Rob Fahrni

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been pouring overnight and into this morning. We have a flood watch in effect until 10AM. I bet it extends.

I finally got the opportunity to do a little async/await Swift this week. Using a combination of generics, Decodable, and async/await makes for an extremely powerful network client. It’s pretty shocking how simple it was to combine those three items to form a set of methods that return fully decoded models with so few lines of code and zero blocks/closures/whatever you call them in your favorite language.

I’m sure some folks will laugh and say “We’ve had that for X years in language Y!” I get it. It’s fairly new to Swift and I’m finally getting to work with it properly.

I’ve also been dabbling with SwiftUI and find some of the concepts weird, but as with all moves to new frameworks or languages, I’ll pick it up and it’ll feel natural at some point.

It’s past time to get my first cup of coffee. I hope you enjoy the links.

Kyle Barr • Gizmodo

Everything Announced at Google I/O: Gemini Takes Over

The week was Google’s Developer Conference. I’m not too much into Google or Android for that matter and while I know LLM’s are here to stay I’m not deep minded enough to find them exciting. Super smart developers find it exciting because they’re challenging in a way they grok and Management find them exciting because they’re a way to do more with fewer people and charge you a ton of money for it. 🤣

Hey, I just want to hack away on my little iOS and Mac Apps and build something I love that I hope others will too. I’m sure someday I’ll have to integrate an LLM into an app. 🤖

Raymond Chen • The Old New Thing

In other words, take the existing component and run it before making any changes to it at all. Does it work?

I’ve said it before so I’ll say it again: Raymond Chen is a gift to computing and Microsoft is fortunate to have him.

He’s done so much for Microsoft and the tools we use everyday so when he shares his pearls of wisdom, I listen.

Baldur Bjarnason

React, Electron, and LLMs have a common purpose: the labour arbitrage theory of dev tool popularity

This was a very interesting read and I found myself nodding in agreement a lot but I also disagreed with things.

Something that does bother me about the move to more abstract tooling is the loss of expertise about the platform and knowing the platform provided tools will be the best for solving problems and creating the best possible apps I’m capable of.

Of course you can still make a crummy app with native tools and a brilliant app with tools like React Native.

When I was a Windows developer I could always tell when an application was written in Classic Visual Basic because of how the windows drew. It was a dead giveaway. That always bothered me. Nothing against Classic Visual Basic, it was a native development tool, and you could be extremely productive with it. Just like modern web tooling being used everywhere.

Chris Kirkham • Reuters

The meeting could not have gone worse. Musk, the employees said, was not pleased with Tinucci’s presentation and wanted more layoffs. When she balked, saying deeper cuts would undermine charging-business fundamentals, he responded by firing her and her entire 500-member team.

Musk isn’t a genius. He’s a bully who wins by being an asshole to folks until he gets his way. During the entire charging team over a plan he didn’t agree with is a prime example of how big a baby man he really is.

Why Tesla keeps him around is beyond me. Jettison the man so he can go work on X so you can continue to lead in the EV space. Who needs a network of cars being used for their compute so some dude and do AI stuff with it? What?

How about getting Tesla to do more good for the world by building trucks for hauling large loads across country or building all electric high speed rail systems and busses. You know, mass transport.

Musk talks about a desire to save mankind but he’s only paying lip service to it as far as I can tell. He is obviously obsessed with making crap tons of money and getting his way at the expense of others.

Joseph Savona, Ricky Hanlon, Andrew Clark, Matt Carroll, and Dan Abramov • react.dev

React Compiler is no longer a research project: the compiler now powers instagram.com in production, and we are working to ship the compiler across additional surfaces at Meta and to prepare the first open source release.

I need to go read more about this React Compiler or at the very least get the lowdown from a friend. I wonder if this will come to the React Native world and if it does what would that look like? Would we get everything compiled down to Web Assembly we push through a mobile device JavaScript runtime?

Web stuff is such a hodge-podge of stuff. It’s like the duct tape and baling wire of development.

I consider myself a duct tape a baling wire developer, so that’s not an insult to me. 😃

Robert Reich

America’s second civil war? It’s already begun

I try to stay away from links to Substack articles but I thought this River Reich article was important enough to break my rule.

If the Orange Menace gets back in office I’d fully expect us to see skirmishes break out all over the country at times due to his draconian policies.

Full on war would only break out if things get bad enough the people finally stand up and say enough is enough.

I hope beyond hope we can keep Joe Biden in the White House for four more years and TFG goes away, either to jail, Russia, or succumbs to a natural end.

Having said that we’re going to be fighting against authoritarian MAGA’s for years and years to come. Here’s hoping the GOP comes to its senses and stops this horseshit.

Federico Viticci • MacStories

Still, as I was thinking about my usage of the iPad and why I enjoy using the device so much despite its limitations, I realized that I have never actually written about all of those “limitations” in a single, comprehensive article.

Nice piece that goes into the things Federico finds lacking on iPad. My knee jerk reaction is to think “just move back to a Mac” but folks should do what they want and complaining about the state of things is the only real power they have to hopefully influence Apple to make changes.

I’m still a big fan of Federico’s FrankenMac or MonsterPad, whatever you’d like to call it, it’s extremely cool so of course Apple will never do it. It would poach sales from Mac and iPad and they certainly want you to purchase both, separately. 🧌

David Zipper • Fast Company

Last week, General Motors announced that it would end production of the Chevrolet Malibu, which the company first introduced in 1964. Although not exactly a head turner (the Malibu was “so uncool, it was cool,” declared the New York Times), the sedan has become an American fixture, even an icon, appearing in classic films like Say Anything and Pulp Fiction. Over the past 60 years, GM produced some 10 million of them.

