Rob Fahrni

There is this weird part of me that wants to go back to writing cross platform C++. All of my cross platform work was for Windows and Linux. The itch has been there since I moved to iOS code — and I spent [two years in between iOS dev jobs working on a cross platform SDK for Pelco’s video encoding, decoding, and recording devices, all in C++. It never made it to Linux but I spent a whole lotta time working on Pelco’s X SDK. That was our version of a cross platform SDK we used internally to build a cool pipeline framework called MPF, or Media Processing Framework.

Why the draw. I’m not sure, but I think it’s probably because it’s the language I know best and I did a lot of work with the Windows API, which was also a strong suit.

I still haven’t, and don’t think I ever will, embrace the Mac like I did Windows. At the time I was a Windows dev the platform was simple, before COM and OLE 2.0. The Windows API was so straightforward.

None of that is true any longer. Not for Windows or C++. I bet I wouldn’t even recognize modern C++. C++ 11 changed A LOT in the language and it’s only advanced since. As for the Windows API, folks still use it but you should be doing something different, like using WinUI 3.

The thing is, I REALLY want to complete Stream for Mac and my new super top secret project: Rooster. Yeah, it’s not so top secret, and I finally gave it a code name, but if you know me you can probably suss out what it would be given my love of blogging.

You’d think since Stream for Mac looks this bad I’d get to work on it, you’d be wrong! 🤣

I really do need to get back to it. I started working on the add feeds modal and realized I needed to fix up some of the code that does that to work better on the Mac. It’s also forcing me to look at adding async/await to the app, which is something I really need to do.

What would be a good name for a blog editing tool? Just for writing, editing, and publishing. Native iOS and Mac. A companion to Stream, as it were.

Would a combined blogging and feed reader app be appealing?

Before doing Stream I was originally doing a blogging tool. I did Stream because a feed reader was easier than doing a blog editor. 🤣

It’s unfortunate I waste so much time thinking about these things but I want them for myself. I figure others might want them too.

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.

Who says you can’t have a retro look in your apps? 😃

NetNewsWire includes templates for the article viewer. One called Illinois looks super fun!

I’ve decided I’m going to work on revamping Arrgly starting tomorrow. It’s going to get a new name, Squish (I think), and the UI is going to be 100% SwiftUI (worst name ever) because I need to learn SwiftUI and Arrgly has always been my playground app.

Once I’ve completed it I’m going to start working on Stream for Mac in SwiftUI and see if I can complete it before the end of 2023. 🤞🏼

Wish me luck. 🍀

Time to sip some coffee and write. It’s that quiet time of the morning I love. Let’s get to it.

This week has been a split in my various timelines; Mastodon, Twitter, and RSS Feeds between the war in Ukraine, Elon Musk bungling management of Twitter, and the mid term elections in the United States. It’s been quite a week.

The Guardian

“In extraordinary scenes, crowds of jubilant residents greeted Ukraine’s armed forces as they reached the centre of Kherson, as Russia’s retreat from the key strategic city appeared to have descended into chaos.”

Let’s go Ukraine! 🇺🇦

Vox

“Democrats outperformed history and expectations with a surprisingly strong midterm elections performance Tuesday, with the promised red wave nowhere to be found.”

This is a real relief. Democrats may lose the house but it looks like the Senate may remain in control of the Democrats and leaves me hopeful we can still save Democracy.

One more term for Biden should keep TFG away from running again.

Platformer

”Everything went from bad to worse at Twitter on Thursday. Today let’s talk about a truly chaotic 24 hours at the company, and the mounting fears over what it means for the service that still serves as the heartbeat of the global news cycle.”

There are so many wonderful hot takes I could post so I’ll probably do another Elon/Twitter hot takes post.

What a complete mess. Either Twitter will go down in a great ball of flames or it will be the most masterful recovery in tech industry history.

Possible outcomes, ranked by likelihood (high to low)

1) Twitter is sold for pennies on the dollar.

2) Bankers foreclose and Twitter goes bust.

3) Servers fail and Twitter goes dark.

4) Divine intervention saves Twitter.

5)Musk's plans somehow work.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) November 11, 2022

Anna Nicholson

“In a complete departure from my usual meanderings, I’m going to present an in-depth comparative review of eight iOS Mastodon/Fediverse apps.”

