Rob Fahrni

I’ve been thinking about breaking Stream’s inner workings into a separate package.

It would include; networking, parsing(RSS, JSON Feed, Atom, and HTML), data models, database(?), and any utilities around those items. The database bit is a stretch and should really remain outside of the package. It wouldn’t force a storage mechanism on anyone.

I’d like to do this to keep me honest about my separation of concerns and I just like the modularity of it.

It would, of course, use Swift Package Manager to create the package.

The big question rolling around my brain is this: Do I open source it?

Why not you ask? Well, it’s simple. I’m afraid my code will be dragged through the mud and that would destroy me. I love and appreciate constructive feedback and would absolutely take PR’s.

To get where I’d love to have it means creating the SPM and using it internally for Stream for iOS and Stream for Mac. I’d also like to make sure I’m using all the new async/await strictness put in place with Swift 6.

If I can get that far I’d consider open sourcing it. Maybe. 🤣

The other question is, would anyone use it?

I decided to grab coffee at Grit this morning and chill here for a bit.

I think Kim is excited for her and Taylor’s California trip. 😆

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

This week was Apple Developer Christmas also known as WWDC. It’s a time of year we learn what Apple has in store for developers for the next year.

At WillowTree we had a watch party at our Durham, North Carolina office. It was really great to meet folks I’ve worked with on projects but haven’t met in person.

It was really nice. A mini vacation with friends.

The keynote and Developer State of the Union were great as always and we all knew AI would be at the center.

Christine Hall • TechCrunch

Here’s everything Apple announced at the WWDC 2024 keynote, including Apple Intelligence, Siri makeover

We all suspected Apple would have an AI story this year, but they did announce other things. One that caught my attention was SwiftData allowing developers to use their own backend as a data source. It’s something every app developer integrating with a custom web service has to do. I’m super curious about it.

I’m also way behind the Swift Strict Concurrency train. It’s as if we have an entirely new language to learn.

Mark Gurman • Bloomberg

Apple to ‘Pay’ OpenAI for ChatGPT Through Distribution, Not Cash

This is a classic mistake all developers and designers are warned not to do. The classic “My app is so popular it’ll get you attention for the free artwork you give me.” Uh, yeah, take cold hard cash.

The irony of this is Microsoft is in essence paying Apple to have ChatGPT integration in Apple OS’es.

Oh, most of the intelligence on device will be handled by Apple’s own models. But, when it does have to go off device it’ll make sure you know it’s ChatGPT so if it screws up you know who to blame. 🤣

Apple Security Engineering

Apple Intelligence is the personal intelligence system that brings powerful generative models to iPhone, iPad, and Mac. For advanced features that need to reason over complex data with larger foundation models, we created Private Cloud Compute (PCC), a groundbreaking cloud intelligence system designed specifically for private AI processing.

I want to know about the custom hardware Apple built. Sure, it’s running Apple Silicon and the OS is stripped down and buttoned up tighter than a drum to prevent accidentally introducing security holes, but I want to see how the hardware is assembled and see how it’s mounted in racks.

Daniel Jalkut • Bitsplitting

During the crescendo to announcing its name, the letters “A” and “I” will be on all of our lips, and then they’ll drop the proverbial mic: “We’re calling it Apple Intelligence.” Get it?

You may be asking why I included this post? I included it because Daniel called the “Apple Intelligence” name over a year ago. Did Apple take his idea? We’ll probably never know. 😃

Hartley Charlton • MacRumors

Elon Musk has threatened to ban Apple devices from his companies over Apple’s newly announced ChatGPT integration.

Space Karen really is a big baby man. He and the Orange Menace are cut from the same cloth. I get my way or I’m gonna throw myself down and have a tantrum.

Do it, ban Apple products at your companies, baby man. 👶🏼

Nathan Edwards • The Verge

If you’ve never tried to do work on an iPad, I am genuinely happy for you. I’m writing this story on a Bluetooth keyboard connected to an 11-inch iPad Air M2. It’s a very nice keyboard, and the Air is a very nice tablet, but this would have been so much faster and easier on a convertible Chromebook. And I could still have watched Andor on the plane.

