2024.11.04 - How Virtual Reality Died

Title: 2024.11.04 – How Virtual Reality Died

Welcoming winter • Autumn weight‑loss • The calculus of life • Wisdom of Traditional Chinese Medicine

This Week’s Hot Topics

How Virtual Reality Died https://www.honest-broker.com/p/how-virtual-reality-died Meta, Microsoft, and Apple lost billions trying to convince us to live in the Matrix. Can you guess what they’re planning next?

How I Write Code Using Cursor: A Review https://www.arguingwithalgorithms.com/posts/cursor-review.html A few months into using Cursor as my daily driver for both personal and work projects, I have some observations to share about whether this is a “must‑have” tool or just a passing fad, plus strategies to get the most benefit quickly that may help you if you’d like to try it. Some of you may have tried Cursor and found it underwhelming, and maybe these suggestions will inspire you to give it another go. Related:

• Bringing developer choice to Copilot with Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, and OpenAI’s o1‑preview
• Introducing ChatGPT search
• Vector Databases Are the Wrong Abstraction
• A return to hand‑written notes by learning to read & write
• AI Flame Graphs
• Claude for Desktop
• The Open Source AI Definition – 1.0
• Pushing the frontiers of audio generation

Deep Reads

Web Component Continued Progress https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/web-component-continued-progress/ At Big Medium we’re fans of Web Components, and over the past six years we’ve helped our clients build standards‑based, interoperable design systems with them.

HTML Form Validation Is Heavily Underused https://expressionstatement.com/html-form-validation-is-heavily-underused HTML forms have powerful validation mechanisms, but they’re rarely used. In fact, many people don’t even know they exist. Is this a design flaw? Let’s find out.

For a Better Web 2: John Ozbay (Cryptee) https://brucelawson.co.uk/2024/for-a-better-web-2-john-ozbay-cryptee/ Amid the excitement of Vivaldi 7’s launch and a talk to 750 people in Utrecht, I forgot to post the second episode of my For A Better Web podcast, where I chatted with the charismatic John Ozbay, founder of Cryptee—a privacy‑preserving photo and notes Progressive Web App from Estonia—about privacy, PWAs, protecting people… and pianos!

Fresh Finds

Octoverse: AI Leads Python to Top Language as the Number of Global Developers Surges We’re Forking Flutter. This Is Why. Build an Astro Site with Deno So Long WordPress Celebrating 21 Years of Notepad++: The Legendary Journey of Our Favorite Text Editor

Products & Others

Where Did All the Hair Go? https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/oE7j0HtqVUa7o7N9arWzUQ Someone said, “Not being anxious is the best rescue for hair loss.” Let go of your obsession with hair, build strong “soul muscles,” and your anxiety and worries may lessen. One day, sitting in a rocking chair, you might calmly laugh, “My hair is thinning, but I’ve become stronger.”

Refuse to Be a “Pregnant Belly” – The Right Way to Lose Weight This Autumn https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/bBmO9d5W85d9Yu2smM-fkA There’s a saying: “When autumn comes, add a little weight; when winter passes, spring brings health.” Autumn is traditionally a time to eat well and store a bit of fat for winter. But for those who care about their figure, “autumn padding” isn’t an option. The real challenge is maintaining a curvy silhouette when metabolism slows and weight gain becomes easy. So, how do you adopt the correct posture for autumn weight loss? Does the classic “eat less, move more” still apply?

Adjust These Lifestyle Habits to Better Welcome Winter https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/F71eU1TVH6m1h8lwDaJIPA In this extensive discussion of the four seasonal qi, we see how the world’s cycles affect the flow of energy. Humans, situated between heaven and earth, need to stay in sync with these cycles to nurture life properly. Winter’s hallmark is “contraction and storage.” The yang qi that rose to the surface in spring and summer retreats underground in winter, leaving the surface looking like “water‑ice‑cracked earth.” Below we combine classic teachings to see how sages advise us to adjust body and mind to resonate with winter’s energy.

Teacher Nona – Anyone Can Learn Five‑Element Acupuncture https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/sRrzeyqd3aMihzsBiRrzLg As a Westerner, I have an innate advantage over many Chinese: you are born knowing what the Five Elements are, whereas in Europe or the United States most people have no concept of them at all. Your ancestors, the ancient Chinese, were incredibly wise; they discovered the “Dao,” the concepts of yin‑yang and the Five Elements, and understood how the world unfolds from them. Dao, yin‑yang, and the Five Elements encompass everything in the universe.

Cai Zhizhong: The Present Moment Is the Differential of Life; a Whole Life Is the Integral of the Present https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ndIWKDKu-XNIEk1bEZMHEw No matter how vast the universe, we can only stand where we are. No matter how long time is, we can only exist in the now. The reality of life is that our whole existence is the accumulation of countless moments; each moment is the differential of life, and the entire lifespan is the integral of those moments.

Studying TCM All Your Life Comes Down to Two Characters https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/uVwjuSakRsJOsXSdyZRNow The ultimate result of learning Traditional Chinese Medicine is a rounded wisdom; I think that is the core purpose of TCM study. The method is to cultivate “a harmonious qi” and “exhaust reasoning to reach destiny.” We acquire knowledge to better enjoy life. Whether it’s TCM or any other skill, if it doesn’t improve our living conditions or enhance life’s quality, there’s little point in studying it. Hence, the goal of learning is to live better and more happily.

---

-- THE END --

---

Originally written by Ping Xia (平侠) and published in Chinese on Web技术周刊 (Web Tech Weekly). Translated and adapted for DriftSeas with permission.