Good morning!
Welp, let’s see what kind of links I set aside this week. Enjoy! ☕️
People in Utah who visit Pornhub will now be greeted by adult performer Cherie DeVille asking them to tell their representatives to change their age verification law.
I’ll bet VPN usage just went through the roof. Hopefully all VPN service providers offered a discount to sign up this week. If they didn’t use the discount code “Utah” they blew it. 😆
By Monday, CNN anchor Jake Tapper would ask his guests to respond to a statement made by Sen. Brian Schatz, the first — but not only — US senator on Bluesky. “Senator Brian Schatz, just, uh, skeeted, on Bluesky,” said Tapper live on air before reading the skeet out loud.
So I mused yesterday on Mastodon that I thought the word skeet didn’t make sense but bravo to the person or persons who made it stick.
Well, someone clued me in on what skeet means. Darned kids and their made up words. 😳
I had recalled reading in the past that the Mac Pro CPU might also be upgradeable, but I had never looked into it before.
This is a fun read! There was a time when I’d repair and upgrade my own PC’s and I really enjoyed it. Apple has never been great at doing this but at least created a few Macs that could be opened and repaired or extended with other hardware. Give Paul’s piece a read it’s a nice little adventure and he’s improved an old Mac with a new CPU.
Like I said above Apple is horrible about creating a nice computer you can open and repair but it’s rare. Then once they do manage to make one they don’t make a way for you to really upgrade it. It’s a real shame folks dropped large sums of money on the latest Mac Pro only to have M1 and M2 based machines outstrip it.
Also, can someone take a Trash Can Mac and fill it with M2 Mac Mini guts? It might pose some challenges but I’d love to see one. The Trash Can is a beautiful artifact at this point and it would be nice to see it revived.
Top Hollywood writers took to social media to express defiant support for their first union walkout in 15 years and showed their feelings about studios being unwilling to meet their contract demands.
Enjoy your scripted shows while you can. I’ve heard some shows have already shut down production.
Good luck to the Writers Guild of America. I hope you’re able to negotiate favorable terms. 🤞🏼
Adobe is warning some owners of its Creative Cloud software applications that they’re no longer allowed to use older versions of the software.
When you purchase software you don’t really own it, you’ve purchased a license to use it. That license can be revoked at any time but I’ve never experienced it.
For someone like me a really old version of Photoshop — pre Creative Cloud — would probably work just fine in a VM but folks who run small shops and don’t want to upgrade for their own reasons shouldn’t be punished. Just my horrible two cents on the matter.
Zephyr, the only trans member of the Montana legislature, was barred from the House floor and gallery last week after facing backlash from Republicans during the debate over a bill that prohibits gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.
I really hope Zephyr is allowed back on the floor and is allowed to represent her constituents properly.
Good luck Zephyr! 🍀
Under normal circumstances, I would be forbidden from discussing this. In fact, I am bound by NDA not to disclose many of the specific details of my experience at Rune Labs, but thanks to Washington’s Silenced No More Act (RCW 49.44.211), my ability to speak about discrimination, harassment, or retaliation that I have witnessed in the workplace is legally protected.
I had the pleasure of working with Elizabeth — we called her Val — at WillowTree and she’s very good at her job and is a fine, fine, person. Hire her.
Val, if for some reason you stumble across this come back to WillowTree! 🙏🏼
Anders Hejlsberg is special - he is someone we idolized since we were teenagers, heard whispers and stories about his prowess and feats in our formative years at Microsoft.
The man created four extremely popular programming languages; Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C#, and TypeScript. That’s a crazy wonderful resume!
To create a single language used my millions and millions of developer would be a once in a lifetime achievement but four time? Simply incredible.
Hey, if you have to work in JavaScript(sorry!) at least Microsoft was able to tame some of the ugliness of JavaScript and make it more productive.
Electrify America CEO Rob Barrosa’s Coast-to-Coast Road Trip
The above link will take you to YouTube for the video. It’s not that long and is a real joy to watch, at least for me it was. I will point out WillowTree works with Electrify America but I’d still think this was cool even without that relationship. It’s nice to see more and more electric charging stations crop up across America.
The route he chose to take was an interesting one. It takes home through Chicago on a more northerly path. Interstate 40 is a pretty straight shot across the country I’ve driven many times.
It makes me wonder if he took this route because I-40 doesn’t have enough Electrify America charging stations to get you across America?
One of these days we have to try the route he took. Perhaps spend some time in Chicago?
The initial version of our service consisted of distributed components that were orchestrated by AWS Step Functions. The two most expensive operations in terms of cost were the orchestration workflow and when data passed between distributed components. To address this, we moved all components into a single process to keep the data transfer within the process memory, which also simplified the orchestration logic.
I love reading about teams improving performance of their software and this is a particularly interesting read because they also lower the cost of their service by 90%! That’s a crazy good improvement.
Now if they could stabilize the Amazon app on Roku that would be amazing. 😃
The 2024 Trax is Chevrolet’s bid for the lower end of the new car market in the U.S. In fact, the Trax is now going to be the cheapest car Chevy sells in America, which brings the General hope that the new and improved version of its entry-level crossover can turn a first-time Chevy buyer into a lifelong customer.
Our daughter has a Trax and it’s a great little car I love to drive when I get the chance. It’s small and really zippy! It’s just fun to drive.
I hope this 3-cylinder model is a great success so Chevrolet keeps making it.
Hey, Chevy, while you’re at it how ‘bout you make the Trax into a World Rally Championship car? Seems like it would be a great fit!
After using System76’s Pangolin as my primary work laptop for nearly six weeks, I can tell you this: If you need a 15-inch Linux-focused laptop, this is the one to get.
If I were to invest in a PC I believe I’d go for a System76 box. It seems they’d make for a great little programming box. Plenty of horsepower to handle C++ and C# dev tools and compiling.
Question: Why do all PC trackpads suck? I mean like really suck. Everyone I’ve ever used has been a real pain. The Mac, no doubt, has the best trackpad in the business.
After Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a ban on abortion after 6 weeks, Taliban officials in Afghanistan have welcomed the move and praised the regressive thinking behind it.
I really hope this is true because we are seeing states in our Union beginning to turn into themselves into women and LGBTQ+ hating theocracies.
Seems fit the Taliban would praise them and DeSantis is a real piece of work worthy of export to Afghanistan. Maybe we can exchange him for some wonderful women looking to get a great education?
I hope you enjoy your weekend.