Folks are going to continue to ask for hardware they may never get. Google and Microsoft both offer hardware more akin to what iPad — MacPad? — users want.

The Viticci Monster is still your best bet.

Reid Spencer • NASCAR

Martin Truex Jr. felt it was time to regain control over his own life and his own schedule.

“I’m obviously here to let y’all know that I won’t be back full-time next year,” Truex said Friday in a press conference with team owner Joe Gibbs, confirming the widely reported news that he will exit the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota at season’s end.

It’s the end of an era. Truex is a Cup Series Champion with 34 wins in his pocket and is always a threat to win on the track.

Here’s to retirement. I hope you enjoy every moment of it Mr. Truex.

Lydia Mee • Newsweek

A pivotal gathering is reportedly taking place in Montreal today, where Formula 1 team bosses are set to convene to deliberate on the sport’s upcoming 2026 rule changes with F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali. This meeting aims to tackle increasing apprehensions surrounding the profound modifications proposed for the 2026 Formula One season.

Hats off to Formula 1 for trying to do something bold with their racing designs. In particular the motors are meant to combine electric power with a traditional combustion motor.

Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman • New York Times

Donald Trump and his closest allies are preparing a radical reshaping of American government if he regains the White House. Here are some of his plans for cracking down on immigration, directing the Justice Department to prosecute his adversaries, increasing presidential power, upending America’s trade policies, retreating militarily from Europe and unilaterally deploying troops to Democratic-run cities.

I’ll continue to beat the anti-Orange Man drum until he’s no longer a threat to Democracy. He must be defeated in November and our system of government must be hardened and prepared for an onslaught of attacks and violence if he is defeated.

Stephen Marz

The standard library contains a ton of code that we don’t want to write ourselves, including printf, scanf, math functions, and so forth. So, we need to make sure our operating system can link to this library and everything “just works”. This post will show you how I linked our operating system to a standard library, newlib, and the trials and tribulations encountered in doing so.

Wow. Stephen has a lot of stuff to consider while integrating the standard C runtime libraries into his Rust based OS. I really need to keep an eye on his work.

Oladimeji Sowole • The New Stack

Note that at this stage, only certain aspects of the Edge UI have undergone this change. In reply to a Mastodon user who asked about this, Russell confirmed that it is “an ongoing effort” and that the Edge team is “converting surface-by-surface, with ~15% fully done so far.”

At the day job I’m diving into React Native because we’re getting a lot of requests for React Native work.

On the flip side you have Microsoft rethinking their use of React in their browser. It makes sense to me. You want your browser to be as zippy and memory efficient as it can be.

James Bickerton • Newsweek

On Thursday 192 House Republicans voted for an amendment which would have required a controversial Confederate monument to be reinstated at Arlington National Cemetery, where it was removed in December 2023.

What an embarrassing time in America. The GOP is fully embracing every mean and cruel law they possibly can. Why do they have to control everyone?

It’s always been a bit of a puzzle to me how the Republican and Democrat party have morphed over the years. Remember it was the GOP led by Lincoln who abolished slavery. Here we are over 150 years later and the GOP wants to control every life in America and Democrats are against it.

You’d think since Stream for Mac looks this bad I’d get to work on it, you’d be wrong! 🤣

I really do need to get back to it. I started working on the add feeds modal and realized I needed to fix up some of the code that does that to work better on the Mac. It’s also forcing me to look at adding async/await to the app, which is something I really need to do.

Caught a Durham Bulls game tonight with a bunch of WillowTree folk. Unfortunately the Bulls lost in extra innings but it’s a beautiful downtown and the ballpark is gorgeous.

Having a nice mocha at Cocoa Cinnamon in downtown Durham.

I like this city.

