Congratulations if you're reading this: we made it through 2020! Sadly, viruses don't respect the symbolism of the transition from December to January, so the early half of 2021 will likely be much the same as things have been, though with the added good news of vaccines rolling out.

Looking through the archives of my newsletter, the last one I sent was back in May — whoops. I think around that time, Life in Lockdown™ was becoming a bit too stale, and so I didn't have anything novel to write, and even when things did start becoming more interesting closer to the end of the year, it proved difficult to get back into the swing of writing.

To compensate, here's a small recap of the latter half of my 2020.

Hackintosh Build

Another newsletter spanning two weeks this time around, since it felt premature publishing what I had written up last Sunday. King County announced a health order to be enacted tomorrow requiring masks to be worn in all indoor spaces. As far as I’ve been keeping track, the number of cases in Washington has trailed off, which is great news, though companies and the local government are still being cautious about opening up too quickly.

In iPad Productivity Corner, my Magic Keyboard came earlier last week! Using the iPad with a trackpad is a whole new experience, and Apple did a really good job integrating cursor support into the OS. Interfacing with the iPad using a trackpad may seem strange at first given the fact that it’s a touch-first device, but in “laptop mode” (ie. with an external keyboard), moving your hand to the trackpad and performing gestures similarly to how you would on a laptop is much more natural (and quicker) than extending your arm and poking at a glass screen. Turns out Steve Jobs had it right back in 2010 when he rejected the idea of touchscreen Macs:

Shortly after publishing last week’s newsletter, I finished reading Thinking, Fast and Slow. I realized a number of experiments in behavioural psychology and economics that people commonly cite are discussed in this book, which sort of makes me feel like everyone has already read this book. What I found most amusing was that near the end, Kahneman starts referring to people with a background in economics as Econs (with a capital E), saying things like “humans, unlike Econs, need help to make good decisions”, as if economists are some species that have transcended everyone else.

I thought I would have trouble deciding what to read next, but a glance at my Kindle library helped me realize that I started (the second book in Yuval Noah Harari’s pseudo-trilogy) but never got around to finishing it. The book provides some context behind how became the dominant species on Earth through the lens of the human experience. It concludes with the idea of “techno-religions” such as Dataism (worshipping data and algorithms as opposed to some other deity) being a driving force this century. Working in this technology industry, it’s certainly an interesting thing to think about.

This week felt like a large outlier in terms of overall productivity, when compared to the last few weeks of working from home. After listening to it being discussed on the Cortex podcast, I went and watched Inside Bill's Brain, a three-part documentary that looks at the mind and accomplishments of Bill Gates. It does a great job of covering both Bill's philanthropic efforts in the recent decade, as well as painting the picture of what his youth was like, and how he ended up growing Microsoft into the behemoth it is today.

One of the things from the documentary that stuck out to me the most was the fact that Bill carries around a tote bag full of ~10 books at all times. One of the central themes covered was that he is a voracious reader, and does so at a remarkable pace (allegedly reading around 50 books per year). In the film, Mike Slade exclaims that Bill "almost always knows more than the other person he's talking to about whatever it is".

This made me realize that as much as alternative forms of media are great for consumption, there's a level of in-depth knowledge about certain topics that can only be achieved by reading books. Unfortunately, as much as I would love to read paper books and build up a nice bookshelf, I find reading on my phone/iPad/Kindle much more convenient. Following along with my yearly theme of "communication", I'm trying to set aside some time every night to get some quality reading time in without other distractions.

Conveniently, there's a page on Bill's blog where he posts book reviews and lists what books are currently in his book bag, which gives some inspiration for things to read. I'm currently making my way through Thinking, Fast and Slow, in which Daniel Kahneman discusses the dichotomy between "System 1" (responsible for instinctive and emotional thought) and "System 2" (the logical part of the brain), and how the interplay between the two results in many of the cognitive biases we experience.

This past couple of weeks feel like they breezed by. I can't tell whether this is because the quarantine has finally become the new norm, or if it's because I have been playing several hours of VALORANT every night. Incidentally, the latter is also the reason why there was no issue of my newsletter last week. Good thing I never officially committed to making this a weekly thing!

It wouldn't be a quarantine-era newsletter without talking about something topical. On April 10, Google and Apple published a joint announcement stating that they would be working in tandem to integrate contact tracing technology into Android and iOS to help health officials track and contain the spread of COVID-19. Obviously I'm biased due to my career affiliation, but I do think this is a noble and well-intentioned effort.

The more technical whitepapers delve into the details of how contact tracing will be achieved while also maintaining users' privacy and anonymity. In short, each device generates a rotating set of keys that are broadcasted to nearby devices (over Bluetooth LE). If a user tests positive for COVID-19 and consents for their keys from that 14 day window to be pushed to Google/Apple's servers, other (potentially infected) users' devices will be able to cryptographically derive whether they have been in proximity of the infected user.

I don't claim to be an expert in cryptography, so I won't make any definitive statements on the soundness of this approach. What I will say is that I'm sure that other people who are much smarter than myself probably reviewed this design, and on first glance, it seems reasonable. I think it's a healthy that people might be skeptical of this type of technology being integrated into their phones, and so maintaining public trust will be of upmost importance moving forward.

