Rolandt

There's actually quite a bit to this post, including some stuff I agree with, and it's a bit unfair to pick on one thing, but I'm going to do it anyway. The thing I'm picking up on is the image of a dog and of some dog parts (a leg, a head, a tail, etc) with the caption "Emergence: is a whole dog made up of the sum of its parts?" What they're trying to show is that complex skills "can be decomposed into more specific “constituent skills and the interrelationships between them." Their point is to emphasize the interrelationships, and that's the part I agree with, with some reservations.

But the thing with emergence is that it does not arise out of "constituent parts". What they are talking about is composition, not emergence (like the way a wall is composed of bricks, but does not 'emerge' from the collectioin of bricks). So in the case of the dog parts, you can only make a dog out of them, not a cat. But if we're talking about pixels, the same pixels could be used to make an image of either a cat or a dog - the organization matters, but the compositionality doesn't. I think this confusion underlies a lot of the conceptual errors in Neelen and Kirschner's work.

I've been shaving a lot of yaks, but I'm finally ready to for other people to start kicking the tires on the MVP of Datasette Cloud.

I've started by inviting a small group of people (from my fellowship program) in to start trying out this new hosted, team-oriented version of Datasette.

Getting to this point has been a classic example of the last 10% of the project taking 90% of the time.

Here's just one example. I need my users to be able to upload CSV files directly into Datasette, rather than making them rely on my growing collection of command-line tools for data ingestion.

So I've been trying to knock the very-alpha version of my new datasette-upload-csvs plugin into good enough shape to be usable for this initial round of testing.

But... that plugin needs to render templates. And Datasette plugins didn't have a pleasant way of rendering templates (if you discount horrifying stack-inpsection hacks). I've had an issue open about this since September. I finally closed it today, and shipped Datasette 0.35 to celebrate.

I want users to only be able to access the Datasette instances for teams that they belong to. Since authentication is handled by datasette-auth-existing-cookies I needed it to grow some concept of permissions. I ended up shipping versions 0.3, 0.4, 0.4.1, 0.5 and 0.5.1 just in the past two days, but it finally does what I need it to do. Another thoroughly shaved yak.

I ran into an awkward ASGI scope issue, which I ended up figuring out using a new datasette-debug-asgi plugin based on my older asgi-scope project.

I've been doing a lot of tinkering with my Docker/Traefik environment too. I can now launch new containers from Python code triggered by a Django Admin action, which is pretty fun.

My other fun project from this week was geojson-to-sqlite, a CLI tool for converting GeoJSON files into a SQLite (or optionally a SpatiaLite) database. Combined with datasette-leaflet-geojson this allows for some really fun geospatial nerdery. I'm looking forward to diving deeper into this set of Datasette use-cases in the near future.

Scrappy weeknotes this week, but I've decided that it's better to keep to the habit and post something untidy than to delay posting and break my streak.

Die Abkündigung von TCL sieht nach einem endgültigen Ende aus. Aber das ist noch nicht ausgemacht.

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The playbook has me disabled by grief at this point, three weeks after Catherine died.

And sometimes I am disabled, with my mind scrunched up in thickets.

But there are periods of joy and beauty, both from within and from without. Anonymous muffins and soups dropped at our door (who would have thought I’d grow into a soup-lover; certainly not Catherine). Deep conversations with new and old friends. A new ability to not avert my eyes at places I used to. And a realization that Catherine, while not here, is still here. In ways that help and elevate my spirit, and ways that confound me.

And then there are all the practical things that need doing when somebody dies.

Here’s a list. Not intended as a reference as much as a way of processing everything I’ve been doing so it seems like more than just eating soup.

1. Picked up a sheaf of official copies of Catherine’s death certificate from the Hillsboro Funeral Co-op. Almost everyone in officialdom calls for this at some point.
2. Picked up a sheaf of “certified true” copies of Catherine’s will from our lawyer. I had a copy in our safe deposit box, but it wasn’t “certified true.” We last updated our wills in June of last year, when Catherine’s death seemed like known-but-still-far-off thing. I’m happy we screwed up our courage to do so, if only because our new lawyer comes from the “plain language” school of will-drafting, so there are blessed few “thous” and “thereuntos” to be found in the language.
3. Closed Catherine’s accounts at Metro Credit Union, and inherited her RRSPs. I remember when we named each other as beneficiaries of our RRSPs, many years ago, and what a minor and insignificant thing that seemed. A box to be checked, a line to be initialed. “That’ll never happen!”
4. Started a claim for the life insurance on our home equity line of credit at TD Bank. Another box we checked back in 2000 when we established the line of credit to help renovate 100 Prince Street. I’d forgotten that we even had insurance until, fortuitously, TD raised the rates the week Catherine died, and sent us a letter to inform us. I called, and, sure enough, we checked the right box and paid the right premiums. I had to get our family doctor to fill out a form attesting to Catherine’s cause of death, but otherwise the paperwork was simple, and the staff at TD helpful. So a huge debt, relatively speaking, may get wiped away. Still holding my breath on this.
5. Started a claim for Catherine’s life insurance proper. Another instance where, when we took out a policy in 2007, our thoughts were that we were being responsible parents, not that we’d ever actually have to make a claim. If only because our somewhat-reasonable monthly premiums would escalate into the stratosphere in the next decade, and we’d likely have dropped the policy. Catherine’s policy was initially with AIG (which you’ll remember from the financial crisis of the last decade); their business got sold to Bank of Montreal, so that’s what I’m dealing with, with the help of the friendly folks at Connolly Group. Just had to fill in a few forms for this, and am awaiting next steps.
6. Submitted the paperwork for Catherine’s Canada Pension Plan death benefit (a one-time lump sum) and my “survivor’s pension,” which, strangely, it seems like I will start to receive right away, not when I retire. Not enough to live on, by any stretch, but also not nothing.
7. Cancelled Catherine’s Provincial Health Card.
8. Paid the bill for Catherine’s cremation. By Interac e-transfer.
9. Turned Catherine’s Facebook account into a “memorialized” one, at Oliver’s suggestion.
10. Requested an archive of Catherine’s photos from Instagram and, a few days later, received it. My plan is to turn it into a static archive, then retire her Instagram account.
11. Returned the bed Catherine had been using to its rightful owners (thank you!), and carted her mattress to the dump.
12. Started to make handmade paper out of the condolence cards and letters we received, and the flowers that were at her celebration of life.
13. Sent copies of Catherine’s Death Certificate to family members who flew here to be with us, so they can claim a bereavement refund from Air Canada. Heretofore I’d thought this was a myth, but it’s true, and appreciated.
14. Cleaned out Catherine’s purse. That might have been the hardest, most intimate thing I’ve done since she died.
15. Rearranged the living room a little. Found a $100 Lee Valley Tools gift certificate from 2000 hidden in the bookshelf (I’ll bet they’ll honour it!). Finally cleaned up the pile of books on my side-table as I’d been planning to for months.
16. Had coffee or lunch dates with a good collection of open-hearted friends. Talked about Catherine a lot. Learned some things. Lots of things, actually. Including a lot about how people process, or don’t process, death. And how help can come from unexpected places.
17. Accepted an invitation to come and cook together on Sunday with good friends.
18. Arranged a date for a biannual gathering with friends that Catherine and I did together for the last 5 years. This year I’ll go with Oliver.
19. Started to think about new homes for Catherine’s spinning wheels and other equipment, as well as her significant cache of fabric and fibre. I have time here, so I’m not in a rush. In the meantime I get a chance to sit in Catherine’s studio. Which is nice.
20. Realized that, despite feeling relatively centred most of the time, I need to avoid movies about happy families doing happy things in their happy lives for a while.
21. Slowly learning how to sleep through the night again. I do pretty well on the head-end, not so much on the morning side.
22. Unsubscribed Catherine from a lot of email newsletters.
23. Switched Catherine’s cell phone plan from a $40/month one to a $15/month one. Not quite ready to give up her number yet, just in case I need to close accounts that have SMS verification.
24. Put a voicemail message on our “home phone number” (really just a redirect to Catherine’s mobile) giving people my cell number. Ultimately I think I’ll do away with this number. As far as I know the only place it still has any utility is as the key to unlock loyalty program points at Murphy’s Parkdale Pharmacy.
25. Starting to get used to writing “my” instead of “our.”
26. As if by magic, recalled the unlock code for Catherine’s iPad; I had to enter a trance-like state to accomplish this.

