Rob Fahrni

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Sorry I missed last weekend. I had the flu and it really kicked my butt. When Kim got up on Saturday morning I went back to bed and slept until 4:30 that afternoon. I needed it. I was wiped out. Sunday was even worse. I felt completely disconnected from my body. Really fuzzy brained, fever, chills, achy, and a lovely cough. That lasted for most of the week. I started feeling more myself on Thursday. Of course I’m back to work on Monday. 😂 I’m grateful I had the week to recover.

I hope you enjoy the links!

Carly Thomas and Abid Rahman • The Hollywood Reporter

James Ransone, the versatile character actor best known for his roles in The Wire, Tangerine, Generation Kill, It: Chapter Two and The Black Phone, died on Dec. 19. He was 46.

This really bummed me out because I thought Mr. Ransone was an incredible actor. It’s not mentioned above but my favorite character of his was Deputy So and So in Sinister.

RIP Deputy So and So. 🪦

Leave Substack

You should probably leave Substack. Here’s why and how.

Yes, you should 100% leave Substack. I can list so many amazing journalists who’ve created their presence on Substack. They don’t say they’ve created a blog, no, they say they’ve created a Substack which makes it even worse. They’re just blogs and, unfortunately, Substack created an environment attractive to writers because it has everything they need; a place to write, social features, and a way to make money doing it. All without lifting a finger to maintain servers or collect money from paid subscribers. It was smart of the founders, but it turns out the founders support some pretty disgusting people, like Nazis.🤬

Robert Lea • Space

Astronomers have made a truly mind-boggling discovery using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): a runaway black hole 10 million times larger than the sun, rocketing through space at a staggering 2.2 million miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per second).

Isn’t this incredible? It’s so difficult to wrap your brain around the idea that a black hole is traveling through space at that speed, creating a wake, and creating new stars as it goes. Just fascinating!🖤

Benj Edwards • Ars Technica

While the JavaScript language didn’t ship publicly until that September and didn’t reach a 1.0 release until March 1996, the descendants of Eich’s initial 10-day hack now run on approximately 98.9 percent of all websites with client-side code, making JavaScript the dominant programming language of the web.

Much to my chagrin JavaScript has become the de facto language of the web. At one time I’d hoped Common Language Infrastructure would become the way of the web, but it didn’t happen. Instead we got WebAssembly, which is fine, I just wish it had been CLI. It would’ve been great to be able to write code in C# or F# or whatever language supported CLI. JavaScript could’ve been CLI compliant.

It is what it is and if you want to do web, you gotta do JavaScript. ☕️

Lexington Herald Leader

Jim Beam, which is one of the largest makers of American whiskey in the world, is planning to shut down production in Happy Hollow in Clermont Jan. 1 through 2026.

Y’all can thank President Orange for this. Canadians have decided they don’t need to purchase American made Bourbon any longer and it’s hurting American Bourbon makers.

That’s not political. That’s just bad business.

Andru Marino • The Verge

With podcasting pivoting to video this year, the word used to describe an audio-only show is becoming meaningless.

Nope. Podcasting is still its own thing. It’s open, distributed via RSS, and all about audio. Now, perhaps I’m misguided with that third assertion? RSS is built to deliver any media type as an enclosure but it’s mostly been used to deliver podcasts.

Besides, how many podcasters with video casts use anything other than YouTube for distribution? I think it’s safe to say very few, if any.

Podcasting, like blogging before it, was created to be an open ecosystem. Sure, go ahead and monetize your podcast, but don’t lock it behind a special service that only supports a proprietary distribution mechanism. That is not podcasting, nor should it be used for the video version of it. Whatever that’s called. Calling it a Video Podcast may be the right thing to do, but being distributed via RSS is partly what would allow using the name Podcast for it.

Marshall Pruett • Racer

Katherine Legge used the momentum from her run at the 2024 Indianapolis 500 with Dale Coyne Racing to expand her career into NASCAR in 2025, and with the support of her sponsors, the Briton is keen to make a return to the Speedway.

I like Katherine Legge. She’s a very versatile driver who’s competed in the Indy 500 and NASCAR Cup Series races. I just wish she could find a full time NASCAR Cup ride. Last year she ran a few Cup races with backing from E.L.F. Cosmetics and I’d love to see them or another woman focused brand step up to give her the ability to run full time. She has what it takes, she just needs money, better equipment, and manufacturer support, like all other drivers. 😀

Maybe a new Dodge Cup team would be interested in having her full time. It would be really great to see! 🤞🏼

Lua.org

Here are the main changes introduced in Lua 5.5. The reference manual lists the incompatibilities that had to be introduced.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Lua, don’t know why. I just like how compact it is and how easy it is to include as a scripting language in other codebases. One of our junior developers at Pelco developed a tool for that allowed a developer to build media pipelines, using our custom media pipeline framework, by writing Lua instead of C++. It was all hosted inside a custom Qt app. It was a great tool mostly because Lua was easier to write and definitely improved developer experimentation and testing velocity. Not to mention the usefulness to the test team. 🧰

Christopher Goffard • Los Angeles Times

Alex Baber, a 50-year-old West Virginia man who dropped out of high school and taught himself codebreaking, now says he has cracked the Zodiac killer’s identity — and in the process solved the Black Dahlia case as well.

This is absolutely fascinating but we’ll never really know the truth of either case.

Perhaps Mr. Barber hit the nail on the head but it sure seems unlikely given the time they’ve gone unsolved and lack of a living suspect to verify it, assuming they’d confess.

Zac Bowden • Windows Central

Too many bugs. Too many changes. Too little control. Windows 11’s reputation might be at its lowest it’s ever been as 2025 comes to a close.

This is a real shame. I cut my teeth as a software developer on Windows and the Windows API. I owe my career to some amazing Windows developer who took me under their wing and taught me how to use those APIs to great effect. After all these years as an iOS developer I still believe I know the Windows API better than I do Cocoa.

I’d really love to see Microsoft put together a small team dedicated to unifying the user interface design and usability of Windows. Eliminate some old cruft and make it rock solid. The underlying foundation is so good to build on.

Embracing C# or Rust to do more work would be nice but there is a ton of C code to maintain and enhance and they need to transition all of Windows to using WinUI 3.

Perhaps they could start by replacing the React Native Start Menu with a brand new Rust based version? That would make for a good start.

I’m mostly well now. I still have a cough that’s working hard to get those last remnants of irritation out of my lungs but I’m mostly whole. 🤧

I made it to the coffee shop this morning because I really need to work on Stream. It’s been three or four weeks since I’ve been able to work on it and I miss it.

I have lots of thoughts swirling around in my pea brain this morning. Mostly around a strong desire to retire. Retire from working for someone else, not retire from working. At this time of the year I always think about what it would be like to work on my own stuff full time. Stream and top secret project would get so much attention. I looked at top secret project last week for a moment and realized it’s been over a year since I touched the code. That didn’t seem possible but the dates don’t lie. My brain though it had been a few months, not over a year. It was a shock to the system. I’m not gonna be here forever and someday I may not want to write code any longer. Who knows? I certainly don’t. The way I feel about things now I can see writing code until I drop dead behind my keyboard. Someone finding me face down, my computer in some weird state from my face unintentionally issuing a command. 😄

Of course, as it stands today, I still need a job and I’m very happy to have one.

Oh, sorry for missing Saturday Morning Coffee yesterday. My body needed the sleep. I managed to sleep until 4:30PM and still sleep last night. I’m still tired this morning. This darned bug took it out of me.

That kind of bullshit is why I’m starting this Substack. To call this moment what it is, to track the erosion of democratic guardrails in real time, and to build a community of people who are sick to death of Trump and ready to fight back. - George Conway

I didn’t link to his piece because he posted on, of all places, Substack.