I’m in the Durham WillowTree office for a few days for our WWDC get together for all our iOS Devs.

Should be fun!

I had no idea David Sunflower Seeds started in Fresno. Learned something new today.

I couldn’t resist posting this here. 🤣

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Well, it’s been kind of a slow week on the project front. Sure, we’re still plugging away and the React Native devs are actively adding new features. I’m spending most of my time fixing the occasional bug that crops up and working on performance stuff, which is always fun. I love doing this type of work.

Chris Cameron • The New York Times

Former President Donald J. Trump has in recent days been escalating his suggestions that he could prosecute his political enemies if elected in November.

Defeat him at the polls and be prepared for a shitstorm and massive temper tantrum if the Orangeman loses.

Gabriel Ludosanu • Xojo Blog

You’re building a fantastic Xojo application that needs to connect to the internet, grab data from websites, or send information to web services. This is where HTTP requests come in. They’re the language your application uses to talk to the web.

I’ve mentioned my love for the BASIC language many times over the years. Xojo is a cross platform development environment with a very modernized form of BASIC.

I’d put money on it being much easier to learn than Swift and Xcode.

Swift is 100% not a beginning programming language.

David Revoy

In all these years, I have never seen the GNU/Linux distribution landscape regress so far away from our needs. It is almost impossible to find a distribution where you can professionally run and set up our most basic tools: Creative software, graphic pen tablet, color calibration. And I tested a wide range of GNU/Linux distributions to make this guide! The choice we have in 2024 is super limited.

It’s kind of sad to see Linux get worse for professional artists.

Any time now it’ll be the year of the Linux Desktop. 🫠

Kevin Turong • The San Francisco Standard

Billionaire entrepreneur Hamdi Ulukaya, the Turkish-born CEO and founder of Chobani, the country’s largest producer of Greek yogurt, has purchased the brewery and its 2.17-acre Potrero Hill home.

This is super nice! I’m so happy for beer lovers everywhere and especially beer lovers in San Francisco. A legend is reborn!

Seamus Hughes • Court Watch

A YouTube influencer is facing federal charges for shooting illegal fireworks from a helicopter at a Lamborghini doing donuts on federal land. On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in California filed charges against Alex Choi for “causing the placement of an explosive or incendiary device on an aircraft.”

I watched a clip of the video and it’s a pretty darned fun video. It’s also my understanding he’s a real jerk and karma ultimately catches up with folks like that.

Bill Emory

Sources speculate the vehicle was traveling at a high rate of speed north on Franklin. At an estimated 80 mph the car blew through the stop sign , mowed through vegetation, went up the 45% incline, jumped the railroad tracks and was stopped suddenly on the north side of the embankment by a 12″ diameter tree.

This happened not far from WillowTree’s Woolen Mills HQ!

Can you imagine what a wild ride that must’ve been? 😳

Garth Edwards • Every

Don Estridge broke all of Big Blue’s rules to create the home computer. The company would never forgive him for it.

I love finding stories like this! Computing history I hadn’t a clue about.

Brian Holmes • KTVB

She said when he wouldn’t take it she dropped the book at Superintendent Derek Bub’s feet. She believes it may have added more fuel to the fire.

Good for Ms. Jenkins! I’m sure the nutball district is full on MAGA and doesn’t want folks to read the book the MAGA GOP is using as their blueprint for a new America.

Andrew Cunningham • Ars Technica

Windows Recall demands an extraordinary level of trust that Microsoft hasn’t earned

I’m still not sure how to feel about this. Hey, as long as I can turn it off I don’t think it’s that big an issue.

And, yes, I’d turn it off right away. Don’t want it, don’t need it.

Heck, if I get another Windows box I don’t really care to have a Microsoft login. Having access to the computer with a local login is good enough for me.

Victoria Song • The Verge

Starting today, Dexcom G7 continuous glucose monitor (CGM) users will be able to monitor their real-time blood sugar data straight from an Apple Watch.

