This is some late-stage capitalism marketing.

You can download an app that lets you manually control the phone camera - see if you can download one and have a play around with it, pump up the ISO and the shutter speed. If you can hold your phone steady you can take a photo of an almost completely dark room that looks almost like you took it in the daytime.

Can’t you listen to music on your work computer or something? Guessing you have an uncool boss. Fair enough!

I think the other direction you could go is to aim for a younger demographic than you’re likely thinking of. Maybe something like 12-15 years old. It’s very important to note that I’m not suggesting you make the story/aesthetic “kid friendly”, if anything I’d suggest more the opposite, kids love things that seem really adult - but the actual challenges and content itself, keep it tuned to a younger audience. I think that age group would get the most out of a general-purpose “learning to code” educational game

Absolutely, I agree completely, personally I hate the adapter because of that reason. I lose literally everything I’m capable of losing.

You don’t, though I would have thought that most of the time when people are using their headphones plugged in to their phone they’re out and about rather than sitting with their phone next to the socket? Though that could be an incorrect assumption of course

It doesn’t need to be a confrontation - just have a chat with your manager, mention that you have an ADHD diagnosis and that you have been recommended some things to help improve your focus, attention and performance at work, and that one of those suggestions was listening to music or white noise through headphones, and ask if it could be considered as an adjustment due to your disability. If you frame it as a collaborative and positive action that you can take together, rather than something you’re demanding to be different, I don’t think there’s any reason for your manager to be offended by the request.

Out of curiosity, would a phone with a USB C to 3.5mm mini Jack be an acceptable compromise?

good low light camera

Pretty much any smart phone should be able to do this with software, really - it’s all just a factor of ISO (light sensitivity) and exposure time, and pretty much every phone sensor can have an absurdly high ISO.

Man, fuck this straw poll website. VPN voting is not allowed? I’m not even on a VPN.

In answer to your question, OP: No, it’s not a requirement for me. I would much prefer if I had one, but it’s not that important for me, I don’t often listen to music from my phone, and when I do I’m in the car, so I just play it over Bluetooth.

I’m not sure how much of this pressure is from your company or self-driven, but I always keep my webcam on and I don’t give a shit about sitting straight or looking attentive or whatever. Half the time I’m fucking around with stuff in the background. Nobody has ever said anything about it.

Depending on where you live it and the job you do, you may be possible to get an exception to the rule against wearing headphones.

If you’re in the US or UK, I know it would be your right to request reasonable accommodation for ADHD - either under the ADA or the Equality Act.

Obviously if there’s a good reason to disallow headphones (for example, if there’s some danger that you wouldn’t be able to hear) then this wouldn’t help. But if it’s just the company being controlling, you can probably get an exception.

Releasing what is essentially two different consoles at the same time was such a bad idea. I can’t imagine that anyone in the engineering team thought it was a good idea. It seems like the kind of decision that is made in a board meeting that gets handed to the engineers with the caveat, “you don’t have to agree with the idea; just make it work!”

For context: I’m currently employed as a software engineer, I do consultancy on the side and I previously was a technical lead. Around 15 years of professional experience which includes a lot of mentoring/training.

It’s a cool idea - there are quite a few little things kicking around with some similarities - “advent of code” is the closest thing I can think of. I’m sure it could be very fun and educational.

Personally, and I’m going to be completely honest and frank with you, I don’t think I would play it, (though I’m definitely not the target market), but also, it’s not likely that I would recommend it to someone who wants to learn to code either.

Usually when people want to learn to code, it’s because they have some end goal in mind - they want to make an app, game, website, they want to get a job as a developer, data analyst, QA, etc. or they have something in particular which interests them - such as machine learning, embedded design, blockchain (yes, I know it’s a scam), digital music/art, etc. - and based on what they want to do, I’d recommend them some very different pathways, and it’s very unlikely that your game would be the best use of their time, to be honest.

I think, personally, this kind of learning device is only really good as a starting point for people who want to learn for the sake of learning, people who want to learn programming but have no real idea about what they want to program - this tends to be quite rare, though, because we all interact with technology from such a young age, by the time people are capable of learning programming, there would be something that gets them excited and that they would enjoy working towards.

I think what I would like to suggest to you instead, is something that I think would be - in my opinion - really cool, genuinely helpful as an educational tool, and with a lot more potential for monetisation:

The exact game you described, but rather than the game being the end goal, instead, you focus on the foundations that the game is built upon, and have the game be a tech demo for an educational, learn-to-code driven game engine.

Prioritise all of the game design tools for building the game such as the world/quest editors and make sure you have some way of supporting different languages, allowing custom assets to be easily imported, etc.

Make it nice and easy for people to build on top of - in an ideal world, it should be possible for someone to decide to make a module for an esoteric conlang and whip up a simple proof of concept adventure with your framework in an evening or two.

Then you can provide it as a subscription based online platform with some sort of limited free trial, a selection of pre-made official modules for individuals and organisations who pay, a “module marketplace” where people can design, share, and sell new adventures (where you take a cut, of course) and self-hosted (or separate) instances for schools, colleges, boot camps, and so on. who want to provide a series of adventures as supplementary learning material for classes.

I think if you put some effort into this you could make something really cool and successful. But it’s definitely a huge undertaking. If you want to take on the challenge, let me know, maybe it’s something we can work on together if you’re interested.

That’s always the trade-off - convenience, or privacy? It seems that we live in a world where we can’t really get both, and everyone has their personal preference on where that line should be drawn.

I’ve got pretty severe ADHD so WFH is a mixed bag, it’s great to have the flexibility but some days I dig myself a hole of not actually doing anything and putting myself under severe pressure to get stuff done in way less time than I would have, and so on. If anyone in the comments has any tips on overcoming this they would be gratefully received :D

I think Edge still has a bunch of the Google telemetry, though. But I could be wrong - I haven’t looked into it because Firefox exists. Firefox also has some Google telemetry kinda stuff by default, just in case you didn’t know - you have to disable it (or bear with it because you want the features)

First of all, thanks for the question, I think it’s really interesting and I’m sorry that some people are responding with so much hostility.

If I commute 2 hours a day and work 5 days a week, that works out at 10 hours, which is more than a single day’s work - so for that reason alone I think the question is a little flawed.

However, the company I used to work for was a 5 minute or so commute for me. So if I could have a short commute like that and work 4 days from the office, I’d totally go for it. More time for me! If it was even as much as 20 minute commute (4.5 days work equivelent) then I’d rather work from home.

If Firefox isn’t available, the next best choice would probably be de-googled Chromium (note that Chromium is not necessarily fully de-googled by default) or Safari. Edge is just Chrome plus Microsoft.

Firefox. It’s better, IMO, to follow a process of how to manually harden it because then you know how to allow exclusions to the hardening when things go wrong.