Rob Fahrni

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Nothing much to talk about this week. I got a haircut and had a bunch of random thoughts about blogging and feed readers. 🤣

Of course I’d still like to make a living working on Feed Readers and Blogging tools. Someday, oh yes, someday. 😃

Jason Snell • Macworld

That’s my long way of saying that this is my last More Color column at Macworld. Thank you so much to everyone at Macworld for the chance to keep my name attached to this brand for an additional 11 years on top of the 17 I spent in my first life as an editor. Thanks to my editor, Roman Loyola, who was already working at MacUser magazine on my first day there in 1994 and is somehow still working with me. And thanks to all of you for reading my words here over the years. I’ll keep bleeding six colors&xcust=1-0-3175482-1-0-0-0-0&sref=https://www.macworld.com/article/3175482), and I know that you will, too.

The bad news is the Macworld reading crowd will, I’m sure, miss Jason’s work. The good news is, he has Six Colors. As a subscriber I’m hopeful it will continue publishing far into the future.

Thanks for your dedication to the Mac and the Mac using community, Jason!

See you over at Six Colors.

Jarred Sumner • Bun Blog

What if, instead, I spend a week testing if Anthropic’s new model can rewrite Bun in Rust?

At first, I didn’t expect it to work. A few days in, a high % of the test suite started passing and I saw how much the new Rust code matched up with the original Zig codebase. My opinion went from “this is worth trying” to “I’m going to merge this”.

Bun is one of those projects that fascinates me. One fella on a mission managed to create a beloved product and continues to love and care for it today, albeit with better resources.

If you’re a software engineer you owe it to yourself to read this article. It goes into great detail how the porting process used Claude Fable to great effect.

Hats off to Jarred for undertaking such a risky port and for teaching us how to use Claude for extremely deep work. It really is impressive.

Ben Gutierrez • Hawaii News Now

Hundreds gathered along Magic Island and Ala Wai Boat Harbor Friday to watch solo rower Kelsey Pfendler complete her record-breaking journey from California to Hawaii.

With all the war and political upheaval in the world it’s nice to see the human spirit of adventure survive and thrive. Congratulations to Kelsey Pfendler on an amazing feat of human strength and endurance. Not only did she make it across she destroyed the prior record of 52 days by nine days, coming in at 43 days to accomplish the feat. Wow! 🥳

L. Jeffrey Zeldman

We need to stop pretending that “the cloud” is a place. It’s not a place. It’s a promise—and promises are only as good as the entity making them. The web was supposed to be decentralized, resilient, a network of nodes that could route around damage. But in practice, we’ve spent the last decade centralizing our lives into a handful of walled gardens, each with its own exit strategy and its own definition of “forever.”

Mr. Zeldman has been writing a lot more over the last six months and I for one am here for it. I’ve always loved his openness, honesty, beautiful writing, and his technical prowess.

We owe a lot to Mr. Zeldman for his steadfast nurturing of web standards and the open web. Keep on keeping on Mr. Zeldman!

Louie Mantia • Parakeet Blog

Last week, Luka and I worked with the hosts of Accidental Tech Podcast—Marco Arment, Casey Liss, and John Siracusa—to design new Liquid Glass icons for their apps. Each submitted their own brief, and we created icons to meet their expectations and look exemplary on macOS 27 and iOS 27.

These icons are beautiful! 😍 It’s so nice to see professionals at the top of their craft.

The ATP boys talked about the icons on Episode 699: Not the Correct Squircle

If I had to pick a favorite from the collection it’s a tossup between John’s SwitchGlass and Marco’s Overcast icons. I suppose my absolute favorite is Overcast’s alternate teal icon. The blue circle in the main icon is also really nice!

I wish Apple would remove the squircle jail from macOS so John could use his original SwitchGlass icon. It’s gorgeous.

Oh, and I agree with John’s take that your icon should be better than your app! I honestly think that’s why Stream is downloaded. The icon is gorgeous (yeah, I’m biased. 😃)

(Y’all didn’t think you’d get away scot free of a Stream mention today, did you? 🤣)

Hugo Rojas • Ecoportal

Switzerland bolted 5,000 solar panels onto a dam wall 8,000 feet up in the freezing Alps where everyone said solar made no sense, and the plant now makes three times more winter power than any farm down in the valleys

How ‘bout those Swiss? 🤣

I suppose if you’re gonna have a manmade dam high up in the Alps you might as well make good use of it, right?

Bring on the solar! 🌞

Oh, and speaking of the Swiss. They meet Argentina tonight in the World Cup Quarterfinals. They’ll definitely have their hands full! Let’s go!

Daring Fireball

It’s one thing for Apple to force all of its own app icons into the same identical shape. That would be bad enough, because Apple’s own Mac apps are numerous and popular, and as the platform owner Apple necessarily sets the direction that many third-party apps follow. But it’s just downright spiteful to enforce it platform-wide.

Maybe if we make enough noise in the Mac and iOS community Apple will give us the ability to have icons outside of the squircle again?

Me complaining won’t help but if enough of the Mac punditry, well known Mac fans, and Mac developers make enough noise, maybe? 🤞🏼

Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

A new app called HyperTexting is making it as easy to surf the web as it is to scroll through a social media feed, like Facebook or X. The app, newly available for iOS, also aims to make updating your own personal website as simple as sending a text message.

Wow! Yet another beautiful entry in the feed reading family. This is a really nice take on feeds as social timelines and it takes things a bit farther by allowing you to post to your blog. Yes, this is yet another feature on the already extremely long Stream todo list. 🤣

Steve Inskeep • NPR

If you’re listening closely, the lyrics of “Born in the U.S.A.” make its subject pretty clear: The 1984 hit by Bruce Springsteen describes a Vietnam War veteran who returns home to desperate circumstances and few options. Listen only to its surging refrain, though, and you could mistake it for an uncomplicated celebration of patriotism. You wouldn’t be the only one.

It’s a high energy song performed by a high energy performer but it’s really depressing if you listen to the lyrics. It’s the experience of a lot of our vets. They come home to nothing without hope. Those transitions have to be brutal in a country that celebrates service but it stops when people need it the most. They need that support when they’re back in civilian life.

