Rob Fahrni

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I love me a four day work week, don’t you? And that’s all I have to say about that.

We’re going to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice this morning at 10. I haven’t heard too much about it but I suspect it’ll be pretty fun. We’ll see.

I hope you enjoy the links.

Erik S Lesser • VICE

Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, about an hour east of Atlanta, is at the center of another school shooting in the United States on Wednesday morning.

Ban all assault weapons, now. They are weapons of war and regular folks don’t need to own weapons of war.

We need a better registration process and training for all weapons. Licensing that has to be renewed every year at a federal government run licensing agency.

Zero gun show sales or online sales. Purchases have to be in person, with initial licensing, and a waiting period of 30 days which requires proof of upcoming training and final licensing within 30 days of receiving the weapon.

Registration would include registration with a centralized ATF database of weapons accessible to local, state, and federal law enforcement.

Make it difficult and expensive so it’s taken very seriously.

Jonathan J. Cooper • The Associated Press

School shootings are a “fact of life,” so the U.S. needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said Thursday.

JD Vance is a garbage human. Zero empathy. Asshole.

Noor Al-Sabai • Futurism

OpenAI is begging the British Parliament to allow it to use copyrighted works because it’s supposedly “impossible” for the company to train its artificial intelligence models — and continue growing its multi-billion-dollar business — without them.

This shouldn’t be allowed if the owner of the site doesn’t want it crawled.

I can see using sites in the public domain who are ok with it.

Go ahead, scrape my site. It’ll assuredly drop the IQ of your AI a few points. 😃

Dave Winer • Scripting News

How podcasting got its name

This is a piece from 2013. I love blogs for the ability to go back in time and gain knowledge on just about any topic.

I recall the 2004 time period quite well. I remember reading on Dave’s blog how this new creation was going and not understanding it at all. Sure, I understood the technical aspects just fine. I didn’t understand why we needed it.

Well, now I think a lot of folks understand why even if they don’t about the mechanism.

Podcasting is amazing and I appreciate it.

Thanks, Dave and Adam, as well as anyone who participated in the process.

NASCAR

Another NASCAR Xfinity Series race that was seemingly in Sheldon Creed’s grasp wriggled free again Saturday at Darlington Raceway.

I felt so bad for Sheldon Creed on Saturday after the race. He’s a great driver and one of my Xfinity favorites but the poor guy can’t seem to win a race. He now holds the record for most second place finishes.

He also revealed a dark side to NASCAR Xfinity racing. He’s not making much to drive a car as a professional driver. In fact most drivers have to bring their own sponsorship to the team to even get a ride! That’s crazy!

Tim Hardwick • MacRumors

Apple is expected to launch a fourth-generation iPhone SE early next year with an OLED display for the first time, marking the completion of Apple’s adoption of OLED technology across all iPhone models.

I’m still using my iPhone 11 and it’s getting a little long in the tooth, especially the battery.

After reading the specs — I know, it’s just a rumor — I’m thinking an SE may be in my future. Why? Well mostly because of a reduced price.

Heck, this years iPhone will probably double in price so the new SE will end up being the price of todays iPhone. 🤣

Jake Kanter • Deadline

And it seems that Sir Ian McKellen could be coming back to his beloved role as J.R.R. Tolkien’s wizard after revealing that he had been approached about featuring in the new Lord of the Rings films.

The man is in his 80’s now and was recently injured after a fall. They’d better get started if they want him to participate.

Also. Why do we need a remake of the Lord of the Rings? I guess it has been over 20 years since Peter Jackson’s epic released. That’s crazy.

Gustaf Kilander • The Independent

Donald Trump and his allies are preparing to make claims of election and voter fraud if he loses in November - according to election experts and a number of old-school Republicans.

But of course they are. It’s a downright miracle we’ve gone over 200 years as a nation without some knucklehead like Trump doing crap like this to become President.

I hope the man loses by a wide margin.

Oh, no media should have the Orange man on their show until the election is complete. Don’t give him the opportunity to declare victory like he did last time.

John Scalzi

Starter Villain won this year’s Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

I like John Scalzi’s work a lot and I miss following him on social media. I wish he’d walk away from X and join Mastodon full time.

Hmmmm, I think he’s on Bluesky. 🤔

Louie Mantia

I’m proud to announce the all-new Parakeet website.

I want to start with a brief historical view of Parakeet’s online presence, then I’ll walk you though some of the key moments making the new website, and then lastly how it makes me feel having our work presented in this way.

I really dig Louie’s style. His blog is a piece of art in my book and he’s applied that same style to Parakeet’s site! Lovin it! 😍

Jowi Morales • Tom’s Hardware

Texas resident used Apple AirTags to discover plastics taken to Houston recycling centers aren’t being recycled

Why does this not surprise me, especially in Texas where they have drive thru Margaritas, free handguns with a purchase at a 7-11, and allow corporations to pollute at will.

Ok, ok, I admit the drive thru Margarita thing is kinda cool. 🍹

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Our grandkids are with us this weekend and for some reason that always throws off Ms. Gracie’s sleep cycle. Her usual 6:30 wake-up came at 5:30 this morning. I suppose that gives me more time to write before the kids wake up. 😁

It’s been a pretty average week this week. I did switch to a different team mid-week. Still on the same application just a different feature set and this time I’m embedded with a team from our client. It’s gonna be fun and I’m excited for it.

Weve had a giant wasp of some kind buzzing around the back door. We think it may be a Cicada Killer. Whatever it was, it was big. I say was because Kolby decided to swat it out of the air and was stung my it. The wasp didn’t last long after that. Kolby is now limping around the house. Poor guy. 😔

The kids are awake. This will be an abbreviated post. 😁

Stephanie K. Baer • The San Francisco Standard

Steve Silberman, writer on the Grateful Dead and autism, dies at 66

R.I.P.

Ryan Smith • AnandTech

It is with great sadness that I find myself penning the hardest news post I’ve ever needed to write here at AnandTech. After over 27 years of covering the wide – and wild – word of computing hardware, today is AnandTech’s final day of publication.

It’s sad to see tech magazines/blogs disappear. How many more will fall over the next year?

WordPress Blog

Since Automattic acquired Tumblr we’ve made it more efficient, grown its revenue, and worked to improve the platform. But there’s one part of the plan that we haven’t yet started, which is to run Tumblr on WordPress. I’m pleased to say we’re kicking off that project now!

[They’re hiring to help with this effort!(https://automattic.com/work-with-us/tumblr-migration/) If I were a backend type I think I’d throw my hat in the ring. What an amazing effort to be a part of!

Alex Kladov

People complain about Rust syntax. I think that most of the time when people think they have an issue with Rust’s syntax, they actually object to Rust’s semantics. In this slightly whimsical post, I’ll try to disentangle the two.

This is a pretty neat look at Rust syntax and why certain choices were made for the standard library.

Tim Hardwick • MacRumors

Apple Lays Off Around 100 Services Staff Across Apple Books and News

I wonder how big the Books and News organization is? Is this a big layoff? It seems like it know how lean Apple tends to run.

Asahi Lina

A subset of C kernel developers just seem determined to make the lives of the Rust maintainers as difficult as possible. They don’t see Rust as having value and would rather it just goes away.

You’d think the C kernel developers would embrace this effort in hopes of improving kernel memory safety. I’m down with the idea.

Toby Christie • Sports Illustrated

Kyle Busch Chose to Race the Right Way on Final Lap at Daytona

With all the attention Richard Childress Racing is getting from the number 3 wrecking Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin to secure a win at Richmond, Bush did the right thing.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Another week, gone. Life seems to be flying by at an accelerated pace and I’m not fond of it.

I continue my React Native and TypeScript work, at work. I’m refactoring a bit of UI code to be shared in the project. It’s been a good experience. I’m definitely a fish out of water but making progress.

We’ll see what next week brings.

Hope you enjoy the links.

Alex Butler • UPI

Katie Ledecky left swimming rival Ariarne Titmus in her wicked wake, revving through the La Defense Arena pool waters toward a record ninth Olympic gold medal with another 800-meter freestyle victory Saturday in Paris.

YAY KATIE! 🇺🇸

Jay Famiglietti • The New York Times

The Central Valley of California supplies a quarter of the food on the nation’s dinner tables. But beneath this image of plenty and abundance, a crisis is brewing — an invisible one, under our feet — and it is not limited to California.

One quarter of the food on the nations table. That’s a big deal.

The big challenge moving forward is how do we get enough water to the Central Valley to continue to raise all those fruits and vegetables to feed everyone?

Yet again, we ignore climate change at our own peril.

Herb Sutter

That’s a great question. Cppreference is correct, and for all class types the answer is simple: The object is initialized on line 1 by having its default constructor called.

But (and you knew a “but” was coming), for a local object of a fundamental built-in type like int, the answer is… more elaborate. And that’s why Sam is asking, because Sam knows that the language has kind of loose about initializing such local objects, for historical reasons that made sense at the time.

Of course Mr. Sutter goes into great depth to explain how the declaration int a; is handled by the C++ compiler (how it’s supposed to be handled according to the standard.)

Remember C is a subset of C++. That was intentionally part of the goal at the time. To get folks to adopt C++ all the C code that had been written needed to continue working.

So, what does that mean for int a; in the question?

It means that declaration doesn’t really initialize a. It just gets whatever value is at that address. Let’s say there was a string represented by the memory now assigned to that declaration and the string began with the letter the ASCII letter ‘a’. Any guess what the value of ‘a’ would be? It would be 97.

In other words, ‘a’ is random.

Mike Masnick • Techdirt

I am excited to announce that I am joining the board of Bluesky, where I will be providing advice and guidance to the company to help it achieve its vision of a more open, more competitive, more decentralized online world.

This is surprising in a good way but I wish we didn’t have two competing decentralized protocols for the social web. It’s fine, I suppose, but having Blusky and Mastodon work with each other would be amazing. Threads still hasn’t delivered full integration with Mastodon, but Micro.blog has, WordPress has achieved some integration points, and Ghost is working on theirs. Tumblr would also be a nice addition but it’s now in a “keep the lights on” mode.

More Fediverse integration, not less.

Bradley Brownell • Jalopnik

Michael Andretti’s denied attempt to join the Formula 1 grid has been granted a DOJ investigation. American firm Liberty Media, which owns Formula 1 Group, denied Andretti Global’s entry to F1 earlier this year. The denial by F1, following a six-month review of the team’s application, which included a commitment from General Motors, claimed that it didn’t believe Andretti could field a competitive car in the series.

This has been a bit frustrating to watch. I would love to see another American company on the grid and I’d really love to see Guenther Steiner in charge of it! 😃

It would also put an American manufactured power unit on the grid from Cadillac. 👍🏼

Nadine Yousif and Michelle Fleury • BBC News

A US judge has ruled that Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly on online searches and related advertising.

This is going to ripple throughout the industry. Does Apple lose their $20 billion fee from Google to be the preferred search engine? I guess we’ll find out.

Stephen Moore

Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: “Bro,1[1] you don’t work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver.”

They have a point. Mordor sucks, and it’s certainly more physically taxing to dig a tunnel than poke at a keyboard unless you’re an ant. But, for the sake of the argument, can we agree that stress and insanity are bad things? Awesome. Welcome to programming.

Programming is definitely part science part insanity. I spend my days agonizing over coding choices, bouncing between feeling kind of smart to feeling a complete idiot.

It’s just the way, at least for me. 😃

Hanaa' Tameez • Nieman Journalism Lab

MTV pulled down MTV News in June. After Deadspin was sold, many of its archives temporarily disappeared. This week, Flaming Hydra reported that The Awl’s archives are gone. And those examples are just from the past couple of months; in 2021, the authors of a Reynolds Journalism Institute report found that just 7 out of 24 newsrooms they interviewed were fully preserving their news content.

This is kind of sad, isn’t it? Journalists losing their work because a publication shuts down.

Then we had the recent kerfuffle with TUAW where someone purchased the site and content, ran it through and AI, and republished all the content under the original authors names with different profile pictures. That’s slimy.

It’s no wonder authors are backing up their own work. I certainly would and do. I have 23 years of blog posts.

Simon Willison

It’s amusing to see Apple using “please” in their prompts, and politely requesting of the model: “Do not hallucinate. Do not make up factual information.”

This is an interesting piece. Go read how Apple is approaching AI. I love their prompts including words like “please” and “do not hallucinate.” Classic! 🤣

Charlie Savage • The New York Times

A bipartisan American Bar Association task force is calling on lawyers across the country to do more to help protect democracy ahead of the 2024 election, warning in a statement to be delivered Friday at the group’s annual meeting in Chicago that the nation faces a serious threat in “rising authoritarianism.”

If Trump loses in November the country needs to be prepared for all kinds of slimy efforts to take the election for themselves.

I have no clue what they’re going to do, but it’s coming.

Nikita Shukla • earth.org

Generative AI has very quickly been adopted across various sectors. However, this has led to increased global electricity consumption that is only predicted to increase further as the technology expands, with many tech companies already at risk of defaulting on their net-zero commitments.

This is a new type of arms race between the big players. They have to do it but they’re not going to make money from it for a long time and oh by the way they’re going to strain the crap out of our power grid. Why? Shareholder value. So while your power is out and you’re baking in the heat of summer or the cold of winter they’ll be happily churning out their next iteration of a fancy pachinko game that isn’t really intelligent, it’s just a super fancy decision tree being jammed into everything because AI.

Each and every AI company should be regulated and be required to generate two times the power they consume, at no cost to the consumer, to offset their consumption. Darned digital vampires.

Stephanie Apstein • Sports Illustrated

U.S. Athletes Are Taking Full Advantage of Free Healthcare in Olympic Village

It’s amazing what a country can do for their citizenry, isn’t it? Healthcare for all, I say! Some things need to be done for the good of society. Healthy, educated, people are an amazing thing. It will allow us to invent and solve big problems. It’s good all around, in my opinion.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Pretty typical week. Slow around the house and busy at work. I have yard work today and we’re gonna install a new ceiling fan later, most likely tomorrow. Kim let me sleep in, it was really nice. Stayed in bed until 10AM, so off to a really late start with morning coffee and writing. 😃

John Brayton • Golden Hill Software

Unread for Mac is now available from the Mac App Store. Unread for Mac incorporates every Unread capability that makes sense on Mac including:

I’m so happy for my friend! John really shows his chops as a Mac developer in this release of Unread for Mac. I’ve had the honor of being on the Beta for months and I’ve watched new features land with high quality and witnessed John polish the user interface to a beautiful sheen.

Unread is a prime example of a Mac-assed Mac App.

Congratulations, John! ❤️

ESPN

Simone Biles reclaimed her Olympic title in the women’s all-around at the Paris Olympics on Thursday.

This is so nice to see Ms. Biles rise to the top of her game once again.

Congratulations, Simone! You make us proud! 🇺🇸

Kylie Robison • The Verge

Mark Kalman, X’s engineering lead of media, and his second-in-command, Melissa Merencillo, resigned today. They announced their departures in a company Slack channel on the day stocks vest at X, which a source suggests might explain the timing.

X is such a cesspool. I’m surprised anyone has hung around to work with Space Karen.

He’s pushed so hard to make X into a Nazi, white supremacist, waste land, and by and large succeeded.

I really wish we could convince the likes of Stephen King and many, many others, with strong voices to leave that shit show.

Epic Games

We are fast approaching a quantum leap in Epic’s efforts to bring our games to players on mobile devices. Fortnite will be returning to iOS in the European Union soon, and the Epic Games Store will be coming to Android worldwide and iOS in the European Union bringing all developers great terms: a store fee of 12% for payments we process, and 0% on third party payments.

It’s interesting Epic chose to undercut Apple by only 3% on payment processing. That will, however, hit the bottom like of companies that pay 30% to the App Store once they cross the magic threshold (I can’t remember what it is, so it’s a magic threshold for this post.)

The 0% fee is absolutely amazing and it would be lovely to see Apple do this, but, it could cost them hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter if all the big players were allowed to do their own thing.

Andrew Harnik • AlterNet

AG Garland knocks Cannon’s classified docs ruling: ‘Do I look like someone who’d make that mistake?’

A little shade thrown by the AG! I love it!

Judge Aileen Cannon based her ruling on a passing comment made by Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas when writing about the Trump Immunity Case.

Yeah, it was done as a favor to Trump to delay the case yet again.

Once the Presidential Election is over, and TFG has lost, hopefully the good work of prosecuting him can get back on track.

NASCAR

Spire Motorsports confirmed on Thursday that Corey LaJoie, driver of the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, will not return to the team following the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season.

This news really bummed me out. Corey LaJoie is an extremely hard working journeyman of NASCAR. He’s never won at the Cup Series Level but throws his whole heart into everything he does.

I’m an avid listener of his podcast, Stacking Pennies, and I hope the man is considered for a Cup ride on another team. It seems unlikely but I’m pulling for him. ❤️

A seat in the Xfinity Series or the Truck Series would at least let him continue to race. 🤞🏼

Eirka Turlock • CNN

A Starbucks app outage on Tuesday left customers unable to place a mobile order, delaying caffeine fixes for millions of coffee lovers until the app returned to service later in the day.

