Rob Fahrni

Your best bet is to pick a distribution medium that gives you portability of your content and some measure of your audience. Today that would be SMTP (email), RSS (podcasting), SMS, Usenet, Tor, Telegram... When we open source @tumblr it could be one of these.

— Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) April 17, 2022

Now isn’t that something? I hope Mr. Mullenweg finds a way to federate WordPress and Tumblr with other systems, like Twitter.

But this, this is a neat way to start something like that.

We’re entering an interesting time. I feel like we’re on the crux of Twitter, WordPress, insert your favorite system here, becoming peer systems. Data flowing freely between them. Rolling up into whatever UI you prefer. Feed Reader, Twitter, Mastodon, Micro.blog. The list of potential rendering tools is as long the the list of publishing tools.

[CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/15/politics/read-mark-meadows-texts-mike-lee-chip-roy/index.html): _“The messages reveal how two GOP allies of then-[President Donald Trump](https://www.cnn.com/specials/politics/president-donald-trump-45) lobbied and encouraged the White House in its efforts to overturn the election. The text messages were obtained by the House select committee and reviewed by CNN.”_

It’s chilling to see a US Senator propose a plan in writing to ignore the will of the voters & steal an election. That’s precisely what this is. https://t.co/GrNNT3xA2I

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) April 16, 2022

If, after all of this, we don’t do something to kick these jerks out of office we absolutely deserve the dictator we’ll get.

It’s no wonder the GOP didn’t want a January 6 investigation.

Unbelievable.

Om Malik: “Since everyone has decided that Elon Musk’s $54-a-share offer for Twitter is just a troll, the question remains who else can buy the company? Is there a suitor who can digest Twitter and deal with all its baggage? Or is the company destined to be a middling underachiever?”

I've now been asked multiple times for my take on Elon's offer for Twitter.

So fine, this is what I think about that. I will assume the takeover succeeds, and he takes Twitter private. (I have little knowledge/insight into how actual takeover battles work or play out)

(long 🧵)

— Yishan (@yishan) April 15, 2022

Musk loves toying with the market.

This is just another pump and dump game for him.

jfo: “Languages are often judged initially on their ‘Hello, world!’ program. How easy is it to write? To run? How easy is it to understand? It’s a very simple program, of course, one of the simplest, even… just produce a little text, and display it, what could be simpler?”

This is a great, geeky, review of the classic ‘Hello World’ program.

9 to 5 Mac: “An in-depth report from Bloomberg last week explained that many employees are frustrated by this change, particularly as Apple advertises that its products make remote work easy… and yet it won’t allow full-time remote work for its own employees.”

I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about return to office from lots of people.

Daring Fireball: “Netflix has built an incredibly valuable brand, and part of that brand’s foundation is that Netflix is a premium service that doesn’t do rinky-dink shit like force you to watch unskippable ads.”

I don’t want me no ads, but if the price of Netflix continues to rise… who knows?

Remotion Blog - Dan Wood: “Given all that, it probably won’t surprise you to hear me say: I wish more people built native instead of going the Electron route. Here’s why I think native software is worth it.”

Dan Wood is a longtime Mac developer and has created some beloved Mac software. It’s nice to see he’s still at it and a champion for native Mac software.

Protocol: “While the HBO Max product team was working on what Lyons called “paper cuts,” it also began a much bigger project of rebuilding the underlying tech platform from scratch.”

I know how much work goes into developing media streaming apps. It’s not easy.

I was excited to use HBO Max when it was available for my Roku and was surprised how slow it was.

The good news is, it’s getting better, and HBO Max has become my favorite streaming choice. The content is amazing and they land new movies early.

Jet trail

There’s always time to smell the roses.

The Daily Beast: “The Senate voted to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the newest member of the United States Supreme Court on Thursday, delivering on President Joe Biden’s vow to successfully nominate the first Black female justice in the court’s history.”

We got a good one. It’s nice to see such a qualified person sit on the Supreme Court.

Congratulations Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson!

MacRumors: “In time, the Deliveries app will likely stop showing direct tracking information in the app for additional services.”

This is a real drag. I’ve been a Deliveries user for quite some time now. I have no idea why delivery companies would lock this down, unless it had to do with privacy? If that’s the case sign these third parties up, make sure they’re trustworthy, and give them an API to use. One that requires the user to give permission to the app before using it.

