Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
This week felt very productive Monday through Thursday. Then Friday came. 😂 It was just one of those days I couldn’t get rolling. It happens from time to time and I’ve learned not to worry about it. I used to worry until I was sick to my stomach. Now? Not so much. I’ve been through it enough to know it’s a temporary state and I’ll get back in the groove, or flow as people like to calll it.
You know where I find tremendous flow? Working on Stream. No pun intended. No meetings, just me, Xcode, and whatever my 🧠 decides it can do that day.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow. It’s focus on Stream morning at Grit. See you there! ☕️
It’s amazing how easy it is to be driven mad by the App Store and app review.
I’m certain every iOS Developer has been where Matt is. App Review has always seemed like a bit of a crapshoot from the beginning. Hell, RxCalc took over 20 days to get a review in 2009. We’ve come a long way but it doesn’t mean the experience can’t be improved.
Sorry that’s happening, Matt. I hope it’s resolved soon! ❤️
WordPress runs 43% of the internet, but try mentioning it in a design Discord and watch the cringe reactions. While WordPress quietly powers The New York Times and Microsoft, design Twitter celebrates every exodus to Webflow like it’s a prison break.
Drama aside, WordPress is a great piece of technology and the folks who work on it each and every day care deeply about it. That kind of dedication is necessary to create a beloved, stable, product.
Here’s hoping WordPress has many wonderful years ahead of it.
As an aside I’d love to see something built on top of WordPress that outputs static HTML with a minimal UI just for bloggers. It’s something I’ve wanted for a really long time. I know I’ve been posting about it since around 2012, or so?
Please, someone, get to it! 😄
As of October 21, Disney+ will cost up to 20 percent more, depending on the plan you have. Disney+ with ads is increasing from $10 to $12 per month, while the ad-free plan is going from $16 to $19 per month. The annual, ad-free plan will go from $160 to $190.
When I fired up Hulu last night I was met by a message warning me prices were increasing. I’m starting to miss cable bundles. 🫠
Rob’s idea of using RSS is fine, but you still have to have someplace to upload the video files, which are far larger than just photos or text. Off the top of my head, I’m not sure what my storage limits are at my host, but I’m sure I’d have to upgrade to a higher tier of some kind if I wanted to start sharing a lot of videos.
I hadn’t considered Vimeo. They have always had a good reputation as a high end service for video but they recently sold to Bending Spoons who have a terrible reputation for ruining everything they touch. (Hey, Bending Spoons, get in touch. I’ll sale you Stream for a few million buck! What a bargain! 😂)
The issue is silos. It’s something we all gravitate towards, especially when they make it easy as a user. We have the Nazi loving Substack attracting great writers who don’t care they’re supporting fascists and YouTube who make it easy to monetize video but have complete control over your content and who can view it.
In a nutshell that’s why I’d like to see folks use their own sites and RSS to start a video publishing revolution just as podcasts did.
As for storage, I see where you’re coming from. My hosting service, DreamHost, provides services that have unlimited storage that could be good for this, or folks could use Amazon S3, or services like Libsyn who target hosting for podcasters. Search around for S3 alternatives, there are a lot to choose from. I also believe file hosting services targeting audio and video would spring up to serve this kind of move to self hosted video.
I think the thing that stops this is folks seeing they can start publishing as soon as they make an account with a service, even if it’s Nazi loving.
Finding a blogging tool, getting file storage, adding accounts, and payment systems, and on and on. Most folks just don’t want to mess with all that. That’s the big barrier to entry.🌻
Live Translation with AirPods and iPhone Mirroring are both amazing features. And EU users are missing out on them. I think Apple structured this piece exactly right, by emphasizing first that the most direct effect of the DMA is that EU users are getting great features late — or never. And that list of features is only going to grow over time.
If folks didn’t see regulation coming for Apple they haven’t been paying attention. Is it fair? No, not if you’re Apple or an Apple fan, but it was bound to happen given Apple’s position in the market. Sure, Android exists, and is doing really well in the market, but Apple has tied so many things into their OSes it was bound to happen.
I think I’m not surprised because I watched the Microsoft trial with great interest because I was a Windows developer at the time. Their dominance allowed them to make, or force, deals with OEMs and sellers that favored them only. They were the 800lb gorilla of the time. They had to protect that Windows and Office dominance in the wake of the internet gaining steam. Hell, they were criticized for Internet Explorer being included in the OS. Apple is now dealing with that many years later, so it’s no doubt they’ve been singled out.
From a competition angle it’s not so much they don’t have competition in phones, they do. Android outsells them worldwide. I think the competition is at the OS services level.
