Whoops, it looks like my Mastodon instance has gone down. DOH!
Update: that didn’t last long! 🤣
Stream for Mac: Work Note
I managed to work on Stream for Mac for a little while yesterday. I got a bit confused about how menus operate on the Mac — from a developer standpoint. I’m an old Windows developer of 20 years turned iOS developer in 2009 and now exploring the Mac and AppKit (yeah, I know, it’s old and busted now.) I got hung up on who “owns” the menu in a Mac App. I’d never had to think about it before, now I have a better understanding of how the Mac and first responder work.
I was kind of beating my head against the concept until our internet connection decided to stop working and I was kind of forced to walk away for a bit. That was intimately the key to figuring it out. I asked some questions on the Core Intuition Slack, using my phone, got some great answers to my noob questions, and read about menus and first responder in a book I have available in Kindle. The book I used was Programming Swift! Mac Apps 1 Swift 3 Edition by Nick Smith. I jumped to Chapter 8 Menus, Toolbars, and First Responder and that did the trick. I’m hoping I’ll be able to carve out some time today to put my newfound knowledge to use. 🤞🏼
I have other chores to take care of first. Hopefully they don’t take too long. Heh, they always take too long. 😂
The Nazi Bar on the Corner
Eventually, the Substack founders had to respond. They couldn’t stare off into the distance like Best did during the Nilay Patel interview in April. So another founder, Hamish McKenzie, finally published a Note saying “yes, we allow Nazis and we’re not going to stop.” Of course, as is too often the case on these things, he tried to couch it as a principled stance
- Robert Reich
- Michael Moore
- Steven Beschloss
- Virginia Heffernan
- Mary L. Trump
- Joyce Vance
- Michael McFaul
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
- Platformer (Casey Newton)
This is a list of folks I’ve been following on Substack. I currently pay for one of those subscriptions and I will no longer be doing that.
There are a lot of wonderful writers and thinkers in that list and I’m shocked they’ve chosen to hang out in the Nazi bar. It’s disgusting.
I’m sure there are many other great writers I don’t know about using Substack but it’s time to move on people. Start your own blog and offer a newsletter from there. Want to monetize it? Hanging out with Nazis to get a paycheck is still hanging out with Nazis and it means you support them.
Try WordPress, Ghost, or Buttondown.
There are others
M1 Mac Runners with Christina Warren
I’m not a backend developer but I do find the care and feeding of services fascinating.
In this video Christina Warren takes us into a GitHub lab — complete with lab coat — to discuss GitHub’s M1 Mac runners.
I’ve wondered how these machines were setup. I’d imagined a bunch of Mac Mini’s turned vertically in a custom rack, but that’s not at all what GitHub does! They disassemble the Mini, pull the parts and pieces out, and put them into a custom sled that allows them to slide right into a rack. It’s extremely cool and now I want a rack of them in my home. 🤣
This did raise some questions however.
What do they do with the shells after they gut the Mini? Do they have a deal with Apple to return them? Do they fill them with PC parts and use them as desktop computers?
Why are they using M1s? Why not M2s? Is it because it took time to build out the new sled and master gutting the Mini without destroying parts? Is it because the M1 is so much better than the old x86 boxes that they decided to get M1s at a discount?
How many total Mac runners do the currently have at GitHub, including x86 based boxes? Were they all gutted and configured to work on a sled like these new M1 versions?
Is the process of building out a sled and rack of these documented anywhere?
Does Apple have an opinion on this? Does Apple have a similar setup for their Xcode Cloud service or do they just have a room full of Mac Mini’s somewhere?
Does GitHub have more Macs on their public facing network than Apple? I’d imagine Apple is using cheap PC boxes running Linux for any service they’re not already running on AWS or Azure.
Is Apple, perhaps, running their Xcode Cloud service inside GitHubs infrastructure?
So many questions.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
I don’t know about y’all but I’ve taken the week between Christmas and New Year off. I do it every year and it’s a nice way to wrap up the year. I’m never sure what I’m going to do during my time off but I do hope to work on Stream a little bit and with any luck we’ll have the grandkids over at least one more time. They’re here now and we’re having a great time together.
More than 200 Substack authors asked the platform to explain why it’s “platforming and monetizing Nazis,” and now they have an answer straight from co-founder Hamish McKenzie
I follow a number of writers I really like on Substack and I have a terrible feeling they’ll all continue to use the Nazi loving platform because of the money they generate.
I will no longer be supporting any of those authors or linking to any of their work until they abandon the platform.
There are options. You could move to Buttondown, use WordPress, or roll your own like Ben Thompson did for Stratechery.
I know that last option is not for the faint of heart but Ben has managed a successful, paid, newsletter for over a decade.
WordPress is still a bit of work, but much easier than roll-your-own. You can pay WordPress to host your site.
Buttondown is not a VC backed venture — that supports Nazi’s — so it takes money to keep it going. Yes, Buttondown is a paid service.
I’d imagine there are other options. Look around and get away from Substack as quickly as humanly possible.
Figma and Adobe have reached a joint decision to end our pending acquisition. It’s not the outcome we had hoped for, but despite thousands of hours spent with regulators around the world detailing differences between our businesses, our products, and the markets we serve, we no longer see a path toward regulatory approval of the deal.
Time certainly does fly! I had no idea it had been 18-months since the proposed acquisition began.
I know there were equal parts excitement and dread around the deal but know all folks need to worry about is Figma surviving as a company.
Will Adobe blow the dust off of XD and get back to work or has that season passed? I was on the XD beta and thought it was a really great piece of software. It was a shame to see it go.
If you want an overview of how things are in Lahaina four months after the fire, check out Jesse Wald’s video. TL;DR: The EPA just completed the hazardous materials removal project and now the main debris removal will start and take about a year.
Devastating. That’s the only word I can use to describe the Lahaina fire. As Bill notes it’s going to take years for things to get back to “normal.” As if normal can ever really return to these poor people. 💔
Chance Miller and Ben Lovejoy • 9to5Mac
The Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 will no longer be available to purchase from Apple starting later this week.
This is interesting news. It makes me wonder how much Apple will eventually pay to make the problem go away or will they buy the company?
Andrew Hutchinson • Social Media Today
As Threads continues to gain momentum, especially among journalists, a next key step will be the development of an API, which will then enable direct publishing to Threads, as well as scheduling, third-party analytics, and more.