More than anything else, though, I’ve been father to Oliver. He has been enormously helpful, including insistence that, when people ask “how are you?”, I tell the truth (he forced me to retroactively retract my “as well as can be expected”-style replies from a couple of people). And an insistence that we keep on doing what we do.

I’ve also learned that our vocabulary for describing grief is primitive, and that most people, most of the time, however well-intentioned, fall back on well-worn tropes (“it’s a journey,” “it’s a process,” “it’s not a straight line”). Kind of like describing a strawberry as “fruity tasting.” Accurate, but in no way a helpful description of its splendours.

(Photo Catherine took in Vigeland Sculpture Park, Oslo, in the fall of 2016)

Bill McKibben in The Guardian, When it comes to climate hypocrisy, Canada’s leaders have reached a new low:

Americans elected Donald Trump, who insisted climate change was a hoax – so it’s no surprise that since taking office he’s been all-in for the fossil fuel industry. There’s no sense despairing; the energy is better spent fighting to remove him from office.

Canada, on the other hand, elected a government that believes the climate crisis is real and dangerous – and with good reason, since the nation’s Arctic territories give it a front-row seat to the fastest warming on Earth. Yet the country’s leaders seem likely in the next few weeks to approve a vast new tar sands mine which will pour carbon into the atmosphere through the 2060s. They know – yet they can’t bring themselves to act on the knowledge. Now that is cause for despair.

Thank you Mitt Romney for your principled vote today. I wish we could have seen a few more like that, but at least there was one.

I started writing in my last year of high school, nearly 50 years ago. I’m not sure my fellow students liked my work as much as they related to the desperate passion embedded in it. Most of it was pretentious and angsty, but it had a few clever turns of phrase and some evocative imagery, and it captured I think some of the anger and dread and hopefulness and anomie of the late 1960s, so I’ve kept some fragments of it. Here is a bit of what I wrote way back  then:

FIVE UNFINISHED CANVASSES (1969-74)

waterscape:
on the riverbank
the cold autumn chill coming in
from over the water
splashing endlessly, wet and thunderous
over the jagged rocks.
time stops: as if waiting for moments long gone or never coming.
in the shadowed haze of overcast daylight
(with soft fine spray blowing in the icy wind
of the dull, shivering, timeless day),
the moment shocks the frozen soul with its unquestionable truth,
its unbearable silence, echoes
the infinite darkness of midday,
the infinite silence of wind
screaming through trees, leaves wet with tiny droplets
blown from the tumultuous river
turned to ice crystals by the winter gusts,
asking startling questions of frozen, weary hearts,
demanding no answers,
giving only the cold realization of utter solitude,
of unbearable loneliness,
of touching an infinite, unanswerable mystery.

study in green and grey:
the warm, wet, silent air whispers
death; the cat
running up towards me
in the dead silence
the dry grass rustling beneath its feet like hay,
purrs madly, fluffy and soft persian
all colours,
and is gone, incongruous, like the
ice-cream bell
sterile vitality
in a world of lost, sad eyes.
cries of lonely owls
faded dark green trees
against the motionless grey sky
silent and dark and dry,
a world of no energy,
so little wind that distant cries and barks
are heard in the vacuum,
so little motion that the children playing,
the dark, small birds against the hazy sky
exist only as landscapes of unreality…

but always there are the dark green, rough grey
sharp-contoured trees against
the wandering, unfocussable clouds:
form against the formless
frozen in time.

mid-night snow:
have you ever seen fresh snowfall sparkling under the streetlights
in the middle of a
windless night with no sounds and nothing moving except
the endless snow and
occasionally a car spinning its tires as it moves anonymously by
and the snow lands on your eyelashes
and you look up and try to catch the snowflakes on your tongue
and the snow above you seems to go
on forever?

there is a sparrow flying from branch to branch of a bare elm
in the park beside the frozen duckpond
on a sunday afternoon and
there is an old man sitting on the park bench throwing crumbs
to the birds and the pavilion in the background is silhouetted
against the stark winter sky
and in front of it are patterns of footprints in the snow
and by the side of the road are two imprints of
fallen angels

wilderland rites:
At night the forest is not what it seems,
The wolf, in the shadows of half-sleep, evolves into a dragonfly,
the fire into a clown, the owl into a junkie, the lady into a child in rags.
The forest becomes a desert, then a city. The clown offers a balloon to the child,
watches it rise into the crimson sky,
pulsing with ventricular booms.
The junkie becomes a priest.
Child becomes a surgeon.
Clown becomes a voodoo magician, laughs the laugh of birth and death.
Dragonfly into hypodermic, into the arm of the Patient Lover.
In the heart of the night come the mating calls.
The rapturous moans of the opium den.
On the beach of no footprints,
by the night lit by lightning,
is a scorpion with wolf’s tattered claws.
Becomes a sea-snake
rising to the song of a flute
played by a woman clothed in strips of ragged fur.
Tben the shadow of a vulture,
wearing the cloth of last rites,
and the snake’s devoured.

elegy for the sixties:
we are the flowers that bore no fruit,
cactic children, scions of extraordinary promise
never realized. on a distant embankment
we sit, wide-eyed execrable hybrids
of the years entre deux doctrines,
broken twigs still standing in infertile ground,
staring at the lush vineyards and orchards
that grew, as they were supposed to,
beyond the road that leads to the greenhouse, and the laboratory,
and the conservatory, where the best strains are kept,
and other places we will never know,
while here we wait, without anticipation, forgotten
in the rain.

