Roden Readers —
Howdy, Craig here with one of these rare interstitial Rodens.
Just wanted to alert you to a new essay of mine published by WIRED yesterday: “The Healing Power of JavaScript”.
I figured I could also offer up some background info on it for those curious about how an essay like this ends up where it ends up.
I started writing the essay three years ago (!!) during a bit of a funk.
In an interview, Bill Gates was asked how hard it was for him to learn to delegate. Bill answers with how he had to change his mental model, going from writing code to letting go to optimize for impact.
Yeah, scaling [Microsoft] was a huge challenge. At first I wrote all the code. Then I hired all the people that wrote the code and I looked at the code. Then, eventually, there was code that I didn't look at and people that I didn't hire. And of course the average quality per person is going down, but the ability to have big impact is going up. [...] A large company is imperfect in many ways, and yet it's the way to get out to the entire world. — Bill Gates
This idea of "having to let go to optimize for impact" really resonates with me. I've gone through this transition in the Drupal community and at Acquia. I've even written about on a few occasions [1, 2].
“Ärzt*innen und Pflegende vollbringen derzeit auf deutschen Intensivstationen wahre Höchstleistungen. Seit über einem Jahr kämpfen sie nun um das Leben schwerstkranker Covid-Patient*innen. Jetzt hat die 3. Welle die Krankenhäuser erreicht, es werden vermehrt jüngere Corona-Infizierte eingeliefert. Viele befürchten eine Überlastung der Intensivstationen. Die bewegende Dokumentation zeigt das Intensivteam der Uniklinik Freiburg im Kampf gegen das Virus.
Katharina Dölle (26) ist Intensivpflegerin an der Uniklinik Freiburg. Die langwierige Pflege von Patientinnen und Patienten ist sie gewöhnt – aber dass die ganze Station über viele Monate fast ausschließlich mit Schwerstkranken belegt ist, ist eine außergewöhnlich Belastung für das ganze Team. Einer ihrer Patienten ist Günter. Der 49-Jährige Fußballtrainer wird Ende des Jahres per Helikopter im „Schneewittchensarg“ auf die Intensivstation geliefert. Er hat eine schweren Corona-Infektion, muss künstlich beatmet werden. Über viele Wochen kämpfen Katharina und das Intensivteam um sein Überleben. Zunächst verbessert sich Günters Zustand, doch dann gibt es einen plötzlichen Rückfall, Günter muss erneut an die künstliche Lunge angeschlossen werden. Wird es dem Team gelingen, sein Leben zu retten?
Trotz größter Bemühungen gewinnt sie nicht immer den Kampf um Leben und Tod. Für die Intensivmedizinerin Viviane Zotzmann und ihr Team gehört Sterben auf der Intensivstation zum Berufsalltag. Insbesondere wenn es jüngere Patienten trifft, kann das eine große Belastung für die Ärzt*innen und Pflegenden sein. Gemeinsam mit ihren Patient*innen und deren Angehörigen durchlebt das Intensivteam Höhen und Tiefen, Hoffnung, Freude, aber auch Trauer und Schmerz. Wie gehen sie mit dem Tod um? Und wie gelingt es ihnen, Angehörigen Trost zu spenden?
Autor Patrick Hünerfeld, Arzt und Filmemacher, hat seit Beginn der Corona-Pandemie das Intensiv-Team der Uniklinik Freiburg begleitet und ihren täglichen Kampf um Leben und Tod dokumentiert.”
Mir haben sich besonders diese Sätze der Intensivpflegerin Katharine Dölle eingebrannt: “Es war im Frühjahr [2020] so, dass eigentlich eine sehr große Solidarität geherrscht hat in Deutschland, und alle motiviert waren, dass wir das packen, und jetzt ist halt der Unmut in der Bevölkerung immer größer. Und das, finde ich, ist zusätzlich noch eine wahnsinnig hohe Belastung. Das fühlt sich manchmal so an, ich hab’s schon öfter gesagt: Die könnten auch mal kurz hierherkommen und uns ne Backpfeife geben. Das ist im Prinzip das gleich wie das, was manche jetzt durch ihr Handeln provozieren: dass die Zahlen jetzt wieder steigen. Es gibt immer mehr Demos, und das, finde ich, ist auch noch ein Aspekt außerhalb der Klinik, der emotional ziemlich zusetzt.”
If you are a web developer, or if your work involves anything involving the Internet, you can't escape DNS. DNS is Internet's addressing system. When you change domain settings or when you want to debug connections. You often end up querying DNS. Here are my go-to tools that I use to query DNS.
DIG
DIG is a Unix tool to query the DNS systems for various values. It's almost always present on all *nix systems. And very easy to use. Let's say you have set up your DNS to point to a web server IP. Now you want to know if the look-up returns the value. You can do that using
It's a FOSS tool. It supports JSON output so you can say pipe the output to a CouchDB. It also supports DNS-over-TLS an DNS-over-HTTPS, the more modern protocol to query DNS. There is also Doggo, which is very similar and also FOSS.
