Saturday Morning Coffee

I struggled to get started this morning. Not because I didn’t want to write. There’s just so much going on at Twitter I could fill today’s post with all Twitter news stories. That could still happen. I haven’t decided yet.

Get that cup ready and strap in. To quote the legendary Forrest Gump. ☕️

“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

Martin Fowler Spicy Mexican Coffee

“In the United States, we have midterm elections coming up. Many people aren’t interested in politics, or feel there is nobody worthwhile to vote for. If you’re an American inclined to skip voting in these mid-terms, I’d appreciate it if you read this appeal.”

It seems that every election from now until we can rid the country of Trumpism will be the vote of our lives.

I have no doubt there are folks I interact with every day worried about the future of our great nation. Im terrified and fully expect a Civil War to erupt. That will happen if Republicans take over the House, Senate, and Presidency lead by TFG.

I predict if he returns the eight year Presidental term as defined will be overturned. TFG will become our dictator and the greatest Democracy every know will fade into the dark of a new dystopian America.

Los Angeles Times

“Chilling new details continue to emerge about last week’s attack on House Speaker Nancy’s Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, at their San Francisco home as the suspect faces formal charges on Monday.”

We absolutely need to call this what it was: an assassination attempt.

TFG and his MAGA, Q loving, base are out of control and have to be stopped.

Tech Crunch

“On Thursday evening, all employees received an email stating that they will be informed of their employment status at 9 A.M. PT on Friday. Each email will be sent with the subject line “Your Role at Twitter.” If an employee is keeping their job, they’ll be notified via their work email — if they’re let go, they’ll be notified on a personal address.”

The Washington Post

“As Twitter advertisers run for the exits, the world’s richest man has apparently decided to set his $44 billion investment on fire”

Musk is a strange bird and was forced to buy Twitter even after he realized he’d made a terrible mistake. Twitter lawyers wrote a bullet proof deal after Musk declared he didn’t care to have any due diligence on the deal.

Major blunder. Now he’s playing games with peoples lives. Laying off up to half of the Twitter staff.

The teams around making Twitter less of a hellscape are gone. I have one good programmer friend, who joined the company in May of this year, who was let go. He was barely getting started and had already contributed a great deal to improving internal iOS dev process and tools. He’ll be fine and I’m trying to get him to come back to WillowTree, wish me luck. 🤞🏼

Stripe

“Today we’re announcing the hardest change we have had to make at Stripe to date. We’re reducing the size of our team by around 14% and saying goodbye to many talented Stripes in the process.”

While it’s not fun to go through a layoff compare and contrast how Stipe handled it vs. Twitter’s ham fisted version. It’s night and day different.

Stripe is taking care of those effected. Go read the piece. This is a very compassionate, empathetic, way to do something so devastating.

Jalopnik

“Four years ago, Dodge showed up at SEMA with a thousand-horsepower crate engine that you could just buy off the shelf.”

Raw unadulterated power. Don’t get me wrong. I want to save the planet and get rid of all carbon emitting gas guzzlers, but this engine gets my heart pumping.

Daring Fireball

“The gambling/casino-related ads were so dominating the auctions for these new ad slots that they were even being presented at the bottom of the product pages for apps intended to help people with gambling addiction.”

Apple becoming a home for advertising feels so, so, dirty. They make all this stink about privacy and go about destroying Facebook (whom I could care less about) by using the power of their platform to disallow the tracking necessary for them to survive. Then they say “Hey! Look over here! We do safe ads with a captive audience on a platform with 50% market share in the US.”

Steve is rolling in his grave and Tim Apple is running his hands together like Mr. Burns with a giant smile on his face because shareholder value.

Just stop.

The Exeter Sun

“VISALIA – Quesadilla lovers across the country should be excited as Quesadilla Gorilla begins their journey of spreading peace love and dillas throughout the states one store at a time.”

I had to add this story this morning because I love this little speciality dining experience. It’s simple, it’s just quesadilla’s, but they’re really good.

If you ever have one make sure you get the Liquid Gold sauce for dipping. It’s absolutely delicious. 😃

Tiny Apple Core

Twitter smells like Musk

Robert Reich

“If Musk’s tweet doesn’t raise bright red warning signs all over the world about his judgment and character, just days after he took over one of the planet’s largest and most influential media machines, I don’t know what will.”

