Just as there are good and bad Catalyst apps, there are good and bad Electron apps. I’m sure that the very best Electron app isn’t as good a Mac app as one written using Apple’s AppKit frameworks

This, to me, is the main problem I have with this argument. An Electron app, web app, PWA, or cli app can be every bit has good as AppKit.

I appreciate that AgileBits was originally planning two separate Mac implementations. That’s a sign that the company cared enough to expend extra resources to have a good experience on the Mac, rather than doing what it did to Windows users in deciding Electron was good enough.

Again. Electron apps aren’t just good enough, they can be great.

Lawmakers apparently relented to public pressure from supporters of municipal broadband and cities and towns that operate the networks. People and businesses from Fairlawn, where the city-run FairlawnGig network offers fiber Internet, played a significant role in the protests. FairlawnGig itself asked users to put pressure on lawmakers, and the subscribers did so in great numbers.

I’m still salty that we even have to have this conversation as previously noted

It’s not even clear who proposed the new law. “The language, inserted without prior public discussion during recent state Senate deliberations on Ohio’s two-year budget, is drawing condemnation from numerous sources. Officials have not said who put the language in the Senate budget document, only that they learned of it for the first time last week,” the Akron Beacon Journal wrote on June 13.

Really? We can’t even verify who added this restriction to the current bill ??

Gun enthusiasts often protest: Cars kill about as many people as guns, and we don’t ban them! No, but automobiles are actually a model for the public health approach I’m suggesting.

We don’t ban cars, but we work hard to regulate them — and limit access to them — so as to reduce the death toll they cause. This has been spectacularly successful, reducing the death rate per 100 million miles driven by 95 percent since 1921.

It is pretty clear how to do it. It is just a matter of public will to get it accomplished.

Free Press, one of the FCC’s opponents in the net neutrality court case, criticized Pai for claiming that the repeal spurred new broadband development. “Approximately 92 percent of the fiber deployments made during Pai’s chairmanship were actually planned and announced during the last few years of the Obama administration, when Title II was securely in place,” Floberg said. “Chairman Pai is trading away critical public protections for a bag of magic beans, and a wink and a nod from cable lobbyists. We need public servants who will actually listen to people, consider the data and serve community needs instead of long-debunked ideologies.”

Once you shine a little bit of light on FCC policy over the last 4 years it becomes very clear that an “open and competitive market” on not remotely their first or even second concern.

It’s enough to bring a parent to tears, except that every parent I know ran out a long time ago—I know I did. Ran out of tears, ran out of energy, ran out of patience. Through these grinding 18 months, we’ve managed our kids’ lives as best we could while abandoning our own.

I am out of tears. I am out of anger. I am out of sympathy. I am out of empathy.

Today I had to look this up for the X number time, so I thought I’d post it and see if it suck.

const { twitter: tweet, facebook: fb } = wes.links.social;

The above code will pull the wes.links.social.twitter into a variable called tweet and similarly for facebook.

In the United States, the authority of state governments to mandate vaccinations is clear — it goes all the way back to a 1905 Supreme Court case that upheld a Massachusetts law requiring vaccinations for smallpox.

Vaccine mandates will prove controversial, to put it mildly, but, like seat belt laws, drunken driving laws and motorcycle helmet laws, they will save lives. We should not grant an unreasonable minority the power to endanger public health.

It is far past time to put the health of the public, as a whole, over that of the individual. Don’t want to get vaccinated? Fine. Unless you medically are unable to, then you are no longer welcome or allowed in public spaces.

“Given Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which holds that a state may require all members of the public to be vaccinated against smallpox, there can’t be a constitutional problem with vaccination against SARS-CoV-2,” said the decision by a three-judge panel at the appeals court. The plaintiffs also made a due-process argument, but multiple court decisions show that “such an argument depends on the existence of a fundamental right ingrained in the American legal tradition,” the ruling said. “Yet Jacobson, which sustained a criminal conviction for refusing to be vaccinated, shows that plaintiffs lack such a right. To the contrary, vaccination requirements, like other public-health measures, have been common in this nation.”

You, or anyone else has no right to endanger others. Period.

“In a way I’ve never seen before, they are fighting tooth and nail,” said Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for Technology Law and Policy. “They consider these bills existential for them because they get at their business models.”

Is anyone actually surprised that companies encourage the “right” regulation, and actively fight it with every fiber of their being?

“Parents want their students to learn how to think critically, not be indoctrinated by the ridiculous leftist narrative that America and our Constitution are rooted in racism,” Patrick said.

