Saturday Morning Coffee

FrapThe United States Supreme Court continues to be a complete mess whose only job appears to be dismantling prior rulings and dialing our nation back a century.

Golden Hill Software: “I am excited to announce that Unread 3.0 is available now from the App Store. Unread 3.0 adds Unread Cloud, a new syncing and article retrieval system for Unread.”

John Brayton, the person behind Golden Hill, is a friend and competitor. Unread is a beautiful, highly functional, and very stable application. With the addition of Unread Cloud, John has taken Unread to the next level.

Checkout the Golden Hill Blog for more details on Unread Cloud. There’s some great content up there.

Of course I’d encourage you to use Stream as well as Unread.😃

The New Yorker: “Regardless of this detail, Hutchinson’s testimony appeared to strengthen the criminal case against Trump. One of her revelations was that, a few days before January 6th, Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, had explicitly warned that if Trump did go to Capitol Hill on January 6th he could potentially be implicated in the crimes of obstructing justice and obstructing the electoral count.”

Trump is a criminal. A poo spouting, lying, criminal, who’s a real threat to our democracy.

Swift.Org Developer Spotlight: “I learned Swift by porting Graphing Calculator’s core computer algebra system. It started as a learning exercise, then became a feasibility study. The pandemic played a role in that decision, as this became my pandemic shelter-in-place project. The refactoring could have been done in C++ and Objective-C++, but it would not have been as effective, nor as much fun.”

This is a really great read. The developer of Graphing Calculator walks us through his effort to port his old code base to a modern Swift/SwiftUI application, complete with AR features!

He also relays his SwiftUI experience.

“When SwiftUI works it is a nigh-magical delight, but when it behaves unexpectedly or when behavior outside the prescribed path is desired, it can be difficult to understand and work around its limitations.”

If you’re a developer take the time to read the post. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Some states in our Beautiful Union have become Gilead. It’s pathetic, dangerous, and extremely cruel.

Also, whoever impregnated a 10-year old should be put down like a rabid dog. Rape and incest are one of those things that makes me angry enough to commit murder because it robs the victim of their soul. It’s worse than murder in my opinion. They’re alive and dead at the same time.

The Podcast Index: “The Podcast Index is here to preserve, protect and extend the open, independent podcasting ecosystem.”

This is something I believe the podcast ecosystem needs. An open podcast directory. I’ve even written about such a thing

The big question for me is, will indie podcast apps make use of it? I’m thinking of Castro and Overcast in particular. Both run their own directories, as well as other backend services, but The Podcast Index makes me wonder if they could replace their directories with this?

I’m sure it comes down to a matter of trust and control. I know it would be really difficult to make such a bold decision.

SFist: “California is pushing for green energy and wants to avoid blackouts, but giving PG&E $75 million to handle radioactive waste at Diablo Canyon may sound like a deal with the devil.”

I love California but she has her problems. It’s crazy expensive to live in the Golden State and continued drought coupled with fire creates monstrous problems to cope with.

PG&E doesn’t have the best reputation. Their lack of line maintenance has caused numerous fires in California, including the massive Camp Fire that killed 84 people in 2018.

Apple announced and displayed a new version of CarPlay at WWDC 2022. Can they compete?

I also wonder if car manufacturers will have to pay Apple 30% of each car sale? 🥴

Tiny Apple Core

Conducting a little experiment here to see if coffee helps cure COVID.

Even if it doesn’t, it still tastes great. ☕️

Saturday Morning Coffee

I’m composing this at 5:30AM, flying down the highway, Mötley Crüe’s Dr. Feel Good on the radio. We’re headed to Durham this morning to watch our granddaughter play soccer. I’m really excited to see her run around the field in a clump with all the other kids.

Where the heck is a Starbucks. I need coffee. ☕️

Richmond Times-Dispatch: “From sassy deviled eggs to a Duke’s heart with an arrow through it, guests can choose from a variety of pre-drawn Duke’s designs. These small and medium sized tattoos – intended for arms and legs only – would typically run $150.”

Not gonna lie. I was ready to do this. 🤣 Lucky for me they were already booked up. No Dukes Mayo tattoo for Rob.

Apple: “Genuine Apple parts and tools can now be purchased by US customers”

If you visit the website Apple setup for this you’re gonna think you’ve landed at some sort of scam site. Don’t worry, it’s not a scam. You’d think they’d have hosted it somewhere at apple.com, right?

The Daily Beast: “Although one senior U.S. official admitted to me (somewhat uneasily) that “Austin said the quiet part out loud,” it soon became clear that the U.S. was publicly willing to own the new goal of turning Russia’s unprovoked, brutal escalation of its ongoing eight-year war in Ukraine into a lasting and meaningful defeat for the Kremlin.”

