Rob Fahrni

Hello, Fahrni

Not encouraging but feels correct. Especially when you have Trump on stage recently saying the President should have the power to fire anyone in the government.

Authoritarian much?

The Right Wing in America is dedicated to the destruction of liberal democracy and multicultural society. They’re looking to replace it with an illiberal regime dedicated to white, evangelical, patriarchal, power in line with Russia and Hungary.

That’s a fact.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) March 13, 2022

Ars Technica: ”The new 27-inch monitor supports 5K resolution with over 1 billion colors via 14.7 million pixels. It also has True Tone technology to attenuate color warmth in different lighting situations, reaching up to 600 nits. Overlayed on the display is an antireflective coating, but there is also a nanotexture glass option to further reduce glare.”

Of the products introduced last week I’m most interested in the new Studio Display. I’ve been a laptop only guy since the early 2000’s — back then it was an IBM ThinkPad — but I’ve always appreciated a desktop setup that includes a full size monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

My current setup is a 24in Dell display of some kind, which as served me really well. Sure, it’s not fancy, but it does the job and my old eyes appreciate the extra space given how much I have to blow the text up to read it. 😃 My personal Mac is a 2015 15in MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD. I like it, a lot. I’ve written almost 100% of Stream on it (my prior MBP was a 2011.)

I’d love to pick up a new fully loaded 16in M1 MacBook Pro and one of these displays. It would be a perfect configuration that would last me for years and years to come.

I recently picked up a new desk and shuffled stuff around in the basement to get it setup to my liking. I’m going to build a new stand that will hold up to three MacBook’s in clamshell mode and mount a web cam on the Dell display. The stand should fit under the display. Once that’s done I’ll mount some Velcro cable organizers under the back of the desk and it’ll be just how I want it.

For the time being here’s the current setup. It’s in transition so please forgive the mess in the background.

Well, darn. The snow is starting to stick.

As the day has gone on the temperature has continued to drop.

Mark Hertling is a former soldier.

Interesting thread.

I said it yesterday on @cnn, I'll say it again today.

Having worked w/ UKR's army, I expected them to be very good. And they have been better than I expected.

Having seen Russian forces in training & exercises, I expected them to be bad. They are worse than I expected. 1/10

— Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) March 12, 2022

CNN: “Over the past couple of months while I’ve been reporting from Moscow, I’ve met many people who have been horrified, shocked and numbed by Putin’s wanton aggression.”

I know we can’t get into the war, but it drives me absolutely bonkers to see us sit on our hands while innocent lives are lost or displaced with nowhere to go.

Morning Shots: “Republicans are anxious — very anxious indeed — to tell us that Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn doesn’t speak for his fellow Republicans.”

This dude has to go. He doesn’t care about legislating. He’s just in Congress to be performative and stay in power. He’s another authoritarian.

The Bitter Southerner: “So my mother and her sisters and friends amassed an impressive collection of delicious, creative cake recipes including apricot nectar cake, the Darn Good Chocolate Cake, and cinnamon coffee cake — all unapologetically starting with a box.”

Who doesn’t like a good cake?

AP: “Known as an ‘onion’ service, users can access this version of Twitter if they download the Tor browser, which allows people to access sites on what is also referred to as the ‘dark web.’ Instead of .com, onion sites have a .onion suffix.”

Learned something new. I wasn’t aware of onion sites. Hopefully this helps Russians organize and put an end to Putin. 🤞🏼

DNA Lounge: “DNA Lounge’s policy is unchanged: we will continue to take steps necessary to reduce the risk of infection to our staff, families and customers”

I was an avid reader of Jamie Zawinski’s work back when he was part of the original Netscape team. His stories were wild.

After Netscape he opened DNA Lounge and I kind of lurk in the shadows to see what’s happening there.

It’s nice to see someone is still treating COVID like it’s dangerous.

[The Fresno Bee](https://www.fresnobee.com/fresnoland/ article258792998.html): “Fresno has many people who are jobless, underemployed or underpaid or for whom opportunities for gainful employment are severely limited, aptly described by Michelle Skoor, chief workforce officer for Bitwise Industries, as ‘excluded people in underestimated places.’”

