Rob Fahrni

Today marks my fifth anniversary with WillowTree! 🥳

Dave Winer

There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that what’s missing in the two-party system in the US is that one of the parties does not own a social network.

There’s a super easy fix for that. Setup a Mastodon server at the Democrats.org and start writing.

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

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

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

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

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

Mediate

‘Democrats Are Realizing Woke Is Broke!’ Morning Joe Crew Reads Entire Maureen Dowd Column Slamming Identity Politics

Woke? Come on! Why not talk about the Orange Dude’s misogyny, racism, and just outright hate? That’s what people in America voted for and want. It’s more about that than the Democratic Party being “woke.”

Yes, Democrats believe in equity, inclusion, and empathy for their fellow man. Why the hell shouldn’t we all want that?

Are you flat ass saying hate is the way? No thanks. I want nothing to do with that.

I’ll be here to help black and brown people, LQBTQ+ people, and Women.

Wanting everyone to be treated the same and have the same opportunities isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength. Hate is too easy.

Get outta here with that crap.

UPDATE:

If you have a Threads account, or can see this video, go watch. This guy, whoever he is, nails it

Dad and his boys; Rob, Jerry, and Doug.

John Gruber

Given the circumstances when I went to bed Tuesday night, it was no surprise I was welling up with tears come the morning. But I’d never have expected they’d be tears of joy, with a sense of hope — however diminished — and abiding love in my heart.

This is, without a doubt, the best piece John Gruber has ever written.

Please take the time to read it. John weaves a very personal tragic moment into the tragedy of the election. I cannot get over how great it is. John really is a masterful writer. Wow.

Thank you for sharing such a beautifully written, thoughtful, and personal piece right when we all needed it, John. ✪

Jason Herbert • Historians At The Movies

Folks, the Twitter that once was is no longer. It doesn’t fit us anymore. What was once an interesting place to find news, meet people, and share in the human experience is gone, dead, and buried. And Elon Musk is holding the shovel.

It has taken the “normals” a really long time to figure out what a lot of us realized the day Space Karen cut third party access to the Twitter API.

Now if we could convince Mr. Herbert to abandon Substack because of its Nazi problem we will have accomplished something.

A bunch of really great writers have abandoned Substack in favor of Ghost and Beehiiv, you can too Mr. Herbert. 💐

Daniel Jalkut, Core Intuition, Episode 610: Reinventing the 90’s

“People spend hours and days trying to reinvent the 90’s.”

I loved this quote and lol’d when Daniel said it because it’s true. 😃

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s a sad week and what promises to be an extremely dark time in our nations history. Unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand — and who’d blame you — I’m talking about the Orange Nightmare winning the Presidential election. It’s so depressing to see that 70+ million Americans decided to choose cruelty over compassion. If, like me, you have a sense of complete sadness and dread you’re not alone. Plenty of us feel this way. I’ve been through the sadness and disappointment period and I’m ready to push back against tyranny any way I can. Black and brown people, LGBTQ+, and women will need our support and help. I stand ready.

Hillel Italie • Associated Press

Quincy Jones, the multitalented music titan whose vast legacy ranged from producing Michael Jackson’s historic “Thriller” album to writing prize-winning film and television scores and collaborating with Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and hundreds of other recording artists, has died at 91.

RIP 🪦

Jim Wright

You personally? Sure, you might have cared enough, but it turns out a lot of those we thought were on our side, those we thought would stand up for their own rights, just … didn’t. Not only didn’t, but they appear to have thrown their lot in with Trump and are willing to let Elon Musk, Laura Loomer, RFK Jr, and the local Preacher Man run their lives. A lot of those women I saw in line yesterday?

Such a well written piece. It’s long but captures the rage, sadness, and confusion many of us feel post election of a complete moron, rapist, criminal to the highest office in the land.

Nish Tahir

What is a Staff Engineer? I get this question quite frequently. Sometimes from engineers looking to elevate their roles. At other times, team members reach out looking to learn how they could get the most value from Staff Engineers on the teams. It is a complicated question because a lot of ambiguity exists in the role. Different engineers have distinct interpretations, so you may get a significantly different answer depending on who you ask.

