There is a secondary discussion if developers should be accountable for sticking to estimates, and my opinion is that they shouldn't - developers should be accountable for the quality and maintainability of the produced code, documentation and tests, not timelines - that's the job of the PM. A good PM will be able to observe that on average the unit of estimation takes 20% longer or shorter and adjust the project timelines accordingly. Also, if someone is worried about developer productivity, it can always evaluate it in relative terms, i.e. how many tasks generated with the above method does one developer execute vs another developer in the same unit of time.
I wondered about this too. In the DMCA policy they state that authors can self-publish on their platform but they don't monitor, screen or review uploaded media, which means they don't have any contact with the authors. Too bad. They could start getting infringement notices.
But in most of the eastern Europe movies are not commercial anyway. They are financed by different sponsorships from state and local companies. They don't make a lot of money once they are made, with rare exceptions. For older movies it's hard to find actual copyright owners. I think some of them could be considered abandonware.
These people have a somewhat modern alternative with mechanical keyboard and eink screen. It has wifi and that's it.
From watching the reviews I understood that a major drawback is that no editing is possible on the device itself and it is very expensive (600$)
I personally use occasionally an android based ebook reader with a bluetooth keyboard (Onyx BOOX Poke 2 with logitech k380). Distraction free writing is a thing.
I picked up a bluetooth keyboard that folds to a size that fits easily in my pocket and paired with my phone that turned out to be a really good writing experience. Writing apps on the phone still default to taking over the full screen and using the phone's "Do Not Disturb" mode was enough to get a good distraction free environment. (On the phone at least, one day in November I was writing in an Irish pub. There was a football game on I was half interested in. A bagpipe band showed up to play a set. The power went out for an hour or so and I was writing under candle light. Plenty of interesting, weird distractions outside of my phone were had.)
This feels like the sort of thing people buy to kid themselves that the problem with their writing lies outside their own brains.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a dedicated writing device but, for me as someone who writes pretty much for the entire working day, inconvenience is the biggest bar to writing other than lack of sleep. If I can't edit on the device, or find the text in my usual GSuite/Office 365 spaces, then maybe I'd be better off with a $40 dictaphone and Rev.com.
> This feels like the sort of thing people buy to kid themselves that the problem with their writing lies outside their own brains.
I posted elsewhere in this thread about this, so to summarize: I've been at a cabin using LTE tethering, and am consciously turning my Internet connection off and on.
I fully realize that the problem is in my brain, but putting up just that tiny of a barrier is enough of an effective "hack" to change the way I work in a positive way. Because there's no connection most of the time I'm working, there's no HN, there's no email popping up, there's no Slack notifications, and there's no "falling down a rabbit hole searching for a solution". I'm spending way more time writing down/rubber ducking the problem I'm trying to solve and coming up with the solution myself (which generally results in a much better understanding of the problem)
I have an kindle fire keyboard with bluetooth, writing in Jotterpad. I switched to the AlphaSmart NEO2 and it's far superior both in price, time-to-write, and lack of distractions for initial drafts. I chose it after being stalked by relentless $400 FreeWrite ads for months. My wife googled "freewrite alternatives." I have also used apps like "Concentrate" and all the other distraction-free apps.
I have also considered minimal linux distros but realize that it's not going to be much better than my kindle fire.
For editing, I would still use my kindle fire.
I use a custom gulp-based build process from markdown files that I wrote which spits out manuscript format, and the NEO works fine with that. Of course it can only hold 9 scenes at once.
I'm using an old asus transformer with external powerbank because its battery has crapped out. It's one of the worst devices I've ever possessed but still gets the job done.
Now if I only knew where to get antiglare screen protection that actually works. I renewed it recently and the new one is not anti-glare at all. :/
Do you think there are more people around you in your situation?
If there are, there might be strength in numbers. You could organise to deliver a signifficantly larger project than any of you could get done individually. You do not need to hire anyone - use the principles of a cooperative and get like minded people that share the profits in an equitable way.
Along the same lines there are companies that may be looking to expand to capture the avilable workforce in your geographical area but lack the apropriate contacts to get started. Your written communication skillks seem to be above average which I consider quite important for such an engagement. If this sounds interesting, do leave some contact details.
Project managers with technical skills are worth gold in product companies (possibly in other companies as well).
Run a few product implementations at customer side and there will be no monotony.
If you grow older and start appreciating more the routine in your life you can go into product management using the knowledge accumulated on customer side implementations and finally consulting.
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Romania has 14.3M (1) Internet users for an active population of 9.2M (2)
As the same time, about 98% of the population has mobile phone coverage (which implies some form of data access) with terminals that can be had for 0 upfront cost and ~10€ per month subscription with very large traffic allowance.
Telekom (previous Romtelecom) can offer DSL services in most villages where a phone exchange is present.
Corruption or not, its probably a bad idea to start a wireless Internet provider in Romania because it already has excellent commodity connectivity virtually everywhere.
That is the situation for cities, yes. On villages is another dimension. Broadcast is almost non-existent and everybody is relying on mobile. The few that have Digi (that's the actual former Romtelecom) are a drop in a bucket. As corruption is rampart, those on villages that require constant high speed connection usually bribe some city hall workers to let them get a fiber from the city hall to their house. The big majority of people, like I said, rely on cell data by doing hot-spots with them, and that gives them most of the time 3G due to weakness of the signal. Romania has coverage over its territory, but just enough to allow you to call an ambulance or police, but to rely a country side business like a farm that sell its products over internet that's not happening. We all wait to see what happens with 5G, and see wtf is the outcome of the current trade war US/China and most importantly to see from where to get 5G equipment for infrastructure. Huwaei is currently the incontestable leader of 5G tech but with shots fired from US govt. against it, and due to Romania being in NATO and having a US military presence we can't really just say "you know what? we'll get 5G from Huwaei". On the other side we are part of EU and current movement is to kinda ignore Trump and the trade war (see EU stance vis-a-vis Iran issue) and most big telecom companies from France/Germany do have talk with Huwaei. So we, a small fish, are caught between a rock and a hard place...and we wait...and we started to fall behind.
That being said, a WISP for villages would definitely has its place in current situation.
Bribing a city Hall worker for fiber Internet connection is again made up. City halls and all other institutions in Romania are not connected to the regular Internet, the connectivity is provided by STS (Special Telecommunications Services) to a private government network. In remote villages this is provided over satellite or radio link. Regular Internet is purchased by the local authorities from local providers (as needed) and is the same service that would be available to anyone else.
If you would run a local farm, do not host your eCommerce site using the available bandwidth, do it in the cloud, that's what grown ups do.
Please provide sources for your claims and do start a WISP if you want to address the rest of the population 2-10%, spread out over a country the size of UK.
