Rob Fahrni

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Another week, gone. Life seems to be flying by at an accelerated pace and I’m not fond of it.

I continue my React Native and TypeScript work, at work. I’m refactoring a bit of UI code to be shared in the project. It’s been a good experience. I’m definitely a fish out of water but making progress.

We’ll see what next week brings.

Hope you enjoy the links.

Alex Butler • UPI

Katie Ledecky left swimming rival Ariarne Titmus in her wicked wake, revving through the La Defense Arena pool waters toward a record ninth Olympic gold medal with another 800-meter freestyle victory Saturday in Paris.

YAY KATIE! 🇺🇸

Jay Famiglietti • The New York Times

The Central Valley of California supplies a quarter of the food on the nation’s dinner tables. But beneath this image of plenty and abundance, a crisis is brewing — an invisible one, under our feet — and it is not limited to California.

One quarter of the food on the nations table. That’s a big deal.

The big challenge moving forward is how do we get enough water to the Central Valley to continue to raise all those fruits and vegetables to feed everyone?

Yet again, we ignore climate change at our own peril.

Herb Sutter

That’s a great question. Cppreference is correct, and for all class types the answer is simple: The object is initialized on line 1 by having its default constructor called.

But (and you knew a “but” was coming), for a local object of a fundamental built-in type like int, the answer is… more elaborate. And that’s why Sam is asking, because Sam knows that the language has kind of loose about initializing such local objects, for historical reasons that made sense at the time.

Of course Mr. Sutter goes into great depth to explain how the declaration int a; is handled by the C++ compiler (how it’s supposed to be handled according to the standard.)

Remember C is a subset of C++. That was intentionally part of the goal at the time. To get folks to adopt C++ all the C code that had been written needed to continue working.

So, what does that mean for int a; in the question?

It means that declaration doesn’t really initialize a. It just gets whatever value is at that address. Let’s say there was a string represented by the memory now assigned to that declaration and the string began with the letter the ASCII letter ‘a’. Any guess what the value of ‘a’ would be? It would be 97.

In other words, ‘a’ is random.

Mike Masnick • Techdirt

I am excited to announce that I am joining the board of Bluesky, where I will be providing advice and guidance to the company to help it achieve its vision of a more open, more competitive, more decentralized online world.

This is surprising in a good way but I wish we didn’t have two competing decentralized protocols for the social web. It’s fine, I suppose, but having Blusky and Mastodon work with each other would be amazing. Threads still hasn’t delivered full integration with Mastodon, but Micro.blog has, WordPress has achieved some integration points, and Ghost is working on theirs. Tumblr would also be a nice addition but it’s now in a “keep the lights on” mode.

More Fediverse integration, not less.

Bradley Brownell • Jalopnik

Michael Andretti’s denied attempt to join the Formula 1 grid has been granted a DOJ investigation. American firm Liberty Media, which owns Formula 1 Group, denied Andretti Global’s entry to F1 earlier this year. The denial by F1, following a six-month review of the team’s application, which included a commitment from General Motors, claimed that it didn’t believe Andretti could field a competitive car in the series.

This has been a bit frustrating to watch. I would love to see another American company on the grid and I’d really love to see Guenther Steiner in charge of it! 😃

It would also put an American manufactured power unit on the grid from Cadillac. 👍🏼

Nadine Yousif and Michelle Fleury • BBC News

A US judge has ruled that Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly on online searches and related advertising.

This is going to ripple throughout the industry. Does Apple lose their $20 billion fee from Google to be the preferred search engine? I guess we’ll find out.

Stephen Moore

Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: “Bro,1[1] you don’t work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver.”

They have a point. Mordor sucks, and it’s certainly more physically taxing to dig a tunnel than poke at a keyboard unless you’re an ant. But, for the sake of the argument, can we agree that stress and insanity are bad things? Awesome. Welcome to programming.

Programming is definitely part science part insanity. I spend my days agonizing over coding choices, bouncing between feeling kind of smart to feeling a complete idiot.

It’s just the way, at least for me. 😃

Hanaa' Tameez • Nieman Journalism Lab

MTV pulled down MTV News in June. After Deadspin was sold, many of its archives temporarily disappeared. This week, Flaming Hydra reported that The Awl’s archives are gone. And those examples are just from the past couple of months; in 2021, the authors of a Reynolds Journalism Institute report found that just 7 out of 24 newsrooms they interviewed were fully preserving their news content.

This is kind of sad, isn’t it? Journalists losing their work because a publication shuts down.

Then we had the recent kerfuffle with TUAW where someone purchased the site and content, ran it through and AI, and republished all the content under the original authors names with different profile pictures. That’s slimy.

It’s no wonder authors are backing up their own work. I certainly would and do. I have 23 years of blog posts.

Simon Willison

It’s amusing to see Apple using “please” in their prompts, and politely requesting of the model: “Do not hallucinate. Do not make up factual information.”

This is an interesting piece. Go read how Apple is approaching AI. I love their prompts including words like “please” and “do not hallucinate.” Classic! 🤣

Charlie Savage • The New York Times

A bipartisan American Bar Association task force is calling on lawyers across the country to do more to help protect democracy ahead of the 2024 election, warning in a statement to be delivered Friday at the group’s annual meeting in Chicago that the nation faces a serious threat in “rising authoritarianism.”

If Trump loses in November the country needs to be prepared for all kinds of slimy efforts to take the election for themselves.

I have no clue what they’re going to do, but it’s coming.

Nikita Shukla • earth.org

Generative AI has very quickly been adopted across various sectors. However, this has led to increased global electricity consumption that is only predicted to increase further as the technology expands, with many tech companies already at risk of defaulting on their net-zero commitments.

This is a new type of arms race between the big players. They have to do it but they’re not going to make money from it for a long time and oh by the way they’re going to strain the crap out of our power grid. Why? Shareholder value. So while your power is out and you’re baking in the heat of summer or the cold of winter they’ll be happily churning out their next iteration of a fancy pachinko game that isn’t really intelligent, it’s just a super fancy decision tree being jammed into everything because AI.

Each and every AI company should be regulated and be required to generate two times the power they consume, at no cost to the consumer, to offset their consumption. Darned digital vampires.

Stephanie Apstein • Sports Illustrated

U.S. Athletes Are Taking Full Advantage of Free Healthcare in Olympic Village

It’s amazing what a country can do for their citizenry, isn’t it? Healthcare for all, I say! Some things need to be done for the good of society. Healthy, educated, people are an amazing thing. It will allow us to invent and solve big problems. It’s good all around, in my opinion.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Pretty typical week. Slow around the house and busy at work. I have yard work today and we’re gonna install a new ceiling fan later, most likely tomorrow. Kim let me sleep in, it was really nice. Stayed in bed until 10AM, so off to a really late start with morning coffee and writing. 😃

John Brayton • Golden Hill Software

Unread for Mac is now available from the Mac App Store. Unread for Mac incorporates every Unread capability that makes sense on Mac including:

I’m so happy for my friend! John really shows his chops as a Mac developer in this release of Unread for Mac. I’ve had the honor of being on the Beta for months and I’ve watched new features land with high quality and witnessed John polish the user interface to a beautiful sheen.

Unread is a prime example of a Mac-assed Mac App.

Congratulations, John! ❤️

ESPN

Simone Biles reclaimed her Olympic title in the women’s all-around at the Paris Olympics on Thursday.

This is so nice to see Ms. Biles rise to the top of her game once again.

Congratulations, Simone! You make us proud! 🇺🇸

Kylie Robison • The Verge

Mark Kalman, X’s engineering lead of media, and his second-in-command, Melissa Merencillo, resigned today. They announced their departures in a company Slack channel on the day stocks vest at X, which a source suggests might explain the timing.

X is such a cesspool. I’m surprised anyone has hung around to work with Space Karen.