Donna Wentworth • Lenergy

From 1 July 2026, energy retailers in NSW, South Australia, and South-East Queensland must give households at least three hours of free electricity every day. No solar panels required. No need to own your home. You just need a smart meter and to opt in through your retailer to have access to free daytime electricity

Ahhhh, more smart use of solar. The older I get the more I’d like socialized medicine and education and I think I’ll add power to that list. We all need power to run our lives. Having a single, stable, protected, shared power grid seems like a natural candidate to socialize. Doesn’t it?

Of course it’ll never happen because ‘murica. 🤣

Andrew Webster • The Verge

After muscling its way into the console space nearly 25 years ago, Microsoft’s gaming division is at its lowest point ever. And the fallout from some disastrous decisions is going to get very ugly in the coming weeks and months.

The whole Xbox thing is a real mess. First buy up a bunch of studios, then declare you’re focusing on PCs, then declare Xbox is no more, then name a new head of Xbox who turns around and declares it’s here to stay.

Now we get layoffs and studio spinouts. Wild. I hope the folks who were let go find a good home and the new small studios are able to stay afloat.

Apple, if ever you wanted to do some games work for the Mac now could be a good time to pickup some people to do the work. John Siracusa and Quinn Nelson have made good arguments for it. But this is Apple. They don’t do serious gaming even though they make serious gaming dev tools.

Hey, Mr. Ternus, it could be a way to get into more homes and make more cold hard cash that adds to that “shareholder value.” 🤣

Jordan Novet • CNBC

Microsoft is eliminating 4,800 jobs, representing 2.1% of its workforce, with the company’s Xbox division losing about one-fifth of its staff in the software giant’s latest effort to cut costs in the era of artificial intelligence.

More on the Microsoft Xbox debacle. It’s all AI or bust these days. Let’s jam it into everything whether it needs it or not.

Yes, I have thoughts and opinions on AI in everything, but that’s for another day.

Julie Johnson • San Francisco Chronicle

On a historic Santa Rosa street, neighbors have been watching a redwood tree grow like a living monument over years, decades, lifetimes. They’ve seen the slow-motion work as its roots muscled large chunks of concrete sidewalk up from horizontal placings into a nearly vertical, catawampus mess. 

The sidewalk is impassable and has been for years. This spring, the city issued the property owner a permit to cut down the tree and restore the sidewalk. It’s the cleanest solution, but one that spurred a passionate neighborhood campaign to save the towering redwood tree with a 4-foot-wide trunk that they now call Rosie.

I’d like to see this tree saved but I can understand why they may need to cut Rosie down. It’s a real bummer of a situation. Too bad they can’t, or won’t, use the Japanese technique of nemawashi to relocate it. See below! 😃

The Times of India

Before a tree is moved, specialists carefully prepare its root system to improve its chances of surviving in a new location. The technique, known as nemawashi, combines centuries of horticultural knowledge with modern engineering and reflects Japan’s long-standing respect for nature and cultural heritage.

This is incredible. The Japanese, like Native American’s, really embrace nature. It’s a beautiful thing and we need more beautiful things in this world.

Joe Wilkins • Futurism

As one New York financier told Financial Times journalist Gillian Tett, new hires who were seen as “AI natives” are turning out to have alarmingly shallow ideas. So much so, the anonymous finance worker admitted, that his firm now actively avoids seeking out AI-literate STEM graduates, and opts to comb through humanities students instead.

Ouch. Yes, we still need to exercise our brains. LLMs are just another tool, not the only tool. Your bain is the best tool you have. Nourish it.

Good thing my fingers don’t need to read the keys to do their job.

It’ll be 1.7 in the store so I can sync the iOS and Mac versions. 😃

How close am I? It’s hard to say to be perfectly honest. One day I’ll just declare it good enough and I’ll boot it out the door.

I want to do a bit of work to the leftmost view in the app to make it into a sidebar and shrink up each item displayed there a bit. That’ll mean some font size changes and probably change the size of the icon and tweak the middle column a bit. 🤣

Then again, maybe not? I’m just not sure I want to do it now.

I will definitely do a bit of visual cleanup. I’ve been tweaking it over time and it’s getting closer. I think of the mess I had when I first got it wired together and it’s come a long way.

It’s going to ship without Settings because I just want to get it done. No changing the number of days to keep feed items (it defaults to 30), no alternate icons, and no tip jar. My hope is to rework Settings in the iOS version and do it in SwiftUI so I can bring that work to the Mac. I do want to make it look like it belongs on the Mac, so it’ll get tweaked for sure.

I am going to start doing all work in SwiftUI moving forward since it’s “the future” of the platform and I need to take the plunge. Over time it’s only going to get better.

One of the most disappointing things to me is the number of features and infrastructure changes I’d like to make. Some are mostly hidden — like parsing the web page associated with the feed — or adding some automation support. The list goes on and on. Oh, heck, sync is a huge one at the very top of the list. Then there’s support for other feed backends… ugh! I could go on forever. 🤣

One more thing. I think I’m going to have to pull the Read Later feature from the app if I want to get it out the door anytime soon. That’s going to require considerable work to parse web pages instead of just simple feeds. I have thoughts on it and once I get around to it I think it’ll turn out just fine, but it’s quite a bit of work to do right now.

Just some random thoughts on a Friday morning.

Kim made this for me in 2002.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been super hot and humid in Virginia this week so I’ve been staying inside as much as I possibly can.

I did manage to get to Grit yesterday and work on Stream. I need to write up the changes I’ve made in the last two BETA releases.

That’s all for now. I hope you enjoy the links.

Daring Fireball

Felix Rieseberg, quite obviously, is the answer to the question why Claude is an Electron app. It’s like wondering why all the screws in a building were hammered into the walls, and then finding out that the guy who oversaw construction founded and co-owns the world’s biggest hammer manufacturer. Windows uses Philips head screws, Linux uses hex screws, and MacOS requires Torx (of course) — but a hammer works the same way with all screws. That’s Electron. That’s Rieseberg’s baby.

