Captured a good picture of a Snowberry Clearwing.
‘There Is a Complete Meltdown in the Building’: Pentagon Reportedly in ‘Chaos’ as Hegseth Loses Four Staffers in One Day
Who’s a thunk it? 🤣
I mean, you put absolute morons in charge and chaos follows. They are the Chaos Monkey Party, not MAGA.
It all starts with the idiot at the top. Good old Marmalade Messiah, Donald J. Trump.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Sippin’ on my coffee, sittin’ on the couch, typin’ this post out on my iPhone. Like most mornings the house is quiet so it’s a perfect time to write, or post a bunch of links.
The week has been good overall. Work was fine. Pretty quiet. Our Canadian and Brazilian brethren were off yesterday for Good Friday. I suppose that had a lot to do with it, well that and No Meetings Friday. 😃
Anywho, I hope you enjoy the links.
I hope someday we’ll get a version of Swift that isn’t chasing whatever the hot new coding paradigm currently is, and isn’t weighed down by ever expanding complexity. I think that could be pretty nice.
I understand Gus’ sentiment. Swift feels, to me, like a dumping ground for programming language nerds.
Apple had pushed it as a simple language to learn. Sure, the basics may be simple, but overall it’s an extremely complex language, especially all the new Swift Concurrency stuff. Does anyone really understand when to use @MainActor?
I’m behind the curve when it comes to fully embracing Swift Concurrency. I currently have one place in Stream for Mac that uses it, and it’s nice, but I’m not implementing any Sendable types, just taking advantage of Task() and Async/Await.
Get a first look at Daniel Suárez’s Telcel-Infinitum scheme as he makes a homecoming to Mexico at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez on Sunday, June 15
This is cool! NASCAR is headed back to Mexico! I’d actually love to attend this event but I didn’t plan for it this year and I’m not sure how much Kim would appreciate me going all the way to Mexico to watch a NASCAR race when NASCAR is mainly a south-eastern thing. I could drive 45 minutes to Richmond Raceway if I wanted to see a race. 😃
I still think Daniel Suárez should try to get Papas and Beer onboard. 🍻
After growing up using Commodore and Atari computers, the first PC I bought with my own money (as a college student) was a “Macintari” in 1987. Proper Macs were super expensive, so instead, I purchased a Mega ST series Atari computer, which ran the same CPU as Macs of that era (the Motorola 68000). If you installed a Macintosh ROM (or EPROM) chip, you could boot into Macintosh System Software (as macOS was known at the time) and use the Atari hardware as if it were a “real” Apple Macintosh computer.
I had no idea you could run MacOS on an Atari computer!
If you’re interested in one persons observations about moving from Windows to Mac, this is a good one. It’s interesting to me how much third party software Windows users use today.
I have no idea how muchuva pain it would be for me to go back to Windows. Ive been gone for so long and it’s changed so much since 2006.
Specifically, Schleswig-Holstein is dumping Windows and Office for Linux and the popular open-source office suite, LibreOffice. The Schleswig-Holstein cabinet made this decision not because of Linux and LibreOffice’s technical superiority, but because it values “digital sovereignty.”
This is another way our fascist regime has affected American companies.
On the flip side this year will be the year of the Linux Desktop! 😜
Sister Anita eventually gave up, mostly because she couldn’t make out the chicken scratch that my right hand was coming up with, and I guess she just decided that she couldn’t save us all, and I would be an acceptable sacrifice to Satan. For which I was thankful.
Of course I latch on to the left handed thing. My folks converted me from left to right handed when I was pretty darned young because “The world is made for right handed people.”
The madness started, as baseball madness tends to start, with the New York Yankees: At the end of March, during the opening weekend of the new season, the team’s first three batters hit home runs on the first three pitches thrown their way. The final score, 20–9, was almost too good to be true. And then, everybody noticed the bats.
This is a great read and why we need science in the world. 😃 Leave it to a physicist to redesign, of all things, the baseball bat. Something that hasn’t really changed in well over 100 years. Progress! Hopefully the Majors doesn’t outlaw them.
There are some spectacles of US decadence and decline that almost seem too on the nose – the sort of orgies of vulgar provocation or fantastic lack of self-awareness that exceed the limits of parody, so that if they were in a novel, you’d think the writer was laying it on a little thick. Among these is the all-women flight by Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-owned rocket tourism company, which on Monday launched a phallically shaped pod full of women – including the pop star Katy Perry and Bezos’s partner, Lauren Sánchez – on a brief trip into space.
The Blue Origin trip into space with a bunch of crazy rich people definitely seems a bit tone deaf.
At least it didn’t blow up like Space Karen’s rockets do.
Beloved reader, I spent 90 minutes on hold with Con Edison yesterday, getting my power turned back on after a billing contretemps.
I’ve always been impressed by Mr. Zeldman’s willingness to write about his life. You will find many posts labeled My Glamorous Life where he shares personal life stories. He’s a great writer, technologist, and by all accounts and amazing human being. I wish him nothing but the best. ❤️
Probably the single most important lesson I’ve learned in my career, the thing that I would argue is the hallmark of “experience”, is understanding just how much work it takes to turn a working program into a viable product. It’s why developer estimates are so notoriously optimistic - and why experienced developers are so notoriously cynical.