I linked to this because WillowTree was involved with the G7 project for quite a while. I was part of a team that worked on a prototype app. It was a super fun project and one of my favorites!

Summer Lin, Joseph Serna, and Alex Wigglesworth • Los Angeles Times

As heat wave envelopes California, 14,000-acre Corral fire burns in San Joaquin County

California, and the San Joaquin Valley in particular, have been fighting high temperatures all week. Over 100 is not uncommon but it doesn’t usually happen this early in the summer.

I use an app called Watch Duty and there are fires burning all over California. My notifications have been firing multiple times a day.

California fire season is in full swing.

Michael Foster • Patchwork

Faced with the challenge of how to respond to the increasing enshittification of the web, and fuelled by a night out with Flipboard’s Mike McCue and Mastodon’s Eugen Rochko, Casey Newton of Platformer laughs and says:

This made me think about a post the week from Mastodon creator, Eugen Rochko:

I should be able to follow #Cara users from my Mastodon account. You can’t convince me to make yet another account in a yet another silo, but I’d love to see and share more art in my home feed. - Eugen Rochko

I would also love to see this and I believe we’re making good headway.

Talk about a platform that allows flowers to bloom!

Juli Clover • MacRumors

The Apple Vision Pro can be used as a display for a connected Mac, but it is bulky, heavy, and uncomfortable. The Spacetop G1, a new laptop from former Magic Leap employees, promises to solve those problems by pairing a computer with a set of lightweight AR glasses that look more comfortable to wear for long periods of time.

I really hope these folks can pull this off. Even if they do I’m sure every Apple blog will pan it for not being as good, or better, than Vision Pro.

If they can pull it off it’ll beg the question: Why couldn’t Apple do it?

I’ll be keeping my eye on this story.

Spyglass • M.G. Siegler

As a kid, I wasn’t in the Pepsi or Coke camp (I liked both about the same), I was fully in the Dr Pepper camp. It was different, sort of weird, like me. One New Year’s Eve I drank so much of it that I got pretty ill and was worried I would have to go to the hospital. Those were different times. As are these, apparently!

It’s kind of crazy to see Dr. Pepper take over second place. I’m a Pepsi fan, always have been, but I have family who are into Dr. Pepper, so I guess it shouldn’t be that big a surprise.

I’m sure Pepsi is doing just fine.

I wonder if he knows of what is now called Dublin Dr. Pepper? The original Texas born Pepper.

My WWDC 2024 Wish List:

1. Developer Kit for making custom watch faces.

That’s it. That’s the list.

I shared these photos this morning in our Staff and Senior Engineers Slack channel.

I owe my career to Windows and the Windows API. I spent years writing Windows apps and loved every minute of it. Sometimes I wish I was still doing it. C, C++, Win32, and even COM feel like an old friend compared to my comfort level with iOS dev. Even after 14 years of iOS Dev. I don’t know why that is, but there you go.

I built my personal Windows Class Libraries — ACLLib — based on these API’s and they still work to this day. That is an amazing testament to how good Microsoft’s backward compatibility promise has been for Windows Developers.

These are pictures of Charles Petzold’s Programming Windows, 1988.

Got a buddy pair coding with me on the porch this morning. 🐸

Paul Krugman • The New York Times

There’s a very real possibility that if Trump wins in November it’ll be the last real national election America holds for a very long time. And while there’s room for disagreement here, if you consider that statement to be outrageous hyperbole, you haven’t been paying attention.

A lot of folks believe this, including me. He refused to leave after he lost in 2020, contested the results in multiple states losing 60 complaints brought before courts, and started an insurrection to stay in office.

What makes you believe he’d leave peacefully after serving a second term?

I don’t believe it for a moment. He wants to be a dictator and change the face of American Democracy.

He wants to lock up his political rivals.

Sound familiar? That’s right. His hero is Vladimir Putin. He wants to be just like his hero.

We moved Kim’s gardenia out front last Sunday. It didn’t have a single bloom opened at the time. It’s been busy this week.

