Rob Fahrni

I feel bad for the folks who made a living on TikTok. I’m hoping they’ll find another job to take the place of being an influencer or whatever they did on TickTok to make a living.

As for the folks who are bummed because they liked watching it. You’ll get over it. I wasn’t happy when Space Karen took over Twitter and shut down the API so I stopped using it, exported my tweets, and deleted my account. I don’t miss it because Mastodon is even better and isn’t controlled by a single company.

I suspect it will be back soon. Hang in there.

Chiefs over Texans Lions over Commanders Bills over Ravens Eagles over Rams

The Bills/Ravens game is gonna be a great game.

President-elect Donald Trump said his inauguration on Monday will take place inside the U.S. Capitol rather than outdoors because of severe cold, the first time in 40 years that U.S. presidential inaugural ceremonies will be moved indoors.

The reason is simple. Through all the bluster, Donald Trump is just a big sissy boy. He’s afraid he’s gonna get a little cold sitting outside. A real man would suck it up and enjoy the moment.

Well, there’s that, and he’s terrified his crowd size will, once again, be much, much, smaller than previously. Remember how tiny his crowd was in 2017? Yeah, it was tiny compared to the mass of folks who went for President Obama or President Biden who followed him.

He’s so hated I’d imagine most of the CEO’s he’s somehow gotten to be there would rather be sitting alone in the cold than be seated behind him.

At work we’ve started using Bruno. It’s nice but it’s also an Electron App. I’m already learning React Native on iOS because we are getting a lot of requests for applications written using React Native. We build apps for clients so it makes sense for their apps to be written once so they work on both Android and iOS. They get their money’s worth, I suppose. It’s all about squeezing more out of us. But what does that say about craft? To me it says it doesn’t matter. We’ve fallen into the Accenture trap. We are hired guns who need to pound out code everyday at the fastest possible pace, with high quality of course, and use the lowest common denominator toolset. 🤢🤮

Anyway, I’m feeling a bit spicy this morning for some reason. I really need to improve my SwiftUI and pound all the new concurrency stuff into my tiny brain but I’m torn because to be useful to my company I need to become a React Native expert.

Guess I’ll have to use Stream and Top Secret Project to learn SwiftUI and Swift Concurrency. 👍🏼

Gotta say it, the Dutch Brothers Coffee app is really well done. It’s beautiful, stable, has a personality, and does exactly what it’s supposed to do. Lets you order and pay for coffee.

I wonder who makes it? Do they do all dev work in house or do they have a studio, like WillowTree, work on it? I’m super curious.

If you know, send a message my way, rob.fahrni@gmail.com.

Jason Herbert • Historians At The Movies

Folks, the Twitter that once was is no longer. It doesn’t fit us anymore. What was once an interesting place to find news, meet people, and share in the human experience is gone, dead, and buried. And Elon Musk is holding the shovel.

It has taken the “normals” a really long time to figure out what a lot of us realized the day Space Karen cut third party access to the Twitter API.

Now if we could convince Mr. Herbert to abandon Substack because of its Nazi problem we will have accomplished something.

A bunch of really great writers have abandoned Substack in favor of Ghost and Beehiiv, you can too Mr. Herbert. 💐

Coke Oreos are not good.

Jennifer Palmer, Paul Monies, Heather Warlick • USA Today

Bids opened Monday for a contract to supply the state Department of Education with 55,000 Bibles. According to the bid documents, vendors must meet certain specifications: Bibles must be the King James Version; must contain the Old and New Testaments; must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and must be bound in leather or leather-like material.

Oklahoma is on the front line of the war to make Christian Nationalism the norm in America. How they can manage this with a First Amendment clearly stating:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Granted, Republicans are so good at skipping the parts they don’t like, like the Second Amendments inclusion of the need for a well regulated militia being necessary as part of the right to own and carry weapons, maybe they just skipped the part about the separation of church and state?

Hopefully the Supreme Court will strike this abomination of a law down and let folks choose their own religion and how they learn about it.

The Religious Right — Christian Nationalists — have done so much harm to Christianity and the person in Jesus.

They love Trump and all of his hate. Can y’all see Jesus standing at the border to the United States of America with an M-16 turning people away? Maybe you can. I can’t. I picture someone welcoming the tired and sick with open arms, providing them water, food, and a place to stay.

The GOP view of Christianity is a brutal idol in the form of Donald J. Trump and his ilk.

Yeah, your vote really matters to the future of this country. Get out and vote. Let’s stop this evil man and his sycophants dead in their tracks and keep this country great.

I would really love to see NASCAR add a couple international dates to their schedule. Maybe these dates are in place of some track dates that get two races and they’re only done every-other-year?

Regardless, I think it would be good for the sport. Granted I’m a total NASCAR noob but I’ve really come to appreciate the skill, strategy, and excitement of NASCAR.

Exciting? Really?

