FeedCity

Much serious thought and consideration, from very smart people in Mountain View and Cupertino, went into determining how to respond to a profoundly silly and thoughtless executive order. Yet that response is disturbing.

One of the not-good things about Mastodon is that you can't moderate comments under your own posts.

If someone says something abusive, it's there for everyone to see, forever.

I've come to value the feature in Facebook that gives the author full discretion over what comments remain, to head off bad vibes.

I think of a post I write as my house, and I want people who visit to feel respected.

A turd in the middle of the living room is not respectful.

A simple idea, a quid pro quo.

If we want Democrats to support the Constitution, we have to demonstrate that we will support them.

We are the government of the US, Congress represents us.

We have been too passive.

But then, they have to include us in governing.

No more shutting off the connection after the election.

Seems like a fair deal.

This is how the US government used to describe slaves.

If I were in charge of marketing for the Democrats: 1. I'd restart the online channel that Kamala Harris had that was shut down on Election Day. 2. I'd get out the message over and over about how things are going too fast, we need to slow it down, so we can consider what's h...

Extraordinary illustrated essay by Marcin Wichary, documenting a typeface — and its long, fascinating, splintered history — that exemplifies the difference between beautiful and pretty. The beauty in Gorton isn’t just in its plainness and hardworking mechanical roots — it’s in the history of the 20th century itself. Gorton became such a part of the world that the bygone world of the previous century imbues how this font makes me feel.

Do yourself a favor and read this one in a comfortable chair, with a tasty slow-sipping beverage, on a screen bigger than a phone. Everything about this piece is exemplary and astounding — the writing, the photography, the depths of research. But most of all, Wichary’s clear passion and appreciation. It’s a love letter.

My thanks to Clerk for sponsoring last week at DF. Integrate authentication and user management services with applications made for the Apple ecosystem with Clerk’s iOS SDK. Built with Swift, Clerk’s SDK adheres to modern standards, delivering the idiomatic and consistent developer experience you expect from Clerk.

Clerk’s iOS SDK makes use of the latest in Swift networking, allowing your code to be as readable and expressive as possible. Authenticate with your favorite social providers in just a few lines of code. Let the iOS SDK take care of managing your users’ authentication state so you can get back to building your app.

If you’re a developer looking for a modern, full-fledged user management and authentication SDK, check out Clerk.

Alan Siegel at The Ringer:

Ahead of ‘SNL50,’ we asked Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Bill Hader, and more to tell us which of their sketches they hold closest to their hearts. [...]

There’s no magic formula, but the most transcendent sketches — the ones we reference and quote, even years later — often share two traits. Just ask Seth Meyers, the show’s head writer and “Weekend Update” anchor for a decade. “A lot of great SNL sketches are both obvious and unexpected,” he says. “You have to combine the two to make it rise above what, you know, could be a very good sketch.”

Fun read with some great video clips. Really looking forward to the SNL50 special tonight.

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc.’s long-promised overhaul for the Siri digital assistant is facing engineering problems and software bugs, threatening to postpone or limit its release, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Shocker.

New research published from Apple machine learning researchers Yuhan Hu, Peide Huang, Mouli Sivapurapu, Jian Zhang: Nonverbal behaviors such as posture, gestures, and gaze are essential for conveying internal states, both consciously and unconsciously, in human interacti...

We're diving head first into a world run by AI bots, before we've even begun to understand how to use them. Musk couldn't be more diabolical if he were cast as a comic book anti-hero. Trump is like the straight man police commissioner. I grew up reading those kinds of comic books. We all did I guess. Probably Elon Musk too. He needs a biographer, asap. Someone please get to work on this.

BTW, no one thought much about the threading structure we use on Bluesky. As far as I can tell it was copied from Twitter. It's not a very good structure. It encourages spam and abuse. You gotta wonder if the threading structure had evolved, or if there were more competition, different approaches to see what would happen, we might have avoided our meltdown with a better design.

Great quote from a favorite show. "He put the dick in contradiction." This is a show that doesn't often indulge in that kind of humor. I imagine they must've had a great time with it in the writer's room. Or was it ad-lib'd? And wtf does it mean?

The idea of a coup in the US is one we all presumably have a hard time thinking about. I sure do. It has never happened before. But it has happened now, and the group that is governing is doing it illegally, and is dismantling the country as quickly as they can, assuming someone will at some point try to stop them? Is that correct? What comes next?

Sad news, posted to his Mastodon account:

Martin passed away yesterday, peacefully in his sleep. He was a true fighter until the bitter end but he is now pain free and at peace.

He’d been remarkably open about his battle against cancer, including the fact that he knew the end was near.

I linked to his software and writing several times over the years. He was a Mac developer’s Mac developer, with an eye for details, and his own work was infused with fine craftsmanship. His “Xcode 4: The Super Mega Awesome Review” back in 2011 was a genuine work of art and service to the community (linked with brief commentary), and he rightfully skewered Apple’s Catalyst Mac port of the Developer app in 2020 (linked with significant commentary).

Rest in peace, and my best and warmest thoughts to his friends and family.

Joe Rosensteel: Netflix deeply regrets accidentally making Netflix a better product for its customers. It temporarily pushed out a change that let people see Netflix shows in the Apple TV app, a change people have been asking for since the debut of the Apple TV app in 20...

Guy Chazan, Amanda Chu, and Joshua Franklin, reporting for the Financial Times (left-wing anti-capitalist fake-news ideologues):

In private conversations, some Wall Street executives go much further. One senior investment banker says the disorder and unpredictability of Trump’s actions — and those of Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla chief who has become one of his most senior lieutenants — was greater than many business leaders had anticipated.

“With hindsight we did not appreciate the nature of what the administration was going to be like,” the banker says. “I do believe they are hurting their stated objectives of peace and prosperity.”

Via Nilay Patel, who quips:

These dummies could have had a compliant corporate Dem with literal Uber lobbyists on her staff and instead they did school shootings and measles.

Many Tricks:

Key Codes displays information about the characters you type, as you type them into the log window. For each key, you’ll see its Unicode value, key code, and any modifiers.

Unless you’re a developer or script/macro tinkerer, you probably don’t need Key Codes. But when you do need it, it’s a godsend. There’s nothing else like it (anymore). Just a perfect little utility that the clever folks at Many Tricks have made available free of charge for a long time. (Available in the Mac App Store, too.)

The way to get even is to win. A lot of people don't get that, and it's almost always their downfall.

I’m not giving money to Democrats. I will give to campaigns that run hard-hitting ads telling the full truth about what Musk is doing now. I want to see the actual ads before I chip in, and will do so enthusiastically, but they can’t be anemic.