Rob Fahrni

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Nothing much to say this week! Hope you enjoy the links.

Whakkee

I’m fed up with every other website telling me “we value your privacy”, and then showing me an opt-out list of hundreds of vendors they’d like to share my information with. If it’s free, you’re the product. Even when it’s not free, that seems to be the case.

I think a lot of us are in the same boat as Whakkee, but they’re doing something about it.

Cabel Sasser

This post is about a found mural, a lost artist, and a conference talk. It’s the full story of Wes Cook and The McDonald’s Mural. Grab a beverage, sit back, relax, and thank you for joining me.

Read the post and make sure you go watch Cabel’s XOXO presentation. It is a beautiful story and Cabel is an excellent story teller. He’s also so full of joy and laughter. It’s such a good watch!

Witney Seibold • Slashfilm

“Mimic” hit theaters late in the summer of 1997. It was Guillermo del Toro’s second feature-length directorial effort after his debut on the acclaimed 1992 vampire flick “Cronos,” as well as his first movie fully in English. Based on “Mimic,” the world wouldn’t have been able to predict that its director would go on to become a beloved cult icon and legit Hollywood darling in subsequent decades.

I like this movie and so does my wife. We saw it in theaters together and I think I need to go purchase it for our collection. 😁

NetNewsWire Blog

NetNewsWire 1.0 for Mac shipped 23 years ago today! 🎸🎩🕶️

Happy Birthday NetNewsWire! You’re buying the beer! 🍻

Congratulations Brent Simmons and the NNW team. It really is a beautiful piece of work and the granddaddy of Mac feed readers.

Fred Lambert • Electrek

Ferrari has officially named its first all-electric vehicle: the Ferrari Luce. The Italian automaker unveiled parts of the interior design today in San Francisco, showcasing a cabin co-designed with Jony Ive’s creative collective LoveFrom that prioritizes physical controls over touchscreens.

The work by LoveFrom is incredible. It’s a very nice mix of digital and analog cockpit. 😘

Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi • The Athletic

Anthony Alfredo said he’d only cried tears of joy like this twice in his life: when his daughter, Everleigh, was born in November and when he made the Daytona 500 on Thursday night. Except less than an hour after one of his most triumphant moments, Alfredo received crushing news. His finish in Thursday’s qualifying race was disallowed because of a technical violation on his No. 62 car, and Alfredo was sent home for Sunday’s Great American Race instead.

The Daytona 500 is the biggest race of the NASCAR season and it just happens to be the first race of the season. Weird right?

Anywho, after qualifying there are two mini races on Thursday called Duels that allow racers to improve their position and let what are called Open Cars race their way into the show on Sunday. There were six open cars trying to get in and two spots to fill. Anthony Alfredo filled one of those spots. It’s a shame a small technicality eliminated them. 😔

Nolan Lawson

You could abstain out of moral principle. And that’s fine, especially if you’re at the tail end of your career. And if you’re at the beginning of your career, you don’t need me to explain any of this to you, because you already use Warp and Cursor and Claude, with ChatGPT as your therapist and pair programmer and maybe even your lover. This post is for the 40-somethings in my audience who don’t realize this fact yet.

Lean into LLMs in your day job if you’re employed by a company like mine. It’s a place where we do client work for big name brands and our company encourages its use.

I’ve been on a very lean team, four developers, a Product Manager, and a part time Lead, and the team is cranking out high quality code faster than I’ve seen it done in a career of almost 40 years.

It’s not perfect out of the gate and can take coaxing to make changes you’d like but the first pass is usually extremely good. Yes, I’ve tweaked stuff by hand but it’s mostly what I want right away.

I may even use it on my personal projects a bit. Maybe.🙂

Todd Vaziri via Mastodon

Framestore’s very good visual effects breakdown of their work on “F1” (2025).

Framestore did incredible work for F1 the movie. The video Todd links to is short and well worth a few minutes of your life.🏎️

Darko Mesaroš

Here’s a crazy idea, can I expose and host a website on a 2001 Sun MicroSystems Netra X1 SPARC Server? Yes, yes I can. Let’s get into how I set this up.

I love the idea of using old hardware like this. I’ve often wished operating systems could freeze in a way and only be modified to fix bugs, enhance security, and improve performance. I really only want this for servers. Don’t keep piling on features that bloat it.

Could you imagine something like an Intel 286, 386, or 486 running a static site like a blog or simple small business site? I can and it sounds amazing to me.

Robert Reich

This is what a rigged economy looks like.

America. Land of the free, home of the Oligarchs.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I hope you enjoy the links. 🙂

Freddie Harrison • Sketch Blog

Here are five ways we’ve been using the MCP server internally at Sketch. We’ve included prompts we’ve tried for you to copy and adapt for your own use cases.

We’re Claude Code fans here — so that’s what our examples use and what we’ve tested with — but you can use any MCP-compatible client.

I have a couple friends who used to work on Sketch and I hope they’re proud of everything they dumped into this incredible design product.

This piece talks about the design side of using the MPC but I’d love to see it in use to generate UI.

I’ve been doing that with Figma and Claude code recently and it does a decent job. Not perfect, but decent.

I believe setting up your design project properly will go a long way toward making code generation much better.

Benj Edwards • Ars Technica

On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Chief Marketing Officer Kate Rouch complained on X after rival AI lab Anthropic released four commercials, two of which will run during the Super Bowl on Sunday, mocking the idea of including ads in AI chatbot conversations. Anthropic’s campaign seemingly touched a nerve at OpenAI just weeks after the ChatGPT maker began testing ads in a lower-cost tier of its chatbot.

The commercial is really well done and made me laugh and shake my head because I could see a company doing something just like this. 🤣

Maybe OpenAI isn’t going to do it like this, but it’s still gross.

Tasha Robinson • Polygon

Mark Fischbach’s unlikely box-office hit Iron Lung caught the conventional film world by surprise. An adaptation and expansion of David Szymanski’s short, vibes-driven indie game of the same name, the sci-fi horror movie was self-financed, self-distributed, and marketed largely through Fischbach’s YouTube channel

Sign me up. I want to see this.

Charlotte Rene Woods • Virginia Mercury

A bill by outgoing Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, that would remove Confederate monuments from Virginia’s Capitol Square advanced in the state legislature Wednesday. 

Every Confederate monument reminds us of another dark time in our democracy. A time when the nation went to war over keeping people as pets.

The Union won. The Confederacy lost. Quit celebrating that. Celebrate the end of slavery.

Remove every last monument and melt them down.

Cody Hammon • Jo Blo

Nina Kiri played the character Alma on 28 episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, and now she has the lead role in a horror film called Undertone, which is stirring up a lot of buzz.

I’m looking forward to this film. It looks great!

Omar Elsayed

Ever wondered why some SwiftUI views feel buttery smooth while others… don’t? I’ve been asking myself this question a lot lately.

I love simple, concise, examples like this that provide instant performance boosts. 💪🏼

Joseph Cox • 404 Media

Lockdown Mode is a sometimes overlooked feature of Apple devices that broadly make them harder to hack. A court record indicates the feature might be effective at stopping third parties unlocking someone’s device. At least for now.

When you go to a protest make sure you get this setup beforehand. And, if you can, setup an old phone with its own phone number and Apple ID and take that instead. It’s what I did for the DC No Kings rally in case things went sideways and I was arrested.

Wil Wheaton

Having a gun and being able to carry it wherever you want is a core and fundamental right of every U.S. citizen, or anyway that is what I have been told all my life by the same people who now use the mere existence of Pretti’s alleged gun as proof his murder was justified

I had this very argument with someone yesterday. It’s sickening that some the Second Amendment crowd are victim blaming.

Why would Alex Pretti not have his legally concealed weapon with him? I bet her carried it everyday. Why would that day be any different?

Second Amendment freaks, you can’t have it both ways.

Matt Gemmell

I recently wrote about the decline in my opinion of Apple. This presents me with an ethical problem, because we’re heavily invested in the company. We don’t own any of its stock, but we’re very much entangled in its products and services ecosystem.

I’m seeing a number of folks starting the process of switching to Linux. Perhaps now Linux will get more folks working on the UI and really make it something special.

Ryan Cooper • The American Prospect

One year ago this month, I predicted that Tesla was cooked. Now the verdict is in, and there is a distinctly charred odor coming from the Austin area. Sales are down, yearly revenue is down for the first time ever, and quarterly profits fell by a whopping 61 percent, to just $840 million. That gives it a price-to-earnings ratio of 297—a ludicrous figure, historically speaking. According to a report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the company has paid precisely zero federal taxes on its earnings in both 2025 and 2024, so the company is certainly being helped along by federal forbearance. But things are getting dire.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. 🤣

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Well the day of sleet we got on Sunday really left us in a mess. We had somewhere between 8-10in of sleet on the ground, which turned into a crust of ice overnight. Temperatures have been frigid so that ice continues to thicken. Breaking it out is a pain so I hired someone with a skid steer and he did a great job clearing off our driveway. The gentleman who did the work is just a random dude helping out his neighbors. Absolutely worth the $50. Our youngest daughter is terrified I’m gonna drop dead while shoveling snow, like a man down the street did last week. 😔

Work is fine. I’m on the second week of a new project on a very focused, small, team. We are using LLMs to great effect. No, we are not vibe coding. We’re all processional software developers who know how to build product. We all check our work and will instruct the LLM when it needs to be corrected. It’s working better than I expected and our code matches the work, in terms of style and architecture, as the work done previously. It’s also accelerated our delivery. 😀

Hope you enjoy the links.

Andrew Dalton and Jocelyn Noveck • AP

Catherine O’Hara, a gifted Canadian-born comic actor and “SCTV” alum who starred as Macaulay Culkin’s harried mother in two “Home Alone” movies and won an Emmy as the dramatically ditzy wealthy matriarch Moira Rose in “Schitt’s Creek,” died Friday. She was 71.

This one hit me because I’ve always had a bit of a crush on her. She’s so funny and seems to be a genuinely kind person. I also find her to be very beautiful.

The last thing I saw her in was The Last of Us in season two. It was a great role for her. A little different role but she was so perfect for it.

RIP. 💔

Nilay Patel • The Verge

On today’s episode of Decoder, I’m talking about the bidding war over Warner Bros. Discovery, which is the biggest story in the entertainment industry right now, and for good reason. It has pretty much everything you could want in a buzzy Hollywood saga — big names, big money, and big drama.

I really hope Netflix is able to win this battle because Paramount would be such a crummy deal for WB. Just look at how they’ve ruined CBS, once a trusted news source is now a running joke.

Can you imagine what they’d do to the likes of CNN and HBO? They’d become dumpster fires, full of extreme right wing talking points and entertainment. No thanks.

Kevin Chan • AP

Amazon is slashing about 16,000 corporate jobs in the second round of mass layoffs for the ecommerce company in three months.

The tech massacre continues. As an older gentleman I’ve mentioned how much this terrifies me. Not only does it terrify me, it terrifies young folks as well.

I’m very grateful for my gig.

Sebastian de With • via Threads

Some big personal news: I’ve joined the Design Team at Apple.So excited to work with the very best team in the world on my favorite products. ✌️

I’m more than a little surprised Sebastian returned to Apple. He cofounded Lux Optics with Benjamin Sandofsky and they managed to create a most beloved camera app named Halide.

My hope is the Apple Design Team reached out to Sebastian because of his piece describing what he hoped the new iOS 26 design would look like. The post predates WWDC 2025 when Apple announced the extremely controversial Liquid Glass and I think Sebastian’s design is so much better than Liquid Glass.

If he’s not there to work in his design to the various OS’es, then why hire him? 🤞🏼

Om Malik

Power. Comfort. A seat at the table. Or, in this case, the crushing weight of a trillion-dollar valuation that demands constant appeasement. MG Siegler puts it plainly: Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, is captured. And so is the rest of the technology community. This is what happens when valuations trump values.

I would hate to be a CEO in the era of Marmalade Messiah. I don’t know Tim Cook, or any “important” people for that matter, but I had hoped he would push back against this horrible administration.

He’s taken a stand when it was easy but taking a stand when it’s difficult is what leaders do.

If he didn’t feel he could uphold the standards expected of an Apple employee then he should’ve retired. Heck, he should retire.

Maybe he believes in Trump and the horrible things they’re doing? It’s hard to believe he’s boot licking just to serve shareholders?

It makes me wish macOS and iOS weren’t Apple products.

Max Tani • Semafor

In recent weeks, rumors have flown around the newsroom about the size of the cuts and when they would be implemented, but the conversation reached a fever pitch late last week, aided by unverified reports about section-wide eliminations. The Post has largely remained silent, leaving staff to read the tea leaves in conversations between individual editors and reporters: Some editors have quietly been suggesting to staff across various verticals, including sports, that it may not be a bad idea to begin looking for other jobs, Semafor has learned, and one Post source said editors would not answer questions about whether there would be a sports section after the cuts at all.

Here’s another boot licking oligarch ruining an American gem.

At one point I know Kara Swisher was interested in putting together a group to buy the Washington Post. What happened to that?

The Post needs an owner who can guide it through this dark time in American history and tell the difficult stories that need telling.

Doug Gregor • Swift.org

There are many interesting, useful, and fun C libraries in the software ecosystem. While one could go and rewrite these libraries in Swift, usually there is no need, because Swift provides direct interoperability with C. With a little setup, you can directly use existing C libraries from your Swift code.

I need to sit down and read and understand how this works but to be perfectly honest creating a tiny Objective-C class that calls the C code is super easy and the resulting code is easy to use from Swift.

Your mileage may vary. 😃

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

🚨 BREAKING NEWS: It’s Sunday 🚨

We had our grandkids yesterday so it gets very busy in the Fahrni household. That’s why I’m publishing this on Sunday.

I started a new project this week and can’t really say more than that. It’s another React Native project with a very short timeframe so it’s time to knuckle down and go to work. 👷‍♂️

We’re getting ready for a real cold spell leading into next week accompanied by possibly 18-24” of snow. 🥶

Folks at work have labeled it snowmageddon. 😂

Some call it Southern Winter. 🤣

My biggest worry is loss of power. It’s not just snow. We’re expected to get an ice storm as well. That leads to complete chaos. Here’s hoping the power stays on. 🙏🏼

I hope you enjoy the links.

Ashur Cabrera

I’ll cover some specifics like which tools I’m using, but won’t dive into implementation details or code snippets. Instead, my hope is that a high-level overview might plant a seed for someone else to try a new idea, or to finally fix that thing that’s been bugging them about their blog.

Ashur is someone I have a great deal of respect for and he’s a talented person, especially when it comes to the web. He creates beautiful, creative, websites you can’t label as boring.

I really love it when folks share how they produce their weblogs. No two workflows and tooling are the same. It’s a wonderful thing. 🧰

Varun Santhanam

Working with JSON in Swift can feel like fighting gravity. Swift is modern, powerful, expressive, and has perhaps the best type system of any programming language. But when it comes to working with JSON, especially unstructured or semi-structured payloads, you’re left with tools that are either clumsy, slow, or both. It barely feels like Swift. I wanted something better. When I couldn’t find it, I built it myself.

I’ve never found the JSON support offered by Codable to be slow but there are definitely software developers with the low level talent and who are speed demons who won’t put up with what they notice is slow.

This library might be for you. 🐦‍🔥

Henry Desroches

We were given this vast, holy realm of self-discovery and joy and philosophy and community; a thousand thousand acres of digital landscape, on which to grow our forests and grasslands of imagination, plant our gardens of learning, explore the caves of our making. We were given the chance to know anything about anything, to be our own Prometheus, to make wishes and to grant them.

But that’s not what we use the Internet for anymore. These days, instead of using it to make ourselves, most of us are using it to waste ourselves: we’re doom-scrolling brain-rot on the attention-farm, we’re getting slop from the feed.

More and more folks are discovering the power and freedom of the blog and RSS. Some of us never left but may have faltered a bit during the very dominant Twitter years. I’m guilty of that but I love my blog now more than ever. ❤️

Dave Rogers

I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose most of my 11 readers if I start writing about Nazis and fascists exclusively, but there’s only so many places I can direct this rage and incomprehension at the absence of rage all around me.

Write about the state of America and our failed democracy all you want, Dave. I’m still reading and agree with you more than ever. I’ve always loved your voice and how you share it through your writing. ❤️

Yosh • Unix Dog

C doesn’t have an official documentation channel, nor does it have syntax or standard library constructs that encourage one particular way of doing things. from this, there’s a bunch of inconsistencies in how people do things, and–especially in the early days of the language and standard library–the landscape and general practice is quite error prone.

