Link. Uh oh
Monthly Archives: January 2020
Apple in 2019, software quality: “Grade: D+ (average score: 2.7, median score 3, last year: B-)”
Link. Must be horrible to work on Apple software
Apple Maps update – MacInTouch
Link. Nice summary.
Neanderthal: “1.8 percent in Asians, 1.7 percent in Europeans, and 0.5 percent in Africans.”
Link. Lots of mixing.
“There’s no simple turning back the clock. Trump is much less the issue than the political environment in which he has thrived.”
Link. Our problems, now concentrated in the GOP, are profound. This struggle will go beyond my lifespan.
Remembering Iraq’s mythical WMDs
Link. Cheney’s true believers became Trump’s troops.
Surviving a child’s suicide.
Link. Count no one fortunate before their death.
[toread] How to fix Split View in macOS Mojave and Catalina | The Robservatory
Link. “To use apps in Split View on other displays, make sure the “Displays have separate Spaces” checkbox is selected in Mission Control preferences.” Just don’t use it.
“We have had a lot of climate policy (and technological advancements) in the past 15 years, and RCP8.5 is much a much, much less likely outcome”
Link. Progress has been made despite the GOP.
GOP “moderates”: “100% committed to acquitting the President no matter what”
Link. They are on trial. They will be found guilty.
Riding a 90s mountain bike: “It’s just that I’ve been coddled by modern bikes, whose designers have learned a lot in 30 years”
Link. Especially, I think, the last 10y.
“Aperture is, for me, the very model of how a modern MacOS app ought to behave”
Link. Bad start, but good when Cook killed it. Why I dislike Apple.
Aperture: an inside story.
Link. “The indiscriminate killing of features was a harbinger of things to come.” One of Apple’s greatest failures. Also my favorite Apple app.
“In 2019, we each spent $640 on digital subscriptions like streaming video and music services, cloud storage, dating apps and online productivity tools”
Link. Similar to coffee bill for most. My family is below this currently. Cable not included but we don’t do that.
Fantastical leaps cost to $40 a year
Link. Insane. No friggin way.
“likely causal detrimental role of prenatal alcohol exposure on cognitive outcomes”
Link. Women at risk for pregnancy can’t drink. This is depressing
So you think you can be a reality TV producer
Link. Stross delightful rant on broadcast TV and especially reality TV.
Lowe on Charles Lieber China scandal.
Link. He’ll have to plead.
Micro.blog adds blog hosted replies.
Link. Standards based AMAP.
PNG compression tools
Link. Preview mostly suffices.
“force Facebook to forget everything it knows about your off-Facebook activity thanks to connections with apps and websites…”
Link. Now available
How to Disable Multitasking on iPadOS 13.
Link. I don’t think is supported on my older iPad anyway
iPad at 10 – Tsai roundup
Link. Meh.
macOS 10.15.3 runor: “fixes the bug where large numbers of messages stored “On My Mac” could be deleted when updating to Catalina or rebuilding Mail’s database”
Link. Other mail bugs remain. Catalina has been disastrous.
Bitcoin excels for drug sales.
Link. No other use
Bats odd immune system means high viral load without illness.
Link. Coexist. Bats also live a long time for their size.
“the average price of a domestic flight changes 17 times in just two days”
Link. Dynamic pricing is everywhere. Im sure it will find ways to discriminate by gender, race, age.
“if I could go back to the pre-split-screen, pre-drag-and-drop interface I would”
Link. I’m not sure if it even works on mine. My iPad is mosly a photo frame. It’s not that useful.
Are You Good Enough at Paperwork to Be a Poor American?
Link. We have a disabled child. We are not poor but we do this. The emergent system is cruel, perverse, ugly and basically America at its worst. I am impressed any poor person can navigate it.
Private equity sucks: retail edition.
Link. If your company is sold to PE you should find another job. If you can.
“Given the scale of subsidies we give to fossil fuels, the industry as a whole should be regarded as a gigantic grift”
Link. Exxon uses tax dollars to pay Senators to give them our money
“Avast antivirus program installed on a person’s computer collects data, and that Jumpshot repackages it into various different products that are then sold to many of the largest companies in the world”
Link. Would not be surprised to learn they fund malware development.
VA health care removes racial disparity in prostate cancer outcomes.
Link. Kudos due VA. This is more than access. Low income VA patients get respect. Not true elsewhere.
[toread] Fallows Dec 2018 article on Trump corruption vs attraction is worth a re-read.
Link. Now the corruption is even deeper. There is no more resistance in the GOP. McMaster May be only tragic character.
“To win power, Democrats don’t just need to appeal to the voter in the middle. They need to appeal to voters to the right of the middle. When Democrats compete for the Senate, they are forced to appeal to an electorate that is far more conservative than
Link. Wisconsin. Biden and Sanders have the best odds.
Software Vulnerabilities in the Boeing 787. Aug 2019.
Link. By now nobody believes Boeing about anything.
JMAP: a candidate IMAP replacement.
Link. Would Apple adopt?
Rural opioid management: not simple, nothing easy.
Link. She had to close to new opioid users. Too many draws state attention.
Russia: “Since 2014, the percentage of those between ages 15 and 29 who want to leave permanently has more than tripled to 44 percent”
Link. Good at sabotaging America, but that doesn’t help Russia.
How Microsoft used government corruption to disable the IRS
Link. Child’s play for them.
“Mr. Pompeo has aspirations to run for president in 2024, his associates say, and he ties his political future to Mr. Trump’s support.”
Link. Pence v Pompeo for the end of days.
Iran jet tragedy: “hoped that the presence of passenger jets could act as a deterrent against an American attack on the airport or the nearby military base”
Link. A deeply fissured society under severe economic stress. Some incompetence, but mostly division.
Catalina security architecture and Little Snitch
Link. Snitch needs an update, but Apple has a complexity problem
Fake flash mac malware succeeds because the web is dying.
Link. Shlayer pays a cut to malware distributors who embed links in sites they control. There are lots of decrepit corners of the modern web to hide in.
“top party bosses in Beijing with little direct power over what happens in the provinces — policy proclamations are sometimes ignored or defied”
Link. Modern China reminds me of a large federal bureaucracy.
“The implant has access to all the database files (on the victim’s phone) used by popular end-to-end encryption apps like Whatsapp, Telegram and iMessage”
Link. Wonder if this was Bezos hack.
Root causes of ios hacks: “we’ll see cases of code which seems to have never worked, code that likely skipped QA or likely had little testing or review before being shipped to users.”
Link. Imagine how much cruft macos or windows has accumulated.
In-the-wild iOS Exploit Chain 5: Apple left a partly implemented system call lying around
Link. Not a deliberate back door, but acted like one.
The Base was infiltrated by just about everyone.
Link. FBI, vigilantes, more — all monitoring race war hobbyists, including teenage boys with mental health issues.
Preventing external displays from sleep
Link. “any device acting as a USB-C hub should shut down power to connected devices when the display merely goes to sleep:”