Kevin Mitnick Passed Away

Dignity Memorial:

Kevin David Mitnick, 59, died peacefully on Sunday, July 16, 2023, after valiantly battling pancreatic cancer for more than a year.

Ghost in the Wires audiobook is one my favorites. But even before that, his name evoked a cool and dangerous side to being a geek.

He broke the law and was sent to jail for real. This gave some reality to the computer and internet stuff I was passionate about. Even though social engineering was his biggest trick, at the time I thought he was a master hacker.

Also, he just seemed like a cool guy. Effing cancer. He will be missed.

GORUCK GR1 21L v 26L Differences

Ben Brooks, on brooksreview.net:

What’s important here is that those GR1s (despite what GORUCK might say in marketing) are a different size than all currently available GR1s. But not by a lot. They are slightly smaller than the current 26L GR1s, and most consider them to be 25L in capacity. I’d say they are somewhere between 24-25L.

We have received your gear from your Scars Repair request and have inspected it fully. Besides the reason it came in, there are other issues of normal wear and/or age. We would like to send you a new ruck!

However, I was a bit confused when they asked me to pick a size, since I didn’t remember they had two. Ben Brooks article helped me understand the difference. I’m leaning towards the 21L though.

Update 2023-07-25: Well, that was easy. I didn’t read the fine print, where for $25 in shipping, I could get back my original GR1. A fews later, I have both my old faithful and new 21L GR1.

Instagram Threads and ActivityPub

Adam Mosseri, on Threads:

We’re committed to building support for ActivityPub, the protocol behind Mastodon, into this app. We weren’t able to finish it for launch given a number of complications that come along with a decentralized network, but it’s coming.

I checked out Threads, but it’s clearly not for me. However, glad it exist. If in fact it will provide a way to follow people from my Mastodon/Ivory setup, I’m a happy camper.

Goodreads Weaponized

Caroline O’Donovan, on The Washington Post:

More than a decade later, even as other social platforms have undergone multiple reinventions, little has changed about Goodreads, a beige website where readers can rate books from one to five stars, write reviews and talk to other readers on old-school forums, some of which have tens of thousands of members.

Even back in the day, I recall preferring Shelfari over Goodreads. But it also was folded into Goodreads and forgotten.

But after Amazon bought Goodreads, it gradually became clear that the technology was old and the data not well organized, and that a significant investment would be required to bring the site up to speed, according to two former Goodreads employees.

Interesting if true. A failed data metrics extraction as the source of stagnation of the site.

debugYYDDD Obsidian Notes

Currently, anytime I get a bug report, or something not working, I create a note with the following naming format debugYYDDD Short Description. For examples, if I was trying to figure out why the feed to mastodon wasn’t working, I’d create:

• debug23177 Social tag to mastofeed fail.md

While I abandoned using day of year as a way to track my daily notes, it works great for sequential files likes this. Specially for looking back — I won’t remember the day/month something failed, but I do seem to have a notion that it was the first quarter of the year, so a file called debug23090, gives this context.

More important, this habit helps me in two ways:

• Keep a log file of my debugging process: Which is an amazing way to stay focussed, and return to where I was if interrupted.
• In days/weeks/months be able to remind myself what was the issues: Old systems break in known ways, and this practice really saves a log of time in the long run.

I now want to experiment with using Peek and Poke as prefixes for items that aren’t related to something broken, but to denote iterative work session on ongoing projects.

You’d think it would be better to manage these top-down: open projects view and start from there — but realistically, I tend to simply start with some atomic note, and go from there. Usually from some prompt like an idea (internal), or communication (external). Only deadlines seem to force me to look at projects as the starting point of the day.

New BOOX Page eReader

From the The Official BOOX Store:

Powered by a Qualcomm advanced octa-core CPU and an upgraded configuration of 3GB RAM + 32GB ROM, the brand-new Page delivers an incredibly seamless experience when you are reading ebooks, browsing websites, or navigating third-party apps thanks to the open Android 11 system.

Solid iterative update to my Boox Leaf 2. $250 price doesn’t make it an easy to justify upgrade though. But updated processor should help with the sluggish perforance.