John’s scathing take is also quite funny. Folks tend to gravitate towards tools they’re familiar with. I’m still fond of C++ and even though I don’t use it today I’d be happy moving back to it. Swift has been a real boon to developer productivity and stable code but SwiftUI has been a bit of a slog for some. Developers have been frustrated by lack of features supported by SwiftUI equivalent features of AppKit. Basically what I think I’m trying to get at and failing is it’s easy to write a crummy app using AppKit or SwiftUI just as easily as it is to write a crummy Electron app.

If folks coding in Electron paid better attention to the platform conventions and wrote apps to fit within them, would you be able to tell the difference between an Electron app and an AppKit app? I can’t answer that because I’ve never seen an Electron app that has tried to be a good platform citizen, be it Windows, Linux, or Mac.

I take that back, 1Password’s Windows, Linux, and Mac Electron apps are quite good and I’d love to know what real dyed in the wool Mac users like John think of it? I’d love a true objective look at 1Password and a recording of its failures as a Mac-assed-Mac-app.

Embracing the platform is the ultimate goal. I know y’all are probably sick of hearing about Stream for Mac but I want it to be a Mac-assed-Mac-app. Even if it’s short on features the big boys have it needs to be a proper Mac app. It’s all native. I’m writing it in Swift using AppKit and there’s the tiniest bit of SwiftUI and Objective-C sprinkled about, but does it feel like a Mac app? That’s all that matters to me in the end.

I would love to see someone write a small Mac-assed-Mac-app in three variants; AppKit, SwiftUI, and Electron. The design needs to match across the board. Without observing the apps binary using something like nm could a user of the app tell the difference? I suspect some may be able to pick up on some differences but I’d also bet most would fail to tell the difference.

Anyway, there’s my hot take. 🔥

David Bushell

Yeah so um… have you noticed that all modern software is teetering on the enshitty cliff? Everything in my dock is an Electron-ified enshittybomb one update from disaster. There used to be alternatives. Now those suck too.

Emphasis is mine. In David’s case he’s just fed up with crummy apps. Electron or not. Crummy apps are harshing his mellow.

Visual Studio Code is an app that seems to be beloved by the development community. I’d say it’s because most poor developers haven’t used anything better. In a past life I lived in Microsoft’s Visual Studio and loved the experience. Now, I’m afraid, it’s probably a bloated mess, but that’s just a guess based on the very little time I’ve spent with it. Xcode is a perfectly good IDE in my opinion. It’s fast and has the features I need to do my job. I’m sure I’ve complained along the way but overall it’s been a productive experience for me.

I’ve switched to Nova for my React Native work at work. It’s an example I can hold up as an excellent Mac app. It is fully native and is a Mac-assed-Mac-app. It’s the little things that I love. Something as small as Cmd+Shift+o displaying the Quick Open dialog brings me joy. Visual Studio Code’s equivalent is a different set of keys I can’t remember off the top of my head.

There’s part two of my hot take on Electron. 🤣

Matt Birchler

For the last couple of years, I have made the point that pretty much every meaningful update to iPadOS feels like a collection of features designed to make it behave more like a Mac.

Perhaps it’s time to let the iPad be its own thing? It’s proven itself useful to a certain set of folks for writing and I suspect many others like it for consuming books and movies. That’s a fine use for it.

Burno Ferreira • Tom’s Hardware

In yet another case of the AI-driven blues, 404 Media reports that Henrico County, VA, Manager John Vithoulkas sent an email to all county employees — including those in schools and social services — asking them to conserve energy by turning off unused lights and computers, using blinds to lessen heat buildup, and curbing or stopping the usage of heavy loads like space heaters.

That plea comes as the state’s main power provider repeatedly hikes rates, and those repeated increases are linked to the rapidly increasing demands of data center buildouts. According to the report, Henrico County already has 37 data centers within its borders, and more are coming to the area.

Virginia is the home to many data centers. By that I mean more than anywhere else in the country and there are more coming, but not without pushback.

Folks are sick of these things and for some reason companies are being horrible citizens as they build them. What I mean by that is they’re not considering the human and environmental costs of their diesel powered, water chugging, AI data centers. It doesn’t help that our current administration doesn’t care about people of the environment, but I digress.

In the end new data centers need tighter restrictions and strong governance to not pollute our water and destroy natural resources and put people’s health at great risk. They need to solve the water problem in a non-toxic way and bring their own environmentally friendly power to the game.

I can hear it now “But, but, those things would be costly and take more time to build!” Yea, so, what’s your point? Suck it up buttercup and do the right thing for humanity and not shareholder value. I’m sick of the phrase shareholder value.

Maggie Boccella • Fangoria

The full moon is here, and it’s bringing a Werwulf with it. Focus Features has released the first trailer for Robert Eggers’ highly anticipated creature feature, putting his signature grim spin on the classic monster movie as he travels back in time for his latest film. 

I’ve watched the trailer and I’m all in. I’m not sure if this is a film I want to see in theaters or wait for it to hit streaming. Either way, I’m seeing it.

Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

The device, known as the Clicks Communicator, was first introduced at January’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas to cater to people who do a lot of work on their phones, like texting and emailing. It’s particularly meant to appeal to those who miss the BlackBerry’s physical keyboard, which some argue is better for these types of tasks.

My wife had a Blackberry at one time and she loved her little keyboard. I sent her a link to the Clicks and she likes it. The big question is this, would she like it after being an iPhone user for years and years now? I don’t think so. I think her love of the keyboard is nostalgic and she’d become sick of it after a short period of time and want her iPhone back.

Scott Neuman • NPR

Scientists, educators, farmers and the broader public now have a new website for climate information in the United States. The site, Climate.us, launched this week and fills a void left when a government-run climate information website was shut down last year by the Trump administration.

This is very cool! If the government is going to screw up and not do its job it’s nice to see a private entity step up and fill the gap.

Now, the conservatives that loved these cuts will say “See, small government works. Private entities filled the void!”