This is really weird to see from American car companies. Why abandon the sedan? Well it’s because American’s are ridiculous. We want the biggest darned cars we could possibly fit on the road.

For me personally I’d really love to have a $10k or less, limited range, EV. It could be small, that’s fine. It would be for running errands and commuting into town, not that I have a commute any longer but if I did I’d like a super economical EV.

Something like this. Would I prefer to buy a ‘Murican version of one, heck yeah! Will a ‘Murican company build one, heck no! 😄

JanerationX

The recent news that the NFL is in negotiations with Netflix (!!!) for the two Christmas Day games this year really made my blood boil. I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised. The league has been slowly chipping away at fans’ goodwill for years. But the fact that Netflix (!!!) is involved makes it extra offensive.

Professional sporting is just as greedy as any other business. They’re there to make money, not just break even, they want to make crap tons of money. This is how they do it. They make deals with the highest bidder. If that means selling the rights to some special games at jacked up rates, it’s what they’re gonna do.

Fans be damned.

The Eclectic Light Company

The only clue given by Apple comes in a single word buried in the sentence “Share code between apps on multiple platforms with views and controls that adapt to their context and presentation.” The key word there is adapt. SwiftUI is a forceful move in delivering an adaptive human interface, one that adapts to the user, the task, the data, and the platform.

Really nice piece on using SwiftUI and how it’s built to adapt to each device, at least that’s the idea.

I also like that it points out there’s nothing wrong with UIKit and AppKit.

Heck, one of the most beautiful, high quality, iOS apps made today is Ivory from Tapbots and last I heard it’s still written in Objective-C on UIKit and AppKit. No need to throw out perfectly good code in favor of an expensive rewrite for the sake of the new hotness.

Ryan Peterman, via LinkedIn

They are so rare that most people don’t work with them directly, but their work is highly visible.

The thing that stands out to me is Meta has all these absolutely amazing people working for them and what exactly do they work on? New ways to extract personal information or track people around the web?

It’s too bad they’re wasting their talent at such a horrible company.

If I were that talented I would, unfortunately, be tempted by a $3mm per year salary. Thing is, I kind of doubt that entire $3mm+ is entirely salary. It’s probably some mix of salary, benefits, bonuses, and stock options. That’s how Meta keeps their talent I suppose, those golden handcuffs are tempting.

To quote the Tool song, Hooker with a Penis:

All you know about me is what I’ve sold you, dumb fuck I sold out long before you’d ever even heard my name I sold my soul to make a record, dip shit And then you bought one

Yes indeed. I suppose we’re all Hookers at some level.

Our daughter and son-in-law are moving. As they were cleaning out their shed they were greeted by a two foot long copperhead.

Our daughter moved a storage tote and there it was. It struck out and luckily it hit the tote.

She, her hubby, and children are all fine.

More of Kim’s roses. She’s had this one for a very long time. It’s moved from house to house through the years.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Well, we’re in another of Virginia’s 12 seasons. Fake Spring is over, now it’s time for Winter Two or Three, I can’t remember the funny names given to them. 🤣 It’s been gray and rainy with thunderstorms all week. ⛈️ After a month of beautiful, mostly sunny days, it’s hard to go back to rain. Oh well, such is life in the Southeast.

Hey, good news! That project I loved so much is extended through the end of June. That makes me super happy. 😃

Gracie and Kolby are fired up this morning. Let’s see if they’ll let me get through this in a decent amount of time. Apparently it’s playtime. 🐶

Hope you enjoy the links.

Campbell Robertson • The New York Times

After a meeting that lasted for hours, the Shenandoah County school board voted early Friday morning to restore the names of three Confederate officers to schools in the district.

Good grief. Just when you think the South is finally making some progress stuff like this happens.

Racist bastards. 🤬

512Pixels

As nice as the new OLED display looks, and no matter how powerful the new M4 may be, the iPad’s problem in 2024 — or another year for that matter — is the software.

Power users continue to basically want macOS installed on their iPads.

I say Federico Viticci should find a way to make his FrankenPad easy to reproduce with a full line of accessories and how-to articles to guid you through the process.

He’d make tens of dollars.

Tim Murphy • Mother Jones

Musk is not a tech visionary with a side interest in politics these days, nor is he just another bored billionaire with a nativist streak; the political activism and the technological ambitions are inseparable. He believes his work is part of a civilizational struggle in which woke progressives pose an existential threat to humanity. And he spends most of his days inside a feedback loop that’s radicalizing him even more.

I think we all know good old Space Karen has been Red Pilled for a very long time. Folks like him and Jack Dorsey slide further and further down the rabbit hole with each passing day.

Good riddance I say. I hope they buy some island, move there, and never come back. 🤡

Diana Ionescu • Planetizen

Data centers in Northern Virginia are using “absurd amounts of water” to power cooling systems, writes Sachi Kitajima Mulkey in Grist, causing concern among local officials.

How is it I live in Virginia and didn’t know it was home to so many data centers?

You’d think all these smart people would figure out how to power everything with good clean energy and find alternative cooling methods. Like building underground or something. 💧

Joan Westenberg

It’s time to wake up, folks. When someone offers you “exposure” or says they want to “empower creators,” keep a firm hand on your wallet. They’re not your friend, and they don’t care about supporting the arts. They care about money, pure and simple, and they see creators as resources to be exploited.

I instantly thought of most YouTubers and Musicians. Sure, there are some who make a killing off their works but most make almost nothing.