Excellent piece by Nish. If you’re a software developer give it a read. Staff Engineer is a weird job. They are the glue that binds us together. The player who can fill any position on a team. They’ve usually experienced a lot and have deep skills in a subject but are adaptable.

When I was an Engineering Director I kind of hated my job, I can admit that now. Moving to a Staff Engineer position was one of the best career moves I’ve ever made.

I feel like a hype man sometimes — it’s my personality — and I love doing odd jobs as often as I can. I do it so younger developers can do the fun work. The work that will stretch them and teach them how the platform they’re working on works in real world applications. Then I get to be there when they struggle to help them over the hump. I find it extremely rewarding. Nish’s experience may be completely opposite of mine — he’s a Principal Engineer (I think?), that’s the highest level in our Engineering organization. Regardless, Nish is the complete package. He’s good at everything. ❤️

Alex Henderson, AlterNet • RawStory

“On November 5,” Dalton writes, “the American people did the unthinkable — they elected a convicted felon president. Judge Juan Merchan should now do what was once unthinkable — force a president-elect to take the oath of office in a jail cell.

Boy-o-boy would I love to see that (yeah, it’s petty of me, so what?) I’m hoping there is another option. Can they postpone his sentence until he’s left office, if he leaves office? That way they can nail him properly.

Of course the risk of waiting means the addled old man may die in office and we get no Justice except for the fact he’d be out of office.

John Braydon • Golden Hill Software

While the best websites provide RSS feeds with full article content, some feeds contain only summaries or previews of article content. Without the webpage text feature an article from such a feed would look something like this in Unread

Mr. John Brayton is an excellent developer and his work shows it. He’s Unread’s only developer. That means he toils over iOS, Mac, and server code to make Unread the amazing product it is.

Yes, at one level John and I are competitors, but John’s work is undeniably so much more advanced than mine and that’s ok. I admire him and his work. Yes software developers can also be fans of other developers and their software.

John and I chat on occasion and he’s an amazing human being.

Go support him by taking Unread for iOS and Mac for a spin. You may fall in love with it.

Susie Madrak • Crooks and Liars

David Frum left the Republican Party following Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election. “De-registered as a Republican today,” Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic, wrote on the social platform X on Wednesday.

I may not agree with a lot of David Frum’s views on policy as a “normal” Republican but I’ve always respected him and I love reading his writing.

Well, the man has finally had enough and left the GOP. Trump and Trumpism has really formed a new party. I wished they’d just give it an official name — perhaps MAGA — and let the GOP have their party back.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

So when the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI announced they were doubling down on their efforts to persuade software manufacturers to abandon “memory-unsafe” programming languages such as C and C++, it came as no surprise.

Yes, it’s going to be extremely difficult to replace existing C and C++ software with a memory safe language, but folks should start now. Rust seems to be gaining real ground as a cross platform development language, even being used in Windows and Linux development. Microsoft’s Mark Russinovich has declared all new system level code should be written in Rust. That’s a big darned deal.

Of course you won’t see Apple do that but guess what! Apple has Swift! Swift was written to be highly performant and the syntax would be more familiar to C and C++ developers than is Rust. Yeah, yeah, I’m most likely a bit biased. 😃

Stephen Goin • KHOU

Houston residents report receiving text messages telling them they’ve been selected to ‘pick cotton’

And so it begins. One day after the election the hate monger racists emerge from their pits to start their campaign against people who don’t look exactly like them. A lot of young white men voted us into this mess. It’s shameful.

Again, we must fight this tooth and nail to save the rotting soul of this great nation.

Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

An effort to bring a broader news ecosystem to the open social web, also known as the fediverse, is now in the hands of the social magazine app Flipboard. Press.coop, a service that created mirrored accounts of top news publishers (including Reuters, AP, WSJ, NYT, BBC, CNN, and even yours truly), has transferred its collection of nearly 100 accounts to Flipboard, the companies announced Thursday.

Flipboard is a for profit company but I do like this move because I’m hoping it’ll get the big news outlets to finally abandon Space Karen’s social platform for Mastodon.

I know that’s asking a lot but folks have been fleeing his platform in greater numbers recently.

David Faris • Newsweek

In light of Trump winning the 2024 presidential election over Vice President Kamala Harris, calls for Sotomayor to retire so that President Joe Biden, with support from a Democrat-majority Senate, would have enough time to appoint a new justice have recirculated on social media.

