Rob Fahrni

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been an interesting week, it’s just felt off for some reason. I think part of it is having our new pup — Cocoa — in the house and part of it is work.

Ever since our layoff things haven’t felt the same, because frankly, they’re not. Our company structure has changed and we’re still adapting and moving thing around. It feels way more corporate than ever but I suppose that happens when you get beyond a couple hundred people. We’re near one thousand, even after the layoff.

After the project I’m working on comes to a close at the end of July I’m hoping to get a little bench time to work on my SwiftUI (worst technology name ever) skills and shake the cobwebs out of the old programmer brain. 🧠

Ashur Cabrera

We’re giving ourselves the weekend to rest, then Phase 2 kicks off Monday when we start working on paperwork and logistics to pack a few bags, our pup, and try our luck at spending the next few years abroad. (More on this later in the summer ☺️)

Ashur is a friend, all around great fella, and very talented web developer. He’s even contributed his amazing web talent to Stream and I’m forever grateful for it.

Anywho, I’m so excited for him and this new adventure. Doing it while you’re young is the right call. Do it while your body can take it. Get out, explore!

I still hope to convince Kim we need to go all in on the RV lifestyle. Still not there yet. Maybe someday.

Enjoy this new adventure Ashur! 🧳

Joel Clay • blog.meldstudio.co

It is also what backs a number of the Swift concurrency primitives – with a cross platform, open source implementation of CoreFoundation released as the backing implementation. That source code is invaluable in gaining a better understanding of how CFRunLoop works. At just under 5k lines of quite readable C code, one could grok it at a high level in a few hours.

If you know me you know I love browsing C and C++ code. The thing I find extremely interesting about this code is how many OS’es it is targeted to run on; macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Makes me wonder who’s writing code against those platforms and how the new all Swift based frameworks work on those platforms.

This article takes a deep dive into CFRunLoop and it’s a good read if you’re into C code. 😃

NBC News

The Supreme Court issued a divided ruling on a pair of challenges to affirmative action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, with potential implications across higher education and beyond.

The Republican built court is doing its job dismantling years and years of progress. They’ve already set Women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and now affirmative action back. What’s next?

Here’s hoping most institutions of higher education don’t change their policies. Just leave that to the rich white racist institutions that take in dumbass rich white kids whose parents buy their way in.

Speaking of dumbass rich white kids…

Daniel Golden • ProPublica

My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations.

Screw Harvard and the entire Ivy League. As a nation we need to get our belief that going to one of those schools magically makes you smarter or better than everyone else. They cater to the rich and powerful who can afford to buy their way in, like Jared Kishner’s dad did for him. It’s all about keeping the rich and powerful in power.

Sure, turn away the dark skinned people with great grades and SAT scores and let the idiots in.

I’m sure there are many other schools doing the same thing and they should all be shamed.

The question is how to stop it?

Doc Searles

For almost the whole time I wrote at the old blog, the URL doc.searls.com took you there as a redirect. Now that URL goes here, directly. Put another way, this was a Harvard blog until yesterday (and again, everything until that day remains so: that’s its legacy). From now on, it’s mine alone. It has crossed from one state to another. I’m not sure yet how it will change, if at all. But I feel energized about what new things I might do with it.

Speaking of Harvard, it sounds like they’ve shut down and archived a bunch of blogs and their associated blogging tools. I’d venture to guess the tools they were using were long in the tooth, not well maintained, and a security risk, but I could be completely wrong about that! 😆

It’s nice to see Doc in his new home. I just need to remember to subscribe to the new site.

Keaton Brandt

Instead, I think it’s safe to say it’s largely Apple’s fault. Or, maybe “fault” is the wrong word. We’ve moved on from the era of beautiful Mac software to the era of web-based apps, for better and for worse. There’s no one simple reason for this evolution, but it’s interesting to think through some of the factors.

This piece goes to all kinds of interesting places. I think the bottom line is Apple is running Microsoft’s playbook from the late 90’s when the web was taking off and they were desperately trying to keep folks tied into their OS and tools.

Eventually Microsoft got their act together and found their way into web technologies. Heck, they even went as far as scrapping their own home built browser for Chromium, but that’s another story I’m very opinionated about.

Jay Barmann • sfist.com

This is very sad. HRD Coffee Shop (521A Third Street), which has seen two generations of owners in SoMa/South Beach and became so well known for its fusion-style burritos and Mongolian beef cheesesteak a decade ago that they were paid a visit by Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives in 2010, closed for good on Friday, June 23. The restaurant had just celebrated its 70th birthday this year.

This was one of the places on my “need to eat there someday” list and it’s a real shame to see it close down. I really wanted to try their spicy pork and kimchi burrito. Guess that ain’t gonna happen now. 😔

Pieter Hintjens

It’s one of my interview questions: “what is Good Code?” Surprisingly, almost no-one gets it right. It’s not about speed, elegance, language, or style. Good Code is code that solves real problems for real people, in an effective way. Let me list the top 10 rules for writing good code.

I enjoy reading how others approach coding. I’m constantly hearing the term “best practices” and makes me cringe a little.

I don’t agree with Pieter’s number zero rule: Use Git and Github. I know git is super popular and I use it and GitHub every day, but it’s not the only version control system on the planet and there are others that work just fine. The advice I’ve always given folks is pick a version control system and use it.

GitHub is, of course, a very good choice. 😃

[David Pierce • The Verge](<https://www.theverge.com/23778253/google-reader-death-2013-rss-social)

To executives, Google Reader may have seemed like a humble feed aggregator built on boring technology. But for users, it was a way of organizing the internet, for making sense of the web, for collecting all the things you care about no matter its location or type, and helping you make the most of it.

I remember how down my brother was when Google shut down Reader. He had a really nice workflow and could navigate Reader with his keyboard. It also had some very unique to Reader features he made good use of. I don’t remember what they were but I should ask him. If they’re unique perhaps Stream could benefit from implementing some? 🤔

Jason Kottke

When you write some code and put it on a spacecraft headed into the far reaches of space, you need to it work, no matter what. Mistakes can mean loss of mission or even loss of life. In 2006, Gerard Holzmann of the NASA/JPL Laboratory for Reliable Software wrote a paper called The Power of 10: Rules for Developing Safety-Critical Code. The rules focus on testability, readability, and predictability:

I’ve heard about these rules before and they’re no bad at all, especially for smaller, self contained programs. Anything mission critical should be extra safe in its implementation.

Remember when the Mars Lander crashed because the teams used different measurement systems? It only cost $125 million to build. Good times. 💥

Jack Gutzler • beyondtheflag.com

As NASCAR descends upon the streets of Chicago for the inaugural race at the new Chicago Street Course, a new chapter in the sport’s 75-year history will be written.

Since getting into NASCAR I’ve had this one marked on my calendar and wish I could’ve attended it. I’ve never been to Chicago or a NASCAR race, why not get a twofer?

I’ll be watching it from the safety of my own living room this time around. 🛋️

Manton Reece

Meta adopting ActivityPub has the potential to fast-forward the progress of the social web by years. Ever since I grew disillusioned with Twitter a decade ago and started pushing for indie microblogs, then writing a book about social networks and founding Micro.blog, I could only dream of a moment where a massive tech company embraced such a fundamental open API.

I’ve been trying to keep my nose out of the discussions around this on Mastodon. Opinions vary, of course, and some folks are very angry about the whole thing. It mostly boils down to folks in marginalized and discriminated against groups who made their homes on Mastodon being afraid. They don’t want to have to deal with the hate that will come along with an extremely popular, large, instance. I can’t say that I blame them.

I’m hopeful this will all work out and won’t divide the community.🕊️

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

We’ve been home for a week now and it’s been really nice to sleep in our own bed!

Now, if we could get Cocoa to sleep past 5:30AM I’d be thrilled. 😃

I hope you have a nice cup of coffee or tea ready and I hope you enjoy the links.

CNN

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has refused to surrender, and called Vladimir Putin “deeply mistaken” following the Russian president’s address describing his actions as betrayal.

I heard about this as I was crawling in bed. I hope the Wagner Group is able to destabilize Putin and end the war in Ukraine.

Probably too much to hope for. 🙁

iamthatis • Reddit

I wanted to address Reddit’s continued, provably false statements, as well as answer some questions from the community, and also just say thanks.

I love this openness from Christian Selig. If folks don’t know, Christian tapes his conversations with Reddit folks. It’s been very interesting to read bit the transcript he’s shared. It’s clear they have lied.

I just wish Christian had posted this all to a weblog so it would have a more permanent home. Who knows what’s going to happen with his subreddit.

Platformer

After a bruising week of protests and locked-down forums, things started to get back to normal Tuesday on Reddit, as — oh wait, what’s this?

Subreddit moderators are doing all they can to screw things up on Reddit. I applaud their effort.

Polygon

If you want to watch pop culture eat itself, go see The Flash, a movie that starts out as a sprightly superhero adventure, then dissolves into a self-referential requiem for the DC Universe.

I’m torn about seeing this movie given all the hubbub surrounding Ezra Miller but I really want to see Michael Keatons older Batman!

Trisha Gee

These days, distributed version control systems like Git have “won the war” of version control. One of the arguments I used to hear when DVCSs were gaining traction was around how easy it is to branch and merge with a VCS like Git. However, I’m a big fan of Trunk-Based Development (TBD), and I want to tell you why.

I’d imagine most folks I work with today have no clue how we used to work. I didn’t use git for version control full time until around 2014 I’d imagine? I found it terribly frustrating to work with at first but know I’m fine with it.

Anywho, up until 2014 I’d worked with so many different version control systems. I’d imagine I worked with CVS the longest and we had one main branch — trunk — and everyone committed directly to it. Yes, breaking the build was definitely frowned upon so you had to be very careful about your commits!

LA Weekly

When North Carolina Gov. Patrick McCrory signed House Bill 2 into law, I wonder if he was thinking long-range about what the result might be. I can’t see him and his staff wondering out loud if their thick-skulled, cracker logic might result in Bruce Springsteen not only canceling his upcoming show in Greensboro, depriving the state of revenue and its residents of a Springsteen concert, but inspiring Mr. Boss to issue a press release that more people have read than will ever peruse House Bill 2.

Henry Rollins seems to be a really great dude. Part punk, part philosopher, always interesting to listen to or read.

The Guardian

Seven years after the Brexit referendum, the proportion of Britons who want to rejoin the EU has climbed to its highest levels since 2016, according to a new survey.

I mean, duh! The British version of MAGA didn’t work out so well. It’s been terrible for so many. I hope they rejoin the EU.

Hendrick Motorsports

The NASCAR Next Gen Garage 56 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 was a hit from day one in Le Mans, among fans, media and even other competitors. And it was fast on track, consistently putting down lap times that bettered cars in the GT class. The car ran near the top of the GT field for more than 20 hours until a drive line issue sidelined the team for more than an hour. Overall, the car was running at the finish, completed 285 laps on the 8.4-mile circuit and finished 39th in the 62-car field.

This car is an absolute beast and looked out of place at Le Mans. It would also look out of place on a NASCAR track. It is a beautiful car with some really excellent engineering. Oh, yeah, and it is super fast! Good old American V8 horsepower under the hood.