He’s pushed so hard to make X into a Nazi, white supremacist, waste land, and by and large succeeded.

I really wish we could convince the likes of Stephen King and many, many others, with strong voices to leave that shit show.

Epic Games

We are fast approaching a quantum leap in Epic’s efforts to bring our games to players on mobile devices. Fortnite will be returning to iOS in the European Union soon, and the Epic Games Store will be coming to Android worldwide and iOS in the European Union bringing all developers great terms: a store fee of 12% for payments we process, and 0% on third party payments.

It’s interesting Epic chose to undercut Apple by only 3% on payment processing. That will, however, hit the bottom like of companies that pay 30% to the App Store once they cross the magic threshold (I can’t remember what it is, so it’s a magic threshold for this post.)

The 0% fee is absolutely amazing and it would be lovely to see Apple do this, but, it could cost them hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter if all the big players were allowed to do their own thing.

Andrew Harnik • AlterNet

AG Garland knocks Cannon’s classified docs ruling: ‘Do I look like someone who’d make that mistake?’

A little shade thrown by the AG! I love it!

Judge Aileen Cannon based her ruling on a passing comment made by Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas when writing about the Trump Immunity Case.

Yeah, it was done as a favor to Trump to delay the case yet again.

Once the Presidential Election is over, and TFG has lost, hopefully the good work of prosecuting him can get back on track.

NASCAR

Spire Motorsports confirmed on Thursday that Corey LaJoie, driver of the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, will not return to the team following the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season.

This news really bummed me out. Corey LaJoie is an extremely hard working journeyman of NASCAR. He’s never won at the Cup Series Level but throws his whole heart into everything he does.

I’m an avid listener of his podcast, Stacking Pennies, and I hope the man is considered for a Cup ride on another team. It seems unlikely but I’m pulling for him. ❤️

A seat in the Xfinity Series or the Truck Series would at least let him continue to race. 🤞🏼

Eirka Turlock • CNN

A Starbucks app outage on Tuesday left customers unable to place a mobile order, delaying caffeine fixes for millions of coffee lovers until the app returned to service later in the day.

This is completely unacceptable! 🤣

Coffee addicts all over the country were left with the shakes, sweating, and irritable because they couldn’t pickup their drinks easily. THEY HAD TO GET IN LINE OR WALK IN THE NERVE OF STARBUCKS!

I’ve always claimed Starbucks has one of the best mobile ordering experiences in all of food services. Outages, unfortunately, happen.

David Goodwin • AppleVis

It is with deep sadness and a heavy heart that after careful consideration I have made the difficult decision to step down from my responsibilities with AppleVis. As a direct result of my departure and following extensive deliberation, the editorial team has come to the painful conclusion that AppleVis will be closing.

It’s been a rough time for magazines for a very long time. 🪦

Game Informer

After 33 thrilling years of bringing you the latest news, reviews, and insights from the ever-evolving world of gaming, it is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Game Informer.

I’m not a gamer but this has to hit hard! It’s such a bummer to see long running sites fold like this. 🪦

Josh Marshall • Talking Points Memo

But yesterday FBI Director Christopher Wray said, ironically in response to a question from Rep. Jim Jordan, that it’s not clear whether Trump was hit by a bullet or debris kicked up by the gunfire. I think in context that’s likely a bureaucratic and gentle way of saying Trump probably wasn’t hit by a bullet. But let’s stick to the precise words. “There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear.”

Congressional Republicans love to focus on the wrong thing and make a big deal out of it.

Let’s talk facts. Someone attempted to assassinate the Orange Man.

It doesn’t matter if it was the bullet or something else that touched his ear enough to make it bleed.

He’s just really lucky whatever hit his ear didn’t actually hit the meat of the ear. It most likely would’ve taken most of it off and done additional damage to him.

Luckily the man’s brain is already so damaged a little more wouldn’t hurt. 😆

Ryan Adamczeski • Advocate

Elon Musk’s trans daughter Vivian Wilson slams his anti-LGBTQ+ comments as ‘ketamine-fueled haze’

Ms. Vivian is super funny! Elon is really missing out on a great kid and proves once again he’s a terrible father. His poor kids are basically fatherless in this world and get to watch their “father” implode into a conspiracy theorist lunatic right before their eyes.

Pathetic man.

Lincoln Carpenter • PC Gamer

Fortnite players declare the Cybertruck public enemy number one: ‘You are now in a truce with everyone else in the lobby until they’re taken down’

I’ve never played Fortnite and I’m not much of a gamer but I feel like I should become a Fortnite player just to hunt these things down and blow them up. 🤣

Jordan Novet, Ari Levy • CNBC

Delta hires David Boies to seek damages from CrowdStrike, Microsoft after outage

Boise has already lead a successful prosecution of Microsoft of while with the U.S. federal government.

I actually feel really bad for Microsoft, not so much for CrowdStrike. After a deal with European Regulators they felt compelled to allow companies to run at the kernel level of NT.

I hope thy go back to the older model and lock things down.

Theo Burman • Newsweek

California Wildfire: Man Saves 100-Year-Old Ranch With Homemade Sprinkler Defense System

A little old fashioned ingenuity at work! I love this story and feel so bad for California at the same time.

The poor folks in Canada as well. 🇨🇦

It’s just tragic we have wildfires every summer in California and it’s just going to get worse.

Since we can use Swift to write code for Windows I’m excited to give it a try.

I’m hoping I can bring over all of Stream’s model, network, utility, and view model code over without changes, or perhaps few changes?

The other thing I’m thinking is, I should be able to port my C++ framework for building Windows apps to Swift. That would be something really special and would allow me to do a full version of Stream for Windows. Heck, if my shared code comes right over and I can rebuild my Framework in Swift, I should be able to do a Windows release pretty quickly.

Of course I really need to focus on the Mac version first.

Hey, Microsoft, can you make Visual Studio support Swift as a first class citizen so we can build and debug using it? Please? 🙏🏼

Michael Gold • The New York Times

In the closing minutes of his speech to a gathering of religious conservatives on Friday night, former President Donald J. Trump told Christians that if they voted him into office in November, they would never need to vote again.

“Christians, get out and vote. Just this time,” he said at The Believers’ Summit, an event hosted by the conservative advocacy group Turning Point Action, in West Palm Beach, Fla. “You won’t have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

The Cheeto finally did it! He said the quiet part out loud for all Americans to hear. He doesn’t plan on leaving office at the end of his four year term if he wins in 2024. Unbelievable.

If that doesn’t stop you from voting for Trump nothing will and our beautiful Republic will be lost forever.

Folks have been saying he’s a threat to democracy for quite a while and he just said it himself. Believe him. Vote for Kamala Harris.

We also need to be extra vigilant just before, during, and after the election, especially if he loses.

Rest assured there will be another coup attempt if he loses.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I got my first React Native PR submitted and I’ve received some good feedback.

On the whole it’s fine. I still find the syntax extremely strange but I’ll figure it out.

I still very much prefer Swift and Xcode to TypeScript and VSCode. 😃

Barack Obama

Joe Biden has been one of America’s most consequential presidents, as well as a dear friend and partner to me. Today, we’ve also been reminded — again — that he’s a patriot of the highest order.

Thank you President Biden for serving your country. ❤️

Robert Reich

Let me add my words of gratitude to Joe Biden for doing something Donald Trump is incapable of doing — putting his country over ego, ambition, and pride.

Biden bowed out with grace and dignity.

Yes, yes he did. Now let’s all get behind Kamala Harris, make her the 47th President of this great nation, and save Democracy.

David Gilmour • Mediaite

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow flipped the question that has long chased Democrats of presidential candidate age and capability on Republicans Sunday night after President Joe Biden announced he would no longer run for re-election, calling out former President Donald Trump as now the “old man in the race.”

It’s time for the media to ask the Orange Man to withdrawal from the run for President because of his age and his lack of mental capacity to properly do the job.