I like this take. I’ve had numerous junior developers say to me something along the lines of “I can’t wait to see what you have to teach me.” Oftentimes that comment is met with a blank stare. 😳 The “teachings” will mostly come organically. I’ve just been around long enough to know how to build software from concept, to development, to shipping, and everything in between. I’ve had great mentors along the way and suffered through issues that seem to crop up in every product I’ve ever worked on. Experience is just age, repetition, and pain, but I do love sharing my experiences of only to help others avoid the pain.
We all know the saying “success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan,” but reading a couple new reports about the current inner-workings of Apple, it almost feels inverted at the most valuable company in the world.
All monster companies eventually experience problems scaling up. Oftentimes it’s because they believe that standardization on some methodology is going to save them. Well, that and people.
We’re still going through growing, and transition, pains at WillowTree since the TELUS acquisition. The cultural and systems transitions haven’t been easy on anyone.
Someday I’ll write about it a bit more.
A few years ago, we bought a church building. Since then, every time I mention it online and/or on social media, someone always responds, “wait, you bought a church, what” and then asks some standard questions. At this point it makes good sense to offer up a Church FAQ to answer some of those most common questions. Let’s begin!
The remodel turned out really nice and it’s great to see them embrace the community by opening the doors for events. John Scalzi is one of those folks I wish I could know personally. He’s just so down to earth I imagine he’d be a great friend.
Forced RTO (Return To Office) is unacceptable, that is no discussion. But please also don’t forget how privileged many of us are to be able to work from home. The factory workers, the people working in grocery stores, doctors, nurses, truck drivers — the majority of the workforce out there — never had this luxury. I have always kept that in mind. They made it possible for people like us to actually be able to work from home.
The forced return to office put in place by many companies has been hard on folks and companies alike. WillowTrees CEO likes to have folks in the office. He likes the buzz and the randomness of bumping into folks. I can appreciate that and I also appreciate working from home. I must give him props for not forcing folks to return to office because he easily could have. ❤️
Would I go back if everyone was required to return? Yes, absolutely. There is a part of me that misses it.
Thanks to the openness of Mastodon and Bluesky, it’s possible to follow accounts across network boundaries.
And that’s the kind of openness that Tapestry, Reeder, and Surf are built on.
There is a new class of software that spans open networks and closed networks. I’ve thought about doing this for Stream ever since I learned more about ActivityPub. Folks can follow Mastodon feeds via RSS so it’s made it less important to write code to connect to ActivityPub directly, so I haven’t bothered.
The fine folks at The Iconfactory have created a pretty ingenious way to connect to any source material you’d like by writing a plug-in to Tapestry in JavaScript! Neat, right? 🙏🏼
Begs the question: What does native mean? 🤔
Last year it turned out that Elon Musk’s xAI had to install additional ‘portable’ generators near its facility adjacent to Memphis, Tennessee, to power the Colossus supercomputer with over 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs as local power grid could not support the load. Now it turns out that these generators were not exactly legal, yet they can keep running, reports The Guardian.
Musks genius is being a narcissist and a sociopath. He doesn’t give a crap about anything or anyone who stands in his way. He and our President are one and the same. Ignore the law and do whatever they want. 🤬
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. 🌞
Ms. Gracie loves the sun.
Don’t come to the U.S.
The European Commission has started issuing burner phones and stripped-down laptops to staff visiting the U.S. over concerns that the treatment of visitors to the country has become a security risk, according to a new report from the Financial Times. And it’s just the latest news that America’s slide into fascism under Donald Trump is having severe consequences for the United States’ standing in the world, all while the president announced Monday that he has no plans to obey a U.S. Supreme Court order to bring back a man wrongly sent to a prison in El Salvador.
The Cheeto in Chief is a piece of garbage.
Trump has lost his mind
In his meeting with President Nayib Bukele today in the White House, President Donald Trump told his Salvadoran counterpart that “home-growns are next” and that El Salvador would “need to be build about five more places” to hold American citizens.
So the president of the United States proposes, on camera, to deport Americans to foreign concentration camps.
We’re approaching a time when violence is going to be the only way to defeat this fascists regime. Constitutional crisis? The Constitution is on fire and his Orangeness is defying the Supreme Court. Law and order are gone, out the window.
If ever there’s been a time to storm D.C, now is it.
Violence is coming.
Ratt
Ratt was my go to metal band of the 80’s. Sure, I liked Ozzy, like everyone else, but I think I was the only Ratt fan in high school. Pretty mellow Ratt here, but I just loved ‘em. song.link/rgtkvkjns…
I’d really love to see Puscifer some day.
I’m watching the recording of the Cup race and just like the Xfinity race Kyle Larson is putting on a clinic. He’s lapping people left and right and he’s putting his car wherever he wants. Wow.
I think my comment earlier about the Cup race being boring was totally wrong! 🏁
NASCAR - Bristol
I’m watching the NASCAR Cup race at Bristol and I gotta say it’s very boring compared to the Xfinity race yesterday. These guys get in a line and it’s like a long train driving around the track.
Those Xfinity cars can be manipulated and move all over the track. These Cup cars are impossible to pass. Their aero packages lose downforce when you pull out from behind a car to pass.
