< Notes...

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.

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?

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. 😅

“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.

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!

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?

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.

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.

Yeah… no. Call me skeptic, cynic, hopeless, non-believer, whatever you want, but I don’t think this is how is going to pan out.

“With trillions of digital workers and robots entering the economy, a tenfold increase in GDP represents a very conservative estimate of how much full automation could increase economic output. If this modest increase were reflected proportionally in US tax revenues, we could resolve all current Social Security funding shortfalls, lower the retirement age to 18, and increase the average payout to over $150,000 per adult per year.”

➝ Via Hacker News.

I told person A that I will be signing the papers later today but that, before I did so, wanted to know why two seemingly identical emails were sent to me by person B. The answer? “Person B accidently hit the send button twice.” What in the world?! How do you do that?

Ugh? Well, this is the drop that overflows the cup. GM ditching Apple Carplay will stop us from buying any GM vehicles in the future. Oh, wait, we never buy GM. 🤣

The corner radius alignment—or lack thereof—on macOS 26 has been bothering me from day one. Specifically for the two applications I run maximised at all times, Safari and Terminal. Will Apple fix it (my hope)? Is it behaving as intended (my biggest fear)?

Last year we placed a bowl full on candies, and left the porch light on, as an indication that Halloween was “happening”. Not a single kid, or adult, showed up. All candies were donated to work. This year there will be no candies, and light will remain off. Halloween is off.

So far having a fairly bad experience while trying to get a PAP machine ordered after having gone through a sleep study. I received an email from them stating the order was sent, while neglecting to send it. At square one now, a month after receiving the email. Ugh!

It is 2025, and most Linux distributions do not ship exclusively i386 ISOs. Yet, people get their amd64 machines, and straight they go to install packages—and their libraries—within the i386 architecture. Currently adding around 1TiB of i386 to our mirrors. 🤦‍♂️

I have a notification on GitHub that I can’t clear out. Someone mentioned me on a repository for which I have no access, or it has since been deleted, or something else. The only “solution” that I have found involves installing and using gh. Why? I don’t want to!

I want to go back to start using email more, like I used to. I am looking into participating more on mailing lists, and overall using email more for communication for which I have been using non-asynchronous apps. I prefer to use the apps provided by the OS, as I have mentioned it before. The thing is, macOS mail app has a couple of things that the “email perfectionist” in me dislikes. A lot. I am one of those, yes. Let’s see:

• No strict threading, that is, using in-reply-to and message-id to properly create threads. It seems that the iOS/macOS Mail app will not exclusively use those, often using subjects to group emails.
• No way to set quoted text to start with the venerable > Internet “standard”. Apple Mail insists on using their colored |.

So, that’s the pickle, my pickle. Will I dust off mutt, or Thunderbird? Ugh, I don’t want to, but…

My most used, and only, filters on the Fediverse are “#wordle” and “wordle”. They work great. I cannot begin to describe how much I dislike those silly “bragging” squares people post, over and over. Ugh!

I remember reading that Jesus said: “Fear everyone, expel the stranger, blame the poor, feed the rich, ignore the sick, sacrifice the young, love only thyself, trust only Caesar, throw lots of stones.” Right? 🙄

With the release of iOS 26, it is iOS 7 all over again. It is also Mac OS X, “the re-run”, with the release of macOS 26. Complain we must, it matters not.

“The new iOS 7 is horrible. It looks like something grade schoolers designed. The colors are too bright. It is very distracting when you have to squint looking at different apps due to the harshness […]. There is no point in keeping something that is so horrible to use.”

“Just “up"graded my iPhone to iOS 26 and I absolutely hate it. It’s visually the ugliest iOS Apple has ever produced […]. It’s so ugly I’m thinking of cancelling my iPhone Air order and looking at Samsung options.”

I cannot stand Steam. Their webpage is shoddy, just as is their app. The games you “own” in their platform you really don’t. I made the mistake of “buying” Diablo IV and Last Epoch for desktop computers because they entised me with a great price, but never, ever, again. You get what you pay for.

