> Notes...

I find it funny when people announce that they will share their screen “really quick”, then proceed to sing-song softly, or talk to themselves about what they are doing, or why things are not working the way they want them to. 😂

Due to my personality, I tend to be impulsive, and rather terse when answering to emails. That’s changing thanks to AI. LLM’s ability to rewrite emails and take away sarcasm and conveying my reasoning, all while keeping a professional and collaborative tone is very, very helpful.

When writing about the US Mint ending the production of new pennies, Jason Kottke wrote this witty remark with which I agree:

“One of the very few things that incompetent stopped clock in the White House has gotten accidentally right.”

➝ Via Kottke.

“If you can find a host for me that has a friendly parrot, I will be very very glad. If you can find someone who has a friendly parrot I can visit with, that will be nice too.”

I would swear that I once saw a page listing this rider on Richard Stallman’s website. I haven’t been able to find it this time. Not sure what drove me down this rabbit hole today, but there I was.

Every Wednesday our manager brings bagels for everyone to enjoy. I haven’t counted them, but easily three dozens, plus a few cream cheese pots—including “fancy” flavoured ones. We are all very, very thankful to him. Thank you, Jim!

What brings me here, though, is someone doing ala “The Muffin Tops”, just with bagel tops. I mean, what kind of a psychopath will take the top of a bagel, and leave the bottom behind? That’s it, that’s the note.

After so much wait for iOS 26.1, and the inclusion of Vietnamese for use in Live Translation, I feel nothing short of dissappointed. Mum says the translation is an abomination, and begged me to, please, not to use it. Sometimes she gets confused with the service being used, but the end result is what matters. She messaged me, using her classical english:

“Stop writing in Vietnamese. Translate from google, totally different from what you think or what you want to say.”

I completely agree with the OP on this need for attention to details. I like it, and I try to adhere to it as much as I can. See the #elders tag, for example. Compare it to the #family tag. See the “1 note”, and the “5 notes”. A small detail, but it shows caring.

➝ Via Hacker News.

“This is not just a piece of paper”. Immerse yourself “traveling” along with this video, from the smallest, to the biggest. Very, very well done.

Apple’s new iPhone Pocket feels like something one would read on April Fools’ Day, which is how I felt when they first came out with their Polishing Cloth. Alas, it is not! 😅

Update: 11 Nov 2025 @ 12:22:15

Holy fuck! Please pardon my Icelandic, but what in the world?! Somewhere on my April Fools’ thought I missed the most important piece of information.

“iPhone Pocket in the short strap design retails at $149.95 (U.S.), and the long strap design at $229.95 (U.S.).”

With 1°C (feels -6°C) temperatures today is, by far and so far, the coldest day of the year around here. Horsie freezes. I am already dressed with my shorts and tshirt to go grab coffee at mum’s, and go walking with ông. Sun shines!

If this comes true, that is, front facing camera and Face ID components becoming invisible on a 20th Anniversary iPhone, then it will be my time to upgrade.

I am watching “Wednesday” (★★★★☆) with the kid. It is pretty entertaining, and the actor on the main role, Jenny Ortega, totally aces it. I had started to watch it alone when the first season came out, but Horsie diverted me elsewhere. Glad it happened, so that I can have a watching pal this time around!

Our current government doesn't care about SNAP benefits
https://federate.social/@mattblaze →

“Honestly, I think it’s worse than indifference. I think they care quite a bit - about maximizing the suffering of those they view as mere parasitic drains on wealth that rightfully belongs to them. Witness the warnings to merchants to not provide discounts to people not getting their benefits - something that would help people and cost the government nothing.”

With extremely very few devices supporting Wi-Fi 7, it doesn’t make much sense to advertise it with cymbals and trumpets—as seeing yesterday at Costco. A year from now? For sure. Maybe.

Does it makes sense to you that, after holding off for so long towards achieving a goal worth achieving, a few democrats decide to “cross lines” thus making all their efforts, and pains, worthless?