Did you know that Paolo Pasco, the winner of both the 2024 and 2025 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, uses MY APP, Black Ink?
That is so cool! I’d be thrilled to hear from dedicated Stream or RxCalc users!
Inbound RSS as a Protocol
The one that would really open them up is inbound RSS, the protocol that all the other twitter-like systems refuse to support. Want to blow the doors off now instead of some vague time in the future? Support outbound and inbound RSS. Let the trains come into the station and leave the station on a well established protocol. It could be done in a few weeks, really. Maybe the very intelligent and curious people who read this blog would like to take the time to understand what this means and the doors it would open? It’s a way to change the subject from “good idea but hopeless” to “hey we can have freedom now."#
When I first saw Dave mention inbound and outbound RSS I thought he was taking about a mechanism to do threaded replies using RSS so we could have something akin to Mastodon or Bluesky.
I was wrong. He would like to have the ability to not only subscribe to an RSS feed but also populate a social service timeline with an RSS feed. That’s a good idea.
Mastodon or Bluesky could add the ability to have your timeline subscribe to an RSS feed. When that feed changes it could publish the content into the timeline. There would be some intelligence baked in to know if it’s already posted the feed, and I’d imagine some other niceties, but the idea is really good!
The problem is the platform folks tend to say “use our API.” Which makes sense, but most API’s are painful in some way because of authentication or some hoop you have to go through. If the platform natively supported inbound RSS it would greatly simplify the developer and user experience. Let me pick an RSS feed to follow and use it! BOOM! 💥
Dave also believes Bluesky is leading us down the same path as Twitter. We’re all jamming our content into a centralized system. That’s not great. By having your own site with a weblog and the ability to publish RSS and have that content or link to that content published to Bluesky you’re not so locked in. Your blog is the primary source. A source you control.
To date I believe Micro.blog is the best at doing this. It supports ActivityPub so your @micro.blog account can be used as a Mastodon account and show up in your timeline. It also has its own timeline and it’s a full on blogging system. The post you’re reading now is a Micro.blog managed blog!
The other great thing it does is publish to other systems. My blog post text is either fully published to Mastodon, Tumblr, and Bluesky or a link to the post is published if it has a title and goes over a certain character count. I believe this is the perfect solution to the limited character count issue on the various social networks.
E.G. when I publish Saturday Morning Coffee that post goes to this blog. Here’s what it looks like on Mastodon, Tumblr, and Bluesky.
The main source is my blog. It’s then distributed to these secondary sources. Mastodon and Bluesky get links and Tumblr gets a full copy. 👍🏼
Now, Micro.blog goes to all the trouble to connect to those API’s so it can publish to each platform. That’s a royal pain for the team at Micro.blog. I am grateful they support all these platforms, but wouldn’t it be cool if Mastodon, Bluesky, and Tumblr let me, the user, go to a settings screen and tell it to use my RSS feed instead? Yes, yes it would! 😃
Another great post from Dave.
Developers: This is the WordPress API. Compare it to AT Proto and ActivityPub. It's got a lot of advantages. It does the basics of social media. It scales, is mature and stable, and well-managed. A better foundation imho to build on than the others. developer.wordpress.com
WHO DID THIS!
You deserve a medal! 🏅
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
I’ve been informally working with a co-worker answering questions about building out hybrid native applications and it’s been wonderful. I also had opportunity to work on more React Native to iOS code with another developer. Total blast. It hit all my happy buttons.
All that happiness was destroyed later Friday afternoon, but that’s a story for another day. Don’t worry, I’m fine, my family is fine, everything’s fine.
Without going into details (that’s what the technote is for), Acorn’s file format is a SQLite database, with a simple three-table schema, containing TIFF or PNG bitmaps to represent bitmap layers, and a plist to represent shape layers. Acorn has kept this simple format since version 2.0 back in 2009.
At some point I’d opened an Acorn file in Base, my database editing app of choice, and realized it was actually a SQLite database. Nifty!
Given Gus is the creator and maintainer of FMDB it kind of makes sense. 😃 (I use FMDB in Stream.)
Warning that even the slightest dent, knick, or scratch would henceforth be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday that Raymond Pratt, a 54-year-old resident of Chula Vista, CA who bumped a Tesla while parallel parking, had been sentenced to death.
The Onion’s articles, like this one, put a smile on my face.
Google lays off hundreds of employees in Android, Pixel group
I’m afraid we’re going to see more and more of this over the next handful of years.
I’m sure I’m living on borrowed time. Who knows, I may end up working at Starbucks?
I love being a software developer but the new world order is ready to trade craft for expediency. I hate that. I hope I can continue to be a software craftsman.
If I could retire today, I would. That would allow me to focus on Stream and [top secret project] all the time. 😀
Protective helmets were donned and sledgehammers wielded as
Elon MuskSpace Karen critics vented their frustration at the Tesla boss and billionaire by smashing up a disused Tesla bound for the scrapheap.
Oh, how much would you love to do this? I know I would.
Have you heard of the abandoned mall parking lots being used to store Tesla cars and trucks, weird, right? It would be a shame if a pack of drones flew over them and bombed them into oblivion, wouldn’t it?
