Leader Key is a neat new-ish app from Mikkel Malmberg:
Problems with traditional launchers:
Typing the name of the thing can be slow and give unpredictable results.
Global shortcuts have limited combinations.
Leader Key offers predictable, nested shortcuts — like combos in a fighting game.
Simple but powerful. Not a replacement for something like Keyboard Maestro or Spotlight, but totally comfortable alongside those two. Free on Github.
There’s a lot of pushback on DEI these days, with some major companies ending their DEI programs. This has been tied into the competence crisis, which is bullshit.
Let’s put the idea that there isn’t massive discrimination to rest. There have been many studies. One found that identical resumes from people with black names vs. people with white names had half the interview requests. A meta-study found the effect less overall: 24%.
Now I don’t know if DEI overcomes that, but modern studies don’t find any less of a gap, so I’m guessing “no”, though the effect on promotion may be more significant.
The obvious solution is to do something similar to the how orchestras evaluate musicians: they place them behind a screen, and they play their music. The evaluators don’t know who’s playing, or anything about them.
Modern technology makes this viable: wipe the resume of any identifying remarks and do the same with any testing. Have the interview with an avatar with a computer masked voice. If you really want to evaluate entirely on merit: their record and their abilities, that would be the way to do it.
The counter-argument is “cultural fit” and I’m not going to say that there’s nothing to it. The evidence is that diverse teams improve quality at the cost of speed and increased conflict but the benefits don’t accrue for teams which don’t work together much. If you’re doing something you already know how to do, where quality isn’t much of a factor, speed is and team members don’t interact much anyway, then there’s a case for “cultural fit” teams. But if you’re dealing with uncertainty, or quality is more important than speed, then a diverse team is probably better.
(Amusingly the evidence is that startup funds perform less well without diversity, but silicon valley hates diversity and prioritizes fit, which is one reason for their under-performance the last couple decades since the tech-bros took charge.)
I’m not a huge fan of DEI. It introduces a variable that shouldn’t matter. Problem is that variable already matters, and DEI is an effort to counter people hiring less competent people because of prejudice.
But there is another solution: one that takes, at least for hiring (and it could be extended to some types of promotion decisions). Decisions based on blinding out gender and race.
If the real issue is merit and not something else, this is the obvious way to go. Strange how rarely it is suggested.
ICYMI: at some point in the latter half of 2024, Syrup Moose Records officially announced that they were taking a well-deserved break during 2025. After averaging at least one release (digital and/or cassette, sometimes CD and/or vinyl too) for their first 2-1/4 years in existence, they have hit the pause button on anything new over the course of this whole year.
Honestly, I think this is a brilliant idea and more people should follow suit. It might give me a slight fighting chance to eventually one day dig myself out of the pile of stuff on my to-do list I have been compiling over the past dozen or so years, stuff I’ve heard and enjoyed enough to write something about to share with the folks who come here to read these words, but which I’ve failed to find the time and energy to do so (yet).
Anyway, because they’ve never half-assed anything, Syrup Moose closed out last year with one hell of a bang: their latest and greatest compilation V — the fifth in a series (not including their first anniversary Year of the Moose) — which tips the scales at a whopping 108 tracks (yes, you read that right, one hundred eight), totaling roughly EIGHT HOURS of material as varied as the label’s first two years of releases have been.
