Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Another week and month in the books. We’ve crossed into February and Punxsutawney Phil says six more weeks of winter. I’m ok with that. Coffees ready, let’s get going.
Carl Weathers, linebacker-turned-actor who starred in ‘Rocky’ movies and ‘The Mandalorian,’ dies
I remember seeing Rocky as a kid and I didn’t much like Apollo Creed. He was arrogant, cocky, and besides, the star of the show was Rocky, the underdog. Of course they eventually became friends and I liked him then.
I loved him as Al Dillon in Predator and as Chubbs in Happy Gilmore.
R.I.P.
NASCAR: Full Speed Is Coming to Your Screen at 200 Miles per Hour
I blew through the five episode season in a couple days. Why’d they only order up five episodes in the first season? I mean, F1: Drive to Survive has had 10 episode since season 1.
They focused on the playoffs but they could’ve done more leading into the playoffs. It’s a long season full of drama and I wanted more.
Overall it was really good and I hope we get a full 10 episodes in season 2.
Define all your data in Pkl, and generate output for JSON, YAML, Property Lists, and other configuration formats.
Pkl is an Apple project. They’re trying to become a services company and having a better means of managing things sounds like a good idea.
It’s odd to see Apple using Java and Kotlin for this but it does make sense given it’s meant to be portable to different platforms. And by different platforms I mean actual different platforms like Linux, Windows, and Mac. Not Mac, iPhone, and iPad. 😄
Black Twitter Remains Unbothered in Elon Musk’s X
I’ve seen folks on Mastodon talking about how difficult it is for Black Mastodon to get started.
When I setup Curmudgeon Cafe there was a large contingent — and still is — of LGBTQ+ instances.
If memory serves it was more a matter of discoverability.
I’d love to see multiple BIPOC instances spring. We need more diversity, not less.
Miguel de Icaza • blog.la-terminal.net
My current effort is slightly different: how to build a native iPadOS (and hopefully VisionOS) experience for Godot. So rather than rewriting the existing Editor codebase with Swift, this effort is about making a SwiftUI on top of the existing Editor.
I don’t keep up with Godot but I do keep up with Miguel. It’ll be fun to watch his effort evolve into a finished product.
Texas' standoff with the feds in Eagle Pass is igniting calls for secession and fears of violence
The MAGA crazed are ready for war and his orangeness is egging them on. Not only that he’s actively working with leaders in the House and Senate to blow up a bipartisan bill that would be the best deal the GOP has seen on the border. All to get that orange dumbass re-elected.
It’s 2024, and I’m here to extol the virtues of using an RSS reader.
Of course everyone should use an RSS reader! Might I recommend Stream for iOS? 😘
Yes, yes, it’s my app, but you should give it a try and if you like it, please, leave me a tip. 🙏🏼
NHS App users in England can now collect medication from a pharmacy without having to visit a GP or health center, according to NHS Digital.
Man oh man would I love to have a national healthcare system that’s fully integrated and lets me manage how I interact with doctors and other healthcare providers.
I’d like it to work like Facebook. Doctors should invite me to join, or I invite them to join, my medical record.
American Healthcare is still stuck in the past. I’d love to see it fixed.
Spotify accuses Apple of ‘extortion’ with new App Store tax
Spotify and others didn’t get what they really wanted. They don’t want to pay a single cent to Apple. Which from a business perspective makes perfect sense.
Guess we’ll see what the law says.
In the two years I’ve been writing about Americans' changing relationship to work, there’s one theme that’s come up over and over again: loyalty. Whether my stories are about quiet quitting, or job-hopping, or leveraging a job offer from a competitor to force your boss to give you a raise, readers seem to divide into two groups.
There are so many factors to loyalty. The true believers exist and they have little to fear. Then there are the masses who quietly do their jobs and aren’t really seen.
We had a layoff at work last May and it destroyed morale, destroyed the company culture, and left loyalty at an all time low.
I hate to be so cynical but companies aren’t there for you. They’re there to make profit. Loyalty from the company only extends so far to the employee.
I still love my job and work hard at it everyday but I fear being laid off.