[Ruben Cagnie • Toast Technology Blog]
At Toast, we believe that GraphQL is the right technology to build efficient web and mobile applications. This did not happen overnight. In this blogpost, we will cover the adoption of GraphQL at Toast, from its early days to the recent paradigm shift towards GraphQL Federation.
I love the Toast app! ❤️ It’s one of my favorite apps on my phone because it’s darned handy! There are four restaurants we love to eat at but sometimes we’d like to get takeout. That’s where Toast comes in. Their idea to build a generic ordering app was super smart. Love it! ❤️
It’s nice to see how folks build their infrastructure out. Reading articles like this is like reading about a motor rebuild. There’s always something new to learn.
I’ve always wanted to try GraphQL. Maybe one of these days I’ll get a chance at the day job? 😃
Former Substack creators say they’re earning more on new platforms that offer larger shares of subscription revenue
Good! Nazistack needs a mass exodus of great writers.
I need to write a piece with a list of the wonderful writers I follow there, via RSS of course, so anyone who reads this can go encourage them to leave Substack. 🤬
This weekend, U.S. secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick went on CBS’s Face the Nation and pitched a fantasy world where iPhones are manufactured in the United States:
I’m sure Tim Cook would love to have a factory complete with worker accommodations that drives folks into the ground for pennies a day.
Maybe our new Administration plans to do away with the minimum wage too?
It’s downright strange how little we know about the hacker or hackers who exposed the identities of over 30 million Ashley Madison users in 2015.
I watched a documentary on Netflix called [Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies, & Scandal(https://time.com/6977627/netflix-ashley-madison-documentary-true-story) a couple nights back and it was absolutely fascinating.
As far as I know the person or persons behind the hack have never been found! That is just amazing to me. Their saving grace is they did it for cultural reasons, not for money. After making their demand for the company to shut down they simply delivered on their threat to release the data they’d stolen. No money demand.
It’s worth a watch.🍿
Mitchellaneous: Excellent protest signs
I threw this in here because I love seeing the interesting signs folks come up with for protests. There have been a lot of good ones since Marmalade Messiah took office.
Tapestry, a new app designed to organize the open social web, is adding a valuable feature to help people who are keeping up with multiple social networks: It will now remove duplicate posts from your feed. That means if you follow the same person across social networking services like Bluesky and Mastodon, you won’t have to see their post appear twice in your feed if they’ve shared it in multiple places.
I remember Craig Hockenberry being asked if Twitterrific — long live Ollie! — was coming to Mastodon. He said that The Iconfactory was exploring something different. Something more for the open web.
Well, Tapestry is that app and it was brilliantly executed.
I’m looking forward to what they do with the Mac version. 😍
Oh, one more thing! Hire The Iconfactory to do your design work, I did, and the results were brilliant!
The Iconfactory is one of those wonderful companies in my list of small companies I’d work for in a heartbeat! 🥰
I have met a lot of developers in my life. Lately, I asked myself: “What does it take to be one of the best? What do they all have in common?”
Great piece. I’ve met my share of absolutely incredible developers in my time. From so many developers at Visio, too many to name, to the many excellent developers at WillowTree, hi Nish!
I like Matthias’ take on the matter.
David Eaves, Hillary Hartley • Lawfare
In March, the U.S. government shut down 18F, the digital services team tasked with modernizing government technology and services. 18F was perhaps best known for helping the IRS create a free direct-file tax website that makes it fast and free for Americans to file taxes.
This group was full of kind, caring, compassionate, designers, developers, and project managers with the goal of making world class websites for the government.
Folks like Ethan Marcotte went to work there. Yes, that Ethan Marcotte, the guy who created Responsive Web Design. Now think of an entire engineering team like that!
Cory’s right, using an RSS reader will make your digital life better. I’m wasting less time scrolling past stuff I don’t care about and more time reading things I enjoy. That’s a win.
Yep, yep, yep! There are plenty of excellent RSS readers on the market, but I think you should use Stream! 😁
C is the lingua franca of programming. We must all speak C, and therefore C is not just a programming language anymore – it’s a protocol that every general-purpose programming language needs to speak.
This piece will take a little time to read but I really appreciated the technical detail and the authors take on so many things C. Nicely done! 🙏🏼
Last week we explored some Threads compatibility updates, how to find and follow people across the Fediverse, and the progress of the social web beta launch. This week, we’ve got more fixes and updates to share, as well as a painful and embarrassing story that we wish had never happened.
This is Ghosts place to talk about how they’re building ActivityPub support into Ghost. It’s nice to see other blogging tools support open standards.
To my knowledge, Micro.blog, WordPress, and Ghost support ActivityPub. I’m looking forward to seeing more!👻
All of Apple’s services are abysmal
I’ve heard this from so many people over the years. Creating web services is hard. Especially when you’re servicing millions and millions of people, but shops like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook manage to pull it off. Why can’t Apple?
Marmalade Messiah Manipulates Market
Now we know the strategy
- Tariff everyone
- That kills the market and puts a strain on the economy
- Tell cronies and “friends” you’re gonna call off tariffs
- “Friends” and cronies buy
- After all the nasty people have bought announce delay in tariffs
- Make a crap ton of money
The man needs to be impeached, now.