On my Facebook profile, under “religion,” it says “Red Sox fan.” So I cannot remain silent about the special set of uniforms that the Boston Red Sox and Nike unveiled for the team to wear on April 17-18. Here’s how they look. I apologize if this photo has made you come close to losing your … Continued
Today, Apple updated the Find My app to allow third-party products to take advantage of its network of devices to locate lost and stolen belongings from the app’s new Items tab. According to Apple’s press release:
“For more than a decade, our customers have relied on Find My to locate their missing or stolen Apple devices, all while protecting their privacy,” said Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Now we’re bringing the powerful finding capabilities of Find My, one of our most popular services, to more people with the Find My network accessory program. We’re thrilled to see how Belkin, Chipolo, and VanMoof are utilizing this technology, and can’t wait to see what other partners create.”
The Find My network program, which is part of Apple’s Made For iPhone program, allows accessory makers to hook into Apple’s Find My network to locate belongings securely and privately. Apple also said it is publishing a draft specification for chipset makers later this spring, so they can take advantage of the precise, directional capabilities of Apple’s short-range U1 chip.
Apple announced three initial partners who are incorporating Find My into their products. VanMoof is integrating the feature into its S3 and X3 e-bikes, Belkin is including it in its SOUNDFORM Freedom True Wireless Earbuds, and Chipolo is using Find My in its ONE Spot item finder. Find My’s integrations with these third-party products will work just like it does with Apple devices allowing users to do things like play a sound, locate items on a map, and put them in Lost Mode to lock them. Apple says all three partners’ products will be available next week, with more partnerships to rolling out soon.
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This week I’m talking with my friend Jordan Behan of Narrate Creative about content, productizing services, and when you should think about outsourcing parts of your content production (this was a not-so-subtle nod to me and my issues with Episode 6).
Jordan and I talk about taking things like video (which he publishes weekly and is sliced into blog and LinkedIn posts) as tools to get your message in front of enough people enough times to make an impact.
One of the most important things I’ve learned from Jordan isn’t just making the most out of all the content you generate, but how to package your freelance services into a product people can grasp.
Jordan’s Lean Marketing Playbook for SaaS combines his decade plus experience in startups, consulting, and writing into something companies can use to kickstart their marketing. You can reach Jordan on LinkedIn or through his website.
“Let’s start with the bad news: I’m from the IRS, and you owe us money for taxes, which you can pay in iTunes gift cards. But the good news is [horn sound], you’ve won tickets for a cruise. Congratulations!”
We continued to ship Librem 5s throughout March all according to plan and also continue to hunt down CPUs. As we get more hardware confirmed we will contact the next group of Librem 5 backers with their shipping estimate and at the moment our pipeline is full well into May.
Camera and Hardware-accelerated Video Support
We made a lot of progress in March on the software front. Probably the most exciting news is that after a lot of work from the team to write kernel drivers, we have gotten both the front (“selfie”) and back cameras working! With the drivers functional we can now get raw images from the camera sensors. The focus now shifts outside of the kernel and into “userspace” software to post-process those raw images, correct colors and brightness, and provide a default camera app.
What better way to announce to the Internet that the Librem 5 camera is working than with a cat picture?
A classic cat picture, taken with a Librem 5
We have also added support for hardware-accelerated video playback using the iMX8mq’s Hantro VPU. By using the VPU instead of the CPU we save power and free up the main CPU for other tasks.
Userspace Software Improvements
Phosh (the desktop shell for the Librem 5) got additional features in March including a volume overlay, swipeable dialogs, geoclue support (adding location services), and shutdown dialogs. Phoc also released version 0.7.0 with massive stability improvements and snap-to-edge support for windows when the Librem 5 is docked.
We have also been working on SIP support to our Calls application so you can use a SIP provider instead of a cellular provider to place calls over the Internet. While the work isn’t yet complete we have made great progress toward supporting SIP, and are now working on adding this support into the user interface to make it convenient.
We have completed the process of rounding up components for Librem 5 USA and once everything has arrived we hope to start production of the Librem 5 USA PCBA in April. We will also continue to ship through our Librem 5 backlog in April and hope to provide an update on the next round of Librem 5 shipments.
Seit Monaten wird ein Ortungs-Tag von Apple erwartet stattdessen öffnet der Hersteller nun ein neues Ökosystem im Rahmen des "Made for iPhone"-Programms.
Der Redakteur hatte mir da NFC reingeschrieben. Nicht so wichtig. :-)
Ich finde das ziemlich cool. Bisher hat mich immer gestört, dass ich mir extra noch eine Tile-App installieren muss, die meine Lokation protokollieren will.
It was really cool to see NetNewsWire in British GQ’s list of top iOS apps — and awesome to be in the company of Fantastical (cousin Michael’s app), Widgetsmith, Linea Sketch, Halide, Overcast, and other great apps.
One part stood out to me, though: the blurb ends with “The lack of a price tag seems almost criminal” — and this isn’t the first time price has been brought up. Often the sentiment is something like “I’m surprised how good this app is, given that it’s free.”