That’s the last place anyone should post if they’re all about democracy because Substack has a history of supporting Nazis. Yes, Nazis.

George, if you’re serious about democracy you should probably find a better place to write because what I see is a pure money play, not a man trying to save democracy.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Gracie decided 5:30 was wake-up time. I felt miserable. I’m definitely sick. Anywho, I started working on Saturday Morning Coffee and as soon as Kim woke up, I went back to bed. That’s why this is so late. I woke up around 11:30 and had to take care of some stuff.

Sorry for the lateness but I hope you enjoy the links.

Five days ‘til Christmas! 🎅🏼

Wil Wheaton

The world knows Rob as a generational talent, a storyteller and humanitarian activist who made a difference with his art, his voice, and his influence. I knew that man, but I also knew a man who treated me with more kindness, care, and love than my own father ever did. And it is the loss of that man that is piercing my heart right now.

The death or Rob and Michele Reiner was a complete shock. I can’t imagine how hard it hit their close friends and family. Wil gives us some clue of what that loss feels like.

I also like that he was able to share his thoughts and feelings on his own terms. No reporters involved. Just a man telling how he wanted to. ❤️

Kate Mothes • This is Colossal

When an oval-shaped portrait fell into his hands, with its structural framework crumbling and its canvas stained, that wasn’t even the worst of it. This particular painting had also been unskillfully painted over to freshen it up, despite—as Baumgartner discovers—the fact that the “fix” actually completely changed the entire feel of the work. As he works, he illuminates how the amateur attempt to restore the work actually eliminated the subtle nuances of the artist’s original intention, and by extension, the sitter’s personality.

This video was a really great watch. Watching someone at the top of their game is a real treat and when he was finished the painting looked incredible.

Take a few minutes out of your day to watch it. It’s really good. 🖼️

Wordpress

WordPress Studio simplifies all of that. 

The free, open-source tool lets you spin up local sites quickly, share previews instantly, and move changes between environments without the usual hassle — helping you focus on creating rather than configuring and troubleshooting.

Tooling makes a huge difference when it comes to managing a large group of systems.

I’d love to see this driven by a real pro.

M.G. Siegler • Spyglass

I’m old enough to remember when the head of Netflix wasn’t just downplaying the importance of movie theaters to the industry, he was eviscerating the entire concept as “outdated”. That is to say, I’m at least eight months old.

I hope Netflix puts an effort behind making top notch movies and lets HBO focus on creation of great series.

Federico Viticci • MacStories

In the 16 years that I’ve been writing for MacStories, I’ve seen my fair share of new apps that have come and gone. Apps that promised to revolutionize a particular segment of the App Store were eventually acquired, discontinued, or simply abandoned. It’s been very unusual to witness an indie app survive in a highly competitive marketplace, let alone to find one that thrived after having been sold twice to different owners over the years. But such is the case of Unread, the RSS client now developed by John Brayton of Golden Hill Software and the recipient of this year’s MacStories Selects Lifetime Achievement Award.

Congratulations, John! You earned it. Unread it a top notch feed reader. 🥳

Malcolm Owen • Apple Insider

The account itself was flagged as “closed in accordance with the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions.” Naturally, there were repercussions that did a lot more to Dr Buttfield-Addison’s digital life than simply the closure of one account.

Some good news to report. Dr. Butterfield-Addison has regained full access to his account.

It took a Herculean effort to get this account unlocked. Normal folks, like most of us, don’t stand a chance of getting our account back. 😔

Jason Owens • Yahoo!Sports

Philip Rivers was competent on Sunday but not much more in his first NFL game since the 2020 season.

Let’s hear it for the old guys of the world. I always liked Phillip Rivers. He has a real drive to win and is tough as nail.

I know I’ve said this many times but the weather in Charlottesville is completely unpredictable. It can be 30F and snowing and 80F and sunny the next.

When I got up with the dogs this morning it was 13F. According to our forecast it’s going to be 60F and sunny Christmas week.

It’s been cold and snowing off and on for a few weeks now. I was hoping for a white Christmas, instead it’s gonna be warm and sunny. 🤣

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Richard MacManus • The New Stack

Thirty years ago, Netscape engineer Brendan Eich famously created a new client-side scripting language in just ten days. It was initially called Mocha, but by the end of the year it would be renamed JavaScript. In 1995, nobody could’ve predicted that JavaScript would become the world’s most popular programming language. But that’s exactly what happened.

JavaScript is most definitely the defacto standard for app development in the browser and it’s used heavily on the server, desktop, and mobile app development. Incredible.

I’ve said for years and years JavaScript is to the browser what C once was to the desktop. Nowadays most folks refer to browser apps as desktop apps, which can be confusing to old timers like me. 😄

Lucien Dupont

If you go see Zootopia 2 this weekend, I’m in the credits, way towards the end, in the technology section.

Congratulations, Lucien! Great Mac developers still exist in the world and Lucien is one of ‘em. Keep on keeping on! ❤️

Dan Wolken • Yahoo!Sports

The work is finally done for the worst selection committee in the College Football Playoff’s dozen-year history, and there are only two ways to explain the grotesque, odious bracket that it belched out Sunday.

I found this upsetting as did many others, but I have to believe that picking the team to leave out was a miserable task. I really hope this wasn’t some kind of political thing because Notre Dame is an independent.

Ben Werdmuller

Throughout my morning, I hadn’t visited a single source website directly. I hadn’t refreshed anything manually. Everything had just appeared, delivered automatically from each source to the app I’d chosen to read it in. My information diet runs on feeds.

Sure, I’m a bit biased, but feed readers are the way to go if you like reading the news. The idea of it coming to you without thinking about it is just plain nice.

I know newsletters have become all the rage. A feed reader gives you the same capability.

Stephen Ramsay

So my question is this: Why vibe code with a language that has humanconvenience and ergonomics in view? Or to put that another way: Wouldn’t a language designed for vibe codingnaturally dispense with much of what is convenient and ergonomic for humans in favor of what is convenient and ergonomic for machines? Why not have it just write C? Or hell, why not x86 assembly?

That’s not a bad idea! Just vibe code in the most efficient language. Hopefully the code is safe and easily readable. I’d imagine at some point a human may want to do some work on it. Maybe I’m being naive. Maybe the LLM would own it and always be used to modify it? 🤔

pmaris • Atlas Obscura

San Francisco’s iconic cable car system is both the world’s oldest and the only one still operating, but that doesn’t mean that the cable cars themselves are all vintage. As working transportation vehicles constructed largely of wood, they have a limited lifespan and periodically need to be rebuilt, and new ones even have to be built from the ground up.

This is one of those craftsman jobs I think is really interesting and would be extremely satisfying. 🪚

Scripting News

The NYT should have started their own Twitter, with exclusive access by people who are quoted in the NYT, so there would have been a connection between the pub, its rep, more inclusive than the masthead.

It’s not too late! They could easily fire up an instance of Mastodon or build ActivityPub directly into their tools.

The easiest route is to start a Mastodon instance. How does nytimes.social sound? 😀

Doug Wilson • Frere Jones

What can be written about Gotham that hasn’t already been published? The typeface, commissioned by GQ Magazine in the early 2000s, is now so ubiquitous it has become part of the visual landscape and can be seen all over the world from Manhattan to Melbourne, Bangkok to Buenos Aires.

What is time? It doesn’t seem like it was created that long ago. It really is a beautiful font.

Ephemeral New York

When it was completed in 1868, this lovely little survivor was not designed to stand out. It may have been built as an outlier, but it was likely part of a row of identical houses meant to appeal to upper middle class buyers enriched by the city’s gangbusters post-Civil War economy.

I want this place. I’d remodel the inside and consider putting a coffee shop in the bottom floor.