I kind of wish I’d been more of a car guy when I was younger. My Dad certainly is and has built some beautiful cars in his time. His ‘37 Chevy Coup Street Rod is stunning and he used to drag race a 454 powered ‘51 Anglia.

I had the opportunity to learn a lot but didn’t. If I could do it today I’d love to be a mechanic or engineer for a NASCAR, IndyCar, or F1 team. I’d love to specialize in engines. I do find them fascinating and would love to rebuild one again. I rebuilt a Chevy small block in High School my senior year. Yeah, I took auto shop because I wanted to do something “easy.” 😃

Cadillac Racing

After 21 years, Cadillac Racing marked our return to the iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 10—11 with our highest finish ever in front of a record audience of 325,000 spectators. Our No. 2 V-Series.R led laps for the first time in Cadillac history and finished on the podium in 3rd, with the No. 3 just behind in 4th, and the No. 311 fighting back for 10th in class.

There’s an article on Jalopnik that includes a video of one of these cars doing a bump start and it sounds mean. It instantly made me think of the Batmobile for some reason.

Now, let’s get more American manufacturers back in NASCAR. Cadillac would be a super interesting entry! I think Dodge is an obvious entry for NASCAR Cup, Xfinity, and Truck series given their history of legendary cars like the Challenger and their RAM trucks.

Cadillac would be super cool to see in NASCAR Cup racing but it may be too lowbrow for them? 🤣

Traveler Dreams

Renting an RV and embarking on a road trip across America can seem like more of a fantasy trip than a real thing you actually do. But you can truly make it a reality. And if you do, it can turn into a thrilling and liberating experience that will leave you with unforgettable memories. Here’s why you should take the plunge.

This is something I dream about all the time but I can’t quite get Kim convinced we need to sell everything and go all in on the RV lifestyle.

As a compromise we’d like to acquire a smaller RV and do some two week to one month excursions to see if we like it. It would also be great for week long camping trips with the entire family.

Maybe someday it’ll be a reality? 🤞🏼

Business Insider

When former NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino was named Twitter’s next CEO last month, advertisers breathed a sigh of relief.

I don’t expect Ms. Yaccarino to last very long at Twitter. I think my original quesstimate was six months but I could see it lasting as long as a year.

Musk is too much of a control freak. The kind of boss I’d hate working for.

The best piece of advice I ever got from my VP of Engineering and CTO at Pelco was “You have to convince people your vision is the right way to go so they follow. You won’t get their best work if you’re a tyrant.” It was something like that. Basically be a leader, not a bully.

Teri Kanefield

This blog post is meant to be read in order. Later answers are shorter because they rely on the information presented in the earlier answers.

This is a really nice piece if you’re following along with the TFG Top Secret documents prosecution. Dude is such a knucklehead and honestly believes he has magical powers to declassify things with his mind. Dumbass.

The New York Times

The engineers reminded him of their commutes. The working parents reminded him of school pickup times. Mr. Medina replied with arguments he has delineated so often that they have come to feel like personal mantras: Being near each other makes the work better. Mr. Medina approached three years of mushy remote-plus-office work as an experiment. His takeaway was that ideas bubble up more organically in the clamor of the office.

I believe with all my heart CEO’s like this are real control freaks and must have the adoration of their people surrounding them at all times. I can have these ah-ha moments, Slack someone, and fire up a zoom call to have the same conversations. It’s just not face to face in a building I have to commute to.

If our company demanded everyone come to the office, of course I’d comply, but I really don’t believe it’s necessary.

Just my horrible opinion.

Assigned Media

A federal court heard both sides during a trial where trans youth, their parents, and their doctors challenged a law banning gender affirming care in Arkansas. The court found that the law violated the right to due process and to equal treatment under the constitution, and ordered the law struck down because Arkansas failed to demonstrate a compelling state interest justifying the unequal treatment.

We really need the courts to continue overturning these idiotic and dangerous laws.

You cannot force people to be someone they are not and denying them healthcare because they’re different than you is barbaric.

Apparently Meta’s Project 92 is going to federate with a limited set of Mastodon instances, pay them, and allow them to display Meta ads in exchange for a cut.

Embrace and extend. Amirite?

Let’s see how this plays out.

Good morning from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina! ☕️

Kim and I rented a place for a week to share with our kids, grandkids, and our dogs! We arrived around 7PM Friday evening, got setup, had some pizza, and pretty much passed out.

We haven’t had time to do any real recon of the are but I did manage to find a decent pizza joint and a Food Lion so we could pick up odds and ends to stock the fridge for the week.

From Friday to Tuesday it’s all about our kids and grandkids. Tuesday forward it’ll just be Kim and I and our oldest grandchild until next Saturday.

I was hoping to get some extra bunk time but that ain’t gonna happen with a puppy who thinks 5:30AM is play time. 🤣

We’re going to have a great time at the beach and whatever else we can drum up.

Enjoy the links.

Daring Fireball

But even just a small taste of VisionOS made me feel confident that it is going to be the next major platform for Apple and Apple developers, alongside MacOS and iOS/iPadOS.

I wasn’t too excited about any new AR/VR headset Apple was set to release, then I saw it in the keynote.

At first I was disappointed because they were showing someone in an office using it to replace their monitor(s) and that’s kind of boring.

The we see someone celebrating a child’s birthday wearing the headset. Really? What a complete douchebag. No, seriously, that’s a really bad move.

But, when I saw them demonstrate watching movies with it, I was excited! That is what I’d use it for!

Am I spending $3,500 anytime soon on one? Hell no! It’s still to early for me, especially at that price. It’s hard to justify it.

Steven Beschloss

Donald Trump himself broke the news this evening that he’s been indicted—making him the first former president to ever be charged with a federal crime.

King ding dong himself is finally being indicted for his retention of government documents. It’s not about him accidentally having a few mixed in with his other papers, it’s about boxes of them, not returning them on request, and lying that he did return them.

The right like to say “What about Biden and Pence?” Indeed, what about them. They self reported having documents and turned them over right away.

TFG is a real garbage human wrapped in a suit. My hope is, at a minimum, he’s banned from running for any federal office ever again.

Colin Paice

Easy question – hard answer, how to I convert a hex string to hex byte string in C?

Go along for the ride. I haven’t taken the time to think through how to solve this and I only have nits to pick with Colin’s solution.

Virginia Mercury

Richmond’s post-graduation mass shooting reflects America’s gun violence epidemic

This is so sickening. The shooting is absolutely horrific but to do it at a graduation? It’s heartbreaking how callous our nation has become.😔

Swift.org

This document is the reference guide describing how to mix Swift and C++

Since this was done as an official way to use C++ from Swift there was all kinds of thought out into safety. That’s fine, but if you have a great hunk of C++ that has been thoroughly tested and you feel good about it you probably don’t need the training wheels provided by this support.

Just wrap your C++ in a thin layer of Objective-C++ and call it from your Swift code without penalty. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Robert Reich

Goodbye, CNN’s Chris Licht. But what’s the lesson?

I know he screwed the pooch with that TFG interview thing but man, that was pretty quick.

512 Pixels

The number of 2019 Mac Pros sold cannot be huge, but the new one’s numbers are going to be even smaller. As a Mac Pro fan that worries me. Yes, there are users who are reliant on PCI solutions and I’m sure those folks will upgrade to this new machine at some point.

Who is this computer for? That’s the question on most folks minds. When I heard it wasn’t nearly as expandable as the 2019 version it made me wonder why they bothered? Beyond the awesome SOC it doesn’t have more to offer than its 2019 counterpart.

Then again, I’ve never been the target of this computer. I’m still using a 2019 MacBook Pro and I’m fine with it. Heck, I have a brand new M2 based MacBook Pro sitting in a box waiting for me to set it up. 🤣

Audibon.org

But as Adams scanned the bustling crowd of King Penguins, elephant seals, and Antarctic fur seals, he spotted something bizarre in the distance.

Go check out the post. This bird is gorgeous and I want it.

Jalopnik

Could The NASCAR Garage 56 Camaro Beat Every GTE Car At Le Mans?

I’d love to watch this all the way through but that’s not gonna happen. I hope NASCAR has partnered with someone to do a full documentary on it. The process from concept to reality to running the race. I hope it makes it the full 24 hours. That alone would be a huge victory.

Good morning! ☕️

Kim and I are on the road this morning. We’re headed to Nashville, Illinois, to pick up a new pup! I hope to post some pictures as we go.

The Hollywood Reporter

Tina Turner, the trailblazing rock star who set world records for ticket sales — and whose dramatic triumph over domestic abuse and the music industry itself made her a feminist icon — has died. She was 83.

Tina Turner is part of the soundtrack of my high school years.

God speed.

Deadline

Ray Stevenson, a veteran actor whose dozens of film and TV credits include RRR, the Thor and Divergent films, Vikings and Star Wars animated series, died Sunday.

I’ve always liked Ray Stevenson. I enjoyed his version of The Punisher but I’d wager he’s best known as Volstagg in Thor.

The Iconfactory

We’re proud to announce that version 1.0.4 of Notchmeister is now available to download. And with it comes a revolutionary new feature called Fusion Dice.

Software should be fun. I’ll bet Notchmeister was fun to build and it’s probably going to be fun to use.

Jalopnik

I usually get the same answer whenever I bring it up: “No, you can’t make your own engine. The castings are too complicated. How will you actually pour your own block? Do you have foundry in your mom’s basement? It’s too expensive to machine one from scratch. You don’t know what you’re doing!”

I’ve had it in mind I should build a four cylinder motor from the ground up. Sure, why not? Maybe some day. 😃

Rolling Stone

President Joe Biden and the Republican Party at loggerheads in the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations as the GOP insists on steep spending cuts and work requirements for aid recipients. Although both Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy sounded hopeful there was a deal to be made just last week, talks appear to have broken down over the last couple days.

Here we go. Headed for a cliff.

Los Angeles Times

The slow-motion rebirth of Tulare Lake has inundated farm fields and threatened levees, homes and whole towns. On Monday, the state projected the lake would reach its peak in the next week or so, but the floodwaters will linger for perhaps two years.

This is a wild thought. Tulare Lake hanging around for a couple years? That’s a crazy thought. I wish I could see an aerial view of it.

The Washington Post

Two of Donald Trump’s employees moved boxes of papers the day before an early June visit by FBI agents and a prosecutor to the former president’s Florida home to retrieve classified documents in response to a subpoena — timing that investigators have come to view as suspicious and an indication of possible obstruction, according to people familiar with the matter.

Can we convict this dude and put him behind bars for a while?

Such a scumbag.

Good morning!

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

Enjoy the linkage!

Sprudge

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

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

Mediaite

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

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

If you can, get out.

gonsoloblog

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

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

Joyce Vance

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

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

Matt Corey

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

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

Defector

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

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

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

Steve Roy

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

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

The Pink News

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

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

Netflix Technology Blog

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

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

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

Jalopnik

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

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

Your mileage may vary. 🚙

Orhun Parmaksız

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

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

Steven Beschloss

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

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

I suspect Jesus would support an end to the violence.

PC Gamer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Had a good sleep! Time for coffee and some links.