I’m really not overly thrilled with this idea. Justice Sotomayor is only 70 and should be able to make it through the next four years, unless the Dems calling for her retirement know something we don’t?

I know Democrats are in charge of the Senate but after McConnell’s bullshit with Garland then applying a different set of rules for Amy Coney Barrett I’m a bit gun shy.

However, if they did decide to replace her how about Merrick Garland or Kamala Harris?

I know folks feel like Garland let us down with Trump. I’m pissed off about it too but I still believe Garland is an excellent candidate because he is so measured when it comes to the law, and dammit, the man deserves to be a Justice.

If not Garland how about Kamala Harris? She knows the law and has been in politics more than long enough to play any games she needs to play.

Another petty thing I’d love to see is Biden retiring so Kamala can become the 47th President of the United States and screw up Orange Man’s swag offerings. 😈

Yes, I’m that petty when it comes to that man.

Here’s hoping he leaves office in four years.

Really enjoyed this episode of Under the Radar

As a youngster it was my desire to work for BigCos like Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, etc. Visio is still the best company I’ve ever worked for and the only company I’ve ever spent ten years at. We were acquired by Microsoft in 2000 and I’ve worked there on three different occasions in very different roles.

Anywho, I digress. To be acquired for enough money to retire would be incredible at this point in my life. But I need an incredible product to sell first. 😃

Coke Oreos are not good.

I’ve always loved contrails. I captured this one after my granddaughter pointed up and said “Look Papi, a jet trail.” Made me proud. 🥹

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Were four days away from what is the most consequential Presidential vote in my lifetime, perhaps the country’s lifetime.

Voting is the most important thing you can do to save our democracy.

I’ll leave it at that. I hope you enjoy the links.

Pema Levy • Mother Jones

Donald Trump may be a known quantity. He’s been a public figure for decades, a television star, and president from 2017-2021. But a second Trump term would present something the United States has never experienced before. Not a would-be authoritarian in the White House—that was Trump’s first term—but a would-be authoritarian who could actually accomplish the task of transforming the federal government into a tool of political repression.

Don’t vote for this man. He’ll destroy our country as we know it and turn it into a hellscape.

Sascha Pare • Live Science

High school students who came up with ‘impossible’ proof of Pythagorean theorem discover 9 more solutions to the problem

I love that a couple of high school kids figured these proofs out. Good for them!

Dave Winer • Scripting News

I’m searching for some common ground between the twitter-like systems, a basis for interop, a common API even. We had that for the blogging layer of this onion, something called the MetaWeblog API. All the popular blogging software supported it. And that meant you could write once and publish to many places. And you could write the script that did that in an afternoon or two. We started out with simple systems and the best of intentions. There’s no technical barrier. And we could do it in a few weeks at most if there was a will to do it.

I have thoughts around this as well that are built around Dave’s desire to use RSS to populate the various services. It deserves a blog post all its own. Maybe I’ll have enough gumption to do that someday. 😃

Matt Carroll • Flock

Over the years, Flutter has attracted millions of developers who built user interfaces across every platform. Flutter began as a UI toolkit for mobile - iOS and Android, only. Then Flutter added support for web. Finally, Flutter expanded to Mac, Windows, and Linux. Across this massive expansion of scope and responsibility, the Flutter team has only marginally increased its size. To help expand Flutter’s available labor, and accelerate development, we’re creating a fork of Flutter, called Flock.

This feels extremely ambitious to me and I fear it’ll fail. Hopefully it doesn’t cause a mess in the community.

Sidney Blumenthal • The Guardian

Donald Trump keeps saying that if he is elected to a second term he will prosecute his political opponents, “the enemies within”. On 22 October he stated, once again, that as president he would use “extreme power … We can’t play games with these people. These are people that are dangerous people … an enemy from within.”

This man is a menace and must be defeated once and for all. Kick him to the curb so, hopefully, he’ll get the idea he’s not wanted and go play golf for the rest of his miserable life.

Iain Thomson • The Register

Drivers passing through San Francisco have a new roadside distraction to consider: billboards calling out businesses that don’t cough up for the open source code that they use.

Some open source projects thrive and some struggle. If more companies would dedicate some resources to these projects it would be better for everyone involved. We don’t need more incidents like the person who snuck a back door into an open source project or just see them abandoned and left to bit rot.