It’s true. C is for folks who want to do it all. At least that was mostly my experience as I learned C and later C++. Platform vendors supplied us with frameworks and SDKs that gave us the building blocks we needed to do our jobs. No package managers.

⚠️ POLITICS BELOW HERE ⚠️

The Nobel Peace Prize

The medal and the diploma are the physical symbols confirming that an individual or organisation has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize itself – the honour and recognition – remains inseparably linked to the person or organisation designated as the laureate by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Yeah, what more can we say? Marmalade Messiah is a sociopathic narcissist. It’s all about him but he’s fake as hell and a hollow shell of a man.

Not to mention bully, rapist, pedophile, failed businessman, convicted felon, and now party to murder in Minnesota.

Just a garbage human who’d already be dead or in prison if he hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his lying mouth. 🤬

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Last week was my final week on a two plus year project to integrate React Native into native iOS and Android code bases and ultimately migrate to a 100% React Native application. That goal was accomplished at the end of 2025, now we hand it over to our client so they can develop everything in pure React Native. It was a very enjoyable ride but our involvement with the project is scaled way back now. Some folks are still working on it but most of us will be moving on. To what? I have no idea at the moment. We’ll see!

Enjoy the links!

James Hibberd • The Hollywood Reporter

Martin wanted to build an empire — and did. Yet “productive” is the last word any Thrones fan would use to describe him. The author’s worry that he wouldn’t be able to finish Winter has borne out to a staggering degree. His tortured inability to “finish the book, George!” — as online hordes regularly chide — is almost as impressive, in its way, as his success at doing everything else.

It’s hard to believe he’s still working on the final book. I’m not a big follower of Mr. Martin but he’s obviously a prolific writer, just a bit slow, that’s all.

I hope he’s able to complete his book and feel really great about it.

Jack McKessy and Michael Middlehurst-Schwartz • USA Today

The New York Giants have offered Harbaugh a five-year deal to become their next head coach, NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport reported Thursday morning. Harbaugh has already accepted the offer, which will make him one of the NFL’s highest-paid coaches, Rapoport reports.

I’m really happy for John Harbaugh. I think everyone knew he’d have his choice of teams given how consistent his teams have been over the years.

I hope he’s able to develop Jaxson Dart into an A-tier quarterback.

Stevie Bonifield • The Verge

One year on Linux, two distros, a few tears, four desktop environments, and zero regrets about leaving Windows.

I’ve seen more people moving to Linux than ever before. Microsoft seems to be doing its best to make Windows an Enterprise only operating system. It’s really very sad.

I started my Windows development journey with Windows 2.1 and it really took off with Windows 3.0.

I worked at Microsoft on Windows for Workgroups version 3.11 in the International Group as a Test Engineer.

I left there for Visio and was a Tester for Visio 1.0.

I owe a lot to Windows professionally. Microsoft always had a great developer story with great SDK support. Now it’s a pretty strange company that doesn’t have a unified developer story and doesn’t even use its own tools for development of its own products. 😔

I think I can get the core bits of Stream ported to Linux, then I’d need to build a UI. 🤣

Dave Winer

I’ve been watching Jake Savin for the last couple of months using Claude.ai and ChatGPT to create a headless version of Frontier that will run on Linux and current versions of MacOS.

This is extremely interesting. There are projects that come along once in a while that I’d like to contribute to, this is one, but I already have enough on my plate with Stream and [Secret Project].

Will Graves • AP News

Mike Tomlin was an unknown when the Pittsburgh Steelers plucked him from obscurity in 2007 and handed the young and charismatic Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator one of the most stable jobs in sports.

Mike Tomlin has been such a constant at Pittsburgh it’s hard to see him leave but I’m happy for him.

I hope he has an amazing retirement.

Dan Moren • Six Colors

Pixelmator Pro is perhaps the biggest part of this announcement, as many have wondered what was in store for the graphics app after its parent company’s acquisition by Apple in late 2024. The Mac app comes to the iPad for the first time with Apple Pencil support, and there’s a new Warp tool across all versions.

This bundle seems a bit strange to me.😃 I can see having the high end creative tools in one bundle but the iWorks apps seem strange in the same group. They seem like should be two separate offerings to me.

Oh, it’s also kind of strange they’re keeping the old versions around and you can still do a one time purchase of them.

AJ Dellinger • Gizmodo

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has seen his net worth skyrocket by nearly $100 billion since the AI boom started a couple of years ago, would really appreciate it if you would stop talking about the potential harms of the technology that’s supercharged his fortune. It’s really harshing his vibe.

I figure he’ll get over it somehow. 🤣

Luke Smith • The Athletic

At the end of his gruelling, podium-less first season with Ferrari in 2025, Hamilton needed that break and reset more than ever. Because 2026 will be the year that defines the late stages of his storied career, and the unification between the most successful driver in F1 history and the sport’s most successful, iconic team.

Mr. Hamilton is toward the end of his career. This may be the natural drop off in talent that comes with age.

I like F1 but I pay more attention to NASCAR and I’m witnessing that with Kyle Busch as well. The man is seven wins from 70 and I’d love to see him make it, but I feel like he won’t, which is a real bummer.

I’d be really happy to see Lewis Hamilton win another championship and walk away on top. Of course these folks are the best in the world and can’t walk away. 😁

Annie Snider • Politico

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs on Monday called for curtailing her state’s lucrative tax incentives for data centers and imposing new water use fees on the growing industry.

This is good. Water is a very precious resource and needs to be treated accordingly. In fact, water poor areas like California, Arizona, Nevada, etc shouldn’t have big AI data centers. Put them in Alaska or northern states that have cold winters. As if I’m some expert on cooling data centers. 🤣

Daring Fireball

Emphasizing that leaving X and Grok available in the App Store and Play Store is directly contradictory to Apple and Google’s stated reasons for maintaining control over software distribution is a good pressure point. Do they selectively enforce content moderation based on whims and/or shifting political winds, or rigorously enforce the plain language of their own content guidelines? Which is it? It can’t be both.

Apple and Google are disappointing their fans. I know I’m disappointed as are many geeky developer and pundit types.

Space Karen needs to be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.

Johnathan M. Gitlin • Ars Technica

The outcry from Bolt fans was loud and vociferous, and in July 2025 GM CEO Mary Barra announced that it would be coming back, with a new Ultium-based battery pack. But only in the Bolt EUV body style—if you prefer the original hatchback, you’re out of luck.

I really like this little car and think it’s absolutely perfect as a commuter car but it’s waaaaay too expensive. How can Chevrolet bring the price down to under $20k for the base model?

That would be incredible. Cars are way too costly. Especially EV’s. I’d imagine that’s part of the reason people still drive gas powered vehicles.

Dave Winer

If I were making a Bluesky client, I would get together with the other independent developers who are creating those clients and agree on adding features that Bluesky itself doesn’t support and be compatible with each other.

I like the idea of this it’s just too bad all of these platforms don’t have a way for third parties to add their own RSS elements. E.G. Dave has introduced a new RSS element named ‘source:markdown’ that is the same as ‘description’ except it’s formatted as Markdown. Pretty cool, aye?

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

This week has been a tough one. Our country is going right down the toilet with the current administration pulling the handle.

They’re just itching for a reason to declare marshal law and the events of this week with the murder of Renee Good by ICE officer Jonathan Ross puts us one step closer to one of us killing one of them.

At some point it has to stop or we will go down that road.

Curt Devine, Thomas Bordeaux, Allison Gordon, Kyung Lah • CNN

As he approached Renee Good’s vehicle on a Minneapolis street on Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross held up his phone camera and recorded video.

Less than a minute later, he was still recording when he drew his weapon and fatally shot Good as she accelerated.

This whole situation is disgusting and vile. The ICEhole who killed Ms. Good should be prosecuted to the full extent possible. He committed murder in plain sight and we have him on video doing it.

Sean Heber

I feel like if Iconfactory brought in that much or sold that many copies of any of our software in one year we’d be throwing a freakin’ party.

Sean is one of the amazing software developers behind beloved titles like Twitterrific and Tapestry. The Iconfactory is full of incredible folks; support staff, designers, and devs. At last count the company is six incredible people working their tails off to produce some of the best software on the Mac and iOS and they’re always struggling to keep the doors open.

Yes, that’s how tough modern software development shops have it.

I wish I were a really rich man. I’d give them a bunch of money, just because.

If you have design or app development needs, please, visit my friends at The Iconfactory and hire them. You will not be disappointed.

Yes, I love this shop so much I’ve tried to get a job there a couple times. 😄 They’ve never had open positions and I don’t think I have the chops to match Craig Hockenberry and Sean Heber, but I’d sure love to work with them. ❤️

I still think Apple should buy the company. Six amazing folks and an amazing catalog of apps in one nice little package. 😃

Dan Moren • Six Colors

It is absolutely unconscionable that, as of this writing, X is not only still on the App Store but is ranked #1 in “News”1 and that Grok is the #3 free app. Moreover, there has been—as far as I have seen—no public statement from Apple or Cook about this situation in the days, at least, over which it has unfolded. Probably because it is indefensible. Even, if at this point, they removed X/Grok from the store—which, don’t get me wrong, they absolutely should—the question would be “what took so long”?

I reported X for child porn at the App Store yesterday and you should too. Space Karen is a disgusting human being and everything he touches turns to amoral shit.

Toss their software out of the store until they fix it, Mr. Cook. You’re one of the largest most profitable companies in the world. Get off the MAGA train. 🤬

Anil Dash

The number one question I get from my friends, acquaintances, and mentees in the technology industry these days is, by far, variations on the basic theme of, “what the hell are we supposed to do now?”

Indeed. What are we supposed to do now? As of this writing I’m 58 years old with no hope of retirement and I’m in an industry going through a radical transformation because of LLMs. They’re damned useful today. What happens when/if they become useful enough I’m no longer needed?

As it stands that day hasn’t come. Humans still need to look over LLM work to make sure it’s correct. Use for everyday things is not trustworthy because it still makes stuff up. But, for software development is pretty darned good.

Every day I expect to be laid off. No, that’s not an exaggeration. I think about it every darned day and I hate it.

I only hope I can find a job when that happens. Being older doesn’t help.

There’s alway Starbucks. ☕️

Joan Westenberg

Before social media ate the internet, and before the internet ate everything else, and before everything else ate itself, blogs occupied a wonderful and formative niche in the information ecosystem. They were personal but public, permanent but updateable, long-form but informal. A blog post could be three paragraphs or thirty pages. It could be rigorously researched or entirely speculative. It could build an argument over weeks or months, with each post serving as a chapter in an ongoing intellectual project that readers could follow, critique, and respond to.

I love Joan’s writing. She’s so thoughtful and her writing is clear and often resonates with me. This piece is no exception. It’s excellent and you should read it. She has an RSS feed, as any great writer should have. Go subscribe now. 👍🏼

Jason Poitras • IntelliCAD Technology Consortium

AutoLISP® is often used to solve practical problems in CAD workflows, with small custom commands that save time and reduce repetitive work. What has traditionally been missing in IntelliCAD is a modern, developer-friendly way to write and debug those scripts. With IntelliCAD 14.0, the new VLISPcommand introduces a Visual LISP–style debugging workflow using Visual Studio Code, powered by the IntelliCAD LISP Debugger extension.

How cool is this? This is going to prove to be extremely useful for IntelliCAD LISP developers. They’re as close to a full IDE without writing an IDE as one could get and they’re leveraging extremely popular open source tools like. VS Code.

Oh, and they have an existing, built in, IDE that’s one of the best ever built: Visual Basic for Applications, or VBA. It’s an add-on developers dream platform. 😀

Kauy Ostlien • Daily Downforce

Brad Keselowski is set to miss the 2026 NASCAR Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium, following an injury suffered during the offseason, per a new report.

This is a bummer but I hope to see Mr. Keselowski healthy and ready to roll for Daytona.

I also like that they tapped Corey LaJoie to drive the 6 for The Clash at Bowman Gray.

If Mr. Keselowski isn’t ready for Daytona I’m curious to see how Mr. LaJoie fairs given the great equipment he’ll have. He’s always wanted to race in better equipment. Now may be his chance! 🚙

Daring Fireball

Nielsen’s post on MacOS 26 Tahoe’s tragic “icons for every menu item” design edict was published a month ago, before Nikita Prokopov’s post on the same subject yesterday. Both posts are crackerjack good, and complement each other. Nielsen makes the point that the Mac stood as a counter to platforms and systems that put icons next to every menu item. Of course Google Docs has icons next to every menu item. It sucks. Google sucks at UI design. We Mac users laugh at their crappy designs.

Tahoe’s design continues to be dragged through the muck. I don’t blame all the longtime Mac experts for being pissed off. Some developers are ignoring the new guidance and I don’t blame them for doing it. When someone uses your software and finds it messy, even if it’s the recommended way, they don’t see it as an Apple problem. They see it as the developers problem.

Jason Snell • Six Colors

Leaks from Apple’s supply chain have begun to strongly suggest the shape and size of the product we’ll call, for lack of a better name, the iPhone Fold. And since it’s likely going to be nine months before anyone holds one of these things in their hands, this seems like as good a time as any to consider the story Apple is likely to tell when it’s selling this device.

Whoa! While I don’t consider myself the target user for this device, I really do not like this form factor. It’s way too wide for my taste. It’s definitely more iPad than iPhone in my view.

Of course that mockup may not be anywhere close to the real design. I, for one, hope it isn’t. 🤞🏼

Ken Case • The Omni Group

Happy New Year! Ready for a productive 2026? We have just the thing: we’re pleased to share that a major upgrade of OmniOutliner is ready for you today!

Omni Group is another premier Mac and iOS shop and it’s really nice to see them release updates to their incredible software.

Congratulations! 🥳

Joe Roberts • Slashfilm

David Harbour explained how he and pretty much everyone else was caught off-guard by the popularity of season 1. “By the time we finished, we wrapped, I thought we wouldn’t get a second season,” he said. “We’d be the first Netflix show kind of ever to never get a second season. We thought no one would watch it, it was going to be a disaster.”

Wow. They thought it would be a flop and it becomes one of the most beloved shows Netflix has ever created, thanks, in part, to Mr. David Harbour.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Sorry I missed last weekend. I had the flu and it really kicked my butt. When Kim got up on Saturday morning I went back to bed and slept until 4:30 that afternoon. I needed it. I was wiped out. Sunday was even worse. I felt completely disconnected from my body. Really fuzzy brained, fever, chills, achy, and a lovely cough. That lasted for most of the week. I started feeling more myself on Thursday. Of course I’m back to work on Monday. 😂 I’m grateful I had the week to recover.

I hope you enjoy the links!

Carly Thomas and Abid Rahman • The Hollywood Reporter

James Ransone, the versatile character actor best known for his roles in The Wire, Tangerine, Generation Kill, It: Chapter Two and The Black Phone, died on Dec. 19. He was 46.

This really bummed me out because I thought Mr. Ransone was an incredible actor. It’s not mentioned above but my favorite character of his was Deputy So and So in Sinister.

RIP Deputy So and So. 🪦

Leave Substack

You should probably leave Substack. Here’s why and how.

Yes, you should 100% leave Substack. I can list so many amazing journalists who’ve created their presence on Substack. They don’t say they’ve created a blog, no, they say they’ve created a Substack which makes it even worse. They’re just blogs and, unfortunately, Substack created an environment attractive to writers because it has everything they need; a place to write, social features, and a way to make money doing it. All without lifting a finger to maintain servers or collect money from paid subscribers. It was smart of the founders, but it turns out the founders support some pretty disgusting people, like Nazis.🤬

Robert Lea • Space

Astronomers have made a truly mind-boggling discovery using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): a runaway black hole 10 million times larger than the sun, rocketing through space at a staggering 2.2 million miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per second).

Isn’t this incredible? It’s so difficult to wrap your brain around the idea that a black hole is traveling through space at that speed, creating a wake, and creating new stars as it goes. Just fascinating!🖤

Benj Edwards • Ars Technica

While the JavaScript language didn’t ship publicly until that September and didn’t reach a 1.0 release until March 1996, the descendants of Eich’s initial 10-day hack now run on approximately 98.9 percent of all websites with client-side code, making JavaScript the dominant programming language of the web.