So, right, Mastodon. The growth on Mastodon has been huge since Musk took over Twitter.

I’m following folks like crazy! I’m up to 465 and I now have 307 folks following me. That is absolutely insane and I never thought I’d see if happen. It’s been so refreshing. The mood on Mastodon has been extremely hopeful and folks are getting along rather well. It’s fun to be there!

If you decide to join take your time finding an instance that’s right for you. There are so many to choose from.

If you’re adventurous consider starting your own! There are hosts out there who make it easy to maintain your instance. Just pay them a few bucks a month.

Alex Suzuki

“My mind is not a sponge anymore. I still love learning, but it does not come as easily as it used to. Take programming languages, for instance. I’ve come to accept that after almost two decades of writing code, I am not really an expert in any single one.”

I have never been as bright as Mr. Suzuki but I worked really hard at my craft and got decent at Windows programming in C and C++. I’ve worked in other environments like C#/.Net, Linux, and finally landing at home on iOS with Objective-C and Swift.

I’m still capable of learning new stuff but I’ve always been extremely slow to do it. I eventually get there it just takes time.

I relate so much to ”my brain is no longer a sponge.” Mine is not. I used to keep a lot of stuff in my head as I was coding. It was easy for me to keep code flow and logic all stuffed in my brain as I was adding new features. Not anymore. It hasn’t been that way for a very long time. Now I have to refresh my findings often and when I step away from code I’ve written it can take a while to get back in the swing of things. Why do you think Stream development takes so long? 😁

I can still do the work it’s just not as easy, or quick, as before.

Becoming an Engineering Director has been really good for me. I get to build up wonderful people and client relationships. I still get to solve technical problems and make recommendations but I no longer have to code them. It’s been a wonderful challenge in ways I never imagined.

Rolling Stone

“Donald Trump ended his pre-midterm rally blitz in disgusting fashion, calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “an animal,” championing the death penalty, and giddily imagining the prison rape of the journalist who reported on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn [Roe v. Wade.”

This guy cannot get near any government office ever again. He’ll destroy democracy.

Horror Hound

“One such monster maker is Mexican director, producer and author Guillermo Del Toro.”

This piece is about Cabinet of Curiosities. Kim and I just completed it. I really enjoyed it, each episode was around an hour in length, and ended without the possibility of each episode having a part two. It was refreshing and I hope we get another season of new stories. Yes, think Twilight Zone, or Stephen King’s Creep Show.

My favorite episodes were:

Episode 1: Lot 36 Episode 3: The Autopsy Episode 5: Pickman’s Model Episode 6: Dreams in the Witch House Episode 8: The Murmuring

Don’t get me wrong, they’re all good, but those stand out in my mind. Pickman’s Model and Dreams in the Witch House really stood out.

Check it out.

Facebook

“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history. I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1.”

Who’d of thunk Mark Zuckerberg would handle massive layoffs so well. Yeah, it terrible to see 11,000 folks out of work but at least he didn’t do it by sending them an email signed by Twitter. He put his name to everything.

Scripting News

“But as a writer, I can’t use a system that doesn’t do inbound RSS. It’s the inverse of the silo problem.”

At first I didn’t understand what Dave was after. I thought he wanted RSS to be used to thread a conversation like Twitter.

Dave just wants to populate his Twitter, Mastodon, and other social sites with an RSS feed. That’s a nifty idea especially if he could work with some of the smaller players to agree to a standard way to connect it. Basically the sites need a way to point to the feed, read the feed, parse, and display it. Done and done.

I like it.

The Grug Brained Developer

“big brain type system shaman often say type correctness main point type system, but grug note some big brain type system shaman not often ship code. grug suppose code never shipped is correct, in some sense, but not really what grug mean when say correct”

I love the Grug, whatever that is. If you’re a developer and need some levity this is the place to go.

Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.

We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022

Ya think?

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. 🤔

I don’t doubt that Twitter might be a bit overstaffed, but this seems more like an intentional act of destroying the company. https://t.co/rJvsdihDnc

— Jeff 🇺🇦 (@Darchmare) October 21, 2022

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.

