As a veteran developer working remotely both with professional colleagues and within an open-source community 95% of my daily communication is via the keyboard. This includes mailing lists, PR reviews on GitHub, commit messages, support forums, Stack Overflow, documentation, release notes, Jira comments, Slack (formerly IRC), etc. There's also personal communication with my immediate family through texting on my phone via a web-app on my computer.

Then there's code.

I learned touch-typing as a freshman in high school about 30 years ago now. I can't begin to fathom how much time and cognitive load I've saved over 3 decades. Learning how to touch-type is one of the first things I'd recommend to anybody wanting to get into any kind of development.

If the current epidemic of mental illness related to social media usage wasn't bad enough, here comes a new challenger for the crown of most toxic way to relate to other "people." Part of what keeps us sane is the natural friction between us and our friends & family. If we have a crazy idea people tend to push back on us. Can this natural friction become toxic? Of course. However, the solution isn't to simply remove other people from the equation. We must grow, develop discernment, and exercise agency. I imagine there's a case to be made for an application of AI chat-bot technology to the treatment of mental illness. I'm thinking of limited use overseen by a qualified clinician - a specific treatment with a specific goal. However, exposing folks, unwitting or not, to the _relational_ influence of a chat-bot trained with who-knows-what data and even potentially toward some nefarious end seems like a bad idea.

I've used a Google Pixel 4a since shortly after it was released. Over the last few months (i.e. before this update) I noticed that my battery wasn't performing the way it had previously. It wasn't a huge difference. I just chalked it up to normal wear and tear.

After the update the battery was very clearly performing much worse. However, I took my phone to a local shop and got a brand new battery in less than 90 minutes. Now it feels like new again.

I'm honestly very happy with the whole process. It makes my phone viable for longer than it would have been otherwise.

I try not to be cynical, but the struggle is real. Given the current social and political climate this statement from the court is a bloody miracle:

> [s]cientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation

This should be headline news.

There is a huge amount of server-side application and server code written in Java. Consider all the Java application servers available on the market (e.g. from IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, etc.) in addition to more lightweight servlet containers (e.g. like Apache Tomcat). There's also a huge community around Spring. Java is not dead. Even if all new development on Java stopped now the existing code-base would keep Java relevant for years.

Variety is the spice of life. Some of the most productive programmers I know were simply doing it because it was a "good" career. Passion and excitement are not pre-requisites for recognizing and pursuing excellence.

IMHO, the key phrase here is, "...if your co-workers are for the most part in an office..." This isn't a big deal at all at my employer where > 50% of my team/department telecommutes. At that point, it becomes part of the corporate culture, and there is infrastructure and expectations to support the distributed work-force.

Re: Allows calling via 3G and WiFi.

This was already available via the Google Voice app. It even has integration with the phone app to be the default method to make calls.

Surely you're not suggesting that Balmer is responsible for the recession?!