Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Another week, gone. We’re picking up the grandkids this morning so I’ll have to get this put together quickly this morning. Sorry, grandpa duty calls! 👴🏼
I’m finishing this off in the car as we go to get them. 🤣
Hope you enjoy the links.
Max Boot • The Washington Post
The GOP’s abandonment of Ukraine makes me ashamed to be an American
This is gut wrenching. Ukraine is standing between Russia and Europe. That nutter in Russia isn’t going to stop at Ukraine. He’ll go until someone can stop him.
Come on G.O.P., get your crap together and defend democracy. Oh, right, you no longer care about that.
Spotify is ending 2023 with its third and biggest layoffs of the year
Man, 2023 has been a crummy year for tech workers. Here’s hoping 2024 is much, much, better.
James Verniere • Boston Herald
“Leave the World Behind,” which is based on a 2020 novel by American author Rumaan Alam and produced by among others Barrack and Michelle Obama, is nothing less than a modern-day version of Alfred Hitchcock’s unforgettable 1963 hit “The Birds.”
I watched this last night and I really liked it. If you have Netflix check it out.
Once upon a time — way back in, like, 2004 or something — I used to turn my nose up at sites that served an RSS feed with only an excerpt. It felt, I think I would have said, like a sleazy way to drive clicks. (“Information wants to be free!” etc. 🙄) Twenty years on I still read a ton from RSS feeds, but I found recently that I’m starting to thaw on that position quite a bit.
Ashur, what happened to the curmudgeon in you? 😃
As a developer of a feed reader I get request to display the full article and it’s what I prefer so I don’t have to visit the website. That’s a feature on the feature list for Stream. One of these days.
Introducing Mammoth 2: The easiest way quit Twitter/X for good and join Mastodon
It’s nice to see developers strive to make Mastodon work for old Twitter, non techie, users to get started with Mastodon. That’s been the biggest barrier to entry. Folks can’t figure out how to join and they also tend to like recommendations.
Earlier this year, a developer slid into Eric Migicovsky’s DMs with a spectacular claim: that he had reverse engineered Apple’s iMessage, allowing any device — Android, Windows, whatever — to send messages as a blue bubble. Migicovsky didn’t believe what he was reading.
This is an interesting read. Bravo to the 16-year old who figured it out!
But Overcast does exist, and it’s the app where most people with exquisite taste in UI are listening to podcasts.
Poor Castro has languished and definitely doesn’t have the geek recognition Overcast does. I’d imagine that’s why it’s the number one podcast player in John’s stats.
As far as UI preferences and paradigm go, Castro fits me better.
I’d love to be able to buy it from Tiny and keep working on it. I’ve already shared my opinion on the matter.
Aldous J Pennyfarthing • Daily Kos
House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose grand vision for America includes transforming every uterus in the country into a Pez dispenser, is convinced he’s the North American Moses who will lead his people to the Promised Land.
Yeah, this guy wants a theocracy. No thank you.
Sure, the Christians might agree with you but what about Jews, Muslims, Buddhists? Name your religion. It’s not right. Our First Amendment was setup to protect us from a theocracy, but we all know the G.O.P. doesn’t really care about the Constitution.
The Comixology app, the mobile incarnation of the digital comics platform owned by Amazon since 2014, has finally shuffled off this mortal coil.
I’ve had ComiXology for a number of years but I never went for the subscription. I just don’t read enough. I don’t see this as a bad move. Comics are just another type of book and the Kindle App is fine for reading.
While four teams are celebrating the opportunity to play for a national title on the field, undefeated ACC champion Florida State is on the outside, becoming the first unbeaten Power 5 conference winner to ever miss out on the College Football Playoff.
This broke a lot of hearts and it’s a real shame the 12 team — why not 16 — playoff wasn’t in place this year.
Of course I say that and my own thoughts on the matter didn’t include Florida State.
I also thought Georgia should have been in. Off by one error. We got Alabama from the SEC instead.
Apple TV+ today shared the first images from “Constellation,” a new eight-part, conspiracy-based psychological thriller drama starring Noomi Rapace (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “You Won’t Be Alone”) and Emmy Award nominee Jonathan Banks (“Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul”).
So, yeah, I’m looking forward to this! Anything with Noomi Rapace in it is good in my book.
Let’s implement a custom dark mode color in our app - dark blue.
Really nice SwiftUI article on how to change the colors used for Light and Dark mode for your app. Well done.