Welcome back to another edition of "staying home and talking about video games". Apologies if you were duped by the first issue into thinking that I would always be discussing software engineering and philosophical quandaries; I'd like to get back to doing more of that, but life is pretty straightforward right now, so this issue will be another short one.

The one interesting thing to come out of this week is that I can finally start talking about VALORANT, Riot Games' take on the tactical FPS. I was lucky enough to be invited into the game's private alpha back in February, though we weren't allowed to talk about it until gameplay was officially revealed by content creators last Friday. I spent the majority of my weekends over the past couple of months playing the game, and have been dying to talk about it.

To follow the guidance that Riot gave alpha members, I won't be going super in-depth about the game in this issue (I'll be waiting a few days until the closed beta begins before doing so). What I will say is that I think Riot completely knocked it out of the park. Everything about the it, from the sound design to the art style, aids the competitive, high-intensity nature of the game, and it's an absolute blast to play. My biggest gripe is its name, and let's be honest: if the worst part about a game is its name, it's a pretty damn good game.

I know many teams at Riot have been working super hard for a long time to deliver VALORANT, and I think the title truly has the potential to become one of the next big esports, especially with Riot's expertise with running professional League of Legends. I am so hyped for everyone to be able to get their hands on the game and try it out themselves.

Another week in quarantine, another issue of this newsletter. Last Monday, Washington instated a similar policy to that of the Bay Area, which they decided to brand as “Stay Home, Stay Healthy”. As a result, I don’t have too much interesting stuff to talk about this week.

As a result of being stuck inside, I’ve been partaking in a few virtual board game nights. We tried playing an online version of hosted through , but found that manipulating the physical pieces in virtual 3D space made focusing on the actual gameplay pretty difficult. (The physics engine is pretty impressive, though.)

This issue of my newsletter comes to you largely while simultaneously playing Animal Crossing and Teamfight Tactics. Having new games really has helped with staving off the pandemic boredom, so yay video games! Also, it turns out my domain was misconfigured which caused my first two emails to end up in some people's spam folders --- whoops! I managed to track down the problem, so this one should arrive in everyone's inboxes.

Shortly after I hit 'send' last week, the COVID-19 response took an interesting turn. Washington announced that all restaurants and bars were to be closed, only allowing deliveries and takeout, and it seems like other places across North America followed suit. The Bay Area took took the most drastic move of any US municipality, enforcing sheltering in place for at least three weeks.

I made the trek into the outside world earlier in the week to pick up takeout, and there was virtually nobody else walking around. The roads around Bellevue Square seemed like a quiet suburban neighbourhood at 4pm on a Tuesday. Nearly every business had hastily-printed fliers on their doors listing their reduced hours or announcing temporary closure altogether. (Side note: having allergies at this time is terrible, since it makes you look and feel like you're sick.) OpenTable has started to maintain a site where they compare the year-over-year reservations on their platform, and the numbers are very alarming. Given that restaurants are a very low-margin business, it seems inevitable that there are going to be some closures after all of this, which is a huge shame.

Home Office Makeover

I seem to have picked up several new subscribers since the last edition of my newsletter, so welcome, and thank you for taking the time to read through a transcription of the random thoughts that pop into my head throughout the week!

My team is currently two weeks into working from home due to COVID-19. It was rough at first, but I think I'm starting to adapt. Plugging my work laptop into the monitor I have at home makes my setup almost identical to the one at my desk at work. Of course, this is largely enabled by Google's wealth of internal developer tooling, but I digress.

I've of course been doing my part in practicing social distancing (luckily staying at home without being bored out of my mind is a skill that I've honed over several years). On the odd occasion that I have gone out, though, the streets have been eerily empty. I only saw a few people walking around Downtown Seattle on a Saturday morning, and a brunch spot that typically requires reservations several days in advance had empty tables at noon.

On the one hand, it's reassuring that people in Washington are taking this seriously. It did make my reflect harder on how much of an impact this is going to have on society, though. These precautionary measures are going to continue for a month more at minimum, if not several, which is unprecedented. Local businesses are going to be hit hard. After we've weathered the storm, it will be interesting to see how attitudes towards things like remote work and public health will have shifted.

Guess this marks the first edition of my newsletter -- welcome! Thank you to my friend Russell for introducing me to Buttondown and publishing his newsletter on a regular-enough basis to guilt me into starting my own.

I was hesitant to at first, since it marks yet another fracturing of places where my writing exists online (see also: my singular Medium post). That being said, I realized that a newsletter is the perfect medium for thoughts that are not yet developed enough to live on my blog but too long for a tweetstorm. As a result, these posts are going to come off as very stream-of-consciousness, though I suppose that's the idea, no?

Revisiting zeal.gg

I finally got around to writing a long-overdue post outlining the architecture of zeal.gg, my League of Legends companion site side project. Sadly, I realized I missed out on some key things after the initial publish, so I went and stealthily edited in some extra content (don't tell anyone).