I would definitely need an elevator. 😃

The Dallas Express via Yahoo!

In-N-Out Burger has quietly removed the number 67 from its order ticket system after repeated chaos caused by teenagers reacting to the viral “6-7” trend, employees and customers say.

Kids today.

Our grandkids drive us a little nuts with this, especially our grandson. 🤣

stickerart.top via Kottke

Discover a unique collection of laptops adorned with creative stickers from around the world. This project celebrates the art and culture of laptop personalization each laptop tells a story through its stickers and gives us a glimpse of the personality of the owners.

I absolutely love this website and need to submit a picture of mine. 😉

Thanks, Jason.

I’m outside putting up Christmas decorations and it’s cold, 35F (2C), but I really am enjoying it. I’ll take this over 80F with 80% humidity any day.

It reminds me of being a kid in the San Joaquin Valley of California on days with dense Tule fog.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I’m a bit late today. I had everything well in hand but something came up we needed to tend to. All is well. ❤️

Netflix News

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Dec. 5, 2025 – Today, Netflix, Inc. (the Company) and Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD) announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Netflix will acquire Warner Bros., including its film and television studios, HBO Max and HBO.

I’m glad Netflix is going to land Warner Bros. instead of Paramount. It’s not a done deal and apparently Paramount may try a hostile takeover, not to mention David Ellison’s daddy loves to please Marmalade Messiah.

Here’s hoping if anyone is able to acquire it, it’s Netflix. 🤞🏼

Louie Mantia

Alan Dye may have left for a more lucrative offer from Meta, but this is absolutely a good thing for Apple, which also benefitted from “losing” Jony Ive.

There is certainly no love lost for Dye in the Apple Developer / Designer ecosystem. I plan on making another post on the subject but this was a major story so I had to share it.

Jarred Sumner • Bun Blog

TLDR: Bun has been acquired by Anthropic. Anthropic is betting on Bun as the infrastructure powering Claude Code, Claude Agent SDK, and future AI coding products & tools.

Bun is a standalone JavaScript runtime and from what I’ve read it’s really good.

Bun was built as a ready to roll replacement for node.js and other tooling for the React community.

It makes me wonder how well it would fit into existing browsers, or new browsers, as a JavaScript engine?

It’s written in Zig which I’m seeing used in more and more places. While it’s not a memory safe language it currently provides better memory safety than C and C++.

Sabrina Moreno • Axios

A masked bandit terrorized an Ashland ABC store over the weekend, smashing multiple bottles of bourbon before passing out drunk on the bathroom floor.

This is such a funny story. I’ve never heard of a Raccoon going on a bender, but here we are. 🦝

The marketing team at ABC is genius! They created a Raccoon Recommends board of all the booze it drank. 🤣

Sergiu Gatlan • Bleeping Computer

Microsoft has confirmed that the KB5070311 preview update is triggering bright white flashes when launching the File Explorer in dark mode on Windows 11 systems.

I know Windows always gets a really bad rap but I still believe it’s an industry strength operating system.

However, what are y’all doing? If something isn’t ready, please don’t ship it. I mean, there’s minor stuff we’ve all shipped, but this doesn’t seem very minor. Data destroying? No, but it definitely affects the usability of the OS.

Joe Wilkins • Futurism

But the spike in cancer-causing pollution wasn’t just the fault of local farms, as Doherty expected. It had its roots in a 10,000 square foot data center by the commerce giant Amazon, which first went online in Morrow County in 2011.

Data centers are the new chemical companies. Time for regulations around water use.

Sarah Barshop, Brady Henderson • ESPN

The parting of ways became official in March, when the Rams released Kupp, who had two seasons remaining on the contract extension he signed in 2022. A few days after he was released, he signed a three-year, $45 million deal with the Seattle Seahawks.

I never thought the Rams would jettison Kupp. The man is an incredible football player.

I am happy to hear he landed with the Seahawks. Great city!

James Parker • Yardbarker

His comments immediately drew backlash and sparked debate about the validity of Beckham’s point. While professional athletes have a history of going bankrupt, even after amassing millions in career earnings, $100 million should be enough for anyone to make last.

Uh, yeah. I’m pretty sure I could live like a king for the remainder of my life on 1/8th of that income.

I’m not sure what kind of home he bought for his Mom, but even if it was a $1mm dollar home that still leaves the man with plenty of dough.

This coming from a man who can’t retire because of poor financial choices. 🤪

Ben Lovejoy • 9 To 5 Mac

The Indian government has ordered Apple and other smartphone manufacturers to pre-install a state-owned “security” app on all phones before they are sold to users.

Apple has had to do strange stuff in other countries before. Like giving the Chinese government the keys to iCloud in China.

They’re gonna fight the request.

Zenae Zukowski • Metal Insider

Severing ties with a close one, even family, is never easy, and Chevelle’s Pete and Sam Loeffler know that pain well. The brothers haven’t spoken to their sibling and former bandmate Joe Loeffler since parting ways with him in 2005.

I had no idea that things ended this badly between the Loeffler brothers. It’s a big loss. I hope Joe is happy and doing well.

Francis Bouvier • Lightpanda Blog

To be honest, when I began working on Lightpanda, I chose Zig because I’m not smart enough to build a big project in C++ or Rust.

I don’t really believe this fella is not smart enough to learn C++ or Rust but I find Zig to be very interesting. I’d love to know more about arenas used for memory management.

I’d also love to know how they handle ownership of memory. In any sufficiently large, threaded, application, memory ownership always becomes an issue. I wonder if arenas help with that? It seems like they would have the same problem as C or C++ memory allocations. Then again, I have no idea what modern C++ has done for memory management, if anything?

Finally got a little snow. ❄️

I had coffee with my daughter this morning.

She turned me into a bear. 🐻

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Happy Thanksgiving weekend! I hope y’all were able to spend some time with friends and family around the dinner table eating way too much food and more pie than should be legal. I know I certainly did. We had a small gathering. Just Kim and I and our youngest daughter and her partner. Simple but very enjoyable. 🦃🥧

As for work. We hit a major milestone. The app we’ve toiled over, our Ship of Theseus, has reached completion! We’ve gone from the creation of a hybrid native/React Native application to a fully React Native application and it’s been approved in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store! 🥳 It was a tremendous amount of work and the team has performed beautifully! Congratulations to all involved!

The App will be released in early December. I’m so excited!

Annie Palmer • CNBC

Amazon’s 14,000-plus layoffs announcedlast month touched almost every piece of the company’s sprawling business, from cloud computing and devices to advertising, retail and grocery stores. But one job category bore the brunt of cuts more than others: engineers

I have a friend who was hit my this. He’s was a contractor there, but it still hit him, and I don’t think contractors are included in those numbers. It’s a real shame. If they really want to move faster they’d keep the devs and they could use LLMs to move faster. It’s just another tool. ❤️

Duncan McLeod • Tech Central

Canva quietly dropped a bombshell at the launch of the company’s Johannesburg office on Tuesday: the design giant is seriously considering porting its Affinity creative software to Linux.

I know a lot of folks are upset by the Affinity acquisition but I really like this idea!

I’m seeing a lot of chatter from folks about switching to Linux (probably won’t happen) and having major apps like Affinity on their platform would be extremely helpful to adoption.

As I understand it Windows 11 is not so great, which is a real shame because it has a very nice underpinning.

Benjamin Garcias • Jalopnik

Despite having their own advantages and disadvantages, inline four-cylinder engines have come a long way, going from being efficient commuter motors to performance champions.

I have to admit I love the roar of race cars, from NASCAR to F1 to Indy Car to World Rally Championship. Hearing, smelling, and watching fast cars perform at the top of their game is thrilling.