Much to my chagrin JavaScript has become the de facto language of the web. At one time I’d hoped Common Language Infrastructure would become the way of the web, but it didn’t happen. Instead we got WebAssembly, which is fine, I just wish it had been CLI. It would’ve been great to be able to write code in C# or F# or whatever language supported CLI. JavaScript could’ve been CLI compliant.

It is what it is and if you want to do web, you gotta do JavaScript. ☕️

Lexington Herald Leader

Jim Beam, which is one of the largest makers of American whiskey in the world, is planning to shut down production in Happy Hollow in Clermont Jan. 1 through 2026.

Y’all can thank President Orange for this. Canadians have decided they don’t need to purchase American made Bourbon any longer and it’s hurting American Bourbon makers.

That’s not political. That’s just bad business.

Andru Marino • The Verge

With podcasting pivoting to video this year, the word used to describe an audio-only show is becoming meaningless.

Nope. Podcasting is still its own thing. It’s open, distributed via RSS, and all about audio. Now, perhaps I’m misguided with that third assertion? RSS is built to deliver any media type as an enclosure but it’s mostly been used to deliver podcasts.

Besides, how many podcasters with video casts use anything other than YouTube for distribution? I think it’s safe to say very few, if any.

Podcasting, like blogging before it, was created to be an open ecosystem. Sure, go ahead and monetize your podcast, but don’t lock it behind a special service that only supports a proprietary distribution mechanism. That is not podcasting, nor should it be used for the video version of it. Whatever that’s called. Calling it a Video Podcast may be the right thing to do, but being distributed via RSS is partly what would allow using the name Podcast for it.

Marshall Pruett • Racer

Katherine Legge used the momentum from her run at the 2024 Indianapolis 500 with Dale Coyne Racing to expand her career into NASCAR in 2025, and with the support of her sponsors, the Briton is keen to make a return to the Speedway.

I like Katherine Legge. She’s a very versatile driver who’s competed in the Indy 500 and NASCAR Cup Series races. I just wish she could find a full time NASCAR Cup ride. Last year she ran a few Cup races with backing from E.L.F. Cosmetics and I’d love to see them or another woman focused brand step up to give her the ability to run full time. She has what it takes, she just needs money, better equipment, and manufacturer support, like all other drivers. 😀

Maybe a new Dodge Cup team would be interested in having her full time. It would be really great to see! 🤞🏼

Lua.org

Here are the main changes introduced in Lua 5.5. The reference manual lists the incompatibilities that had to be introduced.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Lua, don’t know why. I just like how compact it is and how easy it is to include as a scripting language in other codebases. One of our junior developers at Pelco developed a tool for that allowed a developer to build media pipelines, using our custom media pipeline framework, by writing Lua instead of C++. It was all hosted inside a custom Qt app. It was a great tool mostly because Lua was easier to write and definitely improved developer experimentation and testing velocity. Not to mention the usefulness to the test team. 🧰

Christopher Goffard • Los Angeles Times

Alex Baber, a 50-year-old West Virginia man who dropped out of high school and taught himself codebreaking, now says he has cracked the Zodiac killer’s identity — and in the process solved the Black Dahlia case as well.

This is absolutely fascinating but we’ll never really know the truth of either case.

Perhaps Mr. Barber hit the nail on the head but it sure seems unlikely given the time they’ve gone unsolved and lack of a living suspect to verify it, assuming they’d confess.

Zac Bowden • Windows Central

Too many bugs. Too many changes. Too little control. Windows 11’s reputation might be at its lowest it’s ever been as 2025 comes to a close.

This is a real shame. I cut my teeth as a software developer on Windows and the Windows API. I owe my career to some amazing Windows developer who took me under their wing and taught me how to use those APIs to great effect. After all these years as an iOS developer I still believe I know the Windows API better than I do Cocoa.

I’d really love to see Microsoft put together a small team dedicated to unifying the user interface design and usability of Windows. Eliminate some old cruft and make it rock solid. The underlying foundation is so good to build on.

Embracing C# or Rust to do more work would be nice but there is a ton of C code to maintain and enhance and they need to transition all of Windows to using WinUI 3.

Perhaps they could start by replacing the React Native Start Menu with a brand new Rust based version? That would make for a good start.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Gracie decided 5:30 was wake-up time. I felt miserable. I’m definitely sick. Anywho, I started working on Saturday Morning Coffee and as soon as Kim woke up, I went back to bed. That’s why this is so late. I woke up around 11:30 and had to take care of some stuff.

Sorry for the lateness but I hope you enjoy the links.

Five days ‘til Christmas! 🎅🏼

Wil Wheaton

The world knows Rob as a generational talent, a storyteller and humanitarian activist who made a difference with his art, his voice, and his influence. I knew that man, but I also knew a man who treated me with more kindness, care, and love than my own father ever did. And it is the loss of that man that is piercing my heart right now.

The death or Rob and Michele Reiner was a complete shock. I can’t imagine how hard it hit their close friends and family. Wil gives us some clue of what that loss feels like.

I also like that he was able to share his thoughts and feelings on his own terms. No reporters involved. Just a man telling how he wanted to. ❤️

Kate Mothes • This is Colossal

When an oval-shaped portrait fell into his hands, with its structural framework crumbling and its canvas stained, that wasn’t even the worst of it. This particular painting had also been unskillfully painted over to freshen it up, despite—as Baumgartner discovers—the fact that the “fix” actually completely changed the entire feel of the work. As he works, he illuminates how the amateur attempt to restore the work actually eliminated the subtle nuances of the artist’s original intention, and by extension, the sitter’s personality.

This video was a really great watch. Watching someone at the top of their game is a real treat and when he was finished the painting looked incredible.

Take a few minutes out of your day to watch it. It’s really good. 🖼️

Wordpress

WordPress Studio simplifies all of that. 

The free, open-source tool lets you spin up local sites quickly, share previews instantly, and move changes between environments without the usual hassle — helping you focus on creating rather than configuring and troubleshooting.

Tooling makes a huge difference when it comes to managing a large group of systems.

I’d love to see this driven by a real pro.

M.G. Siegler • Spyglass

I’m old enough to remember when the head of Netflix wasn’t just downplaying the importance of movie theaters to the industry, he was eviscerating the entire concept as “outdated”. That is to say, I’m at least eight months old.

I hope Netflix puts an effort behind making top notch movies and lets HBO focus on creation of great series.

Federico Viticci • MacStories

In the 16 years that I’ve been writing for MacStories, I’ve seen my fair share of new apps that have come and gone. Apps that promised to revolutionize a particular segment of the App Store were eventually acquired, discontinued, or simply abandoned. It’s been very unusual to witness an indie app survive in a highly competitive marketplace, let alone to find one that thrived after having been sold twice to different owners over the years. But such is the case of Unread, the RSS client now developed by John Brayton of Golden Hill Software and the recipient of this year’s MacStories Selects Lifetime Achievement Award.

Congratulations, John! You earned it. Unread it a top notch feed reader. 🥳

Malcolm Owen • Apple Insider

The account itself was flagged as “closed in accordance with the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions.” Naturally, there were repercussions that did a lot more to Dr Buttfield-Addison’s digital life than simply the closure of one account.

Some good news to report. Dr. Butterfield-Addison has regained full access to his account.

It took a Herculean effort to get this account unlocked. Normal folks, like most of us, don’t stand a chance of getting our account back. 😔

Jason Owens • Yahoo!Sports

Philip Rivers was competent on Sunday but not much more in his first NFL game since the 2020 season.

Let’s hear it for the old guys of the world. I always liked Phillip Rivers. He has a real drive to win and is tough as nail.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Richard MacManus • The New Stack

Thirty years ago, Netscape engineer Brendan Eich famously created a new client-side scripting language in just ten days. It was initially called Mocha, but by the end of the year it would be renamed JavaScript. In 1995, nobody could’ve predicted that JavaScript would become the world’s most popular programming language. But that’s exactly what happened.

JavaScript is most definitely the defacto standard for app development in the browser and it’s used heavily on the server, desktop, and mobile app development. Incredible.

I’ve said for years and years JavaScript is to the browser what C once was to the desktop. Nowadays most folks refer to browser apps as desktop apps, which can be confusing to old timers like me. 😄

Lucien Dupont

If you go see Zootopia 2 this weekend, I’m in the credits, way towards the end, in the technology section.

Congratulations, Lucien! Great Mac developers still exist in the world and Lucien is one of ‘em. Keep on keeping on! ❤️

Dan Wolken • Yahoo!Sports

The work is finally done for the worst selection committee in the College Football Playoff’s dozen-year history, and there are only two ways to explain the grotesque, odious bracket that it belched out Sunday.

I found this upsetting as did many others, but I have to believe that picking the team to leave out was a miserable task. I really hope this wasn’t some kind of political thing because Notre Dame is an independent.

Ben Werdmuller

Throughout my morning, I hadn’t visited a single source website directly. I hadn’t refreshed anything manually. Everything had just appeared, delivered automatically from each source to the app I’d chosen to read it in. My information diet runs on feeds.

Sure, I’m a bit biased, but feed readers are the way to go if you like reading the news. The idea of it coming to you without thinking about it is just plain nice.

I know newsletters have become all the rage. A feed reader gives you the same capability.

Stephen Ramsay

So my question is this: Why vibe code with a language that has humanconvenience and ergonomics in view? Or to put that another way: Wouldn’t a language designed for vibe codingnaturally dispense with much of what is convenient and ergonomic for humans in favor of what is convenient and ergonomic for machines? Why not have it just write C? Or hell, why not x86 assembly?

That’s not a bad idea! Just vibe code in the most efficient language. Hopefully the code is safe and easily readable. I’d imagine at some point a human may want to do some work on it. Maybe I’m being naive. Maybe the LLM would own it and always be used to modify it? 🤔

pmaris • Atlas Obscura

San Francisco’s iconic cable car system is both the world’s oldest and the only one still operating, but that doesn’t mean that the cable cars themselves are all vintage. As working transportation vehicles constructed largely of wood, they have a limited lifespan and periodically need to be rebuilt, and new ones even have to be built from the ground up.

This is one of those craftsman jobs I think is really interesting and would be extremely satisfying. 🪚

Scripting News

The NYT should have started their own Twitter, with exclusive access by people who are quoted in the NYT, so there would have been a connection between the pub, its rep, more inclusive than the masthead.

It’s not too late! They could easily fire up an instance of Mastodon or build ActivityPub directly into their tools.

The easiest route is to start a Mastodon instance. How does nytimes.social sound? 😀

Doug Wilson • Frere Jones

What can be written about Gotham that hasn’t already been published? The typeface, commissioned by GQ Magazine in the early 2000s, is now so ubiquitous it has become part of the visual landscape and can be seen all over the world from Manhattan to Melbourne, Bangkok to Buenos Aires.

What is time? It doesn’t seem like it was created that long ago. It really is a beautiful font.

Ephemeral New York

When it was completed in 1868, this lovely little survivor was not designed to stand out. It may have been built as an outlier, but it was likely part of a row of identical houses meant to appeal to upper middle class buyers enriched by the city’s gangbusters post-Civil War economy.

I want this place. I’d remodel the inside and consider putting a coffee shop in the bottom floor.

I would definitely need an elevator. 😃

The Dallas Express via Yahoo!

In-N-Out Burger has quietly removed the number 67 from its order ticket system after repeated chaos caused by teenagers reacting to the viral “6-7” trend, employees and customers say.

Kids today.

Our grandkids drive us a little nuts with this, especially our grandson. 🤣

stickerart.top via Kottke

Discover a unique collection of laptops adorned with creative stickers from around the world. This project celebrates the art and culture of laptop personalization each laptop tells a story through its stickers and gives us a glimpse of the personality of the owners.

I absolutely love this website and need to submit a picture of mine. 😉

Thanks, Jason.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I’m a bit late today. I had everything well in hand but something came up we needed to tend to. All is well. ❤️

Netflix News

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Dec. 5, 2025 – Today, Netflix, Inc. (the Company) and Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD) announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Netflix will acquire Warner Bros., including its film and television studios, HBO Max and HBO.

I’m glad Netflix is going to land Warner Bros. instead of Paramount. It’s not a done deal and apparently Paramount may try a hostile takeover, not to mention David Ellison’s daddy loves to please Marmalade Messiah.

Here’s hoping if anyone is able to acquire it, it’s Netflix. 🤞🏼

Louie Mantia

Alan Dye may have left for a more lucrative offer from Meta, but this is absolutely a good thing for Apple, which also benefitted from “losing” Jony Ive.

There is certainly no love lost for Dye in the Apple Developer / Designer ecosystem. I plan on making another post on the subject but this was a major story so I had to share it.

Jarred Sumner • Bun Blog

TLDR: Bun has been acquired by Anthropic. Anthropic is betting on Bun as the infrastructure powering Claude Code, Claude Agent SDK, and future AI coding products & tools.

Bun is a standalone JavaScript runtime and from what I’ve read it’s really good.

Bun was built as a ready to roll replacement for node.js and other tooling for the React community.

It makes me wonder how well it would fit into existing browsers, or new browsers, as a JavaScript engine?

It’s written in Zig which I’m seeing used in more and more places. While it’s not a memory safe language it currently provides better memory safety than C and C++.

Sabrina Moreno • Axios

A masked bandit terrorized an Ashland ABC store over the weekend, smashing multiple bottles of bourbon before passing out drunk on the bathroom floor.

This is such a funny story. I’ve never heard of a Raccoon going on a bender, but here we are. 🦝

The marketing team at ABC is genius! They created a Raccoon Recommends board of all the booze it drank. 🤣

Sergiu Gatlan • Bleeping Computer

Microsoft has confirmed that the KB5070311 preview update is triggering bright white flashes when launching the File Explorer in dark mode on Windows 11 systems.

I know Windows always gets a really bad rap but I still believe it’s an industry strength operating system.

However, what are y’all doing? If something isn’t ready, please don’t ship it. I mean, there’s minor stuff we’ve all shipped, but this doesn’t seem very minor. Data destroying? No, but it definitely affects the usability of the OS.

Joe Wilkins • Futurism

But the spike in cancer-causing pollution wasn’t just the fault of local farms, as Doherty expected. It had its roots in a 10,000 square foot data center by the commerce giant Amazon, which first went online in Morrow County in 2011.

Data centers are the new chemical companies. Time for regulations around water use.

Sarah Barshop, Brady Henderson • ESPN

The parting of ways became official in March, when the Rams released Kupp, who had two seasons remaining on the contract extension he signed in 2022. A few days after he was released, he signed a three-year, $45 million deal with the Seattle Seahawks.

I never thought the Rams would jettison Kupp. The man is an incredible football player.

I am happy to hear he landed with the Seahawks. Great city!

James Parker • Yardbarker

His comments immediately drew backlash and sparked debate about the validity of Beckham’s point. While professional athletes have a history of going bankrupt, even after amassing millions in career earnings, $100 million should be enough for anyone to make last.

Uh, yeah. I’m pretty sure I could live like a king for the remainder of my life on 1/8th of that income.

I’m not sure what kind of home he bought for his Mom, but even if it was a $1mm dollar home that still leaves the man with plenty of dough.

This coming from a man who can’t retire because of poor financial choices. 🤪

Ben Lovejoy • 9 To 5 Mac

The Indian government has ordered Apple and other smartphone manufacturers to pre-install a state-owned “security” app on all phones before they are sold to users.

Apple has had to do strange stuff in other countries before. Like giving the Chinese government the keys to iCloud in China.

They’re gonna fight the request.

Zenae Zukowski • Metal Insider

Severing ties with a close one, even family, is never easy, and Chevelle’s Pete and Sam Loeffler know that pain well. The brothers haven’t spoken to their sibling and former bandmate Joe Loeffler since parting ways with him in 2005.

I had no idea that things ended this badly between the Loeffler brothers. It’s a big loss. I hope Joe is happy and doing well.

Francis Bouvier • Lightpanda Blog

To be honest, when I began working on Lightpanda, I chose Zig because I’m not smart enough to build a big project in C++ or Rust.

I don’t really believe this fella is not smart enough to learn C++ or Rust but I find Zig to be very interesting. I’d love to know more about arenas used for memory management.

I’d also love to know how they handle ownership of memory. In any sufficiently large, threaded, application, memory ownership always becomes an issue. I wonder if arenas help with that? It seems like they would have the same problem as C or C++ memory allocations. Then again, I have no idea what modern C++ has done for memory management, if anything?