With our optimized internal construction, the Page remains a device that can perfectly fit your palm, even with the upgraded battery and magnets for the magnetic cover.

However, the ability to have a magnetic update almost makes it worth it.

1Password on 2FA And Storing Passwords and One-Time Codes Together

Megan BarkerSecurity Scribbler, on 1Password Blog:

The short answer is that storing your TOTP in 1Password is safe. It’s also faster and more convenient than using a separate, dedicated app. The rest of this article is the nuanced (and far less brief) answer. It addresses what dedicated authenticator apps provide (and don’t provide), and how you can 2FA the right way.

Of course they’re going to say it’s fine, but it’s a good article. And — don’t tell anyone — is exactly what I do.

Clean macOS Required Apps

A team member just moved from an IBM Linux laptop to an MacBook Air M2. Sent him the following email of my must have apps to get started.

• Rectangle: macOS window management using keyboard shortcuts or snap areas

• Raycast: keyboard launcher with lots of features/extensions. The ones I use:

  • Clipboard History
  • GitHub
  • Microsoft Teams Meeting
  • Search Screenshots
  • Snippets

• Velja: open links in a specific browser or a matching native app. Easily switch between browsers.

• Hidden Bar: hide menu bar items to give your Mac a cleaner look.

• Hyperkey: convert the caps lock key or any modifier key (I use right ⌘) to the hyper key (all four modifiers combined: ⌃⌥⌘⇧).

• Microsoft 365 from Mac App Store: You’ll likely need MS stuff, save yourself from AutoUpdate hell and use the Mac App Store versions as much as possible.

Edit: forgot two important ones:

• Mac Mouse Fix: use trackpad features like smooth scrolling and gestures with any mouse.

• Maestral: lightweight Dropbox client with just enough features.

Day One of Apple Journal App

Paul Mayne, on Day One:

Apple’s recent unveiling of a Journal app at WWDC was an exciting development for us at Day One. This app introduces a wider audience to the benefits of journaling by incorporating personal location history and photo libraries, much like our Today view. What’s more, Apple’s new Suggestions API should allow us to leverage this data for an even richer Day One experience.

I’ve been a Day One user for almost a decade — and I use it everyday for the last 6 years. So it’s an app I use a lot. I plan to continue to use it, but in a way I’m happy with Apple pushing them along. While its backend has improved considerably in the last few years — the front end has stayed pretty consistent, in a boring way.

WWDC 2023 Wishlist Recap

It’s time to call it for my WWDC wishlist last week:

• Family Shared Airtags in Findmy. Bingo.

From Apple Newsroom:

AirTag can be shared with up to five other people, allowing friends and family to keep track of an item in Find My.

Mac Stage Manager keyboard shortcuts for everything. Fail.

I was hopeful the betas will mention some change, but nothing.

• Mac notification update. Bupkis.

Same as above, surprisingly nothing on notifications this year.

• Smarter iOS software keyboard. W00t.

From Apple Newsroom:

Keyboard brings improvements to autocorrect, allowing users to enter text faster and easier than ever before. Inline predictive text helps users quickly finish sentences, and the new speech recognition model in Dictation improves accuracy.

• Universal Clipboard History on iOS. Nope.

Crickets 🦗.

• Books app for Android. WTF?

Head-shaking laughter.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024

Microsoft Flight Simulator Team, on Microsoft Flight Simulator:

To achieve this unprecedented level of accuracy, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is powered by the significantly evolved Asobo Studio engine.

Available day one on Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass, Xbox Cloud Gaming, Windows 10/11, and Steam. Coming 2024.

Video looks amazing. Can’t help thinking what Vision Pro version could do. Given what a Flight Sim setup costs, $3500 is actually a great price.

WWDC 2023 Wishlist

Tomorrow will likely be as important for Apple, as the iPhone introduction. And while I’m all-in for adjective parade, when the confetti settles, I’m a simple man with simple wishes.

Here’s my personal software updates wishes for tomorrow:

• Family Shared Airtags in Findmy.
• Mac Stage Manager keyboard shortcuts for everything.
• Mac notification update. It’s been broken for years, so many in fact, that I don’t expect a fix now, I want a considerable improvement.
• Smarter iOS software keyboard. Anecdotally it’s getting dumber. Objectively it hasn’t improved in years.
• Universal Clipboard History on iOS. Give us the Pastebot we deserve.
• Books app for Android. I want to read on an iPad during the day and an eink at night.