I can kind of see why they’re creating this input only API. They want to support news organizations and the like who schedule posts or have them setup as a part of their publishing workflow.
But Threads could do it by setting up a Weblogs Ping server and accept RSS feeds!
Weblogs ping is a way to tell a server ”Hey, I have an update” and the server goes out and collects your RSS feed. This would be really great for batch updates. Threads could even define their own namespace extension to RSS if they need additional data. Problem solved!
David McCabe and Nico Grant • The New York Times
Google said on Monday that it would allow developers on its Play app store to offer direct payment options to users and would pay $700 million to settle an antitrust suit brought by state attorneys general, in the company’s latest move to navigate increased regulatory scrutiny of its power.
It was kind of strange to see Google lose and Apple win their respective cases. Google chose a jury trial which seems to have lead to their loss.
No matter. It now makes Apple the only company that requires using their store and payment system. Will this help a Government case if they ever push on Apple to allow third party stores and payment systems?
Laine Campbell • Facebook Engineering
While the app’s production launch had been under consideration for some time, the business finally made the decision and informed the infrastructure teams to prepare for its launch with only two days’ advance notice. The decision was made with full confidence that Meta’s infrastructure teams can deliver based on their past track record and the maturity of the infrastructure. Despite the daunting challenges with minimal lead time, the infrastructure teams supported the app’s rapid growth exceptionally well.
This is an incredible engineering feat. I’m not a fan of Facebook but they do have amazing engineers. If you’re into what it takes to power millions of users the world over go read the piece. It’s really good.
Ukraine’s military intelligence didn’t reveal what forces fighting on Ukraine’s side were responsible for the attack, hinting that it could have been one of the Russian battalions employed by Kyiv.
It’s heartwarming to see Russians push back against Putin. We 100% need to continue our support of Ukraine. Putin and his authoritarian regime cannot be allowed to take another inch of Ukrainian soil. If Ukraine falls, who’s next?
Since RSS is an open web thing that brings you stuff people write, and ActivityPub is also an open web thing that brings you stuff people write, it’s an obvious good idea to do both in the same app. Totally.
I thought about supporting ActivityPub — Mastodon in particular — as a first class citizen in Stream but the truth of the matter is it’s already a first class citizen because Mastodon supports RSS natively and it’s really good! Case closed.
The Privilege of Justice Thomas
After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.
I read this piece and was kind of disgusted by the privilege of political power. Here’s a man who chose to take a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land — a job he can quit at any time — only to bitch and moan about his “low pay.” Let me get this straight, a $173,000 salary in the early 2000’s wasn’t enough? Hell, it 2023, I have a high paying job and I don’t make that much.
Let’s take the typical GOP line here. If you don’t like your job or the pay go find another job. It’s that simple.
Since I make less than Judge Thomas does I’d like to let Harlan Crow I’m available to be bought. I don’t need lavish vacations with you. Just shoot me over, let’s say, $5,000,000.00 and I’ll become a Republican. Not a MAGA asshole, just a “normal” Republican.
Thomas accepted a stream of gifts from friends and acquaintances that appears to be unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court. Some defrayed living expenses large and small — private school tuition, vehicle batteries, tires. Other gifts from a coterie of ultrarich men supplemented his lifestyle, such as free international vacations on the private jet and superyacht of Dallas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow.
The stench off privilege is so strong I can smell it in Charlottesville.
George Priest, a Yale Law School professor who has vacationed with Thomas and Crow, told ProPublica he believes Crow’s generosity was not intended to influence Thomas’ views but rather to make his life more comfortable.
Like I said, I’m not too proud to be kept by a billionaire. Since his support of Thomas is simply to “make his life more comfortable” I think I deserve a piece of that action. I won’t do anything for Crow either, except happily take his money and do what I want. I already sound like a Republican!
Sorry for the rant. I hear stuff like this, the privilege of the powerful, and it makes me sick to my stomach. I’m fine but there are so many people out there struggling to get by. People who want to work, people who work their asses off, and are one emergency away from being homeless or not getting enough to eat.
Meanwhile a Supreme Court Justice bitches about his rough life.
Give me a break.
Apple Cloud Computing, please
As an Apple developer I feel like there’s a service missing from their offerings. Namely something like AWS or Azure, but for indie devs.
Perhaps that is too small a service or too costly to manage for Apple’s tastes? Remember, Tim Cook loves him a big pile of money.
What I’d like is the ability to host services with Apple. Something like the old Parse prior to Facebook acquiring them. That would allow us small folks to spin up a server without having to manage it.
Now, knowing Apple, this would cost a hojillion dollars to use, which wouldn’t work for an indie like myself, but it would be nice to see them give us an option like that.
Ideal
The ideal service would be a nice restful interface with a dashboard for creation and management of models I could fetch with a simple command per user. I know, I know, it sounds like a slightly enhanced CloudKit at this point which is true, but it would be nice to add the ability to get to these service from any code, be it web or Android or Windows, whatever, and let me save data that is not per user data. Yes, I want a true hosting solution I can spin up with a simple to use web interface and I’d prefer not to have to pay additionally for it.
Now, imagine if small developers who have to pay large sums of money to keep their services running could use a great Apple provider service? I’m looking at you, Castro.
Having a really great option for small to medium indie shops could make the App Store even better.
Hey, a fella can dream, right? 😃
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
For those who celebrate Christmas I hope you’ve completed your shopping and can enjoy your time reading blogs today or enjoy some other non day job activity. 😃
Andre Braugher, Star of Homicide and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Dead at 61
This was devastating to me. I’ve liked Andre Braugher since I saw him for the first time on Homicide: Life on the Street. Such a loss.
RIP.
Raymond Chen • The Old New Thing
The x86 instruction set has an ENTER instruction which builds a stack frame. It is almost always used with a zero as the second parameter.
Raymond Chen is one of the best development reads in the world. He’s so smart and can write to boot. He also has great stories to share. I recommend you point your RSS reader at The Old New Thing at Microsoft and enjoy.
I’ve used RSS for news and blogs since Google Reader days. I go through my feeds with Reeder on my iPad mini every morning. It’s my favorite time of day. While I’ve been extremely happy for years with Reeder as my RSS reading app, I’ve faced issues with their Reeder Feeds iCloud service.
iCloud sync is a thorn in the side of almost every developer who uses it. It slow to sync and sometimes requires logging out entirely to get it to work. Little indie companies do a better job running services than Apple. Sure, sure, Apple are doing it at huge scale, but so do Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google and I don’t hear about issues like this as often.