This is completely unacceptable! 🤣

Coffee addicts all over the country were left with the shakes, sweating, and irritable because they couldn’t pickup their drinks easily. THEY HAD TO GET IN LINE OR WALK IN THE NERVE OF STARBUCKS!

I’ve always claimed Starbucks has one of the best mobile ordering experiences in all of food services. Outages, unfortunately, happen.

David Goodwin • AppleVis

It is with deep sadness and a heavy heart that after careful consideration I have made the difficult decision to step down from my responsibilities with AppleVis. As a direct result of my departure and following extensive deliberation, the editorial team has come to the painful conclusion that AppleVis will be closing.

It’s been a rough time for magazines for a very long time. 🪦

Game Informer

After 33 thrilling years of bringing you the latest news, reviews, and insights from the ever-evolving world of gaming, it is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Game Informer.

I’m not a gamer but this has to hit hard! It’s such a bummer to see long running sites fold like this. 🪦

Josh Marshall • Talking Points Memo

But yesterday FBI Director Christopher Wray said, ironically in response to a question from Rep. Jim Jordan, that it’s not clear whether Trump was hit by a bullet or debris kicked up by the gunfire. I think in context that’s likely a bureaucratic and gentle way of saying Trump probably wasn’t hit by a bullet. But let’s stick to the precise words. “There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear.”

Congressional Republicans love to focus on the wrong thing and make a big deal out of it.

Let’s talk facts. Someone attempted to assassinate the Orange Man.

It doesn’t matter if it was the bullet or something else that touched his ear enough to make it bleed.

He’s just really lucky whatever hit his ear didn’t actually hit the meat of the ear. It most likely would’ve taken most of it off and done additional damage to him.

Luckily the man’s brain is already so damaged a little more wouldn’t hurt. 😆

Ryan Adamczeski • Advocate

Elon Musk’s trans daughter Vivian Wilson slams his anti-LGBTQ+ comments as ‘ketamine-fueled haze’

Ms. Vivian is super funny! Elon is really missing out on a great kid and proves once again he’s a terrible father. His poor kids are basically fatherless in this world and get to watch their “father” implode into a conspiracy theorist lunatic right before their eyes.

Pathetic man.

Lincoln Carpenter • PC Gamer

Fortnite players declare the Cybertruck public enemy number one: ‘You are now in a truce with everyone else in the lobby until they’re taken down’

I’ve never played Fortnite and I’m not much of a gamer but I feel like I should become a Fortnite player just to hunt these things down and blow them up. 🤣

Jordan Novet, Ari Levy • CNBC

Delta hires David Boies to seek damages from CrowdStrike, Microsoft after outage

Boise has already lead a successful prosecution of Microsoft of while with the U.S. federal government.

I actually feel really bad for Microsoft, not so much for CrowdStrike. After a deal with European Regulators they felt compelled to allow companies to run at the kernel level of NT.

I hope thy go back to the older model and lock things down.

Theo Burman • Newsweek

California Wildfire: Man Saves 100-Year-Old Ranch With Homemade Sprinkler Defense System

A little old fashioned ingenuity at work! I love this story and feel so bad for California at the same time.

The poor folks in Canada as well. 🇨🇦

It’s just tragic we have wildfires every summer in California and it’s just going to get worse.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I got my first React Native PR submitted and I’ve received some good feedback.

On the whole it’s fine. I still find the syntax extremely strange but I’ll figure it out.

I still very much prefer Swift and Xcode to TypeScript and VSCode. 😃

Barack Obama

Joe Biden has been one of America’s most consequential presidents, as well as a dear friend and partner to me. Today, we’ve also been reminded — again — that he’s a patriot of the highest order.

Thank you President Biden for serving your country. ❤️

Robert Reich

Let me add my words of gratitude to Joe Biden for doing something Donald Trump is incapable of doing — putting his country over ego, ambition, and pride.

Biden bowed out with grace and dignity.

Yes, yes he did. Now let’s all get behind Kamala Harris, make her the 47th President of this great nation, and save Democracy.

David Gilmour • Mediaite

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow flipped the question that has long chased Democrats of presidential candidate age and capability on Republicans Sunday night after President Joe Biden announced he would no longer run for re-election, calling out former President Donald Trump as now the “old man in the race.”

It’s time for the media to ask the Orange Man to withdrawal from the run for President because of his age and his lack of mental capacity to properly do the job.

Luke Deniston

This is the story of a process that died, and the tale of what we went through to track down the killer and bring it to justice. More accurately, it was a process that kept dying, but that hurts the analogy I’m trying to go for here so just bear with me.

I worked with Luke at Agrian. He’s super smart and kind and I love this story. Luke, if you read this, I hope you wrote that entire story yourself? It’s awesome.

Jess Weatherbed • The Verge

Despite Apple’s claims that most consumers will only consider purchasing vehicles that support CarPlay, Rivian says it still doesn’t have any plans to adopt the iPhone mirroring system. Talking to The Verge EIC Nilay Patel in today’s episode of Decoder, Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe likened Rivian adopting CarPlay to Apple choosing to use Microsoft’s Windows operating systems instead of developing its own in-house iOS and macOS alternatives.

I like this take and comparison. Apple has a desire to be the primary control center for the car and that seems wrong. They also want the car company to make sure Apple is called out as the provider of the in car system by not changing things like fonts on the in dash system. That would mean the cars branding wouldn’t match the companies. That’s not good.

Wouldn’t it be cool to work on an embedded in dash system? I think it would.

The Futon Critic

“HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET” ARRIVES ON PEACOCK AUG. 19

YES! I loved me some Homocide: Life on the Streets and I’m glad it’ll be available for streaming. Too bad I don’t have a Peacock subscription. Might have to convince the boss we need it for a while? 🤔

M.G. Siegler • Spyglass

Apple Should Buy HBO

I like this idea, especially if Apple would commit to funding HBO original content so we may get the next Sopranos, The Wire, or Game of Thrones.

Isabel van Brugen • Newsweek

Valentina Bondarenko, a top Russian economist, has died at the age of 82 after falling out of her apartment window in Moscow, Russian state-run media reported on Tuesday.

It’s so strange how many folks fall out of windows in Russia. It’s a downright epidemic.

I suspect if Orange Man wins the Presidency we’ll see this strange affliction migrate to America.

Jowi Morales • Tom’s Hardware

Windows 3.1 saves the day during CrowdStrike outage — Southwest Airlines scrapes by with archaic OS

I find this extremely difficult to believe. I actually liked Windows 3.1 and it’s the OS Visio was originally written on, so it’s pretty near and dear to my heart. Thing is, it’s a 16-bit OS, but it was quite capable. I’d love to know more about this setup and how in the world do they keep it secure? The network support in Windows 3.1 was mediocre at best. Did it even support HTTP? I don’t have the slightest clue.

Gil Duran • The New Republic

Where J.D. Vance Gets His Weird, Terrifying Techno-Authoritarian Ideas

I’ve never heard of Curtis Yarvin but he sounds like a real piece of work. This dudes thoughts are as bad as Nazi Germany’s “useless eaters” program. Pathetic and disgusting.

He’s the one that needs to go away with thinking like that. 🤬

Elizabeth Lopatto • The Verge

The moral bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz

All the billionaire bros in the Silicon Valley need to get their act together. They’re ready to throw democracy away so they can become richer? How much money do you need? The answer must be all of it!

Again. Pathetic and selfish to allow an entire nation to be destroyed because you want to make a buck. Don’t be surprised if someone shows up at your place looking to beat your ass. No, that’s not a threat, but I can imagine someone feeling that strongly about it. I mean, hell, someone has already tried to take out the Orange Man. I don’t suspect it’ll be the last.

Stu Sjouwerman • KnowBe4

TLDR: KnowBe4 needed a software engineer for our internal IT AI team. We posted the job, received resumes, conducted interviews, performed background checks, verified references, and hired the person. We sent them their Mac workstation, and the moment it was received, it immediately started to load malware.

This story is fascinating. At WillowTree we’ve had a couple candidates try to get through by hiring someone to do the technical parts of the test for them. They’ve been caught and I’m not aware of any getting through. I suspect in our case they just wanted a job they didn’t have the skill for. In the end they’d have failed and been let go so I’m not sure why they went through the trouble.

Steven Vaughan-Nichols • ZDNet

Several European countries are betting on open-source software for their technology. In the United States, eh, not so much. In the latest news from across the Atlantic, Switzerland has taken a major step forward with its “Federal Law on the Use of Electronic Means for the Fulfillment of Governmental Tasks” (EMBAG). This groundbreaking legislation mandates using open-source software (OSS) in the public sector.

Here’s the thing about this. If someone finds an exploit in Linux they’re gonna leverage it until they’re caught. Something like the CrowdStrike disaster could happen just as easily in open source software. Companies just don’t have to pay to use it, don’t have to contribute their changes back to the community, or support the maintainers of the software.

It’s a good deal for corporations.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Another very quiet week at home and work.

I hope you enjoy the links.

Dan Heching and Zoe Sottile • CNN

Estey said Simmons died early on Saturday morning. He had celebrated his 76th birthday the day before. “We lost an Angel today - a true Angel,” Estey added.

I remember Richard Simmons from the 80’s. Always the showman, always enthusiastic, always fighting to teach folks how to lose weight and talking about his own struggles.

R.I.P.

Carmel Dagan • Variety

Bob Newhart, the genteel but sharply satirical comic whose TV series “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Newhart” were huge hits throughout the 1970s and ’80s, died Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 94.

I know he’s well know for his television series but I really liked him as Papa Elf in the movie Elf.

R.I.P.

David Nield • ScienceAlert

The probe was recorded traveling at 635,266 kilometers (394,736 miles) per hour on June 29, the second time it’s reached that speed since it launched in 2018. We’re talking around 500 times faster than the speed of sound here.

It’s impossible for me to wrap my brain around the idea of going 394,736 miles per hour. 😳

But, it’s pretty cool!

Lily Hay Newman, Matt Burgess, and Andy Greenberg • WIRED

Only a handful of times in history has a single piece of code managed to instantly wreck computer systems worldwide. The Slammer worm of 2003. Russia’s Ukraine-targeted NotPetya cyberattack. North Korea’s self-spreading ransomware WannaCry. But the ongoing digital catastrophe that rocked the internet and IT infrastructure around the globe over the past 12 hours appears to have been triggered not by malicious code released by hackers, but by the software designed to stop them.

What a day for our global network, Microsoft, and CrowdStrike.

I feel terrible for any shop using CrowdStrike and their DevOps or IT Administrators and Technicians. The only way to fix this issue is to be in the room, in front of the computer.

I once worked at a pistachio and almond processing plant that ran on Windows PC’s. At times I needed access to certain computers and had to get someone to unlock a door for me. Can you imagine having to fix thousands of computers with this issue? Sure, developers and the techies in the organization can fix it on their own and help others, but what a pain in the butt. ❤️

Hafiz Rashid • The New Republic

“I have stood up in rooms with all of these people and I have said, ‘Game out your actual plan for me.’ What are the risks of this going to the Supreme Court? And no one had an answer for me.… I’m talking about the lawyers. I’m talking about the legislators,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

What’s the plan? Seems Democrats don’t have one.

This entire kerfuffle couldn’t have come at a worse time. More than ever we need to be united to stop the GOP in their tracks. They are the political enemy and you defeat a political enemy by beating them at the polls.

Turn out, vote for the Democrat, save democracy.

It really is that simple.

Maya Posch • Hackaday

With performance optimizations seemingly having lost their relevance in an era of ever-increasing hardware performance, there are still many good reasons to spend some time optimizing code. In a recent preprint article by [Paul Bilokon] and [Burak Gunduz] of the Imperial College London the focus is specifically on low-latency patterns that are relevant for applications such as high-frequency trading (HFT). In HFT the small margins are compensated for by churning through absolutely massive volumes of trades, all of which relies on extremely low latency to gain every advantage. Although FPGA-based solutions are very common in HFT due their low-latency, high-parallelism, C++ is the main language being used beyond FPGAs.

A friend worked on one of these high speed trading systems. The pressure on him to write bug free, highly performant C++ code was immense. These trading folks are crazy serious about making money and these systems need to be super solid. Their drive to be filthy rich depends on it.

He didn’t stay for long. The stress wasn’t worth it.

Heather Cox Richardson • Letters from an American

This morning, after a day of Republicans insisting that it is political polarization to suggest that Trump is a danger to our democracy, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in the last days of his presidency, dismissed the classified documents case against the former president. She wrote that “Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.”

It seems Judge Aileen Cannon is in the bag for Trump. She’s been delaying and dragging her feet for months on this matter. Either she’s incompetent or corrupt or maybe a little of both?

Regardless, we can also thank corrupt Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for planting the seed of this plan to dismiss the case. In the Trump Immunity decision he noted Jack Smith’s appointment may be unconstitutional. Of course the documents case has nothing to do with the immunity case. He just slipped it in there to sow doubt. It worked.

There is still a path to prosecution but it won’t happen before the election. If the Orange Clown wins it’ll never happen.

Dan Moren • Six Colors

Ultimately the reaction to 18’s initial public beta may be more about what’s not there than what is. When Apple first announced its latest annual update to the mobile software platform back in June, most of the attention went to a suite of features—the top-billed ones if you look at the company’s iOS 18 Preview Page—collected under the aegis of Apple Intelligence. These marked the company’s much anticipated foray into artificial intelligence and promise everything from image generation to a reinvigorated Siri.

TL;DR - if you’re expecting to see Apple Intelligence as part of the betas, don’t hold your breath. Those features will roll out over the next year and into the future.

Outside of the excitement surrounding Apple Intelligence there are plenty of nice features to explore and enjoy.

Nick Schager • The Daily Beast

Longlegs is the horror event of the summer—a serial killer thriller that plays like a nightmarish swirl of The Silence of the Lambs, Seven, Psycho and Zodiac, albeit with far less rationality and considerably more demonic derangement.

I’m excited to see this! I’d imagine this is one film I’ll be able to get Kim to see in theaters. 😃

Ploum

TL;DR: put your open source code under the AGPL license.

While I don’t agree with a lot of what’s said in this piece, it is worth a read to gain a different perspective on Open Source and the problems around maintaining it.

Jake Edge • lwn.net

At the 2024 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Wedson Almeida Filho and Kent Overstreet led a combined storage and filesystem session on using Rust for Linux filesystems.

I like how this was written. It’s basically meeting notes from the session.

The Rust developers will have to be the ones to absorb the pain of keeping up with changes to the filesystem. As a developer using a newer technology I wouldn’t expect anything less.

I’m looking forward to the day we see Swift showing up in filesystem components on the Mac. There is an effort underway to rewrite Foundation in Swift. That’s a great start.

Wes Davis • The Verge

Apple has approved UTM SE, an app for emulating a computer to run classic software and games, weeks after the company rejected it and barred it from being notarized for third-party app stores in the European Union. The app is now available for free for iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS.

I’d imagine European Regulators made this happen. Apple doesn’t need them crawling any further up their butts. They’re already in enough trouble.

Brett Berk • The Drive

This is the golden age of full-size pickup trucks. Because the market demands it, and because the market is enormous and extremely profitable, the latest breed of pickup trucks is comfortable, commodious, potent, and dare I say luxurious. The Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado, and Ram 1500 are, respectively, the top-selling vehicles in America. And with their Brobdingnagian scale, appliqué steer horns, remotely erecting towing hitches, and power-opening tailgates that drop like the rear flap on a cowpoke’s union suit, pickup trucks may be the greatest examples of overcompensation ever invented.

This is a piece from 2019 but it still holds up today. Trucks are definitely no longer the multipurpose towing and hauling vehicles they used to be. When I got one with power windows and AC I thought it was pretty luxurious, but modern pickups are like luxury automobiles.

I’d bet real farmers and workmen using trucks as trucks don’t buy the luxury models. 😁 I’ve seen the inside of real work trucks. They smell of dirt and oil and usually have mud all over the floorboards. Not to mention barebones interiors.

My grandfather was a mobile mechanic for his entire life. His trucks had flat beds with large generators, a boom, and tool chests and various tool compartments. When his motor or transmission wore out, no problem, he pulled them and replaced them, himself.

I’m sure those folks still exist today but luxury trucks weren’t made for them. 😃

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

This week was Apple Developer Christmas also known as WWDC. It’s a time of year we learn what Apple has in store for developers for the next year.

At WillowTree we had a watch party at our Durham, North Carolina office. It was really great to meet folks I’ve worked with on projects but haven’t met in person.

It was really nice. A mini vacation with friends.

The keynote and Developer State of the Union were great as always and we all knew AI would be at the center.

Christine Hall • TechCrunch

Here’s everything Apple announced at the WWDC 2024 keynote, including Apple Intelligence, Siri makeover

We all suspected Apple would have an AI story this year, but they did announce other things. One that caught my attention was SwiftData allowing developers to use their own backend as a data source. It’s something every app developer integrating with a custom web service has to do. I’m super curious about it.

