Block any ads from showing on your computer with AdGuard DNS

Connect to public AdGuard DNS server (adguard-dns.io)

Set up your network settings to use AdGuard DNS and they’ll block any ad server requests for you. A good option if you don’t want to block ads across your entire network with something like a PiHole. Downside is that you’re sending all your traffic to a DNS server that you don’t control.

DNS addresses

Default servers
AdGuard DNS will block ads and trackers.
94.140.14.14
94.140.15.15

Non-filtering servers
AdGuard DNS will not block ads, trackers, or any other DNS requests.
94.140.14.140
94.140.14.141

Family protection servers
AdGuard DNS will block ads, trackers, adult content, and enable Safe Search and Safe Mode, where possible.
94.140.14.15
94.140.15.16

Examples of blocked ads

Privacy Policy for URL Transformer

Privacy Policy for URL Transformer

Effective Date: January 30, 2024

This Privacy Policy document outlines the types of information that is not collected, gathered, or processed by URL Transformer

Since we do not collect any personal data, we have no information to share or use in any way. Our commitment is to ensure your privacy and data protection rights at all times.

1. No Data Collection

URL Transformer does not collect, store, or transmit any personal information. We do not track user activity, browsing history, or any other information related to the user’s online or offline activities.

2. No Third-Party Data Sharing

Since no data is collected, there is no sharing of personal information with any third parties.

3. No User Authentication

Our extension does not require any form of user registration or authentication. Users can utilize the functionalities of URL Transformer without an account, which ensures that their identity remains anonymous.

4. No Cookies

URL Transformer does not use cookies or any similar tracking technologies.

5. Extension Permissions

The extension may require certain permissions to function correctly (such as activeTab for interacting with web content). However, these permissions do not allow the extension to access personal data. They are solely for providing the features and functionalities as intended by URL Transformer .

6. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page. You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes.

7. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at nick@pezant.ca.

This policy is effective as of January 30, 2024.

Disabling Speak to Chat on Sony XM4

I was frustrated at my Sony XM4 headphones cutting out and playing a sidetone instead every time you start talking during a meeting. Since I was using it on my Mac I couldn’t turn off the Speak to Chat functionality through the app settings. Here’s the fix I found!

SOLUTION:

To turn off this annoying feature, hold two fingers down flat on your right earbud until you hear a “Speak to Chat deactivated” message. You might need to try a few different finger placements (just holding for a few seconds should do)

Credit to hiiamhere1 for this solution (Wh-1000XM4 CUTS OUT WHEN TALKING? : sony (reddit.com))!

Advice for an early-stage PM

Someone reached out to me recently (through a career coach of mine from years ago!) about my journey into PM and asked some great questions about how I got to where I am and how they might consider approaching a career in Product Management. Below are their questions and my answers.

​From your perspective, you’ve had several interesting roles with an expansive field of work, I’d love to learn:

