augstein

I‘m still baffled by this whole issue.

Snooping around on users devices, goes against anything regarding privacy they seemed to stand for. It makes me sick to think this might even be legal. It is also sad they completely ignore any valid concerns about this intrusion.

Whats the next step if we as a society accept this behavior? Homepod listening in, until hashes of conversation snippets match some prehashed terms and sounds potentially related to child abuse and then alerting the authorities?

I find it disturbing that they seemingly are allowed to do things on the devices of their US customers, that in most countries are reserved to law enforcement agencies exclusively.

Also I think they should have to face serious repercussions in countries with strong data protection laws, should they decide to unilaterally change terms of service for their users in these jurisdictions, to reserve the right to search their devices for illegal images.

For many people heavily invested in their ecosystem, it’s also not that easy to just walk away. For other users, the alternative (Google) is not necessarily more trustworthy.

I hope this is just trolling, but in case it’s not, just ask yourself why your landlord or your HOA doesn’t have the „freedom“ to search your flat/house for that kind of stuff.

Lunar is godsent.

Without automatic brightness control for my external display, I had the exact same problems the author of Lunar describes in his article, constantly and manually adjusting the brightness of my display throughout the day, with its awful on screen menu.

Before I got my Mac with an M1, I‘ve used Brightness Menulet, which also worked quite ok, but not nearly as polished and functional.

Would be a perfect fit, if this was available on Heroku.

Memory bloat is a real problem, even for mid-size Rails apps.

But it might not be in their interest, if customers are suddenly able to downgrade to cheaper Dynos with less memory, so we‘ll see.

At current prices, Tethers market cap is only about 10% of Bitcoins and about 5% of the whole crypto market cap.

Honestly, as a macOS power user, I love the new approach Apple is taking with Safari.

More vertical space is a win, especially with those wide screen displays that are getting more popular and lets be honest: Actions like reloading are best done by using keyboard shortcuts anyway, so having a more minimal UI is a win in my book.

The new feature, where Safari’s app chrome changes colour by taking the accent colour of the currently loaded website is just awesome and really brings the website you are currently visiting up one level closer.

How does it compare to fish shell (especially fish’s great autocompletion), e.g. why are you not switching completely?

We should probably first do realistic estimates on how much that would increase prices for those products.

20 years is a long time and I wonder how much use a 20 year old iPhone for example even has.

I'm from West-Germany and have driven a Trabant myself (only twice though). This video, titled "The Trabant Was an Awful Car Made By Communists" from Doug De Muro sums it up quite nicely imo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No1-4GsQa-g ;-)

The fact that they still sold this dangerous and noisy contraption in the late eighties (you even had to wait years to get one), when Audi released the V8 (4C) and Mercedes was about to end production for the S-Class W126, tells you a lot about how broken transportation was in East-Germany.

Thats indeed interesting. Do you know why this is the case?

Always the same objections, from the same people, when it comes to CM.

It's mostly just subjective nowadays, just like your whole 'argument'.

I think it looks great on high res displays, which should cover a huge chunk of all consumer displays used today.

Using a light theme, when working at day and a dark theme, when working at night works best for me, I found.

macOS can switch it‘s theme automatically, depending on the time of the day.

Some editors, like TextMate, support automatically changing their theme accordingly.

If you use it: George Nachman, creator of iTerm, announced it will also be able to switch its theme in that manner.

I'm sure other shells and editors support this feature too or will be.

If you are into TradingView for TA, you might want to give the ‚HMA-Kahlman Trend‘ indicator a try.

How far have we come to even consider poisoning the data on our own devices, because we know it will be harvested and resold by 3rd parties.

A possible alternative, at least for people inclined to a more cinematic watching experience (which has its pros and cons), is to buy a projector.

About which apps are you talking specifically?

I‘m a long time VR user and except for some concepts I haven’t seen anything like what you describe, certainly not that popular.

If you really want or need MagSafe, as I do, you can have it with USB-C only Macs too.

There are many magnetic adapters you can buy, the good ones working better than the original MagSafe 2, which easily fell off when using MacBooks on your Lap, due to the connector being T shaped (instead of MagSafe 1 being L shaped, which worked great).

I also hope they don‘t bring back SD card readers and big clunky HDMI ports into the MacBook lineup, potentially reducing the amount of USB-C ports and making some models thicker.

This exactly.