Microsoft says Apple’s new App Store rules are ‘a step in the wrong direction’
Of course they think it’s going in the wrong direction! They’re a huge corporation in the business of selling software. They don’t want to hand any of it over to Apple.
Epic’s Tim Sweeney referred to it as “Malicious Compliance.”
Get out the popcorn! 🍿
New libraries. New languages. New Frameworks. New Intern coming in and thinking he can rewrite better parts of the code himself. It’s easy to get swept away. But is the newest framework always the best choice? Is a rewrite really going to make everything better? Or is there wisdom in the code that has been around for years, has been tested with crazy edge cases, and has evolved together with the business?
I understand why folks are tempted to rewrite thing, I really do. When I wasn’t a dinosaur of a developer I hand that tendency. “I can make this better”, my brain would say. Sure, there’s occasion to “turn the soil” once in a while and I believe that’s good for a code base. But a full rewrite? No. 🌹
As you can see, even the checkmark wasn’t always there. But one thing remained constant: checkboxes were square.
A square checkbox is something us old timers are accustomed to seeing and changes can be confusing.
The Vision Pro’s checkboxes are confusing but I kind of like UIKit’s toggles as long as you don’t go crazy styling them. 😃
It sounds amazing, and sometimes it is. But the Vision Pro also represents a series of really big tradeoffs — tradeoffs that are impossible to ignore. Some of those tradeoffs are very tangible: getting all this tech in a headset means there’s a lot of weight on your face, so Apple chose to use an external battery pack connected by a cable. But there are other, more philosophical tradeoffs as well.
I think Nilay did a great job balancing his review of Vision Pro.
It’s a great start but has a really long way to go as a general computing device. That’s my opinion having never used one.
I really believe we’ll get a sense for how we should be using it if we see pictures of Apple Executives wearing it daily to do their jobs. I kind of doubt we’ll see that for anything other than articles written about it.
The iPhone, Watch, and AirPods are devices those same executives probably use everyday. I just can’t see them using Vision Pro as much.
When/if they’re ever able to make them look like regular glasses and they cost around $500-800 I’d consider wearing them all the time. Until then they’re way too expensive for my blood. I would rather spend that kind of green on a new MacBook Pro.
Will Stream support Vision Pro? I think so. I have no idea when, but I think it will.
Last week was cold, this week has been like a perfect spring. We had plenty of sunshine with highs approaching 70. Of course next week we drop back into the 40’s. It is winter after all. 😃
It’s been a pretty normal week, thankfully. Work has been great. I’ve had the opportunity to have a lot of heads down time on the project which always makes me happy, and my family is good.
Being a huge fan of The Iconfactory’s work I was excited to see the new site and it certainly delivered. It’s absolutely gorgeous and really does put what they do front and center. I hope it pays huge dividends for them!
Goose stepping moron pictured above
Another thing I’d love to see torn down is the process of creating the Next Gen car. Did y’all know every NASCAR race car has the same frame and shares many of the same parts? That’s incredible to me! It means they’ve leveled the field somewhat, see my question about manufacturer support. Yes, some teams have more resources than others but NASCAR fields the most competitive races of any major racing series. Well, them and IndyCar. I like that they make it more about the driver.
So, why all that intro to Castro who-haw? Well, once again, Castro has gone off the air. This is the second time in the last few months we’ve lost the backend service and the second time in the last few months Castro’s parent company — 
We’re expecting a snow and sleet event this morning. As I was composing this post it started raining around 6:30AM and it’s below freezing. Here’s hoping we don’t lose power and have frozen roads later. 🥶
Now, if by access the government means Apple has to open it up as a paid service, I could see that. Perhaps Google agrees to take on some of the cost burden, based on usage, or pay Apple some huge fee so Android users have full access to Messages with a native messaging app built by Google. That wouldn’t be so bad. Another alternative is for Apple to build a Messages app for Android and sell access to the service as a monthly subscription. Hey, Apple, that means more service revenue! 😁
Dave has been an innovator all his adult life. Whether it was scripting on the Mac and Windows or creating widely used technology like RSS and podcasting. Since he sold weblogs.com and left UserLand he’s continued to build writing tools of various kinds. His latest venture is 