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Tech Ennui
I’ve been feeling a little down about tech lately. It’s nothing really big; it’s just a mixture of little things that have slowly been adding up to more papercuts in my digital life. The world within my computers/devices is like home to me. In many ways, it is my home. I’ve moved from place to…
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Leaky Abstractions: When IFTTT Triggers Aren’t What They Seem
As part of my ongoing initiative to always show up to internet arguments with receipts, I built a bespoke Rube Goldberg machine that can automatically download and archive tweets I like, turning them into Markdown files, complete with attached Twitter images and video downloaded. Once I really get all the kinks worked out I promise…
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Electron Is Bad
So I was discussing 1Password’s recent decision to switch to Electron, and I want to elaborate a little more on why I hate Electron so much. You might not know what Electron is, but there’s a good chance you’ve got one running on your computer right now. Slack and Discord both use Electron, as does…
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More on Apple’s “child protection” features
Regarding Apple’s upcoming feature to scan children’s Messages content for sexually explicit media, there’s a detail I had missed about how it worked: The “phone will rat on you to your parents” function is only going to happen when the child is under 12. For older children, the Messages app will just warn them in…
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Apple’s TV strategy
From a recent MacRumors post, Apple’s neglect of home/living room hardware has gotten even Apple’s own engineers concerned: In his latest “Power On” newsletter, however, Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman says that Apple engineers have personally expressed concerns to him about the direction of Apple’s living room hardware strategy. The pundits are all suggesting that what…
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1Password’s New Apps
Today 1Password announced a completely redesigned app in 1Password 8. But it has a dirty little secret. It’s no longer a native Mac app; it uses Electron instead. I strongly dislike Electron apps. Developers love making apps with Electron, mostly because it’s a lot less effort and you can use familiar web technologies to make…
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The Ultimate Preventative Medicine
Prediction: In future decades, we’re going to realize that the most powerful way to fight decades of growing obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other metabolic disorders is to work less and live less stressful lives. For decades we’ve been desperate for something to blame, from more sedentary jobs to the fact that kids don’t play…
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Apple and Privacy
I’ve got several post drafts written in my Drafts app about this issue, but I’ve found myself struggling to express how I feel. For context: Apple’s announcement from last week The two most controversial changes Apple announced were a new Messages app feature that uses ML on children’s accounts to detect if they are sending…
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The Moonlander: 1 Year In
I’ve been using ZSA’s Moonlander keyboard as my daily driver for just over a year now. Now that I’ve had the keyboard for awhile I wanted to share some deeper insights than the first impressions I shared last year. Layout-wise, the Moonlander is similar to an Ergodox keyboard. It has two halves, the keys are…
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The First World Problems of Being a Mac Pro Owner
So I’m doing some housekeeping in DEVONthink, and it’s in the process of indexing and creating thumbnails for a folder I just relocated and want to re-index. And I watch the progress bar move along at this leisurely pace, and then I go and check out DEVONthink’s CPU usage, and it’s sitting here politely sipping…