Don’t fall for it. There are certain things the government should do for the people and this is one of many I hope we get back when a reasonable administration returns to power.

Liv McMahon • BBC

Ford says it has hired back some human engineers after AI failed to match their skills and experience.

In a bid to reap the benefits of the tech, which developers claim can cut costs and boost productivity, the US carmaker adopted it across some parts of its operations including for quality checks.

But, according to Bloomberg, its executives said the firm has rehired more than 300 “veteran” quality inspectors in recent years to make up for the pitfalls of automated systems.

This is really nice to see. I don’t think it’s a failing of LLMs, rather a failing of management at Ford believing they could replace humans with computers. We’re not there, yet. We’re at step one of many of LLMs being able to do this stuff without a human counterpart.

What I’ve come to learn is an LLM isn’t a replacement for a human. It’s just another tool in the toolbelt. I’ve had great success using Claude as a coding companion. I point it at a well defined ticket that includes behaviors, expected acceptance criteria, documentation (often), and a visual design to guide it. In response it does a darned good job of building out the feature based on other inputs. Inputs like configuration files, existing code structure, code standards, and the general coding style of the developers involved in the project. Another thing I believe is critical to its success: pairing the LLM with an experienced human developer and keeping tasks small. Building in bite sized chunks, I believe, is a super power and super charges the LLM (along with all those skills and configuration files we’ve added.)

Thorin Klosowski • EFF

People talk about RSS like it’s a power user’s secret trick to making the internet more usable, but the real secret is that it’s not that hard to set up and use. Here’s what you need to do:

I like to tell folks RSS is just another way to view a website. It’s the stripped down form of HTML. The meat of the subject. It can contain HTML, images, and even video. It’s just an easier way to fetch a bunch of articles for reading and, if you’re lucky, a lot of the bigger news sites provide separate feeds for different types of news.

I love RSS and what its done for the web. It’s why I created Stream.

Erik Eckstein • Swift.org

Dear compiler developers, I’m happy to announce that from now on “mandatory” parts of the compiler can be implemented in Swift (on the main branch).

This is really cool news. I have two questions: 1) When will the etire compiler be written in Swift? 2) Will they try using an LLM to port all of the C++ code to Swift?

I like to see an experimental port using an LLM.

Jon Udell

Three decades on, software developers still live in the terminal, now more than ever as coding agents dethrone the integrated environments that held sway for so long.

With the advent of the GUI it made it easier to have multiple terminal windows open at once. On a typical day I have at least three open; one for git, one for yarn, and one for Claude. I’ll open others if I need them. The three I mention above are all in a single tabbed window in the order listed.

When working on Stream I have a separate terminal window open for doing stuff there.

Eshu Marneedi

I can’t tell if Zuckerberg is dimwitted or just evil. The problem during the first era of the AI boom (circa 2023) was indeed that Meta was too slow to identify the metaverse flub. But that was no longer Meta’s problem entering the agentic coding era: The problem, rather, was that Meta had no coherent strategy.

Meta/Facebook are terrible companies, but boy are they great for shareholder value.

Random shot of my desk. It’s always a complete mess.

In the shot we have a 3D printed Apple in six colors, an AirTag engraved R💀B, a Diet Pepsi, my Visio 1.0 tombstone, a mouse cable, a little red fridge, an empty protein shake box, and some candles in the background. 🤣

Standing guard.

Random, but I haven’t posted a picture of my surgically replaced left knee in a long time. It works so well now and the scar is barely visible. For me it was an excellent decision.

Now I’m waiting for the right one to completely fall apart. 🤣

Lookie what I just got!

Time for code and coffee!

Let’s go!

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

After Apple announced their price increases for so many of their products I managed to find a new MacBook Air on Amazon at the old price so I went ahead and purchased it.

I got a 15in, M5, 24GB RAM, and a 1TB SSD in Sky Blue. I think it’ll be great for my Sunday morning Coffee and Code adventures.

OM

Om Malik passed away on June 24, 2026, at Stanford Hospital after a long health journey with his heart. He was surrounded by family and friends.

I didn’t know Om but by all accounts he was a very kind man. My heart goes out to his family.❤️

R.I.P. Om 🪦

Get Maheux • The Iconfactory

This month marks the Iconfactory’s 30th year pushing pixels and to celebrate we’ve partnered up with our friends at Cotton Bureau to offer a special t-shirt for the occasion. This high-quality, on-demand shirt sports the 30th anniversary logo on the front breast and a large, retro pixel-clicked design on the back.

My friends at The Iconfactory are celebrating 30 years of great design, illustration, and software development with a nifty new t-shirt! My order shipped yesterday and I expect it to arrive soon.

This new design will join my W-W-Dog-Cow, Ollie, and Iconfactory shirts.

Paul Kafasis • Rogue Amoeba

With last year’s release of MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple made a mess of app icons. In the first betas of MacOS 27 (Golden Gate), however, there are signs of a turnaround. We’re urging Apple to continue making improvements, by restoring the ability for MacOS app icons to have distinct shapes.

Follow the link if only to scroll down and look at the beautiful selection of icons Paul chose for the article. All of them are masterworks.

Deborah Brennan • Cal Matters

A million-square-foot data center became a lighting rod in this rural county. Local leaders filed lawsuits, proposed laws and organized a ballot measure to challenge it.

I’m surprised when I read about the absolute greed of these companies. California has a water problem. It has for decades and decades and companies want to build water guzzling data centers all over the state.

I have a feeling most of the country doesn’t realize how bad things really are in California. Sure, they had a wet winter but it doesn’t even begin to put a dent in the drought they’re still experiencing.

It’s fire season, yeah, there’s a season for fires in California. So far there hasn’t been a big event this year. Here’s hoping they don’t have one.

Anywho, data centers are going to continue to be a problem in the country unless and until companies start thinking about more than shareholder value and think of the imact to people and the environment. You can cover the planet in data centers but if there’s no water to grow crops it doesn’t do us much good.