Musk is already stinking up the place with conspiracy theories, also know as misinformation, also know best as a lie.

Saturday Morning Coffee

This morning I started putting together the notes from this week prior to writing the intro. I had so much content there’s no way I could share it all.

We have Ukraine, the continued effort by the GOP to destroy our nation, and the continued domination of the news by Elon Musk.

I got my COVID bivalent vaccine earlier in the week. I felt crummy the day after but have been fine since.

Next week I’ll be onsite at WillowTree meeting with my all remote group. Wish me luck. Last time we had this event I got COVID. I told my boss if that happened again I was never attending another one. He was OK with that. 😄

Enjoy your coffee and the links. ☕️

Wired: “A CUP OF coffee in the morning is not just about the caffeine (though that’s certainly important). It’s the ritual that starts the day. There’s the sound of beans grinding, the toasted smell of brewing coffee—even waiting for your brew to finish is a part of the fun. It’s a way to let yourself know that it’s time to start creeping toward wakefulness, like the sun peeking over the horizon in an old-timey Folgers commercial—all fuzzy and warm and full of promise.”

The first link had to be about coffee, right? I had to do it first! Charlottesville own Grit is mentioned. It’s my favorite local shop.

Meson Stars: “A toaster-sized instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover is ‘reliably’ converting carbon dioxide to oxygen on Mars at about the same rate as a small tree on Earth, a new study has revealed.”

YAY SCIENCE! 🥳

I will warn you, this whole terraforming idea can go really sideways.

Six Colors: “I get it. The iPad Pro isn’t ready for a complete hardware redesign, nor did Apple want to redesign the Magic Keyboard this year. But the result is that the leading iPad is missing innovations that the cheap iPad offers. It’s weird.”

I didn’t pay attention to the Apple announcement this week, but I can see how this would be extremely confusing.

What do you mean the low end model is better than the Pro model?

Puck.news: “Where we last left the Twitter saga, our reluctant hero Elon Musk had essentially made the difficult decision that he’d be better off forking over another $20 billion of his own cash rather than continue to fight Twitter in court and still end up paying a fine in the billions of dollars—perhaps double-digit billions—and have only a bunch of lawsuits to show for it.”

This guy. I’ll say it again, for being such a genius this was a dumb move.

Then again, he may make fools of us all. We can only hope. 🤔

Engadget: “On one hand, Musk has told prospective investors that he plans to axe 75 percent of the Twitter’s 7,500-member staff upon completion of the deal, a move that would likely cripple the site’s operations and kneecap its ability to moderate content and ensure users' security.”

Yeah! Let’s buy a company for $54.20 a share — it’s not worth nearly that much — and promptly run it in the ground.

Where is everybody going next? I’m still recommending Mastodon or Micro.blog.

Chris Coyier: “If you publish stuff on the web, you’re outputting HTML at URLs for people to read. And it’s good form to provide an RSS feed as well maybe JSON if you’re hip. That’s 2-3 formats for your content out of the gate, which is effort, but hey, that’s the job as a publisher: get your content out to as many people as possible. If syndicating into another format is where people are, it’s likely worth doing.”

Of course I’m biased but having an RSS or JSON Feed is important to the syndication of your weblog or web site.

Also, dear podcasters large and small, please add an RSS option to the list of places folks can get your podcast and make sure folks know it. Thank you.

Reuters: “Oct 17 (Reuters) - Parlement Technologies, the parent company of social media app Parler, said on Monday that it will be acquired by rapper Kanye West, who legally changed his name to simply Ye last year.”

Not to be outdone by his good buddy Elon Musk, Kanye West has been conned into purchasing white supremacist and conspiracist stronghold, Parler.

How long until it disappears?

Vice: “But either way, 5.7 million is a lot, and one of the elements managing it is an operating system that fell into obscurity a quarter-century ago: IBM’s OS/2.”

This is extremely cool. I know there are a lot of OS/2 fans in the world, lord knows I ran into a lot of them during my time at Visio. They’re rabid! 😄

I need to know more about this now and it’s nice to see a reliable system continue to do what it was intended to do.

If it were written today it would probably be some JavaScript monstrosity.

Politico: “In the early days of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Hill warned in an interview with POLITICO that what Putin was trying to do was not only seize Ukraine but destroy the current world order. And she recognized from the start that Putin would use the threat of nuclear conflict to try to get his way.”