Luke Deniston

This is the story of a process that died, and the tale of what we went through to track down the killer and bring it to justice. More accurately, it was a process that kept dying, but that hurts the analogy I’m trying to go for here so just bear with me.

I worked with Luke at Agrian. He’s super smart and kind and I love this story. Luke, if you read this, I hope you wrote that entire story yourself? It’s awesome.

Jess Weatherbed • The Verge

Despite Apple’s claims that most consumers will only consider purchasing vehicles that support CarPlay, Rivian says it still doesn’t have any plans to adopt the iPhone mirroring system. Talking to The Verge EIC Nilay Patel in today’s episode of Decoder, Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe likened Rivian adopting CarPlay to Apple choosing to use Microsoft’s Windows operating systems instead of developing its own in-house iOS and macOS alternatives.

I like this take and comparison. Apple has a desire to be the primary control center for the car and that seems wrong. They also want the car company to make sure Apple is called out as the provider of the in car system by not changing things like fonts on the in dash system. That would mean the cars branding wouldn’t match the companies. That’s not good.

Wouldn’t it be cool to work on an embedded in dash system? I think it would.

The Futon Critic

“HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET” ARRIVES ON PEACOCK AUG. 19

YES! I loved me some Homocide: Life on the Streets and I’m glad it’ll be available for streaming. Too bad I don’t have a Peacock subscription. Might have to convince the boss we need it for a while? 🤔

M.G. Siegler • Spyglass

Apple Should Buy HBO

I like this idea, especially if Apple would commit to funding HBO original content so we may get the next Sopranos, The Wire, or Game of Thrones.

Isabel van Brugen • Newsweek

Valentina Bondarenko, a top Russian economist, has died at the age of 82 after falling out of her apartment window in Moscow, Russian state-run media reported on Tuesday.

It’s so strange how many folks fall out of windows in Russia. It’s a downright epidemic.

I suspect if Orange Man wins the Presidency we’ll see this strange affliction migrate to America.

Jowi Morales • Tom’s Hardware

Windows 3.1 saves the day during CrowdStrike outage — Southwest Airlines scrapes by with archaic OS

I find this extremely difficult to believe. I actually liked Windows 3.1 and it’s the OS Visio was originally written on, so it’s pretty near and dear to my heart. Thing is, it’s a 16-bit OS, but it was quite capable. I’d love to know more about this setup and how in the world do they keep it secure? The network support in Windows 3.1 was mediocre at best. Did it even support HTTP? I don’t have the slightest clue.

Gil Duran • The New Republic

Where J.D. Vance Gets His Weird, Terrifying Techno-Authoritarian Ideas

I’ve never heard of Curtis Yarvin but he sounds like a real piece of work. This dudes thoughts are as bad as Nazi Germany’s “useless eaters” program. Pathetic and disgusting.

He’s the one that needs to go away with thinking like that. 🤬

Elizabeth Lopatto • The Verge

The moral bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz

All the billionaire bros in the Silicon Valley need to get their act together. They’re ready to throw democracy away so they can become richer? How much money do you need? The answer must be all of it!

Again. Pathetic and selfish to allow an entire nation to be destroyed because you want to make a buck. Don’t be surprised if someone shows up at your place looking to beat your ass. No, that’s not a threat, but I can imagine someone feeling that strongly about it. I mean, hell, someone has already tried to take out the Orange Man. I don’t suspect it’ll be the last.

Stu Sjouwerman • KnowBe4

TLDR: KnowBe4 needed a software engineer for our internal IT AI team. We posted the job, received resumes, conducted interviews, performed background checks, verified references, and hired the person. We sent them their Mac workstation, and the moment it was received, it immediately started to load malware.

This story is fascinating. At WillowTree we’ve had a couple candidates try to get through by hiring someone to do the technical parts of the test for them. They’ve been caught and I’m not aware of any getting through. I suspect in our case they just wanted a job they didn’t have the skill for. In the end they’d have failed and been let go so I’m not sure why they went through the trouble.

Steven Vaughan-Nichols • ZDNet

Several European countries are betting on open-source software for their technology. In the United States, eh, not so much. In the latest news from across the Atlantic, Switzerland has taken a major step forward with its “Federal Law on the Use of Electronic Means for the Fulfillment of Governmental Tasks” (EMBAG). This groundbreaking legislation mandates using open-source software (OSS) in the public sector.

Here’s the thing about this. If someone finds an exploit in Linux they’re gonna leverage it until they’re caught. Something like the CrowdStrike disaster could happen just as easily in open source software. Companies just don’t have to pay to use it, don’t have to contribute their changes back to the community, or support the maintainers of the software.

It’s a good deal for corporations.

One of Kim’s mini roses.

Thank you President Biden for digging America out of the mess the former guy left.

You’ve served your country with dignity and respect. We won’t soon forget that.

Switched up the good old springboard again. I’m diggin’ the new neon theme in McClockface.

The Official Windows Blog

On July 18, CrowdStrike, an independent cybersecurity company, released a software update that began impacting IT systems globally. Although this was not a Microsoft incident, given it impacts our ecosystem, we want to provide an update on the steps we’ve taken with CrowdStrike and others to remediate and support our customers.

What Microsoft is actually saying:

WHAT THE F*CK DID YOU DO!?

I still love Microsoft Windows as an operating system and development platform so this event is a real bummer for everyone involved.

Lotsa love to all those IT folks out there busting their butts to fix up their broken PC’s. ❤️

Jamie Frevele • Mediaite

Elon Musk Blasted for Meme Suggesting Too Many Comic Book Characters Are Now Black: ‘This Is Nazi Sh*t’

Imagine that. A man raised in the Apartheid nation of South Africa has an issue with black and brown people being super heroes.

Racist asshole.

Natalie Sherman • BBC

Musk to move SpaceX and X from CA over gender-identity law

Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir • Metro

This is because the state recently enacted a policy that prevents teachers and staff at school from forcibly outing young LGBTQ+ students to their parents, which Musk had a tantrum over.

Good luck with the move, Elon. Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.

I wonder how many of his ~slaves~ employees will make the move to Austin? I’d love to know how many X workers are on H-1B visas? Those poor people don’t have much of a choice.

Then again, if this supposed move works as well as self driving Teslas, they’ll be in California for a really long time.

Chris Isidore • CNN

But as of Saturday, Musk is now publicly endorsing Trump’s presidential reelection bid. And the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported Monday that Musk is now planning on supporting Trump’s presidential campaign by committing $45 million a month to a new super PAC backing the former president.

Space Karen has really been showing his true self over the past few years. He’s as disgusting a human being as they come and he’s dangerous, not because he’s supposed to be a genius, but because he’s a narcissistic liar, like Trump, with a lot of money to buy influence.

Trump sees the Presidency so he can make himself King.

Space Karen sees government money filling his pockets.

Both are meant for each other. Both are disgusting.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Another very quiet week at home and work.

I hope you enjoy the links.

Dan Heching and Zoe Sottile • CNN

Estey said Simmons died early on Saturday morning. He had celebrated his 76th birthday the day before. “We lost an Angel today - a true Angel,” Estey added.

I remember Richard Simmons from the 80’s. Always the showman, always enthusiastic, always fighting to teach folks how to lose weight and talking about his own struggles.

R.I.P.

Carmel Dagan • Variety

Bob Newhart, the genteel but sharply satirical comic whose TV series “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Newhart” were huge hits throughout the 1970s and ’80s, died Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 94.

I know he’s well know for his television series but I really liked him as Papa Elf in the movie Elf.

R.I.P.

David Nield • ScienceAlert

The probe was recorded traveling at 635,266 kilometers (394,736 miles) per hour on June 29, the second time it’s reached that speed since it launched in 2018. We’re talking around 500 times faster than the speed of sound here.

