Senior Microsoft programmer Raymond Chen describes a feature in Windows 10 that is unusually useful:
Windows 10 brings the Xbox Game DVR feature to the PC. The Game DVR feature lets you record yourself playing a video game, so you can share the recording with your friends.
Suppose you have some program that you want to record, say for a bug report or for an instructional video. Just pretend it's a game:
- Put focus on the program you want to record.
- Press Win+G to open the Game Bar. If it asks whether you want to open the Game Bar, say, "Yes, this is a game."
- Press the red circle to start recording, or press Win+Alt+R.
- Do the thing you want to record.
- Open the Game Bar and press the red square to stop recording. Or use the hotkey Win+Alt+R.
- Optional: Open the Game Bar, click the gear icon, and uncheck "Remember this app as a game."
The recording is placed in your Videos\Captures folder.
Cool, right?
Michigan Avenue at the river:
From a couple of weeks ago, when I went to a networking event by the river:
And from Sunday, on the way to perform Mahler:
For the first time since 1880, more young people are living with their parents than with each other:
Adults between 18 and 34 are more likely to live with a parent than to get married or move in with a romantic partner, according to an analysis of Census data by the Pew Research Center. The researchers note that it's the first time in more than 130 years in which young adults have chosen their parents' homes over living on their own in a relationship.
In 2014, 32.1 percent of young adults were living with a parent, while 31.6 percent were living in what Pew calls a romantic relationship — either with a spouse or a partner.
In a separate recent report titled "Missing Young Adult Households," the National Association of Home Builders attributes a lack of demand for single-family homes to millennials living with mothers and fathers after graduating from college or high school. That study said 20 percent of people born 1981 to 1996 were living with parents.
The two organizations found a number of factors leading to these outcomes. In time this will reverse—assuming young people actually have enough families of their own.
YouTube user John Meyer has found two films of boat rides on the Chicago River and into the lake. This one is from 1956:
And this one is from 1983:
Too many things to read before lunchtime:
Now, back to work.
Bullet the Bison takes this folk song literally:
The Dallas NBC affiliate has more.
Yes, I've posted a few things about the killing of Sears lately, because Eddie Lampert's investor call the other day was a train-wreck.
Well, Crain's has attempted to tote up the damage, and it turns out Lampert has reduced the value of Sears stock by over 90%—not counting the dead spin-offs:
Since he combined Sears Roebuck with Kmart in March 2005, Sears Holdings stock has lost roughly 90 percent of its value, dropping to an all-time low of $11.53 a share yesterday. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index has risen 75 percent over that same span.
But Sears Holdings doesn't tell the whole story. Since 2011, Lampert has carved out five investment vehicles from Sears. He spun off department store chain Sears Canada, hardware retailer Orchard Supply, hard-goods chain Sears Hometown & Outlet Stores, apparel company Lands' End and real estate investment trust Seritage Growth Properties. In some cases, Sears gave shares in the new company to shareholders in a direct spinoff; in others the shareholders got rights to buy stock in the newly independent company.
The total value of all these transactions to various shareholders depends on several variables, including when they bought into Sears, how many Sears shares they owned at the time of each spinoff, whether they exercised all subscription rights and how many shares of each company they still hold. But one thing is clear: Investors who stuck with Sears throughout Lampert's tenure would have done better with an S&P 500 Index Fund.
Yeah. How he's remained CEO of Sears boggles the mind.
After announcing yesterday that Sears will close its oldest retail store in the U.S. in the wake of a $1.13 bn loss last year, CEO Eddie Lampert told investors that he intends to return the chain to profitability in five years. Apparently their loyalty program is the problem:
Shop Your Way members sign up to receive coupons, and free shipping, and earn points that can be converted into dollars. Membership also provides access to a “social commerce” community on shopyourway.com that lets shoppers see what merchandise their friends have "liked" or purchased. Sears, in return, receives rich data about these customers that helps it adapt more quickly to serving them.
The program has been Lampert's pet project of the last five years. But after defending it and explaining that building such a platform and changing customers' behavior requires a lot of patience, he admitted what a lot of skeptical observers have long assumed: Shop Your Way just isn't getting people to spend enough money.
He said the platform has an enormous number of registered members, but many of them are not as active as he would like. Three-quarters of Sears' revenue comes from registered Shop Your Way members, but many of them are not frequent buyers.
"Getting people engaged and interested is super-important," he said. "We've built the platform, (but) we've fallen short on getting them engaged. Are we really getting the bulk of their purchases? We want to serve our members deeper. If you shop with us 10 times a year and spend $300, we'd like you to shop 100 times a year and spend $3,000."
NO, you putz, the problem isn't your loyalty platform; it's that you, personally, have spent ten years turning Sears into someplace no one wants to shop. Have you even been inside one of your stores lately?
A few years ago I spent two days inside a Sears store that had been converted into a health-insurance company's head office. I have never worked in a more depressing environment, and I'm including in "never" the time I worked graveyard shifts in a dorm security booth in college.
Eddie, the only way the company can return to profitability in five years is if you terminate retail operations and sell the remaining assets to Seritage. But face it: you killed one of America's greatest brands, all by yourself.
This is Sears, Roebuck & Co.'s very first brick-and-mortar store, located just a few blocks from my house:
The store opened in November 1925, and is closing this summer, as a consequence of Eddie Lampert's rape and involuntary homicide of the company.
Our local NPR affiliate, WBEZ, has the complete story.