And yet this country is very rooted in racism and racist practices, while at the same time trying to continue the experiment of democracy. These two things are not mutually exclusive.

Broadband connectivity — or, rather, the lack thereof — has long been a problem in the United States. The pandemic has demonstrated how essential a lifeline the internet is, and how costly it can be for those who don’t have it. Work, education, social services, and myriad other activities are increasingly taking place online.

While the focus of lawmakers and regulators is often on rural broadband, getting good internet to more people is really a two-pronged problem of both access and affordability. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) estimates that 21 million Americans don’t have access to quality broadband internet, though some estimates suggest the actual number is much higher.

21 million do not have access to broadband. Imagine if that were the case for electricity or clean drinking water? It would be declared a national emergency. And yet, people are sitting outside of public libraries for hours at a time trying to get school work done, apply for state/local relief aid, or connect with family in the only safe way.

It is pretty clear that the private sector is not interested in a ‘connection for everyone’. They often fall short of their current commitments while taking federal money and offering more promises without results. Frontier Gets More After Missing Deadlines or NY Settles with Version to Deliver on Contract Over and over again private companies are cutting corners, leaving out any areas that might not turn a quick profit, lobbing to keep state and local municipalities from delivering cheap high speed access themselves, it is laughable to stay that the ‘market’ is delivering high speed affordable internet access to everyone.

Apple’s App Store rules didn’t even acknowledge creators until this week. On Monday, they were updated with a new section saying that creator-made content and experiences are allowed in apps — so long as they’re properly moderated and monetized for Apple.

I really think this squeeze on individual creators will ultimately force regulation on Apple

Apple Is Holding Back The Creator Economy

10. 💸  Just like the App Store, Apple owns the customer relationship and can choose to offer a refund if they decide you haven’t fulfilled the benefits offered in your subscription. You have to reimburse the money, but Apple retains their cut, natch.

We’re going to learn a lot about Apple Podcast Subscriptions over the coming months. Number ten from Nathan Gathright really gets to the heart for creators and why I don’t believe this will change the landscape of podcasting.

To reach herd immunity, experts generally estimate that we’ll need to vaccinate at least 70 to 80 percent of the population — though it could be more or less, because we don’t really know for sure with a new virus. Yet according to a recent AP-NORC survey, 32 percent of Americans say they definitely or probably won’t get a Covid-19 vaccine. If that holds and the herd immunity estimates are correct, it would make herd immunity impossible.

I am not interest in arguments about personal preference, or individual freedoms. Get vaccinated unless you are medically unable to. That is the only valid reason.

US courts almost always deferred to public health authorities that have deprived individuals of their liberty in the name of public health. One US state high court declared at the beginning of the twentieth century that, “[i]t is unquestionable that the legislature can confer police powers upon public officers for the protection of the public health. The maxim Salus populi suprema lex is the law of all courts in all countries. The individual right sinks in the necessity to provide for the public good” (Parmet, 1985). Even more remarkably, a plenary grant of authority was still found to be constitutional in the 1960s. In upholding the detention of a person with tuberculosis pursuant to a statute that provided virtually no procedural protections, a California appellate court declared in 1966 that, “[h]ealth regulations enacted by the state under its police power and providing even drastic measures for the elimination of disease…in a general way are not affected by constitutional provisions, either of the state or national government.”

Bayer, Ronald. “The continuing tensions between individual rights and public health. Talking Point on public health versus civil liberties.” EMBO reports vol. 8,12 (2007): 1099-103. doi:10.1038/sj.embor.7401134

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which promotes community broadband projects, recently estimated from Federal Communications Commission data that some 80 million Americans can only get high-speed broadband service from one provider.

This is not ok. It is laughable to proclaim that there is plenty of broadband competition, when 10’s of millions only have a single option for service.

Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, said the Facebook board’s decision was “extremely disappointing” and that it was “clear that Mark Zuckerberg views himself as the arbiter of free speech.” And Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, said Facebook, which faces antitrust scrutiny, should be broken up.

Again. What is it about a private business, moderating, and removing users from their platform that leads people to ‘free speech’? Facebook is not a public space, the internet as a whole is sure, hence Trump’s new ‘platform’ blog is perfectly fine, but there is no expectation of free speech on a closed platform run by a private business. Like saying the New York Times won’t print my article ranting about why Miracle Whip is superior to mayonnaise is stifling my free speech!

Verizon is defending its practice of forcing customers to switch plans to get a government-funded $50-per-month discount, telling the Federal Communications Commission that this is not the same thing as “upselling.” Verizon has partially backtracked from this restrictive policy but told the FCC it will take “about a month” to deploy a billing-software update that will let more home-Internet customers get the discounts without changing plans.

