Rob Fahrni

Emma Roth • The Verge

Perplexity has just offered to buy Google Chrome for $34.5 billion — a bid that’s far more than the AI search startup itself is valued at, according to reports ~from The Wall Street Journal~ and ~Bloomberg~. The startup sent the unsolicited bid on Tuesday, just months after ~Perplexity said it would buy Chrome~ if the government ~forces Google to sell its browser~.

I’m thinking Perplexity is trying to stay relevant. They’re probably not going to survive as a company when the great AI consolidation comes.

This is almost certainly a way to get them in the news because they could go to the Chromium project and contribute to it as well as forking it and making their very own Perplexity branded browser. Heck they could probably get Brave or The Browser Company for much less. Hey, there’s even WebKit and Firefox if you want to start with a different browser engine, right?

But, there is a very obvious answer to their offer, right? 🤔

Just vibe code your own browser in a type safe language like Swift or Rust and rule the world! 😈

Matt Mullenweg

I’ve heard stories of teenagers being ostracized because they couldn’t afford an iPhone, of group chats rejecting people who turn the chat from blue to green. I know that sounds petty, but do you remember middle school? It’s about status, and Apple knows that. Everything they make bleeds status and signaling. They’re the best in the world at it, and I should know—I’m typing this post from a M3 Max black MacBook with 128GB of RAM. But while status signaling with amazing hardware and design touches is harmless, in software and social settings in can be harmful.

I have suspicions about the Messages API. Apple are keeping it close to their chest for one or more good reasons. Could it be seriously flawed if not used in a very specific way? Sure, that’s plausible. Is it probable? Who the heck knows? I certainly don’t. Apple aren’t know for their network services abilities. Some folks have great experiences, others live with a complete mess. It’s a crap shoot. If you’re a developer of iOS and/or Mac Apps and used CloudKit for anything you’ve most likely experienced frustrated users because their data isn’t syncing. Like I said earlier, it’s a crap shoot and Apple don’t seem to care enough to enhance these frameworks and services. Gotta push on with those new features for next years OS updates!

Another reason they may be keeping it to themselves is the most likely scenario. It’s a competitive advantage like no other on the iPhone. I’d put money on this being the reason any day. Question is, why can’t they have a competitive advantage?

Steve Jobs initially pledged to make available as an open standard but ultimately restricted to iOS devices. iMessage availability has been a particular sore point in the rivalry between Android and iOS, with iMessage’s “green bubbles” attaching significant social stigma to Android phones. - Russell Brandom • The Verge

What I’d like to see is Apple create a new team just for the RCS Messaging app and fully embrace the specification. This would allow them to seep their “blue bubble” app nice and clean and give folks a full featured and secure RCS experience. Sure, iPhone and Mac users would have to use two separate apps, so what. It’ll get Google and EU regulators off their back and allow Apple to keep Messages less complicated.

As an aside, being able to create a new RCS app from scratch would allow Apple to make a 100% from the ground up SwiftUI experience for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. That would be really nice in my opinion. Apple need to build a new, preferably larger, app in SwiftUI to show the world how it’s done and to eat their own dog food.

I also have a question for the Messages team. Why isn’t the Messages icon blue, like the bubbles in the app? Seems like it should be.

It looks like 20 years after the initial post and at least 14 years after leaving Blogger I’ve broken the rules. 🤣

The week has come to an end. Grandma, the final of the grandparents, was laid to rest Wednesday, December 7. She had a very full 96 years. We miss you already, Grandma.

Now we head home. Bug — our daughter Taylor — and I are at Fresno-Yosemite International waiting for our plane to San Francisco. Sipping my quad-grande-vanilla-mocha and typing away on my iPhone. Coffee is good. ☕️

Swift.org

When Swift began life as an open source project, we wanted to open not just the language itself, but the ecosystem around it. Foundation has been instrumental in the success of decades of software and has been an integral part of the Swift developer experience from the beginning, and we knew it had to be included in the open source offering.

This is really nice to see. Apple does have a history of open source projects.

Swift is an amazing language and I’d love to see it spread to all operating systems. To write shared code for Mac, iOS, Windows, and Android, and have it be a first class citizen would be incredible.