Musk is dangerous. He has a very potent platform (even without owning Twitter) and is using it actively harm US & Western interests and support those of a brutal war criminal. Should he gain control of Twitter, the consequence for discourse/politics in the US will be v. damaging. https://t.co/fX0dvGAcCK

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) October 17, 2022

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.

Jack Black makes a young man’s day. Jack Black is the best of us… pic.twitter.com/K7svV4XezU

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) October 17, 2022

I have plenty of work to do on Stream, plenty. I have a list of features a mile long. Some submitted by the fine folks using Stream — thank you! — some right out of my goofy brain. Yes, I wish I could move faster, yes I’d like to do this full time. Yes, yes, yes!

The best I can do is muster is an hour here an hour there. Anywho, I’m putting this idea out here. It’s one I’ve added to the Stream list. It’s absolutely something I want.

Read Later

I use Pocket as my read later app. It plays a crucial role in collecting posts and news for Saturday Morning Coffee. What I’d really love to have is a read later feature in Stream. One of these decades it’ll happen.

Twitter Support

It would be much better if these features were part of Twitter.

First, I’d love to be able to follow Twitter Lists as if it were an RSS feed. This is a very selfish feature because I have a Twitter List called Politics. It has all my favorite news sources and other sources of politics. I made it because Politics can really stress me out, especially around election time. I’d like this so I could follow any list from any Tweeter, including my own. Of course it would be best to be able to do it without going through Twitter’s authentication system, but I supposed I need that so I can use the API.

Second, it love to have an extension to Stream that could unroll a Twitter thread into a nice single post. That’s it. That’s the feature.

Here’s what it would look like. This example used Thread Reader and Pocket. Stream could be great at this if its darned developer would get off his butt and write some code. 🙃

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

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.

BREAKING:

WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) -- Jury says Alex Jones should pay $965 million to people who suffered from his lies about the Sandy Hook school massacre.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 12, 2022

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.

Welp… that 5-minute montage the Jan 6 committee just played leads me to the conclusion that America did have a president on January 6th. Her name was Nancy Pelosi.

— Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid 😷 (@JoyAnnReid) October 13, 2022

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.

With one or two exceptions, I simply don't care about web sites that don't publish RSS feeds. RSS via the indispensible [@NetNewsWire](https://micro.blog/NetNewsWire) is how I stay abreast of the \*vast\* majority of web sites with content I care about. https://t.co/sluWtnoB3J

— Peter Cohen (@flargh) October 14, 2022

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. 😄

I should get my act together and get a TestFlight build of Stream put together. 😂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He also relays his SwiftUI experience.

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

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

A 10-year-old girl is raped. The State forces her to remain pregnant and tells her to consider it an “opportunity.”

This isn’t Iran. This isn’t Gilead. This isn’t hypothetical.

This happened today in Ohio.

— Gavi Begtrup (@GaviBegtrup) July 1, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Google is quietly coming to dominate the automaker OS market while Apple is showing Figma screenshots no one’s biting on https://t.co/mWNPyVIrbk

— nilay patel (@reckless) June 30, 2022

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

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

Something I’ve considered adding to Stream is the ability to follow Twitter lists.

The reason I’d like to have it is I have a Twitter list called Politics I’d like to follow.

I thought this could be an interesting, differentiating, feature.

Of course there are many features on my list. So many it’s honestly overwhelming when I think about them all.

Some others include; iCloud syncing, Feedbin, Feedly, Labels, Filtering, and many, many more.

So much time, so few features. Scratch that, reverse them. So many features, so little time.

Y’all ready to see the bump Stream got when Musk announced he was buying Twitter!

Drumroll please. 🥁

Yep, I got that nice day of three downloads!

I am greateful folks do take the time to consider Stream. 🙏🏼

NetNewsWire Blog: “Our mission is to make the best RSS reader that we like making. We value stability, high performance, clarity, and lots of figurative air and space rather than a mélange of features.”

I love how Brent and the NNW team hold true to what they believe – and what they want – a feed reader to be.

If you haven’t checked out NNW you really should, it’s a great product.

A week in the life of Stream, my feed reader.

My favorite bit to look at is what Territories folks are in. I love that my app is being used – at least downloaded – all over the world.

I think about localization often. What languages would I start with? German seems like a good start, but based on the numbers Chinese would be a better bet.