Today’s will be abbreviated because we have our granddaughter over and she’s more fun to play with. 😀

Tennessean

Ten days after a shooter unloaded 152 rounds inside a Nashville school and killed six people, Tennessee House Republicans on Thursday expelled two Democratic lawmakers for breaking House rules and mounting a gun-reform protest on the chamber’s floor.

Yeah, they kick out the two black representatives and allow the white one to stay. Good job saying the quiet part out loud. It’s disgusting on so many levels to watch out country regress back to 1950’s America.

The Verge

I had a corpse on my phone, and I kept checking in on it. Ever since January 12th, my preferred iOS Twitter app had been locked in stasis, frozen on an error modal informing me that “there was a problem authenticating with Twitter,” and wow, was there ever. Without any notice, Twitter had revoked the mainline access credentials for Tweetbot and every other third-party client not operated by Twitter itself.

I’m happy the Tapbots folks were able to somewhat recover from Space Karen’s sudden decision to destroy a third-party ecosystem without notice.

Ivory is a beautiful app for Mastodon. Go buy it and support this amazing indie shop.

Steven Beschloss

In 1991, Warren Burger, the former Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, appeared on PBS News Hour and said exactly what he thought about the Second Amendment: “If I were writing the Bill of Rights, there would be no such thing as the Second Amendment—that a well-regulated militia being necessary for the defense of the state, the peoples’ rights to bear arms.”

Once again, it’s the guns.

ProPublica

For over 20 years, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been treated to luxury vacations by billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow.

The man is now saying “Oh, I thought those trips were ok because they were personal trip.” Really? 😳

Come on man, we’re not that dumb. Time for an independent ethics oversight. Sorry Clarence, time to pay for your own luxury trips. Better yet, it’s time to resign in shame. Of course he won’t do that because Republicans only care about money and power. Zero ethics.

Github

Since the beginning, GitHub.com has been a Ruby on Rails monolith. Today, the application is nearly two million lines of code and more than 1,000 engineers collaborate on it daily.

I had no idea GitHub ran on Rails. Huge codebase with a huge team.

I’m a Shadow Phantom

Horrible leadership, racism, sexism, abuse, and violations of countless labor laws in both the U.S. and internationally could only lead to one possible outcome. The lawsuits are piling up and the employees are going to take the hit. Payroll is going to be missed.

This is a great playbook for destroying a company.

Denver Pride

Beyond supporting Denver PrideFest, Molson Coors has a distinguished history of supporting LGBTQ communities across the country, with significant support for organizations such as Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Matthew Shepard Foundation, National Amateur Gay Athletics Association of America, National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, LGBT Victory Institute, Out & Equal, and One Colorado.

I haven’t looked into the whole kerfuffle but apparently Budweiser became enemy number one to MAGA’s everywhere.

Guess it’s time to add Coors to the list?

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

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

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

CNN

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

No words. 😔

Microsoft Design

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

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

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

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

Wired

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

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

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

Dave Winer

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

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

The Guardian

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

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

John Nunley

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

This discussion focused around handles in Windows is quite interesting.

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

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

John Scalzi

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

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

Judo Blog

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

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

Los Angeles Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Washington Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

CNN

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

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

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

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

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

New Scientist

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

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

The Iconfactory

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

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

I’m looking forward to the Mac release.

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

Rogue Amoeba

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

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

The Conversation

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

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

David Smith

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

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

Congratulations! 🥳

Sourcegraph

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

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

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

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

It also makes me wonder where The Singularity fits in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reuters

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

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

Chicago Tribune

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

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

Macworld

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

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

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

Linode

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

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

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

Semafor

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

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

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

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

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

Crooks and Liars

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

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

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

Doctorow

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

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

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

New York Times

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

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

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

Joseph Heck

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

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

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

Cory Doctrow

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

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

New York Times

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

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

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

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

Hope you enjoy the links.

CNN

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

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

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

Arstechnica

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

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

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

Colm Doyle

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

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

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

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

Facebook Engineering Blog

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

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

Mike Masnick

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

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

Cloudflare

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

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

Cordi

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

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

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

Digits to Dollars

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

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

Dave Rogers

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

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

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

Good morning coffee lovers! Hope you’re ready for some randomness because you’re gonna get some. Cheers! ☕️

Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Thousands of frustrated Texans shivered in homes without power for a second day Thursday, most of them around booming Austin, and fading hopes of a quick fix stirred grim memories of a deadly 2021 blackout after an icy winter storm across the southern U.S.

Poor Texans are, once again, struggling through big cold snap. It’s not surprising though, the GOP run state doesn’t care about people, only profits.

I read something yesterday that rings true: How can you tell when you’re going to have six more weeks of winter? Ted Cruz goes to Mexico.

Folks, stop voting for Republicans. They don’t care about you one little bit.

Ars Technica

HBO’s The Last of Us tries a little tenderness in a surprising episode 3

This was a fantastic episode! We got to see a couple live their best lives under terrible circumstances. I didn’t play the game so I didn’t know Bill was gay but he was already an interesting character up to that point. A prepper with the talent of a gourmet chef and a musician. Being gay was just the cherry on top and his commitment to his partner was heart warming. This episode was a quiet reprieve to what I’d imagine will be non-stop violence to the bitter end.

ESPN

Tom Brady says he is retiring “for good” from football, ending a storied 23-year NFL career during which the star quarterback won seven Super Bowls and set numerous records.

Tom, Tom, Tom. I have a horrible feeling Mr. Brady returned to football because his wife broke the news to him that she wanted a divorce not long after he retired. Football was the distraction he needed to get through it. Now the divorce is final, he’s suffered that initial pain, and it’s time to move on.

I’m so sorry you had to go through that Tom. Divorce is nothing but pain for all involved. I hope you have a beautiful life. You are football’s GOAT.

NetNewsWire

Because of Twitter’s announcement that free access to the Twitter API will end February 9, we will be removing Twitter integration from NetNewsWire in the next release (6.1.1) for Mac and iOS.

Space Karen strikes again! This time he’s hitting anyone whow uses the Twitter API. He’s tightening up while over on Mastodon things remain completely open for business! Following folks on Mastodon from your favorite feed read is so easy you don’t need a special plug-in to do it! It supports RSS right out of the box. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Also, who wants this domain? It would be great for a Space Karen watch site, like Twitter is going great.

Jeffrey Zeldman

Before the present owner, I was a Twitter Blue customer, because I always pay for software—to support its creators and help prevent it from disappearing, as so many great websites and platforms have done over the years.

Jeffrey Zeldman is an American treasure and web hero. I’ve enjoyed reading him for years and years now. This time Jeffrey shares his adventure of trying to give Twitter money. Their payment system failed. Doesn’t surprise me.

America, America

The authoritarian strongman types want us to believe in their power. They may even want us to think that their power is divinely influenced, a sign that they’re not like the rest of us, but better. Look no further than the surreal video released just weeks before the Florida gubernatorial election, complete with Voice of God-style narration and mad text about how Ron DeSantis is the fulfillment of God’s plan for a protector and a fighter.

I’m sure Florida has it’s share of wonderful people but why would you choose to live there? DeSantis is a true authoritarian scared of America’s future without bullies like him. Future America will happen. You may slow it down but it will happen. I hope to one day have a liberal society built on love and compassions for our fellow man, not some nasty place full of scared, old, white men grasping for every little bit of power they can. It’ll happen. May just be after I’m going. Here’s hoping it happens before then.

eFinancialCareers

The real problem is that C++ is neither easy nor loved. Rust got an 87% approval rate in the “most loved” category of the Stack Overflow Survey. However, only 9.3% of respondents used Rust at all and only 8.8% did so professionally. C++, meanwhile, languished at 48%.

Look, I don’t want to work on some web3 thing either. Why would I use my talents as a C++ developer to work on a thing I don’t care for? Sure, you could offer me tons of cash and it would be tempting but ultimately I’d be bored to death.

I’ve worked on award winning Windows Applications and highly performant video encoding and decoding systems. I can’t see working on trading systems. Nope, nope, nope.

NBC News

The U.S. military has been monitoring a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been hovering over the northern U.S. for the past few days, and military and defense leaders have discussed shooting it out of the sky, according to two U.S. officials and a senior defense official.

This is really strange to me. We should bring it down, but in a controlled way if at all possible. It would be fascinating to examine what the onboard package contains.

Who knows, maybe it’s full of radioactive material in hopes we will shoot it down. That would be our luck. 😂

Yahoo!

WESTLAKE, Ohio, January 30, 2023–(BUSINESS WIRE)–TravelCenters of America Inc. (Nasdaq: TA), the nation’s largest publicly-traded full-service travel center network, announced today an agreement with Electrify America to offer electric vehicle charging at select TA/Petro locations with the first stations planned to be deployed in 2023. Electrify America is the largest open direct current fast-charging network in the U.S.

This is excellent! There are so many nice electric vehicles on the market today so setting up a massive charging network makes sense.

The old time car companies have caught up to Space Karen’s car company and in many ways surpassed it. Good. We need the competition.

Welp, I’m really gonna need that coffee this morning. Kolby, our puppers, decided 4:30 would be a great time to get up. I was able to ask him to lay down, which means I get another hour, and just like clockwork he woke me up and 5:30. 😀

I’ve done a little poking around my Mastodon timeline this morning and started going through Pocket to see what I was sharing this morning.

First cup down, couple more to go, let’s get started. ☕️

Louie Mantia

All the designers there have a very different taste and style from each other, but they all work together so well. If anything, I felt a little intimidated being the youngest, feeling I might muck it all up. But everyone here was determined to not let me fail. I don’t think I knew what the best job could feel like before I had it.

This is a great piece on Louis time at The Iconfactory.

Louie went on to work for Apple and did the icons for iTunes among other things. After that he started Pacific Helm in San Francisco before landing in Portland to create Parakeet. He’s an amazing designer and if you’re an app creator you may want to hire him to do some beautiful icons for you.

Ars Technica

The New York Times has a report about which divisions are being hit the hardest, and a big one is Google’s future OS development group, Fuchsia.

I check in on Fuschia from time to time and I’d love to see it land on a computing device like Android or Pixel. Perhaps something a bit more powerful, like a web server?

Aeon

This futuristic dream-like scenario is being sold to us as a real scientific possibility, with billionaires planning to move humanity to Mars in the near future.

It would be so much better to invest all that time and resources to saving this planet. After that, please, pursue your conquest of Mars.

Daring Fireball

It’s worse than that, though, because if you were delivered a newspaper with random stories scissored out, you’d know that there were missing stories.

As expected Twitter is beginning to decay. And it has become a bit of a ghost town in my timeline, I do check on occasion, but refuse to post.

The Verge

Asked whether his recent tweets — spreading tawdry conspiracy theories about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, embracing COVID misinformation, mocking trans people, making groan-inducing, jokes, and exposing himself as a right-wing troll — has harmed Tesla’s brand image, Musk responded with characteristic mocking defiance.

Musk is deluded to the point that he only cares about his popularity at the expense of Tesla.

The board should let him go and get someone who can run the company.

AMA

At this point in the pandemic, almost everyone in the U.S. has had COVID-19—whether they know it or not. But something more alarming is happening: A growing number of people are getting reinfected with SARS-CoV-2.

I’ve been wondering for a while if I’m just that out of shape or if COVID did some damage to my lungs. Most likely I’m out of shape but I feel really bad for all the poor souls with long COVID.