I suppose the computers can continue operating as long as we build them bots to service thier needs and they find a way to solve the water problem. Then they won’t need us. 🤔

David Sparks • Mac Sparky

The team behind Bear just released the beta of Lettera, a native Markdown editor for the Mac. It grew out of Panda, the editor they built for Bear 2, and it’s now evolved into a standalone app.

This app looks really nice and I’m looking forward to giving it a whirl. I don’t know what I’ll use it for since I use Tot for composing my blog posts, but it looks really nice nonetheless.🐻

Matthew Guay

Lotus Notes, in 1989, had encryption two years before Pretty Good Privacy brought it to normal email, had rich text formatting and attachments before MIME, had read receipts, notifications, a directory of users, and wiki-style cross-message links. It, rightly, felt like the future.

I remember when Notes was a big deal but I never understood the appeal. It makes me wonder if it could have been turned into a web server as well?

It’s also very sad when I think about all the companies that have disappeared from that era; Lotus, WordPerfect, WordStar, Borland, Ashton-Tate, Micrografx, Aldus, Nantucket, Fox Software, Peachtree, and even my beloved Visio. I know there are many, many, others.

Jennifer Ouellette • Ars Technica

Widow’s Bay, the delightfully eccentric new comedic horror series from Apple TV, is easily one of the best new series of the year. There’s a reason everyone from Guillero del Toro and Ben Stiller to Damon Lindelolf (Lost) is raving about the show. It’s an eminently binge-able, addictive series that pays tribute to all the classic horror tropes while reinventing them in surprising ways.

There are so many great television shows to choose from these days it’s extremely difficult for me to start a new one. But, this one does look compelling.

Osmond Chia • BBC

US artificial intelligence (AI) giant Anthropic has accused Chinese e-commerce and technology firm Alibaba of “brazenly” and “illicitly” extracting its Claude AI model’s capabilities.

So, let’s get this straight. You (Anthropic) pulled all you could from websites to train your LLM but you throw a fit when someone else does it to you?

Got it. Fine for Me but not Thee.

I still believe all this LLM stuff should be operated by Universities in conjunction with the federal government. No one company should benefit from it. Why? For one they built it on the backs of all of our hard work. Secondly we don’t need a bunch of hojillionaires running around controlling the LLMs used all over the US and the world.

Look, I don’t know how to make that happen, but it seems a logical choice in hindsight.

Of note: There’s no way I’d trust the management of this technology in the hands of the current, incompetent, administration.

Mark Gurman • Bloomberg

The No. 1 priority for new Apple CEO John Ternus should be revamping the company’s design team and putting the focus back on the look and feel of products.

I think this is already happening. I can’t see them turning on a dime and declaring the whole Liquid Glass thing a complete failure and ditching it but I can see it evolve into something nice before they do a completely new design and throw everything into chaos again.🤣

We can either live with it or move on to another operating system. I can’t see doing that.

Julian Chokkattu • Wired

The Commodore Callback 8020 is not the first Commodore-branded phone (that would be the Pet from 2015), but it’s the first to feel unique and interesting. It might look like a dumb Nokia phone from yesteryear, but this flippy gadget has access to modern-day Android apps because it runs the Linux-based Sailfish OS from the Finnish company Jolla. The Callback’s front screen shows the date, time and battery status, but no notifications. Flip it open, and you’re greeted with a custom interface that can run apps like Uber, WhatsApp and Spotify.

This is an interesting take on the flip phone. It’s very retro in its styling but it does have an operating system that can run Android apps. It’s meant to be less distracting. I can’t blame folks for wanting that but how many are gonna spend $500 plus on a flip phone just so they can’t install email or social media apps?

Jowi Morales • Tom’s Hardware

AI GPU maker Nvidia just announced a “hotter than a hot tub” liquid cooling system that it says will cut water and electricity use. According to the company, this new solution will run coolant — composed of 75% water and 25% propylene glycol — at 113 degrees F (45 deg C).

The use of propylene glycol seems a logical choice in a closed system but it only accounts for 25% of the overall coolant and, unfortunately, it’s highly toxic.

At least someone is trying something I guess.

Kason Clark • The Sun Gazette

Even though he operates out of the rural community of Tulare, Brandon Contreras’ custom-designed shoes have reached across the state and beyond. 

This gentleman’s shoes look extremely cool and I’m so happy a kid from the area I grew up found a way to do something he loves and do well for himself.

Olly Headey via Mastodon

The Mac I priced up last week for £3,999 now costs £5,199. The one I priced at £6,978 is now £9,699. Didn’t get round to pulling the trigger, fool. 💀

Olly had a post on his blog a week or so back asking if he should buy a new computer. I think the answer should’ve been yes, yes you should’ve upgraded. Sorry Olly.

Our Magnolia is very happy. My Mom had a Magnolia and when I see one I think of her.

It’s beautiful outside today. The current temperature is 86F(30C) but it doesn’t feel that hot in the shade with a slight breeze.

I’m on our back deck enjoying a beer and our beautiful blue sky.

Using the Beta

I’ve been using Stream for Mac in its default mode for quite a while now and I really love it. I can see things I need to tweak but the overall shape and stability of the app put a smile on my face. It’s simple, as intended. Perhaps too simple for some but I built Stream to scratch my own itch and I hope others will enjoy it as well.

The default mode is, like the iPhone and iPad versions, a timeline like Mastodon or Bluesky. There are no unread dots in the timeline so you don’t feel compelled to read everything. It’s meant to be a casual timeline. If you don’t feel interested in a certain headline, just keep scrolling.

If you’d like to remove a feed just display the blog list by doing Cmd+Ctrl+s to show the list, remove the feed, and do Cmd+Ctrl+s to hide the blog list. You can also show and hide the blog list by selecting View > Show Blog List or View > Hide Blog List. Easy.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it but you can navigate up and down the feed items list by using the j and k keys, yes vi inspired, and you can press the space bar to do a page down in the article you’re viewing, doing a shift+space will go backwards. I still need to add code to detect when you’ve reached the top or bottom of a page so I know to jump to the next feed item for you automatically.

For a while I was pretty happy with the overall UI look and feel. That feeling has now disappeared and I think it looks kind of meh. I’m gonna work on that. It needs to be better.