  • how you navigated your career path
    • I get my first full time exposure in Product Management because I wanted to work in games. I went to GDC and networked morning to night for the full week and managed to get a break with a referral for a role at Pocket Gems as an APM.
    • Since then, I’ve mostly worked in startups and I gradually branched out from Gaming specific PM work to a broader consumer PM skill set (although these skills are applicable broadly anyways).
    • I chose to move on to a new opportunity when I felt that the company wasn’t the right fit for me anymore, or if I didn’t see a strong path forward in terms of learning & development in my current role.
  • where you see the market going in your current line of work
    • The most significant change here would be with regards to advances in AI. I think the role of PM will still remain critical but you’ll be able to hand over some of the busywork over to the AI. For example, you’ll still be a central conduit for the team in terms of bringing everything together but folks might be able to query a bot to ask who to talk to for a certain thing or what the status of a ramp is.
  • the skills you have gained throughout your career (either on the job or through structured learning)
    • When I started out as a PM I had a strong business background and was reasonably technical but I didn’t have a academic background in software engineering. I was also data-oriented and analytical but I’d never learned SQL. On the design front, I was already familiar with design tools like Illustrator but hadn’t used tools like Sketch or XD yet. I learned a number of things through doing at Pocket Gems in particular:
      1. How to write SQL
      2. How to read & write JSON
      3. How our systems worked and how to provide direction on feature development as a PM
      4. Using collaborative design software
    • In general, applied learning is going to be most useful as you can become familiar with actual use cases for the tools you’ll be using. Those opportunities can come up in work or as a result of the projects that you’re pursuing yourself.
  • how you leverage ML in your current job (saw you did some studying on the topic)
    • I’m the Product Lead for prompt engineering for a project at LinkedIn called collaborative articles (see articles at linkedin.com/pulse/topics/home). On that track I was both developing prompts themselves but also planning out our roadmap and prioritizing our workstreams to make sure we hit our targets as we were producing content at scale using a pre-release version of GPT-4.
    • Outside of that, I work with AI teams at LinkedIn on projects applying to my area so knowledge of how these systems work generally (data, features, model training, model types, etc) is useful to enhance my ability to work with them effectively.
  • small vs. big companies (what you liked, disliked working in different environments)
    • Company size has an effect on a number of dimensions (although some companies aren’t transformed to the same degree as they grow) things like job stability, level of communication required, liquid vs. illiquid compensation tend to be connected to company size. Generally, being at a larger company is going to give you a more stable outcome (less downside, less upside) but won’t give you as much flexibility and breadth to explore as a smaller company. What I tell early stage PMs is that generally, starting off in a larger company is probably the better overall decision as you’ll have much better liquid compensation, an opportunity to build out your network and a strong brand name to build off of for your future career moves.
    • For me personally, I have a few factors I consider when deciding what kind of company to join
      1. Quality of their product
      2. The people
      3. Culture
      4. Growth potential
      5. Financial upside
    • Now that I’m working at a larger company, what I’ve felt most of all is the sheer amount of work required to get things done. The scale means that your impact still carries well but it does generally slow down the pace at which you’re able to innovate and experiment. I think the sweet spot for me would be starting my own company (small, agile, freedom to make own decisions and own mistakes, shape company as I see it) or joining a pre-IPO startup (still agile and quick moving, getting into scale territory but still room to grow)
  • any advice you may have for me based off my interests (I am sometimes overwhelmed with the possibilities so I am learning how to work through this and focus on my current job dtd)​
    • Being a PM is a mix of many different skills and responsibilities (and that mix also varies across companies). If you like the variety and the challenge of bringing together so many different disciplines and wide groups of stakeholders together you’ll probably like being a PM. Another factor here will also be your comfort with ownership and responsibility, as a PM you’ll be leading your area and often making final decisions on how to proceed so you’l need to be comfortable with being accountable with how things turn out (even if its not necessarily your responsibility in certain situations).
    • On the other hand, if you find you’re really enjoying a certain subset of areas you’ve explored like design, analytics, software engineering, product marketing, user research, etc – it might be work exploring an IC role in that specific area as you’ll be able to focus in on those specific areas that you really like the most.

Things to Do in NYC

Little Island
Xian Famous Foods
Hamilton History Walk
The High Line
Central Park
The New York Public Library
Russ & Daughter’s Cafe
Take the ferry to Stanton Island (for free) and see the Statue of Liberty
The Strand book store
Bike along the west side of Manhattan
COTE Korean Steakhouse is incredible
Bike along the Brooklyn Bridge
Visit Hunter’s Point
Milk Bar for Dessert
9/11 Memorial Museum
Prospect Park

Fix: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 103

If you’re like me and trying to set up a scraping project and leveraging Selenium you may have run into the path requirement that I found to be puzzling. Luckily chromedriver-py solves that for you. However, upon install, I found that it wasn’t accepting the version of Chrome that I had installed (apparently the latest release only supports the beta version of Chrome).