Ahmad Shadeed

Currently, the CSS Working Group (CSSWG) is discussing whether to include masonry as part of CSS grid, or as a new layout module?

I like this, especially if the author(s) of masonry agree with the idea.

Louie Mantia

I wish there were more browsers, and I wish they were more unique. I appreciate that Arc attempted to innovate, but their ego and hubris are a little frustrating. They believe their product is so great that everyone should use it, including their own family and friends. However, when they don’t, they are left feeling perplexed.

I know lots of folks at work using Arc and they love it! I’m skeptical of it. Not because it’s different but because it’s built on Chromium and I don’t trust Google.

Tim Anderson • Dev Class

A Google engineer presented a proposal to the official standardization committee that would split JavaScript into two languages, a core to be implemented by runtime engines and a more capable variant which depends on tools that compile it down to that core.

I thought the idea of a core was Web Assembly? Maybe that’s too broad? I’d like to know more about what this proposal implies and how would it affect developers.

Michael Miszczak • Just a Pack

A couple of weeks ago, in a moment of caffeinated inspiration/despair, I sat down and wrote a long Facebook post as to why we were ditching Google and switching to DuckDuckGo. Today I want to dive even deeper into this topic, and give you a first-hand account of how Google is killing hundreds of thousands of blogs and small publishers.

Blogs were never really meant to be monetized but enterprising folks have figured out a way to do it.

Unfortunately relying on an advertising company’s search engine to surface your blog to users is risky, as the article points out.

My blog is for me and the ten folks who read it. It’s an outlet. Thankfully I don’t have to make a living from it. I’d starve.

Emma Roth • The Verge

Though Dorsey’s message didn’t specify how many employees would be laid off, sources told Fortune that it could be around 100 employees — or about a quarter of Tidal’s remaining staff. Tidal cut 10 percent of its workers last December, and Dorsey reportedly considered a major reorganization at Block in July.

A few years back, during COVID summer, I tried Tidal, Spotify, and Apple Music. Tidal isn’t bad at all. It’s another competitor in the big music service scene. Granted, it’s the smaller of the three, but the user experience at the time was perfectly fine and the music sounded just fine.

I landed on Apple Music, which has the worst user experience, because it is bundled as part of Apple One. It’s fine.

The Editorial Board • The New York Times

Donald Trump has described at length the dangerous and disturbing actions he says he will take if he wins the presidency.

At least The NY Times had the intestinal fortitude to do this.

Still blooming.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

This weeks post is going to contain a lot about politics and the upcoming Presidential Election here in the good old USofA.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you skipped reading but I just feel the need to talk about it, not that it’s going to change anyone’s mind.

I’m still blown away by the response of half of voters. People actually want a nation run by a psychopath who wants to run the country into the ground. Who wants to punish his political enemies. Who is a fascist.

I voted yesterday and I was so happy to cast my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I hope you do the same.

Megan Lebowitz • NBC News

Thirteen former Trump White House officials signed an open letter backing up former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, who told the New York Times that Trump fits the definition of a fascist.

Not surprising, at all. There are not enough people screaming at the top of their lungs “TRUMP IS A FASCIST” on a daily basis.

We all should be.

Chris Walker • truthout.org

In response to the owner of the Los Angeles Times decreeing that the paper would not be endorsing a candidate in this year’s presidential race, Mariel Garza, the editor of editorials for the Times, has resigned from her position.

The LA Times owner is fearing for his papers and his existence in a potential fascist Trump government. This is, ultimately, a cowardly act and plays right into the fascist playbook.

Ross A. Lincoln

The Los Angeles Times has lost two more longtime editorial writers, the latest in a growing exodus to protest owner Patrick Soon-Shiong’s interference with the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, TheWrap can exclusively report.

More fallout from cowardly publishers.

William Lewis • Washington Post

The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.

With moves like this Fascism takes root. Encourage folks to vote for Democracy you cowards! 🇺🇸

Dustin Bluck • Castro

The network request has gone from 49% of our time to 19%. But I’m pretty shocked to find out that with the improved networking speed, now 20% of worker time is spent in the active record connection pool. That can’t be right, what is happening? Taking more traces reveals this was actually an outlier on the lower side, most traces are spending 25-30% of all time waiting on an active record connection.