It’s impossible for me to wrap my brain around the idea of going 394,736 miles per hour. 😳

But, it’s pretty cool!

Lily Hay Newman, Matt Burgess, and Andy Greenberg • WIRED

Only a handful of times in history has a single piece of code managed to instantly wreck computer systems worldwide. The Slammer worm of 2003. Russia’s Ukraine-targeted NotPetya cyberattack. North Korea’s self-spreading ransomware WannaCry. But the ongoing digital catastrophe that rocked the internet and IT infrastructure around the globe over the past 12 hours appears to have been triggered not by malicious code released by hackers, but by the software designed to stop them.

What a day for our global network, Microsoft, and CrowdStrike.

I feel terrible for any shop using CrowdStrike and their DevOps or IT Administrators and Technicians. The only way to fix this issue is to be in the room, in front of the computer.

I once worked at a pistachio and almond processing plant that ran on Windows PC’s. At times I needed access to certain computers and had to get someone to unlock a door for me. Can you imagine having to fix thousands of computers with this issue? Sure, developers and the techies in the organization can fix it on their own and help others, but what a pain in the butt. ❤️

Hafiz Rashid • The New Republic

“I have stood up in rooms with all of these people and I have said, ‘Game out your actual plan for me.’ What are the risks of this going to the Supreme Court? And no one had an answer for me.… I’m talking about the lawyers. I’m talking about the legislators,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

What’s the plan? Seems Democrats don’t have one.

This entire kerfuffle couldn’t have come at a worse time. More than ever we need to be united to stop the GOP in their tracks. They are the political enemy and you defeat a political enemy by beating them at the polls.

Turn out, vote for the Democrat, save democracy.

It really is that simple.

Maya Posch • Hackaday

With performance optimizations seemingly having lost their relevance in an era of ever-increasing hardware performance, there are still many good reasons to spend some time optimizing code. In a recent preprint article by [Paul Bilokon] and [Burak Gunduz] of the Imperial College London the focus is specifically on low-latency patterns that are relevant for applications such as high-frequency trading (HFT). In HFT the small margins are compensated for by churning through absolutely massive volumes of trades, all of which relies on extremely low latency to gain every advantage. Although FPGA-based solutions are very common in HFT due their low-latency, high-parallelism, C++ is the main language being used beyond FPGAs.

A friend worked on one of these high speed trading systems. The pressure on him to write bug free, highly performant C++ code was immense. These trading folks are crazy serious about making money and these systems need to be super solid. Their drive to be filthy rich depends on it.

He didn’t stay for long. The stress wasn’t worth it.

Heather Cox Richardson • Letters from an American

This morning, after a day of Republicans insisting that it is political polarization to suggest that Trump is a danger to our democracy, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in the last days of his presidency, dismissed the classified documents case against the former president. She wrote that “Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.”

It seems Judge Aileen Cannon is in the bag for Trump. She’s been delaying and dragging her feet for months on this matter. Either she’s incompetent or corrupt or maybe a little of both?

Regardless, we can also thank corrupt Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for planting the seed of this plan to dismiss the case. In the Trump Immunity decision he noted Jack Smith’s appointment may be unconstitutional. Of course the documents case has nothing to do with the immunity case. He just slipped it in there to sow doubt. It worked.

There is still a path to prosecution but it won’t happen before the election. If the Orange Clown wins it’ll never happen.

Dan Moren • Six Colors

Ultimately the reaction to 18’s initial public beta may be more about what’s not there than what is. When Apple first announced its latest annual update to the mobile software platform back in June, most of the attention went to a suite of features—the top-billed ones if you look at the company’s iOS 18 Preview Page—collected under the aegis of Apple Intelligence. These marked the company’s much anticipated foray into artificial intelligence and promise everything from image generation to a reinvigorated Siri.

TL;DR - if you’re expecting to see Apple Intelligence as part of the betas, don’t hold your breath. Those features will roll out over the next year and into the future.

Outside of the excitement surrounding Apple Intelligence there are plenty of nice features to explore and enjoy.

Nick Schager • The Daily Beast

Longlegs is the horror event of the summer—a serial killer thriller that plays like a nightmarish swirl of The Silence of the Lambs, Seven, Psycho and Zodiac, albeit with far less rationality and considerably more demonic derangement.

I’m excited to see this! I’d imagine this is one film I’ll be able to get Kim to see in theaters. 😃

Ploum

TL;DR: put your open source code under the AGPL license.

While I don’t agree with a lot of what’s said in this piece, it is worth a read to gain a different perspective on Open Source and the problems around maintaining it.

Jake Edge • lwn.net

At the 2024 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Wedson Almeida Filho and Kent Overstreet led a combined storage and filesystem session on using Rust for Linux filesystems.

I like how this was written. It’s basically meeting notes from the session.

The Rust developers will have to be the ones to absorb the pain of keeping up with changes to the filesystem. As a developer using a newer technology I wouldn’t expect anything less.

I’m looking forward to the day we see Swift showing up in filesystem components on the Mac. There is an effort underway to rewrite Foundation in Swift. That’s a great start.

Wes Davis • The Verge

Apple has approved UTM SE, an app for emulating a computer to run classic software and games, weeks after the company rejected it and barred it from being notarized for third-party app stores in the European Union. The app is now available for free for iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS.

I’d imagine European Regulators made this happen. Apple doesn’t need them crawling any further up their butts. They’re already in enough trouble.

Brett Berk • The Drive

This is the golden age of full-size pickup trucks. Because the market demands it, and because the market is enormous and extremely profitable, the latest breed of pickup trucks is comfortable, commodious, potent, and dare I say luxurious. The Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado, and Ram 1500 are, respectively, the top-selling vehicles in America. And with their Brobdingnagian scale, appliqué steer horns, remotely erecting towing hitches, and power-opening tailgates that drop like the rear flap on a cowpoke’s union suit, pickup trucks may be the greatest examples of overcompensation ever invented.

This is a piece from 2019 but it still holds up today. Trucks are definitely no longer the multipurpose towing and hauling vehicles they used to be. When I got one with power windows and AC I thought it was pretty luxurious, but modern pickups are like luxury automobiles.

I’d bet real farmers and workmen using trucks as trucks don’t buy the luxury models. 😁 I’ve seen the inside of real work trucks. They smell of dirt and oil and usually have mud all over the floorboards. Not to mention barebones interiors.

My grandfather was a mobile mechanic for his entire life. His trucks had flat beds with large generators, a boom, and tool chests and various tool compartments. When his motor or transmission wore out, no problem, he pulled them and replaced them, himself.

I’m sure those folks still exist today but luxury trucks weren’t made for them. 😃

Gil Duran and George Lakoff • Frame Lab

Violence has no place in a democratic political system, and we condemn this despicable act. Yet we must also acknowledge that no one has done more to inject violence into our political discourse than Trump.

Josh Marshall • Talking Points Memo

Trump has already tried once to overthrow the republic in response to losing an election. He explicitly promises to wrench our democratic institutions into a perverted system of populist authoritarianism and wreck the structure of global alliances which have kept generations of Americans safe.

The Daily Beast

The Heritage Foundation’s president Kevin Roberts, one of the architects of the controversial Project 2025 plan for a second Trump presidency, said the quite part out loud this week when he warned liberals that there would be violence if they stand in the way of the “second American revolution.”

Kyler Alvord • People

A sweeping proposal for how Donald Trump should handle a second term in office has sparked concern for its implications on the role of federal government and its calls to eliminate a number of basic human rights.

Donald J. Trump and The Heritage Foundation pose a grave threat to our democracy and the American way of life.

When a young man tried to murder the Orange Man on Saturday night folks called for us to back off, let things cool down. Sure, ok, let’s back off. You can bet Trump’s campaign didn’t. They went to work fundraising off of the attempt on his life.

Violence is not the way and Democrats need to remain focused in our effort to get Independents to vote for President Biden.