That’s it. I consider all these possible, but not all probable.

Boox Leaf 2 Short Term Review

The Boox Leaf 2 is an $199 Android tablet with an ink screen in a small factor and side buttons for up/down or next/previous page turns. I’ve had it for over two months now and use it almost every day for reading ebooks. I first became interested in it after reading Six Colors review a while back.

A Better Eink Reader?

Up front, the Leaf 2 has not changed my reading habits the way I hoped/wished. One of the advantages I thought about it being Android is that I could use my read-it-later apps: Reader and Omnivore. In reality, the speed of the tablet and of the e-ink screen means that if the apps are not optimized for it — mostly no scrolling rather but paginating the articles — it’s a painful experience.

One of the things I do like about it is the software being an Android variant is ability to have Android apps and the upgrade_ability_ this implies. Unlike the Amazon Kindle, where the software is almost as static with the physical device itself. You very rarely get big upgrades or changes with it.

Another thing I like is the button layout. It is a fairly standard ebook reader with buttons layout, similar to the Kindle Oasis and some Kobo Libre designs and a bunch of generic Chinese ink tablets.
But it does work. I do see myself appreciating the side buttons a lot as I lay in bed at night. I had the Kindle Voyage for a long time, which had pressure buttons on the sides, which were useful but not as great as real clickable buttons.

Android Platform

The flexibility of the device software is bittersweet. There’s a side of my the sighs heavily when I have to configure the touch areas for book turning — or for turning it off. However, the long term dynamism of the device makes me happy.

For example, I’ve already decided and changed my mind, on which reading application to use three times. Originally the Kindle app was discarded because for some reason — even when using the physical buttons — the page turning animation would show. It made reading unbearable.

The full featured default reader was next. Works really well but, it allows too much personalization, and, doesn’t have a clear path for synching highlights with Readwise — a deal breaker.

I then moved on to Google Play Books, and was surprised how much well it worked: easy ePub uploads, nice book layouts and great synch across applications. But it has the most annoying automatic dictionary bubble I’ve ever seen. What’s worse, the dismissing gesture didn’t seem to take on the eInk screen.

I then crossed to the pond to the PocketBook ecosystem. Here the configuration options of the Android app are endless. So settled on it for a few weeks — worried on how I’d import into Readwise, but sure I’d find a way since there’s a Obsidian plugin.

Where am I now? well two funny things happened: first, I figured out how to dismiss the dictionary pop-up on the Google Play Books; and secondly, the Kindle page turning slowness fixed itself with some update.

The Design

As I mentioned, the design is really good. I like the button placement and don’t mind the charging port placement. However, it’s a bit plasticky. Depending on how you grab it, it can creak a little¹.

One thing that sucks is the included case. I don’t like how it holds the device, and it’s flimsy, meaning the magnets on the cover do not close properly. Ended up buying a sleeve to use when traveling.

A Quick Note On the Amazon Kindle Ecosystem

One of the things that nudged me on the Android route is that Kindle’s support for EPUB is very hacky. I “acquire” a lot of DRM-free books and every time I try to get one into the Kindle, it messes with the layout.

I feel that this will continue to get worse. The Kindle ecosystem is a dead end if you’re into DRM-free books. Which makes more open platforms like this one more attracting to me.

Closing Thoughts

Would I buy it again? I don’t know. I would probably take another look first at the Kobo Libra 2 or the refurbished Oasis. Should you buy it? No. Trust Jason Snell, I agree with him and wouldn’t recommend this reader to almost anyone.

This isn’t an ebook reader product, it’s an ebook reader project. It require too much fine-tuning to really get started.

Don’t Hold the Elevator Doors

There’s a story of people getting off the elevator whenever Steve Jobs would get in on them at the Apple Campus. The premise being that he would ask: what are you working on? And if your answer was not satisfactory or interesting enough, you would get fired.

While the story seems more myth than fact, as all urban legends, it sure sounds plausible.