Ah, yes, more Musk, the fragrance that lingers. Not only is he trying to destroy Twitter he’s trying to bring about the destruction of Ukraine and Democracy and set himself up to be ruler of the world.

Scary.

Tiny Apple Core

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning fellow coffee and tea drinkers! Grab a cup, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.☕️

Cold Espresso

CNN: “Robbie Coltrane, the actor who brought to life the lovable gamekeeper Hagrid in the Harry Potter film franchise, died on Friday, according to his agent, Scott Henderson. He was 72.”

This is so heartbreaking. Our beloved Hagrid is gone. Mr. Coletrane, of course, appeared in many other films but he will always be Hagrid to me.

RIP 💔

Sketch - Via LinkedIn: “Today is a very tough day for everyone at Sketch. In response to challenging market conditions and with a desire to keep our product-first strategy, we’ve taken the difficult decision to reduce our team by just over 80 people. This will mostly impact Operations and Marketing, who have done great work in the recent weeks and months. Our Product team remains well-equipped, with a core team continuing to drive things forward.”

This is a real bummer to see. In my mind Sketch is a prime example of a modern Mac application done right. I know many designers who use it daily. To see such a reduction in workforce makes your heart sink. All those people looking for work toward the end of the year.

On the flip side there are now many very qualified Mac and iOS developers on the market. Go find one and hire them.

Also, why in the world wouldn’t you put this on the company blog or as a standalone news announcement on your own website?

Fortune: “Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna…things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”

William Shatner is a Canadian Treasure, I originally said American Treasure but a friend corrected me. He’s still an American Treasure if you ask me. 😁 I don’t know what more say, other thank this: We must protect our planet. It’s the only place that can sustain life we’re aware of. Even if we found another planet it would be impossible to reach.

It couldn’t have happened to a better man. Now, get this jerk off the airwaves.

Yahoo! News: “The House select committee held its 10th and possibly final public hearing on Thursday, presenting new evidence stemming from its 15-month investigation into the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.”

Well, well, well, TFG will finally get his subpoena. Of course he’ll worm his way out of it, like he always does. Here’s hoping the Justice Department gets him.

CNN: “Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd delighted “Back to the Future” fans when they were reunited at the weekend, 37 years after the release of the sci-fi comedy.”

I love this film series. My favorite episode is the third and final installment. They’re all very good of course but the third one is best.

Axios: “Google has approved Donald Trump’s Twitter-like social media app Truth Social for distribution in the Google Play Store, Axios has learned.”

This company is doomed to failure. Besides, if Musk gets his hands on Twitter, which is highly likely, TFG will be allowed back on to continue his reign of terror unabated. That sucks.

Fast Company: “With 15,000 locations across the U.S., the coffee chain is betting it can convince electric vehicle owners that it’s the perfect place to charge up. (Literally!)”

Starbucks has some much bigger fish to fry with workers form unions and their attempts to bust those unions but this is an interesting idea.

I was going to question why a company like McDonalds wasn’t interested in doing something like this but Starbucks is definitely a more high end brand. It’s a place folks spend “disposable” income.

That’s right Peter! You tell ‘em!

Hey! Did you know I developed a feed reader for iOS called Stream? That’s right, I did, no, really, I did! It’s free in the App Store but you’re welcome to leave a tip. 😄

Tiny Apple Core

Federated vs. Centralized

Hacker News Comment: “This is one of the strengths of a federated system run by people who aren’t looking to profit. Firstly, they care about their users and are more likely to take difficult decisions, like the one Ash has made, for the good of themselves and their users. In doing so everyone involved has time to make an orderly move.”

I really love seeing this take. It’s the first reply to this Hacker News post on the shutdown of mastodon.technology. Yes, it is a sad day amongst folks in the Fediverse, especially for folks on mastodon.technology but the network persists because it’s federated with other instances. The folks who are losing their accounts will be able to move to another instance or perhaps spin up their own!

It some ways it’s like having your own blog. If you decide to stop writing and let the domain lapse your writing will disappear but the internet of blogs continues to march along.

I’ve heard so many folks say Mastodon isn’t a good substitute to Twitter but if it isn’t, what is?

Once Elon Musk has Twitter it would be fantastic to see Twitter implement the protocols necessary to participate in the Fediverse.

What does that even mean?

It means Twitter would write some code that would allow Mastodon based servers to find it and render Twitter tweets into a unified timeline of users.