It’s really too bad modern software has an expectation of a backing service to make it work properly because a backing service is super expensive to operate. I can’t provide my own sync because I can’t pay hundreds of dollars a month to run a sync service for Stream. I only make a few bucks a month on Stream. And by a few I mean less than $20/month. That’s OK because I chose to make a simple app that isn’t updated often and chose to give it away. But, I feel for those little undies who spend so much to keep services up and running only to just scrape by or lose money.
Chance Miller, Zac Hall, and Michael Potuck • 9to5Mac
Last week, Beeper Mini debuted as a way to bring iMessage to Android, without having to hand over your Apple ID credentials. A few days later, Apple made a change that stopped Beeper Mini from working – and it promised to continue doing so.
Not surprising.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is throwing her weight behind Beeper, the app that allowed Android users to message iPhone users via iMessage, until Apple shut it down. Warren, an advocate for stricter antitrust enforcement, posted her support for Beeper on X (formerly Twitter) and questioned why Apple would restrict a competitor. The post indicates Apple’s move has now caught the attention of legislators, who are in a position to regulate Big Tech through policymaking.
Sorry, Senator. Goodness knows I love you, I really do, but I disagree with you on this. Apple is a publicly traded company who created a secure service for users of their devices. We pay for it with our purchase of Apple hardware and other services. It shouldn’t be seen as a free public utility.
The Beeper folks did an amazing job reverse engineering Messages so they could do what they did but it’s essentially hacking a service. Of course Apple is going to shut that down.
What should Apple do? That’s an easy answer for me. They should staff up an Android team and write a native Android app version of Messages. Then charge a monthly service fee for it. Problem solved! You’re welcome!
Something I often wonder. Are Apple’s services so bad/insecure that they mask it by not opening them up? I kind of doubt that but it always pops into my head when I read something about one of their services.
I am lobbying everyone I know to add great feed support to social media systems, so we can get out of the mode of dominant platforms before Threads becomes the dominant platform.
I must admit I didn’t understand what FeedLand is all about, but know I think I get it, maybe. 😃
Ultimately it’s an RSS aggregator. But I do get what Dave is trying to do beyond FeedLand.
Using RSS to follow a social site like Madtodon, Threads, or Bluesky would be amazing. RSS is mature, extensible, and stable.
I follow a few Mastodon feeds using Mastodon’s incredible RSS support, but it could go even further.
Imagine if all social networks supported RSS publishing. We could then use our reader of choice to casually browse our aggregated feeds. I know of a nice little iOS App that presents feeds as a timeline, check it out. 😃
Sorry, had to get that self plug in there.
What if social networks went the next step? What if I could set up a social network to read an RSS feed? Then I could write in one spot and publish to many/all using just RSS. That would be amazing.
To go one step further the social network could support weblog ping so the social network would know you’ve made an update.
Prior to social networks we had all of this in the blogging world. Dave Winer did all of it. He did RSS as well as weblogs ping. It worked really well. He even had Weblogs.com (don’t go there now, it’s a spammy site) which would display the latest sites with updates. If you’ve ever used Blo.gs you’ve seen weblog ping in action. You can even check out my ancient C++ command line implementation of weblog ping. 😂
Anyway. RSS in and out of social networks + weblog ping could be a nice open API for any social network without the need for someone to write code to call an API.
Alyssa Place • benefitnews.com
Employees' traditional view of retirement is changing. It’s time for employers to embrace that, too.
I asked WillowTree HR. A couple years back if we had any kind of plan for part time work and we don’t. I’d like to see that happen because, quite honestly, I can’t really retire. But I do hope to slow down when I hit 70 to enjoy what time I’ll have left, hopefully I live long enough to see a partial retirement.
I suspect the type of business we’re in doesn’t work well with part-time workers. It’s all about billing those hours, which is the worst possible business to be in.
Product and Services are still king. Anything you can upgrade and make money from while doing the next version is so much better than the hourly hamster wheel. 🐹
Threads started to test ActivityPub integration this week and the fediverse is losing it’s collective mind going into overdrive to block them in any way possible so they can’t grab all your data. Here’s the fun part: they can already do that and they definitely don’t need ActivityPub to do that.
There has been a lot of fear surrounding Threads integrating ActivityPub. I had my doubts at one time but as long as they remain good citizens I don’t have a problem with it
Despite delays, the plan to connect Tumblr’s blogging site to the wider world of decentralized social media, also known as the “fediverse,” is still on, it seems.
I think this is good news. Overall Tumblr feels like it fits into the Fediverse better than Wordpress and I hope they’re able to get it there.
Unfortunately, our medium, podcasting, has suffered economically since the beginning of Covid. As the number of podcasts grew exponentially, the number of advertisers dwindled, and with it, our revenue. At one time, we had as many as 30 people on the TWiT staff, not including show hosts, producing more than 30 unique shows. Today, the staff is half that size, and we produce half the number of shows.
Every indie podcast I listen to seems to be pushing subscriptions a lot harder than before. The entire market is in a downturn for free shows. Seeing TWiT layoff a bunch of longtime staff and cut shows is surprising and sad.
Mustapha Hamoui • platformer.news
Late Monday, the jury deliberating in Epic Games’ lawsuit against Google ruled in favor of the Fortnite developer. It found that Google harmed Epic by creating a monopoly in in-app billing and app distribution within the Android ecosystem, illegally tying the app store and its billing system together. A series of revenue-sharing deals with developers and device manufacturers were also found to harm competition.
I admit I don’t know how it is Google is found guilty of having an App Store monopoly and Apple isn’t. The law is strange and understanding eludes me at times.⚖️
Etsy is the latest company to lay off staff in 2023. CEO Josh Silverman confirmed the marketplace is letting go of 11 percent of its staff (around 225 employees) in its first significant staffing cut in recent years. It’s also reshuffling its leadership, including announcing two executives’ departures at the beginning of 2024.
2023 has been such a crummy year in so many ways but all the tech layoffs scare the crap out of me. I still worry about being laid off and hope the new year doesn’t continue the trend we’ve seen in 2023. 😔
Abandoning the Former Twitter: A Four-Week Check-In
I’m a fan of John Scalzi’s writing and have many of his book, most unread at the time of this publishing. Not only does he write books he also has a very active blog and social media presence. I loved following him on Twitter and now I love following him on Mastodon. You can too!
