Rob Fahrni

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

What would we start off with this morning? The weather? Our power grid in the Charlottesville area? How about some links to articles I’ve collected through the week? Yes, let’s do that.

Ollie Williams • cabinradio.ca

A mercy flight taking Yellowknife hospital patients to safety was cancelled on Thursday, leaving nurses unsure how they’ll safely leave in the face of an oncoming wildfire.

Poor Canada. It’s been on fire for so, so, long. The human toll is so immense. 😔

Good thing Climate Change isn’t real. 🤬

Evan Selleck • AppleInsider

Apple TV+ has revealed the first details of “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” a forthcoming 10-part series starring Kurt Russell, and coming as part of Legendary Entertainment’s Monsterverse.

I’m down for this series! I love me some Kurt Russell! 🦖

David Ljunggren • Reuters

OTTAWA, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The Canadian government on Friday demanded that Meta (META.O) lift a “reckless” ban on domestic news from its platforms to allow people to share information about wildfires in the west of the country.

I’m not a fan of Facebook but I do understand why Facebook chose to disallow links to news in Canada. It was a business decision for them based on new Canadian law.

Hopefully they’ll turn linking back on so folks can communicate about these devastating fires. ❤️

Grace Ebert • thisiscolossal.com

Artist Duke Riley is attuned to this history and its modern-day implications. He gathers laundry detergent jugs, flip-flops, and bottles that once held household products once they wash up near beaches and carves incisive allegories and ornamentation into their surfaces. Painted in a warm, grainy beige, the scavenged waste mimics the whale bones traditional to scrimshaw while the artist’s signature wit emerges through the contemporary narratives of oil barons or marine creatures carrying human trash.

It’s amazing what this man can do with trash.

The Globe and Mail

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says Canada has been considering a “game plan” for how it would respond if the United States takes a far-right, authoritarian shift after next year’s presidential elections.

This is really sad when your neighbor and ally feel the need to prepare for the possibility the United States of America could become and totalitarian nation.

All I keep thinking of is Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale.

Who knows, if the US goes full authoritarian/totalitarian Canada may become a refuge for Americans, just like it is in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Kevin Chisholm • Flutter Engineering Blog

Welcome back to our quarterly Flutter stable release, this time for Flutter 3.13! In just the three months since our last release, we have had 724 pull requests merged and 55 community members authoring their first commit to Flutter!

I’ve tossed around the idea of rewriting RxCalc in Flutter so I keep an eye on it. I find it interesting and I feel like it’s a better choice than React Native, but that’s just a feeling because I haven’t written code in either.

One thing I definitely dislike about it, they paint the UI themselves. They’re not using native controls. I understand the choice, but I don’t like it. I don’t think that would keep me from using it for an app like RxCalc since its UI is extremely simple and I’d most likely use its C++ Pharmacokinetics library.

Nick Gernert • WordPress VIP

Vox Media wanted its creative and development teams to focus on experiences instead of platforms, continuing to create industry-leading content for their audiences.

Big moves like this are always very interesting to me. Vox must need the best writing tools the industry can offer to put together stories and I wonder how they’re going to feel about the writing tools in WordPress. I’m personally not a fan of Gutenberg and wonder if writers will work in that editor or use something else for the writing part and someone else does the post? I’d love to know their workflow.

A little inside baseball. I handle putting together posts for the WillowTree Engineering Blog but the authors use Google Docs to write them.

Debopriyaa Dutta • /Film

In her Telegraph interview, Chalotra explained that she was not too well-versed with the source material (at least to the point that her co-star Henry Cavill was, who’s an ardent fan of the franchise) and the stress of showing up to such a big-budget production was stress-inducing for her. Chaltora talked about how she believed she “didn’t think [she] was going to get through the first day of filming

I love The Witcher and Chaltora’s Yennefer is one of the reasons why. Henry Cavill’s Geralt is also fantastic but the ongoing tension between the two adds another great element to the show.

Ash Furrow

I’m narrowing in on a few possibilities, and one of them will soon become my destination. This space is uncomfortable and I feel an urge to escape it. An urge to collapse the wave function of possible career moves into a definite next job. Any job. After a disquieting summer, I feel myself grasping for certainty.

I’ve watched on Mastodon as amazing developer after developer lose their jobs or are having a very difficult time finding one.

This scare me to death. I’m aging, tired, and my brain definitely doesn’t work as well as it once did — it’s not as fast as before. Sure, I can do the work, but could I get past an interview? That’s the biggest fear.

Starbucks Stories & News

He shares the story of Starbucks® Pumpkin Spice Latte – which has become the company’s most popular seasonal beverage of all time – was created 11 years ago.

This is an article I stumbled on from 2014. I thought I’d share it since Starbucks is about to unleash Pumpkin Spick Latte season on us. It’s not a goto drink for me but I’ve had a few. My wife and daughters love them. Heck, they love all things pumpkin spice. Me? I’m just into good pumpkin pie. 🥧

Grace Kay • Business Insider

During an earnings call on Tuesday, UPS CEO Carol Tomé said that by the end of its five-year contract with the Teamsters union, the average full-time UPS driver would make about $170,000 in annual pay and benefits, such as healthcare and pension benefits.

This article is about how tech workers don’t like the thought of UPS drivers making more than them. I say more power to ‘em!

I’ve often thought it would be amazing to work in a coffee shop. Of course I’d never expect to make that kind of money but I have a feeling I’d enjoy the change. At least for a little while. 😃

Scarheel • Atlas Obscura

From 1810 to 1823, Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre were among the most notorious and successful privateers in the Americas. Like many great pirates, Jean Lafitte’s exact origins are shrouded in mystery, but he is believed to be born either in France or one of its Caribbean colony Saint-Domingue (now called Haiti) and he had a spectacular reputation for drinking, womanizing, and debauchery.