Great piece on some small changes that lead to big wins for a little Indie Developer.

I’m a longtime Castro user and the recent changes to the client app and the backend have been a welcome sight. It’s moving forward again! 👏🏼

Scripting News

Why hasn’t the NY Times run a story that takes Trump at face value and explains to voters what it would be like to live in that United States? It should have been updated and run every time Trump ups the ante.

Fear. This is why the papers are being chickens.

Om Malik

Why does every podcast have a six-minute lead of proverbial throat-clearing, self-promotion, and advertising?

Of my favorites a few just start with the hosts going right into it. I don’t need to be introduced to the hosts, I know who they are, I subscribed to the podcast to begin with. 😃

Juli Clover • MacRumors

Disney is no longer allowing its customers to sign up for and purchase subscriptions to Hulu or Disney+ through Apple’s App Store, cutting out any subscription fees that Disney would have needed to pay to Apple for using in-app purchase.

This is big news. Not giving Apple their cut is what every little developer would love to do, but it’s the Big Cos who can afford to try it.

This move fits into Apple’s current rules around streaming apps, like Netflix. You can’t mention how to sign up from the app — which is a dumb rule — and you can’t link out to a help page that describes how to do it. How’s that for a good user experience?

I’m really interested to see how this works out. 🍿

Manton Reece

It’s odd how many developers in the fediverse don’t know how Bluesky works.

I don’t really know how it works. I understand the TL;DR version and I think it definitely has legs, but will any other instances spin up to prove it out or will it just be a single silo, like old Twitter was?

Apple Security Engineering

Private Cloud Compute (PCC) fulfills computationally intensive requests for Apple Intelligence while providing groundbreaking privacy and security protections — by bringing our industry-leading device security model into the cloud.

More on Apple’s cloud infrastructure for their new AI platform. I still haven’t read the entire piece but thought I’d share it for the geeky readers since this is a politics heavy post.

Kelly Crandall • Racer

Hopefully, NASCAR, Netflix, and viewers are better prepared this year because Bell is on his way once again. Bell has smoothly advanced through the first two rounds of the postseason without much attention. Sunday, he started the Round of 8 from the pole and led 155 of 267 laps at Las Vegas Motor Speedway before finishing a disappointed second.

Christopher Bell is in my top four. I’m not sure if he’s the one, but he darned sure stands a chance to win it all. Unless tragedy strikes I’d expect him to lead laps in Phoenix for the Championship at the very least.

David Pierce • The Verge

For the last eight months, David Cogen has been living a double life. By day: a YouTuber and creator, the face of TheUnlockr, reviewing phones and testing ebikes and explaining how food smokers really work. By night and morning and every single other available moment in between: a coffee shop entrepreneur, working to get a Brooklyn spot called Coffee Check up and running.

Kim and I have often talked about opening a coffee shop but it’s really difficult to run your own business, I’ve tried and I’ve succeeded and failed at it. 🤣

But, there’s something about a coffee shop that feels right. It’s about the community as much as it’s about the coffee.

The coffee shop in Exeter we were regulars at was a place where everybody knows your name and the baristas were friends.

Ernie Smith • Tedium

Today in Tedium: Deciding on a content management system is a bit of a dance. You often have to deal with dozens, maybe hundreds, of pieces of existing content. You want it to be easy to manage, able to talk to other technology tools. Plus, you want to ensure you understand what you built, so you can actually fix it—or reach out to a friendly community. That has been a big reason why the mess with WordPress has been so frustrating.

If you’re thinking about driving your blog or website using a CMS you should give this piece a read. Ernie has gone through the paces so maybe you don’t have to. In the end he lists five options to consider, each with pros and cons.

Most bloggers don’t need much and a CMS can be overkill for us. Others moreso, so a CMS may be just what the doctor ordered.

Done and done! I’ve done my part and voted to keep the United States of America a democracy!

I am all in on Kamala Harris being the next President of the United States. She is fully qualified and will bring an excellent staff on board to keep this country running.

We’re at a critical time in our Nation. Fascism has been knocking on the door for sometime now and it’s time we squash it, forever. Trump cannot win. He will never leave office and will destroy the United States of America. I fully believe that.