The GOP has to lose or the country loses.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been a pretty quiet week in the Fahrni household and at work. I’d say we’re in a steady state at both. Of course it won’t stay that way for long so I’m gonna enjoy it while I can.

Our granddaughter is with us this weekend so let’s see how much writing I’ll get done. 😁

I’ve saved so many interesting links this week. I hope you enjoy them.

Caleb Newton • Bipartisan Report

J. Michael Luttig, a widely consulted former federal judge, is among those harshly condemning the recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to give presidents a layer of legal immunity, meaning protection from prosecution, for certain actions taken in office.

Our Supreme Court has done democracy a big disservice. The immunity they’ve granted Presidents basically gives them carte blanche to commit crimes as part of holding the office.

They’re evil idiots.

Jason Koebler • 404 Media

The real Christina Warren hasn’t been writing these new posts on the zombie TUAW, however. The site’s new owners have stolen her identity, replaced her photo with an AI-generated one, and have been publishing what appear to be AI-generated articles under her byline.

Here’s someone using “AI” in an unethical way. Taking someone else’s work, running it through an LLM to change it, and republishing it under the authors name — with a different author picture — is disgusting.

Victoria Namkung • The Guardian

Whenever Cassie Yoshikawa drives through the Central Valley on the former US Highway 99, she looks for the century-old landmark that symbolizes the midpoint of California: the Palm and the Pine.

You’d think being a lifelong Californian I’d have known about this. I recall passing them but I had no idea they represented the center of California. They’re an official unofficial marker. Folks just did it. Pretty nifty.

Of course they’re going to be ripped out for highway expansion. Goodness knows we need more cars on the road.

Noor Al-Sibai • Futurism

Elon Musk is a man with many brands — but for electric vehicle shoppers, his personal brand has become increasingly toxic.

That’s right, folks are not buying Teslas because Space Karen is such a dick.

I’ve given up on The Musk Files. The man is just so toxic and disgusting his crimes against humanity are too many to enumerate.

Janko Roettgers • Lowpass

This is it for Redbox: The judge overseeing the bankruptcy case of Redbox’s corporate parent Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment granted the debtors request to convert it from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, effectively paving the way for shutting down the company and liquidating its assets.

Wow. BluRay and DVD renters are out of luck it seems. Before streaming became ubiquitous we’d rent from Redbox about once a week. We had one at our local grocery store. It was easy and cheap.

There’s a bit of irony in this whole thing. I’ve gone back purchasing BluRay + digital download movies. We use the digital version all the time but have that BluRay backup should the license for the digital copy be revoked.

Dalia Faheid, Monica Garrett and Brandon Miller • CNN

Death Valley sets a new daily record with a searing 128 degrees as West Coast heat wave drags on

Poor California, poor planet. If this keeps up how long will it be before California can no longer produce the fruits and vegetables that feed the world? That’s not hyperbole. California’s San Joaquin Valley really is the breadbasket of the world.

Patrick Wyatt • Code of Honor

I’ve been writing about the early development of Warcraft, but a recent blog post I read prompted me to start scribbling furiously, and the result is this three-part, twenty-plus page article about the development of StarCraft, along with my thoughts about writing more reliable game code.

Don’t look at the date this article was published. Yes, it’s from 2012. 😄

You know I love a good discussion about code architecture, especially when presented in the form of an actual product. Not just some sample code to illustrate the point. He links off to another post discussing a linked list implementation and it’s great reading.

Chris Medland • racer

Lewis Hamilton’s victory in his last British Grand Prix for Mercedes is “like a little fairytale,” according to team principal Toto Wolff.

It’s really nice to see Lewis Hamilton pick up a win in his final season the Mercedes.

Manton Reece

Everyone who has implemented ActivityPub from scratch knows that there are implementation-specific quirks that trip up developers, making compatibility between apps more difficult. Some of these issues are being clarified by the Social Web Community Group. Test suites will help too. Micro.blog has had ActivityPub support for years and we’re still finding edge cases.

So many folks are climbing on the ActivityPub bandwagon and that’s a good thing. Providing more integration with other services and allowing those to be displayed in native clients without changing formats is wonderful.

As much as I’d like to finish writing, my granddaughter is up so I’m gonna hit the publish button now and hang out with her. 😃

Steven Beschloss

The dangerously self-important Roberts insisted that the country is “in the process of the second American Revolution” and further noted that this so-called revolution “will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Tom Warren • The Verge

Microsoft is finally rolling out spellcheck and autocorrect for its Notepad app in Windows 11, more than 40 years after the simple text editor was first introduced in Windows in 1983.

Skye Jacobs • TechSpot

Big Tech needs to generate $600 billion in annual revenue to justify AI hardware expenditure

Sarah Kuta • Smithsonian Magazine

While visiting his parents’ recently renovated house in Europe, a man spotted something unusual in one of the floor tiles. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be part of a human jawbone—and it still had a few teeth.

Spire Motorsports

Rodney Childers, a 40-time NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) race winning crew chief and one of the sport’s most respected tacticians, will lead Spire Motorsports No. 7 team and driver Corey LaJoie in 2025.

Felix Salmon • Axios

The Slacker generation might have been slacking off when it came to planning for retirement: Gen X consistently ranks in surveys as the least-prepared group for when they stop earning.

John Stoehr • Raw Story

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) declared Monday he is advocating for Christian nationalism, a far-right ideology that claims there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution, and promotes as a national religion Christian fundamentalism, a hardline, extremist brand of Christianity at odds with the religious beliefs of many Christians across the country

Drew Magary • SFGATE

But again, discretion isn’t this car’s job. This is a loud and lonely car for loud and lonely people. And while I enjoyed driving my Cybertruck, I hope I’m never loud and lonely enough to want to buy one.

Adios, New York Times.

I’ve had enough. Time to speak with my money I suppose.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

We celebrated our nations 248th birthday this week. For some reason it made me think back to being a kid in 1976. We lived in the little California town of Lindsay. It’s where I was born. That year, for the entire year, all the fire hydrants were painted in red, white, and blue to celebrate our nations 200th birthday. It was a big deal and I’ll never forget it.

Enjoy the links.

Stephanie Mencimer • Mother Jones

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that former President Donald Trump has broad immunity from prosecution for crimes he allegedly committed while in office. The majority decision provoked furious dissent from the court’s three liberal justices. “The President is now a King above the law,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, concluding, “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

The emphasis above is mine. It’s bone chilling to read that sentence. We’ve opened the door to all kinds of despicable behavior from future Presidents.

It’s a sad, sad, day for America. I hope our country can survive this. ❤️

Jennifer Zhan • Vulture

Martin Mull — the actor who kept us laughing with his comedic chops in Fernwood 2 Night, Clue, Arrested Development, and more — has died. He was 80.

When I hear the name Martin Mull I think of Clue and his small role in Jingle All the Way.

Luda Fux

Managing multiple states in SwiftUI views can be complex and error-prone. This post addresses the issue by introducing a consolidated generic ViewState enum, simplifying state management, reducing bugs, and enhancing maintainability.

It’s nice little things like this that make writing code that much easier. In Swift the enum is extremely powerful. Might as well use it, right?

Eugen Rochko • blog.joinmastodon.org

To reinforce and encourage Mastodon as the go-to place for journalism, we’re launching a new feature today. You will notice that underneath some links shared on Mastodon, the author byline can be clicked to open the author’s associated fediverse account, right in the app.

Leave it to a scrappy little open source project to embrace journalism. Why news organizations haven’t embraced Mastodon is beyond me. Smart folks have started Mastodon instances dedicated to journalists. Of course any journalist has the freedom to choose any instance that suits them. It’s wide open.

Jeremy Whittle • The Guardian

Mark Cavendish became the most prolific stage winner in the history of the Tour de France, taking his 35th victory with a typically instinctive victory in a chaotic sprint finish in Saint Vulbas.