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Happy Thanksgiving weekend! I hope y’all were able to spend some time with friends and family around the dinner table eating way too much food and more pie than should be legal. I know I certainly did. We had a small gathering. Just Kim and I and our youngest daughter and her partner. Simple but very enjoyable. 🦃🥧

As for work. We hit a major milestone. The app we’ve toiled over, our Ship of Theseus, has reached completion! We’ve gone from the creation of a hybrid native/React Native application to a fully React Native application and it’s been approved in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store! 🥳 It was a tremendous amount of work and the team has performed beautifully! Congratulations to all involved!

The App will be released in early December. I’m so excited!

Annie Palmer • CNBC

Amazon’s 14,000-plus layoffs announcedlast month touched almost every piece of the company’s sprawling business, from cloud computing and devices to advertising, retail and grocery stores. But one job category bore the brunt of cuts more than others: engineers

I have a friend who was hit my this. He’s was a contractor there, but it still hit him, and I don’t think contractors are included in those numbers. It’s a real shame. If they really want to move faster they’d keep the devs and they could use LLMs to move faster. It’s just another tool. ❤️

Duncan McLeod • Tech Central

Canva quietly dropped a bombshell at the launch of the company’s Johannesburg office on Tuesday: the design giant is seriously considering porting its Affinity creative software to Linux.

I know a lot of folks are upset by the Affinity acquisition but I really like this idea!

I’m seeing a lot of chatter from folks about switching to Linux (probably won’t happen) and having major apps like Affinity on their platform would be extremely helpful to adoption.

As I understand it Windows 11 is not so great, which is a real shame because it has a very nice underpinning.

Benjamin Garcias • Jalopnik

Despite having their own advantages and disadvantages, inline four-cylinder engines have come a long way, going from being efficient commuter motors to performance champions.

I have to admit I love the roar of race cars, from NASCAR to F1 to Indy Car to World Rally Championship. Hearing, smelling, and watching fast cars perform at the top of their game is thrilling.

Hearing that a four cylinder engine can produce as much power as a V8 is great for internal combustion cars, but we need to stop making them for the general population. They need to become speciality items. We need to make EV’s the everyday car, affordable to all socioeconomic classes. 🚙

Dayvi Schuster

Zig and Qt make for a surprisingly effective combination for cross platform GUI development.

Zig may not be completely memory safe — which is kind of a shame — but it’s still a great choice for good old C and C++ developers.

The article is a good read and Zig looks to be a very good choice for cross platform development.

I’ll be using Swift for the Windows version of Stream sometime in the next 10 years. 🤣

Jackson Lambros • Jalopnik

Nothing manmade has reached further from Earth than the Voyager series of spacecraft. Hurtling away from the sun at 38,000 miles an hour, the duo have now traveled over 12 billion miles, with Voyager 1 set to be a light-day from Earth by the end of this month.

It’s still about a year away, but Voyager — perhaps V’Ger for you Trekkies — is amazing feat of science and engineering.

Raymond Chen • The Old New Thing

A customer reported that their program encountered rendering problems when they created elements that were a half billion pixels tall, and they wondered why this was happening.

Raymon Chen is a national treasure. He works on the wildest problems and can you imagine hearing that someone wants to display something a half billion pixels tall? 😳

Brian Hamilton • The Athletic

To be a professional long snapper is to have your worth measured by maybe a half-dozen plays every week. A pass-fail exam each time for a brotherhood of perfectionists. But the job is also a quest. Do it well enough, and there is stability and longevity in a game not noted for either. There is general health, or better odds for it. There are multimillion-dollar contracts that buy a lot of freedom when you’re done.

True story. When my brother was in his senior year of high school he was contacted by a coach from the Denver Broncos. They’d seen his film as a long snapper and wanted him to attend Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and continue long snapping under the tutelage of a coach there so they could perhaps draft him when he graduated. Ultimately he took a different path because he loved chemistry and eventually earned his Pharm.D at University of California San Francisco, but he wonders what would’ve happened if he’d gone the football route. 😀

Charlie Eriksen • Aikido

It’s another Monday morning, sitting down at the computer. And I see a stack of alerts from the last hour of packages showing signs of malware in our triage queue. Having not yet finished my first cup of coffee, I see Shai Hulud indicators. Yikes, surely that’s a false positive? Nope, welcome to Monday, Shai Hulud struck again. Strap in.

Ugh. The npm community has some big fish to fry. They have to solve this problem. You can’t have folks using your package manager, used by who knows how many developers, as a virus factory. 🦠

Josiah Gogarty • GQ

Given how many internet conspiracies are actively harmful to our social fabric, it’s always heartening to see one that’s slightly lower stakes. How about: Timothée Chalamet, A-lister, our swaggy Paul Atreides and star of the upcoming Marty Supreme, is secretly EsDeeKid, a viral rapper from Liverpool, whose songs have been climbing into the top 20 of the UK singles chart in recent weeks.

When I read this I just smiled. How cool would it be if this is true and nobody ever proves it. 😆

I really like seeing the occasional anonymous band pop up. My favorite being Sleep Token.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Pretty typical week. We have our granddaughter this weekend so I’ll be exhausted by Monday morning, just in time to go back to work. 😆

Yes, of course having her with us is total joy!

Eugen Rochko • Mastodon Blog

After nearly 10 years, I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon and transferring my ownership of the trademark and other assets to the Mastodon non-profit.

I’m thankful for all the work Eugen has done for social networking and Mastodon in particular.

Having him around, I believe, will be good for the direction of Mastodon.

All the best, Eugen! ❤️

Francesco • Vapor Blog

Over the past six months, we have been working on a Visual Studio Code extension to assist in the development of Vapor applications. Let’s explore its features and how it can enhance your development experience.

I wonder if I should install this plugin? I’ve never done any backend development with Swift but if I did I imagine I’d use Vapor?

Also, I’m still surprised by how many people rely on Visual Studio Code daily. It seems the default and go to editor for web and React Native developers, along with so many others. It’s cross platform and super extensible, no wonder it’s so popular. I have a Linux dev nerd friend who was a huge emacs fan. He switched to Visual Studio Code for all of his C++ dev needs and loves it. When he went from Linux to Mac he kept the same setup. That’s attractive for folks who like it.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai • TechCrunch

DoorDash disclosed a data breach that exposed the personal information of an unspecified number of users, which included names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses.

The article also reports that DoorDash said “No sensitive information” was leaked. 😳 How can DoorDash say that with a straight face?

William Gallagher and Mike Wuerthele • Apple Insider

For almost two decades, the Mac Probounced between coveted and beloved, to derided and forgotten. This isn’t the first time this has been said, but now it seems like the reign of the Mac Pro is finally over.

We all know our favorite Mac writer, podcaster, and developer, John Siracusa, is not excited for this move but on the latest ATP episode he shared that he expected it. Sorry, John.

I still think someone should take an old Trashcan Mac Pro and soup it up with upgraded innards. Like turning an old car into a hot rod.

Manton Reece

Dave Winer has been updating the web page about Markdown in RSS. This is an RSS extension that adds source:markdownelements to your feed. Micro.blog supports this by default for all blogs.

At some point I’d like to support this in Stream, I think. That’s still a ways down the road as Stream for Mac still needs a lot of love before I can think about supporting it.

Reuters

Verizon’s new CEO is planning to cut about 15,000 jobs in the U.S. telecommunications company’s largest ever layoffs, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday, outlining some of the executive’s first efforts to restructure in the face of rising competition.

And, here we go. More big layoffs in the tech sector. It’s so rough out there for tech jobs at the moment and I’m so happy I still have WillowTree.

Marcus Mendes • 9 to 5 Mac

The Financial Times reports that Apple has stepped up its preparations for the handover of the CEO role from Tim Cook. Here are the details.

A lot of the Apple community is looking forward to this transition. Tim Cook’s foray into Trump Worship was definitely the final straw for a lot of people.

Anne Trafton • MIT News

MIT engineers have developed a flexible drug-delivery patch that can be placed on the heart after a heart attack to help promote healing and regeneration of cardiac tissue.

This is extremely cool and the type of thing my brother is into. As a Chemistry undergrad he was working on drug delivery systems using plastics. That was, geeze, almost forty years ago. We’ve come a long way and need research like that performed at our universities.

Henri Gendreau • Roanoke Rambler

Nationwide, data center operators including Google have tried to keep secret the amount of water projects could use. In Virginia, Ciaffone’s ruling appears to be the first time that a court has weighed in on whether such information can rightfully be withheld under the state’s Freedom of Information Act, according to a review of case law. But hers may not be the final word.

Being a native Californian I understand, deeply, the importance of water. Here in Virginia it falls from the sky like some kind of magic but in California it’s very rare and much needed.

It’s a precious resource for the survival of the human race. Corporations using it willy-nilly to cool data centers sounds dumb when it’s difficult to come by.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Allergies. Ugh. That’s been my week. It wasn’t a horrible week. I’m just tired. Now, who wants to blow the leaves out of our yard today! 🍂

I hope you enjoy the linkage.

Ben Lovejoy • 9to5Mac

Chris Espinosa, who wrote the first Macintosh calculator app and still works at Apple as its longest-serving employee, found a creative way around Steve’s never-ending critiques in what must be one of the best ever examples of managing upwards

So smart! I’ll bet Jobs was extremely happy to be able to sit there and tweak to his hearts content.

Snapchat

Valdi is a cross-platform UI framework designed to solve the fundamental problem of cross-platform development: velocity vs. runtime performance. For 8 years, it has powered a large portion of Snap’s production apps.

I think this is super interesting and I need to spend a bit of time understanding it better.

I really like that it has hot loading, like React Native, and you can use the debugger! 😍 That is my biggest gripe with React Native development, lack of proper debugging support in the IDE.

Paul Kafasis

Yesterday, Apple unveiled what seems unlikely to be their newest hit product, the iPhone Pocket. Produced in collaboration with the Issey Miyake design studio, this goofy accessory features “a singular 3D-knitted construction designed to fit any iPhone”. It will also hold “all pocketable items”, I suppose in the same way that a bag will hold all baggable items.

You have to visit Paul’s site! 🤣 The picture accompanying this post is worth a thousand words.

Chris Bumbray • JoBlo

John Hughes is responsible for the greatest Thanksgiving movie of all time, 1987’s poignant Planes, Trains & Automobiles. This Steve Martin and John Candy-led classic has become a perennial and a movie tons of folks have probably been revisiting this week. However, about four years later, in 1991, John Hughes made another Thanksgiving movie in the same vein, Dutch. Despite being a pretty solid movie with a very recognizable cast, it’s a hard movie to track down nowadays. And, with Thanksgiving not too far away that’s a damn shame!

I’ve never seen Dutch but it’s on my list. I’ve also never seen Uncle Buck so it’s on the list too!

There are two movies I think of as Thanksgiving movies. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is a classic and the other is Four Brothers but only because the events in the movie happen at Thanksgiving time.

Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving movie?

Mayank Parmar • Windows Latest

WhatsApp on Windows 11 has just got a ‘major’ upgrade, and you’re probably going to hate it because it simply loads web.whatsapp.com in a WebView2 container. This means WhatsApp on Windows 11 is cooked, and it’s back to being absolute garbage in terms of performance.

Let’s just use websites. What benefit does a dedicated wrapper around a website actually give the user? An icon on the desktop? You can make a PWA using Edge, why not do that?

I like native desktop apps.

Allison Smith • Digiday

Shopify, which on Oct. 20 penned the first installment of its brand-new Substack newsletter, dubbed “In Stock.”

No, no, no. Y’all need to stop using Substack. Why centralize your business in the Nazi Bar? I don’t get it.

Paul O’Flaherty

The greatest thing about using an RSS reader is the ability to “mark all as read,” walk away, and not get another update until you hit the refresh button. Seriously, if you haven’t tried it, then you haven’t lived.

There are many wonderful benefits to using RSS. Find a reader and try it for yourself.

Did I mention I make one called Stream? 😃

Politics

Mark L. Wolf • The Atlantic

My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom. President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment. This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench. The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable.

I kind of wish more justices would do something like this but we need them on the bench to defend democracy.

It was brave of Judge Wolf to walk away so he could share his feelings.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

This week seems to have had equal parts slow and fast days. Strange how we perceive time, isn’t it? As I’ve aged time seems to have sped up with exceptions thrown in here and there.

Since I’ve started doing React Native work I’ve tended toward fixing bugs and working on non UI code because I kind of prefer it. This week I started on my first real UI code and I’m actually enjoying it. I’m moving slow but enjoying it. It feels very much like doing SwiftUI but the syntax is more HTML like. And the one really nifty thing about it is hot loading it right inside the app as you code.

Anywho, here are some links. Enjoy.

Kiki Intarasuwan, Kerry Breen • CBS News

UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport, at least 3 killed, Kentucky governor says

What a tragedy. I feel terrible for the souls lost on the ground, in the plane, and for family and friends. 🪦

Marcus Mendes • 9 to 5 Mac

Yesterday, Apple launched a new web interface for the App Store, complete with dedicated pages for each of its platforms, app categories, and search.

This is an interesting turn of events for Apple. Why are they creating a web based App Store? While I think it’s a good idea it feels against their DNA.

Apparently it’s a React based app. If they wanted they could bring that to iOS and Mac by using React Native. I definitely don’t see that happening, but it’s totally possible.

Cecilia Mould • The Cavalier Daily

The University Police Department said there was no evidence of an active shooter on Grounds at 4:43 p.m. Monday after the University previously shared a “RUN, HIDE, FIGHT” alert with community members at 3:05 p.m. The alert had stated that there was an active attacker with a gun in the area of Shannon Library, but an extensive search by police later confirmed no attack had taken place.

Many of my WillowTree co-workers are University of Virginia graduates. That alert went out on our company Slack right away. It’s gut wrenching to hear about a potential shooting in progress. A true American disease we do nothing to exterminate. 😔

Thankfully it was a false alarm.

Bud Smith • The Paris Review

See, the truck nobody else wanted had been my office. I’d built a portable desk inside it. My truck desk, I called it. A couple of planks screwed together, our union sticker slapped on, the whole deal sealed with shellac. I’d built the desk so it slid into the bottom of the steering wheel and sat across the armrests. I used to hang back at the job and sneak in some creative work while the rest of the crew went to break.

I love stories like this. Mr. Smith is a very creative man. He works with his hands all day and writes his novels as he has the time, making great use of the environment around him. Need a desk? No problem. Just make one that fits in your truck so you can lean your iPhone against the steering wheel and use a Bluetooth keyboard to record your thoughts or write for your book.

Bravo! 👏🏼

Ethan Marcotte

The first is that as a product class, “AI” isa failed technology. I don’t think it’s controversial to suggest that LLMs haven’t measured up to any of the loftypromises made by their vendors. But in more concrete terms, consumers dislike “AI” when it shows up in products, and it makes them actively mistrust the brands that employ it. In other words, we’re some three years into the hype cycle, and LLMs haven’t met any markers of success we’d apply to, well, literally any other technology.

I have no idea how all of this is going to play out. I’d imagine we will see a great consolidation of companies at some point. Many smaller players will fail and a few leaders will emerge at great expense to the world. I also expect to see abandoned data centers become the new abandoned mall.

I can also empathize with folks hatred of everything getting AI’ified. I don’t want or need AI in my browser or at the OS level. Let those tools stay lean and let me decide how I’d prefer to use LLMs.

Philip Plait • Bad Astronomy

If you haven’t heard, in an episode of “The Kardashians”, she is recorded talking about how she thinks the Apollo Moon landings were faked — you can watch video of it here. Ms. Kardashian pulls out the hoary old canards about there being no stars in the sky in the photos and the flag waving (yawn), and also claims there’s no gravity on the Moon, which… Well. I’ve seen people say this before, and I think they’re confusing the lack of atmosphere with gravity. It’s a weirdly common misconception. — the Moon does have gravity, about 1/6th as strong as Earth’s. That’s how the astronauts were able to land there and walk around at all.

And the world is flat, right? It’s not great when famous people with a big following spread a conspiracy theory.

We have a lot of that in our country today. It’s really quite sad.

Andrew Webster • The Verge

“Guillermo invited me for breakfast and he said: ‘Listen, we’re doing Frankenstein. If you’re not doing it, then I’m not doing it, so it depends on you right now. Eat your eggs and tell me at the end of it if we’re doing the movie.’”

I’ve been looking forward to del Toro’s interpretation of Frankenstein and his Monster.