I should explain: the app is better — much better — than it would be if it were a for-pay app. If it were a for-pay app, it would be just me working on it instead of this great team of volunteers. There probably wouldn’t be an iOS version at all: it would be Mac-only. The kind of features I don’t enjoy doing, such as the Twitter and Reddit integration (and others), wouldn’t even exist.
And it would be slow going. NetNewsWire 5 would have shipped much later than it did, and NetNewsWire 6 would not have shipped until next year, probably.
Instead, because it’s open source, we have this amazing team of people willing to work on it in their spare time. During a pandemic and everything. They’re bringing you something great out of love, with the goal of writing an app of the highest quality.
We don’t have to rush and Ship Right Now in order to make our revenue numbers. We don’t have to pick feature X over feature Y because we think it will bring in more conversions. We can care about performance and efficiency; we can say no to things that might have made money but that are outside our vision.
There’s nothing wrong with commercial software — NetNewsWire was commercial software for many, many years — but it’s also a great freedom to us that it’s not. And it allows us to make something much greater than I would have made all on my own.
(Why all on my own? Because, these days, a Mac and iOS RSS reader is not going to bring in enough revenue to pay for a team greater than one. And even paying one full salary plus health insurance would have been a hell of a longshot.)
If you ask members if they want something, the answer will usually be ‘yes’.
Why would they say no? There’s no downside.
This is why the best questions also present a downside or, at least, a contrast.
For example, if you ask members if they want a private community, they will usually say yes. Privacy sounds good and there’s no downside.
But if you ask questions like:
Would you like your posts to be read by 5 people you know and trust or 500 people who might be helped by your responses?
Do you want this to be a small close-knit group of peers for intimate discussions or a larger group to build connections and gain diverse perspectives?
…you get more valuable results.
Likewise, if you ask members if you should add a new feature or category, they will usually say yes. Again, there’s no downside. But if you ask questions like:
Approximately how many questions within [proposed category] have you had in the past month?
How frequently have you needed to use [proposed feature] in the last month?
Which topic do you feel isn’t properly addressed by our current categories today?
….again, you get more useful results.
Presenting an option without a downside isn’t research, it’s confirmation bias. Asking members to choose between competing priorities will yield far better outcomes.
I live with my partner on the top floor of a building in Queens, New York. Our apartment has great natural light and cool views of the neighborhood. In exchange for that, however, there are five flights of stairs between my doorstep and the outside world. Those five flights aren’t usually a big deal—I’m young and (relatively) in shape. But when I have to take out the trash or carry packages from the mailroom, those stairs are absolute killers.
Just past midnight Pacific time today, Apple filed Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in its legal dispute with Epic Games. The document, a standard pre-trial filing, is designed to serve as a road map for the trial judge, explaining the facts Apple expects will be admitted into evidence at trial, how the law applies to those facts, and the decision Apple believes the court should reach. In other words, it’s a one-sided account of the disputes meant to persuade the judge that Apple’s legal positions are correct. Epic has filed a similar pleading in the case arguing its side of the story.
That context is important to keep in mind because until the judge issues a ruling, filings like these remain legal posturing. That doesn’t mean that Apple’s filing doesn’t contain facts that may be found to be true through the trial process, but until that trial happens, it’s best to approach these sorts of pleadings with skepticism.
That said, the document Apple filed includes some interesting revelations that the company backs up with reference to the documents and other evidence gathered during the pre-trial discovery phase of the litigation. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit is the additional backstory about something Epic called Project Liberty, a plan that Apple says was hatched by Epic in 2019 to free itself from App Store commissions and that Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney recently mentioned in an interview with CNN.
Last August, Epic submitted an update to its popular videogame Fortnite to Apple’s App Review for approval. After the game was approved and available to users, Epic made a server-side change that enabled a new in-app payment system in violation of Apple’s App Review Guidelines. The move by Epic allowed it to circumvent the 30% commission that Apple charges on digital goods sold through the App Store.
Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store, and Epic immediately sued Apple in US Federal Court for antitrust violations. Epic also published a protest video on YouTube parodying Apple’s 1984 TV commercial that introduced the Macintosh computer to mock the company and rally public support for Epic’s legal efforts. The timing of events left little doubt that Epic’s actions were part of a highly-choreographed strategy to challenge Apple’s App Store rules publicly and in the courts.
What Apple’s court filing detail is that the orchestration of those events reaches back to 2019 when Epic began hiring lawyers and a PR firm to help it find a way around the 30% fee charged by the App Store. Apple says that Epic spent months and large sums of money plotting the events that unfolded last summer. It’s an interesting account and, if true, demonstrates a degree of bad faith on Epic’s part that could harm its case. However, Project Liberty is also the sort of colorful story that works better in headlines than as a defense. The May 3rd trial will more likely be decided on antitrust and contractual minutiae buried deep in Apple and Epic’s hundreds of pages of court filings.