Yep. I think it’s the most exciting of the three racing leagues I keep an eye on; NASCAR, IndyCar, and F1. Of those F1 is, hands down, the most boring of the three with NASCAR being the most exciting. And, no, it’s not just because of the incredible wrecks it’s because on each weekend you could have a different winner. Sure, there are favorites who will win more races than others but you do have a distribution of winners.

Where would they go?

That’s the big question and I have opinions!

Mexico

Mexico City - Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez

F1 currently runs at Mexico City so they’re ready to host a major car racing series.

The track is 2.67 miles of road course. Not an oval, of course.

England

Brands Hatch

Billed as Britain’s Best Loved Circuit, Brands Hatch is a 2.3 mile road course and would be a total blast to see NASCAR compete there.

Who knows, if NASCAR were to have some international events like this perhaps they could run a few European tracks.

Germany

Nürburgring

I would LOVE to see them run THE LEGENDARY GREEN HELL. It’s huge! Just shy of 13 miles of road course with elevation changes and tricky turns.

If that’s just too much track they could run the F1 track instead. It’s just over 3 miles of road course.

Japan

Suzuka Circuit

Another course on the F1 circuit that runs 2.6 miles in length.

And that’s that!

Perhaps one of these tracks per year, maybe two or three in Europe while they’re there.

NASCAR is a very different type of organization. They are extremely conservative and that may not translate well to an audience outside America, but I’d love to see them try.

Ryan Peterman, via LinkedIn

They are so rare that most people don’t work with them directly, but their work is highly visible.

The thing that stands out to me is Meta has all these absolutely amazing people working for them and what exactly do they work on? New ways to extract personal information or track people around the web?

It’s too bad they’re wasting their talent at such a horrible company.

If I were that talented I would, unfortunately, be tempted by a $3mm per year salary. Thing is, I kind of doubt that entire $3mm+ is entirely salary. It’s probably some mix of salary, benefits, bonuses, and stock options. That’s how Meta keeps their talent I suppose, those golden handcuffs are tempting.

To quote the Tool song, Hooker with a Penis:

All you know about me is what I’ve sold you, dumb fuck I sold out long before you’d ever even heard my name I sold my soul to make a record, dip shit And then you bought one

Yes indeed. I suppose we’re all Hookers at some level.

Six Colors

Imagine trying to sell regular people on the idea that they’d be better off with a bunch of different banking apps implementing NFC payments in random ways, rather than using the Wallet system Apple built.

The bit above really grabbed my attention because if you replace different banking apps with browser apps you have one of the reason the Government sued Microsoft in 1998.

How does this grab you?

Imagine trying to sell regular people on the idea that they’d be better off with a bunch of different banking apps software companies implementing NFC payments browsers in random ways, rather than using the Wallet system browser Apple built.

One of the big reasons for the suit was Microsoft’s dominance in the browser market. They gave Internet Explorer away, as part of the OS, and Netscape couldn’t compete with that.

From a piece on Investopedia from October 2021:

The suit was brought following the browser wars that led to the collapse of Microsoft’s top competitor, Netscape, which occurred when Microsoft began giving away its browser software for free.

Now, if you’re being pedantic Apple never allowed anyone to create NFC payments on their system then decided to make their own. They had one to start with, but hopefully you see the point? Apple does compete directly with the likes of Spotify and definitely has an advantage over them because they own the OS.

I personally don’t care about Apple opening up parts of their OS, like NFC, but I do care about how the App Store works and some of the rules surrounding it. If I were a developer who made his living as an Indie developer I’d want to make as much as I could off of each sell of my apps on the store. As it stands today Apple take a 15-30% cut for each sale of your app or in-app purchases of digital goods. I’d love to see a breakdown of Apple’s expenses related to the App Store vs. income. It has become a big profit center for them so losing any of that revenue would hit their bottom line hard. I’m sure that’s why they’re doing things the way they are in the European Union for compliance with the DMA. Their current plan certainly discourages, and flat out denies small companies, to create their own App Stores.

That’s neither here nor there I suppose. I’m gonna get out some popcorn and keep an eye on how this goes. If the Microsoft case is any indicator of how things will go it’s gonna be a wild ride.

Ken White A.K.A. The Popehat

I’m thinking about what I am doing, Rob, as I said expressly in the post you just commented on.

Sorry, did I miss that I am contractually obligated to inform you during a particular time period?

Ken is a valued read and is a very funny guy. The above is a reply to me asking him when he’s leaving Substack and it’s nice to know he’s working on it.

I don’t plan on posting links to the platform any longer, as if my two readers will make a difference. 😄

Like I said in a prior post — or possibly Mastodon — this time period is going to be tough on authors as they sort through their options.

Unfortunately some of my favorite writers remain on the platform. I hope they all eventually decide to leave. 🤞🏼

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.

I’m on a project at work using React Native but not in the typical way, which is to say it didn’t start as a React Native project. It’s an exiting app out in the world actively uses by, I’d imagine, tens and tens of thousands of people. Perhaps hundreds of thousands. Bottom line is, it’s a frontline app and is important to our client.