I have this weird feeling Putin has some kind of terminal illness. Perhaps he just realizes he’s getting older. It seems like he wants to go out in a blaze of glory.

Hopefully that doesn’t include a nuclear cloud.

Daring Fireball: “I know that as a pundit, spending Apple’s money is easy, but UI Browser seems like a tool Apple should have purchased long ago”

I’ve heard the name Bill Cheeseman but never knew what he did. The man is calling it quits at age 79. Wow!

NPR: “He also took issue with the many Biblical references to rape, bestiality, cannibalism and infanticide. “In the end, if Jimmy and Susie are curious about any of the above, they can do what everyone else does – get a room at the Motel Six and grab the Gideons,” he wrote.”

I know some mighty fine people in Florida, but it’s also home of some really crazy people.

Yet another example of authoritarians losing their collective mind because the United States continues its march to become more liberal and they can’t cope with it.

Before you know it they’ll be burning books and recruiting young folks to be an army of tattle tales, complete with little arm bands signifying their importance.

The Ringer: “Saul Goodman had a toupee. He wore colorful suits and a pinky ring. And he drove a boat-sized Cadillac. On the surface, he was a cartoon attorney—the kind that may have even popped up in the ’90s on Mr. Show, the beloved sketch comedy series Odenkirk created with David Cross. Yet there was much more to Saul than that.”

Bob Odenkirk is an amazing actor. I really loved him in Nobody.

Dead State: “MyPillow CEO and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell wants you to know that he finally has the goods to prove the 2020 election was stolen which will lead to the election being overturned as soon as — this Thursday.”

Oh, it’s that nutter again. Dude, give up. There was no fraud.

Tiny Apple Core

Already missing my Exeter Coffee Co family, but happy to be home. 🧡

Saturday Morning Coffee

Puck News: “While Zaslav and his team were quietly signaling their desire to pump the brakes on CNN+, sources familiar with the matter said, Kilar told Zucker and Morse—and, in the final weeks, just Morse—to proceed apace for launch in Q1 2022. He seemed to believe, some said, that if he could force CNN+’s launch before the merger, it might actually get a chance to fly.”

One. Month. In. Everyone involved must be reeling. Scott Galloway had a show on CNN+ and he’s been so quiet about the whole deal, which is really surprising given how vocal Professor Galloway can be.

UPDATE: Saw this after posting.

In the end there’s not much to tell, I suppose. One brand wanted a separate streaming service, the new parent didn’t.

Freaking Rectangle: “A typical coding interview starts out something like this: “Write a function that reverses letter order of words in a string.” Then for the next half hour or more, the candidate scratches out something on the white board (or a shared text document if they are lucky). This approach is weak for a number of reasons”

I really like this idea. Writing code on a whiteboard or in a text document is super stressful. I absolutely hate it, truth be told.

Actually looking at a hunk of code and doing what amounts to a code review feels really nice to me. When I interviewed at WillowTree, part of the process was reviewing a pull request. Knowing how you interact with other folks on your team through a code review can be very telling, not only from a technical perspective, but speaks loads about how you treat and interact with others.

Can you review a hunk of code and keep ego and opinion out of it, while teaching and showing empathy? That’s critically important. Building people up, not tearing them down, is a gift.

TL;DR - If you’re a dick in your PR comments, I don’t want to work with you.

TechCrunch: “Twitter says the idea to feature the Toolbox apps on its platform came from its discussions with the developer community. Developers told the company they wanted to improve users’ experience on Twitter, and, more critically, they wanted distribution so people were aware of their product.”

Twitter has a lot to make up for. In 2012 Twitter decided it hated developers of client applications.

This doesn’t feel like it’s built for client code as much as it is for folks who want to integrate into Twitter. That’s not a bad thing.

I hope they allow client developers to go deep with their new v2 API’s.

Raw Story: “On Thursday, writing for POLITICO, Kyle Cheney outlined how the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol have already dropped “bombshells” about the events of that day and the state of U.S. democracy — even before they deliver their final report.”

We’re really gonna kill democracy. I have no idea how to fix all the damage done by the GOP and TFG.

TechCrunch: “Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of Coinbase, believes Apple’s App Store rules have hampered the company’s product roadmap, accusing the iPhone-maker of banning features from their app and generally not being friendly with the cryptocurrency industry.”

What could a phone need to make it better for crypto currency?

I can’t imagine Apple doing anything specifically for it until it is as accepted as the coin of the realm.

Building a special phone seems like a more likely outcome. Let them build one or two on top of Android and see how it goes.