It would allow a Twitter of Twitters to blossom. Sure, Twitter is a for profit company and others could have for profit Mastodon instances but it wouldn’t be required. All that’s required is the will to fire up an instance.

A true open social experience

Folks like Manton Reese, the creator of Micro.blog, have already implemented these protocols to allow Micro.blog to federate with other Mastodon instances! In fact, I follow quite a few folks on Micro.blog from my Mastodon account on my instance, curmudgeon.cafe.

I could also see news papers, streaming companies, and movie studios running their own instances. Think of names on services like @wolfblitzer@cnn.social for Wolf Blitzer, @maggie@nytimes.social for Maggie Haberman, or @maddow@msnbc.social for Rachel Maddow. Of course I made all those names up and each of those companies may choose to use a different domain extension for their federated servers, but you get the picture.

Those custom domain names can’t be used on Twitter today because it’s completely centralized as opposed to the open, federated, system employed by Mastodon.

The really nice benefit to the federated system is the survivability of the network. If one system disappeared the remainder of the systems continue to operate. There is no set of central servers.

Hey! That’s how the internet is built!

Saturday Morning Coffee

My first cup of coffee is poured and cooling a bit, our old kitty — Khloe — is in my lap, and I’m sat in my writing spot at the end of the couch nearest the front window. It’s cloudy and raining and the wind is blowing. I’m not sure if it’s remnants of Ian yet or just a regular storm. Guess we’ll find out. 🌧️

CNN: “Ian slammed into southwest Florida as a severe Category 4 hurricane Wednesday, packing sustained winds of 150 mph. Officials believe the death toll of at least 45 people is likely to climb in the coming days as searchers access areas that had been blocked by debris and floodwaters.”

What a tragic week for Floridians. So many folks displaced and damage beyond belief. Homes and businesses wiped completely off the map, land reclaimed by sand. And the there is the human toll. 😢

Take care my Florida friends. ❤️

Travel Radar: “There have been multiple reports of strange noises coming from American Airlines in recent weeks that neither the passengers nor crew members could explain. Some passengers have been airing their confusion across social media.”

It’s the perfect time of the year to have mysterious moaning sounds coming out of the speaker system on a flight.

It doesn’t sound like an equipment failure to me. I’m going with ghosts. 👻

When the big players figure out they can automate a money making machine they have to get involved and screw everything up.

Luckily we still have great Indie Podcasts to listen to.

TechCrunch: “Now, a Spanish startup called Penpot — which is taking a new approach to design collaboration through an open source platform that brings designers and developers into the mix simultaneously — says that it’s been seeing a huge amount of adoption since the Figma deal.”

I happened across Penpot a month or so before the Adobe purchase of Figma. It’s really nice and if you’re looking for a Figma alternative you might want to give it a look.

Bleacher Report: “Odell Beckham Jr. questioned why all NFL stadiums don’t feature grass fields after former New York Giants teammate Sterling Shepard suffered a non-contact knee injury on the MetLife Stadium turf on Monday night.”

This is not the first time turf has become controversial. I remember back in the 70’s or 80’s this being a topic of conversation. That was before this new wave of turf became a thing.

I’ve always been a fan of grass fields. Bring them back to every stadium you possibly can. I want to see some filthy uniforms.

Apple Newsroom: “Amid the tools used by archaeologists for centuries — trowels, buckets, brushes, and pickaxes — there’s a new piece of equipment: iPad Pro.”

I am so here for this. Seeing tools used in ways you never expected is always such a joy for the developer.

Congratulations to Top Hatch, the makers of Concepts, and my friend Marc Palmer who is a developer on the engineering team! 👍🏼

Politico: “A federal judge delivered a blistering rebuke of Republican Party leaders Tuesday for what she said was a cynical attempt to stoke false claims of election fraud of the kind that fueled the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.”

I really wish Republican leaders weren’t so power hungry and had the guts to all come out against TFG.

Here’s hoping one of the many troubles TFG has leads to conviction and elimination from running for public office. 🤞🏼

9to5Mac: “This week, a new Instagram client called “OG App” caught the attention of the internet as it promised a better Instagram experience without advertisements or content suggestions from people you don’t know. The app seemed too good to be true, but it has now been taken down – not by Meta, but by Apple.”

If you’re surprised by this, don’t be. Instagram cut off developers long ago. At one time there were plenty of great Instagram clients, even for iPad!

