Rob Fahrni

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.

Good morning!

I couldn’t wait to get started this morning. I got my pot started and sat down to put this post together. When the coffee finished I poured my first cup. I almost let that cup get too cool to drink. The shame! I’ve since remedied the situation and have resolved to not let it happen with my second cup! ☕️

Enjoy the linkage!

Sprudge

Espresso is basically magic. The more I learn about what goes on inside the black box that is the portafilter, the more certain I am of it.

Yes, pulling a really great shot feels like magic. When Haileigh — our oldest daughter — was a barista at a very snobby coffee shop she’d spend the morning adjusting the grinder. That would result in a half to one pound of coffee being ground just to get it properly set up. Was the espresso great? It certainly was. 🪄

Mediaite

Now Disney is cancelling plans to build a massive nearly $1 billion office complex in Orlando, costing the state more than 2,000 six-figure jobs.

I would love to see Bob Iger move jobs out of Florida. The state has gone full fascist under DeSantis and isn’t a safe place for LGBTQ+, black and brown folks, women, and children. Their educational system is teaching them to become white supremacists and intolerant and even their institutions of higher education are under attack.

If you can, get out.

gonsoloblog

TLDR: Render Disney’s Moana scene in less than 10.000 lines of Swift code.

Man, I love the field I work in and the nerds who comprise it. I say that with the utmost respect.

Joyce Vance

Monday morning, American democracy became more brittle, at least in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that prohibits the state’s public colleges and universities from continuing their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

Ah, yes, more of Florida’s fascist Governor making Florida a worse place to live. It makes me wonder if he’s setting it up to secede from our Union, kind of like Texas? It’s like the South is trying it’s damndest to rise again. We can’t let that happen.

Matt Corey

Ok, it didn’t exactly go down like that, and no, it wasn’t “take this job and shove it” either, but I actually did it. I left a great job that I enjoyed, and now I’m officially self employed. What hell am I thinking!?

Matt is going Indie and I’m more than a bit jealous! I wish I could pull it off. I’m pulling for you to be wildly successful Matt! 👍🏼

Defector

I’d like the record to show that I resisted getting AirPods for a long time. 

This is a really great piece by everybody’s favorite swole woman, Casey Johnston.

Her post is all about her quest to recover her lost — and subsequently stolen — AirPods. Go read the piece, it’s really good.

Steve Roy

Five years later I’m still as happy with this decision as I was then. I post to my site, and it gets cross-posted to social media. Today that means Mastodon. Eventually it may mean something else. But no matter what, steveroy.ca will always be the source of truth.

Making your weblog the hub of your social media presence is smart and the proper way to own your content. It’s why I started posting more short content without titles here. While I can’t auto post my content to Mastodon — I could but Micro.blog has some limitations — I do re-post most of my short posts there.

The Pink News

Actor and trans icon Elliot Page has opened up about how gender-affirming care changed his life in a moving Instagram post.

I’ve read stories like this time and again. As soon as a trans persons begins or completes their transition they become a much happier person. I’m happy for Elliot and wish him many long, happy, and fruitful years ahead.

Netflix Technology Blog

The Compute team at Netflix is charged with managing all AWS and containerized workloads at Netflix, including autoscaling, deployment of containers, issue remediation, etc. As part of this team, I work on fixing strange things that users report.

The modern day hero of computing is the DevOps engineer. They’re a mix of geeky computer tech and software developer all rolled into one extremely busy package.

If you’re a Unix/Linux geek I’d imagine you’ll enjoy the piece.

Jalopnik

New cars are getting too expensive, but the value from some of the old standards from Honda, Toyota and Hyundai is still there

Yep, cars are crazy expensive. Yep, good inexpensive cars are impossible to find. Yep, there are good used cars on the market.

Your mileage may vary. 🚙

Orhun Parmaksız

That day I decided to write my own pastebin service. And of course, I was going to write it in Rust.

Neat little piece about one persons quest to make their own thing. All in Rust of course. Because why not?

Steven Beschloss

The offering of “thoughts and prayers” after each murderous mass shooting has become a nauseating refrain. You know the drill: The speakers/tweeters utter this blood-stained phrase (or a close variant) like robots.