I’m also way behind the Swift Strict Concurrency train. It’s as if we have an entirely new language to learn.

Mark Gurman • Bloomberg

Apple to ‘Pay’ OpenAI for ChatGPT Through Distribution, Not Cash

This is a classic mistake all developers and designers are warned not to do. The classic “My app is so popular it’ll get you attention for the free artwork you give me.” Uh, yeah, take cold hard cash.

The irony of this is Microsoft is in essence paying Apple to have ChatGPT integration in Apple OS’es.

Oh, most of the intelligence on device will be handled by Apple’s own models. But, when it does have to go off device it’ll make sure you know it’s ChatGPT so if it screws up you know who to blame. 🤣

Apple Security Engineering

Apple Intelligence is the personal intelligence system that brings powerful generative models to iPhone, iPad, and Mac. For advanced features that need to reason over complex data with larger foundation models, we created Private Cloud Compute (PCC), a groundbreaking cloud intelligence system designed specifically for private AI processing.

I want to know about the custom hardware Apple built. Sure, it’s running Apple Silicon and the OS is stripped down and buttoned up tighter than a drum to prevent accidentally introducing security holes, but I want to see how the hardware is assembled and see how it’s mounted in racks.

Daniel Jalkut • Bitsplitting

During the crescendo to announcing its name, the letters “A” and “I” will be on all of our lips, and then they’ll drop the proverbial mic: “We’re calling it Apple Intelligence.” Get it?

You may be asking why I included this post? I included it because Daniel called the “Apple Intelligence” name over a year ago. Did Apple take his idea? We’ll probably never know. 😃

Hartley Charlton • MacRumors

Elon Musk has threatened to ban Apple devices from his companies over Apple’s newly announced ChatGPT integration.

Space Karen really is a big baby man. He and the Orange Menace are cut from the same cloth. I get my way or I’m gonna throw myself down and have a tantrum.

Do it, ban Apple products at your companies, baby man. 👶🏼

Nathan Edwards • The Verge

If you’ve never tried to do work on an iPad, I am genuinely happy for you. I’m writing this story on a Bluetooth keyboard connected to an 11-inch iPad Air M2. It’s a very nice keyboard, and the Air is a very nice tablet, but this would have been so much faster and easier on a convertible Chromebook. And I could still have watched Andor on the plane.

Folks are going to continue to ask for hardware they may never get. Google and Microsoft both offer hardware more akin to what iPad — MacPad? — users want.

The Viticci Monster is still your best bet.

Reid Spencer • NASCAR

Martin Truex Jr. felt it was time to regain control over his own life and his own schedule.

“I’m obviously here to let y’all know that I won’t be back full-time next year,” Truex said Friday in a press conference with team owner Joe Gibbs, confirming the widely reported news that he will exit the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota at season’s end.

It’s the end of an era. Truex is a Cup Series Champion with 34 wins in his pocket and is always a threat to win on the track.

Here’s to retirement. I hope you enjoy every moment of it Mr. Truex.

Lydia Mee • Newsweek

A pivotal gathering is reportedly taking place in Montreal today, where Formula 1 team bosses are set to convene to deliberate on the sport’s upcoming 2026 rule changes with F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali. This meeting aims to tackle increasing apprehensions surrounding the profound modifications proposed for the 2026 Formula One season.

Hats off to Formula 1 for trying to do something bold with their racing designs. In particular the motors are meant to combine electric power with a traditional combustion motor.

Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman • New York Times

Donald Trump and his closest allies are preparing a radical reshaping of American government if he regains the White House. Here are some of his plans for cracking down on immigration, directing the Justice Department to prosecute his adversaries, increasing presidential power, upending America’s trade policies, retreating militarily from Europe and unilaterally deploying troops to Democratic-run cities.

I’ll continue to beat the anti-Orange Man drum until he’s no longer a threat to Democracy. He must be defeated in November and our system of government must be hardened and prepared for an onslaught of attacks and violence if he is defeated.

Stephen Marz

The standard library contains a ton of code that we don’t want to write ourselves, including printf, scanf, math functions, and so forth. So, we need to make sure our operating system can link to this library and everything “just works”. This post will show you how I linked our operating system to a standard library, newlib, and the trials and tribulations encountered in doing so.

Wow. Stephen has a lot of stuff to consider while integrating the standard C runtime libraries into his Rust based OS. I really need to keep an eye on his work.

Oladimeji Sowole • The New Stack

Note that at this stage, only certain aspects of the Edge UI have undergone this change. In reply to a Mastodon user who asked about this, Russell confirmed that it is “an ongoing effort” and that the Edge team is “converting surface-by-surface, with ~15% fully done so far.”

At the day job I’m diving into React Native because we’re getting a lot of requests for React Native work.

On the flip side you have Microsoft rethinking their use of React in their browser. It makes sense to me. You want your browser to be as zippy and memory efficient as it can be.

James Bickerton • Newsweek

On Thursday 192 House Republicans voted for an amendment which would have required a controversial Confederate monument to be reinstated at Arlington National Cemetery, where it was removed in December 2023.

What an embarrassing time in America. The GOP is fully embracing every mean and cruel law they possibly can. Why do they have to control everyone?

It’s always been a bit of a puzzle to me how the Republican and Democrat party have morphed over the years. Remember it was the GOP led by Lincoln who abolished slavery. Here we are over 150 years later and the GOP wants to control every life in America and Democrats are against it.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

We had a lot of fun this week tracking down a bug in the project I’m working on. It was exposed by slow server response, which was because the service had grown. So the bug was icky. Once we tracked it down on the client side we were able to fix it up pretty quickly. I love doing stuff like this! Finding and fixing bugs is part of any developers job along with writing code.

I hope you enjoy the links.

Natalie Venegas • Newsweek

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns' rare warning during a commencement speech about former President Donald Trump, sparked outrage from supporters of Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement this weekend.

People are right to continue to warn us all of the dangers of electing Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump to the Presidency.

Anyone who reads this site — thanks to both of you — knows I’m a Liberal Democrat suffering from “The Woke Mind Virus.” 😃 So of course I think a man set on destroying Democracy as we know it is dangerous.

Noah Kirsch • The Daily Beast

Now, former board member Helen Toner is explaining her decision. In a new podcast interview, the artificial intelligence researcher blasted Altman’s lack of transparency and said the board was kept in the dark about key decisions. She accused Altman of “withholding information, misrepresenting things that were happening in the company, [and] in some cases outright lying to the board.”

AI will continue to be controversial and it looks like Sam Altman will be the poster boy for the controversy, at least in the short term.

Keeping a full commercial product rollout from the board seems like a bad idea, doesn’t it? No wonder they fired him.

Mark Tyson • Tom’s Hardware

Popular TechTuber Jeff Geerling has delivered an updated take on the old chestnut about the relative merits of pigeon-based vs internet data transfers.

TL;DR - Data delivery by pigeon is still faster than the internet. 🤣

Kelly Crandall • Racer

In a joint statement issued Tuesday, Tony Stewart and Gene Haas confirmed that Stewart-Haas Racing will cease NASCAR operations at season’s end.

This is a real bummer for NASCAR fans and the sport in general. Stewart Haas had a championship team not so long ago but it’s been a long time since they’ve seen victory lane.

They have four cars on the grid. Three teams field four drivers and it’s my understanding NASCAR is going to limit team size to three going forward.

In 2016 NASCAR switched to a Charter system. In that system teams purchase a charter from NASCAR to be part of the system. Those charters are expected to grow in value so a team would have more than physical goods to sale should they decide to close shop. They’re not cheap. Spire Motorsports bought one last year for $40mm. What will each Stewart Haas charter sell for? 😳

Tuomas Pirhonen - PDF

Writing an NVMe Driver in Rust

The link above is to a PDF for Thomas Pirhonen’s Bachelors Thesis. Rust has really made inroads into systems development and I’m happy to see it. Having memory safe code at the systems level seems like a smart thing to do, don’t you think? 😃

I’d be curious to see how much unsafe code exists in the various Rust OS level projects I’ve heard of. But, you gotta start somewhere!

When will Swift be used to build major parts of Apple’s OS level code? Or is it already being used?

Cocoanetics

I’ve long had a longing to have a Mac Mini as build server in my technics room. After Apple finally updated it to (now) fashionable space grey, it was a must purchase for my company.

I’ve had a hankering to do this very thing. I can see setting up the server much in the way we see here and trigger builds via GitHub Actions to start the process. Heck, I could use Xcode’s built in support for automating builds and kick it off right from within Xcode on my laptop. Yeah, Xcode has a decent enough build system to make it useful. Makes me wonder how much of it Apple is using for Xcode Cloud or is 100% of that custom code?

Anton Zhiyanov

If you work with sensitive data, and want to be 100% sure that there is no trace of the old data after it has been updated or deleted — SQLite has you covered. The secure_delete pragma (off by default) causes SQLite to overwrite deleted content with zeros.

TIL! I’ve used SQLite in quite a few projects, including Stream. I love it for local storage and still prefer it to CoreData, it’s just straightforward SQL. Anywho, I had no idea you could do this. Another nice tool to keep in the toolbox.

JanerationX

Doctor Who returned to TV recently as a “soft reboot” to attract a new generation of viewers. Yeah, okay, but the older generations didn’t exactly go away, and since I am a member of an older generation, I am qualified to say that the show sucks.

I think we’ve all been here when we see a big change to our favorite Television show.

Heck, I’m torn about continuing to watch The Witcher. Henry Cavil is The Witcher and to see him replaced just feels wrong.

Kim Zetter • WIRED

Two years ago when “Michael,” an owner of cryptocurrency, contacted Joe Grand to help recover access to about $2 million worth of bitcoin he stored in encrypted format on his computer, Grand turned him down.

You gotta love these hacker folks. At least he’s using his talent for good.

Viktor Petersson

My Home Server Journey - From Raspberry Pi to Ryzen

What’s up with two server based links today? Guess I’m just in a very hardware mood today.

This reminds me I need to setup my $99 Mac Mini I purchased months ago. It’s an x86 based Mini and fairly old but I want it for media streaming and another local backup system.

David Price • Macworld

Those who miss the days of full-time Apple/Microsoft beef will have been heartened last week by bold claims that the latest Surface devices are faster than the M3 MacBook Air. It’s fun to see Microsoft’s marketing department in a combative mood, but part of me wishes the company would stop trying so hard to show it’s better than Apple.

I don’t know that I’d go this far. Microsoft is just trying to lead the industry into an ARM focused world by attempting to create a new standard of PC.

I’ve been on the Mac, almost exclusively, since around 2006(?) and I love the experience from a user and developer point of view.

There’s still that part of me that loves my old development days on Windows. It was also a great platform to build on.

The new Microsoft Surface Pro looks absolutely amazing and I’ve lusted for one of these computers for years. Microsoft has proven for years and years a tablet/laptop can have excellent touch support and a full desktop class OS underpinning it.

It’s only a matter of time before Apple does it. When it happens all doubt around Apple creating a convertible will disappear and folks will think it’s the greatest thing ever.

Chelsea Troy

Each quarter at the University of Chicago includes nine weeks of instruction. In the eighth week, I ask students to submit questions that they would like our ninth and final session to cover. This quarter, a third of the students in the class submitted some version of the question: “How can I use ChatGPT to get ahead in my programming job?”

I know of a lot of developers at work using ChatGPT to their advantage. It’s not that it’s doing their job, no, it’s just another tool to get started with a thought.

Jordan Tigani

The intended takeaway from the “Big Data is coming” chart was that pretty soon, everyone will be inundated by their data. Ten years in, that future just hasn’t materialized. We can validate this several ways: looking at data (quantitatively), asking people if it is consistent with their experience (qualitatively), and thinking it through from first principles (inductively).

I’m not really into backend stuff like this. It seems kind of boring but it’s good to know some folks are really into it.

Declaring something dead is a bit strange to me, because it was never a living thing, but I get the gist.

I’m sure your mileage will vary but this is a small piece worth a read just to understand his declaration.

BigData, it turns out, ain’t all that big.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I had to set aside my upgrade of some of the networking code changes I wanted to make on the project I’m on at work. That’s fine. I knew it would be a bit of a process to update this code and to be honest it may be a fools errand. But I still believe it would make the code more maintainable and eliminate two third party dependencies. But you have to be ready to sideline work like this when more pressing work shows up.

Here we go. I hope you enjoy the links this week.

Benj Edwards • Ars Technica

Gordon Bell, an architect of our digital age, dies at age 89

RIP 🪦

Tom Warren • The Verge

Microsoft has just announced a new Surface Pro, which is part of the new wave of Copilot Plus PCs. The new Pro, which is technically the “11th edition,” starts at $999, comes in four colors, and is powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X processors.

I don’t care about the AI stuff Microsoft announced and hopefully folks can turn it off because it sounds terrible but I do like seeing them ship new hardware with vastly improved performance. 👍🏼

Fingers crossed this one is a winner. 🤞🏼

Lance Ewing

There is nothing unusual about the outside of these disks, but there is something unique about the data that is stored on them, something that Sierra On-Line would have been totally unaware of and certainly wouldn’t have wanted them to include.

I love history stories like this! Back in my Visio days I was what we call a Configuration Engineer. I was in charge of our installer code and creating the final gold master disks — 720KB and 1.44MB — and CD, so I’m familiar with this process. I didn’t, however, have an imaging machine. We sent the masters out to a disk duplication service to mass produce them and put them in boxes with documentation.

Anywho, I never made a mistake like that, and this mistake was not the worst you could make. Hey, at least the code wasn’t there in plain text. You actually had to check space the OS has marked as free to find it. Remember kids, do a destructive format or a DoD wipe of space you’d like to be empty.

Kazuaki Nagata • The Japan Times

In a bid to break Apple and Google’s dominance of the smartphone app ecosystem, the Japanese government is looking to change rules on app markets and payments to stimulate competition.

Things are getting interesting for Apple and Google. At what point does Apple decide on a single strategy for managing the availability of third-party stores and installation of software outside of any store?

I can’t see Japan going for Apple’s “Core Technology Fee” but we’ll see as this moves forward.

John Gruber • Daring Fireball

Pixar Lays Off 175 Employees, 14 Percent of Staff, Shocking No One Who’s Tried Watching Their Recent Films

Harsh take from Gruber. The last Pixar Movie I saw was Onward and I liked it.

I don’t know if it’s that their movies are bad now. Maybe the magic has just worn off?

Jason Koebler • 404 Media

Google Is Paying Reddit $60 Million for F**ksmith to Tell Its Users to Eat Glue

This is a head scratcher. If LLMs are being trained on all of the Internet then we’re kind of screwed.

I’m not eating a pizza with glue in the sauce, ok. 🍕

Witney Seibold • /Film

Armitage didn’t even know his sword had been stolen until Peter Jackson brought it to his attention. He’d been equally surprised to have Orcrist join his possessions in the first place.

All I could think while reading this is how amazing it would be to have this sword hung above my fireplace. 🗡️

It’s a fun little story.

Chris Eidhof

This post is a look inside how (a small part of) SwiftUI works. I’m mainly writing this as part of my extended memory, so that I can go back to it and read about how it works.

This is the kind of post I need as a developer. Having experienced looks at part of the language you use daily is always helpful.

Swift continues to expand as a programming language and I wish the pace would slow a bit. I’m so far behind the curve it’s frightening. That’s what happens when you spend a year-and-a-half as a Director. Those dev skill wilt a bit and you get really far behind.

The good thing is nobody knows, or cares, if you’re using the latest and creates language features or frameworks. What they want is quality software.

I made note earlier this week that Tapbots beautifully designed and implemented Ivory app is written in Objective-C. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

(I reached out to Tapbots to see if that was still true. I didn’t receive a reply.)

Rachel Treisman • NPR

Elvis Presley’s granddaughter is suing to stop the planned foreclosure sale of his compound Graceland, alleging that the company involved not only forged documents, but doesn’t actually exist.

I really hope they’re able to get this sorted out in favor of Elvis’ estate. It seems Lisa Marie may have gone around the estate to get a loan from a dodgy entity that doesn’t really exist. I’ll keep an eye on this one.

Rich Turner • Microsoft Command Line

We are excited to announce the open-sourcing of Microsoft GW-BASIC on GitHub!

I’ve share my love for BASIC and it’s nice to see Microsoft release this code to the general public.

Hey, can you release the grammar for Microsoft Professional Basic v6.x? I’d like to have that for reasons. 😃

Sean Hollister • The Verge

At Build, Microsoft now says it’s adding native version control to File Explorer by integrating systems like Git, letting you see new changes and comments directly from the app.

They’re basically Sherlocking some small plug-in developers with these features. It was inevitable. I used an extension to File Explorer in the mid-2000’s with Subversion that did this very thing. It now does it for git.

Jamelle Bouie • The New York Times

All of this brings us to the most recent controversy surrounding the Supreme Court justice Samuel A. Alito. Not long after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, my colleague Jodi Kantor reported last week, someone in the Alito household flew an inverted American flag in the front yard. The upside-down flag, a sign of naval distress, was one of the preferred symbols of the movement to “stop the steal” — a statement of solidarity with those who disbelieved the results of the 2020 presidential election and fought to return Trump to office against the rule of law and the verdict of the Constitution.