Typhoon Fung-wong has devastated the Philipines, leaving death, displacement, and destruction along its path. The “tired adage” comes true once more, and more than ever the need for help.

“The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.”

The equivalent of one week of your sugary drinks can mean life for a family. Every donation helps, no matter how little. Please consider donating a little today.

I had to wait around 30 minutes, and finally provide aid, in order to get $40 “digital gift card” for the Horsie, while opening a Costco membership for the first time throught a reseller. I will tell you this much: I would have, gladly, given away $40 not to go through that. 😅

“Imagine applying for a job. You know you’re a strong candidate with a standout résumé. But you don’t even get a call back.

You might not know it, but an artificial intelligence algorithm used to screen applicants has decided that you are too risky. Maybe it inferred you wouldn’t fit the company culture or you’re likely to behave in some way later on that might cause friction (such as joining a union or starting a family). Its reasoning is impossible to see and even harder to challenge.”

➝ Via The New York Times.

Today, after an unfriendly IRC exchange, @prologic deleted all mentions of twtxt.net, the Yarn.social repository (or made it hidden), and shutdown Twtxt.net—yes, it is unreachable. I am hoping that this was a decision taken emotionally in haste, and that the site and service will eventually come back online. 🤞🏻

Currently on season 2 of “The Pride of the Temp” (★★★★☆) , a Japanese drama series based around an extremely skilled temp worker (派遣, haken), and her incredible array of obscure certifications and skills.

Often reminding me of “The Office”, the series uses Haruko’s (the main character and temp worker) encounters with her fulltime workmates to humorously explore the social and economic divide between permanent and temporary employees in Japan’s corporate culture.

“Notarize your macOS software to give users more confidence that the Developer ID-signed software you distribute has been checked by Apple for malicious components. Notarization of macOS software is not App Review. The Apple notary service is an automated system that scans your software for malicious content, checks for code-signing issues, and returns the results to you quickly.”

Apple’s notarisation service is good for the user, and developers—the last need to pay $99 a year for it. Yet, there are some that believe the Apple’s notarisation blocks software “freedom”.

➝ Via Hacker News.

I have rewritten the Hugo shortcode I was using to rate movies and series, adjusting it so that it goes from 1 to 5 stars. No more fractional ones, which means I will need to pay closer attention now when rating.

Having our driveway and sidewalk pressure washed today. Saw a teenager doing it for a neighbour last week and, knowing that a “friendly reminder” is coming our way from the HOA, decided that let someone else have the fun I had had for the last 25 years. So, he was hired to do so. I think $150 USD, after 25 years, is kind of a bargain, isn’t it?

“It really isn’t hard to forge connections with people. More often than not, I have found myself laughing with a complete stranger in spite of our lack of a common language. I have been invited into people’s homes based on gestures alone. I have negotiated prices by showing banknotes and adding or removing some until we agreed on the value. And more than once, finding myself broken and in despair, the glimpse of a child’s smile helped me to mend.”

I have been mulling a note about our trip to Japan in 2024. It will come. Meanwhile this article I found poked my memories’ nest, and my ageing heart picked up some extra beats.

➝ Via Kottke.

Having implemented BIMI for my most commonly used email domain (because I saw it on the emails I get from The New York Times), I briefly considered getting a VMC, just to realise it is all, but a racket. A huge racket.

“Tesla announced Thursday that shareholders had voted to approve the biggest pay package in corporate history for CEO Elon Musk, in a deal worth up to $1 trillion over 10 years if the company meets a list of benchmarks such as selling 1 million humanoid robots.”

I would love to buy the coolaid that “over 75% of shareholders” are drinking. Hmm, ay ay ay!