Our client has a large team of React developers and a team dedicated to the design and development of reusable React components for the company. They’ve done an amazing job creating a platform for their devs to build on and would like to have those devs build mobile experiences as well. I can’t blame them. They’re very good at it.

They currently have native iOS and Android apps that are almost ten years old and use various frameworks and technologies. Your typical legacy codebase. That’s nothing new or frightening. All code develops its rough patches over time and as time goes by we go in and turn the soil so to speak. We replace outdated frameworks developed out of necessity with new platform supplied frameworks and our code is more robust and easier to read and maintain, especially for developers coming right out of school.

With all that in mind here’s what our client is looking to do. We are building new features in React Native and leveraging much of the internal native code to fetch network data, build models, and return that data to React Native code. The API or Interface to the native code is well defined and implemented on iOS and Android. The React Native team code is the same for both platforms. I’m part of the platform team integrating React Native into the existing app and providing the API/Interfaces to the React Native developers.

Like I said, this is a non-standard way of doing this but it’s been done by others with stories of success and failure. I believe we are on track to have a story of success. It’s not going to be free of bumps along the way but we’re making really great progress and I believe we will hit a steady working state as soon as next week. That means the foundation to strap up and host React Native code is in place and working as expected. Now it’s time to build out the API more thoroughly, driven by our React Native developers need for specific data or business logic. It’s a single app, purpose built, API. The idea is to hide any ugly code on the native side and keep the API to the app clean for the React Native developers.

Cool Bits

One of the extremely cool things about how we’re approaching it is how our React Native devs work.

They work inside of a separate application while they’re developing new views and logic. It allows them to move more quickly and not have to rely on the native apps to update before writing their code. It also means they don’t have to worry about keeping the existing native app building on their computers. That can be a headache, I wish it weren’t, but it can be. More on that in a bit.

How does it work? Well, when you create a brand new React Native project you run some tool to generate the project for you. It creates the scaffolding for your React Native code as well and iOS and Android host app projects complete with the frameworks necessary to build the native host apps. On iOS uses CocoaPods. I don’t know what Android used.

That allows the React Native Developers to run ahead of the platform native developers to build their UI’s.

Ok, so how does that work?

We negotiate with the React Native development team to define an API signature for the native apps. They build a mock version of that in their development host app that matches the agreed upon signature and go about coding.

We build out the platform side to do the true implementation. When we have something to test we pull over a packaged version of the React Native code and give it a spin. If there are problems we work directly with the React Native developers to figure it out. Once it’s ironed out it’s wash, rinse, repeat. We currently have a feature built by WillowTree and one built by our client working in the development host and in the existing native applications.

It’s pretty darned magical when it works! 🧙🏼‍♂️

The Ugly Bits

Getting the React Native frameworks and nuanced build settings and scripts in place has been a bit of a struggle but I think we may finally have all that figured out. But it is painful for a native developer who’s used to opening Xcode, loading the project, hitting build, and it runs. Sure, we may have to use CocoaPods to get started, but that’s rare now since Apple introduced Swift Package Manager, or SPM.

SPM is integrated into Xcode and works really well. I’ve never had an issue with it, knock wood, and went through Stream a couple years back and replaced my use of Carthage and CocoaPods with SPM. It’s been glorious.

This option is, unfortunately, not available to React Native projects AFAIK. That’s fine. CocoaPods works and is familiar.

The one really ugly bit, at least to me, is the requirement to use npm. I know web devs are accustomed to using it but it feels really strange and fragile to use these two package managers to be able to build and run an app that includes React Native. I know I’ve run into random issues I can’t explain when node packages change or are added but that’s just me being a big whiny cry baby developer. I understand it well enough to be dangerous but I don’t currently have that deep knowledge I like to have. I’m learning new stuff everyday but I’ve only scratched the surface.

Great! How do you feel about it overall? 🤔

I can see why companies are making this choice, especially companies with an army of React developers. It makes complete sense for them to build great UI with their existing developers. And, yes, you can build a great iOS UI with React Native. I’ve witnessed it first hand. If you didn’t know a view was React Native you wouldn’t know the difference in this app. It’s seamless. It’s great in that way.

Angelo Stavrow

but oof — it still feels like I’m working with a business decision, rather than a sharp tool.

I think Angelo’s quote above is a nice TL;DR for me. On the downside I really dislike the tooling. It feels so arcane. I’d love to see something integrated into the Xcode UI for package management and project settings. That’s probably asking a bit much but I’d rather have some do an amazing job of all this scaffolding so I can just hit the build button to run the app.

All that said, it’s still worth using. 👍🏼

As I’ve mentioned here and other places I’ve gotten into NASCAR this year. It started with F1 then I started watching IndyCar which lead to NASCAR.

