Ryan R. Wu: Product management for consumer products, based in Seattle :)
Writing is thinking.
Beat the heat with a simple thermo blanket trick! Discover how small actions can make a big difference in the battle against climate change.
How’s your summer going? Have you been impacted by wildfire or heatwave? Struggled to sleep during muggy nights? How does your summer compare to five or ten years ago?
Continue reading “Staying Cool with Help from a Thermo Blanket”
Early this year, I dropped my 8+ years old iPhone 6 at the swimming pool change room, smashing its screen. Since I wanted an iPhone with USB-C, and there’s rumor that the 15th generation will have it, I decided to hold it till its 9th birthday and replace the shattered screen.
There were two options:
Given that my iPhone 6 has reached its End of Life, and I have been curious about the DIY fix experience for an iPhone, I order the screen repair kit from iFixit.
After spending 10 hours to get everything right, I’d recommend sending your phone to Apple if your phone needs the same love.
In late October 2021, Facebook changed its name to Meta. And announced the ambitious Metaverse project in the Connect 2021 keynote. I was excited to see a tech giant pledged to invest heavily into an unknown realm and bet its future on it. As a used-to-be industrial design practitioner who has fluent 3D skills, I even called my classmate at UW who had a passion for AR/VR saying that maybe we can do something together—like become developers for the Metaverse.
However, after spending some time thinking about it. I became cautious and eventually pessimistic about the Metaverse. The rationales were based on my experience working on software + hardware projects as a Product Manager & Designer for 7+ years.
I wanted to write this post as early as November 2021. But as I was busy working on the End-of-Year campaigns and product planning works for my full-time job, plus my Christmas road trip to Oregon, I procrastinated until now.
My opinion: Allowing people without VR headsets to engage in the Metaverse will lower the entrance barrier. With a boosting Metaverse population, the industry is more likely to invest more resources and build the ecosystem together.
If you have not watched the Connect 2021, no worries. Here are the “whys”, “hows”, and “whats” of the Metaverse according to Zuckerberg:
I just watched the One More Thing event about the new Apple M1 chip. I noticed on social media many people treat it as just another announcement of a new chip—better performance, higher efficiency. However, I believe it’s more than that. Here are my quick thoughts.
Continue reading “Quick Thoughts on Apple Silicon M1 Chip”
I rarely comment on social news or politics, but I just heard California is reopening its economy—people start gathering and dining in restaurants—while it keeps popping up 3K more COVID patients each day. I’m deeply concerned about the situation in the coming cold weather.
Maybe for economic reasons, people have to work to make a living. But if we do it in the same way as we did pre-COVID, we spent 6 months fighting the virus in vain.
People tend to forecast the trend of COVID transmission based on the stat chart. When the daily new case gets to a lower level, they cheer and vow for reopening.
But I hold a strong opinion that the visual trend on the chart is MEANINGLESS for forecast—for a virus-based pandemic, each day is DAY ONE. Whenever there is one active carrier on the street, the exponential growth could spark again.
Attached two screenshots from JHU’s stat site. Data from European countries have proven my opinion. Take the Netherlands as an example, in June, the Netherlands government believed the virus was in control and thus lifted bans allowing bars and restaurant to reopen. Then from the second half of June, we can see a surge in the infection (COVID has a latency period of 7–14 days). And it went way beyond the first wave.
So why California is so confident it’s the time to reopen? If they don’t care about the China experience, does it bother to take a look at Europe? Do Californians want to lock down again when the daily new case jumped to 25K?
A friend of mine’s parents who live in California were just diagnosed with COVID. I feel truly sad about it. And I genuinely hope the politician can prioritize people’s life and death beyond economic interest. Money only matters when people are living well!
Uncle Sam, please be consistent, please be resilient, please make prudent decisions for the sake of human life.
Postscript 01/07/2021
Almost four months after the original post, California now books 40k new cases per day. 10x the level when they loosened the control.