Hearing that a four cylinder engine can produce as much power as a V8 is great for internal combustion cars, but we need to stop making them for the general population. They need to become speciality items. We need to make EV’s the everyday car, affordable to all socioeconomic classes. 🚙

Dayvi Schuster

Zig and Qt make for a surprisingly effective combination for cross platform GUI development.

Zig may not be completely memory safe — which is kind of a shame — but it’s still a great choice for good old C and C++ developers.

The article is a good read and Zig looks to be a very good choice for cross platform development.

I’ll be using Swift for the Windows version of Stream sometime in the next 10 years. 🤣

Jackson Lambros • Jalopnik

Nothing manmade has reached further from Earth than the Voyager series of spacecraft. Hurtling away from the sun at 38,000 miles an hour, the duo have now traveled over 12 billion miles, with Voyager 1 set to be a light-day from Earth by the end of this month.

It’s still about a year away, but Voyager — perhaps V’Ger for you Trekkies — is amazing feat of science and engineering.

Raymond Chen • The Old New Thing

A customer reported that their program encountered rendering problems when they created elements that were a half billion pixels tall, and they wondered why this was happening.

Raymon Chen is a national treasure. He works on the wildest problems and can you imagine hearing that someone wants to display something a half billion pixels tall? 😳

Brian Hamilton • The Athletic

To be a professional long snapper is to have your worth measured by maybe a half-dozen plays every week. A pass-fail exam each time for a brotherhood of perfectionists. But the job is also a quest. Do it well enough, and there is stability and longevity in a game not noted for either. There is general health, or better odds for it. There are multimillion-dollar contracts that buy a lot of freedom when you’re done.

True story. When my brother was in his senior year of high school he was contacted by a coach from the Denver Broncos. They’d seen his film as a long snapper and wanted him to attend Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and continue long snapping under the tutelage of a coach there so they could perhaps draft him when he graduated. Ultimately he took a different path because he loved chemistry and eventually earned his Pharm.D at University of California San Francisco, but he wonders what would’ve happened if he’d gone the football route. 😀

Charlie Eriksen • Aikido

It’s another Monday morning, sitting down at the computer. And I see a stack of alerts from the last hour of packages showing signs of malware in our triage queue. Having not yet finished my first cup of coffee, I see Shai Hulud indicators. Yikes, surely that’s a false positive? Nope, welcome to Monday, Shai Hulud struck again. Strap in.

Ugh. The npm community has some big fish to fry. They have to solve this problem. You can’t have folks using your package manager, used by who knows how many developers, as a virus factory. 🦠

Josiah Gogarty • GQ

Given how many internet conspiracies are actively harmful to our social fabric, it’s always heartening to see one that’s slightly lower stakes. How about: Timothée Chalamet, A-lister, our swaggy Paul Atreides and star of the upcoming Marty Supreme, is secretly EsDeeKid, a viral rapper from Liverpool, whose songs have been climbing into the top 20 of the UK singles chart in recent weeks.

When I read this I just smiled. How cool would it be if this is true and nobody ever proves it. 😆

I really like seeing the occasional anonymous band pop up. My favorite being Sleep Token.

I managed to break the splitter on the right side of the middle column last time I worked on Stream. How? I have no idea what I did to break it. After beating my head against the wall for a half hour I finally found it. I’d set the width of the rightmost column to a fixed value. Duh! Don’t do that if you want things to automagically resize. Fixed. ✅

I need to sit down and read about state management with SwiftUI because it’s clear to me I’m too stupid to use it. 😄

I want to do what I though was a simple thing. I just want to hide, or change the background color of, my read/unread dot. The iPhone app just updates a value in a view model to be true or false and the UI is updated, easy peasy. It’s using UIKit instead of SwiftUI so it’s something I’m very familiar with.

Is it that easy in SwiftUI? Probably, but I don’t currently understand how to change a simple boolean value and convince the UI to refresh itself. I thought, like a big dummy, that I could make a boolean value on the View, decorate it with @State, and by calling toggle() on it, it would cuase the UI to update. Nope. Didn’t work. 😳

I’ve tried a few things to make it happen and it’s obvious I don’t understand how to do it. So… it’s time to go sit down and read how to do it. The View I’m trying to update is hosted in an NSHostingView and I can’t imagine that has anything to do with it? Do I need to using @Binding and @State together in a way I haven’t tried? Or, perhaps, I need use something completely different. ❌

Pretty big fail on my part today. Which is pretty frustrating. I have such little time to work on it that I need to have productive days. Failure is part of the process. I’ll figure it out and be better for it.

I guess I did manage to fix a bug. That’s a good thing. Just not enough.

Time to go home and make a Turkey sandwich. 🦃

Scripting News

The first thing to know is that all comments are blog posts. You write the comment on a blog that you own. And maybe that will be the only way anyone other than you will ever see it. But you don’t have to “go” to the blog to write the comment. You stay right where you are.

I’m not the brightest bulb in the box but I’m extremely curious to know how Dave is going to pull this all together. I’d wager to be that RSS is at the center of it, but how? 🤔

Excited to see what he’s putting together and understand how I can do this with my blog. Knowing how Manton – the author of Micro.blog – operates he’ll adopt this set of protocols or files or whatever Dave comes up with. It will be very nice to have for a lot of folks and to see how it interoperates with whatever Dave is building.

Feature request for Manton when/if he supports this. Please add a special post type to themes so we can choose to put them on the front page of our blog or, perhaps, add a way to keep them in a special place like you do with old Twitter posts? Maybe? 🤔 Or, perhaps do something really cool with the template so there is a connection established on the page with a reference back to the original post. I’m not doing a very good job of explaining this, but Silvio Rizzi did a great job with Reeder.

Does anyone ever take honest pictures of their desk setup? Seriously. They’re alway super clean and uncluttered.

Mine? Mine is a mess, all the time. With random trinkets and junk all over the place.

I moved one item before taking this picture because it had my address on it. Other than that, this is how it looks most days.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Pretty typical week. We have our granddaughter this weekend so I’ll be exhausted by Monday morning, just in time to go back to work. 😆

Yes, of course having her with us is total joy!

Eugen Rochko • Mastodon Blog

After nearly 10 years, I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon and transferring my ownership of the trademark and other assets to the Mastodon non-profit.

I’m thankful for all the work Eugen has done for social networking and Mastodon in particular.

Having him around, I believe, will be good for the direction of Mastodon.

All the best, Eugen! ❤️

Francesco • Vapor Blog

Over the past six months, we have been working on a Visual Studio Code extension to assist in the development of Vapor applications. Let’s explore its features and how it can enhance your development experience.

I wonder if I should install this plugin? I’ve never done any backend development with Swift but if I did I imagine I’d use Vapor?

Also, I’m still surprised by how many people rely on Visual Studio Code daily. It seems the default and go to editor for web and React Native developers, along with so many others. It’s cross platform and super extensible, no wonder it’s so popular. I have a Linux dev nerd friend who was a huge emacs fan. He switched to Visual Studio Code for all of his C++ dev needs and loves it. When he went from Linux to Mac he kept the same setup. That’s attractive for folks who like it.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai • TechCrunch

DoorDash disclosed a data breach that exposed the personal information of an unspecified number of users, which included names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses.

The article also reports that DoorDash said “No sensitive information” was leaked. 😳 How can DoorDash say that with a straight face?

William Gallagher and Mike Wuerthele • Apple Insider

For almost two decades, the Mac Probounced between coveted and beloved, to derided and forgotten. This isn’t the first time this has been said, but now it seems like the reign of the Mac Pro is finally over.

We all know our favorite Mac writer, podcaster, and developer, John Siracusa, is not excited for this move but on the latest ATP episode he shared that he expected it. Sorry, John.

I still think someone should take an old Trashcan Mac Pro and soup it up with upgraded innards. Like turning an old car into a hot rod.

