and an army of Russian and Chinese bots, spewing “their opinion”.
Here’s the script to both recognize fake news or to create it yourself:
- Start with “What the mainstream media doesn’t want you to know”. Or “You are only going to read this here.”
- Throw in a cherry-picked fact out of a scientific report, and indignantly cry foul how the Nobel-prized authors have been silenced, or even have disappeared. “Their information has been removed by Big Tech.”
- Trot out a fancy title: Doctor, PhD, scientist, etc, (Hello Doctor Mengele). Establish their credibility with a long list of educational institutions and awards. Neglect any mention of their money making side business in food supplements, or how they are no longer board certified (Dr. Rand Paul, we meet again).
- Repeat how they have been silenced by secretly funded dark powers, or by the Silicon Valley techies.
- Omit any facts, any serious arguments, any peer-reviewed data, reason or logic. No need to string a few coherent thoughts together. Remember, the rant must go on.
- Call foul: follow the money!
- Send it to the bots to distribute it widely. Appear on extremist (u-hum Murdoch) radio and television shows.
- Rinse and repeat.
The pattern is all too clear in the many articles I get get forward and read. So much that it undermines any potential new insight the article might bring. My immediate reaction is file under /dev/null.
This is unfortunate, as I do want to remain open to the potential of pharmacy-grade ivermectin or about the real effect of masks.
September 2, 2021
It Is the Purple Season
California, the golden state, has weird seasons.
There is the green season, when all the mountains in the Bay Area turn green. The rain in the winter rejuvenated especially the open East Bay mountains.
There is the yellow season, when said mountains now are all a rusty yellow.
It happens almost overnight. One day you are driving home looking Eastward and admiring the grass in all shades of green. The next day, the mountains turned yellow and dry looking. The yellow season also means rattlesnakes and plenty of sunscreen. The yellow season lasts most of the year.
Towards September, we typically enter the orange and sometimes purple season. Orange for the apocalyptic skies, when the smoke of the forest fires across the state block the sunlight and bring doom to the Bay Area.
Purple for the hazardous air quality index score. This is the season when the AQI will hit above 100 by noon. This is the season when you live indoors, mostly cooking in our own sweat until we can cool of the house in the evening.
The last few days we entered the purple season, as winds shifted and sent the smoke from the Dixie and Caldor fires down South towards the Bay Area. Today, the AQI was 160 in San Jose. We’ve seen in much worse. Yet above 100 also means, no cycling, no running and no sitting outside on the patio.
Time to rake the forests.
August 28, 2021
He Is a Romcommunist
As disastrous as last week’s Ted Lasso episode, Christmas in August, was, as wonderful was this week. Ted Lasso is back!
I cheered, laughed and cried a little. That of course had all todo with the fact that this week’s episode, Rainbow, was ten romcom moments bundled in a warm blanket of Lasso folksiness.
Spoiler alert!
Roy Kent is no longer going door to door looking for dentist, or hosting a backelor-like viewing party. He is back at Richmond! He is in the locker room and on the pitch.
Ted is back as the motivator in chief, the Mr Miyagi of the soccer pitch.
Let’s hope this episode was no exception, and that we can expect more of the same amazing writing.
August 21, 2021
Drive to Survive
I am late to the Netflix reality drama about Formula 1. I powered through the three seasons like Max Verstappen in hot pursuit of Valtteri Bottas. I cheered about how good this show is with the same enthusiasm as Pierre Gasly winning his first and only race. And I was saddened when I watched the last episode, with the same pain when Cyril lost his star racer Daniel Ricciardo to rival McLaren.
This show has it all: drama, joy, death, rebirth, betrayal, the young and the soon to be retired, the famous and the rich. It is amazing to see what happens in the paddock or behind the scenes.
I wish we could learn a bit more about the technology of the cars and in the garage. How do they monitor the cars? What data are they looking into? What do all the buttons on the steering wheel do? What does it mean when they say “put engine in position 9”? Why do they want to build a new car each year, and not reuse and improve the previous year’s car? What happens at the offices and manufacturing floors of Renault and McLaren? I have some many geeky questions.
You can also do a drama filled spin-off about the pit crews. How do they train? How do they react when things go awry? Are these the same folks as the mechanics? How pissed are they when their star driver wrecks the car and they need to spend an all nighter rebuilding the car? Do they suffer the same chair shuffling as among the riders?
I used to watch every formula 1 race when I grew up. And as a very young boy, my brother and I would play with marbles on the carpet pretending to be race car drivers, while the race was on television. The blue marble was Jacques Laffite. The red marble was Alain Prost.
The Netflix show has rekindled my interest into formula 1. Both the individual racer and constructor championship is exciting again. The Belgian Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps is the next race. I’ve been on the tracks both with my bicycle and as a passenger in my parent’s car. Let’s go Max!
August 21, 2021
South Bay Bounce Back
Tonight felt almost normal. The 49ers were playing at Levi’s stadium in Santa Clara a pre-season game to a local crowd. I don’t know how well they played. I did notice the game was on the television in every bar and restaurant we walked by tonight.
More importantly, San Jose was buzzing. The streets were full of people. This weekend, San Jose has been hosting the SJ Jazz Summer Fest. There is the large (paid) stage at Cezar Chavez Plaza. There are many other smaller stages throughout the city.
We enjoyed an evening of dancing on First street to the Latin tunes coming from the Latin Tropical Stage. Aside of plenty masked dancing couples, it felt as if we were pre-pandemic. What a change.
Tonight, I never felt unsafe. We were outdoors, dancing in the streets, with plenty of space between people. People were respectful of each other, and either masked up or kept their distance. Prior in the evening, we dined outside on the side walk to Portuguese tapas. California weather allows us this luxury of an outdoor celebration.
Vaccinations, masks, the outdoors, and some common sense, and we are back baby! Stop this anti-vaxing or inserting chip non-sense. Let’s do this. We need it. Azucar!
August 14, 2021
Flat Lasso
We are four episodes into season 2 of Ted Lasso. Something is terribly wrong in Richmond, and it ain’t the soccer team. It isn’t even the coaching staff, or the coach. The Christmas episode in August tipped it. It was bad, very bad.
Where are the life lessons wrapped in a blanket of folksiness? Where are the leadership nuggets delivered as straight as a dart going for the bullseye? Where is the hero’s journey build up? Where is the culture clash or the personal conflict?
The episodes thus far have been a serving of luke warm pudding at best. I like pudding, but this batch is nothing to be excited by.
Ted isn’t it. If they wrote it as Zidane in his final days at Real Madrid, they did a great job. Nice Jaimie is awful. You need a good villain, whom everybody hates. Without Rupert or Jaimie, there is nobody to hate. Roy Kent is as behaved and tame as a poodle. What’s up with that? You know his alter ego Roy Keane would have ripped the writers’ head off. Keely was at least a femme fatal in season 1. Now, it is not clear where they will take this. The same is true about the romantic adventures of Rebecca. A little shining light is perhaps Higgins, who is no longer the abused lapdog.
Let’s hope our Fridays will become a bit happier and Ted Lasso will provide us something marvelous to look forward to from now on.
August 14, 2021