Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
This week Kim and I celebrated our 38th wedding anniversary. Tonight we’re going out for dinner and enjoy some quiet time together.
Work’s been fine. I’ve been spending time on odds and ends, mainly fixing bugs this week, which I enjoy doing. I’m weird that way. I really enjoy tracking down bugs and doing the work other developers would rather not do.
Overall it’s been a great week. 😃
Let’s get to the links and my crummy opinions. 😁
Recent observations from users on the social platform X have uncovered performance issues tied to the Windows 11 Start Menu, revealing that the component is built using React Native - a framework known for its cross-platform flexibility but criticized for inefficiency in system-level applications.
This is a bit of a puzzle to me. Sure, React Native is fine for building applications. But Mark Russinovich declared Systems level programming should abandon C and C++ and use Rust for new projects. He’s also stated they’re not abandoning C#/.NET as a viable option but Rust should be the preferred language where a garbage collected language isn’t a good choice.
It seems logical to be that Microsoft would use Rust or even C# to build the Start menu, not React Native. C# should perform well and provide the security desired by the Windows team and Russinovich, especially if the React Native based solution is slow and heavy. 🦀
A publication I respected greatly just switched platforms, from Ghost to the odious Substack. I canceled my (paid) subscription and explained why.
It’s all about that cheddar! Dollar signs are driving adoption of the Nazi haven, Substack.
I figured that was the case and why not? We have a fascist government now, why not use a Nazi loving platform to host your newsletter, even if you’re Jewish!
Readers may recall that Japan recently passed the Smartphone Act, officially the Bill on the Promotion of Competition for Specified Software Used in Smartphones. Among its most important reforms is a direct prohibition on Apple’s long-standing ban on third-party browser engines on iOS.
The big thing holding back browser vendors is Apple’s insistence they create a brand new app. Why can’t they just make their current apps use their own browser engine? It seems malicious compliance things Apple likes to do. It’s silly and they should stop.
Microsoft is starting to roll out lightweight taskbar apps for Microsoft 365 users on Windows 11. These taskbar apps will automatically launch at startup and provide quick access to contacts, file search, and calendar straight from the Windows taskbar.
It’s interesting to see these kind of apps spring up. It’s as if the Office Apps are so big they need small helper apps to make the experience better.
I’ll bet they’re written in React Native. 😄
And the latest poll conducted by Gallup seems to confirm that Musk has become genuinely hated: a whopping 61 percent of 1,000 randomly selected adult American respondents said they had an unfavorable opinion of Musk, topping the list of most despised global figures.
Does it surprise anyone that Space Karen is so hated? Not this kid.
I really wish Tesla would fire him so they can begin of process of dragging their reputation out of the gutter.
I have every intention of maintaining and updating Zavala for as long as I am able. I’m also committed to keeping it free. I have no intention of getting you hooked on using it and then starting to charge a subscription.
Maurice is a good dude. He spent a bunch of time working on NetNewsWire, all for free of course.
I’m not an outliner type myself but I’ll bet Zavala is really good given Maurice’s talent.
And wait. I’m taking this all way too seriously now. Again, this is clearly a marketing stunt. As it was the first time Perplexity floated it. And just as it was when they floated buying TikTok too. Perplexity loves this shit. And the press eats it up. And now I’m eating up the leftovers! Because guess what? Google is not selling Chrome! So this is like a strawman at an auction.
Yeah, this was, and is, silly. But, we all talked about it for a week or so. Oh, apparently Perplexity has already forked Chromium and built their own browser, called Comet. Who knew! I certainly didn’t.
In my last post, about test automation, I wrote about using sleep : “Bad, bad, bad. Don’t do this.” But why not? Well, the way I was doing it there — until d.exists? — really wasn’t that horrible. What you really want to stay away from, and what I’ve seen people start out with, is sleep with a hard-coded time value. “But I know the app’s going to take a few seconds to be ready,” they say, “so I just put in a 5-second delay.”
The internet is a marvelous place, isn’t it? This piece is now 12 years old but is still very relevant. See, those old timers know what they’re talking about. 👨🌾
In a gesture many critics have decried as yet another blatant bribe to secure favorable regulatory treatment, Frito-Lay CEO Steven Williams presented President Donald Trump this week with a 24-karat, solid gold Funyun.
The Onion is kind of a perfect news paper for the times we live in. 🧅