Grammie — my wife Kim — with her festive mocha with peppermint whipped cream. 😋
Ms. Gracie is trying her darndest to get Ms. Priss to play with her.
Flynn loves getting his ears scratched.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Another week, gone. We’re picking up the grandkids this morning so I’ll have to get this put together quickly this morning. Sorry, grandpa duty calls! 👴🏼
I’m finishing this off in the car as we go to get them. 🤣
Hope you enjoy the links.
Max Boot • The Washington Post
The GOP’s abandonment of Ukraine makes me ashamed to be an American
This is gut wrenching. Ukraine is standing between Russia and Europe. That nutter in Russia isn’t going to stop at Ukraine. He’ll go until someone can stop him.
Come on G.O.P., get your crap together and defend democracy. Oh, right, you no longer care about that.
Spotify is ending 2023 with its third and biggest layoffs of the year
Man, 2023 has been a crummy year for tech workers. Here’s hoping 2024 is much, much, better.
James Verniere • Boston Herald
“Leave the World Behind,” which is based on a 2020 novel by American author Rumaan Alam and produced by among others Barrack and Michelle Obama, is nothing less than a modern-day version of Alfred Hitchcock’s unforgettable 1963 hit “The Birds.”
I watched this last night and I really liked it. If you have Netflix check it out.
Once upon a time — way back in, like, 2004 or something — I used to turn my nose up at sites that served an RSS feed with only an excerpt. It felt, I think I would have said, like a sleazy way to drive clicks. (“Information wants to be free!” etc. 🙄) Twenty years on I still read a ton from RSS feeds, but I found recently that I’m starting to thaw on that position quite a bit.
Ashur, what happened to the curmudgeon in you? 😃
As a developer of a feed reader I get request to display the full article and it’s what I prefer so I don’t have to visit the website. That’s a feature on the feature list for Stream. One of these days.
Introducing Mammoth 2: The easiest way quit Twitter/X for good and join Mastodon
It’s nice to see developers strive to make Mastodon work for old Twitter, non techie, users to get started with Mastodon. That’s been the biggest barrier to entry. Folks can’t figure out how to join and they also tend to like recommendations.
Earlier this year, a developer slid into Eric Migicovsky’s DMs with a spectacular claim: that he had reverse engineered Apple’s iMessage, allowing any device — Android, Windows, whatever — to send messages as a blue bubble. Migicovsky didn’t believe what he was reading.
This is an interesting read. Bravo to the 16-year old who figured it out!
But Overcast does exist, and it’s the app where most people with exquisite taste in UI are listening to podcasts.
Poor Castro has languished and definitely doesn’t have the geek recognition Overcast does. I’d imagine that’s why it’s the number one podcast player in John’s stats.
As far as UI preferences and paradigm go, Castro fits me better.
I’d love to be able to buy it from Tiny and keep working on it. I’ve already shared my opinion on the matter.
Aldous J Pennyfarthing • Daily Kos
House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose grand vision for America includes transforming every uterus in the country into a Pez dispenser, is convinced he’s the North American Moses who will lead his people to the Promised Land.
Yeah, this guy wants a theocracy. No thank you.
Sure, the Christians might agree with you but what about Jews, Muslims, Buddhists? Name your religion. It’s not right. Our First Amendment was setup to protect us from a theocracy, but we all know the G.O.P. doesn’t really care about the Constitution.
The Comixology app, the mobile incarnation of the digital comics platform owned by Amazon since 2014, has finally shuffled off this mortal coil.
I’ve had ComiXology for a number of years but I never went for the subscription. I just don’t read enough. I don’t see this as a bad move. Comics are just another type of book and the Kindle App is fine for reading.
While four teams are celebrating the opportunity to play for a national title on the field, undefeated ACC champion Florida State is on the outside, becoming the first unbeaten Power 5 conference winner to ever miss out on the College Football Playoff.
This broke a lot of hearts and it’s a real shame the 12 team — why not 16 — playoff wasn’t in place this year.
Of course I say that and my own thoughts on the matter didn’t include Florida State.
I also thought Georgia should have been in. Off by one error. We got Alabama from the SEC instead.
Apple TV+ today shared the first images from “Constellation,” a new eight-part, conspiracy-based psychological thriller drama starring Noomi Rapace (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “You Won’t Be Alone”) and Emmy Award nominee Jonathan Banks (“Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul”).
So, yeah, I’m looking forward to this! Anything with Noomi Rapace in it is good in my book.
Let’s implement a custom dark mode color in our app - dark blue.
Really nice SwiftUI article on how to change the colors used for Light and Dark mode for your app. Well done.
This is a picture of Kim and I in 1986. She’s still that beautiful. ❤️
Stream for Mac; SwiftUI or AppKit?
So, I have Stream for iOS and Mac (underway.) Stream is UIKit on iOS and I have the Mac version started with AppKit. The code shared between the two is high; networking, parsers, persistence, view models, utility support, all shared. What’s not? That’s right, the UI.
This is where my brain kind of locks up. Do I continue to invest in AppKit or do I do the Mac version of the app using SwiftUI (worst technology name ever?)
My SwiftUI knowledge is so rudimentary it feels like I’m spinning my wheels and wasting time trying to get Stream for Mac built and shipped using SwiftUI. On the flip side AppKit is also foreign but UIKit is so similar to AppKit that I get the paradigms and most of the API’s feel familiar.
Some of my original motivation was a desire to learn more about AppKit so I could try to get a job with someone like Panic or The Iconfactory, but the truth of the matter is I’m in my final act of my career and jumping to a company of that stature probably isn’t in the cards. I even gave up on my dream of working for Apple quite a while back.
Now my desire is to do the best work I can with Stream and start working on a companion app to it.
I sit here this morning trying to convince myself to do a couple iOS features for Stream and ship it so I can focus on bringing the SwiftUI based Stream to macOS. While my focus will be on the macOS all the work I do will be applicable to the iOS and iPadOS versions since the code can largely be shared between all three. Yes, even more code than is currently shared. We’re talking shared UI code and that sounds really attractive.
Has anyone seen Flynn? No? 🤣
Castro’s Future
We believe in transparency with our community and want to share with you that we are actively seeking a new home for Castro with new owners. Our goal is to continue providing you with the app you love, but with even better features and improvements.