I like NASCAR for a couple reasons. It’s more an everyday Joan’s sport. You know, for us common folks. It’s not hoity-toity like F1 and I think the racing is just plain better. The modern NASCAR cars all share the same design as defined and built by NASCAR. The power trains are the only real difference from an engineering perspective so it’s all down to setup and, more importantly, the driver. But I digress.

There is something that bothers me about NASCAR. Fans seem to be very, uh, conservative. Meaning it’s all about God, country, and to many the Confederate flag and all the hate that comes with it. Bubba Wallace asked NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag and they did, it was a step in the right direction. All that said they have a long way to go, which brings me to why I started writing this.

Which team is progressive enough to put a Progress Pride Flag on the car as the entire livery? I think it would look amazing and start to break down that next wall in the sport.

Anil Dash via Blue Sky

I think I am just giving up on getting people to realize that, by committing their words and personal reputation to Substack’s platform, they’re enabling openly venal people to profit from their creativity and labor. I guess folks just really truly do not care.

Back when Nilay Patel interviewed Substacks CEO and it became clear they clearly do not care if you’re a racist, misogynist, or Nazi, they’ll give you a platform for cold hard cash I reached out via Substack’s own Notes product to tell a couple of my favorite reads; Robert Reich and Steven Beschloss, about that interview. They paid no attention. I mean, why would they? I’m Joe Nobody. 😕

No, I really want you to answer that question. Is that allowed on Substack Notes? “We should not allow brown people in the country.” - Nilay Patel from Substack CEO interview

I love that Anil points to using WordPress to do a newsletter. That’s a great choice. ❤️

Matt Birchler

I continue to be flummoxed by the popular take that Bluesky is doing so much better than Mastodon. Mastodon has 2 million active users and is built on ActivityPub, which means it also communicates with other services that use the same protocol. Oh, and Threads will bring its 100+ million users to ActivityPub soon(ish).

No, Mastodon isn’t “dead” or “dying.”

Look, this platform isn’t something corporations control and isn’t something that needs to make money as a centralized service. It’s run by the people. I run my instance — well, masto.host does — and I don’t require my friends to pay me a monthly fee, some have sent me money to keep it going (thanks Steven!) but overall the $20US per month is cheap for me to have my own instance with a few friends on it.

Anywho, it’s all about the people, not about corporate profits so who cares how many users there are on the network? I don’t.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Sorry for the lateness in publishing today. We had a deployment of some services for a project at work and duty calls! I did have my fair share of coffee to get the old noggin going this morning.

Chris Benshoof

Today, with one command and a couple of cores, I’ve decompiled and annotated every Sierra SCI game, and practically every version, and dumped the results on github for everyone to enjoy.

Many moons ago Sierra On-Line was the game company to work for. They were nestled in the woods of Oakhurst, California, and made fun games.

In 1988 or ‘89 I applied for a job as a Tester and was offered a position, but, I’d also been offered a job as a developer at another company for more money. You can guess which job I took. Right, the dev job.

Anywho, if you’re a Sierra On-Line games fan and a developer have fun checking out the code.

Chance Miller, Benjamin Mayo, Zac Hall, and Filipe Espósito • 9to5mac.com

10 million join Threads in under ten hours, boosted by Instagram integration

I installed Threads and gave it a look. It’s a nice app, scrolls a bit slow at times, and has a look that has me questioning what technology they used to build the app. Apparently one of the Slacks I’m a part of has been having that discussion. I’ll be check it out in a bit.

My initial observation is it’s where all the brands and party people hang out.

One thing I really disliked about it is you are forced to see posts from people you don’t follow. That makes your timeline super noisy. I’m sure they’ll figure it out.

Congratulations to the Facebook folks who worked on the app and got it out the door. Now, take the next step in life and quit this disgusting company. 😃

Definitely a huge difference in privacy between Threads and Mastodon.

I’m all in on Mastodon. ❤️

Chad Hanson • Los Angeles Times

The naturally regenerating giant sequoia forest was so vigorous and lush that, in many places, we had to pull the stems of young sequoias apart just so we could walk between them. There were hundreds of them on almost every acre — many of them already 8 or 9 feet tall.

When I was in Yosemite a couple years back there was a lot of burnt out space with saplings growing all over the place. Here’s hoping the little ones continue to grow like mad.

Chance Miller, Benjamin Mayo, and Zac Hall • 9to5mac.com

Electrify America is the largest alternative to Tesla’s Supercharger network, offering nearly 800 charging stations across the United States. The company offers a CarPlay app that makes it easy to find Electrify America charging stations nearby; the app can also route you directly to those charging stations.

I had to link to this article today because WillowTree may, or may not, have worked on one of the apps mentioned in the article. 😁

Peter Cohen • iMore

Game Porting Toolkit in macOS Sonoma won’t fix what’s broken with Mac games

The TL;DR is Apple doesn’t really care about games and doesn’t really invest time and money to help game developers take a chance on the platform.