My error message:

selenium.common.exceptions.SessionNotCreatedException: Message: session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 103

Current browser version is 102.0.5005.115 with binary path /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome

After installing Chrome’s beta version and being unsuccessful there I figured out that earlier versions of chromedriver-py support earlier versions of the browser.

I was able to install a specific version of chromedriver-py via pip using this command (which is also helpfully included on the version pages on pypi.org):

python -m pip install chromedriver-py==102.0.5005.61

https://pypi.org/project/chromedriver-py/102.0.5005.61/

Remember to uninstall the version that isn’t working for you first.

Happy scraping!

Things and Places in SF + Bay Area

I’ve been in the Bay Area for a while now (7 years) and put together a list for friends visiting to give them some inspiration on what to do when they visit. Hope its helpful to you!

To eat

  • Chicken sandwich at the Bird (my favourite chicken sandwich)
  • Kin Khao (expensive but amazing Thai food) – currently closed but you can check out their sister restaurant Nari
  • Tacko (upscale + delicious Mexican food)
  • B Patisserie (awesome pastries, try their Kouign Aman)
  • Che Fico
  • Get ice cream from Salt and Straw and wander over to Delores Park (where you can often get marijuana enhanced snacks if you like)
  • State Bird Provisions
  • House of Prime Rib (an SF classic, its quite the experience. I’d say its not as good as its priced but worth a visit for the experience potentially).
  • Wayfare Tavern
    • Their popovers are amazing and the chicken is delicious
  • Tartine Manufactory
    • Heidi loves their banana cream pie
  • Flour + Water
    • Solid pasta & pizza
  • San Tung Chinese Restaurant
    • Get the chicken wings
  • Jane the Bakery
  • Yank Sing
  • Chinatown Dim Sum & Baked Goods
    • Napoleon Super Bakery
      • Get the egg tart, buttercream, and whatever else catches your fancy
    • Good Mong Kok
      • Delicious dim sum but often ridiculous lines. If line too long go to the other place listed below.
    • Delicious Dim Sum
      • Similar quality to GMK without the nutty lines.
      • Ordering dim sum
        • My recommendations would be the following dishes:
          • Sesame Ball
          • Shrimp Dumpling
          • Shui Mai
          • Ham Sui Gok
          • + anything else that catches your eye!
  • Breadbelly
    • Online orders open at 10AM (open Thursday – Sunday)
    • I recommend the Kaya Bun and Brown Butter Mochi
    • BREADBELLY (toasttab.com)
  • Boba
    • Boba Guys
      • SF classic. I think they’re overpriced and somewhat overrated but their boba tea is good. Good fit if you’re kind of boujie.
    • i-Tea
      • One of my favourite boba tea shops: I-TEA
  • Coffee
    • I don’t really drink coffee / tea but people are really into Blue Bottle & Pete’s
  • Ice Cream
    • Bi Rite
    • Salt & Straw
  • Crazy expensive but worth it if you have that sort of money to spend
    • Niku Steakhouse
    • Lazy Bear
    • The Shota omakase
  • Plow SF
    • Excellent brunch place 
    • Get there early though as the wait can be crazy ~
  • Mexican
    • Taquería El Farolito – 2779 Mission St San Francisco, CA 94110
      • SF Mission District classic. Excellent value and about as legit as you’re going to get.

To see

  • Yoda Statue at the Lucas Arts building in the Presidio
  • Lover’s Lane in the Presidio
  • Palace of Fine Arts
  • The Painted Ladies
  • Transbay Terminal (go to the rooftop garden and walk around it, its awesome)
  • John McLaren Park
    • Huge park with pretty epic views of South San Francisco
  • Rolling hills out at Mt. Tam
  • Ferry Building
  • Coit Tower
  • Sutro Baths
  • Land’s End Lookout / The Labyrinth
  • Huntington Park
    • Beautiful park in the centre of Nob Hill
  • Transamerica Pyramid
  • Maiden Lane
  • Yerba Buena Gardens
  • Chinatown
  • Crocker Galleria Rooftop
  • Golden Gate Park
  • Tile steps throughout SF. So pretty~
  • Mori Point
    • Short hike from parking lot and beautiful views! 
  • Grandview Park
    • Absolutely stunning views of the city. I recommend going at sunset or sunrise 