I love the city of Fresno and the work Bitwise Industries is doing.

There is an area of Fresno called The Tower District. I spent quite a bit of time there with friends when we were trying to build a little startup. The startup failed but The Tower is now in my blood.

Downtown Fresno is also a special place. It’s kind of a burnout husk of a city with beautiful — empty — buildings waiting for someone to turn them into something special. Bitwise has repurposed and remodeled a number of those diamonds in the rough. I often had delusions of grandeur about buying one, remodeling it as living space above a certain floor, with offices below, and retail at its base. Big dreams for a man who doesn’t know the first thing about pulling something like that off.

I once described it as a Technology Blackhole. It is no longer, thanks to Bitwise.

The Real News Network: “On Feb. 8, seven workers were fired from the Poplar & Highland location in Memphis. The group, who quickly became known on social media as the ‘Memphis 7,’ made up the original union organizing committee at that store location. They say they were fired because of their organizing efforts. Starbucks denies this.”

You just so happen to fire the seven people responsible for trying to form a union, and it wasn’t because they’re trying to form a union? Right.

Cult of Mac: ”During the fighting, Petryk is hunkering down with her teenage daughter and husband. The family has been sheltering for days from Russian bombardment, sleeping in an underground parking garage at night and venturing upstairs to their apartment to work during the day.”

Great piece. I can’t imagine trying to work while my city is being bombed.

If I take a couple minutes to clean this stump up it might make a decent seat or place to put a flower pot.

Spent the day doing more cleanup of damaged caused by our January snow. Todays task was dropping trees that had busted off mid way up.

CNN: ”Police in St. Petersburg arrested at least 350 anti-war protesters on Wednesday, taking the total number of protesters detained or arrested to 7,624 since the invasion began, according to an independent organization that tracks human rights violations in Russia.”

Al Corbett: ”Now, the idea is to throw low-level optimization questions at you that you will never need to deal with in your professional life — it’s not like we’re writing operating systems anymore…”

The interview process can be quite hellish. We have a live coding session with candidates at WillowTree, but to be fair I would call them different than the “Hey, write this complicated algorithm thing for me” interviews.

We work in teams. On those teams we need to make sure we can actually work with our co-workers. The coding exercise tests the grasp of your chose platform as well as how you interact with others.

If that type of exercise doesn’t work for you, you can choose to walk folks through some code you’ve written and explain it, as well as answer questions about it. Think of it as an interactive pull request.

Vanity Fair: ”Then, the day before Ratliff was supposed to shoot his scenes, Hanks fired him. The stated reason: Hanks felt Ratliff had ‘dead eyes.’”

I haven’t listened to this episode but I’m looking forward to it.

Hollywood Life: ”Barry makes a brief appearance in The Batman, and his scene teases his hopeful return as Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime.”

Our youngest daughter and I caught The Batman yesterday afternoon (it was empty.) We both enjoyed it.

That scene with Joker, however brief, was a great scene. Only the smallest glimpse and I knew who it was.

I liked Pattinson as Batman, well done. He’s definitely a brooding version of Batman, but I like it. Gordon, played by Jeffrey Wright, was also a nice imagining of his character.

Fingers crossed they make another one.

This is not exactly encouraging.

Dave Rogers: ”But people are weird. Many, perhaps most, don’t leave. Maybe they don’t feel they have anywhere to go, maybe they feel defiantly that it’s their city, their home. I don’t know. But even with the Russians just kilometers outside the city, people went to the movies.”

We’re so fortunate we’ve never had to live in a country with war raging all around us.

Слава Україні 🇺🇦

This is what Trump said on February 22 2022 pic.twitter.com/xsqOzbMXD5

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) February 28, 2022

Trump and Putin belong together, preferably in Siberian prision.

The Loop: “Over the past couple of years, I have taken time to address issues in my personal life. In that time, I realized that there is so much more to life than work—I’ll be honest, that revelation came as a massive shock to me, but I couldn’t be happier."