I found Mothra.

Epimecis hortaria, the tulip-tree beauty, is a moth species of the Ennominae subfamily found in North America.

I obviously haven’t paid attention to one part of our yard. Now, it’s covered in poison ivy. I’m a big dummy. 🤣

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

We had a lot of fun this week tracking down a bug in the project I’m working on. It was exposed by slow server response, which was because the service had grown. So the bug was icky. Once we tracked it down on the client side we were able to fix it up pretty quickly. I love doing stuff like this! Finding and fixing bugs is part of any developers job along with writing code.

I hope you enjoy the links.

Natalie Venegas • Newsweek

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns' rare warning during a commencement speech about former President Donald Trump, sparked outrage from supporters of Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement this weekend.

People are right to continue to warn us all of the dangers of electing Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump to the Presidency.

Anyone who reads this site — thanks to both of you — knows I’m a Liberal Democrat suffering from “The Woke Mind Virus.” 😃 So of course I think a man set on destroying Democracy as we know it is dangerous.

Noah Kirsch • The Daily Beast

Now, former board member Helen Toner is explaining her decision. In a new podcast interview, the artificial intelligence researcher blasted Altman’s lack of transparency and said the board was kept in the dark about key decisions. She accused Altman of “withholding information, misrepresenting things that were happening in the company, [and] in some cases outright lying to the board.”

AI will continue to be controversial and it looks like Sam Altman will be the poster boy for the controversy, at least in the short term.

Keeping a full commercial product rollout from the board seems like a bad idea, doesn’t it? No wonder they fired him.

Mark Tyson • Tom’s Hardware

Popular TechTuber Jeff Geerling has delivered an updated take on the old chestnut about the relative merits of pigeon-based vs internet data transfers.

TL;DR - Data delivery by pigeon is still faster than the internet. 🤣

Kelly Crandall • Racer

In a joint statement issued Tuesday, Tony Stewart and Gene Haas confirmed that Stewart-Haas Racing will cease NASCAR operations at season’s end.

This is a real bummer for NASCAR fans and the sport in general. Stewart Haas had a championship team not so long ago but it’s been a long time since they’ve seen victory lane.

They have four cars on the grid. Three teams field four drivers and it’s my understanding NASCAR is going to limit team size to three going forward.

In 2016 NASCAR switched to a Charter system. In that system teams purchase a charter from NASCAR to be part of the system. Those charters are expected to grow in value so a team would have more than physical goods to sale should they decide to close shop. They’re not cheap. Spire Motorsports bought one last year for $40mm. What will each Stewart Haas charter sell for? 😳

Tuomas Pirhonen - PDF

Writing an NVMe Driver in Rust

The link above is to a PDF for Thomas Pirhonen’s Bachelors Thesis. Rust has really made inroads into systems development and I’m happy to see it. Having memory safe code at the systems level seems like a smart thing to do, don’t you think? 😃

I’d be curious to see how much unsafe code exists in the various Rust OS level projects I’ve heard of. But, you gotta start somewhere!

When will Swift be used to build major parts of Apple’s OS level code? Or is it already being used?

Cocoanetics

I’ve long had a longing to have a Mac Mini as build server in my technics room. After Apple finally updated it to (now) fashionable space grey, it was a must purchase for my company.

I’ve had a hankering to do this very thing. I can see setting up the server much in the way we see here and trigger builds via GitHub Actions to start the process. Heck, I could use Xcode’s built in support for automating builds and kick it off right from within Xcode on my laptop. Yeah, Xcode has a decent enough build system to make it useful. Makes me wonder how much of it Apple is using for Xcode Cloud or is 100% of that custom code?

Anton Zhiyanov

If you work with sensitive data, and want to be 100% sure that there is no trace of the old data after it has been updated or deleted — SQLite has you covered. The secure_delete pragma (off by default) causes SQLite to overwrite deleted content with zeros.