More surprising than the backstory surrounding Epic’s actions is that it’s still going forward. There’s a reason you don’t see a lot of big companies go toe-to-toe in court like this. Putting the outcome in the hands of a judge and putting senior executives on the witness stand relinquishes the control both parties have over their destinies. It’s a process that’s fraught with risk, which is why a bad settlement is often better than no settlement at all.
‘Settled on the courthouse steps’ isn’t just a figure of speech. There is still plenty of time for this dispute to settle. Still, I can’t help but wonder if Epic has made settlement impossible by the way it orchestrated the dispute and made it very personal for both sides, and also by dragging Apple before government regulators around the world. No settlement can put the regulator genie back in its bottle.
With the trial less than four weeks away, I expect we’ll see the efforts by both companies to sway popular opinion ramp up. However, that’s all a sideshow to the main event. If Epic and Apple’s claims go forward in May, only US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ opinion will matter.
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Daily Scot found another egregious example of what ‘free parking’ actually costs.
Oh the lengths we go to for underground parking. I walked past this open pit mine suspending these three heritage homes in the air on Birch and West 8th Avenue just blocks away from the new Broadway subway line station at Granville.*
Requiring a minimum number of parking places also makes housing, even “affordable” housing, much more expensive – some estimates put the extra cost of a single parking space at between 30 and 75K – and it frequently sits unused. Having easy, abundant parking is one thing; having too much parking just makes it a lot harder and more dangerous for people who are not in cars to navigate streets and parking lots. …
(State of California) Assembly Transportation Chair Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) is tackling all of this with A.B. 1401, which would prohibit cities from imposing minimum parking requirements on certain developments, specifically those located near existing public transit. The bill has strong support from housing advocates, affordable housing developers, and a few mayors who showed up to the press conference to tout its benefits. …
“Right now, empty parking places are taking precedence over housing for people,” said Ricardo Flores of LISC San Diego. The costs associated with minimum parking requirements “will continue to fall on low-income communities and communities of concern,” he said, and people are being forced to pay for a luxury they don’t even use. “Overcoming housing inequities is key to developing healthy communities.” …
A.B. 1401 would not disallow building any parking; it would simply prohibit cities from setting minimum requirements for certain developments in areas where other options exist. In other words, those who want parking can have it, but those who don’t need it would not have to pay for it, either as part of their housing costs or in other price increases from higher development costs. …
“It’s important to be clear: this legislation does not prevent a developer from building whatever amount of parking they think is appropriate,” said Senator Scott Wiener, a co-author on the bill. “The people building housing are going to best understand a specific project and what is warranted there, but to have one-size -fits-all approach mandating a set amount of parking, no matter what, makes no sense whatsoever.” …
A.B. 1401 has been set for a hearing in the Local Government Committee on Wednesday, April 14.
Here’s a plausible scenario in which you’ll drive more – from Slate:
When the pandemic hit, Sheila worked at home. Seeking to minimize interactions with strangers, she avoided crowds and had groceries and essentials delivered to her house. But when the pandemic ends, finally, she’ll resume visiting stores and meeting other people, and her employer will blow the dust off the cubicles and reopen the office. For now, Sheila will return to work in person only three days per week, working from the ‘burbs during the other two. How might her teleworking travel differ from when she commutes in person?
Sheila obviously won’t be driving to or from work if she stays at home, but she’ll still take many other trips. Since she can’t exercise at her office, she instead drives to a gym four miles from her house. A lunch meeting is five miles away, and she combines it with a pharmacy run—generating a trip of 12 miles. At the end of the workday, she makes a final trip to a grocery store three miles away. If you do the math, she has now driven a total of 26 miles—more than when she went to the office.
For an extra twist, imagine Sheila has a neighbor named Bob who in pre-pandemic times would commute to work by walking to a commuter rail station a half-mile away. He now becomes a post-pandemic teleworker, using his car to run errands or meet clients during the workday—trips that he used to do by walking or transit when he worked downtown. Teleworking has led Bob to increase his driving even more than Sheila. He might eventually convince his family to get an additional car—which suggests still more future driving, because people who obtain a car tend to use it. …
“After COVID we’ll have people relocating farther out,” says Patricia Mokhtarian, a professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “When they do commute, they’ll be traveling longer distances.” In a 2005 study, Mokhtarian and her colleagues concluded that teleworking can modestly reduce driving, but she says the effects dissipate as teleworkers move further from the central city. …
If there is a silver lining in teleworking inducing more driving, it’s that we can probably accommodate teleworkers’ travel with the existing road network, without requiring further expansion.
Um, not so fast, this is BC:
So PT readers, what about you: Do you anticipate driving more or less after the pandemic?
Given the scenes in Northern Ireland in recent days, I'm reminded of this interview with Tony Blair in 2018 on the risk Brexit posed to peace. twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/s…
Tony Blair tells me he finds it 'irresponsible, deeply disappointing and sickening' that MPs, including his Labour colleague @KateHoeyMP, are willing to 'sacrifice' the Good Friday Agreement 'on the altar of Brexit'. pic.twitter.com/XRr842Qepo
Samsung is all set to launch the new Galaxy A 2021 lineup in the US. The company updates its lineup every year with new features and hardware. This time around, the 2021 Galaxy lineup will consist of five models, out of which three will support 5G. The entire lineup has already been launched in other regions and is soon expected to debut in the US.