All he best, Jim.

LONG LIVE THE BEARD!

Steve Beschloss: ”It’s hard to quantify the impact of Zelensky’s decision thus far to stay in Kyiv and fight with his countrymen against the invading Russians. But his rejection of the US offer to evacuate—‘The fight is here,’ he reportedly told the Americans. ‘I need ammunition, not a ride.’—is already the stuff of legend. I wouldn’t underestimate how meaningful his courage is in sustaining morale and motivating Ukrainians, be they trained soldiers operating sophisticated weapons or even college students and grandmothers producing home-made Molotov cocktails to fend off their attackers.”

It has been very inspiring to see Zelensky stay and prepare to fight. The fight is coming and I hope he and his fellow citizens can continue to repel Russian forces.

Robert Reich: ”The biggest difference between the old cold war and the new one is that authoritarian neo-fascism is not just an external threat. A version of it has also taken over one of the major political parties in the United States.”

I hope we don’t see World War III or a new Civil War. Here’s hoping Putin and Trump end up in the despots waste bin of time and Democracy survives.

Who knows, maybe Russia can finally become a true Democracy once Putin and his Oligarchs are out of the picture.

Sitting here watching CNN and thinking about some of the news I’ve heard and read over the last few days I’m seriously concerned we may end up in a nuclear war.

Putin, by all accounts, has lost his marbles and has put his deterrent force on high alert.

Russia is getting their asses handed to them by the Ukrainian military and citizens. Putin is off the rails, hates the west, and he’s losing.

I wouldn’t put it past him to let his nukes fly on Ukraine. Hell, what’s stopping him from hitting other European cities or America for that matter. How about Chernobyl? The Russians have control of it last I heard. They could drop a big bomb on that site and make a real mess in the region and across Europe.

Here’s hoping someone in his inner circle puts a bullet in his brain and calls off this shit show.

As I was finishing this post off I switched over to Twitter only to see someone else with the same thought.

WW3 sides being drawn. https://t.co/YiP1XjDt9I

— Derek Powazek (@fraying) February 28, 2022

The Atlantic: ”The Tumblr users I spoke to, both new and returning, cited a few unfashionable aspects that keep them using the platform. Tumblr’s main feed doesn’t shuffle posts algorithmically based on what it determines might appeal to a user. It’s ‘a good, old chronological river,’ Maryellen Stewart, a social-media consultant who has kept a running diary on Tumblr since 2014, said.”

I’ve considered switching to Tumblr a number of times over the years, but, there are two thing I want out of my blogging system 1) control the post taxonomy 2) publish to static HTML.

I’ve lived without item number two, so it’s not nearly as important as being able to control the post taxonomy. I always want my URLs in year/month/day/ format with the post name following. Check out the URL of this post. It’s a perfect example of that. I could control that in WordPress. It would be a nice to have in Tumblr.

Visio Guy: ”Today I’m sharing a drawing of a local transit station/shopping mall that I made with…Visio!”

Chris Roth is Visio Guy. He was part of a group of interns who were part of making shapes for the launch of Visio 1.0. Chris became a full time employee and was around for a number of Visio releases. I don’t remember when Chris left the Visio team but I’d imagine it was sometime after it was acquired by Microsoft.

Since that time he’s continued creating smart shapes for all kinds of drawing types and has written a number of wonderful how-to articles on SmartShapes.

So, yeah, if you need an expert on Visio, Visio automation, or SmartShapes, you’d be hard pressed to find someone with better knowledge of the platform.

Dave Winer: ”I paid Apple $1300, not UPS. If they screwed up, and it’s likely they did, telling me to go to UPS is no answer. I didn’t choose to use UPS, you did.”

Apple has been slipping in various ways for a while now. I don’t know that it’s unexpected given their monster size.

Their developer relationships have become a real problem. I’ve said for a long time they hate third party developers. I have no doubt they’d be perfectly happy dumping third party developers if it wouldn’t cost them billions in services revenue, but that’s a story for another day.