To do

  • Biking
    • Bike across the Golden Gate Bridge over to Sausalito + take ferry back (pretty easy).
      • I recommend renting a bike from the Bike Hut
    • Bike across the Golden Gate and do the Hawk Hill loop (moderate to hard). Really beautiful but a rough climb if you’re not a road biker.
    • Bike through Golden Gate park through to Ocean Beach
      • Visit –
        • The De Young Museum
        • Botanical Garden
        • Dutch Windmill
        • The bison!
        • Turtles at Stow Lake
  • Hiking + Walking
  • Touristy
  • Other activities
    • Disc golf at Golden Gate Park
    • Go pet farm animals at Tilden Little Farm in Berkeley
    • Play mini-golf at Urban Putt
    • Visit some of the the Public Open Spaces in the city
    • Drive the ridiculous tourist carts around town
    • Watch a movie at the Alamo Drafthouse and order a meal to your seats
    • Museums
      • San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
        • I don’t like modern art but many people think highly of this place.
      • Exploratorium
        • Lots of fun practical science exhibits here. Lots of fun as a date night if you go to Exploratorium after dark.
      • Asian Art Museum
        • My favourite museum in the city. So many beautiful, historical cities.
    • Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building (Saturday mornings)
    • Japanese Onsen (466 Eddy St, San Francisco, CA 94109)
    • Ferry to Alcatraz Island
    • Bike Across Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito & take ferry back
    • Visit Dolores Park and Chill Out
    • Bouldering at Dogpatch Boulders or Mission Cliffs
    • Visit Spark Social in Mission Bay
    • Exploratorium
    • California Academy of Sciences
    • Stow Lake @ Golden Gate (turtles!)

Non-SF Based Activities

  • Day trip down south to Big Sur/Carmel-by-the-sea
    • Visit the Monterey Aquarium
  • Day trip out to wine country
    • Napa, Sonoma, Healdsburg
    • I think visiting somewhere other than Napa is better (so Sonoma for example) as its a bit too busy generally but it can be exciting.
  • Day trip up north to Mendocino
    • Its so beautiful here and there are so many amazing hikes, national parks and costal views to experience
    • Russian Gulch State Park
      • We took the North Point trail up into the forest. It’s a steep climb to start but you’re embedded in the woods and it’s pretty magical. We hiked to the waterfall which was not impressive in the least but was a good end point. We came back along the Fern Valley trail (which was “closed” but it was totally walkable and plenty of people were on it).
      • We wrapped up with a picnic at the upper picnic area which provided a view of the bridge.
    • Mendocino Headlands State Park
      • Stunning scenery directly accessible from the parking. You can also see the lighthouse in the distance!
    • Point Cabrillo Lighthouse
      • Beautiful lighthouse and grounds 0.5 miles from parking
    • Mendocino
      • Cute little town nearby, make sure to head to the water and check out the park directly adjacent to the town
  • Day trip south to explore Silicon Valley
    • If you’re interested you can meander around Stanford University, visit the Computer museum, bike around the Google campus, etc. Pretty unique feature of the Bay Area

How to request removal of your deleted content from Google

Have you ever deleted a post online or made a profile private and wanted it to be removed from search results? If that content is no longer available to the public, it should eventually be removed from search results but, if you want to expedite it, you can actually submit a request directly to Google to have it be removed from search results by using this tool (https://search.google.com/search-console/remove-outdated-content).

This tool only applies if the content is no longer publicly available so make sure to have it taken before submitting a request.


If you want to learn more about the tool you can read about it here (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7041154).

Resources for PMs

I’ve had quite a few folks reach out for guidance on navigating their journey as a PM. Since it’s a newer field and a lot of it has to do with softer skills it can be a bit hard to know where to start to build on your skills and become a more effective PM. Here are some resources I’ve found to be helpful in developing my own skills. If you’ve got any you’ve found useful or would like to share please leave a comment, :).