Who doesn’t like a little pirate lore? I know in real life these folks were scoundrels but we’ve romanticized them and there’s something about that skull and cross bones I like.

As I’ve mentioned here and other places I’ve gotten into NASCAR this year. It started with F1 then I started watching IndyCar which lead to NASCAR.

I like NASCAR for a couple reasons. It’s more an everyday Joan’s sport. You know, for us common folks. It’s not hoity-toity like F1 and I think the racing is just plain better. The modern NASCAR cars all share the same design as defined and built by NASCAR. The power trains are the only real difference from an engineering perspective so it’s all down to setup and, more importantly, the driver. But I digress.

There is something that bothers me about NASCAR. Fans seem to be very, uh, conservative. Meaning it’s all about God, country, and to many the Confederate flag and all the hate that comes with it. Bubba Wallace asked NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag and they did, it was a step in the right direction. All that said they have a long way to go, which brings me to why I started writing this.

Which team is progressive enough to put a Progress Pride Flag on the car as the entire livery? I think it would look amazing and start to break down that next wall in the sport.

HuffPost

“The American people can decide whether they want him to be president or not,” said Graham, a fierce critic of Trump before his 2016 election win who became one of his most loyal allies. “This should be decided at the ballot box, not a bunch of liberal jurisdictions trying to put the man in jail.”

U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham is off his rocker in so many way. First off, the people did decide in 2020 who they wanted as their President. Joe Biden won that election going away.

Second. You’re just as bad as all these other strong arm assholes who want to turn the country into a hellhole governed by the rich and powerful.

Donald J. Trump is a criminal, Mr. Graham. You know that. What does he have on you? Pictures of you and the pool boy or something?

Criminals need to be brought to Justice. Without laws we are not a nation. If Trump didn’t commit a crime he’ll prove that in court. Every American is afforded that right. Trump isn’t special.

36

That’s the number of years this amazing woman has put up with me. ❤️

This weekend is pretty special for NASCAR. There are four championship drivers from other countries driving this weekend. 🚘

I’m going to put my money on Shane van Gisbergen having the best finish of these drivers since he won the inaugural NASCAR Chicago Street Race, but I hear Brodie Kostecki is also very good. 😃

Here’s who to watch!

Brodie Kostecki is an Australian professional racing driver. He currently competes in the Repco Supercars Championship, driving the No. 99 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for Erebus Motorsport.

Mike Rockenfeller is a German professional racing driver and was an Audi factory driver competing in the DTM and the FIA World Endurance Championship.

Kamui Kobayashi (小林 可夢偉, Kobayashi Kamui) is a Japanese racing driver. He competes in the FIA World Endurance Championship for Toyota Gazoo Racing, and in the Super Formula Championship for KCMG.

Shane Robert van Gisbergen is a New Zealand racing driver in the Supercars Championship racing in the Number 97 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 car for Triple Eight Race Engineering. With three Supercars Championship wins (2016, 2021, 2022), 80 wins and 46 pole positions, van Gisbergen is the fourth most successful racing driver in the Supercars Championship history.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Another week gone and I’m so pooped out I just want to go back to bed. But wait! There is hope in the form of a magic black elixir called coffee! Phew! That was close.

I hope you enjoy the links.

Sakshi Venkatraman • NBC News

A historic seaside town that once was the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii has been largely reduced to ash as wildfires continued to rip through the state Wednesday.

I’m so sad for Hawaiians. Such a beautiful place with kind people. To see climate change ravage Maui is heartbreaking.

Kim and I have been to Hawaii, Maui, once 20-years ago and it was stunning. We drove the road to Hana. It took us all day to go there and back on a skinny winding road but the sites along the way were unmatched.

We also had the pleasure of visiting the aquarium in Lahaina. It’s all gone now. 😔

I’m just happy to know my Big Island friend and his wife are safe.

The Grug Brained Developer

and, what is worse, front end complexity demon spirit even more powerful and have deep spiritual hold on entire front end industry as far as grug can tell

Someone at work shared a link to The Grug Brained Developer this week and I had to go read. I’ve read it before and it makes me laugh. I hope it makes you laugh. We could use more laughter these days. 😃

Case Viewer

Case Viewer is a macOS app built for fast, frictionless access to high-quality representations of judicial opinions.

This is a really beautiful app designed and developed by a Law Professor! It’s not something I could use but maybe a lawyer reading this post could?

There are so many smart, talented, folks in the world. 🧠

Bryan Carney

There was a time when basic RSS feeds were a growing, straightforward way for users of the Internet to receive a steady stream of headlines on their digital devices — sort of like a ticker from a stock exchange.

Nice little case for and explainer of RSS. If you’re reading this post you may have gotten here via RSS and know what it is but a friend or family member may not.

It’s still the best way to read web sites in my opinion.

Oh, and yes, I make a Feed Reader for iOS. 😃

Steven Beschloss

But in the struggle between light and dark, between those who yearn for greater equality and a better America and those driven by grievance and the need to scapegoat the most vulnerable among us, the next year promises more violence fueled by irresponsible leaders determined to exploit peoples’ worst instincts.

I really enjoy reading Steven Beschloss. As he points out, we could be headed for more violence over the next year as TFG faces down the possibility of jail time.

I’m hoping things don’t revolve into Civil War but if TFG wins the election and shuts down all the cases against him I could see it happening.