The thing is, your current project could be the ugly side or the sharp edge of major initiatives that as a whole does bring change and adds value.

Sometimes things need a temporary solution. Sometimes your pillar is critical, but its upgrade is not a priority.

The question is, then, should you get off the elevator whenever what you’re working on is not elevator-proof™?, or should you be prepared to answer that question?

As an individual contributor, it’s unfair to make you be aware of what’s the business-like answer of what you’re working on question. As a project manager, or better said, as a manager, this is a sixth sense that you should have. Reading the room, understanding your ugly duckling role in the major project.

Dan Shipper Daydreams a Better Kindle

Dan Shipper, on every.to:

I decided to pretend I was a Kindle product manager. I came up with a few grand dreams for the future of reading that are totally divorced from the corporate and practical reality of working at Amazon. Consider it a call to arms for the future of books. A rallying cry to make the Kindle actually great.

Great exercise. The funny thing, the result isn’t really the Kindle I’d want. But agree it’ll be much better.

Fun wishful thinking of what Amazon could do with the Kindle. For me, most of his wishes are almost here with my Leaf 2. Still, really shows how software stagnant the Kindle platform is.

Amazon Prime Mobile Service Rumored

Aisha Malik, on TechCrunch:

People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Amazon is considering offering wireless plans for $10 a month or possibly for free, in a move to bolster loyalty among subscribers. Currently, some people may cancel their Prime subscription and then sign-up again when they want to. If Amazon were to bundle mobile service into Prime, it would likely lead to people sticking with their subscriptions long-term.

Compelling. As an Amazon Prime subscriber, this would be interesting to me.

We currently subscribe to Google Fi on a family plan, which has worked really well — specially for travel. But the adoption of eSim has started to make temporary data plans very convient and price competitive¹.

Brave Browser Now Has Vertical Tabs on Desktop

Brave Software:

Brave’s vertical tabs feature is now available for users to experience a new way to manage open tabs. With today’s 1.52 desktop release, the vertical tabs setting is available to Brave users on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Great news, while a far cry of the over-designed Arc Browser, it’s a great options and my usual recommendation at work. The reasoning on vertical tabs on desktop screen is summarized perfectly on their page:

Vertical tabs help to eliminate overcrowding your browser window, and to increase your on-screen real estate.

I now get lost when I use Safari’s horizontal tabs on my Mac.

Meta Quest 3 Hands-On

Mark Gurman, on Bloomberg:

The device, codenamed Eureka, feels far lighter and thinner than the existing Quest 2 from 2020.

[…]

The actual clarity and VR displays within the Quest 3 feel similar to those in the Quest 2 — despite the resolution being rumored to be slightly higher. But there are two areas where I saw major improvements: video pass-through for mixed reality and the device’s speedier performance.

My brother-in-law fully lives the VR work life: he connects to his Mac and uses and Quest 2 to have multiple virtual monitors. However, the resolution isn’t there. Not sure if slightly higher, would make a difference with him.

Meta hasn’t yet settled on pricing for the device, but people involved in its development believe it may come in higher than the Quest 2’s $400. There is also a belief that the Quest 2 could stick around at a lower price. But there probably won’t be a second-generation Quest Pro anytime soon since the first version bombed.

The VR marketing is going to get interesting, and a $299 Quest 2 will probably make the $2,999 Apple device look very Apple priced for those not into tech details.

However, the most interesting thing for me on this articules is the fact that Meta saw it necessary to preannounce the Quest 3 a week before WWDC. If they are preempting Apple’s announcement, then there must be some sort of device announcement.

Update: and today Meta announced Meta Quest 3 Coming This Fall + Lower Prices for Quest 2:

Raycast Pro Launched

Thomas Paul Mann, on raycast.com:

Today, we’re introducing Raycast Pro, a paid plan that unlocks a new level of productivity. The subscription provides access to the following new features for $8 per month, billed annually.

[…]

But the most significant change is AI. This marks the start of a new era for productivity. Raycast’s deep integration into the OS and powerful Extension platform make us uniquely suited to build a personal assistant that enhances our digital lives.

A few weeks in, I still haven’t subscribed. But I’m sure I will by the end of the year.