Books

The best resource I’ve found on Books for PMs is from Ken Norton. You can view it directly here: https://www.kennorton.com/essays/books-for-product-managers.html

These were the ones I found to be most useful:

  • Nudge
  • How to Lie with Statistics
  • Interview Math (Lewis C Lin, helpful for quant interview prep)
  • Cracking the PM Interview
  • Decode & Conquer
  • On Writing
  • In the Plex (if interviewing with Google)
  • Don’t Make Me Think

Courses

There are a few different options for PM-related courses out there but I think the runaway favourite in terms of value and actual practical application is Reforge. Their courses are built around key concepts like Retention and Engagement, Advanced Growth Strategy, and Product Strategy. I highly recommend taking one of these courses if you have the time & resources to do so. It’s generally a 6-8 week commitment at 6-10 hours per week of time.

Newsletters

Newsletters can be a low friction way for you to continuously get helpful content for you to consume on a periodic basis. Open to more suggestions if folks have them.

WoW Dungeon Reset to send you back to the start of the instance | Classic WoW

Sometimes you’re running a dungeon on repeat (say Blackrock Depths Emperor runs or a Maraudon Princess run) and don’t want to have to port back to a major city (or hearth away) and then run back to the dungeon again. There’s actually a way to reset the dungeon while keeping you in the instance and sending you back to the start of the instance.

Here’s how to do it:

  • Once you want to reset the dungeon and send yourself back to the start of the instance.
  • Invite an alt character that is not inside the dungeon
  • Promote that alt character to be party leader
  • Have everyone log out of the game (you need to log out & wait the 20 seconds you can’t just expedite by exiting)
  • Reset the dungeon from that alt character (right click on your character frame and click on “Reset all instances”). If you’ve done it correctly you’ll get a message like “Maraudon has been reset”.
  • Log back into the instance on your other characters and you should now be back where you zoned in with a fresh dungeon to run!

References:

Things to Do in Vancouver + Metro Vancouver

This is a list I’ve been working on for friends visiting Vancouver. If you have any suggestions or feedback please feel free to leave a comment, :).

To do

North Shore

  • Where I grew up!
  • Things to do
    • Lonsdale Quay
    • Ambleside Park
    • Take the Seabus to and from Vancouver
      • Nice ride with great views!
  • Nature
  • Grouse Mountain
    • Grouse Grind, intense hike up to the top of the mountain. You can also take the gondola if you’d rather not hike your way up.
    • Lumberjack show at the top
    • See wolves and bears
  • Capilano Suspension Bridge
    • Nice suspension Bridge
    • Walk amongst the trees
  • Lynn Valley Suspension Bridge
    • Nice hike in the woods
    • Free Suspension Bridge
    • Waterfalls
  • Deep Cove
    • Baden Powell Trail, Quarry Rock is a short hike with a great view
    • Kayaking
    • Cute little town
  • Lighthouse Park
    • Really nice hike and lighthouse by the water

UBC/Point Grey

  • Things to do
  • Nature
    • Pacific Spirit Regional Park
      • Huge forest on University Endowment lands that you can hike in
    • Wreck Beach is nice to visit and has quite a nice view at sunset
      • Note that this is a nudist beach
    • Nitobe Memorial Garden – UBC Botanical Garden
      • Beautiful little garden on campus. So peaceful and quiet here, :).
    • Botanical Gardens at UBC are nice as well