It hit Netflix yesterday and we’re definitely watching it tonight or tomorrow night. 👍🏼

Thomas Ricouard • TelemetryDeck

I found TelemetryDeck via Mastodon (of course). If you’re an indie developer and not yet on Mastodon, I highlyrecommend it. The developer community there is a vibrant mix of open-source enthusiasts, indie devs, and curious minds who value privacy, transparency, and genuine conversation. It feels more like an old-school forum than a social network: focused, thoughtful, and refreshingly free of algorithms or engagement bait.

This is a piece about TelemetryDeck but Thomas gives Mastodon a seal of approval. And why not! It’s a great platform if you don’t like Nazi’s. The one issue it has is discoverability. There is not algorithm, which I like, pushing you to follow people. I’ve managed to find a lot of really lovely folks through reposts. I’ve been here a fairly long time so the original group of folks I met were in the LGBTQ+ community and I still follow them to this day. It is a super diverse place.

Timothy Snyder (☢️ WARNING: Substack post)

Six months ago I wrote this post about “the next terrorist attack.” I republish it now (lightly updated) because my fear of this scenario has recently grown much greater. All of the factors described below still apply, and indeed more strongly than before. More good people have departed from the crucial agencies. Many of those who remain are disoriented and angry at what they rightly see to be the total disregard of real threats to national security or indeed the total indifference to US interests that is the hallmark of this White House. More unqualified people are at the top.

I try not to link to Substack pieces but Dr. Snyder is an authority on tyranny and we should listen to him.

Amelia Hansford • The Pink News

Robert De Niro’s trans daughter, Airyn De Niro, has said the actor’s support for her has been “non-stop” in a heartwarming new interview.

The 29-year-old said her 82-year-old father, known for his performances in Taxi Driver and Goodfellas, has been incredibly affirming since she came out earlier this year.

Robert DeNiro seems like a really good fella, or perhaps, a great fella. He’s been a very vocal critic of the Orange Sphincter in the White House and it stands to reason he’d be supportive of many different groups of folks.

Apple Developer

Explore a new visual gallery to find how teams of all sizes are taking advantage of the new design and Liquid Glass to create natural, responsive experiences across Apple platforms.

It’s nice to see Apple do these little features. They also kind of need to do them because Liquid Glass has been very controversial among the developer crowd. Apple really needs to sell it so devs do the work to support it.

Paul Kafasis

On the new MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple has mandated that all application icons fit into their prescribed squircle. No longer can icons have distinct shapes, nor even any fun frame-breaking accessories. Should an icon be so foolish as to try to have a bit of personality, it will find itself stuffed into a dingy gray icon jail.

Many developers dislike the new design language but there seems to be a lot of disdain toward the new icon requirements. I don’t blame them. I’m not a huge fan of them myself. I only converted one of my icons because I wanted to give better choices to folks not using iOS 26. I would do the same for macOS 26 if I could.

It would be nice of Apple to allow a pre-rendered property on the new icon format so designers and developers can offer different variations of icons with a personality.

Someone needs to put grandpa to bed. Sleepy Don needs his shuteye.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Feeling a bit distracted today. It happens.

I hope you enjoy the links.

Oh, today is our sixth anniversary of our move to Virginia. It’s hard to believe we’ve been here that long. Twelve more years to retirement if everything works as we hope. That’ll happen in the blink of an eye.

Starbucks

A half-day’s drive from the gray drizzle of Starbucks headquarters in Seattle – over the Cascade Mountains and into the bright sunshine of Walla Walla Valley – you’ll find rolling green fields dotted with little orange pumpkins that may one day be in your Pumpkin Spice Latte.

I like it when companies do these types of profiles. We get to see the real people who make the day to day work, plus I have a soft spot for farmers.

Chance Miller • 9 to 5 Mac

Apple might have a big expansion of its iPad apps in store. A new report today says that Apple could soon release four new iPad apps: Pixelmator Pro, MainStage, Motion, and Compressor. These apps would join Apple’s existing pro-level apps Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, which came to the iPad last year.

It’s nice to see Apple giving some attention to their Professional apps.

Greg Bensinger • Reuters

Amazon is planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning Tuesday, as the company works to pare expenses and compensate for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The job market is already tough enough. I can’t imagine how difficult it’s gonna be to find a new job. These poor folks. 😔

Charlie Cheever and James IDE • Expo

React and React Native now belong to the React Foundation, a new independent home for the ecosystem. Expo is proud to be a founding member.

I still think Apple should get involved with this project. It runs on their platforms and is used by a lot of developers. Why not make sure it’s really good on iOS and Mac?

Jeffrey Zeldman

They say AI will replace the web as we know it, and this time they mean it. Here follows a short list of previous times they also meant it, starting way back in 1997.

When I hear replace the web it’s hard for me to imagine what that would look like. I like the web.

Matt Massicotte

Look, I’m not a fan of singletons and I think you should avoid them. I really like the composition root pattern, or the more technical term of “passing arguments to functions”. There are a million similar, more sophisticated options.

Yes, passing arguments to functions is a great way to avoid having singletons. 🤣 I love that we have to come up with a fancy term for that.

Don’t get me wrong the singleton pattern has its place but I’ve seen it abused to the tune of tens in an app and it makes for a terrible mess.

Python Software Foundation

In the end, however, the PSF simply can’t agree to a statement that we won’t operate any programs that “advance or promote” diversity, equity, and inclusion, as it would be a betrayal of our mission and our community. 

Good on the Python Software Foundation. Supporting racist initiatives by the American government is something we should all avoid.

Virginia Brown • Atlas Obscura

As old as the country itself, the Dobbin House has stood on the same Gettysburg soil since 1776. The oldest building in Gettysburg, the Dobbin House was built by Reverend Alexander Dobbin, an Irish-born early frontiersman, minister, and community leader. Dobbin studied at the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow before coming across William Penn’s advertisements of new land and free worship in the New World. 

We’ve eaten at the Dobbin House Tavern! It’s neat. Employees are in period dress and the food was pretty good.

Be careful with the mixed drinks however! I had a Rum Bellies Vengeance and it just about knocked me on my butt! 🤣

Daring Fireball

After giving it a try over the last week, to me Atlas feels like Chrome with a chat button bolted on. I do not see the appeal, at all, despite being a daily user of ChatGPT. Atlas offers nothing of any appeal to me that’s better than using Safari as a standalone browser and ChatGPT’s excellent native Mac app as a standalone AI chatbot. But, for me, my browser is not “where all of [my] work, tools, and context come together”. I use an email app for email, a notes app for notes, a text editor and blog editor for writing and programming, a photos app for my photo library, a native feed reader app for feed reading, etc. My web browser is for browsing pages on the web. Perhaps this sort of browser/chat hybrid appeals only to people who live the majority of their desktop-computing lives in browser tabs.

Nowadays a lot of folks refer to web based apps as “desktop apps.” The web has been taking over the role of desktop apps for a very long time. Web technologies are extremely arcane but they are the most popular tooling in the world of software development. I don’t feel like desktop apps will cease to exist anymore than the web will cease to exist but the web is definitely a way more popular way to make applications accessible from multiple platforms than are native apps.

Trying to keep the desktop relevant was a battle Microsoft waged in the late 90’s and early 2000’s before deciding to embrace the web. Now Apple is fighting the fight to keep its platforms relevant to native developers. I believe this is partly why SwiftUI was created.

Bob Pockrass • Fox Sports

With the race on the flat 1-mile Phoenix Raceway, neither the Joe Gibbs Racing drivers (Hamlin and Briscoe) nor the Hendrick Motorsports drivers (Byron and Larson) has a clear advantage as both organizations have won races there in the last six events and all four drivers have at least one Phoenix win on their resume.

Trying to pick a winner among the four is challenging. But the feeling here is to go with Kyle Larson.

While I love the idea of Larson winning his second Cup Championship my heart is with Denny Hamlin winning. He’s one of the winningest NASCAR drivers in the history of the sport but doesn’t have a Cup Series Championship. He’s an instant hall of famer even if he doesn’t win but I’d like to see him get one, even if that means Larson has to wait a while for his second.

We’ll find out tomorrow. The Cup Series Championship from Phoenix airs tomorrow at 3PM eastern on NBC.

Stephen Hackett

I hadn’t used ReadKit in over a decade, and when I checked it out again, I was impressed. It’s looks modern with Liquid Glass support, works with Feedbin, and works as well on the Mac as it does on iOS and iPadOS. I’ve been running it this week and so far, so good!

There are so many great feed readers on the market today and ReadKit looks to be one. Besides using Stream daily — even my alpha quality Mac version — I’ve found Unread to be a beautiful option and its read later feature is really good. I’ve started using it to collect articles for Saturday Morning Coffee, until I can get the read later feature of Stream working, but that’s a story for another day. 😀

StreetInsider

TELUS Corporation (NYSE: TU) announced the completion of its acquisition of all outstanding shares of TELUS Digital (NYSE: TIXT) (TSX: TIXT) not already owned by the company for $4.50 per share in cash or TELUS common shares. The transaction totaled approximately $539 million and gives TELUS 100% ownership of TELUS Digital.

TELUS International purchased WillowTree a couple years back. At some point after the acquisition TELUS International was rebranded as TELUS Digital. Eventually the WillowTree name went away and we all became part of TELUS Digital.

Now our parent company, TELUS, has acquired TELUS Digital.

All that to say I’m now a TELUS employee, by way of TELUS Digital, TELUS International, and WillowTree. 😳

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Its been a couple weeks since I’ve written anything and I missed it. But, on the plus side I spent time with our grandkids and protested our horrible government. Both were time well spent away from the keyboard.

Work has been cruising along. We’re approaching the end of our two-plus year effort to move native iOS and Android apps to React Native. It’s about to pay off and I’m so excited to see it hit the streets.

Little plug for work. If your company would like to develop a cross platform app or integrate React Native into an existing app TELUS Digital — formerly WillowTree — have the chops to pull that off.

Time to work on Stream for Mac. Our granddaughter is celebrating her birthday tomorrow so we’ll be off having fun with her.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the links!

Mandalit del Barco • NPR

Diane Keaton, who remained one of Hollywood’s quirkiest and most beloved actors decades after her Academy Award-winning performance in the movie Annie Hall, has died at age 79.

My favorite Diane Keaton movie is Baby Boom. I love the story of the successful type-a personality finding a much better life in becoming a mother in a small town. Great film and she was great.

Another great film is The Family Stone. Unlike Baby Boom it’s very serious and Ms. Keaton is amazing.

RIP 🪦

Bhaskar Sunkara • Talking Points Memo

While some aspects of Substack may harken back to an older form of political publishing,  it doesn’t seem to be reviving the sturdy communities that made the best political blogs feel special. If Crooked Timber today is a living remnant of that order, it looks like Byzantium in its last century: storied and cultured, but a city-state that was once an empire.

I will continue to harp on Substack’s embrace of Nazism. It’s not a good choice for writers. Leave now.

Hartley Charlton • MacRumors

Apple is interested in buying Warner Bros. Discovery’s extensive back catalog of content for Apple TV, Bloomberg reports.

This could be a really interesting pickup for Apple, don’t you think? It’s not like they don’t have a hojillion dollars to spend on some “tiny” acquisitions, right?

Joe Rosensteel • Six Colors

One of the things that I think about from time to time is Apple’s collection of apps. Some are the crown jewels, like Apple’s pro apps, and others help an everyday consumer to tackle their iLife. All are pretty starved for attention and resources, outside of infrequent updates aligned with showing off the native power of Apple Silicon, Apple Intelligence, or demos of platform integration that never quite get all the way there.

I keep waiting for Apple to really eat their own dog food and creat a real productivity app in 100% SwiftUI.

Pages, Numbers, or Keynote would suffice but rewriting software just because is expensive. Perhaps they could do a direct port to SwiftUI using AI as a starting point and fix it up? Perhaps that’s also a really dumb idea. 😀

[John DiLlilo • Tadum by Netflix] (https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/a-house-of-dynamite-kathryn-bigelow-release-date-cast-news)

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE is the latest dramatic thriller from the Oscar-winning director of The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, and more — and it’s streaming on Netflix right now.

I watched this last night. It was good but don’t expect it to be Hurt Locker or Zero Dark Thirty.

It’s the same story shot from multiple perspectives, that I liked. The ending left me wanting but it was a great choice. That’s all I’ll say. 😬

Joannis Orlandos • Swift.org

The Android workgroup is an open group, free for anyone to join, that aims to expand Swift to Android. Today, we are pleased to announce nightly preview releases of the Swift SDK for Android.

I wonder how many iOS App ports we’ll see on Android now? Or perhaps some shared code between the platforms like we see with Kotlin Native?

Tonsky

Syntax highlighting is a tool. It can help you read code faster. Find things quicker. Orient yourself in a large file.

Like any tool, it can be used correctly or incorrectly. Let’s see how to use syntax highlighting to help you work.

I keep looking for a reason to like Visual Studio Code. It just feels wrong to me. Especially keyboard shortcuts. I’m spoiled by Xcode just as I was by Visual Studio when I was using that for 20+ years while writing Windows apps.

Personally, I’d rather use Nova but I’m choosing to use VS Code because it’s what my team uses and the project is suited to it. It’s just not for me.

So, in an attempt to feel more at home, I’ve switched to his theme. It’s not bad and it’s light, which is my preference.

Greg Poggiali • Jalopnik

There are certain truths in the automotive world. A Porsche 911 has its engine in the rear, old Land Cruisers have worse aero than bread, and Mazda’s Soul Red Crystal paint will make you look twice.

I’ve never really paid attention to Mazda’s custom red paint but it is quite beautiful. Maybe I should paint my truck that color? 🤔

Jess Weatherbed • The Verge

Amazon is reportedly leaning into automation plans that will enable the company to avoid hiring more than half a million US workers. Citing interviews and internal strategy documents, The New York Times reports that Amazon is hoping its robots can replace more than 600,000 jobs it would otherwise have to hire in the United States by 2033, despite estimating it’ll sell about twice as many products over the period.

This notion is all fine and good if means people don’t have to work to survive. Provide for our basic health care, food, clothing, and shelter and doing this doesn’t seem so bad, right?

The reality is much, much, darker. This is meant to make the rich, richer at the expense of everyone else.

Reuters

Spire Motorsports will dismiss Justin Haley, driver of its No. 7 Chevrolet, at the end of the NASCAR Cup Series season.

Just one season after dismissing Cory LaJoie for Justin Haley, Spire is doing it again. It’s puzzling to me. Why not give him another year? His team hasn’t exactly been stable. Spire dismissed his highly regarded Crew Chief early in the season. But nope. He’s out.

The only good thing to come out of it is the signing of Daniel Suarez to pilot the 7.

WARNING: Talk of sexual abuse follows

Virginia Roberts Giuffre • The Guardian

In an extract from her posthumous memoir, Virginia Roberts Giuffre remembers the day an ‘apex predator’ recruited her from Mar-a-Lago, aged just 16; how she was trafficked to a succession of wealthy and powerful men – and how everyone knew what was going on

Everyone involved in Epstein and Maxwell’s trafficking scheme is a monster and should be treated as such. That includes Trump.

They’re all pedophiles and sexual predators. Throw them all in a hole and let them fend for themselves.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Ged Maheux • The Iconfactory

We’re pleased to announce the arrival of Iconfactory Tapestryon iOS 26 with stunning support for Liquid Glass, visual improvements up and down the timeline, and a new native app for macOS. 

Y’all know what a huge fan I am of The Iconfactory. They’re an excellent example of great design meeting excellent engineering and I’m always happy for them when they release a new version of something.

I can see Tapestry turning into the ultimate social and blogging viewer plus editor of both! I know, I know, this directly competes with Stream but it’s so much more and I love how it brings so many services together. It may be read-only now, but I can imagine read-write in its future. Keep an eye on it.

Congratulations, y’all!❤️

Maggie Boccella • Fangora

Ever wanted to peek into the mind of one of horror’s greatest authors? Well, now you can, courtesy of Penguin Random House. The publisher has just announced their latest horror nonfiction title, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King, a new book by University of Maine professor Caroline Bicks that explores never before seen access into King’s private archives.

This is a book I’ll be picking up. Who knows if I’ll get around to reading it but I’ll definitely have one. Kim can read it. I know she will.

Stephen King has always been a fascinating character to me. He’s such a prolific writer and the few novels I’ve read have been extremely good in my eyes.

Daniel Jalkut

I achieved a major development milestone for my biggest app, MarsEdit, today. I can now build against Swift 6 with strict concurrency, and no warnings

Wow! That is pretty major! Congratulations, Daniel. I hope you share more of your adventures in Swift Concurrency as you progress!