Trump is a petty, vindictive, narcissistic, asshole. He fits right into the mold of a psychopath – it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s killed someone – and Trump is 100% fascist.

Save Democracy in America. Vote Harris - Walz.

Mmmmmmm, Dragon’s Milk. 😋

Last week someone was talking about Calvin and Hobbes. It’s a comic I love as well and have a fairly old book of them.

Anyway, Kim showed me one back in the 90’s and said “This is Taylor.” Taylor is our youngest daughter and I saw the likeness instantly. It’s 100% her. She’s a goofy kid and I love her for it. 😄

Calvin making faces

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I don’t know if allergies are trying to kill me or if I’ve picked up a cold somewhere. No matter, I’m so sleepy I can barely keep my eyes open. 😃

Ok, so, here we are, three hours later. 🤣 I passed out. Couldn’t keep my eyes open.

Hope you enjoy the links.

Dan Gillmor

I became a blogger because of Dave. Blogging changed — in a great way — the trajectory of my career.

A lot of us were influenced by Dave’s work.

Dan’s a really great writer and someone you should follow.

Pao Ramen

What follows is the talk that Ethan should have given to the team. Instead, he pedaled away on a stolen bicycle, developed a game that flopped commercially, and now roams the streets of San Francisco, high on fentanyl. Meanwhile, David and the rest of the team sold the company for peanuts but landed comfortable positions at the acquiring firm, earning twice as much while working half as hard. So, in the end, it probably didn’t matter. But if you’re interested in sync engines, read on.

This piece is about writing a sync engine for your application. The beginning of the article is a fun read but it does eventually get to the meat of the subject after the comedic intro. I really dig the diagrams.

Todd Vaziri

Near the end of David Fincher’s 1995 masterpiece “Seven”, John Doe takes Somerset and Mills to the middle of nowhere to reveal his final surprise. They drive to a desolate area surrounded by high tension power lines and towers. A combination of long lenses and wide lenses were used to alternate between images of long-lens compression of the space (the first image below), and scattered wider lenses to illustrate the desolation of the environment (the second image below).

What a great film! Todd’s breakdown of the scene and seeing how much a camera lens can completely transform an environment is amazing!

I know nothing about photography or filmmaking but I learned something new.

Mathew Ingram

I realize that many people may not know or care who or what Matt Mullenweg and WordPress are, or why some people are upset about them, but after giving it a lot of thought (okay, about 10 minutes of thought) I decided to write about it anyway.

The wild story that is the WordPress vs. WPEngine saga continues.

I really hope they can get this sorted out and it doesn’t destroy the WordPress community in the meantime.

Jessica Wakeman • The Guardian

Hurricane Helene destroyed Asheville’s flourishing arts community. Can they rebuild what was lost?

Kim and I were supposed to visit Asheville two years ago for an anniversary weekend. We didn’t go because I’d injured my back as was unable to stand for long periods of time. Now I really wish we’d gone. Those poor people were hit so hard. Here’s to a full recovery! ❤️

Saajan Jogia • Newsweek

Former Formula 1 driver Daniel Ricciardo, who remains without a seat after his ousting from Red Bull’s junior team VCARB, will be handed the “Keys to the City” honor.

I guess Danny Ricciardo is an Austin fan favorite.

Heck, now that he’s available I think a NASCAR team needs to convince him to run a road course NASCAR race next season! 😃

Gary Marcus

LLMs don’t do formal reasoning - and that is a HUGE problem

There’s nothing Intelligent about this software. They’re just really good at guessing the next thing.

Sure, they’re really great guessers, but can also be very wrong. Keep that in mind.

Oh, and can we stop the craze of stuffing “AI” into all the things? Thank you.

Frank Schwab • Yahoo Sports

Aidan Hutchinson undergoes successful surgery after gruesome leg injury in win over Cowboys

Under Dan Campbells guidance the Lions have become real threats to win the Super Bowl. I hope losing Aidan doesn’t prevent them from staying in the hunt for a title.

All the best to you Aidan. I hope that leg heals perfectly and you’re back to sacking Quarterbacks next season.

Jan de Mooij • Spidermonkey

75x faster: optimizing the Ion compiler backend

I like working on stuff more under the hood of software. Network, data structures, and making data generally available. I also love making reusable frameworks so others can get their jobs done in less time and with higher quality.