EditorDavid • Slashdot

2096 subreddits were still dark on Friday, as PC Magazine shared this update about ongoing protests at Reddit: To stamp out any remaining protests, Reddit is sending “final warnings” to subreddits that decided to permit NSFW content as a way to derail the company’s advertising business.

That number is much bigger than I expected it to be, wowzer!

Reddit really stepped in it, didn’t they? Who’s to say the new moderators of these subreddits won’t pull the same trick once they’re in charge?

Eric Wills • GQ

On a Wednesday afternoon in mid-April, the greatest bowler in the world, perhaps in the history of the sport, sat in a booth in a Bowlero in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, a cold wind lashing outside, and pondered how it had all gone wrong.

I’m not a bowler but I’m somewhat familiar with the sport because my grandmother was a great bowler. Seeing someone over the age of 10 using both hands is odd, but if you can be a champion bowler who cares how many hands you’re using. Right?

Lora Kelley • The Atlantic

Musk is mainstreaming new standards of behavior, and some of his peers are joining him in misguided acts of masculine aggression and populist appeals.

MIKE ISAAC and Ryan Mac • The New York Times

The day after Elon Musk challenged Mark Zuckerberg on social media to “a cage match” last month, Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, received a text.

I’m not a fan of Mark Zuckerberg but I think he’ll knock Musk on his butt pretty quickly, if he has the guts to step into the ring.

Matt Binder and Matt Binder • Mashable

Twitter’s new API may now cost tens of thousands of dollars per month, but the service being provided to its customers appears to be worse than ever.

It’s really sad to see what was once a decent service turn into a junker of a service.

Oh, BTW, that API was the way to limit folks from overwhelming your servers. If the API was still open, or cheap enough, folks wouldn’t be scraping the site and you could’ve controlled API access by throttling just that for bad actors.

Once again. Stellar job.

There’s nothing better than a self own! Nice work Space Karen. You DDOS’ed yourself. Genius! 😂

The Verge

Elon Musk continues to blame Twitter’s new limitations on AI companies scraping “vast amounts of data” as he announced new “temporary” limits on how many posts people can read.

This kind of checks out. Genius indeed. More like grifter with too much money.

He’s not really killing Twitter, he’s just making it a really crappy platform. He has so much money the thing will probably keep running for years and years to come but it’ll remain a crummy experience.

I’m a big biased because I have my own instance but Mastodon is a very good — not Twitter — experience. I’ve heard technically savvy people say it’s hard to figure out. I didn’t have that experience but I did not like the default web UI experience. It defaulted to a three way split screen with views of different data. I was able to fix that to be more like Twitter in settings then it looked and felt much better.

If you follow the rich and famous and are into shitposting then Mastodon might not be for you. Each server in the federation has its own set of user rules to abide by and if you break them you’ll be blocked or your server could be defederated, which is a very bad thing.

If you’re a techie I’d encourage you to consider starting your own instance with friends. It’s what I did with Curmudgeon Cafe and it’s been wonderful. I use masto.host to host my instance and I’m sure there are others. More smaller instances are a good thing.

If you’re on iOS there are really great iOS client apps for you to choose from; Mona, Ivory, Toot!, and Ice Cubes are really solid client applications and I will hop between them from time to time to see how they’ve improved.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

We’ve been home for a week now and it’s been really nice to sleep in our own bed!

Now, if we could get Cocoa to sleep past 5:30AM I’d be thrilled. 😃

I hope you have a nice cup of coffee or tea ready and I hope you enjoy the links.

CNN

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has refused to surrender, and called Vladimir Putin “deeply mistaken” following the Russian president’s address describing his actions as betrayal.

I heard about this as I was crawling in bed. I hope the Wagner Group is able to destabilize Putin and end the war in Ukraine.

Probably too much to hope for. 🙁

iamthatis • Reddit

I wanted to address Reddit’s continued, provably false statements, as well as answer some questions from the community, and also just say thanks.

I love this openness from Christian Selig. If folks don’t know, Christian tapes his conversations with Reddit folks. It’s been very interesting to read bit the transcript he’s shared. It’s clear they have lied.

I just wish Christian had posted this all to a weblog so it would have a more permanent home. Who knows what’s going to happen with his subreddit.

Platformer

After a bruising week of protests and locked-down forums, things started to get back to normal Tuesday on Reddit, as — oh wait, what’s this?

Subreddit moderators are doing all they can to screw things up on Reddit. I applaud their effort.

Polygon

If you want to watch pop culture eat itself, go see The Flash, a movie that starts out as a sprightly superhero adventure, then dissolves into a self-referential requiem for the DC Universe.

I’m torn about seeing this movie given all the hubbub surrounding Ezra Miller but I really want to see Michael Keatons older Batman!

Trisha Gee

These days, distributed version control systems like Git have “won the war” of version control. One of the arguments I used to hear when DVCSs were gaining traction was around how easy it is to branch and merge with a VCS like Git. However, I’m a big fan of Trunk-Based Development (TBD), and I want to tell you why.