Thoughts and prayers is the GOP way to get evangelical Christian support. That’s all it is, a ploy for votes, an an easy one at that. Just drop a few simple words on social media and gain support for your Godliness. Disgusting, the whole lot. 🤬

I suspect Jesus would support an end to the violence.

PC Gamer

Activision Blizzard’s mandatory return-to-office policy is causing an unnecessary loss of talent, to the point where it could affect development of major titles like World of Warcraft and Diablo 4, according to some Blizzard developers.

Return to office has been a real hot button topic all over the country. Many jobs, like mine, don’t really require me to drive to the office.

Now, having said that, a lot of folks NEED and LOVE the interaction they have in person in an office. Our CEO is a prime example. He believes in person work is the best way to work. That’s all fine and good. Just remember others of us find it distracting, especially in open space offices.

I work in an all remote team at WillowTree but I think about going into the office once in a while for a little human interaction. 😁

One other note. I’d probably find it more tolerable since becoming an Engineering Director because I spend most of my day interacting with other folks. But developer Rob loves quiet and an open floor plan office was horrible for that. I can control my home workspace. At the office I’d have to find a place to hide to do meaningful work as a developer.

I like to tease my JavaScript friends when I get the chance. Most of them own up to the fact it’s a terrible language.😁

It’s the language of the web. No way around it at the moment. Some other thing will come along to replace it. I suppose WebAssembly could eventually be ubiquitous enough to allow us to code in other languages daily but it seems JavaScript is here to stay.

Turkish Minute

Twitter succumbs to Erdoğan’s pressure, silences key voices in Turkey on election eve

Space Karen really wants to live in a racist, white, Christofascist America.

The Verge

Twitter 1.0 was particularly notable for standing up to government censorship around the world. Twitter 2.0 under Elon Musk is actively complying with authoritarian government censorship demands ahead of elections.

See statement on the first link. I like this version because Nilay Patel called the post Welcome to Hell. Accurate.

NBC News

Graphic videos of animal abuse have circulated widely on Twitter in recent weeks, generating outrage and renewed concern over the platform’s moderation practices.

Psychopaths like to torture and kill animals. Twitter is the perfect place for them! It already has a narcissist sociopath as an owner. Why not add some psychopaths?

Ars Technica

Graphic images from a Texas mass shooting on Saturday that killed nine (including the gunman) and wounded seven are still circulating on Twitter after spreading virally all weekend.

So, yeah, more of the same disturbing behavior as the link above. What’s wrong with these people?

The Beaverton

KINGSTON, ON – Queen’s University has reached out to Elon Musk offering eight dollars a month to stop telling people he attended the higher learning institution.

This is an older link and I’m not sure if I’ve already posted it but I don’t care because it’s funny and perhaps a new way Space Karen could grift more cash out of folks to pay for his $44 billion mistake?

Robert Stribley

Instead, he’s making changes to satisfy the whims of his real core audience now, a ramshackle collective of alt-right extremists, Proud Boy/white supremacist types and Q-Anon whackos.

More on the abuse of the LGBTQ+ community at the hands of Twitter’s new policies. This article about the plight of the Transgender community in particular.

Variety

Elon Musk Confirms Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s New CEO, Focused on Business Operations

Oh, look, he’s finally picked a new CEO. Perhaps Ms. Yaccarino will be able to figure out how to make money for the company now they’ve lost many of their best advertisers.

Good luck.🍀

Also, over or under on her making it six months in the position?🎲

I hear folks say “Stop calling the GOP Nazis.” Fine. I’ll stop when they stop behaving like Nazis.

The Verge

Tumblr is somewhere between a social network and an old-school blogging platform, and like most major blogging tools, every post has a dedicated section for freeform category tags. The tags typically appear in a smaller, lighter font under each post, visible but tastefully separated. You might tag a post with the name of a loose topical community like #writeblr, the name of a fandom or hobby, or an internal filter that helps people navigate your blog.

I really like this idea. No only has Tumblr done it right, so has Micro.blog.

Both are microblogging platforms with a timeline and the ability to do long form blog posts complete with titles.