Fingers crossed it doesn’t come to that. 🤞🏼

Peter Corless • ScyllaDB

According to its data model ScyllaDB needs to maintain a set of partitions, rows and cell values providing fast lookup, sorted scans and keeping the memory consumption as low as possible. One of the core components that greatly affects ScyllaDB’s performance is the in-memory cache of the user data (we call it the row cache). And one of the key factors to achieving the performance goal is a good selection of collections — the data structures used to maintain the row cache objects.

I just enjoy posts like this for the technical detail, especially if it includes a diagram. 😃

Comic Sands

The vehemently homophobic conservative group One Million Moms—an arm of the Christian fundamentalist nonprofit American Family Association (AFA)—lost it over an Aveeno Kids Shampoo commercial featuring a child in a rainbow tutu.

Christian Nationalists are no better than the Taliban. How about you try to live and let live. We have bigger fish to fry in this nation, like helping the less fortunate and making a better America for all. Enough of this B.S.

Jon Romeo

William Friedkin’s The Exorcist made its way into our home via the late, somewhat great Blockbuster Video. It was put high on a kitchen shelf away from prying hands for later viewing by my parents. Of course, being told I couldn’t watch it meant that I had to watch it. On the night in question I waited until the parents thought I was asleep before sneaking downstairs to where my parents were about to watch the forbidden movie. Through a crack in the living room door I watched the entire movie.

I didn’t watch the Exorcist until much later in life. I remember people talking about it when I was a youngin’ and it terrified me just hearing about it.

It’s my understanding William Friedkin, RIP, made a film called Sorcerer I’ve never heard of but definitely want to see now.

Chris Lee • Vulture

Call it the Hollywood-labor-organizing version of Avengers Assemble! On the heels of more than a year’s worth of damning disclosures around Marvel Studios’ systematic overworking and underpayment of visual-effects workers on its blockbuster movies and streaming series, VFX crews at Marvel have finally petitioned to demand union recognition from the studio.

I’ve heard time and again VFX teams are pushed to the breaking point and underpaid. The underpaid side is in reference to the little indie shops who do amazing visual effects work.

It’s nice to see them organizing and if Hollywood isn’t careful they’ll miss all of next Blockbuster season.

Tim Hardwick • Mac Rumors

Apple is sunsetting its long-running iTunes Movie Trailers app as it begins hosting movie trailers exclusively in the company’s flagship TV app, MacRumors can report.

There was a time when I’d browse all the upcoming summer blockbusters using Apples Movie Trailers page. Then I switched to this app because it was a nice app I could use on my phone.

At some point I discovered Trailer Town and started using that but, sadly, it stopped updating a number of years back. I’d always wanted a mobile app for it and now that Apple is shuttering their standalone app it’s time for the developers of Trailer Town to revive it! 😃

Mara Negrut • WillowTree Engineering Blog

A few weeks ago, two small teams of WillowTree engineers embarked on a mission to answer the question: What is the impact of using AI tools for engineering? Each team was composed of two developers and a test engineer. Led by the same technical requirements manager, they worked on rebuilding an existing weather app in React Native, with a focus on iOS. The teams each had their own Jira Kanban board and backlog, with identical tickets arranged in the same order. The big difference: one team was encouraged to leverage AI tools during their development and testing process, while the other was not allowed to use any AI at all. The robots team was called Team Skynet1, and the no-robots team was Team Butlerian2 (they will be referred to as such from this point on).

A nifty experiment! Go read the piece and enjoy.! 🤖

So, what is this, any bug people out there? 😆

Whoa! I can’t believe I missed this! It’s been a year since my knee replacement and it is, no doubt, one of the best decisions I ever made.

I realize I didn’t have a surgery or knee category when I wrote my series of blog posts about my knee, which is a real shame. I need to add a category, search back through the posts, and categorize them all.

My first update was pretty simple. I’d just woken up and was extremely happy!

As it stands my knee is doing really well. I still get some extremely minor pains in my knee area but those are mostly in the supporting structure. I’m older, overweight, and out of shape so you have to expect some aches and pains in the body.

Update #2

When, or if, the right knee goes and I’m not too old I’ll have it replaced as well.

I won’t lie and say it was a cakewalk. I had my struggles and it was painful at times but it was all worth it. I didn’t even post about the pulmonary embolism I developed in my right lung, requiring a trip to the ER. I had to be put on blood thinners for a few months. That was not fun.

My new knee allows me to walk long distances, do yard work, play with my grandkids, and stand for longer than 30 minutes without excruciating pain.

Obligatory one year picture. Looks a lot better, doesn’t it!

I thought I’d share some early influences who got me into blogging and helped me model my blogging style, if you will.

Dave Winer

Dave is an early blogger, creator of RSS, and co-creator of Podcasting.

Dave’s writing and frequent tiny posts were the way to go before we had social networks. Blogging was our social network. His blogs style heavily influenced my own.

Jeffrey Zeldman

Jeffrey is a Web Standards pioneer, wonderful human being, and fantastic writes.

He doesn’t blog nearly as much as he use to, but I’d imagine he’s busy.

Evan Williams

Back when I was trying to figure out how to write more frequently on my website I had no idea there was a thing called blogging. I happened across an article about something called Blogger — Evan’s creation — so I signed up. As they say, the rest is history.

My blogging started off here at rob.crabapples.net in early 2001, moved to iam.fahrni.me in 2009, and returned here in August 2021. It’s hard to believe it’s been two years.

These different sites, over a combined 22 years, are my blogging presence.

Hopefully there are many more years to come.

Anil Dash via Blue Sky

I think I am just giving up on getting people to realize that, by committing their words and personal reputation to Substack’s platform, they’re enabling openly venal people to profit from their creativity and labor. I guess folks just really truly do not care.