Now we know. Some of the Supreme Court justices are in bed with American Oligarchs and the MAGA movement. They need to be dismissed from the bench.

For a Supreme to openly show support for the overthrow of our country is pathetic and he needs to be held accountable.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Well, we’re in another of Virginia’s 12 seasons. Fake Spring is over, now it’s time for Winter Two or Three, I can’t remember the funny names given to them. 🤣 It’s been gray and rainy with thunderstorms all week. ⛈️ After a month of beautiful, mostly sunny days, it’s hard to go back to rain. Oh well, such is life in the Southeast.

Hey, good news! That project I loved so much is extended through the end of June. That makes me super happy. 😃

Gracie and Kolby are fired up this morning. Let’s see if they’ll let me get through this in a decent amount of time. Apparently it’s playtime. 🐶

Hope you enjoy the links.

Campbell Robertson • The New York Times

After a meeting that lasted for hours, the Shenandoah County school board voted early Friday morning to restore the names of three Confederate officers to schools in the district.

Good grief. Just when you think the South is finally making some progress stuff like this happens.

Racist bastards. 🤬

512Pixels

As nice as the new OLED display looks, and no matter how powerful the new M4 may be, the iPad’s problem in 2024 — or another year for that matter — is the software.

Power users continue to basically want macOS installed on their iPads.

I say Federico Viticci should find a way to make his FrankenPad easy to reproduce with a full line of accessories and how-to articles to guid you through the process.

He’d make tens of dollars.

Tim Murphy • Mother Jones

Musk is not a tech visionary with a side interest in politics these days, nor is he just another bored billionaire with a nativist streak; the political activism and the technological ambitions are inseparable. He believes his work is part of a civilizational struggle in which woke progressives pose an existential threat to humanity. And he spends most of his days inside a feedback loop that’s radicalizing him even more.

I think we all know good old Space Karen has been Red Pilled for a very long time. Folks like him and Jack Dorsey slide further and further down the rabbit hole with each passing day.

Good riddance I say. I hope they buy some island, move there, and never come back. 🤡

Diana Ionescu • Planetizen

Data centers in Northern Virginia are using “absurd amounts of water” to power cooling systems, writes Sachi Kitajima Mulkey in Grist, causing concern among local officials.

How is it I live in Virginia and didn’t know it was home to so many data centers?

You’d think all these smart people would figure out how to power everything with good clean energy and find alternative cooling methods. Like building underground or something. 💧

Joan Westenberg

It’s time to wake up, folks. When someone offers you “exposure” or says they want to “empower creators,” keep a firm hand on your wallet. They’re not your friend, and they don’t care about supporting the arts. They care about money, pure and simple, and they see creators as resources to be exploited.

I instantly thought of most YouTubers and Musicians. Sure, there are some who make a killing off their works but most make almost nothing.

I thought, very foolishly, I’d be able to make $200 a month with my Indie Apps. Boy was I ever dumb to think that way. At its high point in 2009 to 2011 I was making about $20 a month from RxCalc. It’s still my biggest money maker between it and Stream. That is, of course, my fault. Making my apps better may result in better income.

Do YouTubers and Musicians feel that way or do they feel ripped off by the platforms?

Karissa Bell • Engadget

Jack Dorsey claims Bluesky is ‘repeating all the mistakes’ he made at Twitter

Dorsey also seems to have been Red Pilled. I’m not really sure what he’s after. It sounds like he wants and no hold barred free for all. What he’s after would turn into a giant garbage fire. A flame war to end all flame wars. It would boil out into the streets. An ultimate chaos machine.

Countries have laws. Those laws are largely in place to protect people.

We don’t need a lawless social network but apparently Dorsey now thinks X is the bastion of free speech. It’s not. It’s become a right wing propaganda machine full of Nazis, white supremacist, and vile right wing extremists with your occasional famous actor or favorite personality. 🗑️

Jean MacDonald

I am leaving my position as Community Manager at Micro.blog at the end of this month.

I wish Jean all the best. She’s been ever present on Micro.blog since day one and she made it a better place.

Cheers, Jean, and all the best in your next adventure! ❤️

Kelly Crandall • Racer

Michael McDowell and Spire Motorsports have announced a multi-year agreement for McDowell to become the driver of the team’s No. 71 Chevrolet beginning in 2025.

This caught me off guard! Michael McDowell seems like one of those loyal to a fault type guys. He’s single handedly kept Front Row Motorsports afloat, in my opinion. He’s been very competitive this year at times and spent time leading races. He even came darned close to winning at Talladega. Apparently he told Dale Jr. he was willing to die to win that race. A bit too aggressive for my blood, but that’s the attitude he’ll bring with him to Spire Motorsports.

Here’s hoping he goes to that next level and wins more races.

Jon Brodkin • Ars Technica

Boeing says workers skipped required tests on 787 but recorded work as completed

I just can’t with this company. How can anyone get on a plane now?

I’m afraid of heights and flying in general. So, yeah, I already had issues with getting on a giant tube held in the air by some magical force. Ok, ok, you know what I mean.

Now I’m really leery of getting on one. 😰

Bill Doerrfeld • The New Stack

Open source software is having a midlife crisis. Open source contributors are struggling to keep pace. Popular open source projects are making restrictive licensing changes. Backdoor threats are placing the open source supply chain in jeopardy. And, no one seems to have a clear grasp on what “open” means in the context of artificial intelligence.

There’s a lot of open source software available for individuals and corporations to use without paying a dime for it. That can come at a price. We’ve seen developers remove their packages from node, breaking developers worldwide, we’ve seen plenty of repositories go dark and watch contributions waste away from but rot, and recently we’ve witnessed a long game infiltration into an extremely important piece of software by what appears to be a nation state.

I have no idea how to fix these problems. I suppose treating people with kindness and respect could help with certain issues but some are going to take vigilance one all of our parts to make sure the things we use continue to work and aren’t used for nefarious purposes.

Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

Meta’s move into the open social web, also known as the fediverse, is puzzling. Does the Facebook owner see open protocols as the future? Will it embrace the fediverse only to shut it down, shifting people back to its proprietary platforms and decimating startups building in the space? Will it bring its advertising empire to the fediverse, where today clients like Mastodon and others remain ad-free?

It’s hard for me to imagine what Meta can do to take over the Fediverse but I don’t have a devious mind.

The Fediverse feels like the place we commoners can make a place to flourish. To date I know we have Mastodon as a Twitter replacement and PixelFed as an Instagram replacement. What about YouTube and the likes of Spotify and Apple Music? Is there a brave enough musician or group of musicians willing to build a music streaming service based on open protocols and API’s?

Maybe Taylor Swift would like to back a small team to build streaming software that federates and gives indies a way to host their own music and their own stores. I don’t know if something like that is plausible? Anything is possible to build given enough will, inspiration, time, and resources.

Maybe we’ll see some new ventures spring out of the Fediverse related to video and music streaming.

Jason Graziadei • Nantucket Currenr

Cyber Stuck: First Tesla Cybertruck On Nantucket Has A Rough Day

Once again the Cyber Truck gets a lot of attention by being kind of a bad truck. To be fair it’s easy to get stuck on a beach but damn I kind of like seeing it fail. And that all stems from my dislike of Tesla’s public face in Space Karen.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Feeling under the weather today. I started getting sick in the middle of the week. I slept a lot yesterday and hope to have a quiet weekend.

I hope you enjoy the links.

Paul Lefebvre

Just a few days ago, BASIC turned 60! On May 1, 1964 BASIC was created by Dartmouth College professors John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz.

I really love BASIC. It was the first programming language I learned and used professionally. It was all MS-DOS based at the time and the language had changed over time to include functions and custom data types. It was a really great language.

I owe my career to Microsoft BASIC Professional Development System. ❤️

Joseph Heck

Designing a Swift library with data-race safety

Swift concurrency changes are going to be a lot of fun and take some effort to restructure existing code to make use of it.

And by fun I mean a lot hair pulling, teeth gnashing and head banging on the desk.

Jeremy Mathai • /Film

Marvel couldn’t have made a better choice if it had the Time Stone itself. Back when a “Doctor Strange” movie was far from a guaranteed hit, Scott Derrickson and Kevin Feige knew they simply couldn’t afford to get the casting wrong.

Can you imagine anyone other than Benedict Cumberbatch playing Dr. Strange? I can’t.

And to think Joaquin Phoenix was on their radar sounds strange to me. To be clear Joaquin Phoenix is an amazing actor and can play anything but after seeing Benedict Cumberbatch playing him I can’t imagine anyone else doing it.

Anton Zaides

I always knew that distractions in the workplace are harmful, but only after reading Deep Work by Cal Newport, did I understand how severe the problem is!

This is why I prefer an office to open office spaces. I don’t know how anyone thrives in an open space. Add multiple meetings a day to the mix and you’re not getting much done.

Since the pandemic I’ve been working from home and it’s wonderful. I can control my entire workspace. 🖥️

K. Denise Rucker Krepp • CNN

In some military circles and among many who consider themselves aficionados of Confederate history. The Ruckers have a history of military service going back generations. They’ve also had deep roots in America’s shameful Confederate past. That includes my distant cousin, Col. Edmund Rucker.

It’s really nice to see the Confedercy being dismantled. Now, if we could get rid of the white supremacists and bigots that would be amazing. One step at a time, I suppose.

Collin Woodard • Jalopnik

Tesla laid off at least 10 percent of its workforce earlier this month, and in typical Tesla fashion, the Texas-based automaker made sure the layoffs were done in an organized fashion with plenty of communication and a clearly defined strategy. Just kidding. The layoffs were so poorly executed that security was forced to scan employees’ badges at the door to figure out who had been laid off. And, apparently, that included a guy who had taken to sleeping in his car and showering at the factory so he could work longer hours.

Musk is such a nice, standup, fella, isn’t he? 🤬

Nothing sticks to this guy. I guess that’s what happens when you’re a narcissistic sociopath.

Richard Speed • The Register

Google’s latest round of layoffs have hit engineers working on its Flutter and Python teams.

And… more layoffs. Tech has had a rough couple years.

Howard Oakley

In my quest to implement a full app written for SwiftUI on macOS, my next tasks concern the app’s Settings, how to set those as User Defaults, how to implement some of their more common controls, and how to customise the About window. In these, SwiftUI starts to come into its own, in comparison with AppKit, although it does have a couple of surprising shortcomings.

I love it when folks share their code and experience! I’m not brave enough to do that! Thanks for the code! 👨🏽‍💻

David Merritt Johns • The Atlantic

Back in 2018, a Harvard doctoral student named Andres Ardisson Korat was presenting his research on the relationship between dairy foods and chronic disease to his thesis committee. One of his studies had led him to an unusual conclusion: Among diabetics, eating half a cup of ice cream a day was associated with a lower risk of heart problems.

This is weird to read. Ice Cream for diabetics? I mean, anything for ice cream. Amirite? 🍦

Chance Miller, Ben Lovejoy, and Filipe Espósito • 9to5Mac

A little over a year ago, General Motors made what may well turn out to be one of its biggest gambles in many years: dropping support for CarPlay for all future EVs.

The author thinks this was a mistake. I don’t.

I’m hoping this will turn out well for GM. Just don’t serve up a bunch of ads for new features and other products.

Brian Ramian • Los Angeles Times

Opinion: I once lived in my car and can’t fathom criminalizing homelessness

When I worked at LEVEL Studios in 2010 I had trouble finding a place I could stay fairly cheaply after my sub-lease ran out. I lived in my car for a week. It wasn’t horrible, but its wasn’t ideal.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Welcome to this Special Sunday Edition of Saturday Morning Coffee. What makes it special you ask? Nothing! 😆

Kim, my lovely bride, let me sleep in yesterday. It was glorious! And since we had plans to be out of the house by around 10AM, well, that meant I couldn’t put things together yesterday. Now you know why you’re seeing this on Sunday.

Grab some coffee and enjoy the links!

Adele Peters • Fast Company

Last Saturday, as 39 million Californians went about their daily lives—taking showers, doing laundry, or charging their electric cars—the whole state ran on 100% clean electricity for more than nine hours.

I find this very encouraging and I believe it’s only going to get better.

Down the hill from where we live one of our power providers is installing a large field of solar panels. I don’t know how large it is or how much power it’ll generate, but I’m here for it.

Naomi Hartono • blogs.nasa.gov

For the first time since November, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems.

Engineers this smart blow my mind.

“Oh, the thing I need to repair is millions of miles away? No problem.” 😳

Rick Perlstein • The American Prospect

And that’s when the man in the castle with the seven fireplaces said it.

“I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet.”

Andreessen is another piece of Silicon Valley garbage. Even if he said he was joking there’s always a nugget of truth in there. I’d say he really believes what he said.

Jesse Wegman • New York Times 🎁

Trump’s Immunity Case Was Settled More Than 200 Years Ago

That seems about right. We’ve managed to have 240+ years of Presidencies without one committing crimes against the nation that I doubt our founding fathers expected it to happen like this.

Trump is a rapist and a mob boss looking to use the Presidency as his own personal piggy bank.

I hope the Supremes do the right thing and declare the President isn’t above the law.

Wojciech Kulik

In my previous post, I just scratched the surface of iOS development in Neovim. Since then I discovered many new things that allowed me to move my development almost completely to Neovim.

If you’re really good with keyboard commands this could be the editor for you. I’ll stick with Xcode and BBEdit. 😄

AJ Willingham

I just don’t get Taylor Swift. There, I said it. (DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT DISLIKE HER. I WISH HER ALL OF THE HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS IN THE WORLD. PLEASE, I HAVE A FAMILY.)

Better be careful! The Swifties won’t be happy!

Remember the hubbub caused by Tool releasing their first album in 13 years keeping Ms. Swift’s new album out of the top spot? I do. It was kind of funny.

She’s a cultural phenomenon and apparently a very kind, caring, human being. What’s not to like?

John Viega

A few weeks ago, I got a bit miffed reading yet another article that was too dismissive about memory safety, basically being mostly dismissive about the need for change. The following weekend, I started seeing flippant responses from security luminaries, saying essentially that you’re irresponsible and dangerous unless you drop C and C++ faster than I dropped my 8 am classes my first year in college.

I’m an old curmudgeon and I still love C++ as a development language, especially if you’re doing something that needs to be cross platform. But, I certainly understand the trend and the desire to move to memory safe languages. Swift and Rust are both great choices. Swift has made development on Apple OS’es easier and safer. I love it! Rust is on my to learn list but given my latest project is React Native it makes more sense for me to learn JavaScript. Rust will have to wait.

Jonathan M. Gitlin • Ars Technica

Honda announced today that it will spend $11 billion to expand its electric vehicle manufacturing presence in North America. The Japanese automaker already has a number of factories in the US, Mexico, and Canada, and it’s this last one that will benefit from the expansion, with four EV-related plants planned for Ontario.

That’s a lot of money and it’s interesting it’s happening in Canada instead of the US.

Here’s to Honda building better, more affordable, EV’s than Tesla.

Gary Bernhard • Destroy All Software

This science fiction / comedy / completely serious talk traces the history of JavaScript, and programming in general, from 1995 until 2035. It’s not pro- or anti-JavaScript; the language’s flaws are discussed frankly, but its ultimate impact on the industry is tremendously positive. For Gary’s more serious (and less futuristic) thoughts on programming, try some Destroy All Software screencasts.

It’s easy to poke fun a JavaScript but equally as important to understand how important it’s become to our industry.

Dick Uliano • wtop.com

Archeologists have made a remarkable find at George Washington’s Mount Vernon in the ground beneath the cellar — two sealed bottles containing plump cherries.

Very cool! Now what? Who wants to open a jar and eat one? I kind of do, but there’s no way that’s gonna happen. 🤣

Did you know that while George Washington was away fighting the American Revolutionary War he was also writing home to instruct his brother how he wanted his home renovation to proceed. Then he’d go off and fight some redcoats.

Alex Franchuk • Mozilla

Porting a cross-platform GUI application to Rust

This is something my cross platform loving brain could get behind. The Mozilla team rewrote — not something I recommend — their crash reporting tool in 100% Rust. Nifty!

That included writing four abstractions for different UI toolkits; Mac, Windows, Linux, and one for testing. So three plus. 😄 Love it!

Digiday

The possibility of a TikTok ban is inching closer to becoming a reality at this point. On Tuesday, the Senate passed the bill that would bar the social media platform from operating in the U.S. unless ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, sells its stake.

So this was earlier in the week. The President signed it. Now ByteDance has nine months to get the deal done or pull out of the United States.

I still feel like this could’ve been handled differently but I have no idea what that would entail.

Jordan Rose

So let me re-iterate: the three-and-a-half features listed at the top are the only forms of run-time polymorphism in Swift. Now when someone asks “how can I allow arbitrary different argument types to result in different behavior”, you know the answer: make a protocol.

You heard the man! Make a protocol! That will cause the compiler to enforce the contract between your implementation and the definition. You’re obliged to implement it.