Ignorance has won: our meagre forces collapsed before the war could begin, when we confirmed our suspicion that most of our people were fighting for the other side. The leaders to whom we looked for inspiration turned out to be wrong; not evil men, merely fools, so we were not even stirred to outrage, simply reduced to despair. We have become numbed and lethargic as many of our people have tired of the endless waiting and, in anger or indifference, gone over to the other side. Our arguments have lost their meaning and their definition, and the ensuing silence has lulled us into routine, a routine which we share with the other side, and which further blurs the line between us. Now only a handful of us remain, with nothing left to say, believing in nothing. We would have disbanded and returned to the world of the other side, but to declare our intention to do so would suggest that we are ready to make a decision, and we are not. So we wait; our last traces of pride and stubbornness prevail. At any rate, we now have nothing left to lose. Nothing, except the comfort of the routine, which amounts to nothing.

there is a girl in the garden:
she has eyes that are not of this time.
they shine in the sunlight, reflect
the deep green of the forest,
the magic of learning without fear.
she is the child in all of us.

there is a ghost that walks beside her: its image
grows stronger with the twilight.
its pace is heavier, and in place of eyes
it bears two gaping holes, wooden and vacant
sightless and unreflecting.
within them, the knowledge of what must be done
and cannot be done.
it carries a bottle
and speaks with the calcium in its bones.

Surprisingly, getting computers to give humans readable output is no easy feat. With the introduction of standard streams and specifically standard output, programs gained a way to talk to each other using plain text streams; humanizing and displaying stdout is another matter. Technology throughout the computing age has tried to solve this problem, from the use of ASCII characters in video computer displays to modern shell commands like echo and printf.

These advancements have not been seamless. The job of printing output to a terminal is fraught with quirks for programmers to navigate, as exemplified by the deceptively nontrivial task of expanding an escape sequence to print newlines. The expansion of the placeholder \n can be accomplished in a multitude of ways, each with its own unique history and complications.

Using echo

From its appearance in Multics to its modern-day Unix-like system ubiquity, echo remains a familiar tool for getting your terminal to say “Hello world!” Unfortunately, inconsistent implementations across operating systems make its usage tricky. Where echo on some systems will automatically expand escape sequences, others require the -e option to do the same:

echo "the study of European nerves is \neurology"
# the study of European nerves is \neurology

echo -e "the study of European nerves is \neurology"
# the study of European nerves is 
# eurology

Because of these inconsistencies in implementations, echo is considered non-portable. Additionally, its usage in conjunction with user input is relatively easy to corrupt through shell injection attack using command substitutions.

In modern systems, it is retained only to provide compatibility with the many programs that still use it. The POSIX specification recommends the use of printf in new programs.

Using printf

Since 4th Edition Unix, the portable printf command has essentially been the new and better echo. It allows you to use format specifiers to humanize input. To interpret backslash escape sequences, use %b. The character sequence \n ensures the output ends with a newline:

printf "%b\n" "Many females in Oble are \noblewomen"
# Many females in Oble are 
# oblewomen

Though printf has further options that make it a far more powerful replacement of echo, this utility is not foolproof and can be vulnerable to an uncontrolled format string attack. It’s important for programmers to ensure they carefully handle user input.

Putting newlines in variables

In an effort to improve portability amongst compilers, the ANSI C Standard was established in 1983. With ANSI-C quoting using $'...', escape sequences are replaced in output according to the standard.

This allows us to store strings with newlines in variables that are printed with the newlines interpreted. You can do this by setting the variable, then calling it with printf using $:

puns=$'\number\narrow\nether\nice'

printf "%b\n" "These words started with n but don't make $puns"

# These words started with n but don't make 
# umber
# arrow
# ether
# ice

The expanded variable is single-quoted, which is passed literally to printf. As always, it is important to properly handle the input.

Bonus round: shell parameter expansion

In my article explaining Bash and braces, I covered the magic of shell parameter expansion. We can use one expansion, ${parameter@operator}, to interpret escape sequences, too. We use printf's %s specifier to print as a string, and the E operator will properly expand the escape sequences in our variable:

printf "%s\n" ${puns@E}

# umber
# arrow
# ether
# ice

The ongoing challenge of humanizing output

String interpolation continues to be a chewy problem for programmers. Besides getting languages and shells to agree on what certain placeholders mean, properly using the correct escape sequences requires an eye for detail.

Poor string interpolation can lead to silly-looking output, as well as introduce security vulnerabilities, such as from injection attacks. Until the next evolution of the terminal has us talking in emojis, we’d best pay attention when printing output for humans.

Despite being only four years old, the Apple Watch has fundamentally changed the way we use technology. Due to the sheer number of Apple Watches now seen in the wild, those claiming the device is unpopular have been silenced. However, there continues to be a good amount of cynicism thrown at the computer found on 65 million wrists around the world.

Many tech analysts and pundits continue to look at the Apple Watch as nothing more than an iPhone accessory - an extension to the smartphone that will never have the means or capability of being revolutionary. Such a view is misplaced as it ignores how the Apple Watch has already ushered in a paradigm shift in computing.

Paradigm Shifts

The idea of paradigm shifts was born in the sciences to describe a scenario requiring a new way of thinking in order to explain the world. One of the more fascinating aspects of paradigm shifts is the accompanying social component. Due to the discomfort found with letting go of legacy thinking, society has a built-in aversion to acknowledging when a paradigm shift has occurred due to the discomfort found with letting go of legacy thinking. This makes it likely that paradigm shifts will often be born wrapped in skepticism and doubt.

In terms of computing, no one now questions the shift that took place from desktops and laptops to mobile devices. However, reality was messier as it took nearly a decade for consensus to view the smartphone as a laptop or desktop alternative. For years, smartphones were viewed as merely laptop and desktop extensions. What was initially viewed as a superior email machine for executives marked the start of a paradigm shift in the making.

We are seeing a similar dynamic take place with Apple Watch. Legacy thinking is masking Apple Watch’s transformational attributes. The product is misunderstood as Apple competitors are unsure of the answers to basic questions such as, why are consumers buying Apple Watches?

A Wrist Revolution

While pundits and analysts question what an Apple Watch is for, tens of millions of consumers around the world have recognized how the device can improve their lives. The product category is a sales success.

Apple has sold more than 90 million Apple Watches to date with 29 million sold in calendar year 2019. With an average selling price of more than $400, the Apple Watch is bringing in $12 billion of revenue per year, and that total is growing by 30% per year. After taking into account upgrade trends, the number of people wearing an Apple Watch has crossed 65 million. Based on my forward projections, the Apple Watch installed base will surpass 100 million people in 2021.

The preceding numbers are my estimates obtained by utilizing more than four years of financial clues and insights provided by Apple management in earnings calls, interviews, and presentations. More information on my methodology and the math behind these numbers is found in the Above Avalon daily update from December 11th. Above Avalon membership is required to read my daily updates.

Apple Watch and Paradigm Shifts

In addition to being a sales success, the Apple Watch has ushered in a paradigm shift in computing by making technology more personal in a way that other devices have failed to accomplish or replicate. The Apple Watch allows people to get more out of technology without having technology take over people’s lives. The device is able to accomplish this in three ways:

1. Seamless tracking and monitoring. The Apple Watch tracks one’s fitness and more importantly, health, in a nonintrusive and intuitive way that isn’t possible with non-wearable devices.