Early days.

The Cut: “Fuentes, now 20, says she and Daisy De La O had been inseparable ever since they met as high-school freshmen in Huntington Park, just outside Los Angeles, where they grew up. By the time she posted the emotional montage, it had been more than three months since 19-year-old De La O had been found stabbed to death and wrapped in a roll of carpet outside her Compton apartment complex.”

Such a sad story. Our government institutions fail us and folks find a way.

Tiny Apple Core

Saturday Morning Coffee

The Daily Beast: “The Senate voted to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the newest member of the United States Supreme Court on Thursday, delivering on President Joe Biden’s vow to successfully nominate the first Black female justice in the court’s history.”

We got a good one. It’s nice to see such a qualified person sit on the Supreme Court.

Congratulations Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson!

MacRumors: “In time, the Deliveries app will likely stop showing direct tracking information in the app for additional services.”

This is a real drag. I’ve been a Deliveries user for quite some time now. I have no idea why delivery companies would lock this down, unless it had to do with privacy? If that’s the case sign these third parties up, make sure they’re trustworthy, and give them an API to use. One that requires the user to give permission to the app before using it.

Platformer: “On Monday, it was revealed that over the past month he has become its largest individual shareholder. On Tuesday, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal that Musk now has a seat on the board.”

Money can’t make you happy, but it can buy you a seat on Twitter’s Board.

It would be really great if some of these companies could have some sort of Peon Board. A board of normals, the unwealthy, the unpowerful, to help offset the power held by a few. A super wealthy few.

Fingers crossed he doesn’t bring back the orange menace. 🤡

Microsoft Edge Blog: “Beginning in Microsoft Edge 100, we’ve updated sleeping tabs to enable pages that are sharing a browsing instance with another page to now go to sleep.”

I had to put this in here because it reminded me of something we did for media streams at Pelco. If the user went from a 2x2 display of video — a grid of four videos — to focus on a single stream of video, we’d freeze the other three streams. That meant we’d keep the structure of the pipeline and the attributes to restart it, but we’d release as many system resources as possible back to the OS.

When the user went back to a 2x2, or other layout, we’d thaw the streams and they start displaying video with their corresponding audio stream.

Performance work can be extremely frustrating and add a lot of complexity to software, but, when you get it right it can be very rewarding.

Maddow Blog: “But I was also struck by Trump’s focus on what he still considers one of the key details of Jan. 6: the pre-riot crowd size. In fact, the Republican wants more credit for having brought together anti-election conspiracy theorists, some of whom attacked the U.S. Capitol after having been riled up by Trump’s lies.”

The Former Guy is so egotistical. I’m shocked he hasn’t talked himself into prison.

I never expect him to spend a day in prison. Us normal folk would’ve been thrown in such a deep hole we’d never be mentioned again.

Los Angeles Times: “The walkout came in response to the company announcing Thursday that it would no longer require employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to work in the office, according to an email from Chief Administrative Officer Brian Bulatao that was shared by employees and subsequently posted on Twitter.”

COVID is still a thing and I don’t know about you but I don’t care to have it.

Apparently others are thinking that way.

Bloomberg: “To some, including the 7,500 of Apple’s 165,000 employees who belong to a Slack room dedicated to advocating for remote work, it was bruising. ‘They are trolling us, right?’ one wrote.”

Apple is a fairly backwards company. It’s just in their DNA. They don’t do a lot of things other Silicon Valley companies do. E.G. last I heard, they didn’t have free food, snacks, or even free beverages for their employees. That seems standard fare in most tech companies, but not Apple.

Yeah, it must be amazing working 80 hours a week on an operating system used by millions. But there is way more to life than work.

If you’re at home you can at least somewhat control which 80 hours you work in the week.

Working from home gives me back an hour of commute time a day. I like that. I also love having an afternoon coffee with my wife or having lunch together. It’s just much easier to do random stuff from home.

Tiny Apple Core

Saturday Morning Coffee

[Marc Edwards - Bjango](https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays2/): _“Spec wise, it’s incredibly similar to LG’s 5K UltraFine, and the display of the now discontinued 27-inch iMac.”_

This is a really great piece by Marc if you’d like to know a bit more about good displays options for your Mac.

Pod News: “YouTube is looking at ingesting podcast RSS feeds directly, the slides suggest, with a new podcasts homepage to be at youtube.com/podcasts (a URL that doesn’t work, yet).”

I’m not sure what to make of this. Is it a directory, a paid service, or something else altogether?

Apple’s podcast directory started out as just that, a directory. Now they have a paid service as well as the directory.