If you only need to know an object “is-a” thing that protocol doesn’t actually need to define any properties or methods. Yes, it can be that simple.

Manton Reece

Ghost has announced they are working on ActivityPub support

Manton has been on the open standards software train for years and years. That’s why Micro.blog implements ActivityPub, BlueSky’s AT Protocol, and Micropub.

Micro.blog is a great blogging tool for $5/month. I use it to post here.

Seth Godin

Don’t ignore AI because it’s dumb. Figure out how to create patterns and processes where you can use it as the useful tool it’s becoming.

Keep in mind that AI is just another tool, created by humans, full of flaws. Yes, it’s extremely useful, yes it can get things wrong. But, it’s still growing and changing. Hopefully it’ll will get better over time.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Life is just flying by. Another week in the books.

I’ll be helping Kim paint the kitchen today. Should be an adventure. 👨‍🎨

Jeffrey Zeldman

Sure, watches that tell you when you’re walking unsteadily and pocket computer phones that show you the closest pizzeria are swell, but were you around for ResEdit?

Unfortunately I wasn’t a Mac user during the ResEdit days but I do know a lot of folks who had fun with it, does that count? 😃

David Ingram • NBC News

Elon Musk’s X is a thriving hub for Nazi support and propaganda, with paid subscribers sharing speeches by Adolf Hitler or content praising his genocidal regime.

Shocked! Surprised! Said no one hearing this. I really don’t know what else to say. He’s a garbage human.

Benjamin Sandofsky

An ex-Apple designer who went on to startup success once told me, “I wish I could give a workshop for Apple jumping into startups, to help them un-learn The Apple Way.” I think Apple makes some of the best products in the world, and I strive to build products with their level of craft and quality, so it pains me to admit that The Apple Way can destroy a lot of startups. Which brings us to Humane.

I have yet to read anything positive about the Humane Pin. It’s not such a bad idea to be able to talk to a device you’re wearing. I’ve had an Apple Watch for years and years, that’s the device to talk to. Siri could use some work but I have a feeling that’s already happening.

John S. Tobey • Forbes

Sell Trump Media Stock (DJT) Now - An Implosion Is Likely

I feel bad for all the folks who believe so much in Trump that they invested their entire life savings in a company poised to fail. There’s a sucker born every day and if Trump is good at anything it’s grifting.

Jimmy Cook

A React Native app is made up of two sides, the JavaScript side and the native side. The native side could be Objective-C/Swift for iOS or Java/Kotlin for Android (not to mention the other platforms for React Native like web and desktop). The React Native Bridge allows the native code and the javascript code to talk to each other. Without the bridge, there is no way for the native code to send any information to the JavaScript code and vise versa.

I’ve been working on a React Native project that integrates into an existing iOS and Android app. We’ve created ways for our React Native developers to use the native iOS and Android code to do work for them and allow them to navigate between React Native views and Native views. There’s definitely more work we could do to improve on what we’ve started but it’s in a decent position.

We’ve already released some React Native based work and will be rolling out more soon.

I’m having a blast!

Devin Meenan • /Film

Jaws' Most Famous Improvised Line Was A Not-So-Sneaky Dig At Studio Producers

This is a fun little read. Make sure you take the time to visit. It’ll only take a minute of your life.

Ellis Karran,Richard Madden • BBC

When they removed the wooden panel, it revealed a large slab of stone featuring a carving of the Lincoln Imp.

How cool is that!

I hope they find more interesting relics around their home. Let’s hope they’re not cursed. 😆

Alexandra Sternlicht • Fortune via News+

But with the House voting in March to force ByteDance to sell its stake in TikTok, 11 former employees interviewed by Fortune tell a vastly different story. Many of those ex-workers, four of whom were employed as recently as last year, say at least some of TikTok’s operations were intertwined with its parent during their tenures, and that the company’s independence from China was largely cosmetic.

This gets more and more interesting by the day. I was against forcing them to sell and I still think it’s a bit heavy handed.

Is there a way to regulate them to make sure American citizens data remains on servers here in the States?

We know Apple had to hand over the keys to iCloud in China. Could that be done here?

It’s above my pay grade and I’m sure someone much smarter than me could give me the lowdown. In the meantime I’ll keep watching from the cheap seats. 🍿

Haela Huntress • Metal Sucks

Maynard James Keenan may be a 60-year-old man ranting against cell phones, but he actually might have a point on this one, at least somewhat.

I like that he does this. When I went to Aftershock in 2019, and Tool closed out the festival, there didn’t seem to be any rules around cell phones. As soon as their set opened it was cell phones up from front to back. I was so tempted to take one away from the dude in front of me blocking my view. Yeah, I was pissed off but managed to keep my cool. It sucked looking around that thing all evening but in the end I got to hear some amazing music.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Kim let me sleep in this morning. I must say it was pretty glorious.

Not too much to report on my work week. Busy, but in a good way. I really love this project. The people and the technical aspects have been amazing. Fingers crossed we get to continue on after delivering everything we had to do in this initial round of work. 🤞🏼

JoBlo

Very sad news today as it’s been reported that M. Emmet Walsh has died at the age of 88. No matter the size of the role, the prolific character actor always made a unique impression throughout his long career, which spanned six decades.

He was great in Blade Runner and I loved his character in Christmas with the Kranks.

R.I.P. 🪦

Peter Bergen • CNN

Kushner’s newly disclosed musings last month that Gaza has a lot of “very valuable” waterfront property reminds one of Marie Antoinette’s purported observation, “Let them eat cake.”

Kushner is a perfect fit for the Trump crime organization. He’s a sociopath just like his father-in-law.

My gut reaction earlier sums it up.

Casey Newton • Platformer

Today let’s talk about one of the most significant antitrust lawsuits ever filed in the tech industry: this 88-page complaint against Apple, filed by the Department of Justice and joined by 16 states, accusing the iPhone maker of illegally maintaining its monopoly over high-end smartphones and artificially inflating prices for consumers.

I personally see some similarities between this case and the case the DOJ brought against Microsoft in 1998.

I wrote about it earlier in the week if you’re interested and pointed out the piece from a Jason Snell article that really caught my attention.

Emma Roth • The Verge

Threads is coming to the fediverse — and we just got our first official look at how that might work from Meta itself. During the FediForum conference on Tuesday, Meta’s Peter Cottle showed off a brief demo of how users will eventually be able to connect their accounts and posts to the fediverse.

Being the administrator of a Mastodon instance I’m actually excited for this! There are certain famous people I’d love to follow again and my hope is I’ll find them on Threads.

Tim Bray

When I’m away from home, I still want to listen to the music we have at home (well, I can live without the LPs). We had well over a thousand CDs so that’s a lot of music, 12,286 tracks ripped into Apple Lossless. Except for a few MP3s from, well, never mind. This instalment of the De-Google Project is about ways to do that with less Big-Tech involvement.

I really like the idea of this. I have an old Mac Mini I’d like to turn into a media server, most likely using Plex. I’ve started buying Blu-ray’s again for fear of losing parts of my video library at the whim of the corporation I purchased the license from.

Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein • The Washington Post

Lawyers and former judges said they are baffled by an order issued this week by the federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s pending trial on charges that he mishandled classified documents — and believe her instructions suggest the case will not go to trial anytime soon.

The sway the Orange Turd has over parts of our government is shocking. I hope she’s replaced and soon.

Ryan Hockensmith • ESPN

How one fan picked the greatest March Madness bracket ever built

This is a fun story. I’ve picked Final Four winners and won tournaments among friends with better brackets, but there’s usually a surprise early on that can make or break your bracket.

Just look at the South this year. It’s a mess and I’m here for it.

Jason Karaian • The New York Times

Unilever, the consumer goods giant, said on Tuesday that it would cut 7,500 jobs and spin off its ice cream unit, which includes Ben & Jerry’s, to reduce costs and simplify its portfolio of brands.

Big corporations continue to make huge profits for shareholders at the expense of the working class. I don’t know if that’s exactly what’s happening here but it feels like it.

HomeGrown

As part of creating the Grow Your Own Services site, I set up my own Mastodon server through a managed hosting service. I thought I’d write an article about this topic, in order to help others considering doing the same thing. I’ve tried to break down the process into ten main steps.

If you have the gumption to run and maintain your own Mastodon instances this article is for you.

Me? I just use Masto.Host.

Aurelio Garcia-Ribeyro • Oracle

Java users on macOS 14 running on Apple silicon systems should consider delaying the macOS 14.4 update

This is a pretty big thing to break and I’m sure the DOJ will not look kindly on it.

Louie Mantia

We’ve truly lost sight of how to make good apps. There’s a serious lack of vision and taste in the industry. Everyone’s given in to the lowest common denominator in the design of apps, simply mimicking what others do without understanding if it’s even the right choice.

I’ve been reading Louie more and more lately. I’m glad he’s started blogging because I’ve loved his pieces on his work history, from The Icon Factory to Apple.

Not to mention his blog is fully hand built. That is very tempting to me.

Joab Jackson • The New Stack

After 20 years of development, the open source GnuCOBOL “has reached an industrial maturity and can compete with proprietary offers in all environments,” said OCamlPro founder and GnuCOBOL contributor Fabrice Le Fessant, in a FOSDEM talk about the technology.

What a journey! 20 years in the making. And yes, COBOL is still a thing.

[Erika Morphy • TechSpot](www.techspot.com/news/1022…]

The big picture: Job cuts in the tech industry last year were attributed to the need to economize, driven by inflation and a hiring spree during the pandemic. So, what’s the explanation this year, especially when many of these firms have accumulated a significant amount of cash?

It’s been a rough couple years for tech. 😔

KIRSTEN GRIESHABER • The Associated Press

In Germany, the far right is on the rise again. How did it happen?

The extreme right is growing around the world. Both of my grandfathers would roll in their graves if they were around to see this. They both fought to help free us from fascism.

Derrick Bryson Taylor • The New York Times

The former television anchor Don Lemon’s wide-ranging, testy interview with Elon Musk was released online on Monday morning, touching upon topics including politics, particularly the billionaire’s recent meeting with former President Donald J. Trump; Mr. Musk’s reported drug use; hate speech on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which he now owns; and more.

I watched this and thought Lemon asked some really great, pointed, questions and Musk revealed his authoritarian, racist, self.

Lawrence Hodge • Jalopnik

Lincoln dealers have a big problem. Aside from having just four models to sell, dealers have a bunch of cars from one and two model years ago that they haven’t been able to move.

I admit it. If I could get my hands on a brand new Lincoln Navigator for a super crazy sub 30,000 price tag, I’d consider it. They’re nice.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Feeling a little groggy this morning. I basically passed out sitting on the couch watching TV at around 7PM last night. I woke up a few minutes later and don’t remember closing my eyes. 🤣

Please, send all the coffee.

It looks like I’ll get an opportunity to work on Stream for Mac today, which is very exciting!

Anywho, enough of that, I hope you enjoy the links.

Kate Wagner • Internet Archive

Most of us have the distinct pleasure of going throughout our lives bereft of the physical presence of those who rule over us. Were we peasants instead of spreadsheet jockeys, warehouse workers, and baristas, we would toil in our fields in the shadow of some overbearing castle from which the lord or his steward would ride down on his thunderous charger demanding our fealty and our tithes. Now, though, the real high end of the income inequality curve—the 0.01 percenters—remains elusive. To their great advantage, they can buy their way out of public life. However, if you want to catch a glimpse of them, all you need to do is attend a single day of Formula 1 racing.

This piece by Kate Wagner originally appeared in Car and Driver last week but was taken down the same day it went up. Luckily we have The Internet Archive.

This is a really scathing look at F1. It is most certainly a sport for the rich and famous. A playboys paradise. 🏎️

The Iconfactory

What an amazing ride this past month has been! We appreciate the support of everyone who backed our Project Tapestry Kickstarter as well as those who helped us spread the word far and wide. We couldn’t have reached our goals without your help and we’re so very excited to have an opportunity to bring Project Tapestry to life.

I’m really excited to see what our awesome friends create for us! It’s also gonna be fun to see what others create to extend it! 😍

Ian Millhiser • Vox

The courts were never going to save America from Donald Trump

Trump got exactly what he needed to avoid a trial that could possibly convict him. Sure, it may start before the election but will it have time to complete?

We all know he did it. We all know his strategy is to run out the clock, get elected, and make it all magically go away. Justice is supposed to be blind, but not in this way.

Yet another way the rich and powerful have an advantage over the rest of us. Would you or I have been given the chance to take our argument to the highest court in the land? Probably not.

The man is a criminal and deserves to do a little jail time. It would be fine with me if he was confined to his “club” in the third-world shit hole of Florida. They deserve him. ⚖️

RevK

Unix, and many other systems from that, use a type for time that is seconds since the start of 1970. It is a simple system. Those seconds were stored in a signed 32 bit number, which allows -2147483648 to +2147483647 and hence dates from Fri 13 Dec 19:45:52 GMT 1901 to Tue 19 Jan 02:14:07 GMT 2038. This seemed a pretty good range. especially for adult engineers living in the early 70s. But 2038 is getting closer and closer. I may (hopefully) live to see it.

Time is hard. When I was at Pelco we had to deal with time issues around the world. A really bad choice was made in our UI products to use local time within the app and not just for display purposes. That was fun to fix.

Check out the post for some history and what we’ll need to keep an eye out for if you write date code at a lower level. I’d imagine most modern languages have really great support for dates built in. Question is how about old school services that remain online because they just work and nobody wants to work on them? 😃

Chance Miller, Ben Lovejoy, Zac Hall, and Filipe Espósito • 9to5Mac

Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account, clearing path for Epic Games Store on iPhone

It’s time to get out your popcorn. Apple and Epic are having a little pissing contest. The EU isn’t having it. It looks like Apple is being forced to play nice and they definitely don’t like it.

I haven’t really kept up with the nuanced bits but Apple really doesn’t want to open the platform up any more than they have to. 🍿

Alex Castro • The Verge

Apple hit with first ever EU fine following Spotify complaint

And a nice little follow on to the Epic post above. Spotify is also in the pissing contest with Apple and they’re not backing down.

Shuttering the App Store is not an option because Apple makes a ton of money off of developers. They certainly don’t host us out of the kindness of their hearts. It’s a business after all with shareholders — ALL HAIL THE SHAREHOLDERS!

I can see arguments from both sides. Apple built the platform and should be able to administer it as they see fit. It’s not the only mobile platform on the planet. If you’re a developer and really hate the 15-30% fee you can go elsewhere.

If you’re Spotify or Epic you’re also a business that needs to make a profit and, in Spotify’s case, the margins on music are so thin they can’t afford to give Apple that much money. Heck, I don’t understand how any company could make their own App Store work in the EU given the rules Apple setup to create and maintain one.

Susannah Cullinane, Sara Smart, Cindy Von Quednow and Mary Gilbert • CNN

California’s mountain towns and ski resorts are digging out after a blockbuster blizzard buried them and major roads under several feet of snow.

The last 10 or so years we lived in California’s San Joaquin Valley we were always in some kind of drought situation. Fast forward a few years and it’s been flooded the last two years with tremendous snowpack, which is very much needed.

I’ll bet the Sierra Nevada looks spectacular from the valley floor right now. Folks who live there will understand what I’m saying. Looking up from the great valley to see the Sierra Nevada is awe inspiring on a beautiful clear day. Especially when it’s covered in snow. 🏔️

Thor Benson • Common Dreams

Climate experts are warning that the Smokehouse Creek fire in the Texas panhandle—now the largest in the state’s history with over over 1 million acres burned and counting—provides a horrifying look into a future of runaway temperatures that result in extreme destruction.

And Texas is in the complete opposite situation of California. It’s on fire and not just a tiny fire. It’s a monster eating everything in its path. 🔥

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Well, I’ve managed to put some time into Stream for Mac this week. I’d really messed it up trying to force the codebase into something I wanted, so I started over. Yeah, that sucks, but I think in the end it will have been the right choice.

Taylor — my movie going buddy and youngest daughter — and I saw Dune Part Two last night and we both really enjoyed it. I won’t give away any spoilers here but I wonder if it gave us some insight not given in the book. The problem is I can’t remember the book that well because it’s been 20-plus years since I read it. I enjoyed the ending but it most certainly leaves the door open for Dune: Messiah and Children of Dune. I hope they happen.

I’ve finished today’s post and I’m getting ready to publish. I’ve also come downstairs to my computer so I can work on Stream for Mac today. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll work on yet but I have Import and Export of OPML working as well as Refresh. In my little app that covers a huge swath of functionality because Stream is so darned simple. I’ll spend a whole lot of time on the UI to make it look as good as I’m capable of doing. I still have two important bits of UI to get in; Settings and Adding Feeds. Those will be brand new bits and I’ll get some exposure to more AppKit APIs while I’m at it, which is a big goal for me.

Something I’ve been considering is a triple-pane UI, which is the opposite of what Stream was written to be. I’m still thinking about that move while I work through the basics. The more I think about it the more I both like and hate the idea. In the meantime I have plenty of polish work to do on the app itself. Keyboard shortcuts and right mouse clicks will play an important role in the Mac version.