2. Intelligent assisting. Wearing a computer on the wrist has shown the value found in having a digital assistant push small amounts of information and data to the user throughout the day instead of having the user pull data from pieces of glass (smartphones and tablets).

3. Contextual awareness. A device that is always on us can enhance our surroundings by utilizing our location and activity to deliver contextual experiences. This is a valuable proposition when developing new experiences.

These three items combined allow Apple Watch to handle some tasks that we already give to existing devices like smartphones and tablets as well as jobs and work that cannot be supported by mobile devices.

Apple Watch Connected

Apple Watch’s ability to usher in a paradigm shift in computing isn’t about what ifs or hypotheticals. It's something that is already taking place. We have a growing list of ways Apple Watch is a different kind of computer, the likes of which we have never seen. The latest example is an initiative Apple soft launched two weeks ago with four fitness brands called Apple Watch Connected.

The initiative originated out of feedback shared with Apple from health and fitness clubs looking to better connect the Apple Watch with their own customer experiences.

There are four requirements for a health club or gym to be part of Apple Watch Connected (which is free for both the health club and Apple Watch wearer):

1. Support Apple Pay. Apple Watch wearers must be able to purchase items like water, classes, or even personal training on the wrist with Apple Pay.

2. iOS and watchOS Apps. Businesses must have apps that allow for things like signing up for classes.

3. Earn with Watch. Businesses must offer rewards and incentives to Apple Watch wearers for remaining active. Such incentives have proven to be an effective way to motivate Apple Watch wearers.

4. Support GymKit (if applicable).

Apple Watch Connected ends up being a tool that enables third-party gyms and health clubs to build stronger relationships with customers. This is accomplished when businesses leverage seamless activity and fitness tracking on the wrist to reward their customers for staying active.

The key ingredient for getting this initiative off the ground is having people wear an Apple Watch throughout the day. Trying to recreate this type of comprehensive experience on a dedicated fitness tracker used only during workouts, or even on a smartphone or tablet, would be the equivalent of trying to use a laptop or desktop to accomplish tasks that are simpler and more intuitive on an iPhone. There is no good or easy way to track our daily activity with a large piece of glass that may sometimes be in our pocket or strapped to our arm. Having to grab and hold this piece of glass when using mobile payments or checking location-based notifications and reminders would lead to an overall experience that is subpar.

The most intriguing aspect of Apple Watch Connected is how entrepreneurs can use Apple Watches to launch new business models. With legacy gyms, the idea was to have people pay for monthly memberships but then not show up so that fewer workout machines would be needed. Apple Watch Connected turns that idea on its head by allowing a gym or health club to establish a new kind of long-term relationship with customers that encourages continued workouts and activity. This kind of business model shift is an example of the new paradigm shift unleashed by Apple Watch.

Instead of simply taking the existing app model and applying it to the wrist, a new way of consuming “apps” has developed. Subscriptions are naturally more applicable to something like an Apple Watch as customers find value in long-term targeting, monitoring, and data curation.

A New Framework

I’m introducing a new framework for recognizing paradigm shifts in computing. This theory borrows heavily from my Grand Unified Theory of Apple Products which positions a product category's design as tied to the role it is meant to play relative to other Apple products.

More information on the Grand Unified Theory is found in the Above Avalon Report Product Vision: How Apple Thinks About the World. Reports are available to Above Avalon members at no additional cost.

Paradigm shifts in computing can be determined by monitoring the degree to which products are able to make technology more personal. This framework positions design (i.e. how we use products) as the catalyst for paradigm shifts in computing.

Over the past few decades, we have seen two such primary paradigm shifts in computing:

1. Laptops/desktops to smartphones.

2. Smartphones to wearables.

Neither shift was about a new product replacing an older product. Laptops and desktops are still used by hundreds of millions of people in a mobile world. Similarly, there will be billions of smartphones found in a wearables world.

Instead, the move from desktops and laptops to smartphones and tablets was ultimately about using design to remove barriers that existed between the user and technology. One way this was accomplished was using multitouch as a new way to interact with a device. However, mobile devices are not able to remove all barriers. Increased smartphone and tablet usage has revealed an entirely new set of barriers that we never knew existed. A device like Apple Watch relies on design to remove some of those recently discovered barriers.

One reason this new computing shift has not been universally accepted is because the Apple Watch still uses “training wheels” in the form of requiring an iPhone to set up. This iPhone reliance has led some to view Apple Watch as nothing more than an extension to the iPhone. However, such a claim focuses too much on the technology and not enough on how design is leveraged to alter the way we use technology.

As for an example of a genuine extension of the smartphone, stationary smart speakers are at the top of the list. Grand prognostications of stationary smart speakers ushering in a new era of computing have faded (which doesn't come as a surprise). The primary value found with a stationary smart speaker is being able to take up the physical space needed to house speakers for delivering better sound. In this way, the speaker ends up being a smartphone amplifier that comes in handy for consuming sound as a group activity.

Nearly every other task or role given to a stationary smart speaker could be given to an Apple Watch. The wrist ends up being a better solution given the presence of a screen. In addition, whereas stationary speakers are confined to a finite area (the inside of a room), Apple Watch has greater mobility than even smartphones and tablets as it is literally strapped to our wrist at all times.

Voice in and of itself is not a paradigm shift as the medium is incredibly inefficient for transferring large amounts of data and information. It also creates a massive wall that prevents us from getting more out of technology without having technology take over our lives. Meanwhile, the Apple Watch has become a bridge to the future by containing a screen.

Apple Watch in a Wearables World

Apple Watch isn’t alone in ushering in this new era of computing. Other wearable devices designed to leverage the unique attributes of the body (wrists, ears, and eyes) have a role to play. The attributes that have allowed the Apple Watch to flourish on the wrist are being translated to allow AirPods to become a platform for bringing augmented hearing to the masses. In the future, a pair of eyeglasses will be able to add visual context to our surroundings.

In each example, we have a fundamental rethink of how people use computers to improve their lives. The “training wheels,” or early technological bonds that may exist in the early reiterations of these devices should not be taken or viewed as permanent chains. Rather, they are early support systems designed to give wearables the power to change the way we use technology.

Listen to the corresponding Above Avalon podcast episode for this article here.

Receive my analysis and perspective on Apple throughout the week via exclusive daily updates (2-3 stories per day, 10-12 stories per week). Available to Above Avalon members. To sign up and for more information on membership, visit the membership page.

For additional discussion on this article, check out the daily update from February 6th: A Paradigm Shift on the Wrist. The update goes over an example of how the Apple Watch isn't just addressing tech barriers that have been around for years, but also newer barriers that only recently became visible.

I recently switched my backup tool from Apple’s Time Machine to Arq Backup which for my needs is clearly better. And once I’d realized that, I wondered whose needs would be best served by Time Machine. To be honest I’m having a hard time with that.

