I can’t tell if this is a good idea or a bad idea. Probably a bad idea at that price point with those specs, but this seems like a much more usable and useful form factor than a fully head mounted system when you factor in the weight of the thing on your head and the input method. Like, I might actually be able to do work on this thing unlike an apple vision pro.

So I have some experience with this and have a few things I want to tell you:

Consider a dedicated sleep study. If you have sleep apnea, medication will not fix your problem and some medications may actually make it worse.

Xanax (an anxiety medication) and Ambien (a sleep medication) are very similar drugs with respect to their mechanism of action. Xanax binds to a specific group of receptors to cause anxiolytic effects and happens to also make you sleepy. Ambien binds to a subset of those same receptors to make you sleepy, but don’t have the strong anxiety reducing effect. If Xanax works for you, Ambien should theoretically have a similar effect. In practice, it doesn’t tend to work as well because anxiety can keep you awake. If that has been your experience with Ambien, think about taking some steps to address anxiety even if you don’t think it’s that bad. Yoga, counseling, meditation, whatever. There are also guided breathing audio sessions designed to put you to sleep in apps like Fitbit and calm that may be helpful.

You can also supplement a prescription sleep aid with something non prescription, which is what I do. I take Ambien, and to keep my dose low I supplement with melatonin, tryptophan, and valerian root when I need an extra kick into sleepiness. I’ve heard CBD is also quite effective for this. Magnesium reportedly also helps with restful sleep, but get a sleep formulation because magnesium in the wrong form causes diarrhea.

Don’t underestimate sleep hygiene. For a long time I had the attitude of “I have real sleep problems, basic stuff like cutting back caffeine is not going to help.” The thing is, when taken together, that kind of stuff actually can help tremendously. I scheduled a month where I went hardcore on sleep hygiene. Strict caffeine limits, no late caffeine or exercise, don’t do anything on your bed but sleep and sex, wake up at the same early time every day even when you don’t have to, limit screens before, bed… I mean ALL of it. I found that it actually really helped. In combination with medication it might be a life saver. Might be worth doing your own experiment with it.

Good luck!

Incompatible taste in music. My taste is the benchmark they have to meet and I will not compromise, obviously.

Streaming is getting worse, but it’s still way better than cable. Everything is on demand without having to fuss with a dvr, you can subscribe only to the services you want or rotate through them one at a time, and there are no contracts so you can cancel whenever you want.

Things could obviously be better, but we are nowhere close to how bad cable was/is.

A lot of telling us how good AI is and how Google is the best at it. I got a little excited when they said Gemini is going to change how we use our phones and I thought they might be announcing some big AI-forward redesign of Android, but it was just 3 things they’ve already launched, haha.

Context aware Gemini looks neat though.

Not from a person. When I was younger I took an online personality test. Nothing from a reputable source, just some random pop psychology thing. The result was short and had a few things on it, but one line hit me like a ton of bricks: “You don’t like people who aren’t as smart as you.”

I was incredulous at first, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it was probably true at some level. I was pretty horrified by this realization, and I ended up thinking about it a lot and doing a ton of introspection. I knew I was smart, but I started acknowledging that there were also a ton of things I was terrible at. Whenever I had intrusive thoughts about a person I thought wasn’t very smart, I tried to think about things they were good at or at least acknowledge privileges I had that they didn’t.

We are a product of our experiences, and different people have different skills and aptitudes for things. All of that is ok and doesn’t make someone better than anyone else. I’m not perfect at it, but I found some value in confronting uncomfortable truths about myself.

Nacorn

My first thought when I saw this post was, “That’s not a baguette, that’s french bread.” I never connected that the gigantic long bread at the store with the stale dry crust that they label as “french bread” is supposed to be a baguette, which is French. Like they are too ashamed to actually call it a baguette because it kind of sucks but that’s definitely what it’s supposed to be.

Is french bread a regional thing in the US?

The screen technology is the biggest differentiator. Cheap sets use LCD. Some will have local dimming zones where parts of the backlight dim in order to increase contrast a bit, but there is light bleed which I find distracting

There’s a newer tech called mini LED which is basically an LCD with an array of much smaller led backlights behind it than a cheaper set. This allows for much more precise local dimming of pixels, creating a picture with a better contrast ratio and much less light bleed.

The more expensive stuff is OLED which is a different technology entirely. Its main benefit is that each pixel is lit independently without the need for backlighting which provides VERY deep blacks (the pixels are off), often described as a near infinite contrast ratio, with no light bleed. The main drawbacks are low peak brightness and the possibility of burn in, though both are getting better with time.

The newest and priciest is micro LED, which uses self illuminating LEDs as pixels so it has the same contrast advantages as OLED but it has much higher peak brightness and no burn in. This is extremely expensive and not widely available yet, but is being pitched as replacing OLED eventually.

True, but the Apple RCS announcement said that they were going to work with the GSM association and google to build it into the base spec

I’m 38 and I did not know this.

I’m kinda surprised another company hasn’t made something to legit compete with iMessage yet.

There have been more iMessage competitors than I can even count. None have been able to amass enough users to challenge iMessage in the US. RCS is a different approach that has a shot, but even that would require apple to implement it in order to reach ubiquity. Apple has the US messaging market by the balls and it sucks.

I know boimler’s hair is purple in lower decks, but I didn’t expect it to be purple in live action for some reason and I couldn’t stop thinking about how weird it was whenever he was on screen. Like, the Simpsons have yellow skin while animated but if they were real life people it wouldn’t be neon yellow. Am I crazy?

The battle of crait from the last Jedi with the red salt was visually stunning and doesn’t really get much credit.

What software would non-apple manufacturers use other than android?

Stop Skeletons From Fighting.

Video game channel with absolutely top tier writing, production, and presentation that stacks up against the biggest channels out there, but it’s from a team of only 2 people. The host is super likeable and entertaining. No low effort click bait videos. Criminally underrated with only 330k subscribers. I know that’s still a lot, but they easily have 1m+ sub potential.

The “punching weight” series about ambitious and wacky titles/peripherals are my favorite. They also have some super well researched video game history videos that are great.