Continue reading →
Daily Scot found another egregious example of what ‘free parking’ actually costs.
Oh the lengths we go to for underground parking. I walked past this open pit mine suspending these three heritage homes in the air on Birch and West 8th Avenue just blocks away from the new Broadway subway line station at Granville.*
Requiring a minimum number of parking places also makes housing, even “affordable” housing, much more expensive – some estimates put the extra cost of a single parking space at between 30 and 75K – and it frequently sits unused. Having easy, abundant parking is one thing; having too much parking just makes it a lot harder and more dangerous for people who are not in cars to navigate streets and parking lots. …
(State of California) Assembly Transportation Chair Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) is tackling all of this with A.B. 1401, which would prohibit cities from imposing minimum parking requirements on certain developments, specifically those located near existing public transit. The bill has strong support from housing advocates, affordable housing developers, and a few mayors who showed up to the press conference to tout its benefits. …
“Right now, empty parking places are taking precedence over housing for people,” said Ricardo Flores of LISC San Diego. The costs associated with minimum parking requirements “will continue to fall on low-income communities and communities of concern,” he said, and people are being forced to pay for a luxury they don’t even use. “Overcoming housing inequities is key to developing healthy communities.” …
A.B. 1401 would not disallow building any parking; it would simply prohibit cities from setting minimum requirements for certain developments in areas where other options exist. In other words, those who want parking can have it, but those who don’t need it would not have to pay for it, either as part of their housing costs or in other price increases from higher development costs. …
“It’s important to be clear: this legislation does not prevent a developer from building whatever amount of parking they think is appropriate,” said Senator Scott Wiener, a co-author on the bill. “The people building housing are going to best understand a specific project and what is warranted there, but to have one-size -fits-all approach mandating a set amount of parking, no matter what, makes no sense whatsoever.” …
A.B. 1401 has been set for a hearing in the Local Government Committee on Wednesday, April 14.
Dann Signal. Entropy in Software development seems to be accelerating.
Not only is Signal a sketchy-as-fuck privacy-violating social network wearing "security" cosplay, now it also has a climate-incinerating Ponzi scheme bundled in.
Do they think we don't see through the thinly veiled pump and dump scheme that's proposed? It's an old scam with a new face.
Allegedly the controlling entity prints 250 million units of some artificially scarce trashcoin called MOB (coincidence?) of which the issuing organization controls 85% of the supply. This token then floats on a shady offshore cryptocurrency exchange hiding in the Cayman Islands or the Bahamas, where users can buy and exchange the token. The token is wash traded back and forth by insiders and the exchange itself to artificially pump up the price before it's dumped on users in the UK to buy to allegedly use as "payments". All of this while insiders are free to silently use information asymmetry to cash out on the influx of pumped hype-driven buys before the token crashes in value. Did I mention that the exchange that floats the token is the primary investor in the company itself, does anyone else see a major conflict of interest here? [...]
The whole Libra/Diem token (or whatever they're calling its remains this week) was a failed Facebook initiative exploiting the gaping regulatory loophole where if you simply call yourself a cryptocurrency platform (regardless of any technology) you can effectively function as a shadow bank and money transmistter with no license, all while performing roughly the same function as a bank but with magic monopoly money that you can print with no oversight while your customers assume full counterparty risk. If that sounds like a terrible idea, it's because it is. [...]
The larger trend is of activist investors trying to turn every app with a large userbase into a coin operated slot machine which forces users to buy from a supply of penny-stock-like tokens that are thinly traded and which investors and market makers collude on to manipulate prices for their own gain.
Yes, all that. But also, he began his post with:
This time [the exploitation and betrayal] felt much deeper because it introduced a conflict of interest from our fellow technologists that we truly believed were advancing a cause many of us also believed in. So many of us have spent significant time and social capital moving our friends and family away from the exploitative data siphon platforms that Facebook et al offer, and on to Signal in the hopes of breaking the cycle of commercial exploitation of our online relationships. And some of us feel used.
Well, I'm sorry, but if you felt that way about Signal, you were a damned fool.
It is clear from its design and behavior that Signal's priority is to be a social network first and an encryption tool second. Growth at any cost.
Signal immediately spams all of your contacts with your phone number as soon as you sign up, proving conclusively that they value "expand the social network" more than privacy. That shows where their priorities lie, and from that alone, you know that they're sketchy as fuck.
But beyond that, Signal pretends to be open, but very much is not. If you compile and distribute your own copy of Signal, you are legally prohibited from calling it Signal -- and if it's not called Signal, it cannot connect to the Signal network of servers, meaning your fork cannot talk to Signal users.