Anywho, I hope you enjoy the links.

Diana Dasrath • NBC News

Richard Lewis, revered comic and ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ star, dies at 76

RIP 🪦

The White House

Today, the White House Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) released a report calling on the technical community to proactively reduce the attack surface in cyberspace. ONCD makes the case that technology manufacturers can prevent entire classes of vulnerabilities from entering the digital ecosystem by adopting memory safe programming languages

I instantly think of Rust when I read memory safe programming languages, but Swift falls into that category as well.

The biggest problem, if you want to call it that, is our entire infrastructure lives on top of systems built in C and C++ years, and years, and years ago.

Who will be the first to rewrite a major OS in Rust or Swift? Microsoft has done some work in Windows to rewrite a tiny portion in Rust but what about an entire OS?

Heck, even some very modern efforts, like Google’s Fuscia, are in C++.

Will we see an effort to replace OS Kernels with Rust? Or perhaps the API layers on top of OSes because they provide a bigger attack surface? No matter, I’d be interested in watching something so daunting.

Roberto Baldwin • Ars Technica

The Electrify America flagship station is what charging should have been all along. It’s also what companies like the seven-automaker joint venture now called IONNA are promising. We should expect to see more of this sort of facility as EVs increase in market share; many new owners don’t want to compromise when it comes to keeping their vehicles on the road.

This gives me hope for a good electric vehicle future.

You know what would be even better? Better mass transportation systems powered by electricity.

Whizy Kim • Vox

Older Americans are working longer. Some want to; others have to.

Well, this will most certainly be me. I did a horrible job planning for retirement so the best I can hope for is to slow down a bit and do part time work (if I can!)

I figure I’ll be forced out of the tech space by an aging brain and the inability to keep up with the youngins coming into the workforce.

Maybe a part time gig at a place like Starbucks will work for me? Someday I suppose we’ll find out.

Joe Taraborrelli • Sony Interactive

We envision reducing our headcount by about 900 people, or about 8% of our current workforce

Ugh. More layoffs. This time it’s hitting the video games sector.

I hope everyone who lost their job was taken care of.

We had a layoff at WillowTree a couple weeks back that took out a whole bunch of VPs and Partners and another realignment of the company. It’s been a really weird year since the acquisition.

Neil Long • mobilegamer.biz

Inside Apple Arcade: axed games, declining payouts, disillusioned studios – and an uncertain future

I wonder if this will affect my friends at The Iconfactory? They have a really fun game called Frenzic: Overtime in Apple Arcade.

I hope not. ❤️

Nick Barclay • The Verge

Apple has halted its long-rumored “Project Titan” work on developing an electric car, according to Bloomberg. The company reportedly announced the news internally on Tuesday and said many people in the 2,000-person team behind the car will shift to generative AI efforts instead.

This always felt like a weird project to me. Why a car? Maybe the answer is: because. That’s a valid reason in my book.

Say, has anyone integrated CarPlay to the extent Apple demo’d at WWDC? You know, the one where the entire dashboard is a giant CarPlay screen?

Sameer Ajmani

In this article, I’ll talk about how we aligned Go with Google Cloud while preserving the core values that make Go great for everyone.

I’ve always seen Go as C for the internet. I’m not sure how many folks realize what an impact C had. 20 years ago almost everything was written in C, C++, or Objective-C. If you wanted speed and portability it was your only choice.

I spent 20+ years writing C/C++ code and I still love the language.

I wonder if Go has that kind of following? The web seems to be largely built on Java, Python, Ruby, and JavaScript, of course I could be 100% wrong about that. 😃

Samantha Cole • 404 Media

Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals.

This doesn’t sound like something Matt Mullenweg would be into.

But, he’s been on sabbatical lately and made enemies with the Trans community. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Stacey Leasca • Food & Wine

Wendy’s Is Introducing Uber-Style ‘Surge Pricing’

How in the world do they think this is going to actually work?

It’s lunch time, the lobby of a Wendy’s is full. The menu updates, doubling prices.

The lobby empties out. 😁

Martin Fowler

Improvements in communications technology have led an increasing number of teams that work in a Remote-First style, a trend that was boosted by the forced isolation of Covid-19 pandemic. But a team that operates remotely still benefits from face-to-face gatherings, and should do them every few months.

I’m down with this idea. We tried having on sites for our remote group but it became cost prohibitive. We managed to have two before they were canceled as an activity.

As an aside, I’ve had COVID once. I got it at our first offsite. 😷

Hartley Charlton • MacRumors

Microsoft Begged Apple to Adopt Bing as Safari’s Default Search Engine

Apparently they didn’t beg hard enough. They must not have tried begging with a bag of cash much, much, larger than what Google paid.

Show me the money!💰

Stephen M. Curry • InfoWorld

The Java Ring is an extremely secure Java-powered electronic token with a continuously running, unalterable realtime clock and rugged packaging, suitable for many applications. The jewel of the Java Ring is the Java iButton – a one-million transistor, single-chip trusted microcomputer with a powerful Java virtual machine (JVM) housed in a rugged and secure stainless-steel case.

This is a pretty cool piece of hardware and I want one. I could see having a ring like this for unlocking doors and controlling various simple devices in some fashion.

If it doubled as a signet so I could press it into wax that would be even cooler. 😃

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been a fun week at work. I’ve been fixing bugs here and there. For some reason I enjoy this type of work. I spent a decent amount of time looking at memory graphs for object retentions problems and fixed a couple of good ones this week. That always feels great!

As for Stream for Mac, I started off the week in a bit of a funk but thanks to some amazing Mac devs I was put back on the right path. Stream for Mac development is moving forward once again. Fingers crossed I can keep up the momentum. 🤞🏼

Nikita Prokopov A.K.A. Tonsky

So all this time I was living under impression that, for example, if the average web page size is 3 MB, then JavaScript bundle should be around 1 MB. Surely content should still take the majority, no?

Some of the examples Nikita gives seem ridiculous. It makes me wonder if backend processing that spits out pure HTML will ever become a thing again?

Harry Cheadle • Eater, Seattle

But Tony Delivers doesn’t need to be anything bigger than it already is, which is one guy on a bike showing up to deliver food, probably smiling, probably asking how you’re doing, a bolt of disarming kindness in a city that even before we all got addicted to screens was known for being standoffish. That seems worth $5.

Tony has become a Seattle hero! I can’t believe he’s able to survive on $5 deliveries but bravo for making your own little niche!

Nish Tahir

I’ve been learning more about common attacks that appear in my Nginx logs to learn more about what happens beyond the log entries.

Nish is geekin’ out again. I wish I had his brain. The things I could accomplish! 🧠

Gunnar Anzinger

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

This piece is ridiculous in all the best ways. The paragraph I chose to feature really hit home. Yes, yes, take your time. We need it in two days. 🤣

Claire Elise Thompson • grist

If you like the idea of a perpetual three-day weekend, you might be one of a growing cadre that supports the concept of degrowth: a school of thought aimed at shrinking economies and moving away from GDP growth as a metric of success, while instead emphasizing universal basic services and social well-being.

With the rise of AI companies believe they can replace us with software for many types of work.

I think that’s cool! Let’s replace workers and figure out a way to allow folks to do whatever they want and still receive a paycheck. Like, perhaps, Universal Basic Income, Single Payer health care, and free university for everyone! Of course the rich people won’t like that idea.

Trust me when I say I could find plenty of things to work on.

Michael Szczepanik

It’s time for the NATIVE mobile development to end.

I don’t agree. I’ve been working on a project that involves React Native and I see the value in it, but that doesn’t mean native development should go away. Your mileage may vary. For me it’s native or bust for my personal projects.

Mike Elgan • Computerworld

More to the point: Most companies cannot show actual monetary benefits from RTO mandates. But most employees can show actual and significant monetary costs from RTO mandates.

This is an interesting take on the cost to employees to return to work. I’ve never thought about it in those terms. For me it’s always been about the flexibility working remotely gives me. I save between 40-60 minutes a day by not commuting, I can have afternoon coffee with my wife, and if I need to work late it’s so much easier to stomach because I’m already home.

If WillowTree asked us all to return to the office full time, I would. I just prefer working from home.

Jacob Phillips • Evening Standard

The Kremlin has said it will use its “entire strategic arsenal” and fire nuclear missiles at London, Washington, Berlin and Kyiv if it is made to give up the areas of Ukraine it has invaded.

We need to get our act together and get more aid to Ukraine. The GOP loves their orange American Dictator who, in turn, loves Putin so they’re keeping aid from Ukraine. What happened to all those Patriotic Republicans with their flags and love of all things military? They’re too cowardly to stand up to Trump. It’s really shameful.

Chris Evangelista • /Film

Stephen King Hates The Only Movie He Ever Directed

I liked Maximum Overdrive for what it was. It’s a popcorn movie. Get your popcorn, soda, find your seat, and sit back to watch the mayhem unfold. It delivered and I had no idea Stephen King directed it.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

This week has had its ups and downs. We managed to package up a build of the app I’m working on when we promised it.

It’s also Daytona 500 time! I watched the Duels on Thursday night and the Truck race last night. Today we have the Xfinity Series race and tomorrow the Cup teams race. It’s gonna be amazing.

The work week ended on a sour note. I won’t get into it here, just yet.

I had so many stories to share this week, this is about half of what I had.

Anywho, I hope you enjoy the links.

David K. Li and Rebecca Cohen • NBC News

The Chiefs defeated the 49ers 25-22, cementing head coach Andy Reid and Mahomes’ team as the new NFL dynasty to beat with their third title in last five seasons.

The Chiefs look like the Patriots or Cowboys or 9’ers dynasties before them. Four Super Bowl trips in five years, winning three. That’s incredible.

Congratulations Mr. Swift and the entire Chiefs Kingdom! 🥳

Philip Bump • The Washington Post

Remember the ‘Biden bribe’ allegation? DOJ now says it was made up.

Gee, imagine that, a Joe Biden hater lying to the FBI.

The only criminal running for President is The Orange Menace.

Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

Apple confirms it’s breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

I’m totally unclear what is the real cause behind this decision. Is it really because it makes the OS less safe or is Apple doing another of its passive aggressive things?

I would think they could introduce a new framework for browser engines as well as strict rules and certificates that keep browsers in line, but I may be completely wrong.

As a result EU users of iOS get a much worse user experience. If it’s intentional, shame on Apple, if it’s not, shame on the EU.

NetNewsWire Blog

Thanks so so much to everybody who’s supported the app over the years!🎩🎉 Let’s do 21 more!

The granddaddy of Mac Feed Readers is old enough to have a beer!

Congratulations to Brent and the entire NetNewsWire team! 🍻

Steven Levy • WIRED

In her new memoir, Burn Book, Kara Swisher cites a 2014 profile that dubbed her “Silicon Valley’s Most Feared and Well-Liked Journalist.” She might prefer to downplay the first and emphasize the second. Some people would switch that around. But there is no dispute about Swisher’s impact: When it comes to tech punditry, she’s at the top of the heap.

I’m a Kara Swisher fan. She’s a great reporter and I think she can ask tough questions when it’s necessary.

I’m looking forward to getting the book.

By George Kelly, Julie Makinen, and Josh Koehn • The San Francisco Standard

Waymo robotaxi goes up in flames in Chinatown after crowd attacks vehicle

Note to self. Don’t drive your car into a crowd of folks enjoying their Chinese New Year celebration.

Why this robot thought that was a good idea is beyond me. 🤖

Kelby Vera • Huffington Post

Donald Trump: Taylor Swift Is A Traitor If She Endorses President Biden

Big baby Donnie Boy wants to be loved so badly. You can’t buy Taylor’s love Mr. Orange Menace.

Julia Lurie • Mother Jones

But many workers at Allegiant Stadium, in Las Vegas, make barely more than minimum wage. A San Francisco Chronicle article tells the story of one such employee, Chayasura Walker, who makes $14.25 an hour, without benefits, as she pours $18 beers

I don’t know what to say about this other than it’s tragic people have to work themselves to death just to survive.

My Mom had to do this. She busted her ass to keep food on our table. She’s the bravest, strongest, person I’ve ever known and she deserved better.

The least we as a nation can do is make sure folks have a livable wage.

Mike Masnick • Techdirt

Bluesky is now open to anyone without an invite. And a bunch of other exciting things are coming soon.

Bluesky seems to be the alternative to Twitter for folks who think Mastodon is too difficult to use. It definitely captured a lot of the same early techie Twitter crowd.

I wish they’d federate with Mastodon servers but they have to do their own thing. It’s why they were founded.

Threads, however, still seems committed to Mastodon/ActivityPub integration.

Zoë Schiffer • Platformer

Founder Eugen Rochko on helping Threads federate, dodging venture capital, and why he hopes Bluesky abandons its protocol

I can’t see Bluesky abandoning their protocol. I can however see Mastodon adopting the Bluesky protocol.

I just want a single place to follow and interact with folks. Mastodon has been that place for me. I’ve had much better conversations and interactions on Masrodon than I ever had on Twitter. 🧡

Manton Reece

Today we’re launching a major new feature for Micro.blog Premium subscribers. Micro.blog notes are a new way to save content in Micro.blog when you don’t want to use a blog post or draft.

Congratulations Micro.blog team! 🥳

Frederic Lardinois • TechCrunch

Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and, somewhat remarkably, its Online Footprint Scrubber, which launched only a week ago. Mozilla will also shut down Hubs, the 3D virtual world it launched back in 2018, and scale back its investment in its mozilla.social Mastodon instance. The layoffs will affect roughly 60 employees. Bloomberg previously reported the layoffs.

It’s all about AI these days. Gotta hop on that wagon and ride it.

It’s not going away so we have to adapt our software to use it in some way or it will go away. E.G. I could add machine learning to Stream to make suggestions for feeds to follow. I could, if I had the time. All I can do now is try to finish the Mac version. 🤣

Emily Shapiro and Meredith Deliso

One person has died and at least 21 others were injured by gunfire when a shooting broke out in Kansas City, Missouri, following the parade and rally for the Chiefs' Super Bowl win, officials said Wednesday.

Yay, more deaths due to guns, said no one ever. 🤬

Unbelievable. We Murican’s love our guns and mass carnage.

Matt Massicotte

Recently, I’ve seen a lot of talk around enabling Swift’s complete concurrency checking. I think this is a really good discussion to have. I have opinions! But, I’d prefer to try to give you enough information to understand the trade-offs, because they are significant.

I haven’t checked into this at all but I should. Apparently the move to Swift 6 will require it? Better to figure out what’s wrong now and fix it before it becomes a problem.

John Newby • NBC Sports

Beard Motorsports will compete in Sunday’s Daytona 500 (2:30 p.m. ET on Fox), continuing a trend of the one-employee team taking on juggernauts with incalculable resources.

I’m very happy for Beard Motorsports. Hopefully he’s able to finish the race. That in itself would be a victory for an Indie shop. Let’s go! 🚙

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Its been a busy week at the day job. We’ve been working on some new stuff due to go out the door soon. I’ll be working over the weekend doing some testing to help wrap up our sprint.

I also managed to drop a new Beta of Stream this week. I haven’t heard anything positive or negative about it, but I also haven’t checked to see if anyone has installed it. 🤣

I’m hoping I can put a nice bow on this release soon. 🤞🏼

Evan Hurst • Wonkette

He’s just trying to warn us all. Be careful what you wish for. If you put Donald Trump in prison for massive crimes he committed while in office — the ones he’s indicted for involve plotting to overthrow the literal fucking Republic in order to stay in power after he lost re-election — then it just stands to reason that Barack Obama will go to jail and George W. Bush will go to jail and Crooked Joe Biden will go to jail.

Our Republic is 246-years old. We’ve had 46 Presidents in that time. Never had a President tried to overturn the results of an election. Until The Orange Menace arrived on the scene.

He’s a narcissistic rapist with authoritarian tendencies whose only pursuit is his own power and wealth at the cost of everything else.

He’s a master manipulator who projects his every mistake and crime on others.

He doesn’t deserve immunity from his crimes. The President is not above the law and it’s high time he’s held to account.

The sad thing is, if he becomes President again, all of his crimes will be swept under the rug and our great 246 year experiment will end.

If he loses? He most likely goes to prison.

Molly White • Citation Needed

Attempts to create alternatives have all failed, he says, before going on to describe several projects that are very much still in use, such as the RSS and ActivityPub protocols, or federated social media projects like Mastodon. RSS is dead, he repeats endlessly throughout the book.

I listened to Dixon on a recent episode of the Pivot Podcast and he seems somewhat disconnected from reality about certain things. Like his insistence RSS and other open protocols are “dead.” He sounds like a man trying to shoehorn solutions into web3 and blockchain.

Can someone explain to me how blockchain is going to replace my RSS feed and somehow make it better? I’m serious, I don’t get it, and maybe I should?

Anil Dash

You’ve heard the call to action at the end of nearly every podcast you’ve ever listened to: “Listen to us on your favorite podcast app”, or in the phrasing of podcaster extraordinare Roman Mars, “…wherever you find podcasts”.