TIL! I’ve used SQLite in quite a few projects, including Stream. I love it for local storage and still prefer it to CoreData, it’s just straightforward SQL. Anywho, I had no idea you could do this. Another nice tool to keep in the toolbox.

JanerationX

Doctor Who returned to TV recently as a “soft reboot” to attract a new generation of viewers. Yeah, okay, but the older generations didn’t exactly go away, and since I am a member of an older generation, I am qualified to say that the show sucks.

I think we’ve all been here when we see a big change to our favorite Television show.

Heck, I’m torn about continuing to watch The Witcher. Henry Cavil is The Witcher and to see him replaced just feels wrong.

Kim Zetter • WIRED

Two years ago when “Michael,” an owner of cryptocurrency, contacted Joe Grand to help recover access to about $2 million worth of bitcoin he stored in encrypted format on his computer, Grand turned him down.

You gotta love these hacker folks. At least he’s using his talent for good.

Viktor Petersson

My Home Server Journey - From Raspberry Pi to Ryzen

What’s up with two server based links today? Guess I’m just in a very hardware mood today.

This reminds me I need to setup my $99 Mac Mini I purchased months ago. It’s an x86 based Mini and fairly old but I want it for media streaming and another local backup system.

David Price • Macworld

Those who miss the days of full-time Apple/Microsoft beef will have been heartened last week by bold claims that the latest Surface devices are faster than the M3 MacBook Air. It’s fun to see Microsoft’s marketing department in a combative mood, but part of me wishes the company would stop trying so hard to show it’s better than Apple.

I don’t know that I’d go this far. Microsoft is just trying to lead the industry into an ARM focused world by attempting to create a new standard of PC.

I’ve been on the Mac, almost exclusively, since around 2006(?) and I love the experience from a user and developer point of view.

There’s still that part of me that loves my old development days on Windows. It was also a great platform to build on.

The new Microsoft Surface Pro looks absolutely amazing and I’ve lusted for one of these computers for years. Microsoft has proven for years and years a tablet/laptop can have excellent touch support and a full desktop class OS underpinning it.

It’s only a matter of time before Apple does it. When it happens all doubt around Apple creating a convertible will disappear and folks will think it’s the greatest thing ever.

Chelsea Troy

Each quarter at the University of Chicago includes nine weeks of instruction. In the eighth week, I ask students to submit questions that they would like our ninth and final session to cover. This quarter, a third of the students in the class submitted some version of the question: “How can I use ChatGPT to get ahead in my programming job?”

I know of a lot of developers at work using ChatGPT to their advantage. It’s not that it’s doing their job, no, it’s just another tool to get started with a thought.

Jordan Tigani

The intended takeaway from the “Big Data is coming” chart was that pretty soon, everyone will be inundated by their data. Ten years in, that future just hasn’t materialized. We can validate this several ways: looking at data (quantitatively), asking people if it is consistent with their experience (qualitatively), and thinking it through from first principles (inductively).

I’m not really into backend stuff like this. It seems kind of boring but it’s good to know some folks are really into it.

Declaring something dead is a bit strange to me, because it was never a living thing, but I get the gist.

I’m sure your mileage will vary but this is a small piece worth a read just to understand his declaration.

BigData, it turns out, ain’t all that big.

New York Times 🎁🔗

Donald J. Trump, the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee, was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a case stemming from a payment that silenced a porn star.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow.

Donald J. Trump, convicted felon. Has a really nice ring to it.

My heart is broken💔: As friends & family know, my wife was pregnant with our 2nd child, & about to begin her 2nd trimester. A few days ago she had severe pains, & bleeding, and had to go to the emergency room. There, it was discovered that our baby no longer had a heartbeat.… pic.twitter.com/k1INqq94c0

— Ryan Hamilton (@TheRyanHamilton) May 20, 2024

Texas doesn’t care about women. To Texas they exist to incubate and pop out babies, cook your meals, and clean your house.

If you have a woman in your life why are you still there?