Time Machine setup

I’d used Time Capsules and Airports for many years and then switched to a Synology DS416j with mirrored 6TB drives. It took a little jiggery-pokery to get the Macs and the Synology talking nicely, but then things seemed to work for a while. But not recently. At regular intervals Time Machine says something like “Time Machine has enthrophased the gnocchometric continuum, and you need to back up from scratch again.” Maybe the part before backup from scratch was actually “monophorically phosphorylated the interpretive-dance phlogiston”; can’t quite remember because, whatever it was, that’s how much sense it made.

We have a pretty fast home network but also really big disks, so start from scratch meant multiple days waiting for that do-over backup to do its job. This is not a confidence-building experience.

Arq

On a parallel timeline, at some point I’d asked the world “What’s good Mac backup software?” and a lot of people said “Arq.” OK then, I signed up and paid and gave it a whirl. Because I’d somewhat lost faith that I had anything useful in terms of Time Machine backups, I went and bought a 2TB USB drive at the nearest drugstore and plugged that in. I have to say the onboarding user experience could be better; Arq’s terminology for what you’re backing up from and to is not as self-explanatory as one might like. But I’m pretty sure I figured out the right incantations.

Once running, the Arq user experience is vastly better than Time Machine’s. It tells you what it’s doing, and what it’s doing takes what seems like a reasonable amount of time. Time Machine never tells you anything actually useful about what it’s doing or (all too often) why it can’t, with the unifying theme being that whatever it does or fails to, the process takes hours.

But nobody cares about backup!

The only thing anyone cares about is restore.

I have verified that I can restore data from Time Machine; the only times I’ve done so have been when migrating from one Mac to another. It works fine but (like everything else about Time Machine) is painfully slow and opaque. I also have read enough testimonials from Arq users to be convinced that it’ll do the job when I ask.

What is Time Machine for??

The hero moment is that Finder view replicated back over a timeline, so you can go find the version of any file at any date and bring it into the present day like, you know, a time machine. Like (I suspect) most people, I was dazzled with the UI the first time I saw it. But, in all those years the number of times I’ve used that restore mode is: Zero. As I said above, I’ve done a wholesale restore to a new Mac once or twice: for this purpose the fancy UI is irrelevant.

With a little thought, it becomes obvious why I don’t need the timeline.

What files on my computer do I care about?

1. Photographs, which I load into Lightroom and (mostly) edit. Lightroom edits non-destructively by recording deltas against the RAW file. All I really care about is the most-improved version or the original RAW. If I want to try another treatment of the photo, I make a virtual copy. The net effect of all this is: All I ever care about is the most recent version of any of the files. So the timeline buys me nothing.

2. Work documents, which we collaborate on and version like hell. We do this mostly with WorkDocs, which keeps all your doc versions somewhere in the cloud. All I really care about is the current working version that might be ahead of what’s in the cloud, so once again, only the latest. So the timeline buys me nothing.

3. Code, which is hosted in Git, and all I care about is what’s in my own workspace, because it might be noticeably ahead of the last commit. So the timeline buys me nothing.

4. Blog pieces, which live on both my MacBook and the tbray.org server. The process of getting them ready to push feels like monotonic improvement; I’ve never felt the slightest urge to dig up an old version. So the timeline buys me nothing.

That leaves one category where the timeline might be a winner: Deletion protection. Surely, if I delete some file then regret it, wouldn’t it be handy to scroll the timeline back to just before and pick it up? I guess this might be true for some people, but there’s this: I never delete anything. Seriously, if you’re going to erase data you should think hard first, and that thinking is a waste of precious time and brain bandwidth, because data is cheap to keep and the cost of being wrong is high. So the timeline buys me nothing.

[Now, there’s an exception. Things you really want to delete because they are evidence of sketchy sex kinks or premature antifascism or whatever. Protip: Put this kind of thing somewhere that isn’t backed up.]

Conclusion

Arq is great. A little bird told me it’s the product of a one-person operation and not a VC-funded aspirational Bay-Area Unicorn (the Internet needs more of those). Another little bird recently told me Arq got a serious look-over from a pretty elite OpSec group who said “LGTM” (the Internet needs more of those).

If you have a Mac and your data-handling practices are like mine, I advise sending Arq some money.

Bonus

In 2006 I wrote about Protecting Your Data, on mostly the same subject. Dedicated readers may enjoy tracking the evolution of my thinking on this subject.

Geoffrey James for Inc.:

Everybody hates PowerPoint. Nobody, anywhere, anytime, has ever thought: "Hooray! He's starting his PowerPoint presentation!" That, in itself, doesn't necessarily mean that PowerPoint is useless. After all, dental drills are useful, but nobody has ever thought: "Hooray! He's starting his dental drill."

PowerPoint, however, is much less than a necessary evil. It's a tool that, even when used as intended, does not fulfill its primary purpose, which is to help you communicate more effectively with your audience.

More >

PS: Look at this and find a way to communicate better.

“Oh! The coffee’s good today,” is something my husband or I murmur on occasion as we slowly come alive with our first sip of the morning. On most days, though, the coffee we make at home is just good enough. We make it the same way every time, but whether or not we achieve coffee nirvana on any particular day is anyone’s guess. It mystified me for years—until I decided to get to the bottom of it.

Hello, SUMO Nation!

Berlin 2020 has been my first All Hands and I am still experiencing the excitement the whole week gave me.

The intensity an event of this scale is able to build is slightly overwhelming (I suppose all the introverts reading this can easily get me), but the gratification and insights everyone of us has taken home are priceless.

The week started last Monday, on January 27th, when everyone landed in Berlin from all over the world. An amazing group of contributors, plus every colleague I had always only seen on a small screen, was there, in front of me, flesh and bones. I was both excited and scared by the number of people that suddenly were inhabiting the corridors of our conference/dorm/workspace.

The schedule for the SUMO team and SUMO contributors was a little tight, but we managed to make it work: Kiki and I decided to share our meetings between the days and I am happy about how we balanced the work/life energy.

On Tuesday we opened the week by having a conversation over the past, the current state and the future of SUMO. The community meeting was a really good way to break the ice, the whole SUMO team was there and gave updates from the leadership, products, as well as the platform team.  This meeting was necessary also to lay down the foundations for the priorities of the week and develop an open conversation.

On Wednesday, Kiki and I were fully in the game. We decided to have two parallel sessions: one regarding the Forum and Social support and one focusing on the KB localization. The smaller groups were both really vibrant and lively. We highlighted pain points, things that are working and issues that we as community managers could focus more on at this time. In the afternoon, we had a face to face meeting between the community and the Respond Tool team. It was a feedback-based discussion on features and bugs.

Thursday was ON FIRE. In the morning we had the pleasure to host Vesta Zare, the Product Manager of Fenix, and we had a session focusing on Firefox Preview and its next steps. Vesta was thrilled to meet the SUMO community, excited to share information, and happy to answer questions. After the session, we had a 2-hour-long brainstorming workshop organized by Kiki and me for the community to help us build a priority pipeline for the Community plan we have been working on in the last few months. The session was long but incredibly helpful and everyone who participated was active and rich in insights. The day was still running at a fast pace and the platform team had an Ask-Me-Anything session with the contributors. Madalina and Tasos were great and they both set real expectations while leaving the community open doors to get involved.