Manton Reece

Dave Winer has been updating the web page about Markdown in RSS. This is an RSS extension that adds source:markdownelements to your feed. Micro.blog supports this by default for all blogs.

At some point I’d like to support this in Stream, I think. That’s still a ways down the road as Stream for Mac still needs a lot of love before I can think about supporting it.

Reuters

Verizon’s new CEO is planning to cut about 15,000 jobs in the U.S. telecommunications company’s largest ever layoffs, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday, outlining some of the executive’s first efforts to restructure in the face of rising competition.

And, here we go. More big layoffs in the tech sector. It’s so rough out there for tech jobs at the moment and I’m so happy I still have WillowTree.

Marcus Mendes • 9 to 5 Mac

The Financial Times reports that Apple has stepped up its preparations for the handover of the CEO role from Tim Cook. Here are the details.

A lot of the Apple community is looking forward to this transition. Tim Cook’s foray into Trump Worship was definitely the final straw for a lot of people.

Anne Trafton • MIT News

MIT engineers have developed a flexible drug-delivery patch that can be placed on the heart after a heart attack to help promote healing and regeneration of cardiac tissue.

This is extremely cool and the type of thing my brother is into. As a Chemistry undergrad he was working on drug delivery systems using plastics. That was, geeze, almost forty years ago. We’ve come a long way and need research like that performed at our universities.

Henri Gendreau • Roanoke Rambler

Nationwide, data center operators including Google have tried to keep secret the amount of water projects could use. In Virginia, Ciaffone’s ruling appears to be the first time that a court has weighed in on whether such information can rightfully be withheld under the state’s Freedom of Information Act, according to a review of case law. But hers may not be the final word.

Being a native Californian I understand, deeply, the importance of water. Here in Virginia it falls from the sky like some kind of magic but in California it’s very rare and much needed.

It’s a precious resource for the survival of the human race. Corporations using it willy-nilly to cool data centers sounds dumb when it’s difficult to come by.

Another slow start to the day. I’ve hit a point in my todo list of items I don’t want to do. 😄 That’s always a good sign. It means I’m getting to the end of what I’d like to do to get a 1.0 out the door.

Today I covered three things.

J and K Navigation

I like the way Reeder and Unread use the J and K keys to navigate between feed items, so I added that. I need to figure out if I want to add it to blog navigation as well.

Persist and Restore Window Positions

This was a lot easier than I expected! Thank you Interface Builder! I was able to set a couple properties and it’s taken care of for me.

BUG: Fix Feed Item Refresh

I had an ugly bug that would cause the feed items table view to not refresh properly. I was final able to find the set of properties I needed to tweak to make this do what I wanted. Now the middle column — feed items — now updates properly. Bug squashed.

What Next?

Well, I still have a list of things I’d like to do and I need to work on polishing up how the app feels. When redrawing feed item cells the associated favicon image doesn’t fill in as quickly as I’d like. I’ll just cache all of them so hopefully we won’t have that issue any longer.

I also added a new container type for blog display — leftmost column — so I can add static type items in the column. I need at least to column headers; Articles and Subscriptions, so I can have an All Articles item and have all of the blogs display under Subscriptions for a bit of separation. The All Articles item will behave the same way as Cmd+A and display all feed items mixed together in the middle column. It’s also where I’ll place the items saved to “Read Later” but that may not be a 1.0 item, we’ll see how it goes.

I also need to make sure to get my Action Extension “Subscribe in Stream” working on the Mac so folks will be able to subscribe right from Safari.

Oh, one other annoying thing. I created a separate target for the Mac build and I had to name it Stream-macOS because Xcode wouldn’t let me have two Stream Targets. I suspect this was a mistake and to fix it I’ll have to add a new Target to the existing Target. I know, that may sound weird, but there is a way to do it and I didn’t know about it until I read up on it today. That will be a real pain in the butt to fix because of file inclusion per target. Ack! Not looking forward to that! 🤣

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Allergies. Ugh. That’s been my week. It wasn’t a horrible week. I’m just tired. Now, who wants to blow the leaves out of our yard today! 🍂

I hope you enjoy the linkage.

Ben Lovejoy • 9to5Mac

Chris Espinosa, who wrote the first Macintosh calculator app and still works at Apple as its longest-serving employee, found a creative way around Steve’s never-ending critiques in what must be one of the best ever examples of managing upwards

So smart! I’ll bet Jobs was extremely happy to be able to sit there and tweak to his hearts content.

Snapchat

Valdi is a cross-platform UI framework designed to solve the fundamental problem of cross-platform development: velocity vs. runtime performance. For 8 years, it has powered a large portion of Snap’s production apps.

I think this is super interesting and I need to spend a bit of time understanding it better.

I really like that it has hot loading, like React Native, and you can use the debugger! 😍 That is my biggest gripe with React Native development, lack of proper debugging support in the IDE.

Paul Kafasis

Yesterday, Apple unveiled what seems unlikely to be their newest hit product, the iPhone Pocket. Produced in collaboration with the Issey Miyake design studio, this goofy accessory features “a singular 3D-knitted construction designed to fit any iPhone”. It will also hold “all pocketable items”, I suppose in the same way that a bag will hold all baggable items.

You have to visit Paul’s site! 🤣 The picture accompanying this post is worth a thousand words.

Chris Bumbray • JoBlo

John Hughes is responsible for the greatest Thanksgiving movie of all time, 1987’s poignant Planes, Trains & Automobiles. This Steve Martin and John Candy-led classic has become a perennial and a movie tons of folks have probably been revisiting this week. However, about four years later, in 1991, John Hughes made another Thanksgiving movie in the same vein, Dutch. Despite being a pretty solid movie with a very recognizable cast, it’s a hard movie to track down nowadays. And, with Thanksgiving not too far away that’s a damn shame!

I’ve never seen Dutch but it’s on my list. I’ve also never seen Uncle Buck so it’s on the list too!

There are two movies I think of as Thanksgiving movies. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is a classic and the other is Four Brothers but only because the events in the movie happen at Thanksgiving time.

Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving movie?

Mayank Parmar • Windows Latest

WhatsApp on Windows 11 has just got a ‘major’ upgrade, and you’re probably going to hate it because it simply loads web.whatsapp.com in a WebView2 container. This means WhatsApp on Windows 11 is cooked, and it’s back to being absolute garbage in terms of performance.

Let’s just use websites. What benefit does a dedicated wrapper around a website actually give the user? An icon on the desktop? You can make a PWA using Edge, why not do that?

I like native desktop apps.

Allison Smith • Digiday

Shopify, which on Oct. 20 penned the first installment of its brand-new Substack newsletter, dubbed “In Stock.”

No, no, no. Y’all need to stop using Substack. Why centralize your business in the Nazi Bar? I don’t get it.

Paul O’Flaherty

The greatest thing about using an RSS reader is the ability to “mark all as read,” walk away, and not get another update until you hit the refresh button. Seriously, if you haven’t tried it, then you haven’t lived.

There are many wonderful benefits to using RSS. Find a reader and try it for yourself.

Did I mention I make one called Stream? 😃

Politics

Mark L. Wolf • The Atlantic

My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom. President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment. This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench. The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable.

I kind of wish more justices would do something like this but we need them on the bench to defend democracy.

It was brave of Judge Wolf to walk away so he could share his feelings.

I got an early start this morning and managed to get to the coffee shop before they opened at 7AM. 😀

Once I got my coffee and settled in I got right to work. Got the app built and running then I noticed it wasn’t updating. DOH! Turns out my Mac had lost its mind and refused to connect to the network until I rebooted it. Even a Mac needs a reboot every now and then I suppose.