Are you trying to make Texas a better place by getting Republicans out of office?

Is it where you grew up?

Do you want to get out of there but are trapped because you can’t afford the cost of moving?

Is your job too good to leave?

Maybe you don’t care because it’s someone else’s problem?

What about it is keeping you there?

Kim’s roses are pretty happy but something has been snacking on the leaves.

One year ago Ms. Gracie joined our family. At the time she was five months old and weighed in at 45lbs. Today she’s 95lbs of cuddly dog and owns my heart. ❤️

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I had to set aside my upgrade of some of the networking code changes I wanted to make on the project I’m on at work. That’s fine. I knew it would be a bit of a process to update this code and to be honest it may be a fools errand. But I still believe it would make the code more maintainable and eliminate two third party dependencies. But you have to be ready to sideline work like this when more pressing work shows up.

Here we go. I hope you enjoy the links this week.

Benj Edwards • Ars Technica

Gordon Bell, an architect of our digital age, dies at age 89

RIP 🪦

Tom Warren • The Verge

Microsoft has just announced a new Surface Pro, which is part of the new wave of Copilot Plus PCs. The new Pro, which is technically the “11th edition,” starts at $999, comes in four colors, and is powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X processors.

I don’t care about the AI stuff Microsoft announced and hopefully folks can turn it off because it sounds terrible but I do like seeing them ship new hardware with vastly improved performance. 👍🏼

Fingers crossed this one is a winner. 🤞🏼

Lance Ewing

There is nothing unusual about the outside of these disks, but there is something unique about the data that is stored on them, something that Sierra On-Line would have been totally unaware of and certainly wouldn’t have wanted them to include.

I love history stories like this! Back in my Visio days I was what we call a Configuration Engineer. I was in charge of our installer code and creating the final gold master disks — 720KB and 1.44MB — and CD, so I’m familiar with this process. I didn’t, however, have an imaging machine. We sent the masters out to a disk duplication service to mass produce them and put them in boxes with documentation.

Anywho, I never made a mistake like that, and this mistake was not the worst you could make. Hey, at least the code wasn’t there in plain text. You actually had to check space the OS has marked as free to find it. Remember kids, do a destructive format or a DoD wipe of space you’d like to be empty.

Kazuaki Nagata • The Japan Times

In a bid to break Apple and Google’s dominance of the smartphone app ecosystem, the Japanese government is looking to change rules on app markets and payments to stimulate competition.

Things are getting interesting for Apple and Google. At what point does Apple decide on a single strategy for managing the availability of third-party stores and installation of software outside of any store?

I can’t see Japan going for Apple’s “Core Technology Fee” but we’ll see as this moves forward.

John Gruber • Daring Fireball

Pixar Lays Off 175 Employees, 14 Percent of Staff, Shocking No One Who’s Tried Watching Their Recent Films

Harsh take from Gruber. The last Pixar Movie I saw was Onward and I liked it.

I don’t know if it’s that their movies are bad now. Maybe the magic has just worn off?

Jason Koebler • 404 Media

Google Is Paying Reddit $60 Million for F**ksmith to Tell Its Users to Eat Glue

This is a head scratcher. If LLMs are being trained on all of the Internet then we’re kind of screwed.

I’m not eating a pizza with glue in the sauce, ok. 🍕

Witney Seibold • /Film

Armitage didn’t even know his sword had been stolen until Peter Jackson brought it to his attention. He’d been equally surprised to have Orcrist join his possessions in the first place.

All I could think while reading this is how amazing it would be to have this sword hung above my fireplace. 🗡️

It’s a fun little story.

Chris Eidhof

This post is a look inside how (a small part of) SwiftUI works. I’m mainly writing this as part of my extended memory, so that I can go back to it and read about how it works.

This is the kind of post I need as a developer. Having experienced looks at part of the language you use daily is always helpful.