Back when Nilay Patel interviewed Substacks CEO and it became clear they clearly do not care if you’re a racist, misogynist, or Nazi, they’ll give you a platform for cold hard cash I reached out via Substack’s own Notes product to tell a couple of my favorite reads; Robert Reich and Steven Beschloss, about that interview. They paid no attention. I mean, why would they? I’m Joe Nobody. 😕

No, I really want you to answer that question. Is that allowed on Substack Notes? “We should not allow brown people in the country.” - Nilay Patel from Substack CEO interview

I love that Anil points to using WordPress to do a newsletter. That’s a great choice. ❤️

Scripting News

This is about a service that is sold to end users and developers. The users pay for the service, and developers invest in it. Once it’s up and running it will be the foundation for the web as an open platform for users and developers.

I was reading this nodding my head in agreement because I see the usefulness of it. As I was wondering what current massive services like AWS, Azure, and Google Compute could be used to creat something like this it dawned on me that perhaps GitHub already fulfills all these needs?

It has an identity system, it allows you to store whatever you want in an ordered way, and you could create multiple identities with multiple accounts and give them access across any of your repositories. That last one is a bit of a stretch but it would work (I think?) 😃

I don’t know if Dave will see this but I hope he does and I hope it rings true for him or is at least worth investigating.

Food for thought. 🍔

Wow. This guy is such an idiot and loves to play with fire. He’s a mob boss.

Of course this is a threat to any and all who’ve worked to get him to trial but it’s not a direct threat directed at a single person, is it?

Hey, have you heard of the Second Amendment? I hear it’s a right of all Americans.

Where was I? Right, idiot. It may be that after January 6th Orange Man’s supporters are a little hesitant to go to jail for him. Will we see an attempt made on the life of a judge or prosecutor because of this idiots threat?

I really wish the judge could throw him in the slammer for this.

That shade of orange matches his orange makeup. 😆

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

My time as a pinch hitter on my current project comes to an end next Wednesday but I’ve enjoyed the ride.

My next project is undecided at the moment but I know there are two possibilities. I’d be happy to work on either.

Lisa Respers France • CNN

Paul Reubens, who found fame as the quirky man-child character Pee-wee Herman, has died, according to an announcement on his verified social media.

I liked Mr. Reubens as the flatulent “superhero” Spleen in Mystery Men. Pure sophomoric comedy.

RIP 🪦

Naomi Nix and Will Oremus • Washington Post

Initially, the team carried just two product managers and one or two designers alongside dozens of engineers — a flatter and more coder-dominated group than most Meta product teams, Mosseri said. (At launch, it had grown to three product managers, three designers and 50 coders.) Instead of 30-minute presentations on a single design decision, typical at Facebook and Instagram, “It would be like, ‘Here are six things we need to go through this week.’”

Lean teams can often pull off amazing things if they’re extremely talented. I’d imagine this team is extremely talented. The other thing that helped them succeed was the freedom to cut to the bare minimum allowed to make a great 1.0.

Also, 50 engineers isn’t a small team. 😃

Raymond Chen • The Old New Thing

Depending on what version of Windows you have, you might see a body of water where Poland should be.

Mr. Chen has been involved with the Windows team for 30 years and has been sharing his stories on The Old New Thing for 20. He’s a real gift to us old guys who wrote Windows apps.

His title should be Microsoft Historian. 📜

Gleb Tsipursky • Fortune

Unispace found that nearly half (42%) of companies with return-to-office mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated. And almost a third (29%) of companies enforcing office returns are struggling with recruitment. In other words, employers knew the mandates would cause some attrition, but they weren’t ready for the serious problems that would result.

This doesn’t shock me. Once you settle into a routine at home it’s really difficult to muster the desire to go back to the office. Some folks need to be in an office with other folks but other, like me, don’t need it.

I like the control I have over my environment. My desk, my chair, heck I even bought my own monitor so I could make my setup just the way I want it. Couple that with no commute and the convenience of walking up stairs to our kitchen for lunch or coffee and it’s hard to beat. 🏡

Kim Zetter • WIRED

The backdoor, known for years by vendors that sold the technology but not necessarily by customers, exists in an encryption algorithm baked into radios sold for commercial use in critical infrastructure. It’s used to transmit encrypted data and commands in pipelines, railways, the electric grid, mass transit, and freight trains. It would allow someone to snoop on communications to learn how a system works, then potentially send commands to the radios that could trigger blackouts, halt gas pipeline flows, or reroute trains.

Wow. This is a nightmare. We work really hard to make sure our code isn’t exploitable and here you have a company who intentionally made their software just that, exploitable. If you have a back door it’s an invite to every bad actor to walk right on in. 🫣

Jim ODonnell • Barn Finds

Before I could get this post completed, this 1947 Lincoln Continental cabriolet disappeared from Facebook Marketplace.

I love this car! Design in the 40’s and 50’s was beautiful. Lots of curves and fins and just plain style. Restoring a car like this would be a real honor.

Beyond the beauty of the design it sported a whopping 125 horse power from its 292 V12. 😆

Kylie Robison • Fortune

But in June, Bluesky found itself embroiled in its own controversy after a user signed up for the service with a racist handle incorporating the N-word, and had apparently been permitted to use the platform for weeks without anyone at the company seeming to object.

Bluesky seems to be attracting a lot of the folks who make Twitter so attractive to many and with that it’s also attracting the terrible people.

I miss some actors and writers from Twitter and some seem to have taken to Bluesky. But if Bluesky is going to allow racism and hate to exist on the platform then I really don’t care to use it.

Yes, I have an account but I rarely use it. I’ve found a home in Mastodon.