It’s a closed platform. The best we can hope for is alternate services — like Glass — to catch on and take a big share of Instagrams user base.

Of course the United States, Britain, and Ukraine aren’t the only countries in complete disarray. Iran is having another revolution. Women are coming out in force to demand equal rights and an end to its totalitarian regime.

Yahoo Sports: “Again, if you don’t like the “White Bengal” look with the black stripes — which included the debut of the white helmet with black stripes on Thursday night — then it’ll be a while before you find an NFL uniform you like.”

I loved the white out uniforms worn by the Bengals Thursday night. Being a Bears fan I’m really looking forward to seeing the new orange helmets the Bears will be wearing on special occasions this year.

I kind of wish they’d go orange helmets with their navy blue color rush uniform but they’re not going that direction

Hayseed Blog: “I’m happy to announce a new Stream release. Version 1.3 is a minor release with one new feature and two bug fixes.”

I wish I could turn this little project into my full time gig. Heck, I’d be super happy with a few hundred bucks a month! 🤣

That aside I am proud of my little labor of love and hope you’ll give it a look.

Getting this version out the door has allowed me to get back to the Mac version. It’s slow going since this is my first real Mac app but I do hope to ship it at some point. 😄

Time for my third cup. ☕️

Tiny Apple Core

Saturday Morning Coffee

I got a nice little treat with my coffee this morning. Kim made some pumpkin spice cinnamon rolls. 🤤

Pastries and coffee are perfect together.

Frap

Robin Rendle, hat tip Om 🎩: ”There are no rules to blogging except this one: always self-host your website because your URL, your own private domain, is the most valuable thing you can own. Your career will thank you for it later and no-one can take it away. But don’t wait up for success to come, it’s going to be a slog—there will be years before you see any benefit.”

If you’re reading this you have to know by now I love blogging. I don’t see giving it up. Sure, I’ve gone through extremely dry spells over the years but I still enjoy it.

In the early 2000’s I’d do little one line posts and it was fine. When Twitter became a thing I felt like my blog posts needed a title for some strange reason. When I switched back to this domain for my blog I started posting stand-alone short posts without a title and pictures.

I like the way it’s going. I post more frequently.

The Daily Beast: ”Dearie, a semi-retired federal judge in Brooklyn who’s playing the role of temporary referee, wants to speed up the process and get federal agents back on track. And while Trump has been alleging on social media that he already declassified the records he swiped from the White House, Dearie is demanding that Trump put up or shut up.”

The judge that setup this whole mess by allowing for a Special Master was just passing the buck. It’s nice to see Judge Dearie call B.S.

It’s amazing how big a grifter, gangster, bully, TFG is. He really does deserve some jail time, of course he won’t get any, but he deserves some.

The Iconfactory : ”Introducing Wallaroo - the quickest and easiest way to browse and set wallpapers on your iOS devices. The Iconfactory has been crafting custom wallpapers for the Mac and iOS community for over 25 years, and now we’ve packaged them up in a fun, handy app that’s available today on the iOS App Store.”

I’m a huge fan of The Iconfactory. I’ve been a Twitterrific user for years and years and years and I’m composing this post using Tot, their simple note taking app.

When I saw the post for Wallaroo I installed it straight away and subscribed. I love seeing a subscription that is going to provide me with high quality iPhone wallpapers for the length of my subscription, one year.

I’m currently rocking the Jack-O-Lantern from the Spectral Selfies collection. It’s a beautiful piece of work.

Highly recommended.

I was also surprised to see Apple relax the rules around the Dynamic Island (Do you say Dynamic Island in a big booming voice in your head or is it just me?)

Regardless. It’s nice to see Apple allow for this whimsical treatment of the island.

Who know, next week they may reject it? 🤷🏻‍♂️

The Washington Post: ”The issue Wednesday went far beyond a single statue. Residents — neighbors, families — plunged into an emotional discussion about identity and who gets to define it, provoking a heated defense of local heritage. Much of it was couched in an unreconstructed view of history in which the Lost Cause is noble, the Confederacy was a bastion of states’ rights and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was an unprincipled butcher.”

This is something I really hate about the South. There is a reality distortion field around this so called heritage. Yeah, it’s a heritage of slavery. The imprisonment and mistreatment of human beings to serve your needs. It’s pathetic.