V features contributions from: Ice (USA), Vatermord (Germany), Dragon Siege (Canada), Vulgaris (UK), Touching Grass (USA), Baffald (Canada), Mutated (Canada), Zordiac the Diminisher (UK), Am I In Trouble? (USA), Infectious (Canada), Kapnas (Canada), Through Mists (Canada), Vægtløs (Denmark), Flagburner, Non Serviam (France), Ancst (Germany), Synastry (Canada), Immortal End (USA), Sunless (Canada), Mystryl (Netherlands), Sweat Collector (USA), Ka’Bael (USA), RIPPINGDEXD (UK), Thelema (USA), Dark Valley (Canada), Intoxicated Zen (USA), Excisio (Brazil), Imrryr (USA), Caged Ape (USA), HÄRVERK (Sweden), Injera to All (Canada), Eight.Fold.Path (USA), Paranormal Arson (Canada), We Broke the Weather (USA), Well God (UK), Hippo (Australia), Shadows Ascending (USA), Unliving Deity (USA), Tenebrae Annex (USA), Dead Rights (Canada), Gregfilth (USA), GUILE (Canada), Stochastic Reaper (Czechia), Ruby Rockatansky (USA), The Human Veil (USA), Dom Mechty (USA), Kittyrotica (Canada), Ivan M. Brown (USA), Grumm Trencher (Canada), MEGAFAUNA (Canada), Fire to the Prisons (Australia), The Warhorse (USA), Botched Pneumonectomy (USA), A Room Full of Hummingbirds (USA), Retrofit (USA), Vodi Mizoc (Australia), Brer D. (USA), Ourobonic Plague (Australia), Duncan Evans (UK), A.GUY (Philippines), Gate Theory (Canada), Column of Trout (UK), Azul (USA), Ahles (Australia), Anchorite Magus (USA), Rigor Mantra (Brazil), Selbstverlust (Germany), Dry (USA), Crumble (Canada), Vortigan King (UK), Growth (France), Suture (Sweden), One Eyed Ancestor (UK), Starmourning (UK), Viscerialis (Finland), Abbi Cadaver (USA), Mordran (Sweden), Ingräte (Brazil), Trail of Giants (Canada), the [ v ø ïï d ] // messïïah (USA), Gloomthread (USA), Wooden Vessels (USA), Quietist (USA), aNonymous fRiends (USA), Prime Birds (Canada), Scoured (USA), Double Hell Death Match (USA), D-Class (USA), Antoine Guigan (France), Comprador (USA), Martin Francs Trollope (UK), Awren (USA), R. Gordon (UK), kerchiefs (UK), Shallow Grass (France), Humans as Totems (Canada), Even the Horses Had Wings (USA), Chvrchbvrner (Finland), Besna (Bratislava), TH Speedball (USA), Espi Kvlt (USA), M.D (USA), NODINE & Xadaa (USA/Canada), Markkheim (USA), Born From Pain (Canada), Gorse Mother (UK), Global Extinction Enterprises (USA), Blut auf dem Eis (USA).
The compilation — featuring that fabulous cover art by Worm — is on sale right now, for as little as a dollar (Canadian), or for as much as you care to spend (again, EIGHT HOURS of music!), with all proceeds benefitting Middle East Children’s Alliance:
* * * * *
Syrup Moose Records: website | Bandcamp | Merch Store | Ko-Fi | linktr.ee
Nick Gelling (via Hacker News, Reddit):
If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you might’ve been told your fees are going up by $5 a month or $50 a year. But the fees aren’t actually changing – you’re just being upsold.
[…]
On face value, a price hike of around 30–40% for a half-hearted implementation of an AI tool seems like a bad deal – at least for some of the tens of thousands of 365 subscribers in Aotearoa.
[…]
Log into your Microsoft account at account.microsoft.com. Find your 365 subscription and select “Manage”. Then select “Cancel subscription”.
If you have the right kind of subscription, a new option will miraculously appear – Microsoft 365 Classic, which has no price increase or Copilot AI.
Just like with Adobe, this did not work for me. After I cancelled my $69.99 subscription, the only alternatives were more expensive plans. After over an hour of chat support, I was told that you cannot switch to the Classic plan until it’s time to renew the current plan, even though Microsoft’s own forum had recommended the same thing as Gelling. Maybe too many people were downgrading—the support person seemed prepared to argue with me that I really do want Copilot AI.
The other dark pattern I noticed is that the new plan is $99.99/year or $9.99/month, and it claims that the former is a savings of 41%.
Previously:
I’m pumped about this version of my favorite weather app:
Live Activities
Now you can opt to have Live Activities start automatically when precipitation is in the area! They’ll be started via a notification about 15 minutes before rain or snow begins, then you’ll continue to receive updates until precipitation stops, at which point the activity will be automatically removed.CarPlay App
View weather along your driving route, right from your car’s dashboard! The CarPlay app functions as a GPS app, so you can input your destination and get directions from CARROT in her typically snarky style – plus, you’ll get to see all the weather along the way, including live radar, severe weather alerts, and more.
I have wanted a weather CarPlay app for years. CARROT isn’t first to this, but given it’s the weather app I use every day, it’s an instant-add to my truck.
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