Barn Finds

In the pantheon of old Fords, the ’32 coupe and various Model As are always favorites with hot-rodders and collectors.

I’m not what I’d call a car guy but I do run across a car on Barn Finds or Jalopnik I’d love to have. My Dad has a ‘37 Chevy Coup he restored from a rust bucket. I need to find some pictures. It’s a beautiful car.

Smithsonian

Welcome to Smithsonian Open Access, where you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now, without asking.

The Smithsonian is absolutely amazing. I think they need an iOS and Android App for sharing. 😃

Mike McBride

The cost-saving effects of layoffs are almost non-existent. So why? It’s one thing to be losing money and need to cut costs. It’s another to be a pretty profitable organization with layoffs that don’t wind up cutting costs.

Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have laid off around 50,000 folks recently. The tech sector continues to take hit after hit after hit.

I know WillowTree is in great shape but this kind of movement in the industry can spread. Here’s hoping we’ve seen the last of it for a while.

David Masover via LinkedIn

I’m the Google SRE who made sure to hand off the pager in the minutes after I got laid off on 2023-01-20. If you’ve worked at Google (or maybe even if you haven’t), you may have heard some version of this story. Here’s what actually happened:

This fella is dedicated. After being laid off he felt the need to track down someone to hand his job off to.

I admire the dedication but Google didn’t feel dedicated enough to you to let you keep your job. Keep that in mind. We’re all expendable to corporations.

Good morning! I hope your coffee is strong and you’re ready to read some random links? ☕️

The Iconfactory

While this chapter may have ended, our story is not over. We’ll continue improving our other apps, creating new apps, doing amazing design work for our clients, and posting awesome wallpapers to Wallaroo and Patreon.

Tapbots

We have taken everything great about Tweetbot and used it as the starting point for the future of Ivory.

I’ve been posting on this topic for a while now. Musk is a big caca-doodoo-head and shutting down third-party Twitter clients isn’t a good idea. Why? They’re much better than Twitter’s own client.

Twitter should’ve reached out to these tiny app creators and offered to work with them to include advertising in their timeline streams or offered to buy a few of them and turn each app into a unique client for various Twitter endeavors. Like one that specializes in video and one that specializes in news. Something like that. Give folks more options, not fewer. 🫡🐦

By contrast Mastodon, being a completely open platform, is flourishing thanks to third-party clients! There are so many new iOS Apps for Mastodon it’ll make your head spin. Some have been around for years and have seen a resurgence, others are brand new. They give folks options. Variety, the spice of life!

One other very important point to make. Hitching your wagon to a company that can shut off access at any time was a dangerous move. These indie devs knew what they were doing, but it doesn’t hurt them any less.

I’ve been switching between three very good clients; Toot!, Ivory (beta), and Ice Cubes. Each have something about them I really enjoy, but there are so many more just waiting in the wings.

Also, Musk is failing in many ways. Twitter is a mess and Tesla stock is plummeting. I’m surprised Tesla Board hasn’t fired him. 🔥

Salon

So maybe it’s surprising that any defense attorneys for the Proud Boys have said anything coherent, let alone incisive. Yet right there in the opening arguments, Sabino Jauregui, who is defending Tarrio, went straight at the prosecution’s weak spot: The government is putting the insurrection’s foot soldiers on trial, while leaving the man who led and directed them, Donald Trump, not just untouched by the law but running for president again. (Supposedly.)

To this I say “Duh!” Yes, that slimeball TFG should be in jail.

Here’s hoping Justice is served.

Daring Fireball

The best interfaces to Twitter, on any platforms, were all native apps on the iPhone and Mac. We’re now on the cusp of a new frontier with Mastodon, and it’s Apple’s utterly clueless bureaucratic App Store reviewers who are doing their best to lock the new playground’s gates before they even open.

John is talking about a beautiful, highly functional, Mastodon client called Ice Cubes. The Apple App Store review process can throw some really weird reasons at folks why they won’t approve an app. Stream was rejected three times because I use the word subscribe in it and they thought I was collecting money and wanted their cut. They insisted I use in app purchase for subscriptions. 😵‍💫

Short story long, Ice Cubes was finally approved and I honestly believe someone at Apple read John’s piece and fixed the situation. 💪🏼

stitcher.io

From its humble beginnings as a personal project in the mid-90s, PHP has grown to become one of the most popular languages for web development, powering everything from small blogs to large enterprise applications.

I know what you’re gonna say, PHP is garbage. I don’t think so. It’s been used for years and years and while some folks may find it strange I think it’s a much better language than JavaScript and it continues to improve.

Ars Technica

Legislators of the nation’s least-populous state are taking a brave stand against modernity and climate action. They’re sponsoring SJ0004, “Phasing out new electric vehicle sales by 2035,” an uncomplicated bill that expresses the state’s goal to phase out sales of new EVs by 2035 and asks Wyoming’s industries and citizens to do their civic duty in resisting the EV.

These folks are just ridiculous. When the world becomes so difficult to live in they’ll all ask “What caused this.” We all know what’s causing it. Us, continuing to do things we know are destroying the planet.

Dave Rogers

But I’m conscious of the fact that what I’m doing involves writing; and I have two fears when I’m doing this, neither of which has had the good effect of compelling me to stop. I’m afraid that I’m writing badly, and I’m afraid that it’s boring.

I love reading Dave’s stuff, always have. Like Dave I started my weblog to become a better writer. It hasn’t worked but I still enjoy doing it. Keep up the good work Dave!

Support Indie Developers. That’s it, that’s the commentary.

Sam Soffes

This year was a unique year. I started the year without a job or a place to live. My house in San Francisco just sold, so I had house money in my checking account. Now what?

Great read from Sam. I’d love to become a nomad, traveling the country with Kim and our animal family in a big RV. Yes, id like to make it our full time home!

Anywho, Sam talks about his year of Van Life and it sounds so exciting.

Maybe someday.🤞🏼

Dave Rupert

So you want to make a new JS framework

Web development is still way too difficult. In 2011 I realized most of it boils down to DevOps, not the code so much. We could write, debug, and test code locally but were at the mercy of how the network was configured to make it scale. Yes, we found and fixed bottlenecks in code as we went along, but the DevOps folks were the real heroes.

Go read what Mr. Rupert outlines in his post. It’s ridiculous it takes that much to publish a new JavaScript framework.

Also, why are folks still making new JavaScript frameworks? 🤔

Variety

Regal Cinemas, the second-largest chain of movie theaters in the U.S., will close 39 locations after its parent company Cineworld filed for bankruptcy in September, according to legal filings obtained by Variety.

I love seeing movies on the big screen, always have, but the new realities of COVID-19 have made me a very cautious person. I’ve seen two movies in theaters since the pandemic hit, both at very quiet times for a theatre.

It is sad to see our Charlottesville Regal hit by the closures. It is a really nice theatre.

Good morning! I hope y’all are enjoying your favorite morning wakeup beverage, I know I am. My first cup of the magic elixir know the world over as coffee is sitting next to me and it’s delicious. ☕️

I’m not using my “normal” workflow this morning. Instead of using a combination of Tot and the Micro.Blog app on my iPhone I’m using the wonderful MarsEdit from my Mac. Believe it or not, it feels kind of weird to be doing it this way. But, MarsEdit is such a wonderful tool. Happy to have it. Here we go!

Iconfactory

News quickly spread on Twitter and Mastodon that a wide range of third party apps like Twitterrific, Tweetbot, Echofon, and many others had been disabled. Strangely, Twitterrific for macOS continues to work normally. We cannot say for certain why some clients are unaffected, but it seems possible that there is a new (seemingly unstated and unannounced) policy that is only being applied to apps with large numbers of users.

As of this writing Twitterrific is still blocked from connecting to Twitter. Good old Elon, Mr. Free Speech, is being spiteful and blocking third-pary apps from working. It seems it’s only the third-party apps with the biggest user base.

So far Twitter hasn’t explained why they did it. Spite, I’d imagine.

Oh, it’s worth noting that Twitterrific is the granddaddy of all Twitter clients and while working on it the word “tweet” was coined. They definitely made history. Ollie, the little bird at the right, is Twitterrific’s mascot and in many ways has become synonymous with Twitter.

I’ve been a Twitterrific user for years and years and I have enormous respect for everyone at The Iconfactory and wish them all the best. ❤️

Pitchfork

The Grammy-winning rock guitarist Jeff Beck has died, his family announced. “After suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis, he peacefully passed away yesterday,” the family shared in a statement. “His family ask for privacy while they process this tremendous loss.” Beck was 78 years old.

Another legend gone before his time. RIP Mr. Beck.

The Guardian

Joe Biden said the situation in Brazil was “outrageous” after supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro invaded the country’s congress, presidential palace and supreme court on Sunday, with some senior US lawmakers calling for the far-right figure to be extradited from the US.

Of course Bolsonaro took a page from the Trump Playbook of Stupidity and encouraged his supports to try to overthrow the government. The world looks to the United States for direction. TFG is a real asshole and has put democracy around the world at risk. Both men will get their just deserts someday.

Douglas Hill

In an iOS app, it’s technically fairly easy to also use code written in C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++ or JavaScript. In this article, we’ll look at how to call JavaScript code from Swift using JavaScriptCore. As an example, I’ll go through the steps of adding a JavaScript dependency to my iOS reading app to remove tracking parameters from URLs.

Really nice piece by Mr. Hill. I would love to integrate Read Later into Stream someday and it would also be wonderful to embed Readability JavaScript into Stream to make that happen. It would also help standard RSS feeds because many only include a snippet of the full article text. Having Readability support would allow Stream to parse the text of the original web page so you’d get the full article in the article view. Just one of many things I’d love to so.

Raw Story

The wife of a 2020 Iowa Republican candidate for Congress has been arrested and accused of filing 23 fraudulent votes for her husband, reports Business Insider.

If you want to know what the GOP is guilty of on a daily basis just listen to the things they scream about the most.

Seems they like to cheat at elections, among other things.

Goto 10

So I knew I wanted something different. It turns out that a new OS had been getting a big marketing push: IBM OS/2 Warp. This was v3 of OS/2 and let’s get into its history a bit.

I heard this a lot when I was part of Visio. A gentleman approached me at Windows World in Atlanta one year and said “I guarantee if you port Visio to OS/2 you’ll sell 100,000 copies right away." Apparently he worked for IBM.

We chose not to do it because the market was just too small for us to use precious resources for the port. We did have versions that ran on Classic MacOS, NT PPC, and NT Alpha, but never OS/2. The NT versions were fairly straight forward. The Mac version used a porting kit called Alar. I can’t find any references to it or I’d give y’all a link.

Bjango

In an effort to reduce the final app size of iStat Menus, we’ve been investigating ways to slim down our app icon. It’s currently about 1.4MB, which is normal for an app icon, but a decent percentage of our bundle.

Marc Edwards does a deep dive into app icon sizes and his attempt to scale back the size a bit.

Cycling News

Chris Froome has warned of the long-term effects of COVID-19, arguing that many riders are struggling for months post-infection and highlighting the potential risks to the heart.