I thought, very foolishly, I’d be able to make $200 a month with my Indie Apps. Boy was I ever dumb to think that way. At its high point in 2009 to 2011 I was making about $20 a month from RxCalc. It’s still my biggest money maker between it and Stream. That is, of course, my fault. Making my apps better may result in better income.

Do YouTubers and Musicians feel that way or do they feel ripped off by the platforms?

Karissa Bell • Engadget

Jack Dorsey claims Bluesky is ‘repeating all the mistakes’ he made at Twitter

Dorsey also seems to have been Red Pilled. I’m not really sure what he’s after. It sounds like he wants and no hold barred free for all. What he’s after would turn into a giant garbage fire. A flame war to end all flame wars. It would boil out into the streets. An ultimate chaos machine.

Countries have laws. Those laws are largely in place to protect people.

We don’t need a lawless social network but apparently Dorsey now thinks X is the bastion of free speech. It’s not. It’s become a right wing propaganda machine full of Nazis, white supremacist, and vile right wing extremists with your occasional famous actor or favorite personality. 🗑️

Jean MacDonald

I am leaving my position as Community Manager at Micro.blog at the end of this month.

I wish Jean all the best. She’s been ever present on Micro.blog since day one and she made it a better place.

Cheers, Jean, and all the best in your next adventure! ❤️

Kelly Crandall • Racer

Michael McDowell and Spire Motorsports have announced a multi-year agreement for McDowell to become the driver of the team’s No. 71 Chevrolet beginning in 2025.

This caught me off guard! Michael McDowell seems like one of those loyal to a fault type guys. He’s single handedly kept Front Row Motorsports afloat, in my opinion. He’s been very competitive this year at times and spent time leading races. He even came darned close to winning at Talladega. Apparently he told Dale Jr. he was willing to die to win that race. A bit too aggressive for my blood, but that’s the attitude he’ll bring with him to Spire Motorsports.

Here’s hoping he goes to that next level and wins more races.

Jon Brodkin • Ars Technica

Boeing says workers skipped required tests on 787 but recorded work as completed

I just can’t with this company. How can anyone get on a plane now?

I’m afraid of heights and flying in general. So, yeah, I already had issues with getting on a giant tube held in the air by some magical force. Ok, ok, you know what I mean.

Now I’m really leery of getting on one. 😰

Bill Doerrfeld • The New Stack

Open source software is having a midlife crisis. Open source contributors are struggling to keep pace. Popular open source projects are making restrictive licensing changes. Backdoor threats are placing the open source supply chain in jeopardy. And, no one seems to have a clear grasp on what “open” means in the context of artificial intelligence.

There’s a lot of open source software available for individuals and corporations to use without paying a dime for it. That can come at a price. We’ve seen developers remove their packages from node, breaking developers worldwide, we’ve seen plenty of repositories go dark and watch contributions waste away from but rot, and recently we’ve witnessed a long game infiltration into an extremely important piece of software by what appears to be a nation state.

I have no idea how to fix these problems. I suppose treating people with kindness and respect could help with certain issues but some are going to take vigilance one all of our parts to make sure the things we use continue to work and aren’t used for nefarious purposes.

Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

Meta’s move into the open social web, also known as the fediverse, is puzzling. Does the Facebook owner see open protocols as the future? Will it embrace the fediverse only to shut it down, shifting people back to its proprietary platforms and decimating startups building in the space? Will it bring its advertising empire to the fediverse, where today clients like Mastodon and others remain ad-free?

It’s hard for me to imagine what Meta can do to take over the Fediverse but I don’t have a devious mind.

The Fediverse feels like the place we commoners can make a place to flourish. To date I know we have Mastodon as a Twitter replacement and PixelFed as an Instagram replacement. What about YouTube and the likes of Spotify and Apple Music? Is there a brave enough musician or group of musicians willing to build a music streaming service based on open protocols and API’s?

Maybe Taylor Swift would like to back a small team to build streaming software that federates and gives indies a way to host their own music and their own stores. I don’t know if something like that is plausible? Anything is possible to build given enough will, inspiration, time, and resources.

Maybe we’ll see some new ventures spring out of the Fediverse related to video and music streaming.

Jason Graziadei • Nantucket Currenr

Cyber Stuck: First Tesla Cybertruck On Nantucket Has A Rough Day

Once again the Cyber Truck gets a lot of attention by being kind of a bad truck. To be fair it’s easy to get stuck on a beach but damn I kind of like seeing it fail. And that all stems from my dislike of Tesla’s public face in Space Karen.

Kim’s roses are enjoying this weather.

If you ever find yourself in San Louis Obispo, California, count your lucky stars for being in such a lovely place and make sure you visit Firestone Grill.

Try their Tri-tip Cobb, the Tri-tip sandwich, or one of their amazing burgers. Order a mixed basket of onion rings and fries.

If you get the Cobb I recommend using their BBQ sauce as the salad dressing. It’s absolutely amazing. 🤤

Yeah, I’m thinking of California again this morning and all the lovely places we miss.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Feeling under the weather today. I started getting sick in the middle of the week. I slept a lot yesterday and hope to have a quiet weekend.

I hope you enjoy the links.

Paul Lefebvre

Just a few days ago, BASIC turned 60! On May 1, 1964 BASIC was created by Dartmouth College professors John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz.

I really love BASIC. It was the first programming language I learned and used professionally. It was all MS-DOS based at the time and the language had changed over time to include functions and custom data types. It was a really great language.

I owe my career to Microsoft BASIC Professional Development System. ❤️

Joseph Heck

Designing a Swift library with data-race safety

Swift concurrency changes are going to be a lot of fun and take some effort to restructure existing code to make use of it.

And by fun I mean a lot hair pulling, teeth gnashing and head banging on the desk.