On Friday the community members were free to follow their own schedule, while the SUMO team had the last meetings to run up to. The week was closing up with one of the most incredible parties I have ever experienced, and that was a great opportunity to finally collect the last feedback and friendly connections we lost along the way of this really busy week.

Here is a recollection of the pain points we got from the meetings with contributors:

• On-boarding new contributors: retainment is low for many reasons (time, skillset, etc.)
• Contributors’ tools, first and foremost, Kitsune, need attention.
• The bus factor is still very much real.
• The community needs Forum, Social and Respond Tool analyze:
  • Which questions are being skipped and not answered?
  • Device coverage from contributors.
• What about the non-EN locales on the community events?
• Localization quality and integrity are at risk.
• Language level of the KB is too technical and does not reach every audience.

We have also highlighted the many successes that we have from last year:

• The add-on apocalypse
• The 7 SUMO Sprints (Fx 65-71)
• The 36 community meetings
• More than 300 articles localized in every language
• One cool addons (SUMO Live Helper) (Thanks to Jhonatas, Wesley, and Danny!)
• The Respond tool campaign

As you’ve probably heard before, we’re currently working with an external agency called Context Partners on the community strategy project. The result from that collaboration is a set of recommendations on 3 areas that we managed to discuss during the all hands.

Obviously, we wouldn’t be able to do all of them, so we need your help.

Which recommendation do you believe would provide the greatest benefit to the SUMO community? 

Is there a recommendation you would make that is missing from this list?

Your input would be very valuable for us since the community is all about you. We will collect all of your feedback with us to be discussed in our final meeting with the Context Partner team in Toronto in mid-February. We’ll appreciate any additional feedback that we can gather before the end of next week (02/14/2020).

Please read carefully and think about the questions above. Kiki and I have opened a Discourse post and Contributor Forum thread to collect feedbacks on this. You can also reach out directly to us with your questions or feedbacks.

I feel lucky to be part of this amazing community and to work alongside passionate and lively people I can look up to everyday. Remember that SUMO is made by you and you should be proud to identify yourself as part of this incredible group of people who honestly enjoy helping others.

As a celebration of the All Hands and the SUMO community, I would like to share the poem that Seburo kindly shared with us:

It is now over six months since Mozilla convened last,
and All Hands is now coming up so fast.
From whatever country, nation or state they currently be in,
Many MoCo and MoFo staff, interns and contributors are converging on Berlin.
Twenty Nineteen was a busy year,
Much is going on with Firefox Voice, so I hear.
The new Fenix is closer to release,
the GeckoView team’s efforts will not cease.
MoFo is riding high after an amazing and emotional MozFest,
For advice on how to make the web better, they are the best.
I hope that the gift guide was well read,
Next up is putting concerns about AI to bed…?
Please don’t forget contributors who are supporting the mission from wide and far,
Writing code, building communities and looking to Mozilla’s north star.
The SUMO team worked very hard during the add-on apocalypse,
And will not stop helping users with useful advice and tips.
I guess I should end with an attempt at a witty one liner.
So here it is.
For one week in January 2020,
Mozillianer sind Berliner.

Thank you for being part of SUMO,

See you soon!

Giulia

The Province of British Columbia has started rolling out their first tickets for the Intersection Safety Camera (ISC)  Program announced last year. That means  7,353 motorists have received letters indicating that they are being fined for speeding through one of the 15 of 35 red light intersections equipped with special cameras capturing speeding drivers.

As Dan Fumano in the Vancouver Sun observes that compares with “police throughout B.C. issued a monthly average of 16,414 speed-related violation tickets in 2018, the most recent year for which data was available).”  Managing speed by automation is an accepted trend and works well in Europe, where steep fines keep drivers to posted speeds.

Of course those receiving speeding tickets will be outraged, and there will be hand ringing going on as lawyers test the legalities of the process. But look at the statistics the Province has produced~60 percent of all crashes happen at intersections. At the locations where the cameras have been located an average of 10,500 vehicles annually travel 30 km/h an hour over the posted speed limit in those intersections. Each of the chosen intersections  have an average of 84 crashes a year. That’s one crash every four days, or seven crashes a month per intersection.

The intersections for cameras were specifically chosen by the type of crash, the severity, and frequency. There’s been lots of notice about the cameras  in media, and online on the ICBC and Province’s Public Safety and Solicitor General’s website. The links even contain maps showing which cameras are activated for speed.

The statistics are sobering. In the summer of 2019 the highest speeding ticket issued was for a vehicle travelling 174 km/hr in an 80 km/h zone. In the fall of 2019 the highest speeding ticket given was for a vehicle travelling 154 km/hr in an 80 km/hr zone. In both cases this speed is close to double that of the posted speed. This occurred despite the fact that each intersection in the camera program has large signs posted indicating that speed cameras are in operation.

Currently Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec are the other provinces with automated speed enforcement, and Quebec has statistics that show their program works. In Quebec there has been a 13.3 km/h reduction in average speed at camera intersections, and a 15 to 42 percent reduction in crashes at “mobile and fixed speed” locations.

The speeding ticket goes to the owner of the vehicle, not the driver at the time of operation, and those ignoring the ticket will be personally served with the ticket at their home address. And this is no cash grab~the Province is moving all the net revenue from the program to municipalities that have policing budgets, with the stipulation that the funds “support community safety and address local policing priorities”.

This is all good news and just makes sense in a Province that is providing universal health care and is also underwriting  vehicle insurance. Enforcing posted speeds will  lessen deaths/serious injuries and prevent high speed crashes. It also makes these intersections safer for more vulnerable road users, cyclists and pedestrians who are often the collateral damage of horrific crashes. A survey undertaken in 2018  by pollster Mario Canseco showed that 70 percent of British Columbians were in favour of speed enforcement cameras.

This is a baby step in a more comprehensive approach to enforce speed limits across municipalities and highway systems to alleviate deaths and serious injuries. The Safe Systems Approach which has been adopted in many European countries has also resulted in lowering carbon emissions. I have written about the work in the Netherlands which has  lowered daytime speeds   to obtain a “carbon credit” to build 75,000 units of housing.

The Province’s Intersection Safety Program  is significant in outlining the need for cultural and social change . Drivers need to perceive a vehicle journey as a drive to a destination, instead of a manifestation of speed to achieve quick timeliness. It is time to rewrite the speed hangover from the vehicular street dominance of the last century to create safer streets (and communities) for all users.

Photos: VancouverIsAwesome & CBC.ca

“Beating” the Swiss watch industry, apparently.

This is interesting, but to be fair, the Swiss might not be that good a reference given the way precision manufacturing works these days, so let’s assume we’re talking about the premium watch tier.

Will need to investigate further, but it’s kind of weird that traditional watch manufacturers haven’t yet come up with competing products (yes, there are some, but tradition carries so much weight that they don’t really hold a candle to what the Watch can do).

And I wonder what Swatch is doing. They would be the perfect company to tackle fitness wearables in terms of both hardware and trust on how your health data is processed (which is the biggest gripe I have about things like the Xiaomi Mi Band).

Concept by Silvia Gatta.