I use Micro.blog for this blog and love it. I’ve settled on Mastodon for more of a Twitter like experience and use Micro.blog for blogging.

Having a true tagging feature would be really amazing and would clean up the hashtag soup you find in some Mastodon posts. 👍🏼

Good morning y’all. It’s raining this morning, a repeat performance of last weekend. I did manage to get the steps completed in the garden now we let the rain test my work.

This week I had to get a tooth and removed and a bone graft due to a 20 plus year old root canal failing. I don’t recommend it. 🦷

Time to go lay down in a field and have Kim throw some dirt on me. 😂

CNN

On Monday, it was Nashville’s turn to join the roster of cities made notorious by a mass shooting epidemic much of the country seems prepared to tacitly accept as the price of the right to own high-powered firearms. 

No words. 😔

Microsoft Design

Today marks the debut of the new Microsoft Teams app, released in public preview for Windows customers.

This redesign of Teams looks extremely thoughtful, well planned, and well executed. I’d like to get my hands on it and run it through dumpbin and other tools to see just how it’s put together.

It’s my understanding it’s a native app — no more Electron — with an HTML/CSS/JavaScript filling using the new, Chromium based, WebView2 control

It also means no Mac or Linux client until they can get those items ported to Mac and Linux. You can write C#/.Net code on Linux and Mac today, but as far as I know WebView2 hasn’t been ported. Heck, who knows, the shell around the app could be written in C++? I’m not really clear on that bit, it’s why I want to get my hands on it. 😁

Wired

The US Republican Party has become increasingly authoritarian and extreme in recent years, and it doesn’t seem likely to moderate that in the foreseeable future.

Red States are becoming more and more radical. The entire anti-LGBQT, anti-woman, anti-education, movement is in full swing.

Next thing you know women will have to walk 10 paces behind their husbands in their modest to the ground dress with their eyes on the ground. Disgusting.🤬

Dave Winer

In September 2004, the activity we called audioblogging was starting to gain traction.

Neat little story about how podcasting got its name. 👍🏼

The Guardian

A dispute between the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and Disney over control of the company’s Florida theme park district hinges on a clause referencing King Charles III and his descendants.

The authoritarian was outwitted in this story. If you haven’t heard about this yet go read it. 🤭

John Nunley

This year is supposed to be the year of the Rust GUI. So why is it still so unsafe?

This discussion focused around handles in Windows is quite interesting.

Having written a lot of Windows code that uses handles everywhere — HWND, HINSTANCE, HANDLE, anyone(?) — because that’s the way the Windows API works I don’t see it as an issue.

A HANDLE is a persisted thing that allows Windows to shuffle the underlying object around if needed. It’s a remnant of 16-bit Windows days, because 640k of memory was a precious commodity. It’s a safe thing to the developer as I see it but I do not fault anyone wanting to make things even safer for developers. 👍🏼

John Scalzi

Trump is and has always been the sort of person who believes that laws are for the little people, and has acted accordingly.

I love John Scalzi’s books and prior to Twitter becoming a worthless piece of poo I really enjoyed reading his tweets. In case you don’t know he’s had a blog for many years and it doesn’t disappoint.

Judo Blog

We believe that designer-developer handoff is broken and to solve this problem well requires software that is familiar to designers and developers alike—software that makes building an app’s user interface a collaborative process instead of handing off files back and forth.

I’d really like to take a look at Judo to see how it could improve my own coding efforts. Stream for Mac could use some help. It’s been a slog for me and I keep switching between AppKit and SwiftUI. I really need to focus on SwiftUI going forward.

Los Angeles Times

Only two centuries ago, a shallow inland sea dominated California’s Central Valley.

Tulare Lake is fascinating. California Highway 41 runs right through the lake between Lemoore and Kettleman City. I’ve heard tale in the olden days one had to catch a barge or take a boat from Lemoore to Kettle City.

We drove that route all the time when we lived there. It’s one way to get from the San Joaquin Valley to the Central Coast and all the lovely towns and beaches we fell in love with. Places like San Luis Obispo, Avila Beach, Cambria, Morro Bay, and Pismo Beach.