The Musk Files: Everyone Hates Space Karen
Protective helmets were donned and sledgehammers wielded as Elon Musk critics vented their frustration at the Tesla boss and billionaire by smashing up a disused Tesla bound for the scrapheap.
The public art project was organised by the social media campaign group Everyone Hates Elon. A 2014 Tesla Model S was provided by an anonymous donor “to create a debate about wealth inequality”, a spokesperson for the group said.
I am so OK with this! I wish someone here in Charlottesville or Richmond would setup something like this. Oh, heck, even better would be an event in Washington DC to do the same. Right in front on the White House if that is possible.
Go to hell, Space Karen.
Fingers crossed Tesla stock drops enough he gets a margin call.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Val Kilmer, who played Bruce Wayne in “Batman Forever,” channeled Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone‘s “The Doors” and starred as a tubercular Doc Holliday in “Tombstone,” died Tuesday in Los Angeles.
We lost a good one. I’ve always enjoyed Val Kilmer in his roles. My favorite is his portrayal of Doc Holiday in Tombstone but I also liked him in Real Genius, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and The Saint.
If you were a fan or are curious about Mr Kilmer give the documentary Val a viewing. It’s really well done.
Oh, I also liked his Madmartigan in Willow.
RIP 🪦
Last Tuesday at 1 AM, I was debugging a critical production issue in my AI dev tool. As I dug through layers of functions, I suddenly realized — unlike the new generation of developers, I was grateful that I could actually understand my codebase. That’s when I started thinking more about Karpathy’s recent statements on vibe coding.
I’ve noted here frequently how slow I am to pick up new languages and frameworks. Largely it’s because I have to dig in, get to the bottom of things, and really develop an understanding of how things actually work. The more abstract — or magic — the language or framework the harder I have to work and the longer it takes for me to grok it. That takes time. For me it usually takes two times longer than most people. I’m a dumb redneck who likes computers, I ain’t that smart, so I learn via a lot of head banging and frustration, oh, and persistence and hard work.
All that to say, I love the craft of software development and I have a really hard time with the notion of using an LLM to develop and entire application for me. I can see using an LLM to get past things I’m not great at. Like my current huge struggle with auto layout in AppKit, but not for everything. 🧠
You say ‘city,’ and I’m going to piss myself, and there’s no way I’m going to hide that wet spot just to make you libs more comfortable. I’m going to tell it like it is—for instance, I’m a man, and I’m scared of my own desires, and I don’t care who knows it!
When I think of Conservatives I think of folks who believe they’re patriots, self reliant, tough, and religious.
Often I think they’re none of those things. Being a patriot doesn’t mean wearing a flag shirt or having the Constitution tattooed on your arm or the American flag waving in your front yard.
A patriot is someone who loves their country and would do anything to protect it. That also means being critical of it and standing up for what you believe.
Many Conservatives I’ve met tend to be hateful of others and angry about what others have.
The Onion has a nice way of capturing that. 😃
I’ve been using the recently revamped Reeder on iOS, and after just a few weeks it feels pretty darned close to my ideal way of reading feeds.
Ashur has written a nice piece on his experience with Reeder. It is a very fine piece of software for iOS and Mac and Silvio Rizzi is an extremely talented designer/developer.
He’s taken a new direction with his beloved feed reader. It’s now more broad and can subscribe to more than RSS feeds, which is something I’ve wanted to do with Stream, and The Icon Factory have done with Tapestry.
It’s a new dawn for feed readers. They’re more general purpose viewers now. Expect to see more of this from other readers in future releases.
Also, thank you for the mention Ashur. I’m very grateful for your support over the years! ❤️
Tom Warren and Jay Peters • The Verge
A Microsoft employee disrupted the company’s 50th anniversary event to protest its use of AI.
The world is in such a strange place at this point in history and I hope we learn from it, otherwise we are doomed to complete failure. War, division, and climate change are all huge threats to humanity.
I don’t blame Israel for defending itself against Hamas. Who would? They were attacked by a terrorist organization who wants to exterminate them. We did the same thing after 9/11.
However, I do take issue with Israel attempting to obliterate Gaza and all her people.
Israel of all countries should know better. Jews were hunted by Hitler’s Nazi Germany who wanted to exterminate them. How can they turn around and do the same? 🙏🏼
Elon Musk’s polygonal pickup is a polarizing sales flop that’s missed the billionaire’s volume goal by a staggering 84%. And there’s no sign that things are improving.
Yeah, the Cyber Truck. 🤣
Vojtech Novak, Shubham Gupta, Fabrizio Cucci, Riccardo Cipolleschi • React Native Developer Blog
This release ships React 19 in React Native and some other relevant features like native support for Android Vector drawables and better brownfield integration for iOS.
I hope we get an opportunity at adopt this on the project I’m on at WillowTree. It sounds like a nice step forward for hybrid apps like the one I’m working on.
Last week I bought a 13" MacBook Air in Midnight (24GB memory, 512GB SSD).