NBC 29: ”The city of Charlottesville is hoping to get a better look inside a Downtown Mall eyesore. City officials are hoping to hire an independent inspector to make sure The Dewberry building is safe.”

The Dewberry building is a giant turd in an otherwise beautiful downtown.

I wouldn’t surprise me if it collapsed.

What a mess.

The Guardian: ”In a deal struck in late 2020, Marathon, a bitcoin “mining” company, became the sole recipient of the power station’s electricity.”

All cryptocurrency mining companies really need to consider the environmental impact of their business. It would be wonderful if they’d get behind more green initiatives and stop using old forms of energy like this coal plant.

It would also be extremely thoughtful if they’d generate more power than they use and push it back onto the grid. I know. That may be a step too far to expect these power hungry companies to think beyond their own pocketbooks.

Well said, Mr. Zeldman.

My heart goes out to Ukraine—the land of my grandfather—and to all the people in Russia, Ukraine, and the rest of the world who oppose this cruel and dangerous act of war. I feel old and helpless.

— zeldman (@zeldman) February 25, 2022

Feeling old and helpless kind of nails it.

Where were you when world war 3 started?

— Derek Powazek (@fraying) February 24, 2022

We’re going to war again, aren’t we?

Putin just declared war on Ukraine, announcing a “special military operation.”

Breaking: massive explosions just now in Kramatorsk. At least four. Very big.

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) February 24, 2022

And so it begins. https://t.co/pRZACHqfpF

— Grady Booch (@Grady_Booch) February 24, 2022

BREAKING: Explosions are being heard in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

— Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) February 24, 2022

I’ve had a Reddit account for quite a while, but I’ve rarely used it.

Over the past couple years I’ve started browsing again, using the excellent Apollo.

I’ve thought a lot about providing a way to sync Stream feed subscriptions so folks can share them across devices. Makes sense, right?

What not to do 👎

Something I don’t want to do is sync all feed items. It would be burdensome, make the code more complex, and being that RSS was never intended to be centralized it’s a better fit for Stream.

What to do 👍🏼

However, there is something that makes sense to sync: Feed Subscriptions.

I’ve considered using iCloud to do sync but it seems to be more trouble that it’s worth.

I could roll my own but I really hate the notion of requiring a username and password to make it work.

How about using Sign in with Apple? It still requires signing in, but it’s a bit easier. You only need to push a single button and you’re ready to roll.

With that in mind I’d still need to implement my own sync service but it would only be about syncing subscriptions; add, delete, and get should do the trick.

I’d also add bookmarking and the ability to delete your account.

I’m also considering a read status. Yes, that’s right, folks have requested I mark items as read. While this goes against my original goal of Stream, I can see why folks want it. I believe I could easily sync the read status of an article by posting only the unique article ID. That needs more thought and if it proves too difficult to implement, I’d pass on sync, and just do it locally.

Still Thinking 🤔

As you can see, I haven’t finalized my thoughts on the matter. Chances are I’ll settle on something, start implementing it, and change my mind for one reason or another.

I’d you’re a Stream user and have opinions on how it should operate, or would like a feature, please add a request and I’ll check it out.

Your Support 🙏🏼

If you’re using Stream and enjoy it, please consider leaving a tip or drop me a line, rob.fahrni@gmail.com, to let me know you enjoy using it.

Axios: “Yes, but: 61% of teleworkers are working from home because they’re choosing to, per a new Pew Research study. Just 38% are home because their workplaces are closed or unavailable.”

Wall Street Journal: “When you do it right, it improves retention. The most successful distributed companies have much, much lower churn than other companies. Our voluntary rate of churn was 7.6% over the past year. That’s during the Great Resignation, lower than our peers. And the biggest hidden cost of productivity in most businesses right now is attrition.” - Matt Mullenweg

At WillowTree we had a very strong everyone in the office culture. The pandemic changed that. Over the last couple years it became obvious a fairly substantial number of folks wanted to continue working remote, even after the pandemic (if that ever happens).