As it is today you’d have to go out to I-5 and loop back to get to Kettleman City.

Good morning. I got to sleep in a bit this morning and I’m grateful for it.

It’s wet and rainy this morning which has turned my garden steps project into a muddy mess so I won’t be working on that today. We’ll see how it looks Sunday morning.

In the meantime I hope you enjoy the links as much as I’m enjoying my coffee. ☕️

The Washington Post

Former president Donald Trump warned early Friday of “potential death & destruction” if he is charged in Manhattan in a criminal case related to alleged hush-money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to conceal an affair.

As much as I’d rather not waste time on this asshole I feel the need to.

TFG is the target in four separate investigations. Of which this is the least of them. A teensy part of me would like to see this one put on the back burner and one of the more serious crimes prosecuted, say election interference in Georgia or stealing Government documents — including Top Secret documents.

Should the whole paying the porn star off with campaign money go unpunished? No. The law is the law and nobody, not even an ex-President, is above it.

If he’s arrested I hope he is perp walked out of wherever he is. Yes, I’m being very petty, but this man has stomped on the law his entire life and walked away unscathed. It’s time he paid the piper.

And if you think it’s better not to arrest him because he’s asking his supporters to be violent then you don’t understand all we’re doing is postponing the inevitable. See my earlier mention of three other cases he’s involved in. ⚖️

CNN

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will appear later Thursday before US lawmakers, many of whom want the app banned in the United States because of the risk they say it presents to national security. The clamor for a sale is growing louder again.

Politics aside I feel like there is a technical solution to be had here. A 100% Western clone of TikTok running in the United States that cannot interact with TikTok in China. Run it as two companies doing similar things, including the Western version having its own cut of all source code and developed separately. The code would eventually diverge into something different on both sides.

I can’t see spinning it out to be an option and China can certainly hurt some large American companies in retaliation, Apple anyone? 🍎

It’s a real sticky situation. It’s a little ironic Apple may be in control of the system that excludes TikTok from the App Store if Congress passes laws banning it, not to mention Google doing the same for Android.

We’re gonna have a lot of pissed off teenagers in the States. 🤬

New Scientist

Mathematicians have discovered a single shape that can be used to cover a surface completely without ever creating a repeating pattern.

I would love to have a shower done using this pattern. 🎨

The Iconfactory

You’ll see a lot of problems with SwiftUI mentioned in these posts, but the overall experience was wonderful. This new way of building apps gets a wholehearted recommendation from our entire team: designers and developers alike.

I know I’m constantly talking about The Iconfactory. Why not? They’re an amazing group of folks who build beautiful, fun, applications for Mac and iOS and Wallaroo is no exception. I’ve been a subscriber since it shipped and rotate my wallpaper often. 🦘

I’m looking forward to the Mac release.

Oh, this snippet is from part one of a series so make sure to check out the other parts. They’re a great read for any Apple loving developer.🧰

Rogue Amoeba

Even 18 years on, I find this story rather terrifying. If not for an offhand conversation in which we had no involvement, things could have turned out very differently for our company.

It’s a short story well worth the time to read if you do anything with audio on your Mac. And by anything I mean listening to music or podcasts. 😃

The Conversation

This message of inclusion becomes even clearer when Jesus is later confronted by a single scribe (12:28). In answer to the scribe’s question on the most important laws, Jesus summarised the theological ethic of his gospel: love of God and love of neighbour (12:29-31).

Once again I make my case that Jesus was woke. In the end wokeness means love and equality for all. Jesus taught that. I 100% believe that. ❤️

David Smith

Widgetsmith has just achieved a remarkable milestone, surpassing 100 million downloads since its launch in September 2020. A number that I can’t really wrap my mind around. A number larger than the population of all but 14 countries (🤯).

I don’t know David personally but from all I’ve heard about him he’s one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet and I’m thrilled for him!

Congratulations! 🥳

Sourcegraph

In one shot, ChatGPT has produced completely working code from a sloppy English description! With voice input wired up, I could have written this program by asking my computer to do it.