I really cannot stress this enough. Please, don’t say “I have a question”, just ask the question. From “No Hello, here are some examples:

• “Hey man, what’s up? also, any idea when that thing’s due?”
• “Hi there! Hope you’re well. I’m after the latest deck, when you get a sec :)”
• “Hey, if you’re not busy, could you update those NFRs?”
• “Etc.”

There are “other me” (that is, people with the same first and lastname as me) in Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Spain, all using first.lastname@gmail.com (which is mine) on all sort of things: bank accounts, mobile services, soccer clubs, social media, you name it! Is it that they are so non-technically saavy that they provide an email they don’t own, or is it that companies are assuming—as default—their email address is first and lastname, at gmail.com? Truly mind blowing.

Having used Matrix in the past, and even self-hosted my own Matrix “homeserver”, I can categorically say—in my (own) very, very humble opinion—that it sucks eggs.

Always point the finger at you first. “Is the issue at my end?” “What did I do that caused this?” Only after analising everything, and when the level of certainty has reached a 95% (your number may vary) that it isn’t your fault, your issue, then you look elsewhere (aka “pointing fingers at others”). That is, you know, “everything is my fault” first.

Why having any illness (flu, COVID, headaches and fever, stomach bug, etc.) gets no challenge when requesting a sick day from work, but being mentally overwhelmed, or overworked, does?

“What do you think about coming to office on Wednesdays?” — “We would rather not, no. Not a good idea.” — “OK, let’s start coming to office on Wednesdays as well, so three days a week onsite.”

Why to ask then?!

Call me old school, boomer, curmudgeon, whatever! I, for one, have absolutely no interest, no desire, to carry a foldable mobile device, of any kind. OK, moving on now.

Taco Bell wants you to use their self purchasing machines. They are a mess. No search function, so it is next to impossible to find what you want, especially if you are not a regular.

At the one at 7853 Colonial Drive, Orlando, FL, waiting to order at the counter takes an eternity. They keep servicing their drive through, and kind of ignore you. Once you have successfully placed your order, and it arrives, make sure to check it carefully. It will be wrong 98% of the time. Mine was, and I realised too late, when I was already at home.

That Taco Bell sucks.

We wouldn’t need ad blockers if your ads weren’t obnoxius, privacy invasive, and tasteless. Now you want us to subscribe, or stop using ad blockers (or both!), so that you can be supported. See the cycle you have created? If I were to condone ads, I would for sure pick Carbon Ads.

The State of Florida is backwards in many ways. One of the many things, trash bins. The one for garbage has a green lid, while the one for recycle has a blue lid. Doesn’t make sense, right?

Got invited to a warband raid yesterday, in Diablo Immortal. Afterwards got an invite to their clan. Upon joining, a warm welcome instructed encouraged me to join their Discord channel. Then, and only then, they started to lose me. There is no other technology I dislike more than Discord. Also, it is a game, to entertain me a little, not a job.

As I paid almost three times more for a tiny grocery shopping this evening, I felt grateful that at least they were harvested, and made by real American, patriotic, heterosexual, white, christian workers, and not illegal immigrants. 🇺🇸

If a company follows what other company is doing, and uses that other company as a template almost to the dot, they are no “leaders”. They can’t flaunt innovation. They are followers, who imitate, and copy.

I noted this because, as someone who has to constantly spell his surname, it makes it harder when the listener is expecting a bastardisation of something that has been accepted and adopted as a standard. Anyway, enough of it, I just had to take it off my chest. LOL.

At the risk of being labeled a boomer—something kids already do, anyway—I have to say that the music from the 80s and 90s beats the one from the 2000s, and the 2010s, so far. It reminds me what my mum and dad used to say about the music of their time. Every generation, pretty much the same.

Really wishing more services on Ubuntu were made in Golang, or good old C/C++. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike Python, and it certainly is widely used, multiplatform, etc., etc. Now having almost everything Python comes across as sheer laziness. That’s it. Ubuntu, and Python </rant>.

Why would Microsoft offer releases of their Edit CLI editor for Linux, and compress them using zstd? What’s wrong with tar.gz? Why the added complication? What is there to gain?