Sync

Folks are going to hate, hate, hate, the lack of syncing between your devices. It just doesn’t exist yet. When I originally started Stream I wasn’t happy with the performance of CloudKit. I don’t know if it’s any better today but I have to support it. It’s on the list of things to do once I complete the initial Mac release. I kid of have to gut my data persistence layer and make it work with CloudKit, which I haven’t invested any time in, yet.

I’m ready to get the ★☆☆☆☆ reviews with the “This app sucks, it doesn’t even sync your data!” That’s fine.

There are great alternatives

There are many great choices out there for feed readers. Apps like Unread, NetNewsWire, Tapestry, and Reeder are great choices for more advanced feed readers. I will certainly support some things they support and hope to give you something different. We’ll see. 😄

Thank you

As always I’d like to express my gratitude for everyone who’s ever downloaded the iOS version of Stream for their phone or iPad. And I can’t thank everyone who’s supported me by giving feedback or helping me with a code problem. You’re the best. Thank you. ❤️

I haven’t had a beer in quite a while. Flying Dog’s Double Dog really hits the spot. Big flavor.

Cheers! 🍻

I was able to work on Stream for Mac Friday and I finally fixed up some UI stuff I’ve been meaning to get to for a very long time.

I’d asked a friend from some honest to goodness, unvarnished, feedback and part of what he recommended, I took care of Friday.

When you Refresh your feeds either directly — Cmd+r or clicking the Refresh button or selecting File > Refresh — or indirectly at startup, there was no indication of what was happening. Now there is.

Up in the title where it says Stream I’ve added a subtitle that reads “Updating x/x” or “Importing x/x” depending on what action you’re taking.

• For Refresh it displays “Updating x/x”
• For Import OPML it displays “Importing x/x”

Where x/x would be something like 10/100 if you have 100 items being refreshed or imported.

When importing OPML the UI is “kicked” every 10th feed so the UI refreshes its lists. My method of refreshing has always been very lazy and brute force. It’s something I intend to cleanup at some point, maybe not by the time it ships, but I really need to get this thing out the door.

Thanks for the feedback, Josh. It’s always appreciated.

Oh, one other thing I did was register default settings so the app behaves properly the first time you launch it.

By default the Blog List will be hidden and Read/Unread Dots will be displayed.

Once again, thank you, Josh. 🙏🏼

Here’s a screenshot of what the app looks like as of Friday afternoon. If you look closely at the titlebar you’ll see that it’s actively importing OPML.

I’d really like to create a web service that implements Micropub as a front end to many different blogging systems.

With that you could connect it to your WordPress, Micro.blog, Tumblr, or your favorite blogging platform with an API and use a single front end client or web site to publish to it.

Yes, it would require writing multiple different connectors to those other systems and require overcoming technical limitations of some of them, but overall, it could be something pretty special.

Another thing I’ve considered is supporting a subset of the WordPress REST API in a similar manner. It would be the central point for publishing to many different backends.

Mainly what I want from an API is authentication, create, update and delete of posts. Categories would be on my list as well, oh, and you’d write is pure Markdown as the format.

That’s the 30,000 foot view and I’m certain there would be lots and lots of details to work through but it could be amazing!

I know. So random. It’s the kind of stuff I think about while mowing the lawn.

Can you use ActivityPub to build a blogging system backend like I’m describing?

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I had the first two days of the week off and didn’t realize until we got back from our camping trip that we had Friday off for Juneteenth, so I had a two day work week mainly filled with getting caught up. Also, I desperately need a vacation to recover from my vacation. As recorded here we spent June 1st through 7th with our grandkids at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, camping at the State Beach. It is a lot of fun to hang out with them and see the ocean but it’s also exhausting. 🤣

We’re all happy to be home. Getting a proper shower and getting to sleep in my own bed was amazing. I’m still tired. 😃

I was able to spend some time on Stream yesterday and sorted out some UI stuff that was bugging me and sorely missing. When the app opens and refreshes feeds or the user presses Cmd+R or presses the Refresh button it now displays a progress indicator. The same method is used for importing OPML files. I hope it looks and feels OK to folks? I still need to post my Work Note.

Get Maheux • Iconfactory

Thirty years ago this month, three friends working at a small multimedia company in Greensboro, NC, decided to post a few fun sets of Mac desktop icons on an AOL webpage. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into back then, but here we are, incredibly, thirty years later.

I’m so happy for my friends at The Iconfactory. Ged and the gang are such amazing people, designers, and developers.

For a little while now I’ve gotten the feeling they’re struggling a bit, which is unfathomable to me. They’re so good at what they do! Their design work, iOS, and Mac app development are world class, who wouldn’t want Craig Hockenberry or Sean Heber on their team, not to mention Ged Maheux and Anthony Piraino’s design and illustration mastery and that’s not every employee at the company. I’m sure the other folks involved are just as incredible.

I’m surprised they haven’t been acquihired. Seriously great people and a great, small, company.

Apple or another BigCo should buy them for lots of money, they’ve earned a big pay day with everything they’ve done for the Apple Community. Yes, I’m a fanboi. ❤️

Brent Simmons

My hope for retirement was to get a lot of work done on NetNewsWire.

A year ago it was in sore need of modernization, tech debt pay-off, and bug fixes. People were asking for features, but the foundation needed a ton of work before I could get on to adding new rooms.

Brent has been working very dilligentally on NetNewsWire and the list of changes he outlines shows in the product. An alltime great application from a Mac Development hero.

Thanks for everything you’ve done over the years, Brent. It’s nice to see you’re keeping busy and staying out of trouble. 😃

Olly

I’ve been updating the Pagecord home page today with a new headline, refreshed hero text, and a new section called The Pagecord Principles.

The idea is to encapsulate why Pagecord exists and what it stands for. I’m hoping this resonates with bloggers visiting for the first time, encouraging them to sign up to Pagecord rather than (or as well as) one of the many, many alternatives.

I’ve been following Pagecord’s progress for a little while now and just started following Olly on Mastodon and subscribed to his blog.