Joshua Sokol • The Atlantic

One dusky June evening, two days before the 2022 Pennsylvania Firefly Festival, the biologist Sarah Lower sat on a back porch, watching the sky for a specific gradation of twilight. A group of Lower’s students from Bucknell University hung around her, armed with butterfly nets and stopwatches for counting the time between firefly flashes—a way to differentiate between the multiple lightning-bug species that live here at the edge of Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest.

I love fireflies! It’s one of the things I’ve come to love and look forward to here in Virginia. Little critters with butts that light up! What could be better?

I feel fortunate to be able to walk outside and watch these beautiful creatures at work. Alas, it seems they’re almost finished for the season but watching them was a real joy while it lasted.🧡

Justine Bateman • The Daily Beast

Hollywood CEOs Would Sooner Wreck an Industry Than Suffer Bruised Egos

It feels like this could get really ugly and I hope for the sake of the writers this whole mess will work itself out in their favor, but I’m not holding my breath. 😮‍💨

Lauren Forristal • TechCrunch

Warner Bros. Discovery reported its second-quarter earnings results Thursday, revealing that it dropped in 1.8 million streaming subscribers across HBO, Discovery+ and its new combined streaming service Max.

This is a real bummer. Max is my most watched service, but only from the HBO perspective. To see them combine the catalogs of Discovery and HBO feels like a bad idea. Why not have two apps with one set of credentials? 🤷🏻‍♂️

No commentary this time around. I haven’t posted anything about Space Karen in a while so the articles have been stacking up.

Enjoy.

Juli Clover • MacRumors

Twitter or “X” CEO Elon Musk today said that he plans to speak with Apple CEO Tim Cook about lower App Store fees for creators who earn money through subscriptions on the Twitter/X social network.

Charlie Warzel • The Atlantic

This question, with its exclamatory urgency, has never been more relevant to Twitter than in the past 48 hours, when Musk decided to nuke 17 years’ worth of brand awareness and rename the thing. The artist formerly known as Twitter is now X. What is happening?! indeed.

Tom Warren • The Verge

Twitter Blue, which Elon Musk is currently rebranding to X Blue, now includes the option to hide the notorious blue checkmark. Twitter Blue subscribers recently started noticing the “hide your blue checkmark” option on the web and in mobile apps, offering the ability to hide that they’re paying for Twitter and avoid memes about how “this mf paid for twitter.”

Asher Notheis • Washington Examiner

Actor Mark Hamill has called for people on social media to partake in a boycott of X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Robert Reich

Yesterday, it was reported that Elon Musk’s X Corp., parent of Twitter, has sent a letter to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) accusing the nonprofit of making “a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically” — and threatening to sue CCDH.

Casey Newton • platformer.news

The X Corporation has in recent days devoted more time to signage-related issues than is prudent for a company that continues to lose advertisers, employees, and users’ time. But it’s consistent with Musk’s current incarnation as a cultural vandal, using his money and power to deface once-influential institutions and dare anyone to stop him.

Daring Fireball

Any normal company planning a product name change would have everything sorted out with the iOS App Store and Android Play Store ahead of time. Needless to say, X Corp is not a normal company and so of course they didn’t have anything sorted out.

Matt Binder • Mashable

Elon Musk and company take @x handle from its original user. He got zero dollars for it.

Rumman Chowdhury • The Atlantic

Everyone has an opinion about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. I lived it. I saw firsthand the harms that can flow from unchecked power in tech. But it’s not too late to turn things around.

Casey Newton • platformer.news

On Monday afternoon, a crane rolled up to Twitter’s headquarters on Market Street. The plan was to remove the sign from the historic building’s facade, putting a symbolic end to the company that owner Elon Musk had over the weekend re-branded to X.

Taylor Lorenz • The Washington Post

Far-right Twitter influencers first on Elon Musk’s monetization scheme

Reuters

Elon Musk said Twitter’s cash flow remains negative because of a nearly 50% drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load.

Looks like the orange man is about to get another indictment.

Idiot man. Why are you such an asshole criminal? Stop breaking the law and you’ll stop being indicted.

You’re welcome.

Jerk.

Ahead of the NASCAR race at Richmond today I thought I’d share what I think are the best and worst liveries on the grid.

The Best

Chase Elliott usually runs a NAPA livery so it’s nice to see this mint green on his car.

Denny Hamlin seems to run FedEx and Sport Clips mostly. This blue-green is a really nice change and looked really amazing next to Kevin Harvick’s livery last week at Pocono.

Bubba Wallace always has the best looking liveries on the grid be it McDonalds, DoorDash, or Dr. Pepper. They’re always great looking.

Alex Bowman’s car mostly sports Ally liveries in various configurations. Love ‘em.

The Worst

I’m sure Menards is a really wonderful place to shop full of amazing people but that typography looks terrible.

Something in NASCAR that’s way overdone is a sense of patriotism. So many red, white, and blue liveries. Which isn’t a bad thing! It’s just this one is so boring for such dynamic talent as Kyle Larson.

That’s it. That’s the list. I’m sure many NASCAR fans will disagree but that’s why we have so many cars to choose from!

At the end of the season I hope to post a better list of my favorites from any race.

Also, back in the dinosaur years cars didn’t change sponsors from week to week. That’s definitely not the case today and I love the variation.

Who found me on LinkedIn this week? Well, no real surprises, I guess?

WillowTree makes sense given I asked our CEO something in a public space some thought was stupid of me to do. I didn’t see it that way and it was definitely presented with the best of intentions. Still, seen as bold. Perhaps folks thought “Who is this idiot” and immediately did a LinkedIn search? I dunno?

I love seeing Sketch there! That is a premier Mac application I think any died in the wool Mac developer would love to be a part of. Honored.