I’m still trying to figure out my feed item list UI rendering problem. When it reloads it goes through the proper code path; filters based on selection and tells the table view to reload itself. It does reload but half the time the items display off screen. I can get it to draw properly by scrolling the view. That’s when I noticed it would draw properly every other selection. 😳

This got me thinking about my choice to use SwiftUI for the table view cells. One thing about that choice is cell reuse is kind of strange. The only way I’ve been able to get them to draw properly is to make a new view, just the SwiftUI part, so it gets laid out properly. I’m fairly certain I could get this working by using SwiftUI’s state mechanism but I decided to try doing a proper cell using AppKit and hook up the constraints manually. I have the cell put together and was working on constraints when I ran out of time for the day.

If I’m feeling rambunctious I may work on it a bit this week. If all else fails there’s always next Sunday.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

This week seems to have had equal parts slow and fast days. Strange how we perceive time, isn’t it? As I’ve aged time seems to have sped up with exceptions thrown in here and there.

Since I’ve started doing React Native work I’ve tended toward fixing bugs and working on non UI code because I kind of prefer it. This week I started on my first real UI code and I’m actually enjoying it. I’m moving slow but enjoying it. It feels very much like doing SwiftUI but the syntax is more HTML like. And the one really nifty thing about it is hot loading it right inside the app as you code.

Anywho, here are some links. Enjoy.

Kiki Intarasuwan, Kerry Breen • CBS News

UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport, at least 3 killed, Kentucky governor says

What a tragedy. I feel terrible for the souls lost on the ground, in the plane, and for family and friends. 🪦

Marcus Mendes • 9 to 5 Mac

Yesterday, Apple launched a new web interface for the App Store, complete with dedicated pages for each of its platforms, app categories, and search.

This is an interesting turn of events for Apple. Why are they creating a web based App Store? While I think it’s a good idea it feels against their DNA.

Apparently it’s a React based app. If they wanted they could bring that to iOS and Mac by using React Native. I definitely don’t see that happening, but it’s totally possible.

Cecilia Mould • The Cavalier Daily

The University Police Department said there was no evidence of an active shooter on Grounds at 4:43 p.m. Monday after the University previously shared a “RUN, HIDE, FIGHT” alert with community members at 3:05 p.m. The alert had stated that there was an active attacker with a gun in the area of Shannon Library, but an extensive search by police later confirmed no attack had taken place.

Many of my WillowTree co-workers are University of Virginia graduates. That alert went out on our company Slack right away. It’s gut wrenching to hear about a potential shooting in progress. A true American disease we do nothing to exterminate. 😔

Thankfully it was a false alarm.

Bud Smith • The Paris Review

See, the truck nobody else wanted had been my office. I’d built a portable desk inside it. My truck desk, I called it. A couple of planks screwed together, our union sticker slapped on, the whole deal sealed with shellac. I’d built the desk so it slid into the bottom of the steering wheel and sat across the armrests. I used to hang back at the job and sneak in some creative work while the rest of the crew went to break.

I love stories like this. Mr. Smith is a very creative man. He works with his hands all day and writes his novels as he has the time, making great use of the environment around him. Need a desk? No problem. Just make one that fits in your truck so you can lean your iPhone against the steering wheel and use a Bluetooth keyboard to record your thoughts or write for your book.

Bravo! 👏🏼

Ethan Marcotte

The first is that as a product class, “AI” isa failed technology. I don’t think it’s controversial to suggest that LLMs haven’t measured up to any of the loftypromises made by their vendors. But in more concrete terms, consumers dislike “AI” when it shows up in products, and it makes them actively mistrust the brands that employ it. In other words, we’re some three years into the hype cycle, and LLMs haven’t met any markers of success we’d apply to, well, literally any other technology.

I have no idea how all of this is going to play out. I’d imagine we will see a great consolidation of companies at some point. Many smaller players will fail and a few leaders will emerge at great expense to the world. I also expect to see abandoned data centers become the new abandoned mall.

I can also empathize with folks hatred of everything getting AI’ified. I don’t want or need AI in my browser or at the OS level. Let those tools stay lean and let me decide how I’d prefer to use LLMs.

Philip Plait • Bad Astronomy

If you haven’t heard, in an episode of “The Kardashians”, she is recorded talking about how she thinks the Apollo Moon landings were faked — you can watch video of it here. Ms. Kardashian pulls out the hoary old canards about there being no stars in the sky in the photos and the flag waving (yawn), and also claims there’s no gravity on the Moon, which… Well. I’ve seen people say this before, and I think they’re confusing the lack of atmosphere with gravity. It’s a weirdly common misconception. — the Moon does have gravity, about 1/6th as strong as Earth’s. That’s how the astronauts were able to land there and walk around at all.

And the world is flat, right? It’s not great when famous people with a big following spread a conspiracy theory.

We have a lot of that in our country today. It’s really quite sad.

Andrew Webster • The Verge

“Guillermo invited me for breakfast and he said: ‘Listen, we’re doing Frankenstein. If you’re not doing it, then I’m not doing it, so it depends on you right now. Eat your eggs and tell me at the end of it if we’re doing the movie.’”

I’ve been looking forward to del Toro’s interpretation of Frankenstein and his Monster.

It hit Netflix yesterday and we’re definitely watching it tonight or tomorrow night. 👍🏼

Thomas Ricouard • TelemetryDeck

I found TelemetryDeck via Mastodon (of course). If you’re an indie developer and not yet on Mastodon, I highlyrecommend it. The developer community there is a vibrant mix of open-source enthusiasts, indie devs, and curious minds who value privacy, transparency, and genuine conversation. It feels more like an old-school forum than a social network: focused, thoughtful, and refreshingly free of algorithms or engagement bait.

This is a piece about TelemetryDeck but Thomas gives Mastodon a seal of approval. And why not! It’s a great platform if you don’t like Nazi’s. The one issue it has is discoverability. There is not algorithm, which I like, pushing you to follow people. I’ve managed to find a lot of really lovely folks through reposts. I’ve been here a fairly long time so the original group of folks I met were in the LGBTQ+ community and I still follow them to this day. It is a super diverse place.

Timothy Snyder (☢️ WARNING: Substack post)

Six months ago I wrote this post about “the next terrorist attack.” I republish it now (lightly updated) because my fear of this scenario has recently grown much greater. All of the factors described below still apply, and indeed more strongly than before. More good people have departed from the crucial agencies. Many of those who remain are disoriented and angry at what they rightly see to be the total disregard of real threats to national security or indeed the total indifference to US interests that is the hallmark of this White House. More unqualified people are at the top.

I try not to link to Substack pieces but Dr. Snyder is an authority on tyranny and we should listen to him.

Amelia Hansford • The Pink News

Robert De Niro’s trans daughter, Airyn De Niro, has said the actor’s support for her has been “non-stop” in a heartwarming new interview.

The 29-year-old said her 82-year-old father, known for his performances in Taxi Driver and Goodfellas, has been incredibly affirming since she came out earlier this year.

Robert DeNiro seems like a really good fella, or perhaps, a great fella. He’s been a very vocal critic of the Orange Sphincter in the White House and it stands to reason he’d be supportive of many different groups of folks.

Apple Developer

Explore a new visual gallery to find how teams of all sizes are taking advantage of the new design and Liquid Glass to create natural, responsive experiences across Apple platforms.

It’s nice to see Apple do these little features. They also kind of need to do them because Liquid Glass has been very controversial among the developer crowd. Apple really needs to sell it so devs do the work to support it.

Paul Kafasis

On the new MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple has mandated that all application icons fit into their prescribed squircle. No longer can icons have distinct shapes, nor even any fun frame-breaking accessories. Should an icon be so foolish as to try to have a bit of personality, it will find itself stuffed into a dingy gray icon jail.