Jeremy Mathai • /Film

Marvel couldn’t have made a better choice if it had the Time Stone itself. Back when a “Doctor Strange” movie was far from a guaranteed hit, Scott Derrickson and Kevin Feige knew they simply couldn’t afford to get the casting wrong.

Can you imagine anyone other than Benedict Cumberbatch playing Dr. Strange? I can’t.

And to think Joaquin Phoenix was on their radar sounds strange to me. To be clear Joaquin Phoenix is an amazing actor and can play anything but after seeing Benedict Cumberbatch playing him I can’t imagine anyone else doing it.

Anton Zaides

I always knew that distractions in the workplace are harmful, but only after reading Deep Work by Cal Newport, did I understand how severe the problem is!

This is why I prefer an office to open office spaces. I don’t know how anyone thrives in an open space. Add multiple meetings a day to the mix and you’re not getting much done.

Since the pandemic I’ve been working from home and it’s wonderful. I can control my entire workspace. 🖥️

K. Denise Rucker Krepp • CNN

In some military circles and among many who consider themselves aficionados of Confederate history. The Ruckers have a history of military service going back generations. They’ve also had deep roots in America’s shameful Confederate past. That includes my distant cousin, Col. Edmund Rucker.

It’s really nice to see the Confedercy being dismantled. Now, if we could get rid of the white supremacists and bigots that would be amazing. One step at a time, I suppose.

Collin Woodard • Jalopnik

Tesla laid off at least 10 percent of its workforce earlier this month, and in typical Tesla fashion, the Texas-based automaker made sure the layoffs were done in an organized fashion with plenty of communication and a clearly defined strategy. Just kidding. The layoffs were so poorly executed that security was forced to scan employees’ badges at the door to figure out who had been laid off. And, apparently, that included a guy who had taken to sleeping in his car and showering at the factory so he could work longer hours.

Musk is such a nice, standup, fella, isn’t he? 🤬

Nothing sticks to this guy. I guess that’s what happens when you’re a narcissistic sociopath.

Richard Speed • The Register

Google’s latest round of layoffs have hit engineers working on its Flutter and Python teams.

And… more layoffs. Tech has had a rough couple years.

Howard Oakley

In my quest to implement a full app written for SwiftUI on macOS, my next tasks concern the app’s Settings, how to set those as User Defaults, how to implement some of their more common controls, and how to customise the About window. In these, SwiftUI starts to come into its own, in comparison with AppKit, although it does have a couple of surprising shortcomings.

I love it when folks share their code and experience! I’m not brave enough to do that! Thanks for the code! 👨🏽‍💻

David Merritt Johns • The Atlantic

Back in 2018, a Harvard doctoral student named Andres Ardisson Korat was presenting his research on the relationship between dairy foods and chronic disease to his thesis committee. One of his studies had led him to an unusual conclusion: Among diabetics, eating half a cup of ice cream a day was associated with a lower risk of heart problems.

This is weird to read. Ice Cream for diabetics? I mean, anything for ice cream. Amirite? 🍦

Chance Miller, Ben Lovejoy, and Filipe Espósito • 9to5Mac

A little over a year ago, General Motors made what may well turn out to be one of its biggest gambles in many years: dropping support for CarPlay for all future EVs.

The author thinks this was a mistake. I don’t.

I’m hoping this will turn out well for GM. Just don’t serve up a bunch of ads for new features and other products.

Brian Ramian • Los Angeles Times

Opinion: I once lived in my car and can’t fathom criminalizing homelessness

When I worked at LEVEL Studios in 2010 I had trouble finding a place I could stay fairly cheaply after my sub-lease ran out. I lived in my car for a week. It wasn’t horrible, but its wasn’t ideal.

It’s time to do some camping! Kim and I picked up a new to us camping trailer.

We have a list of places we’d like to visit. Now we just need to pick one and go!

It looks like I’m headed to the bench at work. That honestly terrifies me.

I will make the best of it and dive into SwiftUI and async-await. I haven’t done much with either on a real project.

I could also study JavaScript and React. 🤔

I thought it was allergies. Nope, it’s a cold. NyQuil and DayQuil have once again become my best friends. 🤧

I saw a picture someone posted of the beach and I thought of Avila Beach, California.

Kim and I lived not far from it and would go to the beach at least once a week. We’d load up Maggie — our Yorkie — grab a coffee, and dive to the beach.

We’d throw the ball for Maggie and she’d run up and down the beach until she was worn out.

If we could live there for the remainder of our lives together we would. It’s our little paradise.

I miss our beach dates. I miss California.

Kim’s flowers are pretty darned happy. There are a few new flowers in the mix but the purple and yellow flowers and her mini roses have been around for years.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Welcome to this Special Sunday Edition of Saturday Morning Coffee. What makes it special you ask? Nothing! 😆

Kim, my lovely bride, let me sleep in yesterday. It was glorious! And since we had plans to be out of the house by around 10AM, well, that meant I couldn’t put things together yesterday. Now you know why you’re seeing this on Sunday.

Grab some coffee and enjoy the links!

Adele Peters • Fast Company

Last Saturday, as 39 million Californians went about their daily lives—taking showers, doing laundry, or charging their electric cars—the whole state ran on 100% clean electricity for more than nine hours.

I find this very encouraging and I believe it’s only going to get better.

Down the hill from where we live one of our power providers is installing a large field of solar panels. I don’t know how large it is or how much power it’ll generate, but I’m here for it.

Naomi Hartono • blogs.nasa.gov

For the first time since November, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems.

Engineers this smart blow my mind.

“Oh, the thing I need to repair is millions of miles away? No problem.” 😳

Rick Perlstein • The American Prospect

And that’s when the man in the castle with the seven fireplaces said it.