Which means that the only way to use Signal to talk to other people using Signal is to use the official app. And you have no way of knowing what's actually going on inside it. Maybe it's running the same code as what they publish. Or, you know, maybe not.
Abusing Trademark law to circumvent the checks and balances that open source development normally provides is just appalling. They get to pretend that it is open source, get that bullet item on the pitch sheet, get the good press associated with that, get credulous nerds to call them "fellow technologists" (whatever-the-fuck that means) while still maintaining absolute control.
Signal is no less a vertically-integrated, untrustworthy data silo than any product from Facebook or Google.
And now it is also roping you in to the global suicide pact known as "proof of work".
Wix, the website builder company you may remember from stealing WordPress code and lying about it, has now decided the best way to gain relevance is attacking the open source WordPress community in a bizarre set of ads. They can’t even come up with original concepts for attack ads, and have tried to rip-off of Apple’s Mac vs PC ads, but tastelessly personify the WordPress community as an absent, drunken father in a therapy session.
I have a lot of empathy for whoever was forced to work on these ads, including the actors, it must have felt bad working on something that’s like Encyclopedia Britannica attacking Wikipedia. WordPress is a global movement of hundreds of thousands of volunteers and community members, coming together to make the web a better place. The code, and everything you put into it, belongs to you, and its open source license ensures that you’re in complete control, now and forever. WordPress is free, and also gives you freedom.
Wix is a for-profit company with a valuation that peaked at around 20 billion dollars, and whose business model is getting customers to pay more and more every year and making it difficult to leave or get a refund. (Don’t take my word for it, look at their investor presentations.) They are so insecure that they are also the only website creator I’m aware of that doesn’t allow you to export your content, so they’re like a roach motel where you can check in but never check out. Once you buy into their proprietary stack you’re locked in, which even their support documentation admits:
So if we’re comparing website builders to abusive relationships, Wix is one that locks you in the basement and doesn’t let you leave. I’m surprised consumer protection agencies haven’t gone after them.
Philosophically, I believe in open source, and if WordPress isn’t a good fit for you there are other great open source communities like Drupal, Joomla, Jekyll, and Typo3. We also have a great relationship with some of our proprietary competitors, and I have huge respect for the teams at Shopify and Squarespace, and even though we compete I’ve always seen them operate with integrity and I’d recommend them without hesitation.
Wix, though, continues to show their true colors. Regardless of their product, I hope people consider the behavior of companies in the world they support with their dollars. Wix really wants you to see their new campaign though, so let’s take the bait and watch the creepy, misleading way they are trying to represent themselves.
Apple’s M1 Mac lineup, whether it’s the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro or in some cases, even the Mac mini, are notoriously difficult to upgrade in any way — and if you do, you’re almost certainly voiding the laptop’s warranty.
According to MacRumors, technicians in Guangzhou, China, have found a way to detach RAM and SSD chips from Apple’s M1-based Macs, allowing them to be updated with more powerful and higher-capacity parts.
For example, if you purchased the M1 MacBook Air and 8GB of RAM wasn’t enough, you could upgrade it to 16GB. The report says that macOS even recognizes these homemade upgrades as official Apple parts.
Chinese maintenance engineers can already expand the capacity of the Apple M1. The 8GB memory has been expanded to 16GB, and the 256GB hard drive has been expanded to 1TB. pic.twitter.com/2Fyf8AZfJR
The process is, of course, far from straightforward and involves removing chips that are soldered onto the laptop’s motherboard and replacing them with difficult-to-find parts. As you may have already guessed, the process also void’s the device’s warranty.
On the plus side, this hopefully indicates that future M1 Macs like the inevitable new Mac Pro, for example, will still be upgradable despite being powered by Apple’s own ARM-based silicon.
On another note, while I had several issues with the M1 MacBook Pro when it first launched, the experience is very smooth now. Nearly all of the apps I use daily, including Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, Audition CC and even Edge, all have dedicated M1-based apps.
Even the monitor flickering issue I dealt with for several weeks disappeared when I purchased an official Apple A/V adapter.
Two support pages for the Surface Laptop 4 have turned up on Microsoft’s website, another indication that the company could soon unveil the rumoured successor to the Surface Laptop 3.
Spotted by Twitter user WalkingCat (@_h0x0d_), who often leaks Microsoft-related news, the two support pages cover Intel and AMD variants of the Surface Laptop 4. Both pages appear to be placeholders with details about downloading firmware and drivers for both hardware variants. Unfortunately, neither page confirms any details about the Laptop 4 except that it will come with either Intel or AMD hardware configurations.
Surface Laptop 4 with AMD Processor Drivers and Firmware (placeholder) https://t.co/lJ7Opg9NHB
Although the support pages are low on details, a March report outlined some things to expect from the Surface Laptop 4. That included the specific processors — on the AMD side, Microsoft will once again opt for last-gen chips with the Ryzen 5 4680U and Ryzen 7 4980U options. While an upgrade over the Ryzen 3000 series chips featured in the Laptop 3, it’s disappointing the company may not go with the newer 5000 series AMD CPUs.