I’ve been a little late to jump into the “AI” fray. It’s seems to be at peak hype and I’m still studying it. Part of me sees using it as cheating. Part of me sees it as a great way to learn. Two competing thoughts. I think it’s healthy and I expect to start using some of this tooling in the very near future for code projects. 🤖

I also wish the term AI wasn’t used for this stuff. It’s not the sentient form we’ve discussed in stories from Asimov’s The Bicentennial Man to the manipulative and ultimately murderous Ava from Ex Machina.

I know, those are robotic forms, but they’re what come to mind when I think AI. A form you recognize and can interact with as you would with any other human being.

It also makes me wonder where The Singularity fits in.

[Mac Rumors](<https://www.macrumors.com/2023/03/23/apple-tracking-staff-office-attendance/)

In a post on Twitter, Schiffer said that Apple is now actively tracking in-person attendance using badge records and will give employees “escalating warnings” if they don’t come in the required three times per week.

It sounds like the economic downturn is about to hit Apple. Having mandates like this that ultimately result in termination is a simple way to let go of people without announcing you’re slashing jobs.

All of this in the name of Shareholder value makes me kind of sick to my stomach. Yet another case of the rich becoming richer at the expense of common folk.

New York Times

Mr. Trump, who faced his first criminal investigation in the late 1970s, has been deeply anxious about the prospect of arrest, which is expected to include being fingerprinted, one of the people said. When the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, was arrested in 2021, Mr. Trump watched in horror as television news showed Mr. Weisselberg flanked by officers in the courthouse and said he couldn’t believe what was being done to him.

Arrest him on Monday and make sure you do a perp walk for all the world to see. The man’s calling for people to protest to take their country back. Sound familiar?

As I’m getting started it’s a nice crisp 27F outside just before 8AM EST. The sun is out and will be all day. We’ve had a very mild winter this year, with the exception of that polar blast around Christmas, and I don’t expect us to get any snow.🌞

My coffee is in hand, time to get started. Hope you enjoy the links. ☕️

Reuters

A gunman opened fire on Monday night on the main campus of Michigan State University, killing three people and injuring five, before an hours-long manhunt for the suspect ended with his death, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot, police said.

It’s the guns. I don’t know what else to say. Over and over and over again we see this and do nothing. A truly American thing and not one to be proud of. 😞

Chicago Tribune

Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl for the 2nd time in 4 years, beating the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35 on a FG with 8 seconds left

I’m happy for the Chiefs and their fans. It was a great Super Bowl, a nail biter, not a blowout. Oh, and the Mahomes to Kelce connection is without a doubt the best in football and one of the best ever. If Patrick Mahomes can stay healthy and have a 20-year run he’ll break all kinds of records and win some more rings.

Macworld

Just short of the 10th anniversary of that first Mac Pro misstep, Apple is now late in concluding its processor transition by shipping the first Apple silicon-based Mac Pro. What’s worse, reports from Bloomberg suggest that the company has ditched the next Mac Pro’s highest-end processor, calling the computer’s entire purpose into question.

Given Apple’s new chip architecture with memory and processor built into the chip I have a difficult time defining what a pro machine should or would be. Maybe you have to accept a new definition? Maybe it doesn’t mean a flexible and expandable architecture?

What I’d like to see is Apple give the Professional computing world a way to use their current investment in Mac Pro a way to replace the x86 based Xeon chips with Apple Silicon. Of course Apple would never do such a thing because money. 💸

Linode

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 15, 2022 – Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the world’s most trusted solution to power and protect digital experiences, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Linode, one of the easiest-to-use and most trusted infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform providers.

I follow a number of indie software developers and they tend to use Linode for their service backends. Two that come to mind are Micro.blog, the system I use for publishing my blog, and Overcast, the indie podcast app for iOS. I’m sure there are many more out there I don’t know about. I’ve never done any large scale backend work for my indie endeavors but if I did I’d most likely choose Linode because they’re inexpensive, reliable, and have great customer service.

Hopefully they don’t start hiking prices, laying off people, and becoming a terrible place to host. 🤞🏼

Semafor

Spotify’s podcast push began in earnest in 2016, when Ek invited audio executives including higher ups at Gimlet to the company’s headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden to explain the emerging American podcast market.