Podcasting is a prime example of an existing — “old” — technology working perfectly to keep an entire ecosystem out of the hands of the VC’s and BigCo’s. Sure, VC’s and BigCo’s can have podcasts and podcast networks, but so can a nobody like me with the ability to record my voice, make an MP3, and make it an attachment to an RSS file.

Heck, chances are you’re reading this via my “dead” RSS feed.

Brent Simmons

Why NetNewsWire Isn’t Available for Vision Pro

Brent is a pretty pragmatic fellow and his reason for NetNewsWire not supporting Vision Pro are spot on. If you don’t have the hardware to support the effort, don’t risk making a poor product or experience for your users. Even if it’s open sourced and free.

John Calhoun

Tom Dowdy was a software engineer at Apple back in 1995 when I was still writing Macintosh games in Lawrence, Kansas.

Really nice story from a longtime Apple employee about the man who put his faith in him and hired him.

It also has a nice icon in the article with a nifty Easter egg. 🐣

Shannon Liao • Inverse

Disney Buys A $1.5 Billion Stake in Fortnite Maker, Plans for New Game Universes

Is this Disney’s foray into the Metaverse? It has such interesting intellectual property and we know they’re making content for Vision Pro. What are they really up to? 🤔

Casey Newton • Platformer

Within days, Bluesky was home to both Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Dril. It wasn’t clear what Bluesky was for exactly, but most people there seemed to be having a good time, and that was enough to convince more than 3 million people to at least try it.

I have a Bluesky account, I mean, of course I do. I love me some Twitter-like social media. I also have a Threads account. For me, however, I’ve found Mastodon more to my liking. I have great conversations on Mastodon and I’ve been there since 2018, at least (I was on a different instance way back but I forgot which one. 😂)

I use Threads because the few famous people I like to follow are there and I can’t find them here, which is a real drag, but that’s how it is. If Threads ever federates I’ll happily follow Threads folks on Mastodon.

As for Bluesky, a lot of the folks I followed on Twitter have settled there, so I’ve followed a few I can’t find elsewhere.

One thing I really love about Bluesky is being able to use my own domain to identify myself. I’m @fahrni.me there.

NASCAR

Rajah Caruth to drive Spire Motorsports’ No. 71 Chevrolet full-time in Truck Series

I couldn’t be happier for Rajah. He’s one of my favorite Truck Series drivers and he lost his ride at the end of the 2023 season. I’m happy to know he landed at Spire.

Evan Martin

Cross compiling Rust to win32

Looks mighty painful to get cross compiling working, but once you’re done I’m sure it feels good.

If you’re interested in using Rust for Windows development you can get language support right from Microsoft.

Frank Morris • NPR

The Kansas City Chiefs are undefeated at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, and Gerard DeCosta, a construction worker who lives in Hawaii, says that may have something to do with him.

Believe in curses? Sports folks are prone to believing them. This is a great story and good for a laugh.

I’m taking the 49’ers this weekend but according to this article they don’t stand a chance. 😆

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Another week and month in the books. We’ve crossed into February and Punxsutawney Phil says six more weeks of winter. I’m ok with that. Coffees ready, let’s get going.

MARK KENNEDY • Yahoo

Carl Weathers, linebacker-turned-actor who starred in ‘Rocky’ movies and ‘The Mandalorian,’ dies

I remember seeing Rocky as a kid and I didn’t much like Apollo Creed. He was arrogant, cocky, and besides, the star of the show was Rocky, the underdog. Of course they eventually became friends and I liked him then.

I loved him as Al Dillon in Predator and as Chubbs in Happy Gilmore.

R.I.P.

Amanda Richards • Netflix

NASCAR: Full Speed Is Coming to Your Screen at 200 Miles per Hour

I blew through the five episode season in a couple days. Why’d they only order up five episodes in the first season? I mean, F1: Drive to Survive has had 10 episode since season 1.

They focused on the playoffs but they could’ve done more leading into the playoffs. It’s a long season full of drama and I wanted more.

Overall it was really good and I hope we get a full 10 episodes in season 2.

Pkl

Define all your data in Pkl, and generate output for JSON, YAML, Property Lists, and other configuration formats.

Pkl is an Apple project. They’re trying to become a services company and having a better means of managing things sounds like a good idea.

It’s odd to see Apple using Java and Kotlin for this but it does make sense given it’s meant to be portable to different platforms. And by different platforms I mean actual different platforms like Linux, Windows, and Mac. Not Mac, iPhone, and iPad. 😄

Jason Parham • WIRED

Black Twitter Remains Unbothered in Elon Musk’s X

I’ve seen folks on Mastodon talking about how difficult it is for Black Mastodon to get started.

When I setup Curmudgeon Cafe there was a large contingent — and still is — of LGBTQ+ instances.

If memory serves it was more a matter of discoverability.

I’d love to see multiple BIPOC instances spring. We need more diversity, not less.

Miguel de Icaza • blog.la-terminal.net

My current effort is slightly different: how to build a native iPadOS (and hopefully VisionOS) experience for Godot. So rather than rewriting the existing Editor codebase with Swift, this effort is about making a SwiftUI on top of the existing Editor.

I don’t keep up with Godot but I do keep up with Miguel. It’ll be fun to watch his effort evolve into a finished product.

Robert Downen • Texas Tribune

Texas' standoff with the feds in Eagle Pass is igniting calls for secession and fears of violence

The MAGA crazed are ready for war and his orangeness is egging them on. Not only that he’s actively working with leaders in the House and Senate to blow up a bipartisan bill that would be the best deal the GOP has seen on the border. All to get that orange dumbass re-elected.

David Nield • Lifehacker

It’s 2024, and I’m here to extol the virtues of using an RSS reader.

Of course everyone should use an RSS reader! Might I recommend Stream for iOS? 😘

Yes, yes, it’s my app, but you should give it a try and if you like it, please, leave me a tip. 🙏🏼

Tim Hardwick • MacRumors

NHS App users in England can now collect medication from a pharmacy without having to visit a GP or health center, according to NHS Digital.

Man oh man would I love to have a national healthcare system that’s fully integrated and lets me manage how I interact with doctors and other healthcare providers.

I’d like it to work like Facebook. Doctors should invite me to join, or I invite them to join, my medical record.

American Healthcare is still stuck in the past. I’d love to see it fixed.

Nick Barclay • The Verge

Spotify accuses Apple of ‘extortion’ with new App Store tax

Spotify and others didn’t get what they really wanted. They don’t want to pay a single cent to Apple. Which from a business perspective makes perfect sense.

Guess we’ll see what the law says.

Aki Ito • Business Insider

In the two years I’ve been writing about Americans' changing relationship to work, there’s one theme that’s come up over and over again: loyalty. Whether my stories are about quiet quitting, or job-hopping, or leveraging a job offer from a competitor to force your boss to give you a raise, readers seem to divide into two groups.

There are so many factors to loyalty. The true believers exist and they have little to fear. Then there are the masses who quietly do their jobs and aren’t really seen.

We had a layoff at work last May and it destroyed morale, destroyed the company culture, and left loyalty at an all time low.

I hate to be so cynical but companies aren’t there for you. They’re there to make profit. Loyalty from the company only extends so far to the employee.

I still love my job and work hard at it everyday but I fear being laid off.

Jakub Porzycki • The Verge

Microsoft says Apple’s new App Store rules are ‘a step in the wrong direction’

Of course they think it’s going in the wrong direction! They’re a huge corporation in the business of selling software. They don’t want to hand any of it over to Apple.

Epic’s Tim Sweeney referred to it as “Malicious Compliance.”

Get out the popcorn! 🍿

Vadim Kravcenko

New libraries. New languages. New Frameworks. New Intern coming in and thinking he can rewrite better parts of the code himself. It’s easy to get swept away. But is the newest framework always the best choice? Is a rewrite really going to make everything better? Or is there wisdom in the code that has been around for years, has been tested with crazy edge cases, and has evolved together with the business?

I understand why folks are tempted to rewrite thing, I really do. When I wasn’t a dinosaur of a developer I hand that tendency. “I can make this better”, my brain would say. Sure, there’s occasion to “turn the soil” once in a while and I believe that’s good for a code base. But a full rewrite? No. 🌹

Nikita Prokopov

As you can see, even the checkmark wasn’t always there. But one thing remained constant: checkboxes were square.

A square checkbox is something us old timers are accustomed to seeing and changes can be confusing.

The Vision Pro’s checkboxes are confusing but I kind of like UIKit’s toggles as long as you don’t go crazy styling them. 😃

Nilay Patel • The Verge

It sounds amazing, and sometimes it is. But the Vision Pro also represents a series of really big tradeoffs — tradeoffs that are impossible to ignore. Some of those tradeoffs are very tangible: getting all this tech in a headset means there’s a lot of weight on your face, so Apple chose to use an external battery pack connected by a cable. But there are other, more philosophical tradeoffs as well.

I think Nilay did a great job balancing his review of Vision Pro.

It’s a great start but has a really long way to go as a general computing device. That’s my opinion having never used one.

I really believe we’ll get a sense for how we should be using it if we see pictures of Apple Executives wearing it daily to do their jobs. I kind of doubt we’ll see that for anything other than articles written about it.

The iPhone, Watch, and AirPods are devices those same executives probably use everyday. I just can’t see them using Vision Pro as much.

When/if they’re ever able to make them look like regular glasses and they cost around $500-800 I’d consider wearing them all the time. Until then they’re way too expensive for my blood. I would rather spend that kind of green on a new MacBook Pro.

Will Stream support Vision Pro? I think so. I have no idea when, but I think it will.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Last week was cold, this week has been like a perfect spring. We had plenty of sunshine with highs approaching 70. Of course next week we drop back into the 40’s. It is winter after all. 😃

Juli Clover • MacRumors

Apple’s EU Core Technology Fee Could Bankrupt Freemium App Developers

This is going to take some time to fully understand. Apparently one of the rules requires app makers to pay Apple the equivalent of $0.54 per app installation over one million. Now, if you’re selling a product for some hunk of change or have recurring revenue you’ll probably be fine if you manage to have one million plus installations. Heck, I’d love to have to think about this problem. 🤣

Having other stores to distribute your apps through also sounds interesting but you need to verify you have access to $1,000,000 dollars to handle support issues and keep the store running smoothly.

I’m curious to see what Epic and Spotify do.

As for me, I’ll stick with the good old 15-30% cut and hope someday I have to pay Apple 30% of my sales. Why? Because it would mean I’m making really good money.

M.G. Siegler • Spyglass

I’m honestly not sure I can recall a press release dripping with such disdain. Apple may even have a point in many of the points above, but the framing of it would just seem to ensure that Apple is going to continue to be at war with the EU over all of this and now undoubtedly more.

His analysis of Apple’s press release is a laugh. Apple is definitely trying to scare the crap out of folks. 🤣

Red Sweater

Black Ink for iOS (iPhone, iPad, and if all goes according to plan, visionOS), is now available on the App Store.

Congratulations, Daniel! Here’s hoping it’s a great launch and becomes a hit with the puzzle solving crowd. ❤️

Adam Reiss • NBC News

Former President Donald Trump must pay writer E. Jean Carroll over $83 million in damages for repeatedly defaming her, a jury found Friday.

The petulant baby man is finally starting to get some comeuppance.

He’s such a loser he stormed out of the courtroom.

Way to show what a leader you are. Things get tough and he walks away. A perfect quality for a President, right? Wrong.

Donnie boy, your weakness and low energy is on full display. Nice job. 🍊

Kyle Barr • Gizmodo

One place where Netflix won’t be is Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro VR headset. Why isn’t Netflix planning an app for what is Apple’s big $3,500 gamble on the future of augmented reality? According to co-CEO Greg Peters, it’s because the company doesn’t know if anybody’s actually going to use it.

I can’t say that I blame Netflix for their stance. Vision Pro is a brand new, extremely expensive, piece of technology. It may be cool and all but will enough folks buy into it to justify putting a lot of resources into it?

This doesn’t mean Vision Pro will be a failure. Remember, the iPhone didn’t exactly shoot out of the gate like a rocket. It took a couple iterations for it to finally gain mainstream traction. Heck, iPhone 1 didn’t even have an App Store, it only had “the sweet solution.” 🥽

Eric Berger • Ars Technica

Something has gone wrong with NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars. Although the US space agency has not made any public announcements yet, a source told Ars that the plucky flying vehicle had an accident on its last flight and broke one of its blades. It will not fly anymore.

Poor little copter lost a blade.

Let’s raise our glasses to the little copter who could! 🍻

Gary Leff • viewfromthewing.com

Boeing Whistleblower: Production Line Has “Enormous Volume Of Defects” Bolts On MAX 9 Weren’t Installed

Go read the comments from the Boeing employee. They’re terrifying. I have a fear of heights and flying. This news doesn’t help. 😳

Lois Beckett • The Guardian

LA Times fires 115 journalists in ‘HR zoom webinar’ following union protests

Here we go again. More firings. The hollowing out of news rooms continues.

We need the news and hard hitting articles to keep our government in check. It’s part of what makes America, America. 🗞️

Brian Linder • pennlive.com

Super Bowl announcement has some in MAGA crowd outraged. Here’s why

Please, allow me to fix that headline.

“Racists don’t want black singer to perform at the Super Bowl.”

These people are pathetic.😡

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been a pretty normal week, thankfully. Work has been great. I’ve had the opportunity to have a lot of heads down time on the project which always makes me happy, and my family is good.

Now, go get that nice hot cup of coffee or tea and I hope you enjoy the links!

Platformer

After much consideration, we have decided to move Platformer off of Substack. Over the next few days, the publication will migrate to a new website powered by the nonprofit, open-source publishing platform Ghost.

It’s good to know Casey took this Nazi stuff very seriously and is removing Platformer from Substack.

Once the dust settles I hope he’s able to pull all of his existing subscribers over and a whole lot more.

Thank you, Casey.

The Iconfactory

The new Iconfactory has a singular focus. We’ve been leaders in the design industry for decades and the new site puts our attention to detail, our award-winning apps, and our extensive development services at center stage. In short, we want to help you build the best apps you can, and whether you’re a Fortune 500 company, or an indie developer like us, we’re here for you. The new site explains why we’re the ones you should call on, and it does it with plain language and gorgeous examples.

Being a huge fan of The Iconfactory’s work I was excited to see the new site and it certainly delivered. It’s absolutely gorgeous and really does put what they do front and center. I hope it pays huge dividends for them!

I also noticed they featured the artwork they did for Stream’s feature in the App Store! I’m honored! ❤️

Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

RIP? Third-party podcast app Castro appears to be dead, company goes quiet

So this outage was worse than the last one. It took down not only the service but the website as well. I really thought they’d disappeared but a couple days later they were back.

It still surprises me companies with services like this don’t have a fallback position that would allow them to spin up an environment on a different provider and point the app to it instead, without rebuilding the app of course. I dunno, maybe that’s weird or overthinking the problem, but it makes sense to me.

Better yet, Castro would be better served by eliminating the need for their own service and use existing podcast directories combined with iCloud to sync user settings and subscription lists. That would also offload checking for updated podcast episodes to the client side, but that’s not a big deal.

Sean Hollister • The Verge

Google just confirmed to The Verge that it’s eliminated “a few hundred” roles in each of these divisions, meaning Google has confirmed layoffs of around a thousand employees on Wednesday alone if we use a reasonable definition of “few”.

More layoffs. Hopefully this doesn’t ripple out to smaller companies like WillowTree. Last May, for the first time in company history, we had a layoff. It’s felt strange being there ever since and I feel terribly guilty and extremely grateful I survived it. I really don’t want to see another one.

Chance Miller, Ben Lovejoy, Michael Potuck, and Arin Waichulis • 9to5Mac

iPhone from onboard Alaska Airlines incident found; survives 16,000-foot drop

Now that’s a real drop test! It amazes me I have broken two iPhones by dropping both while getting out of a car and having them fall out of my pocket. That’s like two feet off the ground.

It would’ve been cooler to find it shattered on a sidewalk or parking lot. 😂

Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

It looks like X, the company formerly known as Twitter, has a Verified bot problem. Although X owner Elon Musk suggested that forcing users to pay for verification would help to weed out the bots (aka automated accounts) on the platform, that does not appear to be the case.

I really need to do another Space Karen post, A.K.A. The Musk Files. This dude has really screwed the pooch but it’s all his to do whatever he wants with it.

If you’re smart you’ll backup your tweets, delete them all, and abandon the platform. There are other great choices today like Mastodon or Threads. Your best bet is Mastodon + a blog so you can get free of the whims of corporations and their silos.

Lisa Boone • Los Angeles Times

Curious about building an accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, in your backyard? Whether for extra income or much-needed housing for family, perhaps it’s time to investigate one of the hottest housing options in California.

An ADU is an Accessory Dwelling Unit.

It’s a label used to describe an additional place folks can live on the same property. Those garage or shed conversions you hear about can be considered ADU’s.