Screenshots of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 Intel and AMD support pages
On the Intel side, the Surface Laptop 4 will reportedly use 11th Gen chips like the Core i5-1145G7 and the Core i7-1185G7. If accurate, it should be exciting — I recently tested a Lenovo ThinkPad with the i7-1180G7 and, while not the same one as what’s rumoured for the Laptop 4, the 1180 impressed me. Hopefully the 1185 will also prove impressive.
Beyond that, the Surface Laptop 4 will offer fairly standard configuration options. For example, it should have 8, 16 or 32GB RAM variants, 128, 256, 512GB or 1TB storage options and the 3:2 aspect ratio display should return on the Laptop 4.
“For more than a decade, our customers have relied on Find My to locate their missing or stolen Apple devices, all while protecting their privacy,” said Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of worldwide product marketing, in a recent press release.
Apple says its Find My network accessory program is part of its Made for iPhone (MFi) certification system, and that it’s designed to ensure all supported third-party devices adhere to the same privacy rules as the company’s own devices. Find My supported devices will also feature a ‘Works with Apple Find My’ badge to indicate they’re compatible with the program.
Apple is also opening up the U1 Ultra Wideband chip featured in its iPhone 12 series, iPhone 11 devices and the Apple Watch Series 6, to third-party devices, allowing manufacturers to offer a more “directionally aware experience” through Find My. This is a welcome but very uncharacteristic move for Apple, which typically locks its devices’ more unique hardware features to its own apps. That said, it seems it might take some time for third-party device makers to support the U1 as Apple says it’s only launching a “draft specification for chipset manufacturers” later this spring.
The rollout of third-party Find My support is also likely in preparation for launching Apple’s often-rumoured AirTags Bluetooth tracking device. The tech giant reportedly plans to hold an event later this month where it will likely show off the Bluetooth tracker, along with a new iPad Pro, iPad Mini, iMac and possibly a refreshed Apple TV.
Apple first announced plans to open Find My up to third-party manufacturers at last year’s WWDC following pressure from U.S. and European regulators related to the company giving itself an advantage on its own platforms.
On another note, given how vocal Tile has been about Apple potentially entering the Bluetooth tracking device industry, it’s not surprising the tech giant opted to work with Chipolo instead. Though an overall welcome move on Apple’s part, it will be interesting to see if ‘Find My’ third-party support takes off and we start seeing the feature supported by more devices.
Zero-emission cars accounted for almost 10 percent of vehicle sales in British Columbia in 2020. This brings the province to the top of the ‘highest electric vehicle uptake’ list in North America.
“With the highest reported uptake rates of EVs in North America, B.C. is quickly becoming a leader in the EV industry,” said Bruce Ralston, Minister of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation, in a recent statement.
As per the Zero Emission Vehicle Update 2020, there were 54,469 light-duty electric vehicles registered in B.C. as of December 30th, 2020, with over 2,500 public charging stations scattered around the province. This makes B.C. one of the largest public charging networks and the first cluster of public hydrogen fueling stations in Canada.
The high uptake in electric vehicles is at least partially thanks to the provincial government’s CleanBC EV Charger Rebate Program. The rebate helps potential electric vehicle buyers with the upfront costs of EV infrastructure.
As per the annual report, “Homeowners can get up to a $350 (temporarily increased to $700) CleanBC rebate to install a Level two charging station in a single-family home. Up to a $2,000 (temporarily increased to $4,000) rebate is available for the installation of a Level two charging station designed for multiple users in condominiums, apartments and workplaces.”
In May 2019, B.C. passed the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act, which requires automobile makers to meet zero-emission vehicle sales targets. The target is set to 10 percent by 2025, 30 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2040. British Columbia currently sits at 9.4 percent new electric vehicle registrations and aims to exceed the goal set for 2025.
Google will host a virtual I/O conference this year, and it’ll be free to attend.
The search giant announced plans to host the conference Wednesday and shared a puzzle related to when I/O will take place — Google often teases its developer conferences with puzzles. 9to5Googlesolved the puzzle and reports that I/O 2021 will take place from May 18th to 20th.
The conference will include keynote presentations for both consumers and developers focused on “company and product news.” There will also be technical sessions for people to learn how to adopt new technologies. Google will make the full event lineup available later in April.
I/O 2021 will also have workshops, Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions, meetups, ‘interactive sandboxes,’ code labs and more. Registration for the event is open now.
Google I/O will likely include some updates about upcoming upgrades to the Android operating system — like Android 12, which is currently in development — as well as to Chrome, Chrome OS, Google Assistant and more. Considering past I/O events saw hardware launches, such as the Pixel 3a line and the Nest Hub Max, we could see some announcements at this year’s virtual event. Perhaps the rumoured Pixel 5a will make an appearance.
At the end of 2020, there was a strong hope that high levels of vaccination would see humanity finally gain the upper hand over Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. In an ideal scenario, the virus would then be contained at very low levels without further societal disruption or significant numbers of deaths.