I understand how the AI functionality is the current headlining feature — but I’m still figuring out where and how I’m going to be interacting with it, so is not a must-have for me.

What would I need to so subscribe now? Anything that would enhance the Github Issues plugin, or an advanced way to do file management. Can understand why neither are priority, but those are my demands.

Tidbits for 2023 Week 21

• Stops: very nice iOS photography app with beautiful filters.

• FileFillet : macOS app that stays on the left side of the screen, and makes copy/paste files to locations very easy.

• AnyGPT: makes any text field in macOS becomes a ChatGPT prompt.

• HackerNewt: iOS client for Hacker News that makes reading comments much less painful.

• Pixian.AI: simple webapp to remove image backgrounds and no signup - just credit.

• Sky Bridge: server that translates Mastodon requests into Bluesky ones, so you can use Mastodon apps. Still not Bluesky invite, but keeping around.

• ProNotes: macOS Apple Notes extension which adds ChatGPT, Markdown, and other formatting. I feel the urge to use.

• ‎video for ants: iOS app the will convert the format, compress the bitrate, and optimize the fps to make video smaller. Wish I had this a while back.

• ‎Naptime: iOS tracking of baby nap times and awake windows. If this makes no sense, it might in the future.

Pocket Getting Redesigned iOS App

Jay Peters, on The Verge:

Reader app Pocket is launching a redesigned version of its iOS app, Pocket owner Mozilla announced on Tuesday. The revamped app has a focus on a new Home tab that’s designed to be a “starting off point for visiting everything in Pocket, from your saved content to the articles we think you’ll love,” according to a blog post.

I’m very happy with my current Reader and Omnivore setup, but Pocket has always been a good alternative. Sadly, it seems long times users don’t like the redesign.

Meta’s New Multilingual speech-to-text, text-to-speech

on Meta AI:

Collecting audio data for thousands of languages was our first challenge because the largest existing speech datasets cover at most 100 languages. To overcome it, we turned to religious texts, such as the Bible, that have been translated in many different languages and whose translations have been widely studied for text-based language translation research.

Something very ironic about using the Bible to train multilingual models. The Tower of Babel is right at the start.

We trained multilingual speech recognition models on over 1,100 languages using a 1B parameter wav2vec 2.0 model. As the number of languages increases, performance does decrease, but only very slightly: Moving from 61 to 1,107 languages increases the character error rate by only about 0.4 percent but increases the language coverage by over 18 times.

The number of languages is mind-blowing to me. A functional universal translator is at hand.

In a like-for-like comparison with OpenAI’s Whisper, we found that models trained on the Massively Multilingual Speech data achieve half the word error rate, but Massively Multilingual Speech covers 11 times more languages. This demonstrates that our model can perform very well compared with the best current speech models.

Was very excited about this, but some commenters pointed out that while most languages error rates is superior, it error rate is similar to Whisper in English.

Microsoft Fabric AI Data Platform

Arun Ulagaratchagan, on Azure Blog:

Today we are unveiling Microsoft Fabric—an end-to-end, unified analytics platform that brings together all the data and analytics tools that organizations need. Fabric integrates technologies like Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Power BI into a single unified product, empowering data and business professionals alike to unlock the potential of their data and lay the foundation for the era of AI.

The intro video looks really cool. Will be keeping my eye on it — this is the next step of data platforms in enterprise.

Our tool data tool DOMO, also previewed their AI Service Layer. While not as flashy, I felt it was more sincere and actionable. Regardless, this is the future.

New Thunderbird Logo

Ryan Sipes, on The Thunderbird Blog:

[…] After nearly 20 years, we are thrilled to share a completely redesigned Thunderbird logo that honors our history and vital connection to Mozilla, while carrying us forward into the next 20 years.

Great looking logo and application icons. That’s not something you see all the time. Of course, no surprise:

But you should never forget your roots, which is why we asked Jon Hicks, the creator of the original Firefox and Thunderbird logos, to re-imagine his iconic design in light of Thunderbird’s exciting future.

I’m a fan of his work, so completely biased. He had some nice comments on mastodon about the logo.