Spotify calls their recorded audio podcasting. It’s not. Podcasting is the audio plus a delivery mechanism in the form of RSS. Yes, you can have a podcast as I’ve defined it behind a paywall. They just want to lock you into their app with their advertising and try to upsell you on other things. That’s fine. It’s their business but don’t call them podcasts. Ok, off the soap box. 📦

I was listening to the Pivot Podcast last night and Scott Galloway point out that very few podcasts make a profit. That’s true of what he defines as a podcast. Remember, this started as an open technology built by Dave Winer and Adam Curry. It was used and loved long before businessmen decided they could monetize it. Just like blogging. It’s was and still is a way for us mere mortals to communicate to the outside world, even if we’re not paid a dime to do it.

Oh, and I have a feeling some of the small podcasting shops are doing just fine, but they do things differently and have well loved shows. They’re just not exclusive to Spotify or Apple or whatever Big Co place you get your podcasts. They’re fully open and downloadable using your podcast player of choice because they’re built on top of RSS as the delivery mechanism.

The key phrase to listen for when you hear a podcast advertised is ”Download wherever you get your podcasts.” Then you know it’s a real podcast.

Crooks and Liars

The hearing got incredibly creepy when Arkansas state Sen. Matt McKee asked a trans pharmacist if she had a penis. “Do you have a penis?” he asked the woman, who seemed stunned at the question.

Unbelievable. I wish we could get past this and so many other things. So many people want to control how others behave and how they live their life. Often times based on some form of religion they’ve twisted to support their hate, disdain, or jealously of others.

Let people live their lives. Show them respect and grace as fellow human beings. It’s not our job to tell folks how they should live. That goes for women, brown skinned people, and the LBGTQ+ community. ❤️

Doctorow

After half a decade of sedate, steady growth, Mastodon suddenly surged, from 600,000 daily users to 2.6 million in the space of months.

Some folks are already writing off Mastodon. Silly people. If you’re looking to get a huge following and interacting with movie stars, influencers, government officials, and the rich and famous, don’t expect that from Mastodon. It’s not built for that. It’s built like your everyday neighborhood for us commoners to engage in. It’s real people carrying on real discussions. Sure, there’s gonna be some hate but there are mechanisms in place to take care of that crap. I love it and I’m excited to see it grow. There’s no algorithm to encourage you to follow people or corporate master to satisfy and no need to grow to billions of users because of it.

It’s like blogging. It’s all open and up to us, everyday people, to keep it. ✌🏼

New York Times

Lurking behind the concerns of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, over the content of a proposed high school course in African American studies, is a long and complex series of debates about the role of slavery and race in American classrooms.

Talk about hateful, mean, and unsympathetic to fellow human beings. DeSantis is an authoritarian who wants to mold Florida into his own disgusting image. He doesn’t want you to think for yourself or question authority, no sir. He wants a bunch of dumb drones serving the rich and powerful.

Get out if you can. It’s a terrible state. If you can’t, or don’t want to, I wish you luck and hope you find a way to help change the state. 🍀

Joseph Heck

In the past couple of years, I’ve had the occasion to want to make an XCFramework – a bundle that’s used by Apple platforms to encapsulate binary frameworks or libraries – a couple of times.

I don’t know Joseph personally but I’ve interacted with him on the NetNewsWire Slack and Mastodon and he’s a really kind, thoughtful, selfless man. He’s given me feedback on Stream and Mac programming questions. All that to say he’s one of the good ones.

Anywho, this is a great piece on how he built an XCFramework with a Rust core. Rust has become the new, safe, language for creating highly performant software and being able to use it natively on iOS or Mac and integrate it right into Xcode is wonderful. 🧰

Cory Doctrow

Mobile tech is a duopoly run by two companies – Google and Apple – with a combined market cap of $3.5 trillion. Each company uses a combination of tech, law, contract and market power to force sellers to do commerce via an app, and each one extracts a massive commission on all in-app sales – 15-30%!

Web tools continue to improve to the point that native apps may become a thing of the past for many companies. Of course folks like me will continue to do native iOS, and hopefully Mac, apps for as long as we can, but the writing has been on the wall for a long time. Native apps are becoming less and less important with each passing day. Learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

New York Times

Over the past year, we have seen a sweeping and ferocious attack on the rights and dignity of transgender people across the country.