I’d imagine most folks I work with today have no clue how we used to work. I didn’t use git for version control full time until around 2014 I’d imagine? I found it terribly frustrating to work with at first but know I’m fine with it.

Anywho, up until 2014 I’d worked with so many different version control systems. I’d imagine I worked with CVS the longest and we had one main branch — trunk — and everyone committed directly to it. Yes, breaking the build was definitely frowned upon so you had to be very careful about your commits!

LA Weekly

When North Carolina Gov. Patrick McCrory signed House Bill 2 into law, I wonder if he was thinking long-range about what the result might be. I can’t see him and his staff wondering out loud if their thick-skulled, cracker logic might result in Bruce Springsteen not only canceling his upcoming show in Greensboro, depriving the state of revenue and its residents of a Springsteen concert, but inspiring Mr. Boss to issue a press release that more people have read than will ever peruse House Bill 2.

Henry Rollins seems to be a really great dude. Part punk, part philosopher, always interesting to listen to or read.

The Guardian

Seven years after the Brexit referendum, the proportion of Britons who want to rejoin the EU has climbed to its highest levels since 2016, according to a new survey.

I mean, duh! The British version of MAGA didn’t work out so well. It’s been terrible for so many. I hope they rejoin the EU.

Hendrick Motorsports

The NASCAR Next Gen Garage 56 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 was a hit from day one in Le Mans, among fans, media and even other competitors. And it was fast on track, consistently putting down lap times that bettered cars in the GT class. The car ran near the top of the GT field for more than 20 hours until a drive line issue sidelined the team for more than an hour. Overall, the car was running at the finish, completed 285 laps on the 8.4-mile circuit and finished 39th in the 62-car field.

This car is an absolute beast and looked out of place at Le Mans. It would also look out of place on a NASCAR track. It is a beautiful car with some really excellent engineering. Oh, yeah, and it is super fast! Good old American V8 horsepower under the hood.

I kind of wish I’d been more of a car guy when I was younger. My Dad certainly is and has built some beautiful cars in his time. His ‘37 Chevy Coup Street Rod is stunning and he used to drag race a 454 powered ‘51 Anglia.

I had the opportunity to learn a lot but didn’t. If I could do it today I’d love to be a mechanic or engineer for a NASCAR, IndyCar, or F1 team. I’d love to specialize in engines. I do find them fascinating and would love to rebuild one again. I rebuilt a Chevy small block in High School my senior year. Yeah, I took auto shop because I wanted to do something “easy.” 😃

Cadillac Racing

After 21 years, Cadillac Racing marked our return to the iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 10—11 with our highest finish ever in front of a record audience of 325,000 spectators. Our No. 2 V-Series.R led laps for the first time in Cadillac history and finished on the podium in 3rd, with the No. 3 just behind in 4th, and the No. 311 fighting back for 10th in class.

There’s an article on Jalopnik that includes a video of one of these cars doing a bump start and it sounds mean. It instantly made me think of the Batmobile for some reason.

Now, let’s get more American manufacturers back in NASCAR. Cadillac would be a super interesting entry! I think Dodge is an obvious entry for NASCAR Cup, Xfinity, and Truck series given their history of legendary cars like the Challenger and their RAM trucks.

Cadillac would be super cool to see in NASCAR Cup racing but it may be too lowbrow for them? 🤣

Traveler Dreams

Renting an RV and embarking on a road trip across America can seem like more of a fantasy trip than a real thing you actually do. But you can truly make it a reality. And if you do, it can turn into a thrilling and liberating experience that will leave you with unforgettable memories. Here’s why you should take the plunge.

This is something I dream about all the time but I can’t quite get Kim convinced we need to sell everything and go all in on the RV lifestyle.

As a compromise we’d like to acquire a smaller RV and do some two week to one month excursions to see if we like it. It would also be great for week long camping trips with the entire family.

Maybe someday it’ll be a reality? 🤞🏼

Business Insider

When former NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino was named Twitter’s next CEO last month, advertisers breathed a sigh of relief.

I don’t expect Ms. Yaccarino to last very long at Twitter. I think my original quesstimate was six months but I could see it lasting as long as a year.

Musk is too much of a control freak. The kind of boss I’d hate working for.

The best piece of advice I ever got from my VP of Engineering and CTO at Pelco was “You have to convince people your vision is the right way to go so they follow. You won’t get their best work if you’re a tyrant.” It was something like that. Basically be a leader, not a bully.

Teri Kanefield

This blog post is meant to be read in order. Later answers are shorter because they rely on the information presented in the earlier answers.

This is a really nice piece if you’re following along with the TFG Top Secret documents prosecution. Dude is such a knucklehead and honestly believes he has magical powers to declassify things with his mind. Dumbass.