The iPad’s primary appeal the last 10 years has been its resemblance to the iPhone. If you can use an iPhone, you can use an iPad – at least in most respects. Where that’s no longer true is multitasking.

I love the functionality enabled by iPad multitasking, but the current system is unnecessarily complex. I don’t believe the iPad should revert to its origins as a one-app-at-a-time device, but I know there’s a better way forward for multitasking.

My proposal for a new multitasking system employs a UI mechanic that already exists across both iPhone and iPad. Without losing any of iPadOS 13’s current functionality, it brings the iPad closer to its iPhone roots again and makes multitasking accessible for the masses.

Context menus are the key to a better multitasking system.

When you long-press an app icon in iOS and iPadOS 13, a context menu appears and provides various options. These menus, I believe, are the perfect home for multitasking controls.

The current multitasking system involves dragging app icons away from their location in the dock, on the Home screen, or in Search, and dropping them different places on-screen to enter Split View or Slide Over modes. This system can be effective once you’ve mastered it, but the vast majority of iPad users will never do that. I won’t spend any time on the particulars of multitasking’s current shortcomings; they’ve been well documented elsewhere.

Apple should abandon the iPad’s drag and drop-centric multitasking system and go all-in on context menus for controlling multitasking. Drag and drop of content inside apps should remain as-is,¹ but dragging and dropping app icons to engage multitasking should be retired.

The current concepts of Split View and Slide Over work well, so I’m not calling for a rethinking of these functions, only the way they’re accessed. Split View and Slide Over should be engaged via context menus.

With a long-press on any app icon, on both iPhone and iPad, a context menu appears. This same gesture works whether the app icon is in your dock, on your Home screen, or in Search. Context menus currently display options like Edit Home Screen, Show All Windows, and any app-specific quick actions. Let’s add a couple new options that relate to multitasking.

Concept by Silvia Gatta.

This is a good start. But these new menu items would need to be dynamic based on your current view.

If you had a single app on-screen, Safari, then pulled up your dock and long-pressed on Notes, you would see what’s pictured above: Pair Left of Safari, Pair Right of Safari, and Open in Slide Over. Do I need to explain any further?

If you already had a Split View on-screen, however, the options would change slightly. While working in a Split View of Mail and Reminders, if you raised the dock and long-pressed Notes, you would see Pair with Mail and Pair with Reminders options, plus Open in Slide Over as before. The Split View actions would need to change to indicate whether you intend to pair the new app, Notes, with Mail or with Reminders.

One common complaint about the current multitasking system is that it’s optimized for apps in the dock and falls flat when adding a Home screen app to Split View or Slide Over. But with context menus, everything works exactly as I’ve already described. The only difference is that, since browsing your Home screen means you don’t have any app views on-screen, the context menu options would reflect your last used app or Split View. So if you were working in Calendar, then went to the Home screen and long-pressed Files, the context menu would include Pair Left of Calendar, Pair Right of Calendar, and Open in Slide Over. If you were using a Split View of Calendar and Messages, then went Home and long-pressed Files, the actions would be Pair with Calendar, Pair with Messages, and Open in Slide Over.

When using an external keyboard, Search has always been a great way to add non-dock apps to Split View or Slide Over. With a context menu-centric system this remains true. App icons already support context menus in Search, they would just need the new multitasking actions added.

More on the latest episode of Adapt

For further discussion of this idea for revamped multitasking, listen to the latest episode of Ryan and Federico’s iPad-focused podcast, Adapt:

What I’ve described so far is the core of the system. If you’re a heavy iPad user, however, you may be wondering about certain multitasking situations I haven’t yet addressed. Read on.

When the app you long-press is already on-screen. In this case context menus would offer multiwindow functionality, but in the same form factor I’ve already covered. If Notes is already on-screen and you long-press the Notes icon in your dock, the Split View actions in the context menu would read Pair Left of Notes and Pair Right of Notes.

The Slide Over actions would need to change slightly, since a simple Open in Slide Over wouldn’t suffice. All you would need are two actions instead of one: Open Current Window in Slide Over and Open New Window in Slide Over. That way, you can convert what’s on-screen into a Slide Over window, or leave the current Notes window alone while adding a new Slide Over window on top.²

When you want in-app content to become a new window. In iPadOS 13, often times if you drag content inside an app, you can turn that content into its own window by dropping it on certain areas of the screen. For consistency, drag and drop of content should no longer be used for creating new windows, only for moving data within an app or between separate apps.

This change would follow a precedent already in place. In iPadOS 13’s Safari, long-pressing a link provides an Open in New Window action in a context menu; Ulysses follows this pattern in its context menus for groups and sheets. Simply extend the same functionality to all apps, add an Open in Slide Over action to the context menu, and problem solved.

Apps like Ulysses already offer an in-app option for creating new windows.

When you want to move a Slide Over app into your current view. I’ve talked about adding apps to Slide Over, but not getting them out of it. This could be done in a variety of ways, none of which involve context menus. My recommendation would be adding buttons for this action to Slide Over’s app switcher, underneath the app panes.

When you want to resize or swap Split View apps. These functions could work exactly as they do today. Nothing about them needs to change.

Simplifying Long-Press

If Apple makes these changes, I think it should also tweak the current long-press gesture so that an extended long-press no longer engages “jiggly mode” where you can rearrange apps. Let a long-press do one thing and one thing only: load a context menu, which stays on-screen until you dismiss it. We’ve already taken a step in this direction with the Edit Home Screen action that was added to context menus last year – it’s time to take that next step.

In closing, context menus for multitasking would:

1. Remove the need for iPhone users to learn a major new UI mechanic when using the iPad.
2. Prevent the one-app-at-a-time people from ever accidentally triggering multitasking.
3. Eliminate convoluted gestures.
4. Offer all the same functionality available today, but in a much simpler package.

The iPad is at its best when it offers computer-level power that’s iPhone-level accessible. The current multitasking system fails to do that. Context menus would succeed.

Support MacStories Directly

Club MacStories offers exclusive access to extra MacStories content, delivered every week; it’s also a way to support us directly.

Club MacStories will help you discover the best apps for your devices and get the most out of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Plus, it’s made in Italy.

As the maintainer of RSwitch — and developer of my own (for personal use) macOS, iOS, watchOS, iPadOS and tvOS apps — I need the full Apple Xcode install around (more R-focused macOS folk can get away with just the command-line tools being installed). As an Apple Developer who insanely runs the macOS & Xcode betas as they are released, I also have the misery of dealing with Xcode usurping authority over .R files every time it receives an update. Sure, I can right-click on an R script, choose “Open With => Other…”, pick RStudio and make it the new default, but clicks interrupt train of thought and take more time than execution a quick shell command at a terminal prompt (which I always have up).

Enter: dtui — https://github.com/moretension/duti — a small command-line tool that lets you change the default application just by knowing the id of the application you want to make the default. For instance, RStudio’s id is org.rstudio.RStudio which can be obtained via:

$ osascript -e 'id of app "RStudio"'
org.rstudio.RStudio

and, we can use that value in a quick call to duti:

$ duti -s org.rstudio.RStudio .R all

If you’d rather Visual Studio Code or Sublime Text to be the default for .R files, their bundle ids are com.sublimetext.3 and com.microsoft.VSCode, respectively. If you’d rather use Atom, well you really need to think about your life choices.