Folks should be able to pick a storage service or music provider or insert your favorite thing here and have it integrate deeper with the OS to give users better choices and give Apple some competition. Why should I have to purchase iCloud storage? If I could get more storage for less and it was integrated just like iCloud is integrated, that would benefit the user.
Sure, there’s the whole security angle and the sync angle but Apple would be in charge of defining the specification and provide the integration points and also qualify the storage provider as compatible. Yes, it would be expensive and time consuming, but if someone else has the chops to pull it off and wants to do it, why not let them? Leave the choice to the consumer.
As an aside, I could see Firebase providing such a service. It already supports syncing, is really fast, and is very stable.🔥
Let’s be realistic: DHH isn’t going anywhere. He owns the trademarks, he controls the Rails Foundation, he sits on the board of Shopify, and he doesn’t give a shit about you. In fact, he seems positively giddy at the idea of people being driven away by his occasionally repugnant blog posts and xeets. I’m sure he’d very much like an ideologically pure userbase for Rails, the same way he’d love for Britain to only contain native brits, wink wink. If that means the “Rails community” becomes a small stagnant pool of people getting paid to cheer for him and Tobi, that’s clearly a price he’s willing to pay! He’ll be staying on, whether you like it or not.
It’s too bad the Ruby community is being sucked into the fascist world of David Heinemeier Hansson.
Thankfully Ruby isn’t his creation or run by him so developers could move to something like Sinatra or build something new to get away from him. Sure, old code won’t move, but new works could move off of Rails, right? Heck, you could move to Rust, Swift, or, heaven forbid, Node. You have choices.
A junction of Joe Gibbs Racing teammates during Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Playoff event at New Hampshire Motor Speedway has left Denny Hamlin seeking assistance from his team’s leadership.
I watched this race of course and it wasn’t obvious to me Hamlin wrecked Gibbs, but Hamlin admitted to moving him in later interviews.
Here’s the thing. Hamlin, Bell, and Briscoe are racing for a championship. Gibbs, their teammate, didn’t make the playoffs. In my opinion he should move out of the way for his teammates. Race everyone else, but get out of their way. What if he’d wrecked Hamlin and Bell at that time? It absolutely could’ve happened given how hard he was racing them and how close they were to him.
I will freely admit I’m not a fan of Gibbs. He comes off as a spoiled, entitled, rich kid. Oh, and Grandpa Joe (yes, Joe Gibbs former NFL coach and Super Bowl winner) is the owner of the team.
Maybe it time to find grandson Ty a new racing home for the sake of the organization? He’s good enough to get a seat elsewhere. 🤔
A new study from the Social Market Foundation presents the results of several Housing First pilot schemes, including one in Scotland, and finds that providing free housing to people suffering homelessness results in better outcomes than current services and is cheaper than not doing it.
Take this for what it is. Yes, I support all kinds of social programs like this. We could do this if only America was willing to become truly great again.
Global health authorities rejected the US government’s claim that the popular painkiller acetaminophen, better known as Tylenol in America, causes autism when taken during pregnancy.
Not a surprise. RFK Jr. is a complete nutter and is driving our nation back into the early 19th century. Let’s use leeches to cure disease! I should say crap like that, someone may tell him it works. 🤣
Politics
Benjamin Mullen • New York Times
The Daily Caller, a prominent conservative online publication, published an opinion column on Friday explicitly calling for violence in response to physical assaults on conservatives in America.
Let’s lower the temperature, riiiight… We’re moving closer and closer to a full dictatorship and it’s showing in folks anger toward it. Some want it, others, like me, do not.
See you October 19 in Washington D.C.
WHEN I SAW THE NEWS that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had ordered all U.S. military flag officers (generals and admirals) to gather at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia, next week along with their senior enlisted advisors, my first response was disbelief. Not disbelief that the secretary of defense might want to deliver a strong message to the senior leaders of the force, but disbelief at the method.
So, will the leadership of all of our branches be asked to give their full allegiance to Marmalade Messiah? I hope not. If they are asked, how many will resign, weakening our defenses and opening the door to a full fascist takeover by the “government?”
Arianna Coghill • Mother Jones
On September 17, Pete Hegseth—newly dubbed our Secretary of War—announcedthat any member of the US military who needs a shaving exemption for more than a year will be forced out of the service, tossing out a decades-old policy created for mainly Black and brown troops with pseudofolliculitis barbae, a skin condition that makes daily shaving lead to cuts, sores, and scarring.
Y’all just need to admit it, now. This administration wants an all white nation. Run the leadership of the military out then get all the black and brown people to leave.
We’re just driving for that cliff. Car on fire. Everyone partying like nothing is happening.
It’s happened. We’ve arrived at the beginning.
Let’s save democracy. 🇺🇸