This effort is nothing short of amazing. I love articles like this! 👍🏼

@Lana@beige.party

Uh, and by Christian I mean specifically evangelical Christian, obviously. You better not have any heretical ideas about God like this crap about loving thy neighbor and feeding the hungry and clothing the homeless. That’s the sort of idea that’ll get you in trouble in Trump’s America. But as long as you’re a white, straight, cisgender, evangelical Christian man, you’ll be fine.

Sure, everything will be fine.

Vote Harris-Walz if you want a free America.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s finally getting a bit chilly overnight here in Charlottesville. Yesterday morning we managed to drop down to 39 degrees (Fahrenheit) overnight. It was 41 when I got up with the pups this morning.

Coffee is made, first cup poured, time to put together some links and horrible commentary! 😂

John Naughton • The Guardian

If you log into Dave Winer’s blog, Scripting News, you’ll find a constantly updated note telling you how many years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds the blog has been running. Sometime tomorrow morning the year field will switch to 30. Which will mean that every single day for three decades Dave’s blog will have been stirring things up.

Congratulations, Dave! As I mentioned earlier in the week, Dave was one of my inspirations for blogging.

It’s hard to believe he’s been doing it for 30 years.

Manton Reece

Shut it down. ByteDance has until January to divest the app and I have no sympathy for a delay. It needs new leadership.

These are strong words coming from Manton. He’s a proponent of the open web and to see him this upset is saying something.

EMILIE BLACK & CODY HAMMAN • JoBlo

The Goriest, Bloodiest Films Ever Made: some of our favorites

I’ve wanted to watch the Terrifier series for quite a while now and the recent release of Terrifier 3 I really want to see them.

The only film on that list I’ve seen is Evil Dead, and that was a remake.

The best of the original trilogy was Army of Darkness. It was super campy and Bruce Campbell was amazing. So many quotable one liners from that film.

If you haven’t seen Army of Darkness it’s worth a watch.

Emma Roth • The Verge

“WordPress.org just belongs to me personally,” Mullenweg said during an interview with The Verge. WordPress.org exists outside the commercial realm of Automattic, as a standalone publishing platform that offers free access to its open-source code that people can use to create their own websites. But it’s not a neutral, independent arbiter of the ecosystem. “In my role as owning WordPress.org, I don’t want to promote a company, which is A: legally threatening me and B: using the WordPress trademark. That’s part of why we cut off access from the servers.”

A lot of details have emerged about the ownership of various parts and pieces of WordPress the open source software vs. WordPress the hosting company vs. Automattic. Matt is, basically, all three.

Matt Mullenweg • WordPress

We’re very proud to announce that Vinny Green, a former WordPress community member, has started his fork, FreeWP. We strongly encourage anyone who disagrees with the direction WordPress is headed in to join up with Vinny and create an amazing fork of WordPress. Viva FreeWP!

With all the kerfuffle between WordPress and WP Engine Matt is still a staunch advocate for open source projects and is fine with folks forking WordPress. It is, after all, the way of open source.

It seems Matt’s biggest complaint is WP Engine taking and never giving back. If they’d fork WordPress into something new I’d imagine that would go a long way toward solving some of Matt’s issues with them.

Let WP Engine maintain their own copy and do with it what they will, even if that means doing nothing to improve it.

Alexander Martin • therecord.media

Meta fined $101 million for storing hundreds of millions of passwords in plaintext

Remember kids: Friends don’t let friends use Facebook. Meta is a horrible company run by a sociopath.

Eugen Rochko • Join Mastodon Blog

Mastodon 4.3 just landed! If you’re a mastodon.social user, you might have already seen some of this in action as we’ve been gradually rolling out these updates over the course of the last 11 months in nightly releases, but we’re finally making a new stable release available to the community.

I haven’t noticed any of the major changes because I’m shielded by using a native iOS and Mac client application for all my Mastodon needs.

Congratulations to Eugen and the entire Mastodon development team! 🥳

Leonardo Brito

I had an old Motorola G5 Cedric gathering dust, so I decided to do something with it – it is now running a Puma web server with a simple Sinatra webapp.

I’ve wanted to do this in the past with my old Handspring Visor. These days it would be fun to do it with an iPhone.