Earlier in the week Castro had a four day(I believe) outage of their backend service, Tentacles. 🐙
Thankfully they were able to get things repaired.
Now it appears the folks at Tiny are shopping Castro around. That’s great news! Earlier in the week I sent Tiny a note mentioning I was interested in Castro. Do I have a shot at it? Heck no! Would I love a chance? Heck yeah!
What would I do with it?
Well, that’s a really good question. I have to believe their overhead is extremely high because of their reliance on custom backend service. Here’s where my thinking may go off the rails. Why do podcast apps need their own service to aggregate content?
Podcasting is built on an open standard, RSS. Apple have built the best podcast directory on the planet using RSS as its base and they allow folks to use it. Thank you, Apple!
Now, my friend, John Brayton, believes the directory isn’t complete enough to do what I’m after. That’s ok as long as it allows searching. With the ability to search and get basic podcast information I believe it could be done without a custom, expensive, backend service. Marco Arment the creator of the Overcast podcast player once said on ATP that his server costs are over $8000/month (if my memory isn’t failing me, which is very possible.🧠 Keep me honest here.)
Stream has a feed parser that works really well and could be extended and reused for a Podcast player. All you really need for a Podcast player is the ability to take an RSS feed, parse it, and display information about the episode. RSS includes the link to the audio file.
Castro has a way to search for podcasts and has a hand curated list of recommendations. If you can search Apple’s directory you cover item number one. Item number two is easy, it’s hand curated so that’s not an issue. Once you have the location of an RSS feed you can list and play a podcast.
Of course the thing that blows this thinking up is if Apple’s directory isn’t searchable.
If you’re the maker of a podcast player and have a custom backend please let me know how I’m wrong here, because I must have a knowledge gap. 🙏🏼
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
All the Thanksgiving leftovers are long gone and I celebrated my 56th birthday this week. I got my free birthday coffee at Starbucks, had BBQ for dinner, and chocolate cake for dessert. Luckily the cake didn’t have 56 candles on it. That would’ve been bad. 😃
I hope you had a great week and enjoy the links.
Robert Kagan • Washington Post
Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day. In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will have locked up the Republican nomination. In the RealClearPolitics poll average (for the period from Nov. 9 to 20), Trump leads his nearest competitor by 47 points and leads the rest of the field combined by 27 points. The idea that he is unelectable in the general election is nonsense — he is tied or ahead of President Biden in all the latest polls — stripping other Republican challengers of their own stated reasons for existence.
I can’t see how trials and even convictions can stop Trump from becoming our next President.
Only we, the people, can stop it. If we don’t stop him we’ve lost our nation.
VOTE!🇺🇸
This is a substantial update to MarsEdit 5, featuring all new support for the Mastodon publishing system, which is used to host a large number of independently operated Twitter-like microblogging services.
I’ve been a MarsEdit user off and on for well over a decade. This classic Mac assed Mac App is fast, stable, is great at what it does, and has a developer who cares deeply about it and the Mac.
It’s well worth its $59.95 price tag.
It’s time for an opinion. I wish this were subscription based for Daniel’s sake. He depends heavily on major releases and upgrades to keep his business afloat. This is where I believe subscription pricing could help. Her could do something like $9.99/yr, or $0.99/mo, then he could get off the upgrade cycle train and just add features whenever they’re ready. He provides excellent support and fixes bugs on a regular basis.🚂
Of course I’m not a successful indie giving advice to a man with a long established company and app, so there you go.😃
Capo was not playing audio for some users on Intel Macs running Sonoma. After spending almost two weeks (and about $850) I discovered that macOS Sonoma had a rather nasty bug that was triggered by loading JPEG images.
I love a good debugging story. 🐞
Sophie McEvoy • gamesindustry.biz
Xbox is working with unknown partners to open a mobile storefront to rival the App Store and Google Play.
It will be very interesting to see if Microsoft can actually make a nice experience for mobile users. Beyond that will Apple no longer demand their 15-30% take, even if on another store? I very much doubt it.
It’s been more than six years since images of a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., shocked the world — hundreds of people with tiki torches chanted antisemitic slurs, and a counter-protester, Heather Heyer, was killed.
When this all went down I wasn’t at all familiar with Charlottesville. We were living in California and little did I know we’d move to the area in 2019.
When I started at WillowTree we were located in downtown Charlottesville and I had no idea Heather Heyer was murdered right by our office. It was pretty surreal the first time I walked by it and realized this was the place.
I took this photo five days after my start date with WillowTree.
This week OpenAI had a fantastic keynote at their Dev Day event. They announced new products and enhancements to ChatGPT[1]. Interestingly, some parts of the internet described the keynote as an “Extinction Event”[2] for many AI startups. Many of the startups reportedly facing extinction share the common trait of being thin wrappers over OpenAI’s APIs.
I don’t think Nish sleeps at all. He’s into everything and is well versed in every topic he talks about.
Always worth a read when he shows up in my feed.
Rep. George Santos survived the first two attempts to expel him from Congress. The third vote, however, led to the New York Republican’s ouster.
Well, what do you know. Some folks actually do have an ethics line. Took long enough for them to find it. 🤬
Earlier this week I had a need to manually find a bunch of people’s RSS feed links. It seemed simple enough: go to their website and look for an RSS/Subscribe link but I was surprised to find that a lot of people don’t have a link anywhere to their feed.
I see where Robb is coming from. He’s after a link of image with a link to your sites RSS file.
Most modern feed readers will auto discover feeds by looking in your sites head for a specific alt tag.
Sites should embrace the tag based method but it doesn’t hurt to include a link somewhere.
Debbie Truong • Los Angeles Times
Montiel, an environmental science major, and Butterfield, a journalism major, had lived in their vehicles for several years, the only way, they said, that they could afford to attend college. They usually found parking in campus lots or on nearby streets.
There was a time when we lived in California where I thought I’d have to get a job in the Bay Area because tech in the San Joaquin Valley is hard to find. I was thinking I’d drive in from Exeter on Monday morning, stay the week, and return home Friday afternoon. I was planning to put a shell on my truck and turn the bed of the truck into my home.
For my first year of employment at LEVEL Studios in 2009-10 I did something similar but I found a room to rent for $250/month.
I doubt you could find anything close to that in the Silicon Valley.