C and C++ are still great choices for that of course and we now have Rust, which becomes more tempting with each article I read about it.

Vox

In late November, Amazon began making what are expected to be the largest corporate staff cuts in its 28-year history, axing as many as 10,000 corporate employees, or about 3 percent of the company’s office staff.

It’s sad to see a company have to lay off so many people, especially around the holidays.

Good vibes to all those affected.

Dart Engineering Blog

Over the last four years, we’ve evolved Dart into a fast, portable, and modern language. Our next release, Dart 3, completes the journey to a fully sound null safe language.

Another interesting language getting safer by the day. This could be a really interesting cross platform choice for model, network, and data persistence code if it doesn’t rely on an interpreter. Even if it does it makes me go hmmmm. 🤔

Also, Dart Engineering folks, use Blogger instead of Medium. It is a Google property after all.

Rolling Stone

Recipients of the Congressional Gold Medal didn’t shake hands with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy, at a ceremony on Tuesday.

Good. Those assholes don’t deserve to be recognized by any of us. Support an insurrection and the man who instigated it and you don’t deserve any respect.

The Sacramento Bee

When a man got lost deep in the dark Alaskan wilderness, it was his iPhone’s satellite that saved him.

I’ll be darned. It worked! 🥳

ReadySet Blog

Predictably, many Rust advocates (of which I am one) pointed out that this is exactly the kind of vulnerability that can be statically prevented by Rust, and is a clear example of where “Rewrite it in Rust” can have real benefits.

Speaking of Rust. We’re seeing a movement to Rust as a low level language. Even Microsoft is going to move to it for low level stuff. It would be really great to see it treated as a first class language by Apple and Microsoft in their respective IDE’s.

The Times

The Pentagon has given a tacit endorsement of Ukraine’s long-range attacks on targets inside Russia after President Putin’s multiple missile strikes against Kyiv’s critical infrastructure.

I like the idea of tactical strikes into Russian territory. After almost a year of defending themselves it’s nice to see Ukraine go on the offensive.

Putin has succeeded in making sure Ukraine becomes part of the United Nations. Nice job dude. 🤪

Seth Abramson

I have never had my social media account at any social media platform suspended. But it just happened at Mastodon, a place I have posted so few times that I can literally count them on a single hand.

I’d love to hear the other side of this story. Since Mastodon instances are not beholden to any one corporation they can make their own rules. It could’ve been as simple as the instance admin not liking Mr. Abramson’s work.

He could’ve found a different instance to participate in. It’s really easy to move and I know of at least two instances dedicated to journalism.

It would be nice to see Post federate with other services, Mastodon being the primary one. Post could still maintain their own unique identity and allow others to at least see headlines to paid articles. Just spitballing.

Ed Bott

Nice work, Jack. Your buddy Elon has turned Twitter into 8Chan.

Elon is ruining Twitter.

Also, I’d love to see Mastodon support embedding cards in websites. Maybe it does and I don’t know how. That would be amazing.

If you’re a recruiter from Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or Facebook please save yourself some time and don’t pursue me as a candidate.

I’ve been around for a long time as a developer but I’m not someone you’d want to hire.

I’m not that smart. More than likely I won’t be able to get through your interview process. I do ok as a developer but I’m not an algorithm guy. I try my best to write easy to read, maintainable, and stable code.

I’m not a ninja, rock star, or 10x developer. I’m kind of slow paced, iterative, and discerning. Definitely not a code factory.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Bull Durham I’d compare myself to Crash Davis – played by Kevin Costner. My best days are behind me. I had my time in The Show as part of Visio – which became part of Microsoft – but that was over 20-years ago. I’m in that stage of my career where I’m trying to help younger developers learn the business so they can get to The Show.

I still like to write code but I’m not a good fit for Big COs. I don’t have the energy or desire to work 80-hours a week for months on end. Living for the company.

I’m beginning my twilight season and I’m certain you’ll find your perfect candidate.

Take care, and remember, we only get one shot at this beautiful life. Make the most of it.

P.S. - If you’re a Facebook recruiter, this is the page I want you to see. You should really question why you work for a company like Facebook. If the answer is “because money” you’re doing it wrong. Facebook is a vile company.