Vicon Industries also makes a lot of sense because I worked for Pelco and I’m very familiar with video encoding and decoding and generally how our digital solution was architected and built. Vicon is looking for C# / .Net devs for their new cloud solution. Again, honored to show up in that list.

I’m not sure why Sonos shows up in there but it’s cool. It looks like they need iOS Devs. Makes sense.

CapTech is a consulting service. I can see why that’s in there too, given I work at an agency and have run my own consulting company.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I’m getting more and more excited about writing code full time at work. I’m sure that won’t last but I’m going to enjoy every minute of it while I can. 😃

I ran into issues getting my git SSH keys to work earlier in the week and while I find that frustrating it was also a nice challenge to fix. I’m up and running and ready to break some stuff! 👍🏼

I hope you enjoy your coffee and the links.

Sarah Burns • The Irish Times

Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor has died at the age of 56, her family has announced.

The 80’s was my era of music and I most certainly remember Nothing compares 2 U, it was a big hit.

The thing that really struck me is, she was 56 years old. As I age my mortality has occupied more of my thoughts than I care to admit, but there you go.

God speed. ❤️

Jacob Zinkula • Business Insider

ChatGPT creator says AI advocates are fooling themselves if they think the technology is only going to be good for workers : ‘Jobs are definitely going to go away’

Emphasis is mine. I’ve not used ChatGPT but we’re pushing into AI hard at WillowTree. It’s such a hot button item at the moment all agencies will have to take it very seriously.

For my daily work I see it as a really smart auto complete. The next evolution in code assistant. It felt like cheating early on but as a developer you still have to validate the output. Did you get valid and good code? It may not work all the time. Yes, it’s fallible but it’s also early days. I am certain I’ll use it at some point to help generate some code.

Give it another 10 years to mature. I’ll be really close to retirement by then and the next next generation can use it to their advantage. 😃

Owen Bellwood • Jalopnik

According to General Motors boss Mary Barra, Chevrolet has backtracked on its plans to completely kill off the Bolt, which has so far seen its sales more than double in 2023. Now, the company is working on a next-generation Bolt, which will join Chevy’s other electric models: the Silverado EV, Blazer EV and Equinox EV.

I found this really encouraging! We need more little EVs in the market and I always thought the Bolt was a nice little car.

Hopefully the next generation gets its fire issues under control.

Oh, the only downside I can think of is Chevy’s insistence on building their entire infotainment system.

Manton Reece

Dave Winer posted a 12-minute audio recording on his blog, addressed to me but applicable to everyone who is creating tools for the social web. Listening to it, I have a bunch of thoughts. In this post, I just want to start with server-to-server ActivityPub, and leave some of the other technologies Dave brings up for later.

Dave Winer has created a bunch of the technologies we rely on everyday in the blogging world; blogs, RSS, and Podcasting delivery. Now he’s trying to unify the mechanism to span posting to multiple social networks and blogging.

Manton Reece is the creator of Micro.blog — the service I use to publish this site — and is into open standards like MetaWeblog and ActivityPub, so much so Micro.Blog is a Fediverse server by federating with Mastodon.

To see these two chatting about putting something together to bride these systems is nice to see. I see what Dave is proposing as the next version of MetaWeblog, perhaps extended to accommodate new blogging and social network norms.

Perhaps Micropub could serve to do this? I’ve not looked into it but it seems like it could be the way to go?

I have my own opinions on the matter and I’m sure I’ll voice them at some point. In the meantime it’s nice to see this happening and I’m going to keep an eye on it. 👀

Robert Reich

Someone who has tried to overthrow the U.S. government cannot be president.

Mr. Reich is point out what may sound obvious at first but what he’s really saying is it shouldn’t take a conviction to eliminate TFG. We all know he tried to overturn a fair and valid election in 2019. We all know he rallied his supporters to storm the Capitol and try to stop the formality of recording the election results.

He doesn’t need to be convicted. He’s a danger to democracy and the rule of law. That’s disqualifying. ⚖️

leboncoin Engineering Blog

I recall how, when I was a junior developer, I often felt happy and reassured when I was writing software. It felt like a safe place compared to the overwhelming complexities of the world. The simple, deterministic functions, mechanical in their way of working, offered comfort. If you inject an input, it always gives the same output. It’s controllable, manageable, uncomplicated!

If you’re good at what you do eventually someone will notice and give you more to do with greater responsibility. Eventually you’ll be mentoring people and more junior developers will naturally look to you for your experience.

It’s not a bad thing. It’s just what happens and isn’t isolated to software engineering. This happens in all fields.

While I enjoy working with Junior folks there’s also this big part of me that’s ready to sit in the corner and just work on features and bugs, and that’s all. A simplified dev life. 😃

Dean Obeidallah

Barbie not only broke box office records, she destroyed the GOP’s Barbie Boycott

Barbie isn’t a film I plan on seeing but it sounds like the GOP is once again up in arms over cultural issues dealt with in the film.

I hope it breaks all the records. 🎬

Tony • arcadeblogger.com

I was visiting my family in the Chicago suburbs recently, when my niece mentioned she saw “some TRON thing” sitting on a curb while she was riding her bike through the neighbourhood.

As a teen I remember well the arcade in Exeter. It was called the Quarter Slot. Ahhh, good times. Anywho, I will never forget the Tron game — not the one mentioned in the article — because there were two guys who spent a crazy amount of time playing it and taking copious notes on how to beat every level.

Yes, those were the days.

James Surowiecki • Fast Company

Threads has one big advantage over Twitter: Zuckerberg understands advertising

If Threads can pull people away from Twitter — I mean, ahem, X — does that help to extinctify the ailing bird?

Who knows. Musk is crazy rich so I’d imagine he can keep it afloat for a very long time.