Every one of these Jim Crowe era statues and monuments need to be destroyed. Melt them down and make them something beautiful or put them in a museum to shame them. It would be a museum similar to the Holocaust Museum. We can’t forget the Civil War and we need to tell it for what it was. It was all about slavery.

The Confederacy was a disgusting attempt to overthrow the government. It’s a stain on our history.

Gotta give this asshole props for being honest enough to say what these right wing extremists believe. Most of the MAGA’s dance around the subject. Not this dude. He comes right out and says “I’m a racist bastard.”

Disgusting.

ESPN: ”CLEVELAND – Nobody, at least still living, knows for sure how Brownie the Elf came to be the first official mascot of the Cleveland Browns some 76 years ago.”

Let’s end on a happy note, shall we?

I know Brownie the Elf is controversial in Cleveland and around the country but gosh darnit I’m here for it! Not every NFL team needs some macho mascot.

I hope the dress him up for the holidays. A Christmas elf would be nice.

Oh, I also really love that he covers a gigantor part of the field. Nicely done Cleveland.

Now, let’s get him on the helmets. 😁

Tiny Apple Core

Saturday Morning Coffee

FrapIt’s early in the Fahrni household as I’m composing this post. I’ve been waking up fairly early since the knee surgery and this morning is no exception.

Overall things have been moving in the right direction. My movement is definitely improving and my pain levels are way, way, down.

Since I’ve become more mobile I was able to make coffee on my own this morning with the aid of my walker. There has to be a good old man with walker joke in there somewhere. 👨🏼‍🦳

CNN: ”The Justice Department removed 11 sets of classified documents from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence while executing a search warrant this week for possible violations of the Espionage Act and other crimes, according to court documents unsealed and released on Friday.”

Of course TFG will get off without so much as a scratch. My faith in our democratic institutions is waning. I fear future historians — if they’re allowed to exist — will struggle to understand how we could piss it all away.

MotorTrend: ”Out of the 8.9 million barrels of gasoline consumed daily in the U.S. on average, only 1.8 million gallons, or approximately 20 percent, actually propel an internal combustion vehicle forward. The other 80 percent is wasted on heat and parasitic auxiliary components that draw away energy. As the world begins its shift to EV proliferation, the good news is electric vehicles are far more energy efficient on the road.”

On a positive note, EV’s are good! YAY! 🥳

Would I like to have one? Yep, I certainly would. I’m very cheap when it comes to cars so I’ll be waiting for the prices to drop dramatically before considering purchase of one.

Eventually we’ll have one.

The Verge: ”Last week, California’s DMV accused Tesla of falsely advertising its Autopilot and FSD features, alleging that the company made ‘untrue or misleading’ claims about its vehicles’ autonomous driving capabilities. The DMV’s action could result in the suspension of Tesla’s licenses to produce and sell cars in California, but the agency may not go that far.”

Speaking of electric vehicles. It seems Tesla is finally receiving the scrutiny they need to make their cars safer.

This curmudgeon believes Full Self Driving care are a pipe dream without full infrastructure support. That means roads should know to support cars with self driving capacity. Two way, active, communication.

Felix Krause: ”The iOS Instagram and Facebook app render all third party links and ads within their app using a custom in-app browser. This causes various risks for the user, with the host app being able to track every single interaction with external websites, from all form inputs like passwords and addresses, to every single tap.”

Meta(Facebook), what a scumbag company.

They need that user data so badly they implemented their own browser code. Of course if you open pages using the external browser, Safari, this scummy practice doesn’t work.

I really hope Beto O’Rourke can pull a rabbit out of a hat and win the Texas Gubernatorial election this year.

I know some folks needed their fainting couches when they heard someone say “motherf*cker”, but don’t say a word when there is a mass murder in their state.

To me this says we have a man, a very serious man, trying to solve serious problems against the backdrop of extremism.

Dropping a curse word in the proper context can drive home a point.

It was perfect.

Variety: ”Disney has set pricing and date for the U.S. launch of the version of Disney+ with ads, while also hiking the monthly price of the Disney+ tier with no ads. It’s also going to raise rates for Hulu — both ad-supported and ad-free versions — and introduce new Disney Bundle options.”

Well it continues to look like all that cheap, awesome, streaming is finally coming to an end. I can’t blame these companies for ratcheting up prices and offering an ad supported tier.