I’m really happy for M. Cavendish. After last years fall and broken collar bone I wasn’t sure if he’d give it another go. I’m happy he did.

Gabriele Svelto • Mozilla

In some cases, Firefox could handle the failed allocation, but in most cases, there is no sensible or safe way to handle the error and it would need to crash in a controlled way… but what if we could recover from this situation instead? Windows automatically resizes the swap file when it’s almost full, increasing the amount of commit space available. Could we use this to our advantage?

I’d love to see this in greater detail. I wonder where exactly this is in the codebase? Are they using HeapAlloc, VirtualAlloc, something else, or some combination?

My little C++ class library uses HeapAlloc to preallocate memory for use with strings display to the user that would be shown for errors or other one off uses. It loads strings from resources.

Angela McArdle • Newsweek

Harrison Burton has openly responded to the recent decision by Wood Brothers Racing to replace him with Josh Berry for the upcoming year.

I’m happy for Josh Berry and bummed for Harrison Burton.

Burton is still very young and I hope he’s able to find another team willing to give him a shot.

If all else fails perhaps he could drop back to the Xfinity Series?

Riccardo Savi • The Verge

Microsoft AI boss Mustafa Suleyman incorrectly believes that the moment you publish anything on the open web, it becomes “freeware” that anyone can freely copy and use.

Whoa! This seems a bit wrong. What about copyright? I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but this sounds wrong footed.

I know MacStories has been pounding the regulation drum for a while now. It makes sense. If you’d like to keep your data away from LLM training, it should be an option. But how do you codify it legally?

Emily Galvin-Almanza

You may have heard the term “Project 2025” floating around, and you may even have cracked open the 900+ page document yourself, only to see a lot of kind of bland, policy-wonk text. So let me crack through the policy-speak and tell you WTF is in this document.

I hope you can get to this Pocket link? It was originally a thread on X that someone unwound on Thread Reader, but it’s a mess of ads.

Anyway, go read the piece of a rundown of Project 2025. It’s disgusting what they want to do to our country.

Casey Newton • Platformer News

A year ago this week, Meta introduced Threads to the world.

Happy birthday, Threads! 🎂

Here’s hoping they get fully integrated into the Fediverse so we can follow folks from Mastodon.

Also, does anyone know how to completely disable their recommendation engine? 😆

Adam Gordon Bell • Co-Recursive

What if you had to fight against your company’s culture to bring a revolutionary tool to life? Meet Jeffrey Snover, the Microsoft architect behind PowerShell, a command tool that transformed Windows system administration. Initially met with skepticism, Snover’s idea faced resistance from a company that favored graphical interfaces.

Really nice interview with the man behind Microsoft PowerShell. It’s a super powerful shell for DevOps, Network Admins, and Developers. It’s highly extensible via scripting and making use of .Net assemblies and COM components.

It’s best if you take the time to listen to the podcast but. There is a full transcript available if you’d rather read it.

Siobhan Roberts • The New York Times

Bright and early on the first Saturday in January, Tomas Rokicki and a few hundred fellow enthusiasts gathered in a vast lecture hall at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco. A big math conference was underway and Dr. Rokicki, a retired programmer based in Palo Alto, Calif., had helped organize a two-day special session about “serious recreational mathematics” celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Rubik’s Cube.

I remember when Rubik’s Cubes started showing up at school and I remember my first one. I never mastered how to solve it because I wanted to do it on my own. I could only ever get three sides completed. I also had a pyramid puzzler that was super easy to complete.

Happy 50th anniversary! 🥳

Courtenay Brown, Margaret Talev • Axios

By the numbers: One-third of millennials and over 60% of Gen Z consumers say they rely on their parents for at least some financial support.

We see this with our kids but it’s not about FOMO or poor choices. They usually need help when they have a major expense land on them, like a car breaking down.

It’s tough for them to get by and I know our oldest daughter doubts they’ll ever have a home of their own.

Matt Crossman • NASCAR

Even inside the car while the crash is happening, the world goes silent, or seems to, at least. As Austin Dillon’s car flew down the frontstretch in 2015 at Daytona in one of the most frightening wrecks in NASCAR history, all he could hear were his own thoughts: You’re OK, you’re OK, you’re OK.

If you’ve ever seen that crash you’ll understand why he was repeating that over and over. It’s pretty horrific and a testament to how well these cars are built.

Believe it or not the cars are horsepower restricted on Super Speedways, through the use of restrictor plates.

Louie Mantia

In addition to birthdate, there should be a deceased date field in Contacts. That data can be used for both memorial purposes and to prevent Siri suggestions about making a posthumous birthday call. There should also be an easy way to archive threads with a deceased loved one in iMessage to preserve those memories. There should be a path to inherit iTunes purchases, even though there are legal differences between a CD and a digital album. (Buy physical media, people.)

I’ve thought a lot about what I’d like to do with my various sites when I kick the bucket. I need to put together a plan that will bring everything under one roof so that single domain will serve as an archive of everything I’ve done and will do in computing. It will most likely live under the fahrni.me domain and will include hayseed.co and this domain for certain.

I already have all my Tweets archived thanks to Micro.blog.

Thing is, will my wife be able to manage it and keep the domain going?

It would be really nice if there were a way to archive everything to a single site, like archive.org, or something for free as long as the data is static.

I’ve also started purchasing movies in the BluRay, DVD, digital bundle again, just so I have a physical copy.

This little feller is helping me lay the foundation for my retaining wall.

Wish I could’ve gotten closer.

That’s how old the United States of America is.

Will we have a 249th birthday? Only if we elect Joe Biden. That will allow us to add four additional years to the count.

Happy Fourth of July.

Kathleen Culliton • Raw Story

“Democrats fearful that President Joe Biden will cost them control of Congress are mulling calling on him to withdraw from the race against convicted felon former President…”

All y’all are cowards!

Biden is our only choice. Get out there and rally the troops. There’s more to lose than your seat in the House or Senate.

I would really love to see NASCAR add a couple international dates to their schedule. Maybe these dates are in place of some track dates that get two races and they’re only done every-other-year?

Regardless, I think it would be good for the sport. Granted I’m a total NASCAR noob but I’ve really come to appreciate the skill, strategy, and excitement of NASCAR.

Exciting? Really?

Yep. I think it’s the most exciting of the three racing leagues I keep an eye on; NASCAR, IndyCar, and F1. Of those F1 is, hands down, the most boring of the three with NASCAR being the most exciting. And, no, it’s not just because of the incredible wrecks it’s because on each weekend you could have a different winner. Sure, there are favorites who will win more races than others but you do have a distribution of winners.

Where would they go?

That’s the big question and I have opinions!

Mexico

Mexico City - Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez

F1 currently runs at Mexico City so they’re ready to host a major car racing series.

The track is 2.67 miles of road course. Not an oval, of course.

England

Brands Hatch

Billed as Britain’s Best Loved Circuit, Brands Hatch is a 2.3 mile road course and would be a total blast to see NASCAR compete there.

Who knows, if NASCAR were to have some international events like this perhaps they could run a few European tracks.

Germany

Nürburgring

I would LOVE to see them run THE LEGENDARY GREEN HELL. It’s huge! Just shy of 13 miles of road course with elevation changes and tricky turns.

If that’s just too much track they could run the F1 track instead. It’s just over 3 miles of road course.

Japan

Suzuka Circuit

Another course on the F1 circuit that runs 2.6 miles in length.

And that’s that!

Perhaps one of these tracks per year, maybe two or three in Europe while they’re there.

NASCAR is a very different type of organization. They are extremely conservative and that may not translate well to an audience outside America, but I’d love to see them try.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been a very quiet week but I’m excited for tomorrow because Kim and Taylor will be back home! 🥳

Guess I’d better cleanup the house. 🤣

My first cup of coffee is in hand. I hope you enjoy the links.

boing boing

All schools in every Oklahoma district must now include the Bible in their teachings, as mandated today by State Superintendent Ryan Walters.