There is another reason why I stopped developing Gluon, for now, and time will heal this. It’s personal. I never said this publicly, but here we are. Funny how one individual in a nice community can just blow everything up 💥 I had super strong feelings about this today, and I can’t get it out my head. Hence this post I guess.
Vincent’s app, Gluon, is an excellent app for Micro.blog. For the longest time it was much better than the first party app and it was my iOS App of choice for Micro.blog.
I wish you nothing but joy and happiness, Vincent. Thank you for all of your hard work making Micro.blog a better place.
Anita Chabria • Los Angeles Times
A unicorn costume, a hammer and a belief that pedophiles are using public schools to destroy democracy: The trial of David DePape for attacking Paul Pelosi was strange and disturbing.
This attack on Paul Pelosi was just about as weird as it gets. The dude who did it was so far down the conspiracy rabbit hole he was seeing pedophiles everywhere. These people are the GOP’s base. They’ll believe anything no matter how wild the story. Remember the lizard people who drink children’s blood for the adrenochrome? Yeah, that’s something these people believe.
They all need extreme therapy to repair their addled minds.
Ms. Gracie makes a fine pillow, at least Flynn thinks so. 😀
Stream Numbers
Hiring The Iconfactory to do the artwork for Stream’s App Store feature was such a no brainer and I believe helped catapult my sustained download numbers! ❤️
I’d get about three downloads a day prior to the feature. Now I’m sustaining a much higher average. Grateful.
Has it resulted in gobs and gobs of money coming my way? No. That’s ok. I’m still very grateful!
Ms. Gracie thinks the leaves are the best thing ever.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know I did! It’s a time for family and wonderful food at the Fahrni household, especially the pies! Kim’s pumpkin and Haileigh’s Pecan pie are amazing and I always eat a little too much of each. 😋
Some have wondered why the Trump campaign is being so open about the repressive policies they intend to implement. This “transparency” is in line with authoritarian history: Autocrats often tell you who they are and what they intend to do to you before they take office. They do this as a challenge to norms, and they do this as a threat.
If TFG is elected again and destroys our Democracy we will deserve everything we get and I hate the thought of it happening.
Where will people immigrate to if our democracy comes to an end in favor of an autocracy? Canada? Germany? Some other European nation not caught up in this current authoritarian wave?
Anita Chabria • Los Angeles Times
A unicorn costume, a hammer and a belief that pedophiles are using public schools to destroy democracy: The trial of David DePape for attacking Paul Pelosi was strange and disturbing.
It’s frightening how folks can go down these rabbit holes so quickly and turn into complete, frothing at the mouth, lunatics. 😳
Music streaming service Spotify struck a seemingly unique and highly generous deal with Google for Android-based payments, according to new testimony in the Epic v. Google trial.
Well, well, well, good for Spotify. I’m sure any indie app maker would take a deal like that but it’s always the “big guys” that get preferable treatment.
It can’t hurt that Spotify is a direct competitor to Apple Music and puts a dent in Apple’s bottom line because of it. Not that it’s hurting Apple. 🤣
Monday was a day that crystallized on just how many levels our democracy and its promises stand on a precarious perch.
So a Colorado judge found that his Orangeness is in fact responsible for the insurrection. She also said he’s still eligible to run for President because the 14 Amendment doesn’t apply to the President because he was not “an officer of the United States” that could be disqualified under the amendment.
What?! That makes no sense. 😳
James Boyd and Dianna Russini • The Athletic
Former Colts LB Shaquille Leonard goes unclaimed on waivers: How injuries derailed his stellar run in Indy
Hearing this bummed me out. I like Shaq Leonard. He’s a true leader on and off the field and he has a motor that won’t stop.
Here’s hoping he finds a new team soon and is able to get fully healthy and back on the field.
Heck, even if things are over for him prematurely, due to injury, he’s had a great career.🏈
I do think the clock is ticking, though. The deterioration of Google’s culture will eventually become irreversible, because the kinds of people whom you need to act as moral compass are the same kinds of people who don’t join an organisation without a moral compass.
Interesting read from an 18-year employee of Google. Companies change as they grow. It’s just a fact. WillowTree has changed tremendously since I joined in 2019, especially after the Telus International acquisition. It happens as companies get bigger. ❤️
NFL denounces hate speech, says it has expressed concerns to Elon Musk’s X
Sure, like Space Karen is going to listen to the puny NFL.
Some advice for the NFL. Get off of X, start a Mastodon instance called nfl.social, and start doing whatever it is you use X for on your Mastodon instance. Problem solved. You’re welcome.
Adobe has been issued with a formal antitrust complaint by EU regulators regarding its $20 billion bid for cloud-based product design platform Figma.
I wonder what kind of deal Adobe will have to strike to make this work? It’s obvious Figma is winning the hearts and minds of designers. I feel really bad for the likes of Sketch who are a native Mac only shop. Their work is beautiful and extremely useful but can it survive? I hope so!
Also, please stop using Figma for EVERYTHING in the company. I’ve seen folks make presentations with it and make project plans with it and both of those uses really sucked.
You might as well hitch your wagon to Musk with Krazy Glue at this point, Linda, because despite what your deluded pals on Madison Avenue might think, there’s no going back now. Stacking the events of the past week on top of the mound of insanity that’s already piled high over the course of your short reign has seen to that.
Good luck, Linda. I hope the man is at the very least paying you crap tons of money to destroy your good name and reputation.
Maybe it’s all worth it to her for that CEO title? 🤔
First part of an in-depth guide into developing a native macOS application using Haskell with Swift and SwiftUI. This part covers the set-up required to call Haskell functions from Swift in an XCode project using SwiftUI.
I love seeing other languages integrated into applications! VBA on Windows apps was a huge benefit to app users and gave them the ability to create specialized scripts to help automate their workflows. Even with all of the security implications and exploits it is the best implementation of a scripting environment to date.
I’ve also seen folks integrate Lua with great success and look at how the integration of JavaScript into native iOS and Android apps — ala React Native — has changed the app landscape.
Following on from the previous memory leak I have demonstrated in the Finder in macOS 14.1.1, here’s a second, discovered by Kate, which might have a common root cause.
I have questions. Is this a leak or is it memory consumption? Those are two different things. One is not freeing resources because of a coding error, the other is not freeing resources intentionally. An intentional case would be caching things in memory to improve performance.
Also, if the system needs memory at some point and can’t find enough does the Finder relinquish this memory back to the OS?