Downtown Vancouver

  • Things to do
    • Visit
      • Gastown
        • Hipster part of Vancouver
        • Cobblestone streets
        • Steam clock
        • Fancy coffee bars and silly fashion stores
      • Coal Harbour
        • Beautiful neighbourhood by the water
        • Pathway along the water that leads to Stanley park
      • Canada Place
        • Convention Centre by the water
        • Pathway by the water
        • Olympic Flame
      • Granville Island
        • Cool little island made from a sandbar
        • Used to be industrial now full of small artisan workplaces and cool shops
        • Visit the Granville Island Market
        • Improv at the Theatre on the Island is also very good.
      • Kitsilano/West 4th
        • Nice part of the city with restaurants and good shopping
        • Lots of streets named after trees
      • Granville Street
        • Street where pretty much all the clubs are located in Downtown Vancouver
      • Robson Street
        • Best known for shopping and food
        • Good ramen here
      • English Bay
        • Nice beach by Stanley Park with beautiful views
      • Commercial Drive
        • Quirky part of the city with a lot of small businesses
        • Similar to the Mission in SF
    • Activities
  • Nature
    • Stanley Park
      • Amazing park that represents a big chunk of the city
      • You should bike around the Seawall!
      • Visit the Vancouver Aquarium if you like aquariums
    • English Bay

Food

Overall Recommendations

  • Ask for Luigi
    • AMAZING Italian food
  • Bon’s off Broadway
    • Crazy cheap breakfast diner, very colourful
  • Heritage Asian Eatery
    • Delicious Asian food. Get the Dandan Noodles, duck wings and crispy dumplings
  • Jade Garden
    • Love this Chinese food place on the North Shore. My favourites are the Hot & Sour Soup, Crispy Ginger Fried Beef and Pad Thai Fried Flat Noodle
  • Nam Nam Noodle | Home | Nam Nam Noodle (square.site)
    • Extraordinary hand pulled noodles at great prices.
  • Indian Village Eatery
    • The best Indian food I’ve had in Vancouver. Affordable, delicious and you can see them make your food. The most friendly and warm legit Indian ladies making your fantastic food.
  • Go Fish
    • Amazing fish & chips by Granville island. Beautiful views and you can get many different varieties of fish. I always go for the salmon, :D. Their coleslaw is great too!
  • Bao Bei
    • Taiwanese food in Chinatown
  • Meat and Bread
    • Simple and delicious sandwiches. Lunch rush is a bit crazy during weekdays but if you work around that you should be good!
  • Phnom Penh Restaurant
    • Great Vietnamese food. Make sure to get their chicken wings!
  • Richmond Night Market
    • If this is running, this is a fun spot to visit for a couple hours. Try out some of the night market foods, :D!
  • Savio Volpe | Home – Savio Volpe
    • Astonishingly good place to eat. Their food is expensive but delicious. But everything I ate there was fantastic.
  • HK BBQ Master | HK B.B.Q. MASTER
    • Fantastic BBQ pork for a great price. Highly recommend eating here.
    • Cash only (although there is an ATM in the Superstore above)
  • Kim’s Market | KIM’S MART 
    • Legit Korean grocery off Broadway. If you need to shop for groceries you can get some well priced stuff here and explore some Korean snacks!
  • purebread | https://www.purebread.ca/
    • This is my favourite bakery in Vancouver by far. Their stuff is SO good and SO beautiful. Definitely on the pricey side but if you can afford it it is worth it. I recommend visiting their Mount Pleasant location
    • 5 E 5th Avenue, Vancouver

Surrey

  • Go here for Indian food

Richmond

  • Go here for Chinese food

Kingsway

  • Go here for Vietnamese food

Lonsdale

  • Go here for Iranian food

Other Locations to Visit (Further Treks)

Whistler

  • Excellent skiing and snowboarding in the winter
  • Great hikes and mountain biking in the summer
  • Beautiful mountain resort town

The Chief

  • Awesome hike up to the top of a massive granite face. Cool views.
  • Will take 2-3 hours depending on fitness

Squamish

Victoria

  • Capital city of British Columbia
  • Really nice place to visit for a day or two
  • Beautiful heritage buildings
  • Better weather than Vancouver
  • Lots of museums and such

Various Islands near Vancouver

  • Take the ferries to access these
  • Mix of beautiful nature, cute little towns
  • Totally different lifestyle from the mainland. Much slower and more down to earth.
  • Some islands to consider
    • Bowen Island
    • Galiano Island
    • Saltspring Island