Aimee Hart • Polygon

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein has been on Polygon’s list as one of the most anticipated movies of 2025. A collaboration with Netflix, Del Toro’stake on the Gothic tale is a direct adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 19th-century novel, Frankenstein. With the creature (not monster) teased on Sept. 30, we’ve just had one question: when can we expect to see the Frankenstein trailer?

I’m so excited to see this in theaters! I’ll see y’all there! I’ll be the dude with the huge bucket of popcorn with my eyes glued to the big screen! 🍿

Kev Quirk

After flip-flopping about what I’m going to do with this site, I decided to flip to Jekyll and build my own little CMS while I’m at it. Because why not?

I love watching folks bounce around building new tooling for their weblogs. It’s not something I’m willing to take on at the moment but it is something I think about it a lot given Stream is weblog adjacent.

Tom Warren • The Verge

Windows is coming back together. Microsoft is bringing its key Windows engineering teams under a single organization again, as part of a reorg being announced today. Windows chief Pavan Davuluri, who was just promoted to president of Windows and devices earlier this month, shared the changes to Microsoft’s Windows teams in an internal memo.

As a fan of Windows I think this is a good idea. Get everyone moving the same direction. Bring codebases back together and make sure Windows continues to run great on the desktop as well as the backend.

I know it gets a lot of crap but it’s still a great OS and runs so much of the worlds computers we need it to continue to be great.

One of these days I’ll get another Windows box. I hope to bring Stream to Windows someday. Gotta finish the Mac version first! But when/if it comes to Windows it’ll be all, or mostly, Swift. It’s doable.

Justin Hughes • Jalopnik

The Eaton fire burned down more than 9,400 structures and killed 17 people this past January, mainly in the Altadena community just north of Pasadena, California. The massive clean-up is still underway, and some residents have moved into RVs parked on their property until their permanent residences can be rebuilt.

There are so many sad and disgusting things happening in our once wonderful nation. To see folks lose their homes to a huge natural disaster and not be in a position to rebuild is just another tragedy in a nation, not to mention a world, of tragedies.

Konstantin

While using Instruments is always a good idea (and current Xcode 26 has amazing tooling for observing concurrency related issues), there are several opportunities to improve this even more in the editor itself. let’s break down some features Xcode could introduce in order to make it easier to anticipate issues, befor they become a bug for the instruments.

I’ve been collecting articles to read about Swift Concurrency for quite a while. One of these days I need to sit down and read them. I’m afraid my knowledge of Actors and Concurrency is near zero. I think I understand the concepts but putting them to use is another matter that will require some quiet contemplation and lots of experimentation along with notes, copious notes. 😃

Joel Drapper

If you really want a full-stack Ruby framework that doesn’t have a bigot with poor reasoning skills in charge, you need to make one. And to succeed, it needs to be better than Rails in every way.

That Ruby on Rails guy has really shown what a white nationalist Nazi type he is. I know many folks use Ruby on Rails and it’s difficult to pull away from that infrastructure if you’ve built on top of it. But, when you start something new you can move on from it. Leave that legacy code alone and build on Swift, Rust, or Node. There are many great options available to you. Heck, you could use Sinatra or keep an eye on Yippee. You have choices.

daveverse

Linux wasn’t the first Unix. WordPress was built out of a fork of another blogging system. RSS was the result of work Netscape did building on work I did, and then needed protection from an incompatible fork. None of these things are simple, but the result is — interop, no lockin, no billionaires owning the result.

It’s very obvious I love me some RSS and what it means to the open web. Dave continues to do interesting experiments with blogging, RSS, and social media sites. Then we have Manton Reece at Micro.blog who I believe has nailed the Social blogging, or Micro blogging, nail directly on the head. They’re working hard every day to keep us and our content out of the big billionaire corporate silos.

I was messing around with WordPress the other day and it’s so close to being kind of perfect. I have more thoughts on the matter that need to be a standalone blog post and I hope to pull it together soon and describe my perfect system. 👀

Kauy Ostlien • The Daily Downforce

On Tuesday, the NASCAR industry learned via the Dale Jr. Download that Legacy Motor Club’s purchase of a Rick Ware Racing charter was record-breaking. While this was surely newsworthy, Dale Earnhardt Jr., co-host of the show, seemed to have mixed emotions about the implications of these rising charter costs.

NASCAR Cup charters are a strange beast. They’re stupid expensive and have to be renewed every year, which I think is really dumb. It should be a one time purchase, a franchise like the NFL, but I digress.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is, without a doubt, the biggest fan and supporter of NASCAR. He’s very involved from owning an Xfinity team to podcasting to being in the broadcast booth. He’s an incredible dude in my book and even he has been priced out of Cup team ownership. For now charters are in the 10s of millions, how long before they’re hundreds of millions of dollars?

If her wants to buy a charter now is the time. There are only so many available.

Last year Jr. Motorsports ran an open car at the Daytona 500 and finished in the top 10. It would be incredible to see a Jr. Motorsports Cup car week in and week out.

I hope he can manage it without driving his company to bankruptcy.

Cliff Schecter • BlueAmp

Help us, Dear Souls: We’re Trapped in “War Ravaged” Portland

I saw so many Mastodon, Bluesky, and blog posts dripping with sarcasm and Portland’ism last week after the Orange Man announced he was sending troops to ”War ravaged Portland”.

Yeah, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It’s Portland. They’re too busy gathering at Powell’s Bookstore, sipping a latte, or downtown in the evening at a food truck having an IPA with friends.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

This week felt very productive Monday through Thursday. Then Friday came. 😂 It was just one of those days I couldn’t get rolling. It happens from time to time and I’ve learned not to worry about it. I used to worry until I was sick to my stomach. Now? Not so much. I’ve been through it enough to know it’s a temporary state and I’ll get back in the groove, or flow as people like to calll it.

You know where I find tremendous flow? Working on Stream. No pun intended. No meetings, just me, Xcode, and whatever my 🧠 decides it can do that day.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow. It’s focus on Stream morning at Grit. See you there! ☕️

Matt Birchler

It’s amazing how easy it is to be driven mad by the App Store and app review.

I’m certain every iOS Developer has been where Matt is. App Review has always seemed like a bit of a crapshoot from the beginning. Hell, RxCalc took over 20 days to get a review in 2009. We’ve come a long way but it doesn’t mean the experience can’t be improved.

Sorry that’s happening, Matt. I hope it’s resolved soon! ❤️

Iconik

WordPress runs 43% of the internet, but try mentioning it in a design Discord and watch the cringe reactions. While WordPress quietly powers The New York Times and Microsoft, design Twitter celebrates every exodus to Webflow like it’s a prison break.

Drama aside, WordPress is a great piece of technology and the folks who work on it each and every day care deeply about it. That kind of dedication is necessary to create a beloved, stable, product.

Here’s hoping WordPress has many wonderful years ahead of it.

As an aside I’d love to see something built on top of WordPress that outputs static HTML with a minimal UI just for bloggers. It’s something I’ve wanted for a really long time. I know I’ve been posting about it since around 2012, or so?

Please, someone, get to it! 😄

Ars Technica

As of October 21, Disney+ will cost up to 20 percent more, depending on the plan you have. Disney+ with ads is increasing from $10 to $12 per month, while the ad-free plan is going from $16 to $19 per month. The annual, ad-free plan will go from $160 to $190.

When I fired up Hulu last night I was met by a message warning me prices were increasing. I’m starting to miss cable bundles. 🫠

Dave Rogers

Rob’s idea of using RSS is fine, but you still have to have someplace to upload the video files, which are far larger than just photos or text. Off the top of my head, I’m not sure what my storage limits are at my host, but I’m sure I’d have to upgrade to a higher tier of some kind if I wanted to start sharing a lot of videos.

I hadn’t considered Vimeo. They have always had a good reputation as a high end service for video but they recently sold to Bending Spoons who have a terrible reputation for ruining everything they touch. (Hey, Bending Spoons, get in touch. I’ll sale you Stream for a few million buck! What a bargain! 😂)

The issue is silos. It’s something we all gravitate towards, especially when they make it easy as a user. We have the Nazi loving Substack attracting great writers who don’t care they’re supporting fascists and YouTube who make it easy to monetize video but have complete control over your content and who can view it.

In a nutshell that’s why I’d like to see folks use their own sites and RSS to start a video publishing revolution just as podcasts did.

As for storage, I see where you’re coming from. My hosting service, DreamHost, provides services that have unlimited storage that could be good for this, or folks could use Amazon S3, or services like Libsyn who target hosting for podcasters. Search around for S3 alternatives, there are a lot to choose from. I also believe file hosting services targeting audio and video would spring up to serve this kind of move to self hosted video.

I think the thing that stops this is folks seeing they can start publishing as soon as they make an account with a service, even if it’s Nazi loving.

Finding a blogging tool, getting file storage, adding accounts, and payment systems, and on and on. Most folks just don’t want to mess with all that. That’s the big barrier to entry.🌻

Daring Fireball

Live Translation with AirPods and iPhone Mirroring are both amazing features. And EU users are missing out on them. I think Apple structured this piece exactly right, by emphasizing first that the most direct effect of the DMA is that EU users are getting great features late — or never. And that list of features is only going to grow over time.

If folks didn’t see regulation coming for Apple they haven’t been paying attention. Is it fair? No, not if you’re Apple or an Apple fan, but it was bound to happen given Apple’s position in the market. Sure, Android exists, and is doing really well in the market, but Apple has tied so many things into their OSes it was bound to happen.

I think I’m not surprised because I watched the Microsoft trial with great interest because I was a Windows developer at the time. Their dominance allowed them to make, or force, deals with OEMs and sellers that favored them only. They were the 800lb gorilla of the time. They had to protect that Windows and Office dominance in the wake of the internet gaining steam. Hell, they were criticized for Internet Explorer being included in the OS. Apple is now dealing with that many years later, so it’s no doubt they’ve been singled out.

From a competition angle it’s not so much they don’t have competition in phones, they do. Android outsells them worldwide. I think the competition is at the OS services level.

Folks should be able to pick a storage service or music provider or insert your favorite thing here and have it integrate deeper with the OS to give users better choices and give Apple some competition. Why should I have to purchase iCloud storage? If I could get more storage for less and it was integrated just like iCloud is integrated, that would benefit the user.

Sure, there’s the whole security angle and the sync angle but Apple would be in charge of defining the specification and provide the integration points and also qualify the storage provider as compatible. Yes, it would be expensive and time consuming, but if someone else has the chops to pull it off and wants to do it, why not let them? Leave the choice to the consumer.

As an aside, I could see Firebase providing such a service. It already supports syncing, is really fast, and is very stable.🔥

Johan Halse

Let’s be realistic: DHH isn’t going anywhere. He owns the trademarks, he controls the Rails Foundation, he sits on the board of Shopify, and he doesn’t give a shit about you. In fact, he seems positively giddy at the idea of people being driven away by his occasionally repugnant blog posts and xeets. I’m sure he’d very much like an ideologically pure userbase for Rails, the same way he’d love for Britain to only contain native brits, wink wink. If that means the “Rails community” becomes a small stagnant pool of people getting paid to cheer for him and Tobi, that’s clearly a price he’s willing to pay! He’ll be staying on, whether you like it or not.

It’s too bad the Ruby community is being sucked into the fascist world of David Heinemeier Hansson.

Thankfully Ruby isn’t his creation or run by him so developers could move to something like Sinatra or build something new to get away from him. Sure, old code won’t move, but new works could move off of Rails, right? Heck, you could move to Rust, Swift, or, heaven forbid, Node. You have choices.

Zach Sturniolo • NASCAR

A junction of Joe Gibbs Racing teammates during Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Playoff event at New Hampshire Motor Speedway has left Denny Hamlin seeking assistance from his team’s leadership.

I watched this race of course and it wasn’t obvious to me Hamlin wrecked Gibbs, but Hamlin admitted to moving him in later interviews.

Here’s the thing. Hamlin, Bell, and Briscoe are racing for a championship. Gibbs, their teammate, didn’t make the playoffs. In my opinion he should move out of the way for his teammates. Race everyone else, but get out of their way. What if he’d wrecked Hamlin and Bell at that time? It absolutely could’ve happened given how hard he was racing them and how close they were to him.

I will freely admit I’m not a fan of Gibbs. He comes off as a spoiled, entitled, rich kid. Oh, and Grandpa Joe (yes, Joe Gibbs former NFL coach and Super Bowl winner) is the owner of the team.

Maybe it time to find grandson Ty a new racing home for the sake of the organization? He’s good enough to get a seat elsewhere. 🤔

Craig Dalzell • Common Weal

A new study from the Social Market Foundation presents the results of several Housing First pilot schemes, including one in Scotland, and finds that providing free housing to people suffering homelessness results in better outcomes than current services and is cheaper than not doing it.

Take this for what it is. Yes, I support all kinds of social programs like this. We could do this if only America was willing to become truly great again.

Tom Chivers • Semafor

Global health authorities rejected the US government’s claim that the popular painkiller acetaminophen, better known as Tylenol in America, causes autism when taken during pregnancy.

Not a surprise. RFK Jr. is a complete nutter and is driving our nation back into the early 19th century. Let’s use leeches to cure disease! I should say crap like that, someone may tell him it works. 🤣

Politics

Benjamin Mullen • New York Times

The Daily Caller, a prominent conservative online publication, published an opinion column on Friday explicitly calling for violence in response to physical assaults on conservatives in America.

Let’s lower the temperature, riiiight… We’re moving closer and closer to a full dictatorship and it’s showing in folks anger toward it. Some want it, others, like me, do not.

See you October 19 in Washington D.C.

Mark Hertling • The Bulwark

WHEN I SAW THE NEWS that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had ordered all U.S. military flag officers (generals and admirals) to gather at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia, next week along with their senior enlisted advisors, my first response was disbelief. Not disbelief that the secretary of defense might want to deliver a strong message to the senior leaders of the force, but disbelief at the method.

So, will the leadership of all of our branches be asked to give their full allegiance to Marmalade Messiah? I hope not. If they are asked, how many will resign, weakening our defenses and opening the door to a full fascist takeover by the “government?”

Arianna Coghill • Mother Jones

On September 17, Pete Hegseth—newly dubbed our Secretary of War—announcedthat any member of the US military who needs a shaving exemption for more than a year will be forced out of the service, tossing out a decades-old policy created for mainly Black and brown troops with pseudofolliculitis barbae, a skin condition that makes daily shaving lead to cuts, sores, and scarring.

Y’all just need to admit it, now. This administration wants an all white nation. Run the leadership of the military out then get all the black and brown people to leave.

We’re just driving for that cliff. Car on fire. Everyone partying like nothing is happening.

It’s happened. We’ve arrived at the beginning.

Let’s save democracy. 🇺🇸

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

This week was exciting at the beginning with the release of Stream 1.6 and became pretty boring, pretty quickly.😀

It’s really nice to finally boot a new release of Stream out the door. It’s the first time I’ve ever released anything to coincide with the release of a new operating system. I don’t make a lot of noise about it, because I don’t really know how to! 😂

Anywho, it’s out there and I’m excited about it even if it only got one new feature and some tweaks to support iOS 26. If you’re a Stream user, thank you. 🙏🏼 I hope you’re enjoying it.

Tricia Escobedo • CNN

“Robert Redford passed away on September 16, 2025, at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah–the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved. He will be missed greatly,”

SETEC ASTRONOMY… TOO MANY SECRETS.

RIP, Mr. Redford. 🪦

James Hibbard • The Hollywood Reporter

Jimmy Kimmel‘s latest monologue has ignited a political firestorm and resulted in ABC suspending the show.

I know folks don’t like it when I include politics, but this is some serious stuff. It’s trampling on our First Amendment rights and has to stop.

Holly Borla • Swift.org

We’re excited to announce Swift 6.2, a release aimed at making every Swift developer more productive, regardless of where or how you write code. From improved tooling and libraries to enhancements in concurrency and performance, Swift 6.2 delivers a broad set of features designed for real-world development at every layer of the software stack.

I still haven’t had the opportunity to look into strict concurrency but I do hope to at some point.

I was so happy to have done a bit of SwiftUI in Stream that I shred it with a colleague. She instantly found all the dumb things I’d done and straightened me out.😃

Thanks, Ms. Iryna! 🙏🏼

Reuters via Yahoo! Tech

Israel-based Fiverr International is laying off 30% of its workforce, a company spokesperson said on Monday, as the online services marketplace doubles down on artificial intelligence to automate systems and streamline operations.