After reading this I’m tempted to go with a new Air as a personal Mac. I’ve been one of those die hard must own a MacBook Pro people but seeing a developer I have a lot of respect for say it works beautifully for an app like Acorn gives me confidence it would be a great choice for my less substantial projects, like Stream. 👍🏼
Warner Bros. dropped a new sneak-peek teaser for James Gunn’s Superman on Thursday out of CinemaCon, and it’s mostly just the same trailer we saw back in December, with the same quick-cut looks at Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), Guy “worst haircut in the ’verse” Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), a giant kaiju that might be Jimmy Olsen, and more. The difference is, there’s an extra two minutes of footage that might just be the full theatrical cut of the sequence that follows after Superman crashlands in the snow near the Fortress of Solitude — and it’s a long, agonizing two minutes.
Based on the trailers I’ve seen I don’t think I’m gonna like this Superman.
Henry Cavil is still the best Superman. 🦸🏻♂️
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, and a range of other online services, is reducing its workforce. The layoffs will impact 16% of staff across divisions, an Automattic blog post published Wednesday reveals.
I feel really bad for Automatticians. They’ve been through a real rough patch over the last year. First all the hubbub with WPEngine, the mass resignations, and now a layoff.
I hope they all land on their feet and Automattic survives and continues to lead the progression of WordPress far into the future.
I’d also like to see Matt Mullenweg loosen his grip on the open source organization so it can lead future efforts. ❤️
Back in 2019 I moved my blog off of WordPress and over to Ghost. In short, I wasn’t happy with WordPress and wanted a blogging engine that felt more like it was made for blogging than a full CMS where I didn’t use 99% of the features on offer. Ghost seemed to align with my values as a writer and a general user of technology, and over the past 6 years, that’s only become more clear that was the right choice for me.
Paying an organization to take care of the servers and infrastructure for your blog is very freeing.
I switched to Micro.blog a few years back and don’t regret it. The team makes sure we’re always up and running and the service and user experience are dirt simple for blogging. Just as they should be. ❤️
I’ve used most Google’s products since the day they were introduced, so it was a great opportunity to see what these products are like for first time users, since the first time I used them long ago, they usually looked much different.
An interesting read on Google’s widely used products and services. Understanding how the Enterprise versions work is challenging. I’ve had a number of odd experiences with sharing documents over the years. Go read it. You may find yourself nodding your head in agreement.
France’s competition watchdog (Autorité de la concurrence) ordered Apple to pay €150 million (~$162.4 million) after finding that its App Tracking Transparency system allows the company to abuse its dominance in the mobile app market. In its decision, the authority says the initiative — which Apple pitches as a way to give users more control of their privacy — harms small publishers and “is neither necessary for nor proportionate with” Apple’s goal of protecting personal data.
Heh, App Tracking Transparency is something I really appreciate as a user but I can see how some App Developers would not like the idea.
At WillowTree we create a lot of what I refer to as “Marketing Apps.” Most large corporations who have something to sell you really need to have these beautifully designed and implemented applications that not only advertise their products but often need an ordering workflow. We do that and we do that really well.
Every one of the apps I’ve worked on is chock full of analytics measuring all sorts of things. The great companies take the user experience data they collect very seriously and make improvements accordingly.
The app I’m working on now has improved dramatically over the last year because the company we’ve done work for studies their analytics. It really can work.
Politics
Johnathan V. Last • The Bulwark
Fittingly, it was the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, who declared the official time of death.
The United States of America is now a world wide embarrassment that cannot be trusted and has become a laughing stock.
Postpone any trip to the US you’ve had booked. It’s a real mess here.
If you had told me a decade ago that a former president would waltz back into the White House, torch the global economy, slap double-digit tariffs on damn near everything, spook the markets into evaporating over three trillion dollars in a single day, and call it a “booming economy” with a straight face—I would’ve thought it a particularly cruel and poorly conceived joke.
Again. See my first comment above.
Trump and his administration are burning everything down. Morons all.
Of note, Joan Westenberg has become one of my favorite writers. She delivers facts and opinions with a dry wit I really appreciate.
Now as the owner of The Atlantic, she is the quiet superhero behind the current Signalgate scandal. Editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who in full disclosure I know well enough to have his email, has rightfully been taking a hero’s tour on media everywhere since he broke the story of having been “accidentally” included in a Signal chat group of the top national security officials talking about an imminent attack on the Houthis, in violation of every imaginable security protocol not to mention common sense.
It took one brave woman to put all the billionaire bros to shame.
Now if we could convince Bezos to sell the Washington Post to Kara Swisher that would be incredible.
Coffee with Bug this morning.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
PS5 owners really want to play Xbox games, as Microsoft tops Sony’s preorder charts
From an outsiders perspective this makes sense given Microsoft’s move to purchase extremely popular game studios. They should absolutely make sure everything they create is playable on PlayStation. It’s kind of been Microsoft’s M.O. all along. Write software that runs anywhere. 👨🏻💻
The other day, I was reading an interesting article about moving away from social media siloes and getting back to basics with a domain and a web page. (Neocities is also a nice place to learn HTML markup and put up a home page.) I liked the article and was looking forward to leaving a comment, BUT when I got to the bottom of the post, I was confronted with a prompt to sign up for a membership. Really? To leave a comment? Especially on an article about the small web?
Of course this is about Substack. It is, along with X, an internet Nazi bar and it’s full of amazing writers supporting it.
Money talks, I guess. 😞
A major Tesla investor has called on Elon Musk to step down as head of the company as a nationwide boycott causes stock prices to plunge.