Platformer: “On Monday, it was revealed that over the past month he has become its largest individual shareholder. On Tuesday, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal that Musk now has a seat on the board.”

Money can’t make you happy, but it can buy you a seat on Twitter’s Board.

It would be really great if some of these companies could have some sort of Peon Board. A board of normals, the unwealthy, the unpowerful, to help offset the power held by a few. A super wealthy few.

Fingers crossed he doesn’t bring back the orange menace. 🤡

Microsoft Edge Blog: “Beginning in Microsoft Edge 100, we’ve updated sleeping tabs to enable pages that are sharing a browsing instance with another page to now go to sleep.”

I had to put this in here because it reminded me of something we did for media streams at Pelco. If the user went from a 2x2 display of video — a grid of four videos — to focus on a single stream of video, we’d freeze the other three streams. That meant we’d keep the structure of the pipeline and the attributes to restart it, but we’d release as many system resources as possible back to the OS.

When the user went back to a 2x2, or other layout, we’d thaw the streams and they start displaying video with their corresponding audio stream.

Performance work can be extremely frustrating and add a lot of complexity to software, but, when you get it right it can be very rewarding.

Maddow Blog: “But I was also struck by Trump’s focus on what he still considers one of the key details of Jan. 6: the pre-riot crowd size. In fact, the Republican wants more credit for having brought together anti-election conspiracy theorists, some of whom attacked the U.S. Capitol after having been riled up by Trump’s lies.”

The Former Guy is so egotistical. I’m shocked he hasn’t talked himself into prison.

I never expect him to spend a day in prison. Us normal folk would’ve been thrown in such a deep hole we’d never be mentioned again.

Los Angeles Times: “The walkout came in response to the company announcing Thursday that it would no longer require employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to work in the office, according to an email from Chief Administrative Officer Brian Bulatao that was shared by employees and subsequently posted on Twitter.”

COVID is still a thing and I don’t know about you but I don’t care to have it.

Apparently others are thinking that way.

Bloomberg: “To some, including the 7,500 of Apple’s 165,000 employees who belong to a Slack room dedicated to advocating for remote work, it was bruising. ‘They are trolling us, right?’ one wrote.”

Apple is a fairly backwards company. It’s just in their DNA. They don’t do a lot of things other Silicon Valley companies do. E.G. last I heard, they didn’t have free food, snacks, or even free beverages for their employees. That seems standard fare in most tech companies, but not Apple.

Yeah, it must be amazing working 80 hours a week on an operating system used by millions. But there is way more to life than work.

If you’re at home you can at least somewhat control which 80 hours you work in the week.

Working from home gives me back an hour of commute time a day. I like that. I also love having an afternoon coffee with my wife or having lunch together. It’s just much easier to do random stuff from home.

Grandma’s Roses

We’re really cooking here in the great San Joaquin Valley today. 🥵

<img border=“0” src=“http://static.crabapples.net/apple-rotten.jpg" align=“right” alt=“Rotten Apple”/>Before I came to California I downloaded some movies to watch from our collection on Movies Anywhere.

I’ve watched most of them and wanted to watch something else so I downloaded Dune on HBO Max. Worked perfectly.

I was also able to download You Were Never Really Here on Amazon Prime Video. Worked as expected and I enjoyed the film.

Today I decided I’d download Slow Horses to watch this evening on Apple TV+. It failed, twice as of this writing.

Why? For a company pushing services so hard, why is it so painful? Sure, you can say “But they have a lot of users.” Absolutely, they do. But do you think HBO Max and Amazon Prime are smaller?

It’s disappointing.

One of these days I’m going to run Charles and see what URLs each of these services hits for streaming content.

Down the road from my Grandma’s place is a house with a number of rose bushes.

I stopped to smell them and a bee came out of the flower. It flew around a bit, landed on the flower, crawled around, and went back into it.

I tried to get a picture of the bee, but I couldn’t do it, so here’s a picture of the flower.

I watched Dune for the third time and the abrupt ending still drives me nuts.

I hope the second part is as good as the first.

The sleeper must awaken.

[Marc Edwards - Bjango](https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays2/): _“Spec wise, it’s incredibly similar to LG’s 5K UltraFine, and the display of the now discontinued 27-inch iMac.”_

This is a really great piece by Marc if you’d like to know a bit more about good displays options for your Mac.

