Jarrod Blundy
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, theverge.com:
If you’re considering adding smart features to your front door, 2025 is shaping up to be an excellent year to do so.
It me! Ultra-wideband support, better battery life, wider smart home interoperability, and more is all coming next year. Sounds promising.
I enjoy dipping into Micro.blog and Mastodon, and I’ve gotten to meet and interact with people I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise.
But I think we’re putting an undue amount of pressure on the fediverse to provide community for us. No platform can build or provide community. People are the only ones who can build community, and we do it by nurturing individual connections with each other.
We can use the fediverse as a tool for this, just like we can use our own blogs, and email, messaging, phone conversations, video calls, streaming interactions, and in-person visits.
Hey @micr0@fuzzies.wtf, @altbot@fuzzies.wtf is amazing. I built a shortcut to generate descriptions for images before I post them online, and I’m curious if you have a prompt that you feed to Gemini along with each image that you’d be willing to share? Just hoping to further improve my tool. Thanks!
The story of how and why I started Onward Mountain Guides this year. 🧭
🆕📝 Delta of the Defaults (2024)
Taking stock of the apps I'm using these days. 📱
Dan Moren on one of his favorite hardware picks of 2024:
We’d previously put in Lutron Caseta switches when we did our renovations after buying the house, and while they’ve been great, my one complaint was they look a bit nerdy with all the various buttons. Good news: Lutron is now also offering the Diva Smart Dimmer, which works just as well as the classic Caseta switches, but looks like your standard “paddle rocker” switch. I love these; they’re way easier to use by feel and they have a far sleeker look
I concur; the Divas are a notable upgrade in look and feel!
Not that I think anyone will actually join them, but I had some fun putting together “One a Week” and “One a Day” tiers for my supporter page to go along with the prototypical “One a Month”. You get the same stuff (incl. a yearly custom shortcut), but we love each other more. 😆 heydingus.net/club
Why do executives (or regular people, for that matter) continue to post their communications to X? I literally cannot open the links. It’s 2024, loading a webpage should not be this difficult. Post to your own domain! (From this article, btw.)
Federico Viticci: ‘iPad Pro for Everything: How I Rethought My Entire Workflow Around the New 11" iPad Pro’
If you told me years ago that a future story about my iPad Pro usage would wrap up with a section about a pillow and HDR, I would have guessed I’d lost my mind in the intervening years. And here we are.
As he teased this story for months, I couldn’t understand what took so long for Ticci to write up how he does video and audio podcasts from the iPad. Turns out this piece is so much more. Fascinating read.
Chris Murphy descibes the precipice upon which US democracy stands:
[W]hen you start to put a couple of the regime’s political opponents in jail, there are literally just thousands of people who say, You know what, forget it. It’s just not worth it. I think this is important, to oppose Donald Trump, but I got a family at home. I just don’t want to put my name in the mix. And all of a sudden, the bodies that are available for the political opposition are cut in half. […] So even if it’s just Liz Cheney—and it may not be just Liz Cheney—the chilling effect that it has on speech could be fatal.
🔗 Apple Released the Original AirPods Eight Years Ago Today (Hartley Charlton / macrumors.com)
At the time, wireless headphones were already on the market but had not yet reached true mass popularity. AirPods helped redefine the category through their convenience and seamless integration with Apple devices.
AirPods handily best all other accessories, and hold their own on my list of best Apple products of all time.
This internal Shortcuts action appears to have flown the coup! cc: @matthewcassinelli@mastodon.social
I super hope this fixes my issue with missing time chunks in my Micro.blog feed! It’s very close to being my favorite timeline reader. If that bug really is fixed, my final request will be for an option to sort newest posts to bottom. Why don’t all timelines offer this? We read from top to bottom!
3D-printable Mac mini designs, gift-wrapping tips for odd-shaped items, a hilarious video, a reminder about disability and design, stunning Earth photography, Doom running on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, and a case that boosts AirTag battery life.
TIL The Verge is newly available via Apple News+. Maybe I won’t need their subscription after all. 🤷♂️
🔗 ‘Bloomberg: Apple scraps plans to offer iPhone hardware subscription service’ (Chance Miller / 9to5mac.com):
Apple also offers the iPhone Upgrade Program, which is backed by Citizens Bank and splits iPhone purchases into installments across two years, with the option to upgrade after one year. You can also finance iPhone purchases with Apple Card Monthly Installments.
But these programs require you to connect the phone to a major carrier at checkout. No smaller (cheaper) carriers allowed, which is a big ol' bummer.
🔗 Iconic Flint Center undergoes demolition five years after closing (Stephanie Lam / mercurynews.com)
An iconic performing arts theater where Apple co-founder Steve Jobs unveiled the first Macintosh computer in 1984 is being reduced to rubble, five years after the college district that owns the space closed it down due to high renovation costs.
‘Twas also the stage upon which the Apple Watch debuted. I feel just a little sad about this little bit of history going away.
Alright, I’ll share my Raycast stats too. I’m definitely not taking full advantage of it.
Well… our wood stove is “unsafe”, and our roof, which we were told had been recently replaced when we bought the house last year, is “terrible” per the chimney sweep. Oh, and the pest guy won’t return my texts about the squirrels in my roof. 2025 is shaping up to be a pricey year for home repairs.
It’s weird how much people’s kids look like them. A bit narcissistic, don’t you think? I mean, c’mon, have a little imagination.
Victoria Song: ‘Meta rolls out live AI, live translations, and Shazam to its smart glasses’
Live AI allows you to naturally converse with Meta’s AI assistant while it continuously views your surroundings. For example, if you’re perusing the produce section at a grocery store, you’ll theoretically be able to ask Meta’s AI to suggest some recipes based on the ingredients you’re looking at. […]
Meanwhile, live translation allows the glasses to translate speech in real-time between English and Spanish, French, or Italian.
Roughly 30-minute battery life with Live. Not great, but’ll be fun to try!
🔗 Apple TV+ renews hit, world-building drama “Silo” for seasons three and four
Great news! I liked season one, and I love season two! Can’t wait to see more unfold.
Kushaiah Felisilda: ‘A Calendar Shift Experiment’
I’ve always set my calendar to start on Sunday, simply because it’s the default setting on most calendars, both paper ones and digital. Now, I’m experimenting with setting Monday as the start of my week for the next two weeks. I’m curious to see if this change will affect my perspective on the week’s structure.
🎙️ Having heard you say how much you wanted to be a parent someday, I couldn’t be more excited for you, @imyke@myke.social (and Adina). I’ve loved hearing all the baby talk. It really has been quite the year! 🥹 Good luck! 🤞 overcast.fm/+AADAvLi-…
🎙️ One of the best explainers for the three types of fun I’ve heard to date. And I like what he says at the end; it’s in type 3 that you really grow. dirtbagdiaries.com