This experiment hasn’t worked for some companies. It’s darned useful, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not a be all end all. It’s like the next evolution in the hammer or a fancy screw driver that doesn’t strip screws. It just helps us get our jobs done.

Geoff Perlman • Xojo Blog

Supporting Liquid Glass and the underlying system changes is a big undertaking and we still have more work to do. Since we build Xojo with Xojo, this means updating not only the Xojo framework but also parts of the IDE itself so it looks and behaves correctly on macOS 26 with Liquid Glass. Our goal is to let you use Liquid Glass in both built-in Xojo controls and third-party party plugins as soon as possible. That’s why the next release of Xojo, 2025r3, will be built for macOS 26 and iOS 26, giving your apps the latest look and feel while still allowing them to run on older versions of macOS and iOS.

Wow, I didn’t expect Xojo to be built with Xojo, but it makes sense. Here’s putting your money where your mouth is. I think that’s really impressive and to me it proves Xojo is industrial strength enough to build native apps for macOS, iOS, and Windows from a single source base. Kudos! 🤩

John Brayton

I just released Unread 4.6 with improvements to support Apple’s operating system updates.

A big congratulations to my friend, John! 🥳

Booting updates of your software out the door is always exciting.

I still use Stream on the Mac, even though it barely works, but I use Unread a lot. It’s a beautiful app and works how I’d expect it to work. Try it! It’s really good!

Cody Hamman • JoBlo

Trick ‘r Treat is getting its first nationwide theatrical release this October

This is something we watch every Halloween, a few times. We absolutely love it! When it hits theaters I’m gonna drag Kim out to see it with me on the big screen.

Bogden Ionescu

The idea of hosting a web server on a vape didn’t come to me instantly. In fact, I have been playing around with them for a while, but after writing my post on semihosting, the penny dropped.

So, yeah, a vape pen hosting a website is kind of awesome. Why? Because, that’s why! If you have the skill to pull it off, do it.

I’d still love to host a site on an old iPhone. They’re more than powerful enough to pull it off.

Uros Popovic

I recently implemented a minimal proof of concept time-sharing operating system kernel on RISC-V.

There are so many smart, determined, folks out there in the world.

This kernel project is written in Zig, which I don’t know much about.

When is someone going to do this in pure Swift? The new low level language of choice seems to be Rust, but it could be Swift, right? Maybe? 🤔

Part of Chris Lattner’s vision for Swift was to use it as a systems level language. What happened to that goal?

Apple, of all people, should spend a little time creating a 100% Swift based OS to use on their backend.

I know, I know, it’s a lot of work and Apple already has an OS. But they still need to make better use of the language they’re pushing on developers. It should be a great way to build a more secure operating system.

David Pierce • The Verge

There’s just one ongoing problem with Liquid Glass: it’s the wrong idea. Apple is trying to make a single interface metaphor work absolutely everywhere, and it just doesn’t. Frankly, I’m not sure any all-encompassing design language could feel right on everything from a watch to a phone to a TV to a headset. But I do know that Liquid Glass in particular, which is hell-bent on making everything feel deep and physical and layered, often just feels like clutter. And it feels least at home on Apple’s most important and popular devices.

I’ve been using iOS 26 on a test device since WWDC. It’s been fine. Did I see some oddities, yes, I did. Was it completely unusable? No, it wasn’t.

I have it on my daily driver now, I’m typing this post on it, and it’s been perfectly serviceable. On occasion I have lost a button in a background but it doesn’t happen often.

At the day job we haven’t upgraded to Tahoe, macOS 26, so I can’t say how it looks or works. We haven’t deployed it because some software folks use has been a bit janky. Our poor IT is tasked with getting all that squared away before we’re allowed to move forward.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been a big week for the Apple ecosystem. All the new Apple gizmos and gadgets were announced on Tuesday. I no longer get excited about these events, especially since they became highly produced marketing commercials. But, there was one thing I really liked: the orange iPhone 17 Pro.

Stream was approved earlier this week and I’ll be pushing the button to release it sometime Monday night, I think, because iOS 26 is supposed to hit the streets on Tuesday.

Like all of my releases, this one is small. One new feature, a small tweak for the UI on iOS 26, and some bug fixes. I hope folks enjoy it.

Here are some links and bad opinions. Enjoy!

Apple Newsroom

Apple unveils iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, the most powerful and advanced Pro models ever

The color of the week was definitely orange! My Mastodon timeline was full of orange iPhone 17 Pro orders.

I don’t update often, I went from an iPhone 11 to an iPhone 16 last year, but if I were to upgraded this year that orange Pro would be the one. I’m still tempted but can’t justify it. 😍

Joel Dare

Imagine a web page that loads instantly, deploys effortlessly, and never needs a security update. I’m using pure HTML and CSS to accomplish all that and to build things in a fraction of the time.

This website loads so fast! We’ve all become accustomed to slow loading CMS based blogs like WordPress or Ghost or add your favorite blog here. I don’t mean to pick on those amazing products but raw HTML is blazing fast and I love it!

Ashley Belanger • Ars Technica

Free for any publisher to use starting today, the RSL standard is an open, decentralized protocol that makes clear to AI crawlers and agents the terms for licensing, usage, and compensation of any content used to train AI, a press release noted.

The RSL Collective has put together a very low tech solution to the problem of AI servers hammering websites and taking content for training their LLMs. I like this idea, a lot, and will be deploying it to this blog. Going forward all transactions here will cost an AI company a hojillion dollars.

No, it’ll remain free because nobody reads it anyway and if you want to train your AI on my crappy writing, good luck! 🤣

Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

Mastodon, an open source, decentralized alternative to X, is rolling out a somewhat controversial feature by adding quote posts, which will launch next week. The feature, which allows a user to quote someone else’s post and reshare it with their own response or commentary, has contributed to a culture of “dunking” on X, where users often deride other people by responding with snark or insulting humor.

To address this concern, Mastodon says it’s implementing quote posts with safety controls.

I’m looking forward to trying this out but I wonder how long it’ll be before all the amazing Mastodon apps are updated to support it?

Barn Finds

Go Bullitt if you must, but I’d rather see this potentially handsome 1968 Mustang Fastback restored to its showroom glory.

What a beautiful car! I always thought I’d retire and have a project like rebuilding a car. I don’t think that’ll happen but I still like the thought of it. Instead I’ll probably sit behind a keyboard and continue coding until I die. 😄

Dan Goodin • Ars Technica

A prominent US senator has called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Microsoft for “gross cybersecurity negligence,” citing the company’s continued use of an obsolete and vulnerable form of encryption that Windows uses by default.

I’m surprised Microsoft would allow something like this to go on. Here we have Apple doing everything they can think of to lock down their OS’es and Microsoft’s is vulnerable. 😲

Ben Werdmuller

There are two CMS choices that I think are particularly well-suited for newsrooms. The first, Ghost, is perfect for smaller newsrooms with a newsletter-centric distribution model. (I love Ghost’s elegance and use it for my own site and newsletter.) The other is, indeed, WordPress.

If you’re part of a small or large newspaper, Ben has a recommendation just for you.

Even my old hometown newspaper, The Sun-Gazette, uses WordPress. 📰

Apple Security Research

For Apple, improving memory safety is a broad effort that includes developing with safe languages and deploying mitigations at scale.

If you’re a nerdy computering type person who writes software this article is a really good read.

Apple has gone to great lengths to make the OS’es even more secure and that includes hardening their developer tools!🛠️

Adam B. vary • Variety

Henry Cavill has sustained an injury while preparing for the Amazon MGM remake of “Highlander,” which will delay production on the Chad Stahelski film likely until early 2026, Variety has confirmed.

I ask you, how can Superman get injured?🦸🏻‍♂️

Here’s hoping Mr. Cavill recovers quickly and the film is a big hit.

Do it justice MGM!🎬

Annie Palmer • CNBC

“There’s 1,400 employees at Opendoor. I don’t know what most of them do. We don’t need more than 200 of them,” Rabois told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Friday.

What a crazy statement. I’ll bet the employees are putting out feelers into the world to get ahead of the inevitable.

Jobs are so hard to come by today.😞

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

The week started off a bit stressful for me. Stream was stuck in Waiting for Review hell at the beginning of the week. I finally pulled it from review and submitted a new build. That worked and some folks were able to look at the latest release. I even got some bug reports (nasty crasher on an iPad Mini I haven’t sorted yet) and found some terrible bugs running Stream on the new iPadOS 26 windowing support. Ack! 😲

I’m hoping I can fix them during my Grit development time tomorrow. 🤞🏼

This release of Stream does the minimum amount of work to support Liquid Glass in iOS 26, but it’s a start.

Jack Dunn • Variety

Graham Greene, the Canadian actor best known for his Oscar-nominated turn in the 1990 film “Dances with Wolves,” died on Monday in Toronto after a battle with long illness. He was 73.

This was really sad to see. I loved his performance in Wind River. I thought the film was incredibly good but I don’t think it did well in theaters.

As an actor his performances always felt real, like he was just living life, not reading from a script. I always appreciated that. 🪦

Jordan Novet • CNBC

Atlassian said it has agreed to acquire The Browser Co., a startup that offers a web browser with artificial intelligence features, for $610 million in cash.

My congratulations to The Browser Company! 🥳

I interviewed with this team, I think it was one of their founders? I also think he realized I wasn’t a heavy enough hitter and I wasn’t willing to kill myself for a company again.

We spoke for about 30-minutes. Very nice guy and I’m really happy for him.

Daring Fireball

But this seems like bad news. I just don’t see how Atlassian/Jira DNA can possibly be a good thing to inject into an innovative user-focused web browser.

Arc was adored by its fans and I’m not sure how Dia is doing.

I could see Atlassian merging the two together to form an excellent browser. Both extensible, like Arc, and AI driven like Dia.

My gut says the extensibility and customization features of Arc are really attractive. Atlassian could take advantage of that plus add Dia’s AI support to build up a very compelling Jira App as well as a fantastic browser.

What if all that customization support really opens up the door to better desktop apps built from web technology? Think Electron.

Oh, one more thing. The Browser Company is the first company I know of to stretch Swift the way they have. They built up Swift support for Windows and used that to ship their Windows version of Arc.

Joan Westenberg • The Index

Arc’s exit fits this history neatly. It’s tempting to be cynical: yet another beautiful app sacrificed on the altar of enterprise bundling. But there is another way to read it. Beauty survives by being absorbed. The design DNA of Arc may not persist in its purest form, but elements will filter into the larger ecosystem. That’s how Sparrow influenced Gmail, or how Wunderlist informed Microsoft To Do. Users lose the standalone purity, but the market as a whole advances.

I appreciate Joan’s take on the sale. Hopefully we get a beautiful new browser out of the deal.

Bob Pockrass • Fox Sports

Will Power will move to Andretti Global next season as he replaces Colton Herta, who will move to Europe and serve as a test driver for the Cadillac F1 team.

Wow! This is quite the shakeup both ways. Will Power is an IndyCar legend and Colton Herta is a rising IndyCar star!

I do admit I like seeing Herta going to Cadillac F1. They will be my new F1 team going into 2026. I’d been on the Haas train for some time but they just don’t invest at the levels of other teams. I’m hoping the Cadillac backed team will. It’ll also be really nice to see an American built engine back in F1 in 2028.

Matt Massicotte

Making just one type @MainActor can result in cascade of errors at all usage sites where the compiler now cannot provide that MainActor guarantee. This virality can make it really hard to incrementally adopt concurrency with targeted changes. Perhaps that’s not too big a deal for smaller code bases/teams, but I bet this is a killer for big projects. So what do you do?

I honestly don’t know. 🤣

The new concurrency support for Swift sounds extremely complicated, even for the best of developers. Matt seems to be an authority on the matter so I hope to read more of his stuff once I get to a new app that needs it. For now Stream is what it is. It uses closures/callback blocks to update models and the UI after pulling new feeds. It works as is and changing it just to change it feels like a waste of time. I really want to finish the Mac version and I do have another app to build. That seems like a good time to do SwiftUI and proper concurrency work. Like a dummy I’ll try to do both at once. 🤣

M.G. Siegler’s Spyglass

Almost exactly 15 years after the service first launched to the world – they waited 15 years but couldn’t wait a few more weeks to make for a fun story? – we now have a version of Instagram tailored for the iPad. And… it’s sort of crap.

I had a third-party Instagram for iPad app a very long time ago, at least ten years back. Then Facebook decided they were going to shutter their API and cut off all third-party access. That third-party app, that I can’t remember the name of, was a pure iPad App. It was fast and beautifully designed. The layout would change, as expected, when rotated and would show you a grid of photos you could tap into to view larger. It was beautifully executed.

From what I’ve seen of the new Instagram built version it’s nowhere near that and that’s a real shame.

If you’re looking for a pure, elegant, platform for viewing and posting photos I’d recommend Glass. It’s gorgeous and not full of crummy ads, displays a beautiful stream of pictures, and even has a proper iPad app.

Tom Warren • The Verge

Windows Mixed Reality headsets were left in a non-functional state last year, after Microsoft suddenly discontinued the platform with its 24H2 update to Windows 11. Now, an Xbox engineer at Microsoft is bringing these headsets back to life, thanks to a new driver that enables SteamVR support.

This is extremely cool! Thanks Mr. Microsoft Xbox Engineer for this gift! ❤️

Thank you Microsoft for allowing this! When I was there, there’s no way this could’ve happened.

Dom Corriveau

If you glance over this blog, you will see that I am an avid Android fan. After setting up numerous Linux prootdesktops on phones, I wanted to see if I use a phone as a server and run my blog from an Android phone. Since you are reading this, I was successful.

I absolutely love projects like this! Take a teeny device not at all meant to host a web server and do just that! Incredible work!

I’ve often wondered how you could take a bunch of the same model iPhones and build a blade style bus for them to plug into to act as a kind of super computer. Wouldn’t it be cool to add a web server to an iPhone and use it to host your blog or use a bunch to process data. They’re super fast and amazing computers, why not repurpose them? I mean if folks could build super computers out of 286 chips why not A16 chips?

Anyway. It’s a neat thought experiment.

State of California

Today, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, and Washington Governor Bob Ferguson announced they will launch a new West Coast Health Alliance to ensure residents remain protected by science, not politics. The alliance represents a unified regional response to the Trump Administration’s destruction of the U.S. CDC’s credibility and scientific integrity.

It’s really wonderful to see the west coast of the United States come together to support common sense science. I miss the west coast. ❤️

Gavin Newsome’s troll game is top notch. 🤣

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Craig Hockenberry • Iconfactory

Tot, your tiny text companion, is still tiny. But now, it’s even more mighty.

That’s because we’ve just released Tot 2, with tons of great improvements to let you collect text on your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

Congratulations to my friends at Iconfactory! 🥳

I’m using Tot 2 — as usual, on my iPhone — to compose this post. It’s still an amazing little text editor. It’s reliable, easy to use, and fast. I’ve used it for a few years to compose almost all my blog posts on this site. Highly recommended. ❤️

Robert Reich

So when a friend phoned recently to tell me that my new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, was 1 on the Times nonfiction bestseller list (it’s actually right there at the top in this Sunday’s print edition!) I couldn’t believe it.

Robert Reich is a wonderful man and I’m very happy for him! 🥳

Daring Fireball

I don’t think the old icons for these apps from MacOS 15 were particularly good — Apple has mostly lost its “iconslook cool” game. But the new ones in MacOS 26 Tahoe are objectively terrible.

Tahoe and all the iOS derived OS’es has been universally panned since WWDC. I’ve been using it on my iPhone 11 to test some new features for Stream and I’m getting close to putting it on my daily driver.

It’s not been a horrible experience and I’ve run into some “surprise and delight” moments.

I’m planning on Stream supporting it day one in the most minimal of ways. A basic recompile to pick up the new look and I’ve added a feature I’ve wanted for a very long time.

Ryan Erik King • Jalopnik

The Cadillac F1 Team announced on Tuesday that it signed Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez to race for the team in 2026. The American team’s debut lineup will have a combined 26 seasons of F1 experience and will likely be the oldest driver pairing on the grid. Both drivers will be 36 years old when next season begins in Australia.

I like this combination of drivers! I kind of wish they’d picked up Danny Ricciardo, but I really do like this pairing.