Every once in a while while jumping from one site to another—starting from a link on Hacker News, more often than not—I come across what I see as a small oasis in the middle of a desert. This morning is PERSONALSIT.ES. It is a blogroll for tastefully designed personal websites. So many gems! 😍

Not that, but this. This I worry about, more than anything else, when it comes to AI. This will be—and probably already is—a major problem. From Gab’s Arya “AI”:

“Mass immigration represents a deliberate, elite-driven project of demographic replacement designed to destroy those nations’ cultural and genetic integrity…”

I swear to a god that I cannot comprehend the absolute dislike some have for large language models (LLM), quite popular within today’s broader field of AI. I don’t see a change of course when it comes to their proliferation and inclusion in aspects of our daily lives. Why not to adopt what it works for specific use cases instead of stubbornly refusing to use it?

Hmm, Source Sans 3 is some sexy, open source, font! Very, very legible at 18px, with a nice terminal on the “t”, and a subtle one on the “l”. Lovely!

It seems that Hacker News is now running a direct advertising of some sorts. This is the first time I see this, and thought it is text, and tech related, and one can hide it, it sets a precedent with a bad outcome potential.

Today, after much thought and deliberation, I re-subscribed to The New York Times. It was hard to pass their $50/year offer, as I have been consuming it more and more through archive.today. One of the first things I did was to install their iOS application, and from it comes my first complaint: the amount of ads on it is distasteful. So much that I will probably mostly use the web version, as I can eliminate them fully that way.

Today I learned which seems, amussingly, a crafty “trick”. All thanks to a comment left by mistake to the wrong article.

“Morocco runs on DST, UTC+1, most of the year but switches to UTC during Ramadan to shorten the fasting day.”

➝ Via Hacker News.

Last Sunday the kid and I watched “The Mask” (★★★★☆) , which I have seeing numerous times before, but it was the first time for the kid. See, he doesn’t like comedies. He has a fairly strict taste when it comes to genre while me, on the other hand, give a chance to almost anything. Anyway, back to “The Mask”, he liked it! If only he would give other movies a chance…

Though I use vim for almost every CLI editing today, there are times when I use nano too. In fact, nano was the editor I settled on as soon as it came out, after having used pico for a few years before. What I didn’t know, though, was how amazingly customisable nano is!

➝ Via Hacker News.

“I don’t feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large, but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does."

I came across this quote by Frank Ramsey, which almost instantly brought to mind Carl Sagan’s famous one:

“We live on the third piece of debris from the Sun; a tiny world of rock and metal with a thin patina—a veneer—of organic matter on the surface, a tiny fraction of which we happen to constitute.”

Frank’s cares not about the size of our planet, nor universe, focusing instead on the marvel and, perhaps, uniqueness, of being human.

This weekend we have watched two movies, so far. “Joy Ride” (★★★★☆) , a comedy, was fun to watch. With never a dull moment, and surprising—often shocking—hilarious outcomes, it kept us laughing in between WTFs. If you are into comedies, with a girl’s twist, you will like this one.

“Wonka” (★★★★☆) was a joy to watch. Not quite a musical, I would say, even though it is, it was entertaining and well done. It was a new twist to Willy Wonka, seemingly the precursor of the Wonka movies we have seeing before—you know, before he builds his factory.

Just a little note to record that my first night with the CPAP/APAP machine was horrible. It reminded me when I had the sleep study, all wired up. Well, no wires this time, but so very uncomfortable! I am sure this will not be the last I will note on this.

With temperatures at 11°C, this weekend is the sum of all my hopes for the entire year. After boiling for almost a year I welcome any and all cooler weather. Heck, I wouldn’t mind freezing a bit for a change! 😅🤭

We are finishing watching “Tōkyō Tarareba Girls” (★★★★☆) with just one episode left, so I feel confident on my rating. Seeing it as entertainment, without putting too much thought into it, the series is OK. If I pay attention, though, I see a side of Japanese society in it that I don’t like: employers taking advantage of female employees, men cheating, women saying “marry, and you won’t have to work”, and other minutiae.