Hardware to Boost Your Productivity, Yolobets, and More
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#hardware #productivity #wfh
By this point most of us who are able to work from home have a dedicated space where we work every day — actually, the lack of variance in the environment is the reason why we lose track of time and feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. But I digress.
My co-writer Mario put together an amazing article about the best hardware you can buy to become more productive. Please excuse his Windows-centricity, he just doesn't know any better — I wouldn't be surprised to see our eternal discussion of Mac vs Windows resurfacing in this newsletter at some point. Don't worry, I will be the one writing about mac-centric stuff for those of you who still have some taste.
Mario starts the article covering the basics: mouse and keyboard. I have no objections to his choice of mouse. I personally use the $99 Logitech Master MX3, but close enough to Mario's choice. Where I diverge a bit is in the keyboard department: I recently became an adept mechanical keyboard user. It's definitely a matter of personal preference, but I love myself the thonk of the CherryMX Brown switches in my Vortex Race 3.
Mario also shares some of his controversial opinions on ultra-wide monitors — he basically shits all over them, which I wholeheartedly agree with — and explains how to optimize your monitor configuration for MaX PrODucTiviTy.
A thing that Mario talks about in his article that I absolutely agree with is spending some money on good ambient lighting behind your monitor — I personally use a Philips HUE lightbulb that I control with Alfred from my iMac and it helps me transition from "work time" to "personal time" when I change the color.
So go ahead, read the article and let us know what setup do you have. Do you agree with Mario's picks and strong opinions or prefer mine? Do you hate both? Either way, if you dropped us a message or a like on substack to prove that someone is actually reading this, we'd be eternally thankful.
I guess if there is any moral here to be found, it's that you can be good friends with someone who thinks different than you in critical subjects dear to your heart, like keyboards and Operating Systems. If we can bridge this divide, everyone can.
— Joan
Mario's links
A new startup I found interesting this week thanks to their announcement of an investment of $9m is Almanac. The company is building "a cloud-based platform for open source docs". This means trying to bring all the benefits of open source in sites like Github to any kind of documents so you don't need to waste your precious time creating, for example, a new NDA or a new business template from scratch.
Ultimately, our vision is to build a platform that helps take the work out of work—so you can focus on the deep, meaningful creation only you can do. In doing so, we hope Almanac can be a place where everyone has a chance to contribute and collaborate in this new digital era, and where opportunities for greatness are distributed equally.
AI & The Future of Consulting: Will Data Scientists Become Consultants? If you work as a consultant for any industry, you should read this piece. I certainly agree that "standard consulting" is going to suffer a massive disruption in the coming years and it still to be seen how the industry reacts to that. Probably, the McKinsey and BCGs will be around in 20 years but I am not so sure about Accenture and other firms that can/will be disrupted by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and the like.
Most tech content is bullshit: "At the beginning of my career, I would never, ever, post anything technical on the internet. I thought that if someone was brave enough to post a blog post or take part in a tech discussion, they always know what they are doing. I couldn't be more wrong!" The sooner you realize that the most skeptical you will be with any content online. Including, of course, this newsletter.
50 ideas that changed my life: David Perell is a celebrity for productivity nerds and aspiring writers and his tweets usually gather numerous pieces of valuable insights. You must read this one.
Joan's links
#throwbackCounter Strike 1.6 in-browser: If you want to feel like a teenager again but don't feel like installing CS 1.6, now you don't need to. Marvel yourself seeing how far web technologies have come — you can instantly download and play a game that used to require advanced graphic cards and a lot of patience installing — just to get depressed when you are killed with a headshot after playing forgetting the key to buy weapons.#yolobetsAs you probably know, Hertz went bankrupt. So obviously the self-named retards and autists from /r/wallstreetbets and other Robinhood geniuses, naturally bought the stock, making it soar more than 300% from minimums. They bought so much stock that Hertz is preparing a $500M issuance of stock to take advantage of the demand for its stock, while shamelessly admitting that the stock is most likely worthless. What a time to be alive!
...there is a significant risk that the holders of our common stock will receive no recovery under the Chapter 11 Cases and that our common stock will be worthless.
#cryptoPopular Mechanics reports that the NSF, an agency of the US Government, awarded $225,000 to KRNC a crypto startup based in LA, to develop a protocol to "allocate" scarce crypto assets to fiat dollars. Some thoughts that come to mind... How will this work in this world of JPowell's BRRR printer? Why would you want to do this anyway? What benefits would it bring? I'm not sure, but a priori it sounds like a pretty bad idea. If that wasn't enough, the company's website looking like the ugliest — and obviously free — Wordpress template does not help the case.