I‘ve had a Quest 1 and loved most of it, except that for me, it was extremely uncomfortable and even left marks in my face after a while. So I sold it before the Quest 2 was released.

For me a VR headset needs to be at most half the weight of a Quest 1 (~0.5kg) to consider it for now. And a bigger FOV would also be nice :-)

This blogpost is unfortunately barely readable on a small screen, because of the fixed line widths.

May I ask for recommendations on where to trade Bitcoin? The fees on Coinbase (Pro), Kraken, etc seem prohibitive to me, especially for larger sums.*

*) I‘m used to commission free stock trading with no volume limits in Germany, for any private individual. Don‘t know how this handled in other countries though.

Came here to also recommend Goldiloader, but your comment and especially your blogpost summarizes it just fine.

We‘re using Goldiloader in a medium sized Rails application with zero problems so far.

Spotify for Apple Watch is still basically a remote for Spotify on iOS, presumably due to some contracts between Spotify and Samsung.

So although Spotify could technically implement a standalone Apple Watch App since at least WatchOS 6 (released over a year ago now), they haven’t, which means you always need to carry your Phone with you. Their support Forum is full of complaints about this, with no proper reaction or explanation from their side.

The Apple TV app also does not work properly, requiring to re-login often and can‘t be controlled properly by iPhone.

Which standalone VR headset would you recommend, if one can‘t use a Facebook login?

According to a Review by Ars Technica, the 10% weight saving comes from the flimsier headstrap.

I also think Facebook is kind of admitting they messed up the headstrap, if they have to sell a proper one separately.

The same goes for the One plan for individuals. One will bump into the 50GB iCloud storage limit pretty soon, when using iCloud Photo Library.

We are just talking about handheld personal computers. I don‘t know why people always try to come up with car comparisons when its really about computers, but: You already can modify your car today, including the (engine) software, but have to make sure it is still street legal. I sure can imagine certifications for autonomous cars and their software. So if you can and want to tinker with it, be prepared to pay for the certification to keep it street legal.

I won‘t argue about the rest of your comment about AI, as I think this leads to discussing castles in the air.

Also in Safari iOS 13.6

Apple really isn‘t on track regarding many important trends and even in areas they used to rock.

- Virtual Assistants: After almost nine years of development, Siri still is only really reliable doing most basic tasks like setting timers or reminders.(1)

- Smart Speakers: The HomePod is way too expensive and still the whole package really is no match for Amazons or Googles alternatives. Too inflexible and the "Smart" part is laughable (see above). While Amazons and Googles smart speakers are a common sight in many households today, Apple is sitting on the sideline for years.

- Laptops: The debacle around their Butterfly Keyboard design was only resolved recently … after almost four years of massive problems. The new 2020 MacBook Air has a thermal design that is weird, to say the least and according to reviewers has heat problems despite being cooled actively, when comparable laptops are cooled passively.(2) The 2020 MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro 13" have screen-to-body ratios that are outdated in comparison with the competition.(3) The MacBook Pro 16" has speaker issues, display issues(4) and may overheat when used with an external display(5).

- Desktop Computers: The Mac minis hardware is outdated and its price really isn't compelling. If you want to buy a proper external display from Apple to use with your MacBook or Mac desktop (mini/pro) and are no Hollywood Studio Video editor that needs a 5000$ XHDR display, you are out of luck. If you want to do Machine Learning and the likes on your new Mac and need NVidia CUDA support, you are out of luck.(6) The whole "modern CPU with macOS" topic is a sad one.

- Webbrowser: When surfing the web with Safari you will encounter a rising number of websites that tell you to upgrade to a more modern browser like Chrome. Many web developers will tell you that "Safari is the new IE".(7)

- TV: Apple TV pricing is not competitive and the Siri remote is so bad that people buy 3rd party replacement remotes.(8)

1) https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/alexa-vs-google-assistant-vs-...

2) https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2020/04/18/does-...

3) https://www.ultrabookreview.com/21772-laptops-small-thin-bez...

4) https://www.laptopmag.com/news/uh-oh-apples-16-inch-macbook-...

5) https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/16-macbook-pro-gets-excessi...

6) https://gizmodo.com/apple-and-nvidia-are-over-1840015246

7) https://www.safari-is-the-new-ie.com

8) https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/12/9/21002605/a...

Ordering from Apple or Samsung directly, as suggested by the article, even is something to avoid, unless you like paying a premium (usually you can find their products about 10-30% cheaper somewhere else).