Yes, long term COVID-19 is a real deal and it effects young, old, and even the fittest of fit professional athletes. Wear a mask and stay safe out there.

Bloomberg

Apple Inc. is working on adding touch screens to its Mac computers, a move that would defy long-held company orthodoxy and embrace an approach that co-founder Steve Jobs once called “ergonomically terrible.”

I can understand folks saying it’s ergoonomically terrible to use a touch screen on a desktop computer, but occasionally tapping the screen on a laptop isn’t bad at all. I’ve seen many a person do this with their touch screen Windows laptops over the years and they don’t seem to have any sort of fatigue associated with it.

Microsoft’s Surface Pro seems like the perfect Windows device to me. It’s a tablet that can be use with a full sized monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and it runs Windows. I could write code on one of these devices. I can’t do that with an iPad.

Fox Sports

Sometimes, there’s a guy like Stetson Bennett IV, except that there isn’t really, not exactly like him anyway, not when this young man of unassuming excellence had to be a footballing miracle-worker just to become Georgia’s quarterback, never mind everything he’s done since.

I love me an underdog. Now, lets see if Stetson Bennett can have an NFL career. I hope so.

Also, the real Championship game was Georgia vs. Ohio State in the Peach Bowl. That was one amazing football game.

Don Melton on Mastodon

Today is the twentieth anniversary of #Apple’s #Safari Web browser being publicly introduced. That stunning debut happened at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco on January 7, 2003. And, of course , I was there. Here’s what I wrote about that event ten years ago:

Happy Birthday Safari! 🥳 All us Mac loving people owe Don “Gramps” Melton a big thanks for putting together the team that went on to create Safari. Thanks, Don!

One cup down, time for the second one and some writing. ☕️

ESPN

CINCINNATI – Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin was taken off the field in an ambulance after receiving treatment on the field for over 10 minutes, which resulted in the game between the Buffalo Bills and- Cincinnati Bengals being suspended until further notice Monday night.

I have a lot of thoughts on this matter having been through it myself, at the age of 17.

Was it a tragic accident? Yes. Is it the end of the world for Mr. Hamlin? No, definitely not. Is it scary? Oh, yes, it most certainly is.

WillowTree

Today, Jan 4th, marks the official start of our next chapter as WillowTree, a TELUS International Company.

So, yeah, we are now a part of TELUS International.

What do I expect? Bigger engagements over the next year with bigger brands. I see it as a huge positive.

Realistically, only time will tell, but I’m feeling really good about it. 👍🏼

[Tech Dirt](https://www.techdirt.com/2023/01/04/journalists in-and-others-should-leave-twitter-heres-how-they-can-get-started/)

Near the end of 2022, Elon Musk issued an edict to the journalism community. Obey me, he said, or you will be banned from posting on Twitter.

I’ve been reducing my use of Twitter each and every day for a while. I’m down to checking it once or twice a day because there are folks there I haven’t found on Mastodon.

Mastodon has definitely become by new social network home. You can search me out using @fahrni@curmudgeon.cafe or go directly to curmudgeon.cafe/@fahrni. I’d love to connect on Mastodon. 😃

Slate

In the past year, there’s been a sharp uptick in anti-LGBTQ incidents around the country. One group estimates that there’s been a 12-fold increase in demonstrations and political violence targeted at the queer community, just since 2000.

Love is love. LGBTQ+ rights are HUMAN RIGHTS! Look, if on the basis of religious beliefs you don’t agree with LGBTQ+ folks, fine. But they’re human beings who deserve to be treated as you would anyone else. Yes, it’s that simple, and it is a choice.

Let’s put it in Christiany terms. WWJD? Do you think Jesus would’ve shown nothing but hate and contempt for the LGBTQ+ community? I think not. He would have shown them kindness, compassion, and above all else, love. ❤️

Goto 10

Another BASIC game I made back in the 80s was one that I actually designed with one of my younger sisters. She had expressed interest in all this “computer stuff” I was doing and wanted to know what it would take to make a game.

I’ve been following Paul’s site for a while and it’s a lot of fun. If, like me, you have a place in your heart for the BASIC programming language, subscribe to Goto 10 and enjoy.

NTDEV

It’s 2023, and Windows 11 is finally a mature operating system that most people would be happy to use. Sun Valley has finally arrived, and it’s all about a long overdue reinvestment in design under Panos Panay’s leadership. But is it enough? 
Let’s take a look.

TL;DR - Windows needs more work to bring everything up to a modern look and feel.

The author goes on to identify nine distinct UI styles, that’s right nine. Talk about technical debt.

From a code design perspective would it be better to go through all those UI frameworks and make them use WinUI 3 or would it be better to touch each individual application to update their UI?

I have been of the opinion you’d hit a wider range of apps if you updated the frameworks to use WinUI 3.

I’ve even written about it. I did get some great feedback that from that piece that basically said the design models are too different to make the Win32 API wrap Win3 UI. I can accept that. But, if it could be pulled off, an entire class of applications would look modern without their authors modifying them.

Perhaps a compromised approach would be to make some of the newer UI Frameworks use Win3 UI and rewrite the UI for old Win32 API apps? 🤔

NPR

When the employees announced they were unionizing, Microsoft vowed to remain neutral and let the employees make their own decision about joining, CWA said.

This sounds really great but the skeptic in me wonders how much Microsoft will allow this to happen in others areas of the organization?

Gaming is full of nightmarish stories of long hours and, even worse, abuse.

I’m hopeful this new union will address both of those and make for better work conditions. 👍🏼

Business Insider

While I’m always excited to see what innovations companies like Apple have in store, I have some serious concerns about betting on AR/VR glasses as a growth market.

For quite a while now I’ve had zero interest in AR/VR technologies. In my opinion AR could be useful in many industries as long as the tech is as easy to wear as a pair of glasses. I could see them being useful to mechanics, electricians, builders, and various trades I’m not thinking about. Otherwise they’re just expensive toys.

I thought Apple Watch Apps would flourish. They have for some developers but they’re mainly little views into data from your iPhone. That’s not bad, it’s just the way they are.

Hey, all I’d like to see is custom watch faces. That’s it. Then, perhaps, someone could create a watch face that looks like Dumbledore’s watch. Kim bought me the Fossil collectible one year for Christmas. 😃

It’s grey outside this morning, low fog, and we expect rain later in the morning that should go until midnight tonight. My what a difference a week makes. Last week at this time is was 8 Fahrenheit outside, this week 49 Fahrenheit at 8AM. Weird.

My first cup is steaming on the table next to me. It’s delicious. ☕️

NBC News

WASHINGTON — A federal judge indicated Wednesday that then-President Donald Trump’s remarks on Jan. 6 telling a crowd to “fight like hell” before the Capitol attack could have signaled to his supporters that he wanted them “to do something more” than just protest.

It seems obvious to all of us TFG riled up his supporters and sent them marching to the Capitol to overthrow the will of the people. Of course he’s likely to get away with it, run for President, win again, and never leave office. Thus destroying our democracy.

I hate being so negative but I haven’t seen anything that makes me believe justice will eventually come home to roost for TFG.

Ashur Cabrera

Thanks to my instance admins, though, seeing the red no alt badge is a simple way for me to know not to boost that post. Conversely, an alt badge gives me the green light to boost, knowing the author has taken the time to describe the image.

My friend, Ashur, on why it’s important to add alt text to images in your Mastodon posts. It’s all about accessibility.

Mac Rumors

Historically, Apple released at least one new Mac model every year in the fourth quarter that runs between October and December, starting in 2001 with the launch of the iBook G3. This means that there has been a new Mac toward the end of the year for the entire lifespan of product lines including the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

While I still love me some Apple devices I don’t really pay much attention to what’s happening with Apple releases. Most of the end of the year Apple enthusiast angst is around their promise to convert the entire Mac line to use Apple Silicon. They didn’t make it.

Meanwhile I’m plugging along on my 2019 MacBook Pro and it’s a perfectly great computer. Yes, even for writing code.

Rob Napier

We spend so much time drilling algorithmic complexity. Big-O and all that. But performance is so often about contention and memory, especially when working in parallel.

I see Rob Napier’s name all over Stack Overflow when I have a question about iOS or Mac Programming. This little piece walks through his process to optimize some code. I love these types of posts.

Not Just Bikes

I tried the “Full Self-Driving (Beta)” on a Model Y in Toronto. It was terrifying.

I don’t want a full self driving car and I have zero confidence in Tesla ever creating a good one, much less a perfect one. Musk is delusional and rapidly slipping into insanity after his purchase of Twitter. More on that later.

Don’t waste your money on a Tesla, there are lots of really great EV’s on the market now.

Mobile Syrup

After a heavy winter storm hit southern Ontario and parts of Quebec around December 25th, one lucky home could keep the lights on via the power from a Ford Lightning.

Speaking a a great EV! How cool is it to have the ability to power your home when the power goes out? I’d like to have that ability. I mean prices start at less than $40,000.00! 😳 Who can afford these things? I can’t. 😕

The North Shore Leader

Controversial US congressional candidate George Santos has finally filed his Personal Financial Disclosure Report on September 6th - 20 months late - and he is claiming an inexplicable rise in his alleged net worth to $11 million..

This Santos guy is a real piece of work, just like TFG. He’s nothing more than a grifter and he’s going to be a Representative for New York’s 3rd congressional district. Hogwash, I say. He should be expelled for lying and we need a better systems in place to vet any candidate before they’re allowed to run for office.

Seat 31B

A lot of people have been asking for an explainer on what is going on with Southwest Airlines and the massive meltdown that has occurred.

This whole Southwest thing is a real mess. It sounds like they need to invest heavily in their digital infrastructure. I know a company full of great folks who could help fix it.

David Penfold

Eating too much cake is the sin of gluttony. However, eating too much pie is okay because the sin of pi is always zero.

Lovely, geeky, dad joke. I had to share it.

Denny Henke

Building the tiny house, setting up the garden and food forest during the first summer. Then, of course, learning about living in the tiny house during winter and what that means for keeping warm and keeping things working.

This is a really great series of posts! Our youngest daughter is taken with the idea of living in a tiny home. Guess I should pass this series of articles on to her? 🤔

Dave Rogers

But, like anyone I suppose, I have darker moods from time to time; and I often find that I’m reluctant to post those thoughts at the marmot. They’re not strictly political, though politics has a role in why they exist.

I love reading Dave’s work. He’s a very thoughtful man and shares wonderful stories about life, tech, and photography. This post is out of the norm for him but I understand exactly where he’s coming from. I have these thoughts myself and I often wonder how many folks share them with me.

You’re not alone, my friend. ❤️

Dave Winer

One of the reasons I chose Twitter for identity for my apps, a decision made in 2014, is that I hoped that a developer community would grow up around Twitter. I hoped that Twitter would take a chance on co-promoting products. It could still happen, but it seems unlikely now.

With Twitter imploding there’s a decent chance Dave will have to swap out his identity system. As nice as it would be to not have to do it, it seems somewhat inevitable unless Musk can turn things around at Twitter.

Time for my third and final cup of coffee. See y’all next week. ☕️

Good morning! It’s Christmas Eve – for those who celebrate!