Pagecord is a very simplified blogging platform, as they should be. The 800lb. gorilla in the space — WordPress — has grown into a full featured Enterprise CMS capable of running the worlds largest web sites and your tiny blog, but something like Pagecord is a great choice instead of using WordPress for your personal blog because it’s tiny, has a great UI and editor, and comes at a really great price of only $39/year!

I signed up to support their efforts and I’m thinking about moving my Hayseed Blog over to Pagecord.

Thanks for the great software, Olly!

Robert B Shpiner • The Guardian

I’m a critical care doctor. I’ve never seen the US harm its children this deliberately

Ah, yes, the incompetence of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. continues to destroy our country’s health and human services infrastructure and put us at great risk.

I don’t know if it was the brain worms or something else that twisted this mans brain but he doesn’t belong in a leadership position in our country.

I hope beyond hope we have future elections and can get competent people back in office to start turning the mess our country is in around. 🤞🏼

Hartley Charlton • Mac Rumors

Apple this week confirmed that Notion is migrating its user interface to SwiftUI, citing the app’s desire for greater performance and UI consistency than its existing web-based stack can deliver.

This is both interesting and welcome. It’s also going to be very expensive but it’s nice to see such a highly regarded company and software move toward a native solution when so many are moving to Electron and React Native to deliver their products across platforms.

That brings up some questions: Is the Mac their primary desktop platform? Do they have a big Windows user base? Will the core Swift code be shared between Mac and Windows or will they be using shared C, C++, or Rust as the core? Are they using an LLM to do the initial port to Swift and SwiftUI using their TypeScript/JavaScript code as a map?

I’ll be watching their progress. This kind of stuff really interests me.

Martina Igini • Earth org

If treated as a country, data centers could rank sixth globally for electricity consumption by 2030. They would also require an amount of water equivalent to the annual needs of 1.3 billion people.

Data centers are going to be a huge controversy for years to come. I wish I had the intelligence to help solve these problems because I really have no clue how we fix this. Someone has to have the knowledge to do it? Right? 😳

Mark Tyson • Toms Hardware

A “full-feature-parity version of Notepad” has been written in x86 assembly and it weighs in at just 2,749 bytes. Windows legend Dave W. Plummer is (inevitably) the coder behind this efficiency tour de force, and he’s made RetroPad available (code and exe) on his GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license.

Ahhh, old greybeards know what they’re doing when it comes to understanding how the machine really works. At a time when we see developers moving higher and higher up the stack to solutions that abstract away so much of the computer it’s nice to see someone get down in the muck and mire of the chip and build something.

As a Swift developer I’m ready to see Swift as a language slow its pace of new feature adoption. I’d like to see it stable for a long time. It’s been a very useful language since the start but it’s become such a dumping ground over the last few years I can’t keep up with it. I’d imagine that’s just a me problem, but it’s still something I’d like to see.

Mr. Plummer was able to take something that’s been stable for 30+ years and build a highly useful, fast, small app with “old” tooling. I’m looking forward to his video on the matter and I hope he dives into his entire working environment as well as code details.

Daniel Jalkut

Forever the optimist, I think that the next several years will be an era in which opinionated, competent developers are able to run circles around projects that are overly-invested in AI. Dip into AI, maybe even let it be your first mate, but never let it be the captain.

I’ve always liked Daniel Jalkut. I’ve never had the honor of meeting the man personally but I listened to him and Manton Reece on CoreInt for years (long live CoreInt!) He is a true punkass and optimist and seems like a genuinely kind and thoughtful person. He’s also a hell of a software engineer, especially when it comes to debugging Mac software.

Hey, fellas, if either of you happens to read this, please, do an episode of CoreInt so we can get caught up! 🙏🏼

MacPsych

Dear Apple: please move on from your focus on ‘style’ and return to substance. Your operating systems are verging on unusable and totally ignore the accessibility needs of millions.

Also: please ensure your new CEO doesn’t publicly reward a fascist dictator with gaudy awards. 

I think Mr. MacPsych should be pretty happy with this years WWDC. It really sounds like they’ve worked on hardening the operating system and shoring up Apple Intelligence instead of adding a bunch of new features to the OS’es. That’s great news for users and developers alike!

As for the CEO and his kissing the ass of a fascist dictator. That job seems like it’ll become the job of the Chairman of the Board instead of the CEO’s job moving forward. Yes, still Tim Cook doing the ass kissing, but I hope it frees up incoming CEO John Ternus to get Apple back to what it does best; amazing hardware and software that delights.

Emanuel Maibert • 404 Media

A software update to some Amazon delivery vehicles is automatically turning off the air conditioning after a few seconds if the driver is not in their seat, according to multiple Amazon delivery drivers who are complaining about the update online. 

Talk about not taking your target audiences day-to-day use of something into account! Amazon workers are notoriously overworked and monitored for efficiency. It’s a bit extreme and this unfortunate bug certainly doesn’t help driver morale.

TC Sottek • The Verge

Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO will probably make him the richest person to ever walk the planet. And while his mountain of horrible personal conduct could fill multiple books, one fact in particular stands out: A year ago, Musk’s actions directly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. He did it knowingly. And, worse — gleefully.

I’ll keep saying it: Space Karen is a horrible human being and deserves a trip to Mars, him personally, alone. 🤬

Nikita Prokopov

Why care about every frame? It builds trust. Users can’t see the code, so UI is the only way for them to judge the quality of the app. If UI looks good, that means developers had time to polish it, which means that they probably spent a comparable amount of time to iron out the code. It’s a heuristic, but a reasonable one.

Polishing code is fun, especially when, as the developer, you see a performance or stability improvement. When you’re able to polish up the UI of your application and someone notices it, it’s an even bigger joy than noticing the internal improvements you’ve made, unless, of course, someone using your app notices performance or stability improvements. 😄

Ah, heck, polishing is rewarding no matter what type you’re able to do but polishing the UI is no doubt the most visible type.

Anthropic

The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees. The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance. Access to all other Anthropic models will not be affected.

