∞ Ask vs Guess Culture
Jean Hsu's article on Ask vs Guess Culture is a great read:
If you’re more a guess-culture person, asking people for help without knowing their circumstances can feel rude or intrusive. Broadcasting publicly your need for help can feel awkward and vulnerable.
If you’re more of an ask-culture person, the guess-culture example of juggling everyone’s specific scenarios and the historical context of favors probably seems exhausting. Dropping hints in the hopes that you won’t even have to make your request can feel extra passive and manipulative.
And because I'm an Asian living in the U.S., I experience so much clash between the cultures:
I was raised deeply in guess culture, as many Asians and Asian-Americans are. The Japanese proverb that “the nail that sticks up gets nailed down” reinforces the idea of social collectivism and keeping your individual needs and wants to yourself — values that are shared by many Asian culture.
Western society is very much ask culture. A classic example can be found in proverbs. “A squeaky wheel gets the grease” is an American proverb, enforcing the ideas of individualism and that asking for what you want will benefit you.
`xcrun simctl status_bar` Is Not Working Since Xcode 14.1
xcrun simctl status_bar is a great tool to control what you want to display on the status bar in simulators. It's often used to set the time to 9:41 AM for screenshots.
Since Xcode 14.1 in Oct 2022 though, it's no longer working if the simulator runs iOS 16.1+. Neither Xcode 14.2 and 14.3 fixed this, and it has been a mysterious since.
However, today @saagar just posted the reason and a workaround:
If you’ve been trying to use xcrun simctl status_bar recently to take pretty screenshots and found that it doesn’t work past simulators running iOS 16.1, you can use
SIMCTL_CHILD_SIMULATOR_RUNTIME_VERSION=16.0 xcrun simctl bootas a temporary workaround to get this back.
Great, problem solvedmitigated!
In addition, if you use @twostraws's awesome ControlRoom app, I sent out a PR (to be reviewed and merged) to add this workaround.
Remembering Alex Hay
I'm very sad to hear Alex Hay, the maker of Toolbox Pro and many other apps, has passed aways after years of battling with cancer.
MacStories is dedicating Automation April 2023 in memory of Alex Hay:
So, with his family’s blessing, we’re dedicating Automation April 2023 in memory of Alex Hay, a brilliant and beloved member of the automation community who was taken from us far too early at the age of 36. MacStories is also making donations to the American Cancer Society and Cancer Research UK in Alex’s name, and we’d love it if you would join us in making a donation using the links above too.
The Apple automation community is a close-knit group of talented, creative people, and no one exemplified that more than Alex Hay. We’re grateful for the chance we had to get to know Alex and the apps he built that opened up so many new possibilities for Shortcuts users around the world. Our hearts go out to his family and friends, and we hope you’ll join us in thinking of him and his loved ones throughout Automation April.
Alex's work has inspired so many people and has advanced automation tooling on Apple platforms. He was also such a friendly person, helping other developers in the community. I have closely followed his research on the new iOS 16 AppIntent framework. Without that and a few brief exchanges on Twitter, I couldn't have launched Mango Baby's iOS 16 update with great AppIntent support.
We'll miss you.
∞ From 20 Dollars in His Pocket to a Dumpling Empire: Din Tai Fung Founder Dies at Age 96
By Heather Chen, CNN:
The founder of one of the world’s biggest dumpling empires has died.
Yang Bing-yi, who set up the Taiwanese restaurant chain Din Tai Fung, “passed away peacefully” at the age of 96, the company said in a statement Saturday.
Rest in piece.
Din Tai Fung is a Taiwanese restaurant chain. The first branch in the US opened in Arcadia, California, in 2000. Though this branch was permanently closed in 2020 due to COVID-19 impact, there are 13 other locations in California, Washington, Oregon, and Nevada.
Hello, how is/was your Saturday night? I just spent mine recovering my 400+ post titles. They were lost during a database migration. Luckily all the history are saved somewhere and I was able to write some ad hoc code recovering all of them.
∞ Gordon Moore Has Died
Intel and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation announced today that company co-founder Gordon Moore has passed away at the age of 94.
I can't think I could be born in a better era, and a huge part is because of the technological advances brought by Gordon Moore.
Rest in Peace.
You don't need to be the first in the market. You do need a differentiator. Focus on that. Catch up the rest later.
Warranty registrations should not require physical addresses.
∞ Sheng Wang: Sweet and Juicy
Enjoyed full hour of laid-back jokes. 💯
Happy the Year of Rabbit
I started my career at Google more than 10 years ago in New York. My then manager asked us to set personal OKRs. I wrote “visit the Chicago office" so I could spend more time with my wife in Chicago. They were very supportive. The entire org cared us, and sincerely put our career in priority. Every Friday 7:30PM we ate pizza and watched founders' TGIFs hosted in California. It was an unconventional company.
The day before this Luna New Year's Eve, I was waken up by my wife around 2:30AM telling me to check my email. We are still not sure how she woke up exactly minutes after the email. It was difficult to process when sleep deprived. Heck it would probably take a really long time to digest everything. We are still celebrating the New Year and the Spring Festival. I don't know how I would feel going back to work on Monday. One thing became obvious, it is now just a conventional company. After the founders left, you can feel it stronger every year.
I can still enjoy working on my team and enjoy the work I do. But I start to question the long term purpose of it. I guess I set my 2023’s theme to be the Year of Purpose for a reason. I hope I can figure it out.
I'm upset. Happy the Year of Rabbit.