Look, I’m a native California boy. It’s mostly sunshine and warm weather year round. Sure we’d get down in the high 20s overnight on rare occasion, but nothing like we’ve experienced in Virginia this week. It’s been pretty darned frigid. The temperature at the moment is a balmy 8 degrees outside, with a feels like of -7. That’s just wild!

Anywho, first cup of coffee is in the mug. Time to compose the post. ☕️

Mike Hurley

Many people using PCalc on their shiny devices today don’t realise that the app has been around for a lot longer than they think. In some cases, a lot longer than they’ve been thinking.

Happy Birthday PCalc! 🎂

It’s impressive to have an active 30 year run with a piece of software. Congratulations on 30 years and counting James Thomson!

Craig Hockenberry

By now, you probably know where this is going: yes, I wrote my own utility and call it SimBuddy. It’s a FREE download from the Iconfactory.

Craig Hockenberry is a long time Mac and iOS Developer. He’s best known as the creator of the first Twitter client, Twitterrific, but he’s also developed many fun and useful apps for the Iconfactory.

If Apple gave out lifetime achievement awards, Craig would be deserving of one.

Thanks for another great development tool, Craig!

Joel Spolsky

Well, yes. They did. They did it by making the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make: They decided to rewrite the code from scratch.

This is an oldie-but-goodie. The Joel on Software piece above is from 2000 and touches on something that can destroy a company quicker than anything: rewriting software.

The article was brought up somewhere this week because Musk is reportedly looking to rewrite Twitter.

I mean, dang, dude! Maybe try to understand how all the things work together before jumping to that conclusion. A lot of cool stuff was happening before you blew the place up.

Randomly thinking back to my time at Apple.

In 2013 when the iOS side of iTunes U, Podcasts, App Store, and Remote were owned by a team of 7 engineers. Each app source in a different source control.
I was lead for iTunes U. I was told a few things by my new manager
1) Don't ...

— @taquitos@macaw.social the new Taquitos (@taquitos) December 5, 2022

I’ve been trying to stay away from linking to Twitter but I couldn’t resist this tweet because it captures something a lot of modern devs should hear.

Basically the tweet thread goes on to explain how broken Apple’s development process was broken on a particular team.

I’m not saying alternate forms of development are necessarily bad but grinding devs into the ground is not good, at all. People need time to live, and sleep.

Futurism

It’s not just Tesla investors who are at their wit’s end with CEO Elon Musk, who has been making a huge mess of his Twitter takeover.

Ah, yes, The Musk Effect. He’s dragging Tesla down with Twitter and I’m shocked the Tesla Board hasn’t fired him.

Tech Dirt

But, really, after all this, I cannot fathom how anyone can possibly get all that excited about joining yet another centralized social media site. Perhaps I’m biased (note: I am biased) because it was my frustration with the problems of these big, centralized social media services that made me write my Protocols, Not Platforms paper a few years ago. But, after all of that, the big question that kept coming up about it was “sure, but how would you get anyone to actually use it.”

Here’s to the Open Web making a comeback! We now have Mastodon and Micro.blog to fill our Twitter mojo and both run on open standards like ActivityPub and RSS.

Dare Obasanjo

A friend asked what I think will happen to Twitter. Here’s my assessment

Nice little Mastodon thread from Dare sharing his thoughts on the Twitter mess.

Denise Yu

You’d like to have time to code, but nobody else is onboarding the junior engineers, updating the roadmap, talking to the users, noticing the things that got dropped, asking questions on design documents, and making sure that everyone’s going roughly in the same direction.

This piece from Denice is required reading for any Software Developer. It explores the position know as Staff Engineer or Principle Engineer in many companies today.

At WillowTree was have a dual track for Software Developers after the Senior level; Staff Engineer or Associate Engineering Director.

I personally reached a point where I decided it was time to change direction and focus on building teams instead of coding, so I became an Associate Engineering Director.

It is interesting to note the Staff and Director positions overlap in significant ways but also have very unique traits. The Director position is a people management and team building position, the Staff position does deep dives into technology and can master just about anything.

Anywho, go read Denise’s piece, it’s very good.

Alexandre Colucci

Like in the past years, I will try to answer a couple of questions: How many binaries are in iOS 16? Which programming languages are used to develop these apps? How many apps are written with Swift? What is the percentage of apps using SwiftUI versus UIKit?

I had to share this because I too find it interesting to know how much Apple is eating their own dog food when it comes to their developer technologies.

Swift seems to be making real inroads and SwiftUI (worst name ever) is starting to show itself.

I’ve been thinking about doing Stream for Mac with SwiftUI. It is the future of development on the Mac and iOS. All devs need to learn it at some point.

Dan Sinker

Newsrooms should not spin up instances for their reporters partially because this is too new to dedicate strapped staff to

I’ve been pushing the idea of news companies spinning up their own Mastodon servers. Dan does make a good point about not doing that. If Mastodon could be enhanced to export all posts to another instance I have a feeling Dan wouldn’t be as opposed to the idea. As it stands you can move instances but it only keeps your followers, you lose your posts. That’s no bueno.

Adam Davidson

We want the field of journalism to take ownership of the ways stories are distributed and audiences are engaged.

With the most recent flight of users from Twitter Mr. Davidson spun up an instance of Mastodon for journalists. That was a brilliant idea and provides a bit of distance from the journalist to their organization. It’s a great alternative to news orgs spinning up their own.

The Atlantic

There has never been any mystery about what happened on January 6, 2021. As Senator Mitch McConnell said at Trump’s second impeachment trial, “There’s no question—none—that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”

In many ways I’ve lost confidence in our Justice system because it treats the rich, politicians, and white people differently than everyone else. Combine more than one of those traits and you’re likely to walk away unscathed where someone who works at the coffee shop, is poor, and dark skinned is totally screwed.

It’s not right. TFG must be brought to Justice. Our system requires it if our democracy is to survive.

Ghost Only

How to have a good internet experience in 8 easy steps

I usually avoid posts that include “steps” or “X reasons” because they’re usually really bad click bait type articles. This one isn’t. Go check it out.

Good morning. I’ve just finished my first cup of joe time to do a little writing while the second cools a bit. ☕️

The back is still misbehaving and I’m over it. Don’t you wish it was that easy to heal something? You just say “I’m over it” and it’s magically fixed? Yeah, me too. Physical therapy, I’m coming to see you. Be kind to me.

Grist

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have allegedly achieved the first-ever net energy gain in a nuclear fusion reaction, according to the Financial Times, which cited three unnamed sources with knowledge of the recent experiment.

I know this is just the beginning and it may take another 20 to 50 years to get where we need it to be. Hopefully we can keep the planet alive that long.

The Iconfactory

More than any other year in recent memory, 2022 brought big changes—some good, some bad, and some sad. During our 25 years in business we’ve learned to roll with all manner of punches and continue forging ahead. This year was no different.

I’m a huge fan of The Iconfactory. I use more than a few of their products, including Tot, which I’m using now to write this post.

I also use Twitterrific, xScope, and Wallaroo. Really great software, excellent people.

Comic Sands

Social media users cheered as Democratic President Joe Biden masterfully trolled former Republican President Donald Trump’s big “announcement” with a few announcements of his own.

President Biden announced a bunch of really nice accomplishments.

TFG’s big announcement was a bunch of NFT trading cards with his face superimposed over the top of various fit men. Laughable, but true.

The great grift continues. You too can own these gems for $99.00US. I wonder how many of his poor cult members fell for it? Poor saps. 🤣

Fortune

Cavill, who has played Superman since 2013’s “Man of Steel,” took to Instagram on Wednesday to share the “sad news” that he would not be returning to the iconic role.

I loved Mr. Cavill as Superman and will miss him as The Man of Steel.

And to really rub salt in the wound he had to turn down his role as Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher, which kind of ruins that too. 🤬

Six Colors

Lawsuits, new laws, and proposed regulations have been swirling around Apple and some of its core business practices for years now. But on Tuesday came the first report—from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, perhaps the most reliable breaker of secret Apple news—that Apple’s planning on changing its App Store policies in major ways.

Apple allowing Third Party App Stores? What? Has hell frozen over?

Look, if we do get Third Party App Stores I Apple will require each of them to pass a percentage of each sale directly to Apple.

Tim Apple: “Welcome to the Apple Platform, Third Party App Store.”

Third Party: “Thank you, Tim. It’s good to be here.”

Tim Apple: “I’ll take 27% of every sale, due at the first of the month.”

Third Party: “😳”

Apple always wants their piece of the pie, so to speak. 🥧

The Washington Post

HOUSTON — Employees at the Texas Department of Public Safety in June received a sweeping request from Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office: Compile a list of individuals who had changed their gender on their Texas driver’s license and other department records during the past two years.

What is wrong with these people? Trans rights are human rights! Get lost Paxton. Texas, what a terrible state. Embarrassing and dangerous.

Our country lacks empathy for fellow human beings. It’s sickening.

Fulton News & Record

The men standing before the cameras in Moore County were sober-faced and serious as they addressed the intentional and targeted attacks on two electric substations the night before. Forty-five thousand residents lost power, schools and businesses closed, the county was forced to declare a state of emergency and curfew, and local communities were put both at risk and on edge.

So, yeah, this is what its come to. Militant groups destroying our infrastructure. Osama bin Laden didn’t need to strike at our country, we’re destroying ourselves.

Swift.org

The Foundation framework is used in nearly all Swift projects. It provides both a base layer of functionality for fundamentals like strings, collections, and dates, as well as setting conventions for writing great Swift code.

If you’ve written an app for iOS or Mac or any other Apple Platform you’ve used Foundation. I checked out the repository and there’s an awful lot of C code in there, which isn’t bad, but makes me wonder if the plan is to slowly replace all that C code with 100% Swift?

Kenny Kerr

The windows crate provides bindings for the Windows API, including C-style APIs as well as COM and WinRT APIs. This crate provides the most comprehensive API coverage for the Windows operating system. Where possible, the windows crate also attempts to provide a more idiomatic and safe programming model for Rust developers.

While Apple is all in on Swift, Microsoft is embracing Rust as their language of choice for low level orogramming. This new set of Windows “crates” as the Rust community calls them sounds like an excellent way to write Windows applications.

I find it really interesring it includes Win32 API’s, COM, and WinRT all rolled into one cohesive package. Hopefully the interface is consistent and hides all the ugly details. I have a feeling it does.

Vox

It’s not about doxxing. It’s about Elon.

Bingo. This entire time a man we all thought was some kind of genius was just another grifter. Don’t get me wrong, the man is smart, but I don’t think he’s a genius. He’s a narcissists and needs to be in the news. See, even I’m talking about him. That’s his super power.

How do you go from society’s Tony Stark, focused on accelerating the world toward sustainable energy, to being the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving screaming about the woke mafia?

— Christian Selig (@ChristianSelig) December 16, 2022

The week has come to an end. Grandma, the final of the grandparents, was laid to rest Wednesday, December 7. She had a very full 96 years. We miss you already, Grandma.

Now we head home. Bug — our daughter Taylor — and I are at Fresno-Yosemite International waiting for our plane to San Francisco. Sipping my quad-grande-vanilla-mocha and typing away on my iPhone. Coffee is good. ☕️

Swift.org

When Swift began life as an open source project, we wanted to open not just the language itself, but the ecosystem around it. Foundation has been instrumental in the success of decades of software and has been an integral part of the Swift developer experience from the beginning, and we knew it had to be included in the open source offering.