Either way I suppose it can be seen as a leak. At the very least it could be a performance problem if system performance degrades because of it.
What I’m saying is that Apple sometimes takes its failures and learns important lessons that inform its future attempts… but sometimes, it seems to just give up.
Apple is a company of people and people make mistakes.
I feel like the Vision Pro could be a mistake. Maybe mistake is too harsh a word? Maybe it’s just a product that’s too immature at the moment? I’m sure they’ll sell a hojillion of them on day one but will there be a great app ecosystem to support it?
My guess is highly specialized applications will drive sales but what do I know? Not much. 😂
Harvey’s urgency, even 12 hours later, is a reflex: This is exactly what she did for 13 years as the head of Twitter’s trust and safety team.
It must have been almost impossible to squelch all the crazy and hate on Twitter. Now X just doesn’t care and allows all the crazy and hate to blossom.
Get out, now. ☢️
Last month, Google launched a new feature for Chrome called IP Protection that makes it easier for the company to spy on you. No surprise, since this is Google’s business model. But what’s concerning is that Google is marketing this as a privacy feature.
I don’t know much about this but it seems like something I need to better understand.
I’m a Safari user and I mix Firefox in there.
I had to install Chrome at work because a client has some Chrome friendly tools we need to use. 😮
Nilay Patel and Alex Heath • The Verge
After an attempted coup by OpenAI’s board that lasted five days, Altman is returning alongside co-founder Greg Brockman.
Dizzying. I hope Altman keeps a good set of ethicists around him to keep him in check.
We don’t want the robots to take over the world, do we. 🤖
It is this type of definition, however, that holds RSS back. Why does it just have to be updates to a website? RSS can be used to distribute all sorts of information. Once you start adding custom namespaces the possibilities are amazing.
I agree with Colin. RSS can be used for many things and why not? It’s extensible and there are gobs of tooling for it.
Just think of what it did for Podcasting.
I know at one someone maintained an RSS feed of hospitals with extra drugs other hospitals could ask for. You’d be surprised how many hospitals run out of certain drugs and how many have a surplus. It was a nice way to connect folks. Yet another niche served by RSS.
I’ve had the thought of just publishing my blog as RSS only. Sure, discovery would suck, but feed readers are just another type of web browser, only the web comes to the feed reader.😃
Happy Birthday President Biden! 🥳🎂🔥🚒
Siri tells me this is a Giant Leopard Moth. Whatever it is, it’s beautiful.
Ms. Gracie has had a rough week. She was neutered and developed an infection at her incision site and has a small opening as a result. She’s been in her cone most of the time but when she gets it off she’s so happy and playful.
But now, time for a nap.
Matt Mullenweg on Messages and RCS
I’ve heard stories of teenagers being ostracized because they couldn’t afford an iPhone, of group chats rejecting people who turn the chat from blue to green. I know that sounds petty, but do you remember middle school? It’s about status, and Apple knows that. Everything they make bleeds status and signaling. They’re the best in the world at it, and I should know—I’m typing this post from a M3 Max black MacBook with 128GB of RAM. But while status signaling with amazing hardware and design touches is harmless, in software and social settings in can be harmful.
I have suspicions about the Messages API. Apple are keeping it close to their chest for one or more good reasons. Could it be seriously flawed if not used in a very specific way? Sure, that’s plausible. Is it probable? Who the heck knows? I certainly don’t. Apple aren’t know for their network services abilities. Some folks have great experiences, others live with a complete mess. It’s a crap shoot. If you’re a developer of iOS and/or Mac Apps and used CloudKit for anything you’ve most likely experienced frustrated users because their data isn’t syncing. Like I said earlier, it’s a crap shoot and Apple don’t seem to care enough to enhance these frameworks and services. Gotta push on with those new features for next years OS updates!
Another reason they may be keeping it to themselves is the most likely scenario. It’s a competitive advantage like no other on the iPhone. I’d put money on this being the reason any day. Question is, why can’t they have a competitive advantage?
Steve Jobs initially pledged to make available as an open standard but ultimately restricted to iOS devices. iMessage availability has been a particular sore point in the rivalry between Android and iOS, with iMessage’s “green bubbles” attaching significant social stigma to Android phones. - Russell Brandom • The Verge
What I’d like to see is Apple create a new team just for the RCS Messaging app and fully embrace the specification. This would allow them to seep their “blue bubble” app nice and clean and give folks a full featured and secure RCS experience. Sure, iPhone and Mac users would have to use two separate apps, so what. It’ll get Google and EU regulators off their back and allow Apple to keep Messages less complicated.
As an aside, being able to create a new RCS app from scratch would allow Apple to make a 100% from the ground up SwiftUI experience for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. That would be really nice in my opinion. Apple need to build a new, preferably larger, app in SwiftUI to show the world how it’s done and to eat their own dog food.
I also have a question for the Messages team. Why isn’t the Messages icon blue, like the bubbles in the app? Seems like it should be.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Up early this morning to drive our youngest daughter to the airport for a trip to California. I’m a little jealous. Thanksgiving in California with our wider family sounds amazing.
I’m still very much enjoying the current project I’m on at work and I wish I could spend the next five years on it. That would be perfectly fine with me, but I believe I’ll be wrapped up early next year then who knows what’s next? 😃
Time for some linkage.
In a post on OpenAI’s official blog, the company writes that Altman’s departure follows a “deliberative review process by the board” that concluded that Altman “wasn’t consistently candid in his communications” with other board members, “hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.”
This whole situation is weird and the announcement sounds rushed and leaves one scratching their head.
Microsoft, which has invested billions in OpenAI, learned that OpenAI was ousting CEO Sam Altman just a minute before the news was shared with the world, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The firing of Altman seems so rushed. Why wouldn’t the board have taken a bit longer making the decision so they could warn their partners ahead of time?
Microsoft is heavily invested in OpenAI. I can’t imagine they’re happy about how this went down.
As for folks who don’t spend their time macro-blogging—“ordinary people” who use rather than spend significant chunks of their day creating web content—Tai points out that this, statistically at least a more important issue than the fate and choices of the artists formerly known as digerati, remains unsolved, but with glimmers of partially solution-shaped indicators in the form of a re-emerging indieweb impulse:
Long live blogs and the indie web. If you’re blogging you’re not answering a the whims of a corporation who could lock you out at any time and can make money off of your hard work.