“I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet.”

Andreessen is another piece of Silicon Valley garbage. Even if he said he was joking there’s always a nugget of truth in there. I’d say he really believes what he said.

Jesse Wegman • New York Times 🎁

Trump’s Immunity Case Was Settled More Than 200 Years Ago

That seems about right. We’ve managed to have 240+ years of Presidencies without one committing crimes against the nation that I doubt our founding fathers expected it to happen like this.

Trump is a rapist and a mob boss looking to use the Presidency as his own personal piggy bank.

I hope the Supremes do the right thing and declare the President isn’t above the law.

Wojciech Kulik

In my previous post, I just scratched the surface of iOS development in Neovim. Since then I discovered many new things that allowed me to move my development almost completely to Neovim.

If you’re really good with keyboard commands this could be the editor for you. I’ll stick with Xcode and BBEdit. 😄

AJ Willingham

I just don’t get Taylor Swift. There, I said it. (DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT DISLIKE HER. I WISH HER ALL OF THE HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS IN THE WORLD. PLEASE, I HAVE A FAMILY.)

Better be careful! The Swifties won’t be happy!

Remember the hubbub caused by Tool releasing their first album in 13 years keeping Ms. Swift’s new album out of the top spot? I do. It was kind of funny.

She’s a cultural phenomenon and apparently a very kind, caring, human being. What’s not to like?

John Viega

A few weeks ago, I got a bit miffed reading yet another article that was too dismissive about memory safety, basically being mostly dismissive about the need for change. The following weekend, I started seeing flippant responses from security luminaries, saying essentially that you’re irresponsible and dangerous unless you drop C and C++ faster than I dropped my 8 am classes my first year in college.

I’m an old curmudgeon and I still love C++ as a development language, especially if you’re doing something that needs to be cross platform. But, I certainly understand the trend and the desire to move to memory safe languages. Swift and Rust are both great choices. Swift has made development on Apple OS’es easier and safer. I love it! Rust is on my to learn list but given my latest project is React Native it makes more sense for me to learn JavaScript. Rust will have to wait.

Jonathan M. Gitlin • Ars Technica

Honda announced today that it will spend $11 billion to expand its electric vehicle manufacturing presence in North America. The Japanese automaker already has a number of factories in the US, Mexico, and Canada, and it’s this last one that will benefit from the expansion, with four EV-related plants planned for Ontario.

That’s a lot of money and it’s interesting it’s happening in Canada instead of the US.

Here’s to Honda building better, more affordable, EV’s than Tesla.

Gary Bernhard • Destroy All Software

This science fiction / comedy / completely serious talk traces the history of JavaScript, and programming in general, from 1995 until 2035. It’s not pro- or anti-JavaScript; the language’s flaws are discussed frankly, but its ultimate impact on the industry is tremendously positive. For Gary’s more serious (and less futuristic) thoughts on programming, try some Destroy All Software screencasts.

It’s easy to poke fun a JavaScript but equally as important to understand how important it’s become to our industry.

Dick Uliano • wtop.com

Archeologists have made a remarkable find at George Washington’s Mount Vernon in the ground beneath the cellar — two sealed bottles containing plump cherries.

Very cool! Now what? Who wants to open a jar and eat one? I kind of do, but there’s no way that’s gonna happen. 🤣

Did you know that while George Washington was away fighting the American Revolutionary War he was also writing home to instruct his brother how he wanted his home renovation to proceed. Then he’d go off and fight some redcoats.

Alex Franchuk • Mozilla

Porting a cross-platform GUI application to Rust

This is something my cross platform loving brain could get behind. The Mozilla team rewrote — not something I recommend — their crash reporting tool in 100% Rust. Nifty!

That included writing four abstractions for different UI toolkits; Mac, Windows, Linux, and one for testing. So three plus. 😄 Love it!

Digiday

The possibility of a TikTok ban is inching closer to becoming a reality at this point. On Tuesday, the Senate passed the bill that would bar the social media platform from operating in the U.S. unless ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, sells its stake.

So this was earlier in the week. The President signed it. Now ByteDance has nine months to get the deal done or pull out of the United States.

I still feel like this could’ve been handled differently but I have no idea what that would entail.

Jordan Rose

So let me re-iterate: the three-and-a-half features listed at the top are the only forms of run-time polymorphism in Swift. Now when someone asks “how can I allow arbitrary different argument types to result in different behavior”, you know the answer: make a protocol.

You heard the man! Make a protocol! That will cause the compiler to enforce the contract between your implementation and the definition. You’re obliged to implement it.

If you only need to know an object “is-a” thing that protocol doesn’t actually need to define any properties or methods. Yes, it can be that simple.

Manton Reece

Ghost has announced they are working on ActivityPub support

Manton has been on the open standards software train for years and years. That’s why Micro.blog implements ActivityPub, BlueSky’s AT Protocol, and Micropub.

Micro.blog is a great blogging tool for $5/month. I use it to post here.

Seth Godin

Don’t ignore AI because it’s dumb. Figure out how to create patterns and processes where you can use it as the useful tool it’s becoming.

Keep in mind that AI is just another tool, created by humans, full of flaws. Yes, it’s extremely useful, yes it can get things wrong. But, it’s still growing and changing. Hopefully it’ll will get better over time.

Huffington Post

Former President Donald Trump’s attorney on Thursday argued that a president could order the assassination of his political rival and stage a military coup without being prosecuted for it.

How have we arrived here? One man is single handedly doing his damnedest to unravel American Democracy to placate his narcissism and for some reason nobody wants to tell him he can’t do it.

