Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Sorry I missed last weekend. I had the flu and it really kicked my butt. When Kim got up on Saturday morning I went back to bed and slept until 4:30 that afternoon. I needed it. I was wiped out. Sunday was even worse. I felt completely disconnected from my body. Really fuzzy brained, fever, chills, achy, and a lovely cough. That lasted for most of the week. I started feeling more myself on Thursday. Of course I’m back to work on Monday. 😂 I’m grateful I had the week to recover.
I hope you enjoy the links!
Carly Thomas and Abid Rahman • The Hollywood Reporter
James Ransone, the versatile character actor best known for his roles in The Wire, Tangerine, Generation Kill, It: Chapter Two and The Black Phone, died on Dec. 19. He was 46.
This really bummed me out because I thought Mr. Ransone was an incredible actor. It’s not mentioned above but my favorite character of his was Deputy So and So in Sinister.
RIP Deputy So and So. 🪦
You should probably leave Substack. Here’s why and how.
Yes, you should 100% leave Substack. I can list so many amazing journalists who’ve created their presence on Substack. They don’t say they’ve created a blog, no, they say they’ve created a Substack which makes it even worse. They’re just blogs and, unfortunately, Substack created an environment attractive to writers because it has everything they need; a place to write, social features, and a way to make money doing it. All without lifting a finger to maintain servers or collect money from paid subscribers. It was smart of the founders, but it turns out the founders support some pretty disgusting people, like Nazis.🤬
Astronomers have made a truly mind-boggling discovery using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): a runaway black hole 10 million times larger than the sun, rocketing through space at a staggering 2.2 million miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per second).
Isn’t this incredible? It’s so difficult to wrap your brain around the idea that a black hole is traveling through space at that speed, creating a wake, and creating new stars as it goes. Just fascinating!🖤
While the JavaScript language didn’t ship publicly until that September and didn’t reach a 1.0 release until March 1996, the descendants of Eich’s initial 10-day hack now run on approximately 98.9 percent of all websites with client-side code, making JavaScript the dominant programming language of the web.
Much to my chagrin JavaScript has become the de facto language of the web. At one time I’d hoped Common Language Infrastructure would become the way of the web, but it didn’t happen. Instead we got WebAssembly, which is fine, I just wish it had been CLI. It would’ve been great to be able to write code in C# or F# or whatever language supported CLI. JavaScript could’ve been CLI compliant.
It is what it is and if you want to do web, you gotta do JavaScript. ☕️
Jim Beam, which is one of the largest makers of American whiskey in the world, is planning to shut down production in Happy Hollow in Clermont Jan. 1 through 2026.
Y’all can thank President Orange for this. Canadians have decided they don’t need to purchase American made Bourbon any longer and it’s hurting American Bourbon makers.
That’s not political. That’s just bad business.
With podcasting pivoting to video this year, the word used to describe an audio-only show is becoming meaningless.
Nope. Podcasting is still its own thing. It’s open, distributed via RSS, and all about audio. Now, perhaps I’m misguided with that third assertion? RSS is built to deliver any media type as an enclosure but it’s mostly been used to deliver podcasts.
Besides, how many podcasters with video casts use anything other than YouTube for distribution? I think it’s safe to say very few, if any.
Podcasting, like blogging before it, was created to be an open ecosystem. Sure, go ahead and monetize your podcast, but don’t lock it behind a special service that only supports a proprietary distribution mechanism. That is not podcasting, nor should it be used for the video version of it. Whatever that’s called. Calling it a Video Podcast may be the right thing to do, but being distributed via RSS is partly what would allow using the name Podcast for it.
Katherine Legge used the momentum from her run at the 2024 Indianapolis 500 with Dale Coyne Racing to expand her career into NASCAR in 2025, and with the support of her sponsors, the Briton is keen to make a return to the Speedway.
I like Katherine Legge. She’s a very versatile driver who’s competed in the Indy 500 and NASCAR Cup Series races. I just wish she could find a full time NASCAR Cup ride. Last year she ran a few Cup races with backing from E.L.F. Cosmetics and I’d love to see them or another woman focused brand step up to give her the ability to run full time. She has what it takes, she just needs money, better equipment, and manufacturer support, like all other drivers. 😀
Maybe a new Dodge Cup team would be interested in having her full time. It would be really great to see! 🤞🏼
Here are the main changes introduced in Lua 5.5. The reference manual lists the incompatibilities that had to be introduced.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Lua, don’t know why. I just like how compact it is and how easy it is to include as a scripting language in other codebases. One of our junior developers at Pelco developed a tool for that allowed a developer to build media pipelines, using our custom media pipeline framework, by writing Lua instead of C++. It was all hosted inside a custom Qt app. It was a great tool mostly because Lua was easier to write and definitely improved developer experimentation and testing velocity. Not to mention the usefulness to the test team. 🧰
Christopher Goffard • Los Angeles Times
Alex Baber, a 50-year-old West Virginia man who dropped out of high school and taught himself codebreaking, now says he has cracked the Zodiac killer’s identity — and in the process solved the Black Dahlia case as well.
This is absolutely fascinating but we’ll never really know the truth of either case.
Perhaps Mr. Barber hit the nail on the head but it sure seems unlikely given the time they’ve gone unsolved and lack of a living suspect to verify it, assuming they’d confess.
Too many bugs. Too many changes. Too little control. Windows 11’s reputation might be at its lowest it’s ever been as 2025 comes to a close.
This is a real shame. I cut my teeth as a software developer on Windows and the Windows API. I owe my career to some amazing Windows developer who took me under their wing and taught me how to use those APIs to great effect. After all these years as an iOS developer I still believe I know the Windows API better than I do Cocoa.
I’d really love to see Microsoft put together a small team dedicated to unifying the user interface design and usability of Windows. Eliminate some old cruft and make it rock solid. The underlying foundation is so good to build on.
Embracing C# or Rust to do more work would be nice but there is a ton of C code to maintain and enhance and they need to transition all of Windows to using WinUI 3.
Perhaps they could start by replacing the React Native Start Menu with a brand new Rust based version? That would make for a good start.