Ross Gerber, who owns an estimated $105 million in shares of Tesla stock, called on Elon Musk to step down as head of the company, saying that he “destroyed” the company’s reputation
Does anyone know what Tesla is up to anymore? It’s just sitting there, not making progress. It was once a bright shining star. Now it’s a losing afterthought. Wonder why?
Tesla board, fire Musk.🔥
Red Bull only has itself to blame for its driver mess
It’s really incredible to see Red Bull panicking over two races with, in essence, a rookie driver. They fire Danny Ricardo and Sergio Perez in favor of Liam Lawson — over Yuki Tsunoda — and expect the man to be top 10, or better, on day one. Absurd.
Red Bull has competition, that’s it. McLaren has caught up and Mercedes is show some of their old spark. Not to mention Alex Albon keeping Williams in a good spot.
I’d expect Ferrari to show some teeth soon. It’s gonna get really interesting! 🏎️
Once upon a time, landing a job at the likes of Amazon, Google, or Microsoft was seen as the golden ticket — offering generous salaries, four-day work weeks, and nap pods. Over the last few years, though, that image has been transformed into one that is far less idyllic, marked with mass layoffs and employees sleeping on the office floor.
Basically the BigCo’s are returning to the way they used to be. When I was at Microsoft everyone worked long hours moving as fast as we could to meet deadlines. My nap pod was the floor under my desk where I’d grab some shuteye as I worked overnight. I’d imagine I worked an average of 60 hours a week for months on end.
It’s not a good way to live. It’s hard on you physically and mentally and if you have a family it punishes them.
I do not recommend doing it.
Rebuilding Prime Video UI with Rust and WebAssembly
This link is to a video and slides for the presentation. I didn’t watch it but I thought I’d share it because I do find this interesting.
The browser as operating system feels more than a bit odd. Folks like Apple, Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft really need to put way more effort into tooling to make it better for developers. As a developer I want a full IDE with real debugging support, no matter the language I choose. Perhaps they’re already there and I’m just naive?
I’m still a bit bitter WebAssembly was chosen over a CLI implementation — ECMA-335 — that runs in the browser. But, at least we have something common for browsers and languages to target.
It is strange to take this low level language and spit out WebAssembly. ⚒️
Researchers have found that ChatGPT “power users,” or those who use it the most and at the longest durations, are becoming dependent upon — or even addicted to — the chatbot.
It was inevitable, right?
Each new version of macOS has increased the complexity of launching apps, from the basics of launchd, the addition of LaunchServices, to security checks on notarization and XProtect.
If you’d like to see a really nice overview of how macOS launches apps, this is for you! 🚀
It’s not crazy technical, an intentional choice by the author, and will give you an understanding of how things work when you start up your favorite application.
In this post, I assume that vibe coding will grow up and people will use it for real engineering, with the “turn your brain off” version of it sticking around just for prototyping and fun projects. For me, vibe coding just means letting the AI do the work. How closely you choose to pay attention to the AI’s work depends solely on the problem at hand. For production, you pay attention; for prototypes, you chill. Either way, it’s vibe coding if you didn’t write it by hand.
Vibe coding is the new way I guess.
As someone who has spent over 30-years struggling to become better each and every day I find this depressing. I know I’m an ok developer. Not the worst and certainly not the best, not even close. But to spend a lifetime at something only to see folks produce more output without even trying is extremely discouraging.
Craftsmanship goes out the window in favor of expediency. It is the new way and we’re all going to have to get used to it or be left behind.
I’ve finally become a dinosaur. 🦕
Gracie is enjoying all the sniffs and Kolby is chillin on the front door mat. It’s a gorgeous day here, suns out, blue sky.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
“Big” George Foreman, one of the most influential and recognizable boxers of all time, died Friday, his family announced on his social media account.
RIP, Big George. 🪦
Apple is reportedly losing more than $1 billion annually on its streaming service, Apple TV+, according to The Information on Thursday — providing a rare glimpse into the tech giant’s content operation.
That’s a huge number. Apple has some really good original programming. The production value is always top notch. I’d imagine that’s why it costs so much to keep going. Take a look at Netflix. They pump out content that, overall, has a much lower production value. Those in turn fund the production of high quality content. 💸
There’s been a lot flying around the social web the past couple of days about Apple completely botching their AI push, and I haven’t seen a whole lot of solutions (I fully admit I could completely be missing it). But off the top of my head, here’s one idea that I think could really help and reap benefits for both Apple and developers.
I’d imagine a lot of developers are going to want access to an AI API.
Put AI in all the things! I’m not sure how I’d use it in my apps, yet, but I could see doing some local machine learning to help pick feeds for the user to check out. 😁
RSS and ATOM feeds are problematic (for our use-cases) for two reasons; 1) lack of history, 2) contain limited post content. We built some open-source software to fix that.
I like this, a lot! This would be a great way to make a complete backup of your blog. Just generate a gigantic RSS feed of everything and push it to GitHub and other places.
One of the things I want to do for Stream is get full content for a particular feed. For now Stream only gets what the feed includes. I’ll have to change that so it grabs the HTML and pulls the body out.