This is really nice to see. Apple does have a history of open source projects.

Swift is an amazing language and I’d love to see it spread to all operating systems. To write shared code for Mac, iOS, Windows, and Android, and have it be a first class citizen would be incredible.

C and C++ are still great choices for that of course and we now have Rust, which becomes more tempting with each article I read about it.

Vox

In late November, Amazon began making what are expected to be the largest corporate staff cuts in its 28-year history, axing as many as 10,000 corporate employees, or about 3 percent of the company’s office staff.

It’s sad to see a company have to lay off so many people, especially around the holidays.

Good vibes to all those affected.

Dart Engineering Blog

Over the last four years, we’ve evolved Dart into a fast, portable, and modern language. Our next release, Dart 3, completes the journey to a fully sound null safe language.

Another interesting language getting safer by the day. This could be a really interesting cross platform choice for model, network, and data persistence code if it doesn’t rely on an interpreter. Even if it does it makes me go hmmmm. 🤔

Also, Dart Engineering folks, use Blogger instead of Medium. It is a Google property after all.

Rolling Stone

Recipients of the Congressional Gold Medal didn’t shake hands with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy, at a ceremony on Tuesday.

Good. Those assholes don’t deserve to be recognized by any of us. Support an insurrection and the man who instigated it and you don’t deserve any respect.

The Sacramento Bee

When a man got lost deep in the dark Alaskan wilderness, it was his iPhone’s satellite that saved him.

I’ll be darned. It worked! 🥳

ReadySet Blog

Predictably, many Rust advocates (of which I am one) pointed out that this is exactly the kind of vulnerability that can be statically prevented by Rust, and is a clear example of where “Rewrite it in Rust” can have real benefits.

Speaking of Rust. We’re seeing a movement to Rust as a low level language. Even Microsoft is going to move to it for low level stuff. It would be really great to see it treated as a first class language by Apple and Microsoft in their respective IDE’s.

The Times

The Pentagon has given a tacit endorsement of Ukraine’s long-range attacks on targets inside Russia after President Putin’s multiple missile strikes against Kyiv’s critical infrastructure.

I like the idea of tactical strikes into Russian territory. After almost a year of defending themselves it’s nice to see Ukraine go on the offensive.

Putin has succeeded in making sure Ukraine becomes part of the United Nations. Nice job dude. 🤪

Seth Abramson

I have never had my social media account at any social media platform suspended. But it just happened at Mastodon, a place I have posted so few times that I can literally count them on a single hand.

I’d love to hear the other side of this story. Since Mastodon instances are not beholden to any one corporation they can make their own rules. It could’ve been as simple as the instance admin not liking Mr. Abramson’s work.

He could’ve found a different instance to participate in. It’s really easy to move and I know of at least two instances dedicated to journalism.

It would be nice to see Post federate with other services, Mastodon being the primary one. Post could still maintain their own unique identity and allow others to at least see headlines to paid articles. Just spitballing.

Ed Bott

Nice work, Jack. Your buddy Elon has turned Twitter into 8Chan.

Elon is ruining Twitter.

Also, I’d love to see Mastodon support embedding cards in websites. Maybe it does and I don’t know how. That would be amazing.

This week will be slightly abbreviated. I’m in California for a funeral.

It’s 4:50AM here and I really need the juice. ☕️

Inessential

The internet’s town square should never have been one specific website with its own specific rules and incentives. It should have been, and should be, the web itself.

The open web is still the best web and weblogs play a big role in making the web better. When I post to my blog it generates an RSS and JSON Feed so you can point your feed reader of chioce to it and get updated when my blog changes. It’s nice in that way because it’s completely decentralized.

Mastodon also works that way. It’s a collection of different servers participating as a collective. I can follow folks from many different servers around the world and it just works.

I see my weblog as the central hub of communication and use Mastodon and other social networks as a means of broadcasting posts to a wider audience.

To subscribe to my Mastodon account all you have to do is point your favorite feed reader to my Mastodon account with a .rss extension appended and you get an RSS feed! How awesome is that?

Here’s what it looks like: https://curmudgeon.cafe/@fahrni.rss

Jalopnik

Formula 1 drivers are truly athletes at the top of their game. As such, they all follow strict diets, have nutritionists on hand to monitor what they’re eating and make sure that they’re only consuming things that keep them in tip top shape over a race weekend. For Alfa Romeo driver Valtteri Bottas, this includes coffee. Lots of coffee.

I got into F1 a little bit while watch Drive to Survive on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it I’d recommed giving it a try. It’s fascinating.

While I’m in California I’ll probably visit Exeter Coffee Company and Dutch Brothers.

It’s nice to see others with an extreme coffee addiction. 😀

Robert Reich

What worries me most about Trump’s dinner last week at Mar-a-Lago with Nick Fuentes, the outspoken antisemite and racist who is one of America’s most prominent young white supremacists, and Kanye West, whose recent antisemitic outbursts have rocked the entertainment world, isn’t just that a former (and possibly future) president would dine with such avowed bigots.

The GOP is not even trying to hide their antisemitic and racist ways. It’s seriously pathetic and signaling to every other garbage human it’s ok to openly talk about and act on their hate.

Jesse Skinner

I signed up for Mastodon back in May 2019 and, at the time, I wrote on there: “I just heard about Mastodon a few days ago. I keep spelling it Mastadon. It’s a really cool platform and architecture, and I would love to see it completely replace Twitter one day. Do you think it could?”

I also spelled it Mastadon at first, whoops.

As far as replacing Twitter, I think it will for me as a place to collect, perhaps as a public square. 😀

MacRumors

Tapbots, the company behind the popular Tweetbot app designed for Twitter, is working on developing a new app called Ivory that integrates with the Mastodon social network.

I’ve been using Ivory for a while and it’s absolutely gorgeous and works the way you’d expect it to work.

Mastodon has turned into an iOS App playground and I’m loving it.

chaos.social

The past month has changed the Fediverse, and, by extension, our instance. We’ve continued as normal (apart from limiting sign-ups) to give ourselves time to figure out which changes were only temporary, what seems to be changed for good, and how to react. A month seems ample time, and here we are with a set of changes in how chaos.social will work in the future.

Folks thought Mastodon would be the wild west, without good and proper moderation, but many instances take things very seriously and are making changes as needed to make their instance a better place. The chaos.social instance is one such example.

Jason Kottke

Hey everyone. Tomorrow, after almost 7 months of a sabbatical break, I’m resuming regular publication of kottke.org. (Actually, I’ve been posting a bit here and there this week already — underpromise & over-deliver, etc.) I’m going to share more about what I’ve been up to (and what I’ve not been up to) in a massive forthcoming post, but for now, know that I’m happy to be back here in the saddle once again. (And that my fiddle leaf fig is doing well!)

Welcome back, Jason! Jason has been a mainstay of my web consumption for well over 10-years, most likely since 2001-2002 timeframe when I got into blogs and blogging.

WillowTree

Charlottesville, Va. – December 1, 2022 – Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) will launch a new Associate of Applied Science Degree Program (AAS) in Technical Studies-Software Development, co-created with WillowTree, in the 2023 spring semester which starts January 9. The two-year degree program will provide high school graduates and those seeking to advance in or change careers with the digital and data skills needed to fill current and emerging jobs in software development.

I thought I’d humblebrag a bit. I was honored to be part of the group who helped define this new program at PVCC. The working group was full of wonderful WillowTree folks and I think we wound up with a great program.

Since I don’t have a degree of any type I’ve been thinking about signing up for this program.

Thank you PVCC!

Why does software need so many people and take so long compared to the recent past? Let's compare! 🧵 cc @realGeorgeHotz

— Peter Yared (@peteryared) November 26, 2022

Ahh, the life of the modern developer. 🤣

It’s Thanksgiving week here in the States so I had a three day week, which is really nice and I’d like to make it a standard moving forward. Show of hands, whose with me!

I need to have a very serious conversation with Kolby. He woke me up at 5AM, not to go outside, nooooo, he just wanted to get up. Goofy pup.

There is a good side to being awake, I’m alive, I get to write, and I get to drink coffee. Cheers. ☕️

The Guardian

Sian, I’m seeing a lot of talk about a Martin Scorsese film called Goncharov. But I’ve never heard of a Martin Scorsese film called Goncharov. What’s going on?

This is one of those delightful things that could only happen on the internet. Creative people gonna create.

Maybe Mr. Scorsese should make this film? It would have to be a remake, of course. 😃

John Scalzi

Now, why should we bring back that artisan, hand-crafted Web? Oh, I don’t know. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a site that’s not run by an amoral billionaire chaos engine, or algorithmically designed to keep you doomscrolling in a state of fear and anger, or is essentially spyware for governments and/or corporations?

That’s right, author John Scalzi also has a really great blog and he understands the power of the open web. He’s also very entertaining on Twitter. Here’s hoping his Mastodon account is just as good.

Want to take your following list from Twitter to @Tumblr? We want to help you do that! Unfortunately, @TwitterAPI is returning an empty list for every user we check with our token using their API. 😕 It's your data, they're locking it up!

— Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) November 23, 2022

Proton

This new emphasis on advertising also undermines Apple’s claims about privacy with its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature and its “Privacy. That’s iPhone” ad campaign. In fact, it appears ATT may have been more about blocking competitors than protecting user privacy. Since Apple introduced ATT, its ad revenue has skyrocketed, leading German regulators to investigate Apple to see if it’s abusing its power.

No matter Apple’s true intentions here it just comes off as a real scumbag move and I’d imagine regulators are ready to pounce.

The Verge

Elon Musk says that Twitter’s check mark program could return on Friday, December 2nd, with a new procedure to verify individual identities in order to resolve impersonation issues. Musk described the new manual authentication process as “painful, but necessary.” Verified checkmarks will also be expanded with additional colors — gold for companies, grey for the government, and the original blue for individual accounts.

Not that it matters but I like this move. I don’t agree with the color coding but I like the idea.

I’d make the people gold, governments blue, and companies gray. As it is having gold for a company makes them seem more important than people. The people make the platform not companies. Oh, and gray for the government feels like a slap in the face to governments.

these big brain posts about twitter’s infrastructure make me all tingly inside https://t.co/qncdcUgAIf

— Amy Hoy (@amyhoy) November 23, 2022

Flicker Fusion

I think Musk is genuniely surprised he hasn’t been able (so far) to bluster his way through this.

We’re finally starting to see cracks in Musks three ring circus. He’s spending so much time at Twitter blowing it up he’s ignoring Tesla and Space X.

Here’s hoping he hires an adult to run Twitter soon. 🤞🏼

Puck

I know I wasn’t alone in chuckling when the new Warner Bros. Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav announced on an earnings call last week that he’d really like to do “something with J.K. on Harry Potter going forward,” noting that his film executives “haven’t done a Harry Potter movie in 15 years.” You don’t say! one rival exec texted, echoing a few calls I got from others on the Warners lot. People are terrible.

You need more than JK Rowling to boost your profits Mr. Zaslav but you know that.

Comic Sands

Horror icon Stephen King became the latest celebrity to mock billionaire Elon Musk following his move to reinstate former Republican President Donald Trump to Twitter.