A really great piece by Jamelle Bouie. Please, go read it if you can.

Yours truly who accidentally started a conversation about SwiftUI List performance. Smooth, fast, stable, code is important to me and most developers. we do strive to make our apps the best they can be. I’m still learning, still trying, to make all my apps better each time I work on one. This conversation may change how I do Stream for Mac.

WillowTree Engineering

“One of the biggest reasons the title of “Staff Engineer” is so hard to wrap up in one quick explanation is because it entails such a wide scope. Over the course of my time as a Staff Engineer, I’ve had responsibilities that fall into all of the following categories at one time or another”

Up until I became an Engineering Director I’d been a Senior Software Engineer since the early 2000’s, not long before Microsoft acquired Visio. I was so self conscious about the title change I asked that nobody talk about it. I didn’t tell anyone. Why? I was kind of embarrassed because I thought there was no way I could be a Senior Engineer amongst all the legendary Principal Engineers I worked with. At Visio a Principal Software Engineer was equivalent to what we call a Staff Software Engineer at WillowTree.

Fast forward to 2019 when I join WillowTree we had Staff Software Engineers and I had never actually heard the term. We also had Principal Software Engineers. The difference was a Staff focused on technical stuff and the Principal on managing folks and helping them grow.

Since then the Principal role changed name to Engineering Director. Same responsibilities, new title.

One of the things I found attractive about WillowTree was the dual track a Senior Software Engineer had the choice of taking when they promoted to the next level. I’d been thinking for quite a while I’d like to become more of a people manager and get out of day-to-day coding. To this day I still love writing code and building product. I fill that need today by building my own products. They’re small, digestible, apps I enjoyed building and maintaining, especially Stream.

Since I became an Engineering Director I’ve caught myself missing the day-to-day work of building a product. By that I mean doing the code. It’s a real transition to become a people and project manager instead of writing code. It’s taken time for me to really embrace the change and I’m finally started to settle into it.

A part of me wonders if I could be a Staff Engineer and I think I could. Staff folks tend to work on stuff around the edges, gluing all the various bits together, making sure the build pipeline gets setup and working, working with the client to decide architectures, third-party services, and overall strategy. They also tend to jump on big issues, bugs, and hop around technologies at will and pick them up quickly. In my experience at WillowTree they have the ear of our client.

My history tells me I have filled a lot of those roles, all of them in fact, but the thing that I feel would stop me from doing that job is speed. I’ve never been quick to make change. Yes, I can adapt, but I’m not one to do it overnight. I’m not what I’d label intelligent. I work really hard at what I do to make things soak into my brain. Over the course of my career I’ve outworked people. I don’t give up when I’m onto something. My lack of speed has always been, I believe, my biggest weakness.

That’s why the people manager track was so interesting to me. I knew it was time to get out of coding, I love mentoring, and it feels really great to see others grow in their career.

But I sure do love sitting in a quiet room building software and if I could work on my own projects all day, every day, I’d do it in a heartbeat. 😃

I’ve had a head cold for the past week and my body is finally getting on top of it, finally. As a result I’m tired this morning and my brain is foggy and doesn’t want to do anything. Coffee to the rescue, I hope! ☕️

Hope you enjoy the links.

CNN

More than 23,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands injured after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Turkey and Syria on Monday, officials said.

It’s been a very sad week for the people of Turkey and Syria. So many dead and wounded. I haven’t kept up with it like I normally would for such a tragedy. Why is that?

Thankfully people are still being rescued from the rubble. America needs to send help.

Arstechnica

According to The Register, Google and Mozilla have recently been spotted working on versions of Chromium and Firefox that use their normal Blink and Gecko rendering engines, respectively.

It doesn’t surprise me to hear Google and Mozilla have native browsers built for iOS. Why not, their code is very portable already, it makes sense.

Some competition on the platform would be good for Apple and consumers.

Colm Doyle

It’s hardly insightful to suggest that the last few years have substantially changed the day to day experience of a knowledge worker. Nearly overnight even the most remote skeptical leadership teams were forced to embrace flexible work practices like working from home.