But since then, new “variants of concern” have emerged and spread worldwide, putting current pandemic control efforts, including vaccination, at risk of being derailed.
Put simply, the game has changed, and a successful global rollout of current vaccines by itself is no longer a guarantee of victory.
No one is truly safe from Covid-19 until everyone is safe. We are in a race against time to get global transmission rates low enough to prevent the emergence and spread of new variants. The danger is that variants will arise that can overcome the immunity conferred by vaccinations or prior infection.
What’s more, many countries lack the capacity to track emerging variants via genomic surveillance. This means the situation may be even more serious than it appears.
As members of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission Taskforce on Public Health, we call for urgent action in response to the new variants. These new variants mean we cannot rely on the vaccines alone to provide protection but must maintain strong public health measures to reduce the risk from these variants. At the same time, we need to accelerate the vaccine program in all countries in an equitable way.
Together, these strategies will deliver “maximum suppression” of the virus.
What are ‘variants of concern’?
Genetic mutations of viruses like Sars-CoV-2 emerge frequently, but some variants are labelled “variants of concern”, because they can reinfect people who have had a previous infection or vaccination, or are more transmissible or can lead to more severe disease.
There are currently at least three documented Sars-CoV-2 variants of concern:
B.1.351, first reported in South Africa in December 2020
B.1.1.7, first reported in the United Kingdom in December 2020
P.1, first identified in Japan among travellers from Brazil in January 2021
Similar mutations are arising in different countries simultaneously, meaning not even border controls and high vaccination rates can necessarily protect countries from home-grown variants, including variants of concern, where there is substantial community transmission.
If there are high transmission levels, and hence extensive replication of Sars-CoV-2, anywhere in the world, more variants of concern will inevitably arise and the more infectious variants will dominate. With international mobility, these variants will spread.
South Africa’s experience suggests that past infection with Sars-CoV-2 offers only partial protection against the B.1.351 variant, and it is about 50% more transmissible than pre-existing variants. The B.1.351 variant has already been detected in at least 48 countries as of March 2021.
The impact of the new variants on the effectiveness of vaccines is still not clear. Recent real-world evidence from the UK suggests both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines provide significant protection against severe disease and hospitalisations from the B.1.1.7 variant.
On the other hand, the B.1.351 variant seems to reduce the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine against mild to moderate illness. We do not yet have clear evidence on whether it also reduces effectiveness against severe disease.
For these reasons, reducing community transmission is vital. No single action is sufficient to prevent the virus’s spread; we must maintain strong public health measures in tandem with vaccination programs in every country.
Why we need maximum suppression
Each time the virus replicates, there is an opportunity for a mutation to occur. And as we are already seeing around the world, some of the resulting variants risk eroding the effectiveness of vaccines.
That’s why we have called for a global strategy of “maximum suppression”.
Public health leaders should focus on efforts that maximally suppress viral infection rates, thus helping to prevent the emergence of mutations that can become new variants of concern.
Prompt vaccine rollouts alone will not be enough to achieve this; continued public health measures, such as face masks and physical distancing, will be vital too. Ventilation of indoor spaces is important – some of which is under people’s control, some of which will require adjustments to buildings.
Fair access to vaccines
Global equity in vaccine access is vital too. High-income countries should support multilateral mechanisms such as the Covax facility, donate excess vaccines to low- and middle-income countries, and support increased vaccine production.
However, to prevent the emergence of viral variants of concern, it may be necessary to prioritise countries or regions with the highest disease prevalence and transmission levels, where the risk of such variants emerging is greatest.
Those with control over healthcare resources, services and systems should ensure support is available for health professionals to manage increased hospitalisations over shorter periods during surges without reducing care for non-Covid-19 patients.
Health systems must be better prepared against future variants. Suppression efforts should be accompanied by:
genomic surveillance programs to identify and quickly characterise emerging variants in as many countries as possible around the world
rapid large-scale “second-generation” vaccine programs and increased production capacity that can support equity in vaccine distribution
studies of vaccine effectiveness on existing and new variants of concern
adapting public health measures (such as double masking) and recommitting to health system arrangements (such as ensuring personal protective equipment for health staff)
behavioural, environmental, social and systems interventions, such as enabling ventilation, distancing between people, and an effective find, test, trace, isolate and support system.
Covid-19 variants of concern have changed the game. We need to recognise and act on this if we as a global society are to avoid future waves of infections, yet more lockdowns and restrictions, and avoidable illness and death.
If you are having comfort problems with your bike saddle, this post about the Zacro Gel Seat Cover has a budget solution.
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Ian Dunt (IanDunt)
on Thursday, April 8th, 2021 12:54pm
Samsung is all set to launch the new Galaxy A 2021 lineup in the US. The company updates its lineup every year with new features and hardware. This time around, the 2021 Galaxy lineup will consist of five models, out of which three will support 5G. The entire lineup has already been launched in other regions and is soon expected to debut in the US.
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Price Tags.
jwz:
xkcd.com.
The Guardian.