We can see what the current default for R scripts via:

$ duti -x R
RStudio.app
/Applications/RStudio.app
org.rstudio.RStudio

You can turn the “setter” into a shell alias (preferably zsh or sh alias since bash is going away soon) or shell script for quick use.

Installing duti

Homebrew users can just brew install duti and get on with their day. Folks can also grab the latest release and get on with their day with just a little more effort.

The duti utility can also be compiled on your own (which is preferred so you can look at the source to make sure you know being compromised by a random developer on the internet); but, if you have macOS 10.15 (Catalina), you’ll need to jump through a few hoops since it doesn’t compile out-of-the-box on that platform yet. Thankfully those hoops aren’t too bad thanks to a helpful pull request that adds support for the current version of macOS. (You’ll need at least the command-line developer tools installed for this to work and likely need to brew install autoconf automake libtool to ensure all the toolchain bits that are needed are in place.):

At a terminal prompt, go to where you normally go to clone git repositories and grab the source:

$ git clone git@github.com:moretension/duti.git
$ cd duti
$ git fetch origin pull/39/head:pull_39 # add and fetch the origin for the PR
$ git checkout pull_39                  # switch to the branch
$                                       # review the source code
$                                       # no, really, review the source code!
$ autoconf                              # run autoconf to generate the configure script
$ ./configure                           # generate the Makefile (there will be "checking" and "creating" messages)
$ make                                  # build it! (there will be macOS API deprecation warnings but no errors)
$ make install                          # install it! (you may need to prefix with "sudo -H"; this will put the binary in `/usr/local/bin/` and man page in `/usr/local/share/man/man`

NOTE: If you only have the macOS Xcode command line tools (vs the entirety of Xcode) you’ll need to edit aclocal.m4 before you run autoconf and change line 9 to be:

sdk_path="/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs"

since the existing setting assumes you have the full Xcode installation available.

FIN

I’ll be adding this functionality to the next version of RSwitch, letting you specify the application(s) you want to own various R-ish files. It will check for the proper values being in place on a regular basis and set them to your defined preferences (I also need to see if there’s an event I can have RSwitch watch for to trigger the procedure).

If you have another, preferred way to keep ownership of R files drop a blog post link in the comments (or just drop a note the comments with said procedure).

I've been - I'm not sure what the right verb is here - watching? TikTok for a while now (it's good easy viewing on the spin cycle during commercials on the morning news). Participants upload short videos either with live sound or with soundtracks. There's a wide range of content. Some do lip-sync, some do dances. Whatever. There are some ads, but they're brief, and you can make them disappear. My own thinking is that teens like TikTok because it isn't full of influencers and self-promoters. Or that might just be why I like it. And no, I'm not worried about it being owned by a Chinese company. I can't imagine Facebook or Twitter being any less helpful to their own governments than TikTok would be to its own government.

A city bigger than New York:

Click here for video.

Or here.

Haunting.

On this week’s episode of Adapt:

Multitasking is key to using the iPad as a primary computer, but the current drag and drop-centric system is flawed. Ryan shares his idea for a new approach, then Federico details his email app discoveries.

You can listen below (and find the show notes here), and don’t forget to send us questions using #AskAdapt and by tagging our Twitter account.

Sponsored by:

• TextExpander, from Smile: Unlock your productivity with TextExpander. Get 20% off with your first year.

→ Source: relay.fm

In recent weeks, I’ve posted three tutorials with Clearing the Confusion titles, all in my regtools GitHub repo. Topics have been unbalanced classification data; k-fold cross validation; and scaling in PCA. Comments welcome!

Google is looking to expand its footprint in Canada as it unveiled that it will open three new offices located in Waterloo, Toronto and Montreal.

The tech giant says that by 2022, all of Google offices in Canada will accommodate up to 5,000 employees.

Google opened its first Canadian office in Toronto in 2001, and has since opened two additional offices located in Montreal and Kitchener. The tech giant currently employs 1,500 people, including engineers, game developers, sales leaders and AI researchers.

Premier Doug Ford has praised the expansion and released the following statement:

“By expanding their footprint in Ontario, Google will continue to tap into some of the best talent in the world in one of the most business friendly environments in the world.”

Google is also launching the first ‘Google for Startups Accelerator in Canada,’ which will be its 12th accelerator worldwide. The Accelerator is going to be based in Waterloo, and aims to help Canadian startups to grow and reach global success.

Further, Google announced that it is providing a $2.5 million grant to NPower, which is a charity that focuses on helping underserved youth to achieve sustainable careers.

The grant is going to be used for scholarships for the IT Support Professional Certificate and the IT automation with Python certificate. These are meant to help Canadians obtain tech skills that are required in the digital economy.

These investments will expand Google’s already significant presence in Canada, as a report shows that the tech giant generated an estimated $23 billion CAD in economic activity in 2019. This includes $650 million in revenue through the Android app economy.

The post Google to open new offices in Toronto, Waterloo and Montreal appeared first on MobileSyrup.

In epidemiology, “herd immunity” is the essential concept that prevents the spread of deadly viruses. Now that disinformation and fake news are viral, we need to start thinking about herd immunity for the health of the nation’s perception of reality. When it comes to actual viruses, here’s how herd immunity (also known as community immunity) … Continued

The post Truth, science, and herd immunity appeared first on without bullshit.

From where I sit this article looks like Sal Khan returning to educational orthodoxy after a ten-year journey in the wilderness. Here are the 'three things' he has 'learned' (quoted):

• Teachers are the unwavering center of schooling and we should continue to learn from them every day
• Students need exposure to rigorous grade-level curriculum and they need to work at their learning edge
• Our public schools are an abiding institution that is making important progress despite many challenges

I guess if you spend ten years working in schools with teachers then these are the conclusions you are going to reach. But on the other hand, you could be forgiven for reading this and concluding "the changes we proposed at Khan Academy did not catch on in schools."

Fred London* visited Vancouver in 2018 as one of 12 case studies on ‘Healthy Place-Making‘ – the title of his newly released book.

In modern-day society the main threats to public health are now considered ‘avoidable illnesses’, which are often caused by a lack of exercise and physical activity. Practitioners must now consider how they can encourage people to lead healthier lifestyles and improve health through urban design.

This book presents the path to healthier cities through six core themes – urban planning, walkable communities, neighbourhood building blocks, movement networks, environmental integration and community empowerment. Each theme is presented with an overview of the issues, the solutions and how to apply them practically with exemplars and precedents.

*Fred London (MA, Dip Arch, RIBA, AoU) studied at Cambridge University Faculty of Architecture and at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, punctuated by a year of employment in Vienna.  In 1995 Fred became a founder director (now partner) of John Thompson & Partners (JTP), where he worked on numerous housing projects for developers and also the London Wetland Centre. The breadth of this cross-cultural experience has contributed to his unique perspective on what makes for universally-applicable healthy placemaking.