At WillowTree our CEO, Tobias, is a huge proponent of working in the office full time. When COVID hit we were just getting ready to move into our newly renovated building at Woolen Mills, but that didn’t happen and everybody went remote.

Fast forward a year and a half later and WillowTree is making preparations to return to the office on a hybrid schedule. Then COVID spiked again so it was out on hold. Eventually a poll was taken, we do lots of polls at WillowTree, asking if folks preferred in office or work from home. Tobias himself was shocked to learn that over 20% of the company preferred it.

Things changed based on the poll and a team was created to that would allow anyone to work from anywhere. I’m part of that team and I love it. I’m grateful our leadership is open to big change. So far it’s been really amazing.

Facebook Engineering Blog

Facebook for iOS (FBiOS) is the oldest mobile codebase at Meta. Since the app was rewritten in 2012, it has been worked on by thousands of engineers and shipped to billions of users, and it can support hundreds of engineers iterating on it at a time.

If you’re a developer go read this piece. When folks think of mobile software they most likely think of toy sized apps like Stream, not a lot going on. Then you run into a beast of a codebase like Facebook and you realize mobile software is “real” bonafide software with real challenges.

Mike Masnick

In the past few decades, however, rather than building new protocols, the internet has grown up around controlled platforms that are privately owned.

This is a piece from 2019 and it holds up really well. He’s basically discussing what ActivityPub and Mastodon have become. A lot of the challenges around siloed social networks is around “free speech.” I put that in quotes because most folks think free speech is a free for all, anything goes, and you can’t ban me because I said something nasty or threatening to you. Of course a platform could ban you and it has nothing to do with free speech. Companies and individuals don’t have to take the abuse and can choose to ban you if they want. Mastodon has helped this in many ways. I run my own Mastodon server and it’s by invitation only so I know and trust the folks on it to maintain a certain decorum. I know they won’t be nasty or threatening and it’s self policing. We need more small instances with better community management.

Cloudflare

Today we’re introducing Wildebeest, an open-source, easy-to-deploy ActivityPub and Mastodon-compatible server built entirely on top of Cloudflare’s Supercloud.

I read through this post and I think it’s really wonderful to see addition ActivityPub based services come online. It’s an exciting time!

Cordi

About the tech experience on Mastodon. This is the last of three posts I have on Mastodon. I’ve been on the app for more than two months and have been content to ghost Twitter.

A nice series of posts about one persons experience with Mastodon. If you have friends fearful of joining they should go read this and see what someone else has experienced. Sure, it’s not Twitter, it’s even better, and it’s growing day by day.

Jack Dorsey believed Twitter should be open, not a silo. Mastodon and ActivityPub are delivering that vision. A central hub, controlled by a single corporation, is no longer in charge. The people are.

Digits to Dollars

After 30 years of dominance, the industry has come to come view Intel as a giant who has fallen on hard times. We do not think this is the right way to view the company, and it creates mental blind spots which hinder our ability to assess what are the right next steps for the company.

It’s hard to believe Intel is having so much trouble. They coasted for so long on their x86 architecture and still make a ton of money from it but the times they are a changing. Apple creating their own, much better, silicon must scare the pants off of Intel internally. They’re lucky Apple doesn’t care to sell their tech to any computer manufacturer. Imagine a Windows PC running on Apple Silicon. That would be glorious. 😃

Dave Rogers

What is somewhat more puzzling to me is the nature or character of the people who are attracted to this type. The toadies and sycophants, the enablers and lickspittles who compete for proximity to someone in power, someone in control.

I love reading Dave’s stuff. He’s an extremely kind, compassionate, man and a great writer. Unfortunately he lives in Florida and that state is full of looney birds, especially at the government level. Their Governor is is King Looney, a complete nutter, with fantasies of making Florida a totalitarian government run by him. His desire to control everything is exactly the opposite of a free nation and against everything our nation was founded on. He needs to go.

Dave, like many of us, can’t understand why people want this sort of strongman creating horrible policy in charge. Why would you want your rights squashed? You’re American, don’t you believe in freedom for all?