Jan 10, 2024 4 min read

MidWeek Briefing #2

Windows 10 is almost EOL, Warsaw is building, Hyperloop One shuts down, and what the hell was Evernote thinking

Good Wednesday morning. We cover Evernote doing something stupid, Hyperloop closing down after burning cash, what EOL for Windows 10 could mean for your laptop, and a new Architectural vision of Warsaw.

Evernote messes up IMHO

I've used Evernote over the years and like it a lot as a digital notetaker. Then they started clamping down on their free tier and I stopped using it. I have nothing against a company trying to make a buck, we all have to, but now they're getting even more stingy.

I don't think this will have the intended effect they want. I don't use Evernote anymore, instead I build a Digital Garden (aka Zettelkasten) using iAWriter and Wikilinks.

“From December 4, the Evernote Free experience has changed. Going forward, new and existing Free users will have a maximum of fifty notes and one notebook per account. These limits refer to the number of notes and notebooks a user can have in their account at one time: you can always delete unwanted content to remain below the threshold,” the company, owned by Milan-based Bending Spoons, said.

Rebuilding the historic palaces of Warsaw

As a citizen of the world I can appreciate great architecture and art. As a design professional I never believed its Architects vs Civil Engineers ("A before C"), I've always believed that we are one cohesive team that can shape the world for the good of mankind.

This is why I'm so excited when I read this ASCE article about a plan to rebuild the historic palaces of Warsaw that were destroyed during World War II.

Warsaw-based WXCA Architectural Design Studio submitted the winning design concept to rebuild the historic complex as it was in 1939. The new buildings will join the existing Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which was built after World War I and is “the most remarkable relict (with) the most momentous symbolism,” according to WXCA.

Windows 10 support is ending & it could be a disaster for the environment

After reading Doughnut Economics and learning about what a regenerative design means, this potential outcome of sending millions of computers to the trash heap (e-waste) is atrocious and a missed opportunity.

Even if we strip Windows 10 from a mere 1% of those computers and install Linux, then reconnect them to the computing grid, we could increase our computing power and recycle all those chips. Let's think regenerating as opposed to recycling.

Hyperloop closes down

Coming from the "duh" file, Hyperloop One closes down after burning through a lot of cash and building absolutely nothing. This was a complete waste of time and took away the focus (and money) from building real transit solutions: high speed rail.

The company had captured the public’s imagination since its founding in 2014, a year after Elon Musk released a white paper outlining a vision for hyperloop technology. The concept was a tantalizing promise of a new kind of transportation technology — and an end to traffic.

I've always been in the camp of high speed rail and I keep scratching my head wondering why we're still so reliant on cars for everything. We could have nice things but instead we get distracted on the latest shiny idea.

Infographic of the week

This week's infographic is about the salary trends of data scientists from the r/datascience Reddit group. User ZhanMing057 hand coded the data and produced this following infographic.