I recall someone talking about doing that within the last year or so using Iconfactory’s WorlWideWeb for iPhone, if memory serves.

Debopriyaa Dutta • /Film

If you’re a fan of slow-burn police procedurals that suddenly transform into a possession flick with stylish, ambitious choices, “Fallen” is worth checking out.

I saw Fallen in theaters with Kim and we both liked it. It is certainly a slow burn detective movie with a super natural twist of an ancient evil.

Worth checking out.

Jason Bahl • WPGraphQL

With that said, I’m excited to announce that after 3.5 wonderful years at WP Engine, I’ve accepted an offer with Automattic to continue my work on WPGraphQL as it transitions into becoming a canonical community plugin on WordPress.org.

With the community in tatters it’s nice to see someone share some good news. Although it may not be seen as good from the WP Engine side of the equation.

Jessamyn!

Happy 7th Birthday MLTSHP!

This tiny service came into being as MLKSHK many years back when Twitter didn’t have its own photo sharing. I’m sure you could find many an old Tweet in my archive using MLKSHK for photo posting.

I’m still a subscriber. Long live MLTSHP and a very happy birthday! 🎂

JanerationX

The Internet Archive got hacked. It takes a special kind of asshole to do something like this. While the world is currently full of assholes with too much time on their hands, this particular breach just rankles, and it makes you wonder: is anything sacred?

The short answer is, no. Nothing is sacred. Especially on the internet. 🤬

Megan Sauer • CNBC

Her Etsy store brought in $220,300 last year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

This is the kind of “side hustle” I’d like to have. 😂

That would allow me to become an indie developer and realize my dreams for Stream and its yet untitled sister app.

Andrew J. Hawkins • The Verge

For almost as long as he’s been CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk has been bullshitting us about self-driving cars.

Folks are finally talking about Musk the way they should. He’s a bullshit artist. That’s his genius.

He’s managed to bullshit his way into Tesla. No, he’s not a founder. He’s not a Twitter founder.

Yes, he founded SpaceX and the Boring Company, but he doesn’t seem too involved with those. Choosing to let intelligent folks to run those was a good idea.

He’s a lying, white supremacist, homophobe, antisemitic, conspiracy theorist, bully with a lot of money.

Clearly I don’t think much of him. He’s a terrible human being.

All I think of when I see that picture is Igor saying “Master.”

Of course he was shaking Trump’s hand. Or should I say, master’s hand? 🤔

Scripting News

Today is the 30th anniversary of this blog. Hola!

When I started my blog in February 2001 there were three folks who inspired me; Dave Winer, Ev Williams , and Jeffrey Zeldman.

All these years later Dave is still digging, tweaking what it means to publish for the web, making new software, and writing on his blog every day.

I’ve always enjoyed Dave’s writing and hope that maybe someday I’ll be as good at it as he is.

Happy Birthday, Scripting News and congratulations on 30 years of blogging, Dave. 🥳

It’s even worse than it appears.

Jennifer Palmer, Paul Monies, Heather Warlick • USA Today

Bids opened Monday for a contract to supply the state Department of Education with 55,000 Bibles. According to the bid documents, vendors must meet certain specifications: Bibles must be the King James Version; must contain the Old and New Testaments; must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and must be bound in leather or leather-like material.

Oklahoma is on the front line of the war to make Christian Nationalism the norm in America. How they can manage this with a First Amendment clearly stating:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Granted, Republicans are so good at skipping the parts they don’t like, like the Second Amendments inclusion of the need for a well regulated militia being necessary as part of the right to own and carry weapons, maybe they just skipped the part about the separation of church and state?

Hopefully the Supreme Court will strike this abomination of a law down and let folks choose their own religion and how they learn about it.

The Religious Right — Christian Nationalists — have done so much harm to Christianity and the person in Jesus.

They love Trump and all of his hate. Can y’all see Jesus standing at the border to the United States of America with an M-16 turning people away? Maybe you can. I can’t. I picture someone welcoming the tired and sick with open arms, providing them water, food, and a place to stay.

The GOP view of Christianity is a brutal idol in the form of Donald J. Trump and his ilk.

Yeah, your vote really matters to the future of this country. Get out and vote. Let’s stop this evil man and his sycophants dead in their tracks and keep this country great.