Our leadership at WillowTree is pretty amazing. They listened. Now we have a full group of folks working remotely.

I’ve been a remote worker off and on for well over 20 years. I love it, much to the chagrin of my wife. I’m now a part of the work from anywhere team at WillowTree.

We’ve also started hiring folks for remote first positions. Our team has people in California, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Florida, and Ohio to name a few. It’s nice because it’s allowed us to focus on hiring really great people without convincing them to move to Charlottesville, Durham, or Columbus.

So, if you’re looking for an iOS, Android, or Web gig, give WillowTree a look. You may find the company, and job, of your dreams.

I love this place and hope to make it my final work home, if they’ll have me. 😃

If the open web had a good lawyer we could stop Spotify from calling their radio programs "podcasts" because it's a fraudulent claim.

It's like saying a car gets 800 miles per gallon when it gets 30 mpg. It's a lie. People expect podcasts to work in any player. Spotify is lying

— Dave is tweeting in Markdown (@davewiner) February 17, 2022

Read the thread. There is so much confusion around who coined the term Podcast and what defines a Podcast.

Apple didn’t invent podcasting, they just have the most well known directory of podcasts. Think of it as a phone book of sorts, or a map, for finding the source of Podcasts.

I wish Indie Podcasters would band together to create an Open Podcast Directory. It’s only purpose would be to find the source of Podcasts. Podcasting apps could then use it to locate the source RSS feed and subscribe.

Podcasting and the technology that makes it possible were invented by Dave Winer, with help from others, including Adam Curry and Christopher Lydon.

A Podcast is audio, its source, and the means of distribution via RSS.

To be a podcaster all you have to do is record some audio, make that audio an enclosure element in an RSS feed(hey, guess what, it’s just a URL!), and let folks subscribe to the RSS feed.

In every Podcast player I’ve ever used this open standard is fully supported. If I want to subscribe to a Podcast in my favorite player I just get the URL for the Podcast and paste it into my player — for me it’s Castro — and it does the rest.

Sure, it supports finding Podcasts using Apple’s Directory, but that’s just icing on the cake. When it subscribes it doesn’t use any tech from Apple, it just uses the Podcast’s RSS feed, which is supplied to Apple by the Podcast creator.

All of that to say, what Spotify calls a Podcast, is not a Podcast. They’re not public and not delivered to the user via RSS, in a Podcast player of their choosing.

I don’t think making money from your work disqualifies it as a Podcast, but I’m sure many folks would disagree with me.

Akami: “Akamai Technologies, Inc, the world’s most trusted solution to power and protect digital experiences, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Linode, one of the easiest-to-use and most trusted infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform providers.”

I know of two small companies using Linode to run their web servics; Micro.blog and Overcast Radio. I wonder how this will affect small businesses, like those mentioned? Linode has a great reputation, is inexpensive, and gives you full access to your machine instances. All starting at $5 a month. Fingers crossed it doesn’t change too much.

Adobe Blog: ”C++ runs everywhere – Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and in browser. It gives you access to the hardware and OS on all platforms. It is well supported and standardized, with few discrepancies between implementations. C++ allows us to build high-performance libraries that can be used anywhere.”

If you’ve followed me for any amount of time you’ll know I love the C++ programming language. I spent a large amount of my career, 20 years, building software with it. I still think it’s a great language because it does run everywhere.

Heck, Safari and Chrome (derived from Safari) are probably the two most used applications on macOS and their core are written in C++.

I’d love to know of any other popular macOS apps written in C++. If you know of any, drop me a line at rob.fahrni@gmail.com. Thanks.

ESPN: ”The Houston Texans have hired Lovie Smith as their next head coach, the team announced Monday.”

I’m so happy to see Lovie Smith back at the helm of an NFL team. I still haven’t forgiven the Bears for firing him in 2012, after having an 10-6 season, but failing to make the playoffs. Since his firing the Bears have had one season over .500, Matt Neagy’s first season they went 12-4.

They should’ve kept Lovie.

Anyway, he’s back, and I’m happy for him.