The European Commission is not backing down from efforts to rein in Big Tech. In a series of press releases today, the European Union’s executive arm has announced actions against both Apple and Google. Regulators have announced that Apple will be required to open up support for non-Apple accessories on the iPhone, but it may be too late for Google to make changes. The commission says the search giant has violated the Digital Markets Act, which could lead to a hefty fine.
It’s time to get the popcorn out to see how much these two juggernauts push the rules. 🍿
Apple has already done the very least it could do to comply with opening up the ability to have third party app stores.
What I have trouble understanding is how she continued working with sociopaths after the first few years, when it was obvious that they wouldn’t change. As she rose in the company, and spent time with “Mark” and “Sheryl,” it was clear that these two people, as well as others, don’t care about the consequences of their platform.
Facebook is a nasty, evil, company. I jettisoned my account in 2011 but thought recently about making a new one. What an idiot! I’m glad I didn’t do it.
A month of anti-Tesla dissent escalated this week with two reports of Teslas catching fire in Las Vegas and Kansas City.
I still say these Tesla cars and trucks are spontaneously combusting.
It would a real shame if the stock price sunk so low Space Karen got a margin call.
It’s too bad Tesla’s board is in Space Karen’s pocket. Tesla could use new leadership at CEO and the board.
They’re clearly not innovating or even doing the least bit to update the models they have. When was the last time the body shape changed?
Also, Musk isn’t running the company. Why should he continue to drag them down?
Fire the man already, before one of those giant lots of Tesla’s spontaneously combusts and cause a lot more damage.
After a year, the top 5 percent of apps in most categories, including gaming, photo and video, health and fitness, and social and lifestyle, make more than $5,000/month. The 25th percentile makes $5 to $20 per month, depending on the category, save for photo and video apps, whereas the bottom quartile makes $32 per month.
I’d take $32 per month! I could use it to support my coffee habit. 😁
On the flip side I’m really happy for the companies who make enough to survive on and even thrive. Good for them! ❤️
Word is spreading that Sauer Brands Inc. ― owner of Greenville’s beloved mayonnaise brand ― has been sold to none other than a northern company.
I’d never had Dukes Mayo until we moved to Virginia. In California all I remembered was Craft Mayo as a choice. Dukes became an instant hit for me the first time I had it. I hope these new owners don’t mess it up. 🫙
Robert Rodriguez • The Fresno Bee
On Tuesday, the two defendants in one of Fresno’s biggest business scandals are expected to report to federal prison to serve their sentences for wire fraud and conspiring to commit wire fraud.
I know Jake and Irma personally and I hope nothing but the best for them. I have to believe this was a huge mistake on their part. An ignorant mistake. I don’t know enough about it to know if it was or not. They did so much good for the Central Valley and other places. ❤️
Chinese automaker BYD unveiled a new range of electric vehicles that it said can charge in five minutes, ramping up its competition with Tesla in the burgeoning Chinese market.
It would be nice to see these cars here in the States. Especially if they’re in the 10-20k range. That’s the range I’d consider purchasing a new car.
Sitting out on the deck this afternoon with the pups enjoying a beautiful day.
John Roberts, Knucklehead
Hazif Rashid • The New Republic
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.” - Supreme Court Justice, John Roberts, March 2025
What a knucklehead. In April of 2024 you said a President could do anything they want as long as it was done as part of their duty as President. Right. RIGHT!?
Let’s see what he said.
Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.
Right, like I said, he can do whatever he wants as President.
Nice work, dumbass.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Its been a week. My back is really messing with me. I’ve had this problem for years and years and I absolutely hate when I’ve injured it. The meds I’m on leave me really sleepy so I wouldn’t be surprised if this set of links is short.
Anywho, there’s my week in a nutshell.
I hope you enjoy the links.
Brazilian Court Gives Apple 90 Days to Allow Sideloading on iOS
I hope Apple is starting to build out their infrastructure to allow for more stores but what I think most developers would rather see is Apple dropping their 27% fee for using the platform. Something more like 5% or even 10%.
Never gonna happen.
Apple on Tuesday patched a critical zero-day vulnerability in virtually all iPhones and iPad models it supports and said it may have been exploited in “an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals” using older versions of iOS.
Even the best software engineers in the world make mistakes.
A 10x faster TypeScript
This video is worth a watch. It was interesting to hear their reason for using Go for the port.
Microsoft is replacing Remote Desktop with its new Windows app
So now they have a Windows app for running Windows apps?
Talk about confusing. This is weird. 🤣
Aditi Bharade • Business Insider
Kentucky’s bourbon makers are up in arms about Canada yanking their bottles off shelves
Consequences. This is a consequence of tariffs. You definitely cannot blame Canada for pulling American products off of their shelves.
A week ago, ByteDance announced the release of Lynx, a technology for building mobile apps using Web technologies. ByteDance had been using it to power many of their apps, and they decided to package it up and open-source it. Having Lynx enter the space with a new approach is great news for the community.
Yet another framework for building mobile applications.
A lot of companies are looking for ways to have a single set of code to run across mobile platforms.
It’s hard to argue against the idea of it.
The future of America isn’t being written in Washington—it’s being coded, traded, and hoarded by tech billionaires who see democracy as a bug, not a feature.
Billionaire Tech Bros need to be placed on a rocket and launched to Mars. Let them have it. 🚀