It’s exhausting to keep up with ISPs that are paying lip service to “improved customer care” while really wringing them out for the good of shareholders. 🥵

The state has been in a drought since 1994, and climate change is making things worse. Now, the vast majority of Arizona faces a “severe” drought, according to the US Drought Monitor.

Living here for the last 22 years, I was surprised that the drought has been in effect since 1994?!? That is the same year Forest Gump came out, the number #1 saying that year “The Sign”, Ace of Base. Like really? That is a obscene amount of time.

Now I wonder what the southwest has done to mitigate the consistent climate challenge and the ever increasing population growth?

Biden had originally proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent as part of the plan, but many Republicans remained adamant that they wouldn’t support a change in the corporate tax rate. Biden later showed an openness to only raising the rate to 25 percent, and last week began pushing Republicans to see if they would accept any tax changes whatsoever.

It is no secret that the US is in dire need of massive overhaul. Enough budget acrobats, raise taxes on the corporate wealth and get it done.

It’s only February so maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but this post by Claus Matzinger, author of Data Structures and Algorithms with Rust, was very encouraging.

Initially, a book was this unsurmountable challenge, but, one chapter at a time,

It’s nothing profound, but a great simple explanation of the benefits you as the author get out of tacking a project as massive as a book. You bet the resources listed are in my amazon book list for down the road. 😉

ArsTechinca

Pai didn’t release the full Broadband Deployment Report

No kidding. 🙄 But wait, with a little digging you wouldn’t believe what the results are!

Despite the limited information available, advocacy group Free Press was able to discover a huge error that showed broadband progress under Pai’s leadership was less impressive than he claimed.

So there was a big error, they fixed it, and then continue to lie about the results of their unsuccessful program. Ok. Got it.

From 9To5Mac

According to a promotional message found in the service, the price for Apple Arcade will be $4.99 / month, including a one-month free trial. As Apple previously announced, the service will allow access to all members in a Family Sharing account.

If this is the case, I’m all in. I would have been in the fence about it at $10. That compounded with the Switch Lite at a lower price is gonna make gaming at my house with young kids awesome for everyone !!!!!

This week Apple has been putting several products to the dirt nap, sleeping with the fishes.

Original HomePod Originally overpriced, over engineered, and stuck with Siri. While it did sound fantastic, the price tag of $349 did not offer the same features and benefits as smart speakers a 1/3 that price. And while we’re used to paying the ‘Apple Tax’ for good products that work well in the ecosystem, this first version was noticeably lacking for the price. Even more concerning is the 4 years it’s been out, it has received little improvements via updates. Most notably it launched without multiple timers, eventually released, I struggle to think of anything else noteworthy that the HomePod improved upon during it’s lifespan.

iMac Pro Released the same time as the HomePod, fall of 2017, this iMac was easily the best iMac ever made. Also just like the HomePod, it was released, and left without any revisions or updates during its life. (Dropping the 8-core model doesn’t count) The iMac Pro came from an alternate time line where Apple was not going to make a new Mac Pro, there was to be no more powerful, modular tower from Apple. Months before it’s release, Apple had its unusual round table to announce it was changing directions. It would be almost 2 more years before the now Mac Pro is readily available, the iMac Pro, the future pro machine, was now relegated to keeping pro users content until then. Often referred to as the most powerful and quiet iMac ever, it continues to be a favorite among podcasters. Now with the M1’s out, Apple is closing this time loop, leaving the iMac Pro in a short list one 1 and done products.

While these products are discontinued for very different reasons, it marks the end of the beginning into a new chapter for Apple.

While Greater China and other emerging markets accounted for the vast majority of the year-over-year iPhone revenue decline, in some developed markets, iPhone upgrades also were not as strong as we thought they would be. While macroeconomic challenges in some markets were a key contributor to this trend, we believe there are other factors broadly impacting our iPhone performance, including consumers adapting to a world with fewer carrier subsidies, US dollar strength-related price increases, and some customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements. 

Apple Website

Like many I can’t say the last line that iPhone battery replacements made a significant impact to lower sales than previous projected, it’s a bad look Tim. The smartphone market is mature and for the most part fully saturated. Someone like myself, who has pre-ordered most iPhones, getting the newest biggest best, have held off in recent cycles. Why? The combination of phones breaking $1,000, with the leveling off of hardware speed from year to year. Even with that, I’ve been Apple Leasing iPhones since they offered it. Pretty much iPhone as a service. At this point every 2 years seems more than adequate.