The New York Times

The engineers reminded him of their commutes. The working parents reminded him of school pickup times. Mr. Medina replied with arguments he has delineated so often that they have come to feel like personal mantras: Being near each other makes the work better. Mr. Medina approached three years of mushy remote-plus-office work as an experiment. His takeaway was that ideas bubble up more organically in the clamor of the office.

I believe with all my heart CEO’s like this are real control freaks and must have the adoration of their people surrounding them at all times. I can have these ah-ha moments, Slack someone, and fire up a zoom call to have the same conversations. It’s just not face to face in a building I have to commute to.

If our company demanded everyone come to the office, of course I’d comply, but I really don’t believe it’s necessary.

Just my horrible opinion.

Assigned Media

A federal court heard both sides during a trial where trans youth, their parents, and their doctors challenged a law banning gender affirming care in Arkansas. The court found that the law violated the right to due process and to equal treatment under the constitution, and ordered the law struck down because Arkansas failed to demonstrate a compelling state interest justifying the unequal treatment.

We really need the courts to continue overturning these idiotic and dangerous laws.

You cannot force people to be someone they are not and denying them healthcare because they’re different than you is barbaric.

Apparently Meta’s Project 92 is going to federate with a limited set of Mastodon instances, pay them, and allow them to display Meta ads in exchange for a cut.

Embrace and extend. Amirite?

Let’s see how this plays out.

Dave Winer

But here’s some good news. There’s no guarantee that Facebook will be successful on terms that matter to them. Unless a half billion people use their service, it’s probably not worth continuing, for a company the size of Facebook. Podcasting has withstood countless attacks like this, and has always been left standing as unsullied as ever.

Dave has been around the block a few times and has watched open technologies he’s created come under attack by BigCo’s. Some have held up better than others but his biggest and best creations; RSS and Podcasting have stood the test of time.

I’m no fan of Facebook/Meta. I believe it to be a terribly unethical company lead by a sociopath and want nothing to do with them. I’ve even made it know to their recruiters to remove me from any lists my name may show up on as a potential employee.

I have no idea what their end game is with ActivityPub and Mastodon’s API but I hope the open web is more than resilient enough to withstand it. I have to imagine Facebook will be monetizing their network using ads because Facebook is an ad network. How does Mastodon as a service and open source software handle that? Are there rules in place built into the software to identify ads so client applications can filter them out? Will any Mastodon client be able to connect to Facebook’s Project 92? I’m certain more questions will come to mind as we approach the announcement of it opening to the public.

Until then I’m cautiously optimistic Mastodon will stand up to a BigCo entering the network and I hope Eugene and his team manage to keep things open and honest for the rest of us.

If Facebook become jerks in the Fediverse I’ll cut them off in a heartbeat.

PC Magazine

As The Verge reports(Opens in a new window), a Meta executive demonstrated a preview version of the Twitter alternative, which is known internally as “Project 92,” at a company-wide meeting this week. When it arrives, the final name is expected to be Threads, a name we first heard about in 2021 as a way for Facebook users to post connected messages.

There is much consternation on Mastodon around Project 92. It’s rumored to support the Mastodon API and folks are not happy about it. Why? I have no idea.

Facebook has kind of skirted around the edge of blogging for a long time and I’m surprised they never turned Pages into a blogging platform. All they need is the ability to add titles, support for bold and italic, images, and links. That should cover 99% of post needs.

Add API support for getting, creating, updating, and deleting those posts and you could have a really great blogging solution.

Good morning from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina! ☕️

Kim and I rented a place for a week to share with our kids, grandkids, and our dogs! We arrived around 7PM Friday evening, got setup, had some pizza, and pretty much passed out.

We haven’t had time to do any real recon of the are but I did manage to find a decent pizza joint and a Food Lion so we could pick up odds and ends to stock the fridge for the week.

From Friday to Tuesday it’s all about our kids and grandkids. Tuesday forward it’ll just be Kim and I and our oldest grandchild until next Saturday.

I was hoping to get some extra bunk time but that ain’t gonna happen with a puppy who thinks 5:30AM is play time. 🤣

We’re going to have a great time at the beach and whatever else we can drum up.

Enjoy the links.

Daring Fireball

But even just a small taste of VisionOS made me feel confident that it is going to be the next major platform for Apple and Apple developers, alongside MacOS and iOS/iPadOS.

I wasn’t too excited about any new AR/VR headset Apple was set to release, then I saw it in the keynote.

At first I was disappointed because they were showing someone in an office using it to replace their monitor(s) and that’s kind of boring.

The we see someone celebrating a child’s birthday wearing the headset. Really? What a complete douchebag. No, seriously, that’s a really bad move.

But, when I saw them demonstrate watching movies with it, I was excited! That is what I’d use it for!

Am I spending $3,500 anytime soon on one? Hell no! It’s still to early for me, especially at that price. It’s hard to justify it.

Steven Beschloss

Donald Trump himself broke the news this evening that he’s been indicted—making him the first former president to ever be charged with a federal crime.