Pod News: “YouTube is looking at ingesting podcast RSS feeds directly, the slides suggest, with a new podcasts homepage to be at youtube.com/podcasts (a URL that doesn’t work, yet).”

I’m not sure what to make of this. Is it a directory, a paid service, or something else altogether?

Apple’s podcast directory started out as just that, a directory. Now they have a paid service as well as the directory.

Hopefully Google will create a completely open directory as an alternative to Apple’s.

I hope they’re respecting the source of the original podcast file. Apple does this, at least for the time being.

John Siracusa: “Podcasts are now literally how I make my living.”

I’m super happy for John and I’m a fan of the man’s mini-rants, because he’s clever and funny.

Here’s hoping his podcast empire continues to flourish and he can bring us a few more Mac utilities.

Puck News: “Then the F-bombs flew. One of the most heavily managed, media-savvy movie stars of all time, was suddenly rage-screaming, off-mic but 100 percent clear, even up in my cheap seat: ‘Keep my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth.’ Twice, with even more fury the second time.”

I thought I was watching part of the show when Will Smith walked up on stage. When the audio was shut off I knew it wasn’t part of the show. I was able to read Will Smith’s lips when he dropped his second F💣.

I’m not for violence, but I’m pertective of my wife and children. I don’t think I’d have handled it this poorly. He could walked up and told Chris Rock what he did wasn’t cool and ask him to apologize to Jada.

As it was, Chris Rock handled it pretty well. He looked like the adult in the room, even if his joke went too far.

I’m convinced that between the examples set by Ted Cruz and Will Smith we can find an appropriate and honorable way to handle some guy making a stupid comment about your wife’s appearance.

— Ken Olin (@kenolin1) March 28, 2022

Michael J. Tsai: “A consistent subscriptions experience is supposedly one of the advantages of the App Store. But Apple privileges its own services, too.”

I’m certain most developers believe Apple can do whatever it wants with its own platform.

The real problem is they say one thing and do another. To say the App Store treats all developers the same is a complete lie.

I’m not a fan of people lying to me. Never have been.

Associated Press: “It didn’t go well: Trump wanted Pence to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and he was very unhappy the Vice President wouldn’t do it.”

Back to TFG. If we cannot kill off Trumpism we will be the next authoritarian government in the world with an autocrat at the top. He, and his family, will not leave until The People get them out by violent means. Yes, another Civil War.

It does make me wonder how many states would band together and secede from the union if that happens. I could see the west coast states; California, Oregon, and Washington, banding together to form a new country.

The world has so many problems. We just don’t need this.

Obstruction of justice, anyone? Violation of presidential records act? https://t.co/BTSGPMqhU3

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) March 29, 2022

There’s no fool like an April fool.

This is a very welcome sight here in the San Joaquin Valley of California.

It’s raining.

David Rothkopf: “Putin started this carnage without justification. He alone has made the decision to escalate. He has serially violated international laws and committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. He has lied about the threat posed by Ukraine and by NATO and the US.”

A month in. The madman must be stopped.

Who’s next? Poland, Moldova, Slovakia?

Ok, sure, it seems he fears NATO, but he’s also said he doesn’t want Ukraine as part of NATO because it will boarder Russia.

If Ukraine falls, Russia will be boarded by Poland.

Stack Overflow: “All in all, developers value flexibility. Not every work environment works for everyone in the same ways. Still, 45% developers say the ideal work environment is in their own home, while 27% say it’s in an office building.”

I loved going into the WillowTree office, I really did, but I definitely like working from home more.

I don’t have children running around daily, so it’s really easy to focus.

I know many of my coworkers have the opposite issue. Young ones running around the house so they’d like to go back to the office.

I’m glad we now have options.

Axios: “Since Virginia’s booze sales are regulated by the state, it sells Pappy for the manufacturer’s sales price — often hundreds or thousands dollars less than you can find it on the open market.”

I had no idea you could get Pappy at the recommended price in Virginia. That’s pretty cool.

I’d honestly find it difficult to find anything better than Bookers. Best Bourbon I’ve ever had.

I would be up for a Pappys for the sake of comparison.