Hopefully Google will create a completely open directory as an alternative to Apple’s.

I hope they’re respecting the source of the original podcast file. Apple does this, at least for the time being.

John Siracusa: “Podcasts are now literally how I make my living.”

I’m super happy for John and I’m a fan of the man’s mini-rants, because he’s clever and funny.

Here’s hoping his podcast empire continues to flourish and he can bring us a few more Mac utilities.

Puck News: “Then the F-bombs flew. One of the most heavily managed, media-savvy movie stars of all time, was suddenly rage-screaming, off-mic but 100 percent clear, even up in my cheap seat: ‘Keep my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth.’ Twice, with even more fury the second time.”

I thought I was watching part of the show when Will Smith walked up on stage. When the audio was shut off I knew it wasn’t part of the show. I was able to read Will Smith’s lips when he dropped his second F💣.

I’m not for violence, but I’m pertective of my wife and children. I don’t think I’d have handled it this poorly. He could walked up and told Chris Rock what he did wasn’t cool and ask him to apologize to Jada.

As it was, Chris Rock handled it pretty well. He looked like the adult in the room, even if his joke went too far.

Michael J. Tsai: “A consistent subscriptions experience is supposedly one of the advantages of the App Store. But Apple privileges its own services, too.”

I’m certain most developers believe Apple can do whatever it wants with its own platform.

The real problem is they say one thing and do another. To say the App Store treats all developers the same is a complete lie.

I’m not a fan of people lying to me. Never have been.

Associated Press: “It didn’t go well: Trump wanted Pence to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and he was very unhappy the Vice President wouldn’t do it.”

Back to TFG. If we cannot kill off Trumpism we will be the next authoritarian government in the world with an autocrat at the top. He, and his family, will not leave until The People get them out by violent means. Yes, another Civil War.

It does make me wonder how many states would band together and secede from the union if that happens. I could see the west coast states; California, Oregon, and Washington, banding together to form a new country.

The world has so many problems. We just don’t need this.

Tiny Apple Core

Saturday Morning Coffee

The Bulwark - Morning Shots: “Right now, the pro-Putin (or anti-anti-Putin) faction is clearly in the minority, but they continue to have out-sized influence, especially on Russian state TV, where they provide aid and comfort to the Kremlin.”

For some strange reason one of the two political parties in the United States loves autocrats, dictators, and megalomaniacs.

I don’t understand it and they don’t understand my desire to have a better America, a people focused America. One with a few social services that make us better, stronger, and equitable.

A couple I can think of right off the bat; Universal, single payer, healthcare and a university education for anyone who wants it, for nothing out of pocket.

SFFWorld: “On the other hand, John Scalzi all but admits he’s going for pure entertainment with this novel and he most definitely hits the target.”

I really enjoy following John Scalzi on Twitter and his weblog, not to mention loving Old Man’s War.

I don’t read very often. That’s not something to be proud of, it’s just who I am, but I do have Kaiju Preservation Society and hope to dig into it.

The Atlantic: “Russian President Vladimir Putin is in trouble. Despite his limited gains on the ground in Ukraine, he is facing strategic defeat in a war that no one (including me) would have expected him to lose.”

Here’s hoping the people of Ukraine continue to lay the wood on Russian invaders and are eventually joined by the people of Russia to oust Putin.

The Verge: “The real issue is that $1,599 is a lot of money, and here, it’s buying you panel tech that is woefully behind the curve. Compared to Apple’s other displays across the Mac, iPhone, and iPad lineup, the Studio Display is actually most notable for the things it doesn’t have.”

So, I was kind of excited by this announcement, but a friend brought me back to reality.

It’s a good display and you can get something just as nice from Samsung for less. It just doesn’t have the nice case around the display and, by all reports, has a really crummy stand. I’d personally use a VESA mount, so it wouldn’t bug me.

Hey, I’m still using some $300 Dell 24in display I bought years ago and I’m happy with it.

I also believe 27in is about as large as I’d like to go. I’m a single monitor guy and 27in should do nicely.

Mental Floss: “But Uslan wouldn’t be talked out of his dream. He convinced the father of a co-worker, former MGM executive Benjamin Melniker, of the project’s commercial potential, and in October 1979, after six months of negotiation, against all advice or logic, the production partners acquired Batman’s film rights for a reported $50,000. Uslan immediately quit his day job.”

This is a wonderful read about a kid who never gave up on Batman!

I also love me some Dark Knight action and I’m hoping the new, grittier, Batman is able to give us A Death in the Family on the big screen. Affleck’s Batman gave us a brief glimpse of Jason Todd’s Robin suit in Batman vs. Superman.

Tiny Apple Core