King ding dong himself is finally being indicted for his retention of government documents. It’s not about him accidentally having a few mixed in with his other papers, it’s about boxes of them, not returning them on request, and lying that he did return them.

The right like to say “What about Biden and Pence?” Indeed, what about them. They self reported having documents and turned them over right away.

TFG is a real garbage human wrapped in a suit. My hope is, at a minimum, he’s banned from running for any federal office ever again.

Colin Paice

Easy question – hard answer, how to I convert a hex string to hex byte string in C?

Go along for the ride. I haven’t taken the time to think through how to solve this and I only have nits to pick with Colin’s solution.

Virginia Mercury

Richmond’s post-graduation mass shooting reflects America’s gun violence epidemic

This is so sickening. The shooting is absolutely horrific but to do it at a graduation? It’s heartbreaking how callous our nation has become.😔

Swift.org

This document is the reference guide describing how to mix Swift and C++

Since this was done as an official way to use C++ from Swift there was all kinds of thought out into safety. That’s fine, but if you have a great hunk of C++ that has been thoroughly tested and you feel good about it you probably don’t need the training wheels provided by this support.

Just wrap your C++ in a thin layer of Objective-C++ and call it from your Swift code without penalty. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Robert Reich

Goodbye, CNN’s Chris Licht. But what’s the lesson?

I know he screwed the pooch with that TFG interview thing but man, that was pretty quick.

512 Pixels

The number of 2019 Mac Pros sold cannot be huge, but the new one’s numbers are going to be even smaller. As a Mac Pro fan that worries me. Yes, there are users who are reliant on PCI solutions and I’m sure those folks will upgrade to this new machine at some point.

Who is this computer for? That’s the question on most folks minds. When I heard it wasn’t nearly as expandable as the 2019 version it made me wonder why they bothered? Beyond the awesome SOC it doesn’t have more to offer than its 2019 counterpart.

Then again, I’ve never been the target of this computer. I’m still using a 2019 MacBook Pro and I’m fine with it. Heck, I have a brand new M2 based MacBook Pro sitting in a box waiting for me to set it up. 🤣

Audibon.org

But as Adams scanned the bustling crowd of King Penguins, elephant seals, and Antarctic fur seals, he spotted something bizarre in the distance.

Go check out the post. This bird is gorgeous and I want it.

Jalopnik

Could The NASCAR Garage 56 Camaro Beat Every GTE Car At Le Mans?

I’d love to watch this all the way through but that’s not gonna happen. I hope NASCAR has partnered with someone to do a full documentary on it. The process from concept to reality to running the race. I hope it makes it the full 24 hours. That alone would be a huge victory.

Good morning! ☕️

Kim and I are on the road this morning. We’re headed to Nashville, Illinois, to pick up a new pup! I hope to post some pictures as we go.

The Hollywood Reporter

Tina Turner, the trailblazing rock star who set world records for ticket sales — and whose dramatic triumph over domestic abuse and the music industry itself made her a feminist icon — has died. She was 83.

Tina Turner is part of the soundtrack of my high school years.

God speed.

Deadline

Ray Stevenson, a veteran actor whose dozens of film and TV credits include RRR, the Thor and Divergent films, Vikings and Star Wars animated series, died Sunday.

I’ve always liked Ray Stevenson. I enjoyed his version of The Punisher but I’d wager he’s best known as Volstagg in Thor.

The Iconfactory

We’re proud to announce that version 1.0.4 of Notchmeister is now available to download. And with it comes a revolutionary new feature called Fusion Dice.

Software should be fun. I’ll bet Notchmeister was fun to build and it’s probably going to be fun to use.

Jalopnik

I usually get the same answer whenever I bring it up: “No, you can’t make your own engine. The castings are too complicated. How will you actually pour your own block? Do you have foundry in your mom’s basement? It’s too expensive to machine one from scratch. You don’t know what you’re doing!”

I’ve had it in mind I should build a four cylinder motor from the ground up. Sure, why not? Maybe some day. 😃

Rolling Stone

President Joe Biden and the Republican Party at loggerheads in the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations as the GOP insists on steep spending cuts and work requirements for aid recipients. Although both Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy sounded hopeful there was a deal to be made just last week, talks appear to have broken down over the last couple days.

Here we go. Headed for a cliff.

Los Angeles Times

The slow-motion rebirth of Tulare Lake has inundated farm fields and threatened levees, homes and whole towns. On Monday, the state projected the lake would reach its peak in the next week or so, but the floodwaters will linger for perhaps two years.

This is a wild thought. Tulare Lake hanging around for a couple years? That’s a crazy thought. I wish I could see an aerial view of it.

The Washington Post

Two of Donald Trump’s employees moved boxes of papers the day before an early June visit by FBI agents and a prosecutor to the former president’s Florida home to retrieve classified documents in response to a subpoena — timing that investigators have come to view as suspicious and an indication of possible obstruction, according to people familiar with the matter.

Can we convict this dude and put him behind bars for a while?

Such a scumbag.