Stephen King, another author I love, is also extremely entertaining on Twitter and I hope he to makes his way to Mastodon.

I wish he and Mr. Scalzi would consider running their own Mastodon instance and invite authors to join them. That would be amazing.

TechCrunch

Tumblr will add support for ActivityPub, the open, decentralized social networking protocol that’s today powering social networking software like Twitter alternative Mastodon, the Instagram-like Pixelfed, video streaming service PeerTube, and others.

I think this is a brilliant idea. Tumblr is a great little micro blogging platform and this will bring a massively scaled ActivityPub instance to the fold.

When I saw this announcement my gut reaction was ”Yes! I must get a job there to help!” Yeah, seriously, that’s how I felt. Luckily I remembered how much I love WillowTree and came to my senses.

Here’s wishing the Tumblr team all the best! 🧡

Oh, look, we still have pumpkin and pecan pie. Pie and coffee? Don’t mind if I do. 🥧

What a week! That dude that took over Twitter is driving it in the ground with a gigantor hammer all while we watch from the cheap seats sipping our soda and eating popcorn. What a spectacle.

This week was a busy week at work, promotion time. Lots of meetings. I’m all Zoom’ed out.

Enjoy that morning elixir of life. I certainly am. ☕️

Wired

Eugen Rochko looks exhausted. The 29-year-old German programmer is the founder of Mastodon, a distributed alternative to Twitter that has exploded in popularity in recent weeks as Elon Musk’s ownership of the platform has rained chaos on its users.

I’ve heard some folks doubt the survivability of Mastodon and doubt hate can be squashed there. In my experience on the platform it’s quite the opposite. If you’re running a server full of racist white nationalists, Nazis, or other hate groups it’s extremely easy for the admin of your server to block federation of that entire server.

I’ve found Mastodon to be so much better for conversation with folks outside my little friend bubble on Twitter.

Brent Simmons

For writers, artists, podcasters, journalists, and people who make things in public, Twitter was the one social networking site we all had to use.

Brent is a long time blogger, Mac programmer, creator and leader of the NetNewsWire team, and all around great guy. If you’re a consumer of RSS point your feed reader to his site. It’s a great read.

Platformer

Musk went on to say that “Twitter will be much more engineering-driven,” and that while design and product “will still be very important,” engineers “will have the greatest sway.” And then Musk presented employees with an ultimatum: click “yes” on a Google form affirming your desire to “be part of the new Twitter,” or leave in exchange for three months’ pay.

I’ve heard from a friend that most of the US Engineering staff left. That’s just wild.

Last week, I made the decision to leave my role leading Trust & Safety at Twitter.

Today, I'm sharing a few thoughts about what comes next for the site. https://t.co/QPAQR6zpqU

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 18, 2022

I don’t have a NY Times subscription but I’ll bet this piece by Mr. Roth is quite good.

Daring Fireball

If you had told me three weeks ago that Twitter, as a company, would today be embroiled in turmoil — perhaps outright existential crisis — over a company-wide email from Elon Musk centered around the phrase “extremely hardcore”, v-1 is not the scenario I’d have imagined.

In my career I’ve worked for some hardcore companies, like the old Microsoft, it’s not fun. Don’t do it.

NEW: Email from Elon to the engineering team: "Anyone who can actually write software, please report to the 10th floor at 2pm today. Before doing so, please email me a bullet point summary of what your code commits have achieved in the past 6 months" 1/

— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) November 18, 2022

I don’t understand why he continues to ask for snippets of code from his employees. It’s just some random metric he’s using to what what end? What about the devs who made Twitter better by removing code?

CNN

Amazon confirmed on Wednesday that layoffs had begun at the company, two days after multiple outlets the e-commerce giant planned to cut around 10,000 employees this week.

It’s been a rough couple weeks in the tech sector. I’m sorry to see so many folks having to deal with this. Here’s hoping they land on their feet quickly.

Fresnoland

While Central Valley agricultural leaders warn of jobs loss during California’s ongoing drought, some local leaders say it’s time for less water-dependent economic opportunities.

California is in deep trouble so the United States food supply is in deep trouble. You’ll see it at the grocery store.

Becky Hansmeyer

When I tweeted my way into the iOS community so many years ago, I felt the same energy and excitement, if not necessarily the same level of closeness. You all gave me the confidence I needed to keep going with programming when I felt like giving up. We’ve person. Like her I lament the loss of the Twitter we knew but all good things come to an end, right?

America, America

I’m not anywhere close to assuming redemption for Rupert Murdoch or his publication for their role in empowering the dangerous desecration of the last six years, particularly since Fox News showed reluctance in quitting the man by airing nearly all of his sour announcement. (For me, the announcement at Mar-a-Lago had more of the air of a man running from the law than running for the presidency.)

How TFG avoids jail time at this point is beyond me.

The Register

Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich has had it with C and C++, time-tested programming languages commonly used for native applications that require high performance.

Russinovich is a legendary software engineer. It’s gonna be interesting to see how many new products come out of Microsoft and other companies written in 100% Rust.

The Brookings Institution

In this second edition of our October 2021 report, we review the investigation and its basis. We assess the publicly known facts and relevant law and analyze the extent to which the former president may be held criminally responsible for his conduct in Georgia. We conclude that Trump is at substantial risk of criminal prosecution in Fulton County.

At substantial risk? How is he not already in handcuffs? If any of us “regular” people had done this we’d be thrown in a dungeon.

Jalopnik

Haas’ Kevin Magnussen just scored his first-ever pole position in Formula 1 during the Brazilian Grand Prix. Yes, I intended to write that sentence. It’s not April Fool’s Day. Kevin Magnussen is polesitter for Saturday’s sprint race.

I support Haas. It’s an American F1 team and I’m happy for Kevin Magnussen and Haas. Now, get some podiums! 😂

PZ Meyers

Between the Church Militant and Nick Fuentes, it’s pretty clear what the theocratic Right wants to do: they want to kill you or force you to be as mad as they are.

Nick Fuentes is a piece of work but at least he’s not hiding his White Christian Nationalism behind dog whistles, no sir, he’s just saying it out loud.

From: @twittereng
To: @elonmusk
Subject: pic.twitter.com/EiDADFtMCN

— DM of Engineering 🎲 (@dmofengineering) November 17, 2022

Go check out that tweet thread. It’s full of Twitter Employees saying goodbye after the hardcore time limit expired.

It’s a sad day for the social network. How long will it stay up?

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

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

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

Martin Fowler

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

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

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

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

So, let me get this straight.

You can’t hand out water and snacks to people waiting in line to vote, but you can station yourself armed, in full tactical gear, and intimidate people trying to drop off a ballot?

— John Collins (@Logically\_JC) October 29, 2022

Los Angeles Times

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

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

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

Almost all my family are Republicans. We’ve disagreed about a lot throughout the years but I never thought they were cruel. This isn’t my parents’ Republican party. MAGA-Republicans are a bitter, lonely, and violent bunch. When we need compassion they choose cruelty. https://t.co/Njvdd4XUAJ

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) October 29, 2022

Tech Crunch

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

The Washington Post

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

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

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

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

Stripe

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

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

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

Jalopnik

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

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

Daring Fireball

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

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

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

Just stop.

Can you imagine having $48.2 billion cash on hand and YET still thinking "ah yes, those House of Fun Casino ads will grow our bottom line, let's do it" pic.twitter.com/j1k6WT8i2H

— Federico Viticci (@viticci) October 26, 2022

The Exeter Sun

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

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

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

I’m on my second cup. The first one disappeared while putting together this post.

Kolby, our puppers, decided he wanted to get up at 7AM. He doesn’t understand the concept of weekends. That’s ok, I still love him.

Platformer: “Elon Musk took over Twitter on Thursday like a military general who had assumed power by force, purging the company’s ruling regime and replacing it with the singular effect of his personality.”

Dear Advertiser,

The reason I bought twitter is because,,,The Delaware Chancery Court made me.

— Scott Galloway (@profgalloway) October 28, 2022

The Verge: “Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself, and there is no possible way to grow users and revenue without making a series of enormous compromises that will ultimately destroy your reputation and possibly cause grievous damage to your other companies.”

The Elon era has begun. Will it be a total disaster or will he turn it around? One thing is for sure, the platform is poised to become more extreme and folks are fleeing. I plan on sticking around because I’m addicted but I also have my Mastodon instance and enjoy it. Read on for a link to a getting started with Mastodon post.

Per Axbom: “Let’s face it, Mastodon can be as confusing as it is rewarding. Especially if you are used to something else (like Twitter). The trick is always to minimise the frustrations and get on with the social benefits. And breathe. And find amusement in the chaos. Here are some tips to help y0u on your way.”

Here we are, a nice piece on getting started with Mastodon. I really do enjoy it. It’s a federation of little Twitters minus the advertising and each instance has the ability to define their own rules and controls which other instances it will allow pairing with. Basically if you have a garbage instance like Gab you can block them from participating with your network. There are a few out there, but most are excellent and provide great diversity in the community.

Apple Security Engineering: “To inaugurate our security research blog, we present the first in a series of technical posts that delves into important memory safety upgrades in XNU, the kernel at the core of iPhone, iPad, and Mac.”

If you’ve ever written any C or C++ code you know the power of the language as well as the pitfalls. This is a really nice post on Apple’s pursuit to harden the XNU kernel at the heart of their products. Great read.

Reuters: “Oct 26 (Reuters) - Skechers USA Inc (SKX.N) said on Wednesday its executives escorted Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, out of a Los Angeles corporate office, after the rapper and fashion designer ‘showed up unannounced and uninvited’.”

Our society has two sets of rules; one for the rich and one for the rest of us. Kanye definitely exercises his privilege every chance he gets.

The man is an antisemite and should be shunned by society. His behavior of late is stirring an already vile nest of hornets into a frenzy.

We cannot tolerate that behavior.

Ed Zitron: “As I’ve written before, I do not think much of Mark Zuckerberg as a CEO.”

I’m no fan of Facebook and I don’t feel bad for the folks who continue to serve this company. You know what you’re doing. If you have anything resembling a soul remaining, get out now.

Meta is a profoundly unethical and increasingly incompetent company, and it starts at the top, with Mark. https://t.co/2sGmrLKcw5

— Grady Booch (@Grady\_Booch) October 27, 2022

The Daily Beast: “Guillermo del Toro effusively loves all things ghoulish, grotesque, and squishy—not to mention that he has a particular fondness for dank subterranean locales and slimy tentacled beasts.”

I’ve been looking forward to the release of Cabinet of Curiosities for some time now. We haven’t started watching but we most certainly will be, soon I hope.

WillowTree: “VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 27, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – Today, TELUS Corporation (T-TSX; NYSE-TU) and TELUS International (NYSE and TSX: TIXT), a leading digital customer experience innovator that designs, builds and delivers next-generation solutions, including AI and content moderation, for global and disruptive brands, are pleased to announce a definitive agreement to acquire WillowTree”

Let’s go!

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

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

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

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

Enjoy your coffee and the links. ☕️

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

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

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

YAY SCIENCE! 🥳

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How long until it disappears?

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

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

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

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

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

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) October 17, 2022

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

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

Scary.

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

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