Many developers dislike the new design language but there seems to be a lot of disdain toward the new icon requirements. I don’t blame them. I’m not a huge fan of them myself. I only converted one of my icons because I wanted to give better choices to folks not using iOS 26. I would do the same for macOS 26 if I could.

It would be nice of Apple to allow a pre-rendered property on the new icon format so designers and developers can offer different variations of icons with a personality.

Someone needs to put grandpa to bed. Sleepy Don needs his shuteye.

It looks like Democrats in the House and Senate are getting into the troll game.

“Thank you for your attention to this matter” 🤣

It’s nice to see all of Marmalade Messiah’s lies met with humor.

I just can’t. 🤣

Newsom’s troll game is tops.

I was slow to start today. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to work on at first. It took me a couple hours to really get rolling.

So, what I did was fix a refresh bug that was bugging me. When I added a new blog the blog table view didn’t update. It took me a long time to decide how I wanted to fix it. I went through a bunch of ideas then I noticed that I’d already had some stuff in place that would allow me to fix it pretty quickly. Unfortunately it took me forever to get to that point. That’s now fixed. ✅

I had another bug that was really bugging me but I keep forgetting what it is until I run into it again. This week I decided to save the offending Atom feed into my collection of test feeds so I’d get it fixed. Bug exterminated. ✅

I have a small list of things to do before making a 1.0 release. Once I get those items completed I’ll put together a limited beta and collect some feedback. I need to do a lot of polishing. My tables flicker too much during updates because I reload everything and force the UI to render. Yeah, very heavy handed. If I can minimize the flicker I may ship it like that. Once the Mac version is out I can focus on catching it up to the iOS version and start adding new things to both at the same time. I have so much work ahead of me but that’s perfectly fine!

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Feeling a bit distracted today. It happens.

I hope you enjoy the links.

Oh, today is our sixth anniversary of our move to Virginia. It’s hard to believe we’ve been here that long. Twelve more years to retirement if everything works as we hope. That’ll happen in the blink of an eye.

Starbucks

A half-day’s drive from the gray drizzle of Starbucks headquarters in Seattle – over the Cascade Mountains and into the bright sunshine of Walla Walla Valley – you’ll find rolling green fields dotted with little orange pumpkins that may one day be in your Pumpkin Spice Latte.

I like it when companies do these types of profiles. We get to see the real people who make the day to day work, plus I have a soft spot for farmers.

Chance Miller • 9 to 5 Mac

Apple might have a big expansion of its iPad apps in store. A new report today says that Apple could soon release four new iPad apps: Pixelmator Pro, MainStage, Motion, and Compressor. These apps would join Apple’s existing pro-level apps Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, which came to the iPad last year.

It’s nice to see Apple giving some attention to their Professional apps.

Greg Bensinger • Reuters

Amazon is planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning Tuesday, as the company works to pare expenses and compensate for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The job market is already tough enough. I can’t imagine how difficult it’s gonna be to find a new job. These poor folks. 😔

Charlie Cheever and James IDE • Expo

React and React Native now belong to the React Foundation, a new independent home for the ecosystem. Expo is proud to be a founding member.

I still think Apple should get involved with this project. It runs on their platforms and is used by a lot of developers. Why not make sure it’s really good on iOS and Mac?

Jeffrey Zeldman

They say AI will replace the web as we know it, and this time they mean it. Here follows a short list of previous times they also meant it, starting way back in 1997.

When I hear replace the web it’s hard for me to imagine what that would look like. I like the web.

Matt Massicotte

Look, I’m not a fan of singletons and I think you should avoid them. I really like the composition root pattern, or the more technical term of “passing arguments to functions”. There are a million similar, more sophisticated options.

Yes, passing arguments to functions is a great way to avoid having singletons. 🤣 I love that we have to come up with a fancy term for that.

Don’t get me wrong the singleton pattern has its place but I’ve seen it abused to the tune of tens in an app and it makes for a terrible mess.

Python Software Foundation

In the end, however, the PSF simply can’t agree to a statement that we won’t operate any programs that “advance or promote” diversity, equity, and inclusion, as it would be a betrayal of our mission and our community. 

Good on the Python Software Foundation. Supporting racist initiatives by the American government is something we should all avoid.

Virginia Brown • Atlas Obscura

As old as the country itself, the Dobbin House has stood on the same Gettysburg soil since 1776. The oldest building in Gettysburg, the Dobbin House was built by Reverend Alexander Dobbin, an Irish-born early frontiersman, minister, and community leader. Dobbin studied at the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow before coming across William Penn’s advertisements of new land and free worship in the New World. 

We’ve eaten at the Dobbin House Tavern! It’s neat. Employees are in period dress and the food was pretty good.

Be careful with the mixed drinks however! I had a Rum Bellies Vengeance and it just about knocked me on my butt! 🤣

Daring Fireball

After giving it a try over the last week, to me Atlas feels like Chrome with a chat button bolted on. I do not see the appeal, at all, despite being a daily user of ChatGPT. Atlas offers nothing of any appeal to me that’s better than using Safari as a standalone browser and ChatGPT’s excellent native Mac app as a standalone AI chatbot. But, for me, my browser is not “where all of [my] work, tools, and context come together”. I use an email app for email, a notes app for notes, a text editor and blog editor for writing and programming, a photos app for my photo library, a native feed reader app for feed reading, etc. My web browser is for browsing pages on the web. Perhaps this sort of browser/chat hybrid appeals only to people who live the majority of their desktop-computing lives in browser tabs.

Nowadays a lot of folks refer to web based apps as “desktop apps.” The web has been taking over the role of desktop apps for a very long time. Web technologies are extremely arcane but they are the most popular tooling in the world of software development. I don’t feel like desktop apps will cease to exist anymore than the web will cease to exist but the web is definitely a way more popular way to make applications accessible from multiple platforms than are native apps.

Trying to keep the desktop relevant was a battle Microsoft waged in the late 90’s and early 2000’s before deciding to embrace the web. Now Apple is fighting the fight to keep its platforms relevant to native developers. I believe this is partly why SwiftUI was created.

Bob Pockrass • Fox Sports

With the race on the flat 1-mile Phoenix Raceway, neither the Joe Gibbs Racing drivers (Hamlin and Briscoe) nor the Hendrick Motorsports drivers (Byron and Larson) has a clear advantage as both organizations have won races there in the last six events and all four drivers have at least one Phoenix win on their resume.

Trying to pick a winner among the four is challenging. But the feeling here is to go with Kyle Larson.

While I love the idea of Larson winning his second Cup Championship my heart is with Denny Hamlin winning. He’s one of the winningest NASCAR drivers in the history of the sport but doesn’t have a Cup Series Championship. He’s an instant hall of famer even if he doesn’t win but I’d like to see him get one, even if that means Larson has to wait a while for his second.

We’ll find out tomorrow. The Cup Series Championship from Phoenix airs tomorrow at 3PM eastern on NBC.

Stephen Hackett

I hadn’t used ReadKit in over a decade, and when I checked it out again, I was impressed. It’s looks modern with Liquid Glass support, works with Feedbin, and works as well on the Mac as it does on iOS and iPadOS. I’ve been running it this week and so far, so good!

There are so many great feed readers on the market today and ReadKit looks to be one. Besides using Stream daily — even my alpha quality Mac version — I’ve found Unread to be a beautiful option and its read later feature is really good. I’ve started using it to collect articles for Saturday Morning Coffee, until I can get the read later feature of Stream working, but that’s a story for another day. 😀

StreetInsider

TELUS Corporation (NYSE: TU) announced the completion of its acquisition of all outstanding shares of TELUS Digital (NYSE: TIXT) (TSX: TIXT) not already owned by the company for $4.50 per share in cash or TELUS common shares. The transaction totaled approximately $539 million and gives TELUS 100% ownership of TELUS Digital.