All I want to know is when will he be selling Twitter.com and for how much? It would make for a great Mastodon instance. 🐘

Ryan Erik King • Jalopnik

The Alpine F1 Team is currently competing at each race weekend with the odds slightly stacked against them. The Renault power unit used by the French factory team is believed to be 30 horsepower behind their rivals. Under normal circumstances, Alpine would be told simply to improve on their own, but there’s currently a freeze on engine development. The FIA, the sport’s governing body, wants to allow Alpine to catch up.

Alpine is kind of what remains of the Renault team and it seems like they’re going backwards.

I’d love to see them move closer to the front of the pack but they continue to be one of the “back of the pack” teams with flashes of brilliance on rare occasion.

Formula One is an extremely tough sport to compete in. Teams with extremely deep pockets can buy great engineering and dedicate huge resources to land their teams in victory lane. It also makes the races really boring. 😃

Here’s hoping Renault is given a chance to fix their horsepower issue ahead of next season. At this point I suppose it doesn’t matter much.

I’m a Haas supporter myself. It’s the only American team on the grid so why not support them? They also have Guenther Steiner who is the most entertaining of all the Principals in F1. 😃

Oh, by the way! Since you’re an American team why not use American built power? I mean, you run Ford motors Stuart Haas Racing, why not work with them on an amazing F1 power unit? I’d love to see that! Don’t let Red Bull be the only team doing it!

Who else is looking forward to the next season of Drive to Survive?

Tim Hardwick • MacRumors

Apple has become the target of a £785 million ($1 billion) class action lawsuit on behalf of over 1,500 developers in the UK over its App Store fees, reports TechCrunch.

Unfortunately this is pocket change for Apple. I don’t make much as a developer of apps for Apple devices but to those who do giving up 15 to 30% of revenue is a big deal.

Even if Apple allow for third party stores or payment processors they’re still going to charge their fee. Might as well keep the App Store as it is and be done with it.

Daring Fireball

Translation From Hostage Code to English of X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino’s Company-Wide Memo

I mean, if Yaccarino isn’t actually asking for help to get out now I suppose she will be in six months to a year because Space Karen won’t agree with her about something and drive her insane or sack her.

Just let Twitter fade away, sell off the domain, and let’s move forward with the open web.

Janis Mara • berkeleyside.org

Peet’s is widely credited with transforming the industry — after all, the three founders of Starbucks learned much of their craft from founder Alfred Peet — but there’s much more to it than that.

I’d always known Peet’s was a big influence in the coffee world but I had no idea how much of an influence it really was.

This story is a fun read about one employees view from the inside. ☕️

It was a record sales week for my little apps!

Yes, I’m genuinely happy about this.

How’s this for a prototype logo? 😂

I have zero artistic talent. Oh, in case you can’t figure it out. That’s an IB, not the number 13, and it’s my stab at a logo for Indie Developers to use on whatever to act as a stamp signaling the app is Indie Built!

When our granddaughter is over she has this old iPhone 5c that was mine at one time. I absolutely loved that little thing but iPhone 7 FOMO got me to upgrade mid way through the iPhone 7 upgrade cycle. I kept the 5c as a test device, which is something I’ve done with all of my phones.

Fast forward a bit and the 5c is no longer useful as a test device because it’s 32-bit and Apple dropped OS support for that. So, it just sat in a drawer for quite a while.

Eventually I reset it and passed it on to our granddaughter as a toy. She loves talking to voice memos and writing stuff in note, so it’s kind of perfect for her. Oh, not to mention all the wild pictures we get. 🤣

Anywho, I had the 5c out last night charging it for her and realized how amazing it felt in hand. It made me wish I could have this exact form factor, plastic and all, with modern guts and a big storage device. Even if it still had the older camera I’d be cool with it.

Can someone get on that? Could modern M Series chips fit inside the smaller case and would the battery last? I kind of doibt it, but it would be fun to have.

Gracie knows how to sit on stairs. 🤣

Dave Rogers

I don’t know what we’re going to do. If we were better situated, I suppose we’d buy a “second home” in a safer state. Someplace to land if this place gets wiped out. But we’re not so well situated that we can afford a second home. And moving after we’ve spent so much time and money making this place the way we want it is almost impossible to contemplate. And we’re not getting any younger, either.

Dave is one of my Floridian friends I worry about. He’s opposed to everything DeSantis is doing to the state and he feels somewhat trapped. I hate this!

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been a strange week for me. I started on a new project, 50% of my time, as a developer while transferring my work as a Director the other 50% of my time. That is some strange hat swapping. 😃

Coffee in hand! Let’s go!

Allison Quinn • The Daily Beast

Middle school students in Florida will soon be taught that slavery gave Black people a “personal benefit” because they “developed skills.”

Florida is the worst place in our nation. How in the world can a government be so stupid and cruel all at the same time? Oh, right, Ron DeSantis is how.

Friends in Florida. If you have the will to stay I hope you’re ready to fight the good fight. These sorts of policies on seem to be getting more and more extreme. I hope, for the sake of future Floridians, and our Nation you can make a change.

The other option? Get out.

Steven Beschloss

A deeply disturbing New York Times story published Monday described in polite terms a plan for “sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government,” what might be more accurately described as an aggressive effort underway to install dictatorship if Donald Trump retakes the White House.

I love reading Steve Beschloss’ work. I’ve never read a story of his with such a tone of fear. I’ve made the comment that I thought TFG wanted to be a dictator but we’ve managed to avoid it. I keep coming back to a statement he made about China not having term limits for their leader and saying “maybe we should try that” or something to that effect.

