The World Cup has eaten my life and I regret nothing. The US-Portugal game Sunday: 2-1 with thirty seconds left, then Ronaldo delivers a perfect cross and it’s 2-2 and I made a sound that scared my neighbors. Group of Death indeed. Work productivity during group-stage games is a rounding error above zero; Brazil kickoffs land between 9:30pm and 6:30am IST, and the office has quietly adopted a no-meetings-before-11am rule until the group stage ends.
Actual tech news I refuse to skip: Amazon announced the Fire Phone last week. It has four front cameras for a 3D head-tracking effect, and a button that identifies products so you can buy them from Amazon. It’s a store you can call people with. The room wants it to be cool; the room is not convinced.
Also Google I/O is this week: Android everywhere, watches (Android Wear), cars (Auto), TVs. Google and Apple are both annexing every screen with a power source.
TIL: WebSockets, for real this time. Built a tiny live World Cup score widget for the office dashboard, my first production socket code. Watching the score update with no refresh still feels like a magic trick. The Portugal equalizer arrived via my own widget and I have never been so devastated by my own infrastructure.