I’ve been thinking about LLMs a lot lately. Mostly about where they belong in society. The more I watch this race to deliver AGI the more I’m starting to believe this technology shouldn’t be used to make a small group of people billionaires or trillionaries. I think the original goal of Open AI was right. It should be open to everyone. For the good of mankind.

Yep, I said it, “for the good of mankind.” Loaded words, I know, but I don’t know how else to say it. All of these AI researchers and developers should work for universities who are government funded all working to deliver their unified work for all to use. It should be socially responsible software with strict regulation behind it. Do no harm.

LLMs should be a social benefit for all Americans. Run by its own agency within the United States Government in partnership with the best universities. Pay the researchers and developers well and give them the best tools and working conditions necessary to advance LLMs while making sure we don’t drive humanity to extinction.

Social issues related to LLMs also need dealing with. If humans are going to be put out of good paying jobs we, as a society, need to make sure people can survive without jobs. Of course folks will scream socialism! If LLMs put us out of work eventually how do we survive if not by a basic income provided by our government? Yes, it’s something I’m curious about. Something we may need in the future — hell, something we need now?

Anyway, that’s a deep discussion for someone like me with a shallow mind. I’d love to hear how folks would solve problems like this.

Devin Meenan • SlashFilm

Guillermo del Toro’s wild, cinematic imagination has led to him being attached to many unrealized projects over the years. It’s a miracle on par with creating life that he finally got to make his dream “Frankenstein” movie. Of all the Del Toro projects that never happened, though — aside from maybe his canceled H.P. Lovecraft adaptation – the one unfulfilled del Toro movie that’s left the biggest hole in fans' hearts is “Hellboy III.”

I love the Guillermo del Toro Hellboy movies and I wish Ron Perlman had a chance to make that final installment but I guess it’s not to be. 😔

Jamie Marsland • Pootle Press

Today, the UK government announced plans to ban social media for under-16s. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the restrictions are needed to protect children’s wellbeing and mental health. Slightly to my own surprise, I think they are right.

I love that we have free speech in America (well, the kind we had before Marmalade Messiah took office.) Yes, I’m well aware that free speech, part of our First Amendment rights, only apply to the suppression of speech by the Government. Which is where this stuff gets sticky, and yes, I know it’s the UK government in this case. 😁

Anywho, since BigCo’s won’t govern their own platforms to protect children someone has to. We have enough studies now to know it’s not good for kids mental health and definitely doesn’t help them learn. So, I guess, it’s time for governments to step in and propose regulations to stop social networks from harming children. Now, how do we do that without compromising privacy? There’s the rub.

Dominic Preston • The Verge

Fox has announced that it’s acquiring Roku outright, in a deal that values the streaming company at $22 billion.

Roku is built into our TCL TVs. We use them and the only issue I have with them is not really knowing what they’re collecting from us. 🤔 You can bet Fox is going to collect every little tidbit they can and more.

I’m hoping I can convince my wife it’s time to upgrade to Apple TV and disconnect the TCL from the network. 😁 It’s a longshot, but I’m gonna try. Wish me luck! ☘️

Jeremy Keith

But credit where credit is due. The upcoming version 27 of Safari is looking very good.

That’s not because it’s at the cutting edge of the latest web standards. Quite the opposite. Most of the changes listed for this release are bug fixes. That’s what I want to acknowledge and applaud.

It seems the hardening that’s happening with all Apple 27 OS’es also applies to apps. I use Safari everyday as my main daily driver — I’ve also been using Orion — and every little fix they make to Safari is perfectly fine with me. Do I want them to support all web standards? Yes, I do, but I also want them to continue to make a solid, easy to use, and privacy preserving browser.

Yes, I want it all! 😆

Chris Koseluk • Hollywood Reporter

Gene Shalit, the fun-loving film critic on the Today show known for his oversized mustache, out-of-control mop of black hair and lively use of puns in his movie reviews, died Friday. He was 100.

Godspeed Mr. Shalit. I always loved watching your reviews delivered with a big smile and gigantor mustache. RIP. 🪦

This weekend NASCAR is racing at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego on the Coronado Street Course. The track is 3.4 miles long and goes over various different track materials like concrete, old concrete, black top, and old black top not to mention lots and lots of bumps! It also includes a transition into a downhill just before a left turn. All that said just to say it’s kind of cool seeing these cars getting a little air when they hit that downhill transition. 😄 Should make for some very interesting racing. Based on the truck race yesterday I suspect there will be lots and lots of damaged and crashed race cars before the day is over.

Checks out

I’d really hoped I’d have shipped Stream for Mac by now. I’m just having so much trouble polishing off the final bits. It doesn’t feel quite right yet.

This is the point in Stream for iOS where I punted and made some views as Web Views just to get it out the door.

I need to finish off OPML Import and Export so they show a progress indicator and some bugs and I’m calling it good enough. I’ll ship it as version 1.7 along with an updated iOS version 1.7 and hope to keep them in sync from then on. All new UI features across Mac and iOS will be SwiftUI moving forward.

I want to add syncing for the iOS and Mac versions but that will come after shipping the Mac version because I have to replace FMDB with CloudKit. Which will be a pain in the keister.

So many features to do; YouTube, Podcasts, Mastodon, Reddit, etc… a metric crap ton of work. 🤣

Doing yard work was not exactly how I wanted to spend my final day of vacation, but here we are, doing yard work.

I want to retire so bad. A week and a couple days off did nothing for my burnout except make me want more time off. 😃

I’m buying a Power Ball ticket next time I’m at the store. 🤣

Kim’s hydrangea is pretty happy.

No Saturday Morning Coffee today. We’re still at the beach!

Here’s a picture of my Perfect Coffee.

Day four at the beach is in the books. The kids are tired, Kim and I are tired, everybody’s tired.

We’re having lunch at the trailer then I bet everyone takes a nap. 🤣

No beach tomorrow. Tomorrow we go inland a bit to a boardwalk of sorts and have a chill day. Some food, ice cream, whatever. Then we’ll pack up a bit and have a quiet evening.

Sunday we travel home. 🏡

Our grandson has started building his kingdom.