I just don’t get it.

For 240+ years we’ve managed to exist as a nation without having a President use the Office as his own corrupt money making scheme.

Now, here we are, at the Supreme Court waiting for a tiny group of people to make a decision that could destroy everything we have, all for one man.

There is an upside to this, I suppose? If the Supreme Court decides the President has full immunity and President Biden is willing Trump could be stopped.

I’ll leave it there. Let your mind wander on what that solution might be.

If Trump isn’t stopped now he’ll use that unchecked power in unimaginable ways. Political rivals will mysteriously fall from high rise buildings, die of poisoning, or be thrown in prison.

He’ll rule until he’s hauled out of the White House in a body bag and pass the reins to Bevis or Butthead or some other crony.

Vote for Democracy. Vote Joe Biden 2024.

UPDATE: Apparently Craig Hockenberry is thinking along the same lines as I am. Yeah, the Supreme Court needs to be very careful.

They really should just say “The law applies to everyone."

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Life is just flying by. Another week in the books.

I’ll be helping Kim paint the kitchen today. Should be an adventure. 👨‍🎨

Jeffrey Zeldman

Sure, watches that tell you when you’re walking unsteadily and pocket computer phones that show you the closest pizzeria are swell, but were you around for ResEdit?

Unfortunately I wasn’t a Mac user during the ResEdit days but I do know a lot of folks who had fun with it, does that count? 😃

David Ingram • NBC News

Elon Musk’s X is a thriving hub for Nazi support and propaganda, with paid subscribers sharing speeches by Adolf Hitler or content praising his genocidal regime.

Shocked! Surprised! Said no one hearing this. I really don’t know what else to say. He’s a garbage human.

Benjamin Sandofsky

An ex-Apple designer who went on to startup success once told me, “I wish I could give a workshop for Apple jumping into startups, to help them un-learn The Apple Way.” I think Apple makes some of the best products in the world, and I strive to build products with their level of craft and quality, so it pains me to admit that The Apple Way can destroy a lot of startups. Which brings us to Humane.

I have yet to read anything positive about the Humane Pin. It’s not such a bad idea to be able to talk to a device you’re wearing. I’ve had an Apple Watch for years and years, that’s the device to talk to. Siri could use some work but I have a feeling that’s already happening.

John S. Tobey • Forbes

Sell Trump Media Stock (DJT) Now - An Implosion Is Likely

I feel bad for all the folks who believe so much in Trump that they invested their entire life savings in a company poised to fail. There’s a sucker born every day and if Trump is good at anything it’s grifting.

Jimmy Cook

A React Native app is made up of two sides, the JavaScript side and the native side. The native side could be Objective-C/Swift for iOS or Java/Kotlin for Android (not to mention the other platforms for React Native like web and desktop). The React Native Bridge allows the native code and the javascript code to talk to each other. Without the bridge, there is no way for the native code to send any information to the JavaScript code and vise versa.

I’ve been working on a React Native project that integrates into an existing iOS and Android app. We’ve created ways for our React Native developers to use the native iOS and Android code to do work for them and allow them to navigate between React Native views and Native views. There’s definitely more work we could do to improve on what we’ve started but it’s in a decent position.

We’ve already released some React Native based work and will be rolling out more soon.

I’m having a blast!

Devin Meenan • /Film

Jaws' Most Famous Improvised Line Was A Not-So-Sneaky Dig At Studio Producers

This is a fun little read. Make sure you take the time to visit. It’ll only take a minute of your life.

Ellis Karran,Richard Madden • BBC

When they removed the wooden panel, it revealed a large slab of stone featuring a carving of the Lincoln Imp.

How cool is that!

I hope they find more interesting relics around their home. Let’s hope they’re not cursed. 😆

Alexandra Sternlicht • Fortune via News+

But with the House voting in March to force ByteDance to sell its stake in TikTok, 11 former employees interviewed by Fortune tell a vastly different story. Many of those ex-workers, four of whom were employed as recently as last year, say at least some of TikTok’s operations were intertwined with its parent during their tenures, and that the company’s independence from China was largely cosmetic.

This gets more and more interesting by the day. I was against forcing them to sell and I still think it’s a bit heavy handed.

Is there a way to regulate them to make sure American citizens data remains on servers here in the States?

We know Apple had to hand over the keys to iCloud in China. Could that be done here?

It’s above my pay grade and I’m sure someone much smarter than me could give me the lowdown. In the meantime I’ll keep watching from the cheap seats. 🍿

Haela Huntress • Metal Sucks

Maynard James Keenan may be a 60-year-old man ranting against cell phones, but he actually might have a point on this one, at least somewhat.

I like that he does this. When I went to Aftershock in 2019, and Tool closed out the festival, there didn’t seem to be any rules around cell phones. As soon as their set opened it was cell phones up from front to back. I was so tempted to take one away from the dude in front of me blocking my view. Yeah, I was pissed off but managed to keep my cool. It sucked looking around that thing all evening but in the end I got to hear some amazing music.

Our magnolia is just starting to show signs of spring happiness. Beautiful blossoms are just around the corner.

I thought I’d sticker up my work MacBook Pro and after adding the centerpiece WillowTree sticker I stopped. It just looks so nice.

Looking up

This deliciousness just arrived. 😋

My favorite coffee from Mukilteo Coffee Roasters. It was called Monorail Espresso because it was created for Monorail in downtown Seattle — I used to have a mocha every morning at 5th and Pike — but the name changed to Chetzemoka at some point. I need to go figure out the story behind that. ☕️

It’s a beautiful morning here at the Fahrni Homestead. We have two Dogwoods in our yard and they’re in full bloom. Such beautiful trees.