We had a really great detached garage at our home in California we converted into a really great living space. Our daughter and her family lived there for about a year so they could save money. We intended to use it as a She Shed for Kim but we moved to Virginia and never realized her dream.

Francesco Mazzoli

Let’s say you’re writing a long running multi-threaded application, on Linux. Maybe it’s a database or a server of some sort. Let’s also imagine that you’re not running on some managed runtime (maybe the JVM, Go, or BEAM), but rather managing threads spawned using the clone syscall. Think of threads created in C with pthread_create, or using C++’s std::thread.

I was part of a team who wrote our own internal C++ framework — it was dubbed XSDK — for all of our teams. We had really wonderful thread support but I can’t remember how we handled interrupting them to stop them. I believe we had a Stop() method that would set a flag the threads Run() method was responsible for checking and clean itself up. After setting the flag the Stop() method would join the thread and wait for it to terminate. Anyway, our implementation used pthreads for Linux and native Windows API thread support for Windows. They both worked really well.

Tori Otten • The New Republic

Explosive new audio of Roger Stone reveals the longtime Trump ally was trying to plot the assassinations of two outspoken Democratic congressmen.

I’m sorry I’m so obsessed with the orange man and the folks in his orbit. They’re all deranged bullies and must be defeated again.

Daniel Golson • Jalopnik

VinFast Will Try And Sell Its Tiny VF3 SUV In The U.S. With 125-Mile Range For Under $20,000

I believe we need more EVs like this. Limited range and less expensive. This price is something I’m willing to pay for a new vehicle.

While I still believe we need to fund better public transportation over cars at a federal, state, and local level, the idea of an inexpensive, limited range, EV is a good start.

Isaac Arnsdorf • The Washington Post

Speaking to reporters after an appeals court hearing in which Trump’s lawyers said he should be immune from prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election, Trump claimed without evidence that he was being prosecuted because of polls showing him leading President Biden. He warned that if the charges succeed in damaging his candidacy, the result would be “bedlam.”

Our courts need to start coming down on this asshole. He’s such an authoritarian he uses his outsized influence to foment violence from his supporters.

If our court system treats him differently because he may cause violence we’ve lost our nation.

You combat a bully by punching him in the nose, hard. Let him cool his jets in prison for a while and see how it suits him.

At a minimum he should be suspended from running for President given a Colorado court rules he engaged in insurrection.

I really hope the Supreme Court interpret Section 3 or the 14 Amendment to include the President. 🤞🏼

Anna Tong • Reuters

Videogame software provider Unity Software (U.N) will target laying off approximately 25% of its workforce, or 1,800 jobs, the company said in a regulatory filing and internal company memo on Monday.

Ahhh, Unity is back in the news. I wonder if this had anything to do with the decisions made in September of last year or it’s just “market forces”, whatever that means, that caused the need to let go of so many people.

Molly Jong-Fast • Vanity Fair

It never occurred to me that these facts could somehow be perverted by partisanship. But three years later, we are seeing just that, as Republicans cling to the lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” by Joe Biden and are poised to make Trump their 2024 nominee. And perhaps even more dangerous than the GOP ditching reality is the news media’s inability to cover Trumpism as the threat to democracy that it very much is.

The march to an authoritarian America continues, unabated. I need to step up and do what I can to stop the orange menace from winning and destroying the country as we know it.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

So ends my week of relaxation. In the past I’d start becoming angry about how quickly my time off flew by. Not this week. I made the most of each day with some lazing about thrown in.

I managed to get some time to work on Stream for Mac and do a bunch of things around the house I’d put off for far too long. Today I plan on cleaning up Kim’s car and working on my dumpster bike. But I’m open to change.

Anywho, my coffee is ready. I hope you enjoy the links.

PZ Myers • Free Thoughts Blog

Nikki Haley got asked a straightforward question: “What was the cause of the United States’ Civil War?” She staggers back, stalls for time, and finally coughs up, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run.

This is one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever seen. Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows the Civil War was fought over slavery. So, either Nikki Haley is a racist piece of crap or extremely stupid. I don’t think she’s stupid.

This was the easiest of softball questions you could give a Presidential candidate and she failed miserably, that alone should disqualify her from holding office in any federal, state, or local government.

Of course she’s competing with the biggest asshole of all for the GOP nomination. Good luck with that, Ms. Haley.

Maybe this was part of her audition for the Vice Presidency? Gotta show the Orange Man how racist she really is to get the job. 🤬

Jessica Wildfire • OK Doomer

Meanwhile, a world-class trail runner named Emilia kills herself after a Covid infection leaves her with an unstable heart. Around the world, smart talented young men and women are losing their careers after Covid ravages their organs, their brains, their immune systems.

COVID is still around and still wreaking havoc on folks.

I still need to get my booster, you should too. 💉

Mike Hanley • GitHub

Over 15 years ago, GitHub started as a Ruby on Rails application with a single MySQL database. Since then, GitHub has evolved its MySQL architecture to meet the scaling and resiliency needs of the platform—including building for high availability, implementing testing automation, and partitioning the data.

It’s wild to see how big services can become. GitHub — the company that centralized a decentralized version control system — has over 1,200 MySQL databases. That’s a metric crap ton.

It also seems strange given Microsoft has their own SQL Server offering continues to use MySQL, owned by Oracle. 🥴

Joan Westenberg

Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump, used an artificial intelligence program to generate bogus legal citations in his motion for early termination of his supervised release.

The moral of the story is don’t believe everything a LLM gives you. You still need to verify the answer.

Laura Paddison • CNN

Scientists in California shooting nearly 200 lasers at a cylinder holding a fuel capsule the size of a peppercorn have taken another step in the quest for fusion energy, which, if mastered, could provide the world with a near-limitless source of clean power.

Will this pan out? If we’ve ever needed it now is the time. At the rate the climate is changing a team of scientists will emerge from their labs to announce to the world they’ve done it only to find the world on fire.

Raymond Wong • Inverse

Inside Apple’s Massive Push to Transform the Mac Into a Gaming Paradise

But will AAA games come around and make the commitment to the platform? Without developers it’s an instant failure.

Diane Duane

Can you add artificial intelligence to the hydraulics?

This is a link to a comment on a post — at least I think it is? Regardless it’s a funny read. If you only follow one link make it this one. AI is taking over all the things even if it can’t.

Alex Castro • The Verge

Earlier this year, Amazon announced plans to start incorporating ads into movies and TV shows streamed from its Prime Video service, and now the company has revealed a specific date when you’ll start seeing them: it’s January 29th.

I’m kind of surprised they don’t just bake this into Amazon Prime pricing.

Brandon Paul • Flo Racing

With over 1,600 total entries on hand for the Tulsa Shootout this week, there is bound to be some NASCAR connections to the biggest Micro Sprint event in the country.

I’m not sure how many folks not into NASCAR would know that drivers often compete in multiple different types of races throughout the year.

Sprint Cars seem to be a real favorite and winning a Golden Driller is still a highly sought after prize. Even for highly talented NASCAR drivers.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Another week, gone. We’re picking up the grandkids this morning so I’ll have to get this put together quickly this morning. Sorry, grandpa duty calls! 👴🏼

I’m finishing this off in the car as we go to get them. 🤣

Hope you enjoy the links.

Max Boot • The Washington Post

The GOP’s abandonment of Ukraine makes me ashamed to be an American

This is gut wrenching. Ukraine is standing between Russia and Europe. That nutter in Russia isn’t going to stop at Ukraine. He’ll go until someone can stop him.

Come on G.O.P., get your crap together and defend democracy. Oh, right, you no longer care about that.

Ananya Bhattacharya • Quartz

Spotify is ending 2023 with its third and biggest layoffs of the year

Man, 2023 has been a crummy year for tech workers. Here’s hoping 2024 is much, much, better.

James Verniere • Boston Herald

“Leave the World Behind,” which is based on a 2020 novel by American author Rumaan Alam and produced by among others Barrack and Michelle Obama, is nothing less than a modern-day version of Alfred Hitchcock’s unforgettable 1963 hit “The Birds.”

I watched this last night and I really liked it. If you have Netflix check it out.

Ashur Cabrera

Once upon a time — way back in, like, 2004 or something — I used to turn my nose up at sites that served an RSS feed with only an excerpt. It felt, I think I would have said, like a sleazy way to drive clicks. (“Information wants to be free!” etc. 🙄) Twenty years on I still read a ton from RSS feeds, but I found recently that I’m starting to thaw on that position quite a bit.

Ashur, what happened to the curmudgeon in you? 😃

As a developer of a feed reader I get request to display the full article and it’s what I prefer so I don’t have to visit the website. That’s a feature on the feature list for Stream. One of these days.

Bart Decrem • Mammoth Blog

Introducing Mammoth 2: The easiest way quit Twitter/X for good and join Mastodon

It’s nice to see developers strive to make Mastodon work for old Twitter, non techie, users to get started with Mastodon. That’s been the biggest barrier to entry. Folks can’t figure out how to join and they also tend to like recommendations.

Jacob Kastrenakes • The Verge

Earlier this year, a developer slid into Eric Migicovsky’s DMs with a spectacular claim: that he had reverse engineered Apple’s iMessage, allowing any device — Android, Windows, whatever — to send messages as a blue bubble. Migicovsky didn’t believe what he was reading.

This is an interesting read. Bravo to the 16-year old who figured it out!

Daring Fireball

But Overcast does exist, and it’s the app where most people with exquisite taste in UI are listening to podcasts.

Poor Castro has languished and definitely doesn’t have the geek recognition Overcast does. I’d imagine that’s why it’s the number one podcast player in John’s stats.

As far as UI preferences and paradigm go, Castro fits me better.

I’d love to be able to buy it from Tiny and keep working on it. I’ve already shared my opinion on the matter.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing • Daily Kos

House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose grand vision for America includes transforming every uterus in the country into a Pez dispenser, is convinced he’s the North American Moses who will lead his people to the Promised Land.

Yeah, this guy wants a theocracy. No thank you.

Sure, the Christians might agree with you but what about Jews, Muslims, Buddhists? Name your religion. It’s not right. Our First Amendment was setup to protect us from a theocracy, but we all know the G.O.P. doesn’t really care about the Constitution.

Susana Polo • Polygon

The Comixology app, the mobile incarnation of the digital comics platform owned by Amazon since 2014, has finally shuffled off this mortal coil.

I’ve had ComiXology for a number of years but I never went for the subscription. I just don’t read enough. I don’t see this as a bad move. Comics are just another type of book and the Kindle App is fine for reading.

ESPN

While four teams are celebrating the opportunity to play for a national title on the field, undefeated ACC champion Florida State is on the outside, becoming the first unbeaten Power 5 conference winner to ever miss out on the College Football Playoff.

This broke a lot of hearts and it’s a real shame the 12 team — why not 16 — playoff wasn’t in place this year.

Of course I say that and my own thoughts on the matter didn’t include Florida State.

I also thought Georgia should have been in. Off by one error. We got Alabama from the SEC instead.

Apple

Apple TV+ today shared the first images from “Constellation,” a new eight-part, conspiracy-based psychological thriller drama starring Noomi Rapace (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “You Won’t Be Alone”) and Emmy Award nominee Jonathan Banks (“Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul”).

So, yeah, I’m looking forward to this! Anything with Noomi Rapace in it is good in my book.

Danijela Vrzan

Let’s implement a custom dark mode color in our app - dark blue.

Really nice SwiftUI article on how to change the colors used for Light and Dark mode for your app. Well done.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

All the Thanksgiving leftovers are long gone and I celebrated my 56th birthday this week. I got my free birthday coffee at Starbucks, had BBQ for dinner, and chocolate cake for dessert. Luckily the cake didn’t have 56 candles on it. That would’ve been bad. 😃

I hope you had a great week and enjoy the links.

Robert Kagan • Washington Post

Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day. In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will have locked up the Republican nomination. In the RealClearPolitics poll average (for the period from Nov. 9 to 20), Trump leads his nearest competitor by 47 points and leads the rest of the field combined by 27 points. The idea that he is unelectable in the general election is nonsense — he is tied or ahead of President Biden in all the latest polls — stripping other Republican challengers of their own stated reasons for existence.

I can’t see how trials and even convictions can stop Trump from becoming our next President.

Only we, the people, can stop it. If we don’t stop him we’ve lost our nation.

VOTE!🇺🇸

Daniel Jalkut • Red Sweater

This is a substantial update to MarsEdit 5, featuring all new support for the Mastodon publishing system, which is used to host a large number of independently operated Twitter-like microblogging services.

I’ve been a MarsEdit user off and on for well over a decade. This classic Mac assed Mac App is fast, stable, is great at what it does, and has a developer who cares deeply about it and the Mac.

It’s well worth its $59.95 price tag.

It’s time for an opinion. I wish this were subscription based for Daniel’s sake. He depends heavily on major releases and upgrades to keep his business afloat. This is where I believe subscription pricing could help. Her could do something like $9.99/yr, or $0.99/mo, then he could get off the upgrade cycle train and just add features whenever they’re ready. He provides excellent support and fixes bugs on a regular basis.🚂

Of course I’m not a successful indie giving advice to a man with a long established company and app, so there you go.😃

Super Mega Ultra Groovy

Capo was not playing audio for some users on Intel Macs running Sonoma. After spending almost two weeks (and about $850) I discovered that macOS Sonoma had a rather nasty bug that was triggered by loading JPEG images.

I love a good debugging story. 🐞

Sophie McEvoy • gamesindustry.biz

Xbox is working with unknown partners to open a mobile storefront to rival the App Store and Google Play.

It will be very interesting to see if Microsoft can actually make a nice experience for mobile users. Beyond that will Apple no longer demand their 15-30% take, even if on another store? I very much doubt it.

Deepa Shivaram • NPR

It’s been more than six years since images of a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., shocked the world — hundreds of people with tiki torches chanted antisemitic slurs, and a counter-protester, Heather Heyer, was killed.

When this all went down I wasn’t at all familiar with Charlottesville. We were living in California and little did I know we’d move to the area in 2019.

When I started at WillowTree we were located in downtown Charlottesville and I had no idea Heather Heyer was murdered right by our office. It was pretty surreal the first time I walked by it and realized this was the place.

I took this photo five days after my start date with WillowTree.

Nish Tahir

This week OpenAI had a fantastic keynote at their Dev Day event. They announced new products and enhancements to ChatGPT[1]. Interestingly, some parts of the internet described the keynote as an “Extinction Event”[2] for many AI startups. Many of the startups reportedly facing extinction share the common trait of being thin wrappers over OpenAI’s APIs.

I don’t think Nish sleeps at all. He’s into everything and is well versed in every topic he talks about.

Always worth a read when he shows up in my feed.

Steve Benen • MSNBC

Rep. George Santos survived the first two attempts to expel him from Congress. The third vote, however, led to the New York Republican’s ouster.

Well, what do you know. Some folks actually do have an ethics line. Took long enough for them to find it. 🤬

Robb Knight

Earlier this week I had a need to manually find a bunch of people’s RSS feed links. It seemed simple enough: go to their website and look for an RSS/Subscribe link but I was surprised to find that a lot of people don’t have a link anywhere to their feed.

I see where Robb is coming from. He’s after a link of image with a link to your sites RSS file.

Most modern feed readers will auto discover feeds by looking in your sites head for a specific alt tag.

Sites should embrace the tag based method but it doesn’t hurt to include a link somewhere.

Debbie Truong • Los Angeles Times

Montiel, an environmental science major, and Butterfield, a journalism major, had lived in their vehicles for several years, the only way, they said, that they could afford to attend college. They usually found parking in campus lots or on nearby streets.

There was a time when we lived in California where I thought I’d have to get a job in the Bay Area because tech in the San Joaquin Valley is hard to find. I was thinking I’d drive in from Exeter on Monday morning, stay the week, and return home Friday afternoon. I was planning to put a shell on my truck and turn the bed of the truck into my home.

For my first year of employment at LEVEL Studios in 2009-10 I did something similar but I found a room to rent for $250/month.

I doubt you could find anything close to that in the Silicon Valley.

Vincent Ritter

There is another reason why I stopped developing Gluon, for now, and time will heal this. It’s personal. I never said this publicly, but here we are. Funny how one individual in a nice community can just blow everything up 💥 I had super strong feelings about this today, and I can’t get it out my head. Hence this post I guess.

Vincent’s app, Gluon, is an excellent app for Micro.blog. For the longest time it was much better than the first party app and it was my iOS App of choice for Micro.blog.

I wish you nothing but joy and happiness, Vincent. Thank you for all of your hard work making Micro.blog a better place.

Anita Chabria • Los Angeles Times

A unicorn costume, a hammer and a belief that pedophiles are using public schools to destroy democracy: The trial of David DePape for attacking Paul Pelosi was strange and disturbing.

This attack on Paul Pelosi was just about as weird as it gets. The dude who did it was so far down the conspiracy rabbit hole he was seeing pedophiles everywhere. These people are the GOP’s base. They’ll believe anything no matter how wild the story. Remember the lizard people who drink children’s blood for the adrenochrome? Yeah, that’s something these people believe.

They all need extreme therapy to repair their addled minds.