Own your content. Start a blog and link it everywhere.
CONCORD, N.H. - A suspect is dead after a shooting at New Hampshire State Hospital in Concord Friday afternoon. Police say the situation is now “contained” and all patients at the hospital are safe.
GUNS, GUNS, GUNS, America loves gun.
The GOP likes to say it’s a mental health issue. Fine, let’s get laws and required training so the people with mental health issues don’t get their hands on guns. Right?
The blue versus green bubble debate may finally be winding down. Apple says, in 2024, the iPhone will add support for RCS messaging, the messaging standard used by most Android phones, according to a report from 9to5Mac.
I hope Apple builds this as a separate app. Keep those blue and green bubbles separate. If they do it gives them a chance to build something new in SwiftUI from the word go. That would be really nice to see.
If they have to make it part of Messages hopefully they do it in a way that doesn’t totally screw up the Messages UI.
Oh, and I really hope they keep their own messaging platform.
Jonathan M. Gitlin • Ars Technica
GM will build F1 powertrains in 2028 as long as F1 lets Andretti in
I’m so down with this and am hopeful Andretti Cadillac are given a charter. American racing needs to have a presence it what some see as the premier racing league in the world. There are only 20 drivers in the F1 world today. Two drivers from each of 10 teams. Expanding the grid by two would be amazing, and having an American company producing power units for that team would be absolutely incredible. Here’s hoping Haas does a deal with Ford. 😃
Automattic’s recent announcement that Tumblr is being put into maintenance mode feels like the end of a personal era. Tumblr wasn’t just another social network; it was a cultural phenomenon, a haven for the eclectic and the expressive, where the internet’s fringes found a voice and a community.
I’d hate to see Tumblr disappear. It’s different than WordPress or Facebook or Mastodon or any other blogging platform. It has a different feel to it that’s difficult to describe but Joan’s use of eclectic is a great choice. We need networks like that on the web.
Here’s hoping it finds a way to keep on keepin on. 🤞🏼
UPDATED, with White House comment: TikTok announced today that it was removing videos that have popped up on the platform in which users of various ages and ethnicities promote Osama bin Laden‘s “Letter to America,” which he had written to justify the attacks on 9/11.
I’ve never seen the video or read the transcript but I’d imagine it lays out his point in a way which makes perfect sense. The problem is, the man was a terrorist. He was all about exterminating the west and western culture. These folks are true believers and they put their money where their mouth is by killing innocent people to further their views.
Earlier in the week I said we were lucky on January 6 when the Capitol was stormed. Those folks were not serious people or it would’ve gotten much, much, worse and they wouldn’t have left.
I feel like the Christian Nationalist movement is on the path to becoming an American terrorist organization and they want to run the nation. Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s what Gaza has/had with Hamas in charge.
A theocracy in the United States will not work.
The next step was to give this new product a name. After several weeks of trial and error we landed on “xScope”. The “X” worked for both the operating system and the “examination” done by the tool. All the assets and websites were put in place and we got ready to launch with our unique tool with a unique name.
A hearty congratulations to one of my favorite companies in the world! I’ve been a user of xScope for a number of years now and it’s extremely handy for looking at screen layouts at the pixel level.
Highly birthday!🥳
Finally, the team noticed one user that was particularly flummoxed by the dialog box, who even seemed to be getting a bit angry. The moderator interrupted the test and asked him what the problem was. He replied, “I’m not a dolt, why is the software calling me a dolt?”
Folklore is a great site if you’re at all interested in Apple’s early days. So many amazing stories.
On Wednesday at the Microsoft Ignite conference, Microsoft announced two custom chips designed for accelerating in-house AI workloads through its Azure cloud computing service: Microsoft Azure Maia 100 AI Accelerator and the Microsoft Azure Cobalt 100 CPU.
This is really cool and exciting! I hope Microsoft realizes performance boosts and energy savings in their Azure data centers.
Now, how do I get one for my desktop Windows computer. 😁
The iOS UI framework landscape shifted in 2019 with the introduction of SwiftUI, a first-party declarative UI framework that accomplishes many of the same goals as Epoxy. Although SwiftUI was not a good fit for our needs during its first three years, by 2022 it offered increased stability and API availability. It was around this time that we started to consider adopting SwiftUI at Airbnb.
This will be fun to monitor. Airbnb tried to adopt React Native a few years back and abandoned the effort in favor of native development.
I have a feeling SwiftUI will stick. If you’re an iOS shop you don’t really have any choice. 😁
Google Rejected Max Howell(Creator Of Homebrew) For Getting This Interview Question Wrong. Can You?
There are plenty of amazing software developers working at smaller shops because they can’t get past these types of interviews.
I’d managed to get an interview with Google in 2018-19 timeframe and canceled it when I was told I’d have to study for a couple weeks before interviewing. I was given links to algorithms and other materials to prepare for the interview. I was also assigned a mentor to help me prepare. 😳
The job was working on Chrome for iOS.
I canceled the interview.
Employees frustrated with their CEOs’ return-to-office mandates have tried arguing that remote work is linked with greater productivity. That it helps the environment with fewer commutes and improves diversity by broadening the talent pool. Now, they may have another argument to get their CEOs’ attention: Higher revenue growth.
More support for the remote work lifestyle. When I read articles like this I always think about the other articles I’ve read about working from home being the devil.
Working from home works for me but not for everyone. I’ve even considered going into the office one to two days a week just for a change of pace. Kim asked me “Are you that desperate to get COVID again?” the other day when I mentioned possibly going into work one day next week. She’s not wrong. I definitely do not want COVID again. I got COVID in 2022 at a group onsite and was exposed to COVID at a recent onsite. My luck at the office hasn’t been great.
I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I’ve been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies – an impression that has been reinforced almost daily – is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right.
This is a pretty long read so make sure your mug is full.
Neha Dwivedi • EssentiallySports
As it turns out, Kurt Busch has never been shy about wearing his heart on his sleeve, especially when it comes to his love for Formula 1. Flashback to June 2016, with NASCAR taking a week off, Busch jetted off to catch the Haas F1 Team in action at the Grand Prix of Europe in Azerbaijan, right after he qualified 17th for the FireKeepers Casino 400 at MIS.
I’d like to see some crossover between NASCAR and F1. Let’s start with Kyle Larson in an F1 ride and go from there. Maybe he could drive for Haas or the new Andretti Cadillac team? 😃