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

This morning started off kind of bad. Mr. Flynn decided he’d nudge my hand as I was putting my coffee down. He got hot coffee on his head. He’s ok but he needs to learn the importance of coffee to start your day.

We have two weeks remaining on our current project. I hope the company extends us for more work but they may not. Even if they did there’s no guarantee I’d stay on the project. I’m so into this one all I can see are the things I’d love to improve. 🤞🏼

L.V. Anderson • Slate

As an adult, Kunz loves real coffee. But he also believes that its days are numbered. Climate change is expected to shift the areas where coffee can grow, with some researchers estimating that the most suitable land for coffee will shrink by more than half by 2050 and that hotter temperatures will make the plants more vulnerable to pests, blight, and other threats.

Say it ain’t so! First off we’d all be walking around like zombies. Second, I’d have to change the name of this series. Does Saturday Morning Chicory? Doesn’t quite work for me.

Hesher Keenan • Metal Sucks

When Tool released their latest album Fear Inoculum back in 2019, it was the band’s first new release since 2006’s 10,000 Days. That’s a long fuckin’ time for new music from any band, let alone one with such a rabid fan base as Tool, and it’s something frontman Maynard James Keenan admits probably can’t happen again.

Yes, Tool kept us in suspense for 13 years — Maynard says 14 — but Fear Inoculum was so worth the wait. Now, do I want them to wait for 13 more to produce a new album? I do not. I’m ready for more but if they never produce another studio album I’d be ok with it as long as they keep touring.

Personally I’d love to see them release a bunch of live covers they’ve done through the years. Their version of Led Zeppelin’s No Quarter is so good and Ted Nugent’s Stranglehold, played 1998 in Michigan featuring Buzz from Melvins on guitar is a real banger. Collect them up and do a cover album. I’d love that.

Jeffrey Zeldman

While honeymooning in Rome, we spotted an Italian translation of my second book in the display window of a quaint old shop two blocks from the Colosseum.

Jeffrey Zeldman has given us so many wonderful blog posts through the years. It seems like he doesn’t post nearly as often as he used to so when he does they’re nice reads. This one is short and it’s a fun story.

Howard Oakley

In just two months, SwiftUI will be five years old. First released for macOS Catalina in 2019, it’s hard to believe that it’s only two years younger than APFS. Although I’ve been happily developing my apps using AppKit, one of the major components of Cocoa, I’ve been trying to recreate my app Skint using SwiftUI, so I can create a widget for it.

Neat little tour of Apple frameworks and SwiftUI observations. The bottom line is SwiftUI has some catching up to do. I know it gets better and better with each passing year but it does hold back some apps from making a pure 1:1 transition from UIKit/AppKit to SwiftUI.

Don’t worry, they’ll get there eventually. The good thing is you can drop back to UIKit/AppKit if the SwiftUI version of an API doesn’t support your needs.

Julie Clover • MacRumors

Apple Vision Pro Owners Complain of Headaches, Neck Issues and Black Eyes

I can see the headache and neck issues but black eyes? I believe it’s happening, no need to doubt it, but it’s just not something I’d have expected.

Charles Pulliam-Moore • The Verge

You might know the broad strokes of the Joker and Harley Quinn’s twisted romance from Batman: The Animated Series and other DC projects. But the first trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux makes it seem like director Todd Phillips is doing something very different with his musical take on the characters.

I’m sold. Let’s get this move to theaters already! 🃏

Bryce Covert • The Nation

The factory floors at America’s top seller of electric vehicles are rife with racial harassment, sexual abuse, and injuries on the job.

Does this surprise anyone? Musk is human garbage. Tesla’s board should grow a pair and kick the man to the curb.

Tom Warren • The Verge

Microsoft is getting ready to fully unveil its vision for “AI PCs” next month at an event in Seattle. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that Microsoft is confident that a round of new Arm-powered Windows laptops will beat Apple’s M3-powered MacBook Air both in CPU performance and AI-accelerated tasks.

I hope this is accurate. It would be nice to see Windows boxes compete with M series chips.

Anna Tingley • Variety

“Dune: Part Two” is barreling to streaming. The epic sci-fi sequel, starring Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya, will become available to rent and purchase on digital starting Apr. 16, and will release on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on May 14.

I’ll be purchasing the Blu-ray, DVD, Digital combo the day it’s available. What a great film.

Juli Clover • MacRumors

Apple is leasing 45,000 square feet of space in an office building in Miami, reports Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

Miami? Really, Apple? Miami? I guess y’all use slave labor in China to produce hardware. Might as well go hang out in a state with an authoritarian Governor hell bent on making Florida a third world state. Disappointing.

Mark Frauenfelder • Boing Boing

A woman who left over $1,000 in tips at a Florida taco restaurant because she thought she was going to be swept up in the biblical rapture on the day of the eclipse, now wants a Rapture refund, claiming the restaurant defrauded her.

Hey, if you’re all in on being Raptured and believe, why worry about that money? You made some people’s lives a little brighter and a little better.

I can’t see this going anywhere.

Ms. Priss set the trap and I fell for it.

It’s been a pretty darned nice day. 🌞

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I’m still really enjoying the project I’m on at WillowTree and I hope we’re able to extend it further down the road.

I’ve been thinking about a way to fix my completely broken layout of Stream for Mac table view cells. For some reason the same layout I used on iOS isn’t working on macOS? Are the layout engines that different between UIKit and AppKit? No idea. But I do hope my new idea fixes it once and for all.

Then I need to get back to adding async await functionality to my feed adding code. This whole time it’s been synchronous because you really can’t mess with the UI during the initial get of the site data. When you select the feed you’d like to add everything becomes asynchronous, just like feed updating is.