Here’s hoping Cadillac have a great 2026 season! 🥂

Anthropic Blog

We view browser-using AI as inevitable: so much work happens in browsers that giving Claude the ability to see what you’re looking at, click buttons, and fill forms will make it substantially more useful.

I’m not a fan of the current tracking done by some browsers and websites and this sounds very big brother to me. I think I’ll nope out of any browser AI extensions. Good thing I prefer Safari. At least it doesn’t have an AI piece, yet. 😂

Jennifer Ouellette • Ars Technica

The findings confirm that, while Twitter was once the platform of choice for a majority of science communicators, those same people have since abandoned it in droves. And of the alternatives available, Bluesky seems to be their new platform of choice.

It’s a shame more folks didn’t discover how amazing Mastodon really is. It’s not governed by just one company on one big server instance. You have the freedom to start your own! It’s open, no ads, and you can manage it the way you want.

Mr. Shiffman could have started his own scientist based Mastodon Instance and made signing up for it only available to scientists. That’s a good thing! It would still be a part of the overall Mastodon community.

GitHub Community

Over the past few months, Github has been getting slower and slower on Safari. It has now reached a point where it is unusable.

I hadn’t really noticed this since I’ve been using Chrome for a client project but it was recently fixed so I’m hoping we’ll see it in all the 26 versions of Apple OS’es.

Is wonder if it’s fixed in Purple Safari?

Jason Torchinsky • The Autopian

I say this because it’s a no-joke track monster that ran the Nürburgring in 6:52 and yet it’s also shockingly comfortable for a normal, multi-hour road trip that won’t leave you feeling like you spent five hours in an industrial washing machine when it’s done. I’m not speculating when I say this, either: I know from experience, because I rode in Autopian co-Founder Beau Boeckman’s brand-new Mustang GTD as we drove over 300 miles from Los Angeles to Monterey.

I need to go checkout the video of their trip. I’d really like to see more of the car. It sounds like they had a really good time.

Do you think Mr. Boeckman would let me drive it from California to Virginia and back? That would be incredible! 🏎️

America by Design Fail

How did you think people would react when you fired the government’s most talented designers and engineers from 18f and the United States Digital Service and then tried to roll out this shit?

The folks around Marmalade Messiah all seem to be really bad at whatever they do. They’re all just a bunch of grifters.

He’s hoping we’re able to get rid of this administration next cycle and we get the 18f team back together. 🤞🏼

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Its been a pretty normal type week, nothing exciting to talk about. I did get a haircut! 😁

Work on Stream continues at a blistering pace!🤣 The feature I hoped to complete a few weeks back is nearing completion but I’ve hit a real snag on device only. I think I know what it is. Goodness knows I hope I’m right because I’ll be stuck if my change doesn’t work. Such is the way it goes!

Enjoy the links.

Marina Dunbar • The Guardian

Brent Hinds, the former lead guitarist of the acclaimed heavy metal group Mastodon, was killed in Atlantaovernight.

RIP 🪦

Sean Tilley • We Distribute

CrowdBucks is a new payment system for the Fediverse

A new payment system based on the Fediverse sounds great but will it catch on and be safe and secure? I’ll be interesting to see who adopts it.

Jason Lalljee • Axios

Cracker Barrel changed its logo this week, a move that was quickly and widely disparaged by MAGA figures who decried the switch as a “woke” gesture.

This has gone so far off the rails. Look, I’m not a fan of the redesign but I’d imagine it wasn’t done for some nefarious reason and the original company has long since outgrown its roots.

I’ll continue going there for breakfast. I like their pancakes. 🥞

Michael Hiltzik • Los Angeles Times

As it happened, GPT-5 was a bust. It turned out to be less user-friendly and in many ways less capable than its predecessors in OpenAI’s arsenal. It made the same sort of risible errors in answering users’ prompts, was no better in math (or even worse), and not at all the advance that OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, had been talking up.

Lots of hubbub over GPT-5. I guess folks really fall in love with certain models? But, like with any other software, big, buggy, changes tend to make folks unhappy.

Paul Klauser • CarMax

If you have six engineers, and everyone’s paired up, you’ve now limited your WIP to three items of work instead of six. That work is being continuously reviewed through the pairing process, and is ready to be merged quickly, without introducing the delays we sometimes associate with code review.

I got to work with Paul at WillowTree. He’s a super smart fella and extremely nice. He was one of those superstars at the company. Technically gifted and extremely kind. CarMax is lucky to have him. WillowTree was unlucky to lose him.

Barry Petchesky • Defector

Ah, but there’s a rub. Microsoft explicitly warns users that its AI function should not be used for things like “doing math” or “anything actually important”

Sorry, this made me laugh. Let’s take Excel, a tool relied on by a hojillion people and make it less useful. 🤣

Please, for the love of Pete, stop shoving AI into everything.

Notion recently did this and it started trying to record my meetings. No thank you. I turned off all of its AI capability.

Look. I think it’ll be fine for use in my dev environment but I’d rather be selective about it. Put it in a setting somewhere and let me turn it on. It should be off by default. 🙏🏼

Tom Warren • The Verge

Microsoft and Asus are putting a date on their new Xbox Ally handhelds: October 16th. Both the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X will be available on the same day in a variety of markets worldwide, but Microsoft and Asus aren’t opening preorders yet or revealing pricing.

I don’t really understand these devices. Are they meant to fully replace an XBox? Are they like the Switch and dock to play on the big screen but easy to carry around? It seems like it but it also seems like it can’t play all games?

Someone, please, straighten me out.

Oh, and the rumored price of $699 and $1,049 sounds really expensive.

Paul Krugman

Notice that I said short-term, not long-term. This isn’t about AI causing unemployment by replacing humans. We’re talking instead about the risk of a recession if the current surge in AI-driven investment turns out to be unsustainable.

Mr. Krugman seems a bit bearish on AI. There’s a lot of talk about an AI bubble and I can see that. At some point one or more of these AI only companies is going to fail and disappear or be acquired by someone else. Seems inevitable.

The power situation seems pretty dire to the continued existence of AI companies and they absolutely need to provide their own power and be held to environmental standards. Space Karen’s xAI is such a bad citizen and Tennessee is pathetic state for allowing it to go on.

Shari Sharwood • The Register

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman has suggested firing junior workers because AI can do their jobs is “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

I like this. We’ve seen stories of companies firing employees in favor only to ask the employees to come back because AI isn’t really ready for prime time.

One thing LLMs are good for is development. I’ve seen some good work produced by them. You still need an expert to check the work but it can be a handy little helper.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

This week Kim and I celebrated our 38th wedding anniversary. Tonight we’re going out for dinner and enjoy some quiet time together.

Work’s been fine. I’ve been spending time on odds and ends, mainly fixing bugs this week, which I enjoy doing. I’m weird that way. I really enjoy tracking down bugs and doing the work other developers would rather not do.

Overall it’s been a great week. 😃

Let’s get to the links and my crummy opinions. 😁

Sergey Tkachenko • Winearo

Recent observations from users on the social platform X have uncovered performance issues tied to the Windows 11 Start Menu, revealing that the component is built using React Native - a framework known for its cross-platform flexibility but criticized for inefficiency in system-level applications.

This is a bit of a puzzle to me. Sure, React Native is fine for building applications. But Mark Russinovich declared Systems level programming should abandon C and C++ and use Rust for new projects. He’s also stated they’re not abandoning C#/.NET as a viable option but Rust should be the preferred language where a garbage collected language isn’t a good choice.

It seems logical to be that Microsoft would use Rust or even C# to build the Start menu, not React Native. C# should perform well and provide the security desired by the Windows team and Russinovich, especially if the React Native based solution is slow and heavy. 🦀

Dan Gillmore via Mastodon

A publication I respected greatly just switched platforms, from Ghost to the odious Substack. I canceled my (paid) subscription and explained why.

It’s all about that cheddar! Dollar signs are driving adoption of the Nazi haven, Substack.

I figured that was the case and why not? We have a fascist government now, why not use a Nazi loving platform to host your newsletter, even if you’re Jewish!

Open Web Advocacy

Readers may recall that Japan recently passed the Smartphone Act, officially the Bill on the Promotion of Competition for Specified Software Used in Smartphones. Among its most important reforms is a direct prohibition on Apple’s long-standing ban on third-party browser engines on iOS.

The big thing holding back browser vendors is Apple’s insistence they create a brand new app. Why can’t they just make their current apps use their own browser engine? It seems malicious compliance things Apple likes to do. It’s silly and they should stop.

Tom Warren • The Verge

Microsoft is starting to roll out lightweight taskbar apps for Microsoft 365 users on Windows 11. These taskbar apps will automatically launch at startup and provide quick access to contacts, file search, and calendar straight from the Windows taskbar.

It’s interesting to see these kind of apps spring up. It’s as if the Office Apps are so big they need small helper apps to make the experience better.

I’ll bet they’re written in React Native. 😄

Victor Tangermann • Futurism

And the latest poll conducted by Gallup seems to confirm that Musk has become genuinely hated: a whopping 61 percent of 1,000 randomly selected adult American respondents said they had an unfavorable opinion of Musk, topping the list of most despised global figures.

Does it surprise anyone that Space Karen is so hated? Not this kid.

I really wish Tesla would fire him so they can begin of process of dragging their reputation out of the gutter.

Maurice Parker

I have every intention of maintaining and updating Zavala for as long as I am able. I’m also committed to keeping it free. I have no intention of getting you hooked on using it and then starting to charge a subscription.

Maurice is a good dude. He spent a bunch of time working on NetNewsWire, all for free of course.

I’m not an outliner type myself but I’ll bet Zavala is really good given Maurice’s talent.

M.G. Siegler • Spyglass

And wait. I’m taking this all way too seriously now. Again, this is clearly a marketing stunt. As it was the first time Perplexity floated it. And just as it was when they floated buying TikTok too. Perplexity loves this shit. And the press eats it up. And now I’m eating up the leftovers! Because guess what? Google is not selling Chrome! So this is like a strawman at an auction.

Yeah, this was, and is, silly. But, we all talked about it for a week or so. Oh, apparently Perplexity has already forked Chromium and built their own browser, called Comet. Who knew! I certainly didn’t.

Steven Vore

In my last post, about test automation, I wrote about using sleep : “Bad, bad, bad. Don’t do this.” But why not? Well, the way I was doing it there — until d.exists? — really wasn’t that horrible. What you really want to stay away from, and what I’ve seen people start out with, is sleep with a hard-coded time value. “But I know the app’s going to take a few seconds to be ready,” they say, “so I just put in a 5-second delay.”

The internet is a marvelous place, isn’t it? This piece is now 12 years old but is still very relevant. See, those old timers know what they’re talking about. 👨‍🌾

The Onion

In a gesture many critics have decried as yet another blatant bribe to secure favorable regulatory treatment, Frito-Lay CEO Steven Williams presented President Donald Trump this week with a 24-karat, solid gold Funyun.

The Onion is kind of a perfect news paper for the times we live in. 🧅

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I had a heart stress test this week and I guess I’ll find out the results sometime next week. I’ve seen the results but it’s all medical speak and from what I can see I have a problem with one of the chambers of my heart. No doubt my poor life choices are catching up to me quickly. I was encouraged to see that some of what was mentioned said it was reversible. No doubt diet, exercise, and dropping about 100lbs will be the thing I need to do. Easier said than done. 😃

Jessica Murray and Yassin El-Moudden • The Guardian

Thousands of fans lined the streets of Birmingham to watch Ozzy Osbourne make his final journey through his home city, with his tearful family laying tributes as crowds chanted the late singer’s name.

Being loved by so many is something to behold. Most of us will die quietly, hopefully surrounded by family. That’s my sincerest hope.

RIP, Ozzy. 🪦

Casey Newton • Platformer

This week, Substack apologized after sending a push alert promoting one of the pro-Nazi blogs on its network.

Here we are. Substack “accidentally” promoting a Nazi blog.

There are so many great writers using that platform and I really wish they’d get off of it. 😔

Michaela Towfighi • New York Times

Taylor’s account is that he purchased the guitar from a road manager for the Stones while playing with John Mayall, then brought it with him in 1969 when he joined the Stones for five years. His version has been recounted by music journalists, guitar aficionados and a Stones historian.

This is a fascinating story. I love a good mystery! 🕵🏻‍♂️

Ryan Whitman • Ars Technica

The first foldable phones hit the market six years ago, and they were rife with compromises and shortcomings. Many of those problems have persisted, but little by little, foldables have gotten better. With the release of the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Samsung has made the biggest leap yet. This device solves some of the most glaring problems with Samsung’s foldables, featuring a new, slimmer design and a big camera upgrade.

It sounds like foldable are finally getting really good. This may be why we’re getting rumors of an Apple foldable. The technology is finally there.

Shannon Heckt

Amazon Web Services pulled an application for a 7.2 million square foot data center in Louisa County last week, after a surge of resident opposition.

I didn’t even know an Amazon data center was going in near us. I wonder how many folks Amazon hires for big joints like this? What types of jobs do they hire for?

All the data centers being built around the country concern me. So many natural resources and environmental issues follow along with them. Biggest among them is water usage. I’m from California and we lived in a constant state of water conservation. That mindset has followed me to Virginia but most folks ‘round these parts don’t seem to care much about it. It rains a lot so water seems plentiful. Folks probably don’t think twice about data center water consumption. It’s a real problem. One that needs solving.

Frank Landymore • Futurism

Lest you forget that many CEOs are more than willing to fire you and replace you with a shoddy AI model with sociopathic glee, here are the words of one such executive at the forefront of displacing human labor.

I use LLMs on occasion and from my experience they’re just really good reference material. I use them tangentially. I’ll ask how I can setup a GitHub action and things like that. I can see using them for more complex programming problems but so far I haven’t had a need for that. I just truck along writing code, solving problems on my own, and generally love doing it.

When push comes to shove at the day job I’ll step up my usage because I’ll have to. Until then I’ll keep using my little side kick like I’ve been using it. It’s actually useful as a research assistant.

Dave Winer • WordCamp Canada

The idea of WordLand is to do all the block-oriented work once, outside of the writing environment, then flow the writing through it, far away from the heavy lifting. It’s always how I’ve done my blogging tools.

Dave has been building writing tools for over 30 years. His latest creation, WordLand, is very similar to something I’ve wanted from WordPress. It’s a down to earth writing environment based on Markdown that lets you write. Dave is also good about hooking his work up in such a way that it flows outbound to other systems, like Mastodon or Micro.blog or Bluesky.

I want this in a native desktop app, much like MarsEdit, but I want to build my own. I have for years, just like I’ve wanted to build my own Visio clone. I finally gave up on that idea. It’s too big for one person to pull off, but the blogging tool is small enough for a one man show.

It’s too bad all of these blogging platforms can’t decide on a unified API so we could build tools on top of all of them without implementing a client side library for each one. That makes it such a chore.

I think MicroPub is the best choice to pull all these services together.

Of course, as Dave has been championing, having a way to import an RSS feed to your social media site or blog is another fine way to make this work.

I would still like to have a common programmable way to do it. 😃

Johnathan Thompson • High Country News

But “sustainable” bitcoin mining is an oxymoron, given the enormous amounts of power and water data centers consume.

Again, see my comments about the Amazon data center that pulled out of Virginia. Environmental problems abound.

M.G. Siegler • Spyglass

These companies are essentially saying to some employees that they’re so valuable that they’re worth paying not just a lot of money, but more money than basically anyone in the world gets paid – including, often, their own CEOs. And yet to others, they’re basically saying they’re worthless – I mean literally not worth paying anything to any longer.

This feels really terrible. Reading what some of these CEOs say about human beings they’re firing and replacing with LLMs is distressing. So callous, so inhumane. Soulless.

But hey, shareholder value! Keep the rich, rich, at all costs! 🤬

I’m so very thankful I have a job.

Matt Birchler

I’ll just say it: liquid glass is a quintessential example of form over function. There are some UI changes as well to the OS 26 platforms, but the core visual design is clearly optimized for “it looks cool most of the time” rather than how practical it is to use.

I was showing Liquid Glass to our youngest daughter and she said “Oh, I don’t like that!” and “Oh, that’s cool!” depending on what I was showing her.

I’m seeing some strange behavior, like text jiggling back and forth as UI elements shrink or controls jumping into place instead of animating smoothly. I do suspect all of these things will be fixed by ship time, or not long afterwards. It’s not bothering me too much. I trust Apple to fix things in such a way that everyone benefits. That’s what frameworks are for! Fix it once, we all benefit! 😃

At least that’s the goal. 👍🏼