No, we shouldn’t try that out. We don’t need a dictator. Stopping that for future generations is worth dying for. I hope I don’t have to see it come to fruition. 🙏🏼

Nikita Lisitsa

It only runs on certain architectures (arm64-v8a) and Android API versions (26+), but still. It doesn’t sound like a big deal until you realize that I’m using my own C++ game engine. It took me about a week to support building for Android, and in this post I’m going to tell you how this is done.

So how cool is this? Yeah! Go write your Android code in C++, that’s the way it should be done! 😃

Yes, I’m a big fan of C++ and kind of wish we could write more platform neutral UI code using the language but each platform brings its own style and unique perspective on their UI. It’s just plain better to do your UI using the frameworks and preferred language of the platform. In most cases. 🔧

Games, of course, seem to be the exception. 👾

Michael Lopp

I use Bear 300 times a day. Probably more. I could sketch their five preference screens from memory. I’ve written and edited two books in Bear. I’ve spent hours understanding how tags propagate through the system. Ask me about their sync system. Quiz me on their keyboard shortcuts.

Shiny Frog recently released a new version of their award winning writing tool, Bear. Congratulations! 🥳

Of course I have it on my iPhone and Mac but I’ve found I really enjoy the absolute simplicity and versatility of Iconfactory’s Tot for writing. It’s just plain old text and I add Markdown by hand. Super easy.

They’re both wonderful writing tools if you’re ever in the market for one.

Eduardo Domene Junior

Before Async/Await was officially introduced into Swift, many of us adopted Combine for one-shot operations that don’t necessarily need a stream of values, such as API calls. The new feature, however, makes such operations easier to construct and to read, thus it makes sense to consider migrating them. We will see a simple extension that lets us work with both Combine and Async/Await at the same time, making it possible to gradually migrate our code.

I haven’t written production code in a year-and-a-half. In that time a lot has changed in the iOS Development community. Namely SwiftUI and async / await have become the preferred way to do UI and asynchronous programming respectively.

The addition of async / await to my iOS and Mac development toolbox is a welcome site and one I’ll put to use in Stream.

Now if I can wrap my brain around SwiftUI I’ll be off and running. 👍🏼

Scott Dance • The Washington Post

In recent days, China set an all-time high of nearly 126 degrees Fahrenheit, while Death Valley hit 128 degrees, two shy of the highest reliably measured temperature on Earth. Phoenix experienced a record-breaking 19th consecutive day at or above 110 degrees Tuesday. And in the Middle East, the heat index reached 152 degrees, nearing — or surpassing — levels thought to be the most intense the human body can withstand.

Nahhh, climate change isn’t a thing. 🤬

I suppose Earth will heal herself by killing us all off. 🌞

Amanda Silberling • TechCrunch

According to Mullenweg, Tumblr is spending about $30 million more than it makes each year. This isn’t too surprising, given Tumblr’s history as a company.

I’d imagine most folks (all two of you) reading this blog have a Tumblr account? I know I do. At one point I’d considered using Tumblr as my blogging platform. It has almost everything I’m looking for, but there are two things missing; taxonomy choice and static publishing.

I like my posts to have a YYYY/MM/DD/post format and I love having them published statically. By having them published as plain HTML it makes it super easy to pick them up and move them somewhere else.

For some reason I still have a soft spot for Tumblr and even tried to get a job there a few times! Heck, I’d still like to work for them. Perhaps I could influence them to make the changes I want? 🤔

Anywho, I hope it survives and manages to pull off ActivityPub and Mastodon support. Matt Mullenweg understands open communities and I believe Automattic will do right by the ActivityPub and Mastodon communities.

Kev Quirk

I love my Crocs. I have 3 pairs, and in this post I’m going to convince you that they’re the best shoes on earth.

I’ve worn Crocs and they are quite comfortable and squishy. I like that. 👞

Wil Wheaton

But, yes, I am a member of SAG-AFTRA since 1980, and I am on strike with my union, which has been in solidarity with the WGA since May.

Wil Wheaton is an interesting character and seems like a really great fella.

It’s nice to see actors come out in force to support writers. They need each other. 🪧

Lawrence Hodge • Jalopnik

Whether you like it or not, subscription-based vehicle features are coming. Make no mistake, its a horrible idea to have to pay to unlock a feature that has already been built into your vehicle. But automakers are in the business to make money and they don’t care.

I really hate this trend. Fine, charge me for satellite radio, no problem or for OnStar but this idea of charging a subscription for heated seats and who knows what else is ludicrous to me.

It’s a good thing we continue to have choices. Chevrolet seems to be headed down the subscription road but Ford may not? I hope we have at least one big American car maker who keeps it simple.

Joe Kukura • sfist

There’s yet another bid for the bankrupt, 127-year-old Anchor Brewing Co., and the call is coming from inside the house, as brewery employees are launching a seemingly longshot bid to buy the company.

I’d like to see Anchor survive. It’s made it through tough times and here’s another one staring them in the face.

If they do close here’s hoping someone revives the name and recipes down the road. I hope it doesn’t get that far.

Oh, and shame on Sapporo.

Anil Dash

Today, in the New York Times, Paul Krugman shares a key insight that his headline editor summarizes as The Rich Are Crazier Than You and Me. While this is true, what’s even more key to me is why the most prominent tech tycoons (who are one of the most powerful cohorts of the rich) have gotten so radicalized.

The Silicon Valley is full of strange bro billionaires like Andreessen, Dorsey, Thiel, and Space Karen. They’re American Oligarchs with a thirst for power and some strange ideas.

The ultra rich definitely live in a reality distortion field of their own making and enable each other.

Ms. Gracie visited the vet for the first time today. She was 45 pounds when we got her, now she’s 61.

Here’s a picture of Gracie and Kolby on the deck. She’s only six months old, he’s six years old. 😃