I know we’ve had many discussions about which service(s) to drop and Disney+ seems to be a lock because of the grandkids. 😄

Congratulations to the entire 1Password team. What a huge milestone!

It’s so satisfying to ship a new product. I haven’t installed it yet, but most certainly will at some point. It is a really spectacular service and worth checking out if you need password management for your family and/or multi platform password management.

Ars Technica: ”With Tesla stock on a rebound, Musk has just sold $6.9 billion worth of shares in his electric car company, a move disclosed in regulatory filings on Tuesday. Musk got an average of $869 for the shares, which is significantly more than the $628 that TSLA shares were trading at in late May.”

Gotta get those billions somewhere to pay that big Twitter $54.20 per share price tag later in the year.

Also, Mr. Musk, I still have the perfect domain for you.

I hope your enjoyed your coffee and the links. ☕️

Tiny Apple Core

Open Source Tumblr?

Ribbit Now isn’t that something? I hope Mr. Mullenweg finds a way to federate WordPress and Tumblr with other systems, like Twitter.

But this, this is a neat way to start something like that.

We’re entering an interesting time. I feel like we’re on the crux of Twitter, WordPress, insert your favorite system here, becoming peer systems. Data flowing freely between them. Rolling up into whatever UI you prefer. Feed Reader, Twitter, Mastodon, Micro.blog. The list of potential rendering tools is as long the the list of publishing tools.

I watched Dune for the third time and the abrupt ending still drives me nuts.

I hope the second part is as good as the first.

The sleeper must awaken.

Code Bomb 💣

AHHHHHH!Daring Fireball: ”The way the Node community works, just blindly slurping in other people’s package updates without knowing what’s in them, continues to boggle my mind.”

In one of yesterdays posts I referred to the React Native community as loosey goosey.

The node.js community is one of the reasons why.

Always pin your dependencies.

Heck, I’ve worked on projects where we’ve committed binaries, after doing a ‘pod install’, to the repo so we wouldn’t get an accidental update. Folks understood not to install stuff in their local build so we wouldn’t get random crap.

Another thing I’ve done is just include the code right in my project, no dependency manager. Especially if the code is really small.

Anywho, enough of the Development World According to Rob. 😄

More React Native

Microsoft Cash Cow.

Microsoft: “React Native isn’t just for mobile! Check out how the Windows 11 Settings app is leveraging React Native for Windows to deliver new features and capabilities to users faster and with the same great visual fidelity as Windows 11.”

I find it so strange Microsoft would choose to use React Native for features in the OS. They have C#/.NET which is a wonderful choice and highly optimized for Windows development. It also works with Windows UI 3.0.

The only reasons I can come up with are: 1) they’d like to demonstrate it can be done. 2) they don’t have developers working on this “feature” with the skill set required to do it in C++ or C#?

Brain in a jarThat second one is a real stretch but I just can’t resolve in my own brain why you’d choose this over your own tools?

Red Shift: “So let’s cause some drama and ruffle some feathers, and talk about why Flutter is better than React Native… in all the ways that don’t matter.”

One glaring downside to Flutter is it doesn’t do native UI. It’s all rendered by them. That is a pretty crummy thing to do.

I could see giving this a go for RxCalc if it used native controls. It has decent support for using C++ libraries and RxCalc’s calculations are C++.

Ward Abbas: ”After 3.5 years of working at Wix, mobile R&D, infrastructure team and as an ex-owner of react-native-navigation, i can shed the light on many issues directly related to the RN architecture (new and old) and indirect stuff that the framework can easily cause bad stuff more than good.”

More negative feedback about React Native.

Part of my consternation regarding React Native is the ecosystem seems “loosey-goosey.”

Lots of node dependencies dragged along for the ride and node has its own issues.

However, to make things better you have to get involved.

Destroy Facebook

Facebook is putrid to its corePluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow: “Facebook is a rotten company, rotten from the top down, its founder, board and top execs are sociopaths and monsters, committers of non-hyperbolic, no-fooling crimes against humanity. They lie, they cheat, they steal. They are some of history’s greatest villains.”

Facebook. I really hate Facebook. I mean like really, really, hate Facebook.

I’d love to see the company die in a fire, a virtual nuclear explosion that caused such a cataclysmic event to occur no data, on any Facebook server, could be recovered. And by some miracle the entire catalog of Facebook source code magically disappeared.

That would be a magical day indeed.