This seems to be a violation of separation of church and state established by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

The text is simple and is referred to as the Establishment Clause.

It reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…

That’s it. That says it all and goes on to say you’re free to practice any religion you’d like.

Also, when these Christian Nationalists say “The Bible” which Bible are they referring to? Catholic? King James? New International Version? Which? Folks will argue over that, believe me, I know first hand. My Grandparents and Mom swore if you didn’t read the King James you were doing it wrong. Who can read all those begats and hithers and all that English we no longer use today?

Anyway. This is the setup for a visit all the way to the Supreme Court where the Heritage Foundation was allowed to seat three judges during the Orange Man’s time in office and Alito is obviously ready to support a Christian Nationalist agenda.

This is a clear violation of the First Amendment, just like being able to post the Ten Commandments in the class room.

Keep Church out of public schools. You have your place of worship and Bible studies for that.

Romain Dillet • TechCrunch

A few months after opening a non-compliance case on Apple and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the European Commission has shared its preliminary findings with Apple. And the bottom line is that the current App Store rules are in breach of the DMA. Confirmed violations of the DMA can lead to fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover.

Hoo-boy. Apple has stepped in it. Their implementation of the Digital Rights Act has a few things that have left many scratching their heads. Apple believes and has established that they’re entitled to a commission on every sale of digital goods. Until Tim Cook took the stand and proclaimed that, I’d never thought of it as a commission. I just knew they got 30% of my sales, which was reduced to 15% later on. Tim Cook when on to say it was going to be tough for developers to keep track of, and pay, what they owe Apple every month.

As part of Apple’s DMA implementation they expect a 27% commission due them for each App sale on competing app stores.

The next oddity is the Core Technology Fee for companies opening their own app stores. Go read the CTF if you’re interested. I’m just gonna mess it up trying to explain it here.

Basically Apple has made the idea of having a competing App Store so unattractive very few companies have the resources to pull it off.

Having a commission of 27% vs. 15% in the Apple App Store and the CTF seem to be the biggest issues.

Can the EU tell Apple they can’t collect a commission? I’m pretty sure that’s what most developers want and it would open the door to competition from Indie App Stores. We’re all in this to make a living from it. If I could sell my app in Store A and pay 5% for processing it’s a much better deal than the 15% I give to Apple. Math for the win!

I don’t foresee putting my apps that lose money in any other App Stores, but I’d imagine others are super happy to try.

Christian Selig

Today I’m releasing Juno 2.0, which incorporates a ton of that community feedback, and truly brings the app to the next level through extensive improvements and new features. Using it over the last little while I have had so many moments where I catch myself smiling. Browsing and watching YouTube on visionOS through Juno is honestly just so fun, immersive, and downright futuristic, and I genuinely think the best way to watch your favorite videos.

Christian is the developer behind the wildly popular Reddit client Apollo, which Reddit shut down. He seems to have gone down the Vision Pro rabbit hole with a new video playing app called Juno. I suspect the app is beautiful and extremely easy to use.

If you own a Vision Pro and love watching YouTube videos, give it a try. It’s a one time purchase of $4.99US in the Vision Pro App Store.

Dino Durrati • politizoom

Fascist piglet and Donald Trump butt boy Kevin Roberts, President of the uber-right leaning Heritage Foundation – the organization that owns the Supreme Court and six of its justices – was skillfully unmasked earlier this morning by MSNBC correspondents Simone Sanders, Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez, who apparently had a diabolical plan in place to expose this Nazi for just who he is… just ask the idiot Trump sycophant pertinent questions and then sit back and let him run his mouth.

Go watch the YouTube video of this interview. The MAGA nuts are now saying the quiet part out loud. Project 2025 is a playbook to make a fascist America.

It’s good they’re being open about it. The question is, how many people will see this and pay attention to Project 2025, much less vote against the fascist MAGA agenda?

Germany let it happen with Hitler. We can’t let this happen with Trump.

Jay Peters • The Verge

Figma is announcing a bunch of new features at its Config conference today, including a major UI redesign, new generative AI tools to help people more easily make projects, and built-in slideshow functionality.

I’m stunned how popular Figma is. At WillowTree it’s used for everything. Just about every meeting I go to there’s some kind of FigJam board being used for something. Can we please stop? 🤣

I guess at some point everything devolves into presentation software. Folks used Visio for this purpose back in the early 2000’s and probably still do today.

Personally I’m more into native apps, like Sketch, for Design. But folks need to use what suits them and makes them productive.

Daniel “Jelly” Farrelly

Casey suggested “The Search for Blue March”, and I mostly stuck with it, only opting to change the month to “December” because I felt gave a better nod to the original. “Kay Celis” became the director, a pseudonym that makes way more sense if you say it out loud. For the date, I opted to use Callsheet’s launch date. It felt appropriate.

Reading about the process of doing something creative makes me smile. This post did just that. 😀

Richard Lawler • The Verge

The NFL has been hit with a $4.7 billion verdict in a class action antitrust lawsuit filed on behalf of residential and commercial customers who paid for its Sunday Ticket package on DirecTV from 2011 through 2022.

That’s a heckuva lot of cash! Wowzer!

Once it’s divvied up everyone will get a check in the mail for $0.25. 🤣

Kevin Purdy • Ars Technica

40 years later, X Window System is far more relevant than anyone could guess

Old software never goes away. In this case it seems X is considered complete.

The new hotness is Weyland. I haven’t used Linux since 2009 so I have no experience with it. Heck, most of my windowing experience on Linux was with KDE.

It’s interesting to see how far things have come since then. I may need to make a VM just to horse around with things.

Katelyn Reinhart • ASU News

The wet-bulb temperature limit for human survival indicates the maximum combinations of temperature and humidity that humans can tolerate without suffering inevitable heat stroke over a fixed duration of exposure.

This is kind of terrifying if you believe in Climate Change and a hotter earth.

Our combined stupidity and the drive of capitalism at all costs will lead to our extinction.

It makes me wonder if folks should continue to have children? I fear for my grandchildren.

Eleana Tworek, Don Gonyea, Samantha Balaban, and Shannon Rhoades • NPR

Detroit’s population is growing, a first since the 1950s. The uptick is small but significant for a city that’s struggled for decades.

I’m here for this! I’d love to be able to convince my wife we need to move to Detroit and fix up a home in a neighborhood that needs reviving.

My wife’s not having it. 😆

I didn’t watch the debate last night and I’m glad I skipped it. Apparently President Biden didn’t do so well. That’s ok, I’m still voting for him and I’m sure most Democrats will.

Question is how do we get Independents to vote for him or true Republicans who don’t agree with the draconian MAGA movement? The movement that’ll set us back decades.

I’m still voting for Joe Biden, I don’t care if he’s not as sharp as he once was. He has amazing people all around him and I’m certain he can still do the job.

If you’re an Independent or Republican the question is: Do you want Democracy or Fascism?

The choice is so easy for most of us, we want Democracy.

Let’s see how Mrs. Fahrni and Taylor are doing in California!

Sucks to be them. 🤣 Having to deal with perfect blue sky and sunshine with a high in the mid-70’s.

A few of Kim’s happy flowers.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been an interesting week at the Fahrni household. Kim and Taylor are visiting family in California and I’m holding down the fort. There are of course benefits to this, I can eat whatever I want. But, there are also downsides. I can eat whatever I want. Needless to say, I’ve done a horrible job of eating the right things, the healthy things I should be eating. 🍔🍟🍕🍰🥧🍦

Richard Goldstein • The New York Times

Willie Mays, Baseball’s Electrifying Player of Power and Grace, Is Dead at 93

Perhaps the best to ever play the game. RIP.