This little change is the fire step in moving all of Stream’s asynchronous code to async await. I still need a much deeper understanding of how it works and why I need it. The code isn’t broken as is today but if Apple requires using async await at some point in the future, it will break.

Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, amirite? 😁

Chris Quinn • cleveland.com

The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.

It’s extremely difficult to write about Donald Trump as an equal to Joe Biden. Trump is a narcissist, rapist, twice impeached, criminal former President with desire to be a forever Dictator of the United States of America. He wants to end democracy as we know it. He’s only in it for his own gratification, to be cruel, and as a means to enrich himself.

Joe Biden is a leader who believes in helping people and he supports the Constitution. He’s been an effective leader.

Look, no President is perfect. President Biden is no exception to that rule. I’m a liberal and don’t agree with everything he’s done, but he has done great work for the people of the United States.

Vote for democracy. Vote for Joe Biden for President.

Craig Hockenberry • Iconfactory

This post will explain the technology behind Project Tapestry and how we tested it as a prototype. We’ll keep this discussion at a fairly basic level: if you’re a web or app developer, you’ll have no problems following along.

I just love everything Iconfactory does. Yes, I’m a software developer, yes Tapestry will somewhat compete with Stream, but I don’t care. I love this idea and I’m a little green with envy I didn’t think about it. 😃

This is the way to open up your app and make it more easily extensible internally in the process. There are lots and lots of great JavaScript developers out there.

I backed it as soon as I heard about it and I’m really looking forward to the final product.

Matthew Haughey

I’d like a hosted, centralized web app that is akin to early-era Blogger.com that lets me save new posts into a system, then it’s up to me where the output goes.

My blog began life as a Blogger blog. I published this site from 2001 to 2010 completely on Blogger. It generated static HTML and would FTP the generated HTML to my site. I loved it and it was extremely easy to move my site when I changed hosting providers. I just zipped up the directory and expanded it in its new home, updated Blogger to point to the new location, and went back to posting.

Today I publish this site using Micro.blog. It also generates static HTML but it’s all hosted on Micro.blog’s hardware. If I ever leave it’ll be easy to move.

I have been considering a move to a completely hand written blog. 😃

Of course once I started thinking about doing that I thought up some tools I’d like to write to help me out. 😂

Max Tani • Semafor

The shift, Apple wrote in a blog post, was technical: The dominant podcasting platform had begun switching off automatic downloads for users who haven’t listened to five episodes of a show in the last two weeks.

This is a piece from January but it is interesting. Like blogging I believe it’s safe to say the idea behind Podcasting was never about monetizing, it was about freedom of expression. But, in the end, you can’t and shouldn’t, stop folks from monetizing it. That’s part of the freedom.

Reliance on a single centralized source of podcasts is a mistake. Apple has been so gracious in sharing their feed directory with the world for nothing it’s difficult to call it a mistake. The fact that it exists isn’t a mistake. The fact that so many podcasting apps and podcasters rely on it is.

There are now many podcast networks, from Indie to BigCo, and some apps and networks have their own directories but Apple is still the dominant player.

Oh, not to mention they have their own player that ships with their OS’es. That’s where the hit to podcast download numbers originated. Apple’s podcasting backend and their distribution front end in the form of the Podcasts app.

Hurubie Meko and Michael Wilson • New York Times

A magnitude-4.8 earthquake sent tremors from Philadelphia to Boston and jolted buildings in New York City. An apparent aftershock was widely felt around 6 p.m.

It’s strange to hear about a quake on the east coast. It was a topic of conversation at work yesterday in our weather Slack channel, of all places.

East coasters aren’t used to this. Here they’re accustomed to cold and snow and hurricanes, not earthquakes.

ROB BESCHIZZA • Boing Boing

Amazon is to end the AI-powered “Just Walk Out” checkout option in its Amazon Fresh stores. It turns out that “AI” means “Actually, Indians” and it isn’t working out.

So now we know what AI actually means! What a complete failing on the part of Amazon. It would’ve been so much better to have failed using AI than to move the jobs of cashiers to India where a bunch of overworked, underpaid, Indians are doing the same job.

Just hire some real people to manage the store.

Matt Birchler • birchtree

You probably got to this post because you Googled some question about what exactly “the fediverse” is, what “ActivityPub” actually means, or what would happen if you turned on federation on your Threads account today.

I still hear about folks struggling to understand how to sign up for Mastodon. The Join Mastodon site should just present the user with a signup form and host everyone on mastodon.social or a new instance and let folks decide what to do next. Most will probably be perfectly happy to stay on that instance forever. 👍🏼

Zack Sharf • Variety

Christian Bale Transforms Into Frankenstein’s Monster in First Look at Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘The Bride’

I’m diggin the look of Bales monster. Sign me up for the finished product.

Anthony Bonkoski

Ref-counting is garbage collection.

But is it really? I can see the point but it’s a tough sale for this old curmudgeon. 😂

I wrote a tiny sample to explain reference counted objects to a co-worker years back — 13 years at the time of this writing. It still illustrates the point fairly well, I think.

Today C++ developers get a lot of great reference counting and other newer memory management techniques through the stl.

Sarah K. Burris • Raw Story

Judge Cannon ‘basically inviting’ Jack Smith to ask for her removal in new filing

This judge seems to be incompetent or in the bag for Trump.

Look, the dude took too secret documents home with him. Probably not a big deal if he’d returned them when he was asked to. But no, not his Orangeness, he hold onto them, claiming they’re his through the magical process of declaring them his through mind control or some crap.

The trial is all about that. Not the Presidential Records Act.