OpanAI ChatGPT app for iOS

on openai.com:

The ChatGPT app is free to use and syncs your history across devices. It also integrates Whisper, our open-source speech-recognition system, enabling voice input. ChatGPT Plus subscribers get exclusive access to GPT-4’s capabilities, early access to features and faster response times, all on iOS.

Better than 99% of all ChatGPT apps out there. Hoping apps like Short Circuit, Peteyand Poe continue to exist.

The Work of the Audiobook

Alexander Manshel, Laura B. McGrath, J. D. Porter, on Los Angeles Review of Books:

Audiobooks have become such a driving economic force in the publishing industry that they have spawned their own dedicated networks of promotion, circulation, and consecration. Audiobook rights are now a staple of book contracts, changing the terms of negotiation.

Had no idea how much weight audiobooks now had on the industry.

The promise of the audiobook is that reading time, leisure time, entertaining time, and edifying story time can all happen anywhere at any time. Whether you are riding the bus to work, doing the dishes, or nodding off to sleep, the hands-free audiobook allows you the freedom to read when you otherwise could not.

My audiobook consumption has dropped off a cliff without post-covid commute craziness. Still, I always try to have a couple non-fiction audiobooks around¹. I’m able to think about what I hear, but fail miserably if I have to use my imagination. Which makes fiction books a no-go.

Obsidian Image Zoom and Preview

If you use obsidian-minimal theme, good reminder if you image zoom is driving use crazy:

• Style Settings > Minimal Theme > Features > Disable image zoom

I’m trying out Obsidian Image Toolkit, and while not pretty, it’s an improvement over the default image zooming behavior.

Tidbits for 2023 Week 19

• Soulver 3: for iPad is out. I mostly use v2 on iPhone, but very close to upgrading.

• Foldie: Transfer files between Android and MacOS. Useful for my experiments with the Boox Leaf 2.

• Introspect: iOS journaling app that uses ChatGPT’s to ask questions about your writing. Very interesting.

• Breveto: Yet another writing App for Mac. Looks very pretty, and in active development. Will keep an eye on it.

• Table of contents: Safari extension for quickly documents for macOS and iOS. See a list of all headings in the page and click any to jump to it. Brilliant.

• Praxis: Block scripts, trackers, and cookies on iOS. Waiting for iPad version to see if I can replace Brave for this use-case.

• FSMonitor: macOS app that monitors all changes to the file system.

New Mastodon Onboarding Experience

Eugen Rochko, on Mastodon Blog:

We believe it’s important for Mastodon to be good as a product on its own merits, and not just because of its ideology. If we only attract people who already care about decentralization, our ability to make decentralization mainstream becomes that much harder.

In the context of Bluesky recent rise, I thinks this specially great news. For some (like me), the decentralization of Mastodon is a feature, but for many many more, it’s a horrible bug. Making onboarding simpler is required for those of us what want Mastodon to continue to grow.

We’re always listening to the community and we’re excited to bring you some of the most requested features, such as quote posts, improved content and profile search, and groups.

Actually the most interesting part of the post for me — quote posts are a big deal in social, and I think an implementation will make it more fun for everyone.

Nebo New Free Plan On iPad

The Nebo team, on Nebo:

So what’s the new plan and how does it affect you? That depends on whether you’re a new or existing user, and which Nebo in-apps (if any) you’ve purchased in the past.

The biggest change is that everyone will now be able to access all Nebo’s features for free.

Nebo has the best HWR of all the iPad apps I’ve tried. In fact, it’s how I usually write down my DayOne entry from bed at night.

This is great news for educational and other users with limited budget.

Default Folder X 6.0 Big New Features

St. Clair Software Blog:

Quick Search: Keyboard-based access to Recent and Favorite Items, including recently-launched applications and recently-used Finder windows.

[…]

Drag and Drop: You can now drag and drop files and folders onto Default Folder X’s icon in your menu bar. When you do, it will pop up its menu so you can select a destination for them.

Every few years I let my 30 days expire DFX trial. It’s an amazing app, but it never quite makes the cut because I need some changes in workflow to take full advantage of it. The two features highlighted above, sound like they’ll get me to finally purchase.

Will wait a couple of weeks until it’s in beta, and will give it a try.