Swift continues to expand as a programming language and I wish the pace would slow a bit. I’m so far behind the curve it’s frightening. That’s what happens when you spend a year-and-a-half as a Director. Those dev skill wilt a bit and you get really far behind.

The good thing is nobody knows, or cares, if you’re using the latest and creates language features or frameworks. What they want is quality software.

I made note earlier this week that Tapbots beautifully designed and implemented Ivory app is written in Objective-C. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

(I reached out to Tapbots to see if that was still true. I didn’t receive a reply.)

Rachel Treisman • NPR

Elvis Presley’s granddaughter is suing to stop the planned foreclosure sale of his compound Graceland, alleging that the company involved not only forged documents, but doesn’t actually exist.

I really hope they’re able to get this sorted out in favor of Elvis’ estate. It seems Lisa Marie may have gone around the estate to get a loan from a dodgy entity that doesn’t really exist. I’ll keep an eye on this one.

Rich Turner • Microsoft Command Line

We are excited to announce the open-sourcing of Microsoft GW-BASIC on GitHub!

I’ve share my love for BASIC and it’s nice to see Microsoft release this code to the general public.

Hey, can you release the grammar for Microsoft Professional Basic v6.x? I’d like to have that for reasons. 😃

Sean Hollister • The Verge

At Build, Microsoft now says it’s adding native version control to File Explorer by integrating systems like Git, letting you see new changes and comments directly from the app.

They’re basically Sherlocking some small plug-in developers with these features. It was inevitable. I used an extension to File Explorer in the mid-2000’s with Subversion that did this very thing. It now does it for git.

Jamelle Bouie • The New York Times

All of this brings us to the most recent controversy surrounding the Supreme Court justice Samuel A. Alito. Not long after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, my colleague Jodi Kantor reported last week, someone in the Alito household flew an inverted American flag in the front yard. The upside-down flag, a sign of naval distress, was one of the preferred symbols of the movement to “stop the steal” — a statement of solidarity with those who disbelieved the results of the 2020 presidential election and fought to return Trump to office against the rule of law and the verdict of the Constitution.

Now we know. Some of the Supreme Court justices are in bed with American Oligarchs and the MAGA movement. They need to be dismissed from the bench.

For a Supreme to openly show support for the overthrow of our country is pathetic and he needs to be held accountable.

No, it doesn’t suck eggs. That’s a clickbait title. Tell all your friends to visit. 🤣

SnazzyQ on Threads

The simplest tasks on iPadOS are either incredibly difficult and time-consuming, or they’re so unintuitive that even a 25-year Apple veteran can’t figure them out. Frankly, neither reflects well on iPadOS.

I have a very simple explanation for this.

Dude, it ain’t a Mac.

I know, I know, that’s a dumbass answer and iPad fans don’t want to hear it. I don’t blame you.

I’d like to be able to do all the iPad stuff on my iPhone with a second display and have it work more like macOS. I want full Xcode and a Terminal and free form windowing.

I know, that’s all on my Mac, today.

I’ll just use my Mac. It’s an amazing device. Besides, if Apple treated all the platforms the same how would they increase sales every quarter like Wall Street expects?

Maybe that sounds cynical. I’m not trying to be. Apple is a for profit enterprise. We all know that. Their goal is to extract as much money out of you as they possibly can. One great way to do that is make multiple different form factors that excel at specific niches.

I haven’t had a new iPad in years. My wife gave me her 9.7” when she upgraded a couple years back and I never use it. But if I were to use it, it would be for consuming movies and reading.

And for the reading bit my iPad Mini, gen 1, was the best device I’ve ever used for that. It was crazy light.

I use my iPhone for a lot of stuff. Social junk and writing blog posts. I’m using it now and it’s great for that.

Look, if I could have an iPhone that could display multiple windows and have all the things I get with macOS and the power of my MacBook Pro, I’d use this for everything.

As it is, it doesn’t work like that, and I don’t expect it to, ever.

Keep on keeping on iPad people. You never know, maybe someday you’ll get what you’re after. ✌🏼