An introduction to a free and secure alternative for your video parties, and some tips on how to make your calls safer

“See that necklace on the nightstand? It’s a family heirloom passed down from generation to generation,” said Tracy to the man she had just met at the bus stop a few minutes ago. Before she knew it, she had brought him back to her house and was showing him around.

“I shouldn’t really leave it lying around like that,” she sighed, “but I’m just too busy to clean up! Most days I’m out of the house by 8am and I’m not back before dark!”

That sounds like the beginning of a cheap, trashy novel, perhaps a self-published thriller or love story. In any case, it’s such an absurd conversation that most people put it down as fiction the moment they see it. …

Maybe Microsoft is where it’s at now. Thoughts from Build 2020.

Since at least 2003, I have been an avid Apple user. My first Mac was a second hand iBook G3 “Snow” with a 700mhz PowerPC processor. Those were the early days of Mac OSX, when the operating system was still rough around the edges. Still, I loved its simplicity of operation while retaining the ability to access a familiar UNIX-like command line for anything more involved.

Everything just worked, a far cry from the experience on my Sony Vaio running Windows XP. Gone were the days of driver installs, uninstalls and reinstalls, and of KB-123099 Tuesday patches. That’s the way it stayed for the next 17 years. In fairness, I carried on using Windows at work for a few more years. The quality of life difference between the two platforms was in my face every day. …

How to measure performance effectively, beyond the buzzwords

Everything was hunky-dory in Robin’s team. The engineers were always performing at their peak and sprints were regularly completed by their deadlines. The team’s KPIs were above 80%, and everyone looked happy. All seemed perfect, maybe too good to be true?

It wasn’t until a couple of quarters down the line that the proverbial mess hit the fan. Nobody saw it coming, especially not Robin. The truth was that the team had been rushing to complete those deadlines, taking shortcuts along the way. In the process, they accumulated a lot of code debt, and that eventually came back to bite them in the rear. …

It’s a good time to focus inwards, and emerge with beautiful wings

Earlier this week, I went out for a stroll. Butterflies roamed freely by the side of the road, chasing the smell of timidly blooming flowers. Suddenly, my thoughts went to my friends and family outside Hong Kong, especially those in Europe and in the US who, unlike these butterflies, were locked up at home.

Butterflies are beautiful. They dance around in the spring breeze flapping their delicate wings and showing off their colors. They seem free and carefree, but it’s not always been like that.

Not long ago, they were nothing more than a worm-like creepy-crawly. An insignificant, flightless bug that couldn’t be further away from the majestic creature of today. To become a butterfly, they literally went through a metamorphosis. …

Between global recession and technology advancement, we might be ready to move on

The iPhone 7 is still my favorite Apple device to date. Specifically, in its Plus variant, I loved the big screen, thin design and overall build quality. It was also the last flagship phone from Apple to release with a sub-$999 MSRP (specifically, $649 for the standard version, and $769 for the Plus).

With the launch of the iPhone X a year later in 2017, Apple started the worrying trend of expensive flagship phones that’s still going to this day. Its competitors followed suit. Thanks to an ever-growing list of features, it’s now quite common to see top-of-the-line devices starting at $999, and only growing from there. Case in point, Samsung just released their 2020 flagship in February, the S20, starting at $999 for the base model, and going all the way up to $1,399 for the maxed-out version, the Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G. …

The iPhone and the MacBook are no longer the gold standard they used to be. Does it matter?

My Samsung Galaxy S10+ just got a software update. It’s now running the latest version of OneUI, based on Android 10. I haven’t felt so good using a phone since the days of the iPhone 7 Plus. Everything is fast, shiny and gesture-driven. When I change the brightness on my screen, the little “sun” icon rotates on itself. As it does so, its weight changes, becoming bolder and bolder as the brightness goes up:

What’s the big deal, you say? Let’s take a step back, cause there was a time when Android was horrible, Apple ruled the world and you wouldn’t catch me dead without my iPhone. …

It depends, here’s a story from baseball in Japan

Baseball is as popular in Japan as it is in the United States, if not more. Each game of the top professional league, the NPB, attracts rowdy crowds that somehow manage to band up together and cheer their favorite team in unison.

Today’s story is about two players from Japanese baseball who transitioned from superstar on the field to head honcho in the dugout, Kanemoto and Ramirez. Two similar accounts of former glory with a very different ending.

Kanemoto Tomoaki played in the NPB, for a grand total of 21 years. He split his time evenly between two teams in the Central league, Hiroshima Carp and Hanshin Tigers. His start in the pros was marred with poor batting performance due to lack of strength, something that the rookie worked hard to fix in his first three years as a pro. His hard work paid off. By the time of his retirement, Kanemoto had scored 476 home runs and 2539 hits, putting him in the national all-time top 10 for both stats. …

How to chase away the scary shadows of loneliness and depression

Social distancing is one of the best strategies to curb the spread of the new coronavirus that’s found its way to every corner of the world in recent months. In fact, lacking a vaccine and a cure, a reduction in human contact is really all we can do right now to keep the number of cases down, and also alleviate the stress on an already thinly spread healthcare system that’s quickly running out of supplies.

However, social distancing itself can turn nasty: as contact with others is limited, loneliness starts to set in. Add to that a reduction in external stimuli since you’re stuck at home, and you have the perfect recipe for depression, which can bring about an array of health issues from chronic pain to an increased risk of heart disease. …