Mansee Khurana • NPR

Donald Sutherland, who starred in more than 200 movies and TV shows, died Thursday in Miami, Fla., after a long illness. He was 88.

We’ve all seen Donald Sutherland in movies and perhaps you may not be able to name many?

The films I most remember him in were Space Cowboys, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Salem’s Lot.

RIP.

Sinem Akinci • Microsoft C++ Team Blog

This blog post was written in collaboration with Philipp Jeske and Rainer Bauereiss, a software engineer and a software engineering lead we worked with to deliver on these improvements, who shared their story and experience with C++ development while adopting Visual Studio 2022.

Neat interview with a couple engineers from Bosch about their use of Visual Studio in a cross platform environment.

I’m so jealous of this! I’d have loved to have had this in 2005 or even 2009 while working at Pelco.

I used vim, KDevelop, and eventually settled into Eclipse while working on our Linux products. Windows was easy, we used Visual Studio.

Heck, I’d have loved to have had VSCode at that time! 😃

Reading this article brought back some great memories and made me want to ask Bosch if they needed any old crusty C++ devs. 🤣 I do miss it.

Rain Noe • Core77

If you’ve worked in structural package design, you may have noticed recent changes to Starbucks' cups for cold drinks. If not, here’s a look at the new design features, added to make baristas' lives easier.

While it may seem mundane or boring to some it’s not to me. There is a designer living inside me, but he sucks. At least with sites like Core77 I can live vicariously through amazing designers of all kinds!

There is one glaring problem with these Starbucks cups. Know what it is? Yes, they’re made of plastic. How in the world can we divorce ourselves of it? 🤔

Filipe Espósito • 9to5Mac

Apple this year announced a series of changes when it comes to the App Store in the EU, as the Digital Markets Act (DMA) antitrust legislation came into force in March. However, the European Commission doesn’t seem satisfied with the changes Apple has made. For the EU, Apple has some “very serious” issues with not being fully compliant with the new legislation.

Well, it sounds like Apple may be at the “find out” part the ever popular statement “F*ck around and find out.”

Of course I’ll be keeping an eye on this. Will I participate in another store? I kind of doubt it. 🍿

Daniel Golson • Jalopnik

Do You Think Honda’s $15,000 Electric Kei Van Would Actually Work In America?

I don’t know but this is the sort of pricing we 100% need here in the States if we want to get folks to buy electric vehicles. I’d buy a lesser expensive electric car for commuting — if I had a commute — even if it had a 100 mile range. I could charge at home and at work. ⚡️

Nick Hodges • InfoWorld

Software developers started having to think not only about how the program was going to get the job done, but also about how the user was going to interact with the program to get the job done. It became clear that a good user interface was something that would sell more software.

This is one of those things that bothered me about web apps. They’re all over the place as far as UI design goes. With native Mac and Windows apps you at least expect, and get, a certain amount of consistency across applications. 👨🏽‍💻

Allan Rose Hill • Boing Boing

The team members decided to spend the night in the cells of D Block. However, one of the fellows was a loud snorer so they banished him to crash in the room where mughots were once taken. The next morning, they found him, and his gear, outside the room.

Who doesn’t love a good ghost story?

It makes me want to go spend the night there to find out what’s going on.👻

Mark Moran • UPI

Excavation unearths cherries in cellar of George Washington’s Mount Vernon

This is pretty nifty. I wonder what else they’ll eventually find? I love American history, the good and bad, and have often thought of becoming a History teacher or historian.

I wonder what those dissolved cherries taste like? Probably really disgusting. 🤣

Dave Winer • Scripting News

One of the cool things about the way I designed FeedLand internally is that there are various levels of feed stuff. If you want to start over at any level, you can, and today I’m doing exactly that. But first here’s the stack

A little insight to Dave’s FeedLand service stack.

Andy Kalmowitz • Jalopnik

The Tesla Cybertruck is possibly the most look-at-me vehicle on sale today with its bizarre shape and stainless steel bodywork, but what if you wanted something that stuck out from the crowd even more (in a bad way)? Well, folks now is your chance to do just that, because I’ve just stumbled upon the most attention-seeking Cybertruck to date. Listed for sale in Lincoln, Nebraska is a completely polished Cybertruck. Who knew the center of Hell was Nebraska?

I personally don’t see the attraction to the Cybertruck. I’d imagine they’re mostly purchased by macho men and Space Karen fanboys.

Of course I’d never own one but I will admit I kind of like the way this highly polished version with aftermarket wheels and tires looks. Way better than the factory mess Tesla ships.

It’s gonna be dangerous as heck on the road. Can you imagine getting hit in the face with the glare off of one of these? 🪩

John Gruber • Daring Fireball

By My Count Trump is Batting .900 on the Ten Commandments

Yeah, the Orange Menace couldn’t tell you the Ten Commandments much less live by them. He’s a fraud when it comes to religion, just like he is at everything else.

Kelly Crandall • Racer

Gene Haas to continue in NASCAR with new Haas Factory Team in 2025

This is good news for NASCAR fans, I think? When Stewart Haas announced their closure folks thought there’d be four charters up for sale. Now it looks like the Cup side will be reduced to one team and the Xfinity side will retain both of the existing teams.

I’m really interested to know which team and charter will they keep? E.G. It could be the four car with a different team and driver.

That still leaves three Cup charters and drivers looking for new homes.

I’d love to see these charters go to new homes and see their drivers go with them. I’m especially curious about where Josh Berry and team land. He’s had a good rookie season and he has a legendary Crew Chief. 🚘

UPDATE: I guess we know where Chase Briscoe is gonna land. 🤣

Chase is currently a Stewart Haas driver. Guess he’s going to Joe Gibbs Racing.

Samuel Axon • Ars Technica

Business Insider claims it has seen internal Dell tracking data that reveals nearly 50 percent of the workforce opted to accept the consequences of staying remote, undermining Dell’s plan to restore its in-office culture.

Dell employed an interesting tactic and it kind of didn’t really work.

So, if you choose to work remotely you’re basically stuck at your current job and salary. It turns out 50% of the company was fine with those terms.

Travis Gettys • AlterNet

A former U.S. Supreme Court clerk cast suspicion on the lengthy delay by justices in rendering a decision in Donald Trump’s immunity case.

This doesn’t surprise me given what we’ve been hearing about the court recently.

The thing in most concerned with is their upcoming decision on the Orange Menaces claim he has full immunity. Apparently some group of judges are leaning toward a limited set of immunities for the President. That seems insane to me, unless it only applies to Presidential duties. The Orange Dude didn’t commit his crimes as part of his official Presidential duties. They were the selfish acts of a cruel, narcissistic, rapist, felon.

Besides, the justices need to be really careful. If they give free rein to Presidents the Orange Dude may mysteriously disappear, and if Dark Brandon were behind it, well, wouldn’t that be something.

I know it’s pathetic of me to say stuff like that but at this point I’m hoping the guy just goes away never to be seen again. I don’t care how.

Charles R. Davis • Salon

The story, in a way, is that there is any story at all: On Thursday, two sources told The New York Times, in effect, that every liberal critic of Judge Aileen Cannon — every legal analyst who says she has mishandled Donald Trump’s classified documents case, displaying incompetence and prejudice — is absolutely right.

This judge is something else. By all accounts she has no clue what she’s doing, unless of course she really does and it tilting her decisions to Trump.

In other words, Cannon’s own colleagues are openly talking about her bias and inability now that both have been ably demonstrated in case that still has no trial date, a year after she was assigned it, largely due to the fact that she has agreed to hold hearings on just about every issue raised by the defense. On Friday, even outside right-wing attorneys will be given time in the courtroom to argue that it was actually illegal for Smith to even bring the case.

I keep hoping the 11th Circuit will replace her. Regardless, Trump won’t see trial before the election so she will have achieved her goal.

Longest day of the year. It’s 9:04 and still light.

Love it.