TELUS International purchased WillowTree a couple years back. At some point after the acquisition TELUS International was rebranded as TELUS Digital. Eventually the WillowTree name went away and we all became part of TELUS Digital.

Now our parent company, TELUS, has acquired TELUS Digital.

All that to say I’m now a TELUS employee, by way of TELUS Digital, TELUS International, and WillowTree. 😳

Worked on Stream for Mac today since we’re celebrating our granddaughters birthday tomorrow, should be a super good time. Looking forward to it.

So, today when I started I had to fix a couple of outlets in my Mac NIB for the main window. How this got busted I’ll never know but it was and it caused the app to crash at startup. I do this so rarely that I forget how to do it, so it sucked to have to start off that way. Fixed. ✅

Next thing on the fix it list was a bug I’d introduced three weeks back. When I’d refresh the blog list using a pull to refresh on the iOS build or Cmd+R for the Mac build it would make all the network requests and tell the view controller to do its thing, however I messed up my view model when I added the ability to filter down to single blog selection in the UI, whoops! That was a simple fix. ✅

I decided, with the time I had left, to add some keyboard support. Doing a Cmd+A will now select all feeds. I need to add an All item in the blog list so folks can click on it if they’d prefer to select to display all feed items for all blogs that way. Maybe next time.

I also added support for using the up and down arrows to navigate through the list of blogs or the list of feed items. That went together pretty quickly and I really like the results. Done. ✅

I’m going to add some vi support to the keyboard to do some navigating as well as making the space bar scroll the through the article you’re viewing or moving on to the next item once you reach the bottom of an article. Stuff like this are kind of table stakes in existing feed readers. Future addition.

Until next weekend I’ll have some new features to play with on my Mac. I’m tempted to start a TestFlight but it’s still so early days. Reach out if you’d like to try it now. It may crash and misbehave but it’s kind of fun to play with, if you can tolerate it. 😄

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Its been a couple weeks since I’ve written anything and I missed it. But, on the plus side I spent time with our grandkids and protested our horrible government. Both were time well spent away from the keyboard.

Work has been cruising along. We’re approaching the end of our two-plus year effort to move native iOS and Android apps to React Native. It’s about to pay off and I’m so excited to see it hit the streets.

Little plug for work. If your company would like to develop a cross platform app or integrate React Native into an existing app TELUS Digital — formerly WillowTree — have the chops to pull that off.

Time to work on Stream for Mac. Our granddaughter is celebrating her birthday tomorrow so we’ll be off having fun with her.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the links!

Mandalit del Barco • NPR

Diane Keaton, who remained one of Hollywood’s quirkiest and most beloved actors decades after her Academy Award-winning performance in the movie Annie Hall, has died at age 79.

My favorite Diane Keaton movie is Baby Boom. I love the story of the successful type-a personality finding a much better life in becoming a mother in a small town. Great film and she was great.

Another great film is The Family Stone. Unlike Baby Boom it’s very serious and Ms. Keaton is amazing.

RIP 🪦

Bhaskar Sunkara • Talking Points Memo

While some aspects of Substack may harken back to an older form of political publishing,  it doesn’t seem to be reviving the sturdy communities that made the best political blogs feel special. If Crooked Timber today is a living remnant of that order, it looks like Byzantium in its last century: storied and cultured, but a city-state that was once an empire.

I will continue to harp on Substack’s embrace of Nazism. It’s not a good choice for writers. Leave now.

Hartley Charlton • MacRumors

Apple is interested in buying Warner Bros. Discovery’s extensive back catalog of content for Apple TV, Bloomberg reports.

This could be a really interesting pickup for Apple, don’t you think? It’s not like they don’t have a hojillion dollars to spend on some “tiny” acquisitions, right?

Joe Rosensteel • Six Colors

One of the things that I think about from time to time is Apple’s collection of apps. Some are the crown jewels, like Apple’s pro apps, and others help an everyday consumer to tackle their iLife. All are pretty starved for attention and resources, outside of infrequent updates aligned with showing off the native power of Apple Silicon, Apple Intelligence, or demos of platform integration that never quite get all the way there.

I keep waiting for Apple to really eat their own dog food and creat a real productivity app in 100% SwiftUI.

Pages, Numbers, or Keynote would suffice but rewriting software just because is expensive. Perhaps they could do a direct port to SwiftUI using AI as a starting point and fix it up? Perhaps that’s also a really dumb idea. 😀

[John DiLlilo • Tadum by Netflix] (https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/a-house-of-dynamite-kathryn-bigelow-release-date-cast-news)

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE is the latest dramatic thriller from the Oscar-winning director of The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, and more — and it’s streaming on Netflix right now.

I watched this last night. It was good but don’t expect it to be Hurt Locker or Zero Dark Thirty.

It’s the same story shot from multiple perspectives, that I liked. The ending left me wanting but it was a great choice. That’s all I’ll say. 😬

Joannis Orlandos • Swift.org

The Android workgroup is an open group, free for anyone to join, that aims to expand Swift to Android. Today, we are pleased to announce nightly preview releases of the Swift SDK for Android.

I wonder how many iOS App ports we’ll see on Android now? Or perhaps some shared code between the platforms like we see with Kotlin Native?

Tonsky

Syntax highlighting is a tool. It can help you read code faster. Find things quicker. Orient yourself in a large file.

Like any tool, it can be used correctly or incorrectly. Let’s see how to use syntax highlighting to help you work.

I keep looking for a reason to like Visual Studio Code. It just feels wrong to me. Especially keyboard shortcuts. I’m spoiled by Xcode just as I was by Visual Studio when I was using that for 20+ years while writing Windows apps.

Personally, I’d rather use Nova but I’m choosing to use VS Code because it’s what my team uses and the project is suited to it. It’s just not for me.

So, in an attempt to feel more at home, I’ve switched to his theme. It’s not bad and it’s light, which is my preference.

Greg Poggiali • Jalopnik

There are certain truths in the automotive world. A Porsche 911 has its engine in the rear, old Land Cruisers have worse aero than bread, and Mazda’s Soul Red Crystal paint will make you look twice.

I’ve never really paid attention to Mazda’s custom red paint but it is quite beautiful. Maybe I should paint my truck that color? 🤔

Jess Weatherbed • The Verge

Amazon is reportedly leaning into automation plans that will enable the company to avoid hiring more than half a million US workers. Citing interviews and internal strategy documents, The New York Times reports that Amazon is hoping its robots can replace more than 600,000 jobs it would otherwise have to hire in the United States by 2033, despite estimating it’ll sell about twice as many products over the period.

This notion is all fine and good if means people don’t have to work to survive. Provide for our basic health care, food, clothing, and shelter and doing this doesn’t seem so bad, right?

The reality is much, much, darker. This is meant to make the rich, richer at the expense of everyone else.

Reuters

Spire Motorsports will dismiss Justin Haley, driver of its No. 7 Chevrolet, at the end of the NASCAR Cup Series season.

Just one season after dismissing Cory LaJoie for Justin Haley, Spire is doing it again. It’s puzzling to me. Why not give him another year? His team hasn’t exactly been stable. Spire dismissed his highly regarded Crew Chief early in the season. But nope. He’s out.

The only good thing to come out of it is the signing of Daniel Suarez to pilot the 7.

WARNING: Talk of sexual abuse follows

Virginia Roberts Giuffre • The Guardian

In an extract from her posthumous memoir, Virginia Roberts Giuffre remembers the day an ‘apex predator’ recruited her from Mar-a-Lago, aged just 16; how she was trafficked to a succession of wealthy and powerful men – and how everyone knew what was going on

Everyone involved in Epstein and Maxwell’s trafficking scheme is a monster and should be treated as such. That includes Trump.

They’re all pedophiles and sexual predators. Throw them all in a hole and let them fend for themselves.