Steve Beschloss: “It was just the antidote needed after the constant bullying, disruptions and demeaning of this brilliant jurist and Black woman by Republican Senators.”

Ketanji Brown Jackson is more than qualified for a seat on the bench. I don’t give a crap about the color of her skin or her gender. She’s amazing.

She’s earned a spot on the Supreme Court.

I'd say she's qualified.

Source: @washingtonpost pic.twitter.com/u18lPpQh1b

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 21, 2022

CNN: “He leads a team working at a military junkyard at an undisclosed location in Kyiv, repairing and repainting Russian military equipment for use by Ukrainian forces.”

Ukraine is full of resourceful, brave, people.

Even though small teams of Ukrainian defenders are wreaking havoc on Russian tank columns and supply lines I wish we could offer more help.

Truthout: “If Trump runs in 2024, we are opening ourselves up to a world of danger. The Republican Party is setting up a paradigm where if they win, they deem the election as legitimate, and if they lose, they refuse to certify for the Democratic candidate in swing states, offering up bogus voter fraud claims.”

If we’re not careful we’ll end up with our very own Putin in charge, only ours would be dumb as a post.

Not a single cloud in the sky, here in little Exeter, California.

Over the Sierra Nevada. The lack of snow pack is extremely concerning.

FAT 🛬

Arrived. This place is in big trouble now.

DEN - FAT 🛫

Fresno, here I come. Get ready.

You’ve been warned.

Fancy lunch in Denver. 😃

DEN 🛬

I have a little under an hour before boarding.

Maybe I can get some grub?

RIC - DEN 🛫

Headed to California to spend some time with my grandmother while she recovers from surgery.

Daring Fireball: ”The way the Node community works, just blindly slurping in other people’s package updates without knowing what’s in them, continues to boggle my mind.”

In one of yesterdays posts I referred to the React Native community as loosey goosey.

The node.js community is one of the reasons why.

Always pin your dependencies.

Heck, I’ve worked on projects where we’ve committed binaries, after doing a ‘pod install’, to the repo so we wouldn’t get an accidental update. Folks understood not to install stuff in their local build so we wouldn’t get random crap.

Another thing I’ve done is just include the code right in my project, no dependency manager. Especially if the code is really small.

Anywho, enough of the Development World According to Rob. 😄

A dear friend, Richard Caetano, sent me these photos from our time together, as developers, at Paramount Farms in late 2003, early 2004.

I’ve aged pretty hard over the last 19’ish years.

I realized at this time I was not cutout to be an IT developer. I was too accustomed to working with designers, testers, and a product roadmap to fit in. 😂

I was fired in November 2004, days before Thanksgiving.

Live and learn.

Back in my Pelco days I was the lead for what was unofficially the AV team. One of our designers made us a mascot of sorts and I love it. 🧡

Microsoft: “React Native isn’t just for mobile! Check out how the Windows 11 Settings app is leveraging React Native for Windows to deliver new features and capabilities to users faster and with the same great visual fidelity as Windows 11.”

I find it so strange Microsoft would choose to use React Native for features in the OS. They have C#/.NET which is a wonderful choice and highly optimized for Windows development. It also works with Windows UI 3.0.

The only reasons I can come up with are: 1) they’d like to demonstrate it can be done. 2) they don’t have developers working on this “feature” with the skill set required to do it in C++ or C#?

That second one is a real stretch but I just can’t resolve in my own brain why you’d choose this over your own tools?

Red Shift: “So let’s cause some drama and ruffle some feathers, and talk about why Flutter is better than React Native… in all the ways that don’t matter.”

One glaring downside to Flutter is it doesn’t do native UI. It’s all rendered by them. That is a pretty crummy thing to do.

I could see giving this a go for RxCalc if it used native controls. It has decent support for using C++ libraries and RxCalc’s calculations are C++.

Ward Abbas: ”After 3.5 years of working at Wix, mobile R&D, infrastructure team and as an ex-owner of react-native-navigation, i can shed the light on many issues directly related to the RN architecture (new and old) and indirect stuff that the framework can easily cause bad stuff more than good.”

More negative feedback about React Native.

Part of my consternation regarding React Native is the ecosystem seems “loosey-goosey.”

Lots of node dependencies dragged along for the ride and node has its own issues.

However, to make things better you have to get involved.