Dawn

Holy hell, we actually made it! After 4 years, the Trump presidency ended in a way that was fairly predictable, even if we didn’t know the specifics of how it’d go down. It’s really heartbreaking to think about what we got ourselves into, but this is what happens when you elect an incompetent conman with […]

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The Sedition Caucus

The New York Times has compiled a list of the Senators and Representatives who objected to certifying the results of the election.

We should not forget these cowards who insist on objecting to this election. None of them explicitly asked for what happened, but they are complicit in the events at the Capitol because they’re consistently misleading their base with lies & conspiracy theories because they think it’s politically advantageous to keep that group riled up. Senator Romney said it well yesterday – true leadership is telling hard truths.

Barry Loudermilk, my representative, is on the Sedition Caucus list and I look forward to working tirelessly to run him out of office.

Instapaper Season

With the next 2 weeks off of work, it’s one of my favorite times of the year – the season where I clean out hundreds of unread items in my Instapaper queue. I’ve been using Instapaper since it launched over a decade ago, and it’s been one of my most used apps since. Over the […]

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Unfriending Facebook

So, I finally deleted my Facebook account. This was something I’ve been batting around for what seems like years, but after about 6 months of having my account deactivated, I pressed the button earlier today and it felt good. So, why did I pull the plug? In my opinion, Facebook is bad for our society […]

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The M1 Macs

From Daring Fireball:

What you need to understand is that the best aspects of these Macs aren’t benchmarkable. It’s about how nice they are. The cooling system never making any noise doesn’t show up in a benchmark. I suppose you could assign it a decibel value in an anechoic chamber, but silent operation, and a palm rest that remains cool to the touch even under heavy load, aren’t quantities. They’re qualities. They’re just nice.

So far it appears that the new M1 Macs are a performance, efficiency and UX win. They’re an improvement in nearly every way, yet within the same enclosure as before.

The webcams still stink, however.

Overall, this is a great review of the entire experience of using  these new Macs and it has me very excited to upgrade whenever I end up buying a new machine.

Turning the Page

The past week has felt like a year, but we’re finally at a point where we can start talking about the future. Trump has been voted out of office, and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be leading the charge. Biden’s speech last night was workmanlike. He hit all of the right notes about being […]

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Google discontinues its Google Nest Secure alarm system

From The Verge:

Google isn’t totally out of smart home security, though. It still sells video doorbells, security cameras, smoke alarms, and more.

For now.

Unless you’re using something that is absolutely mission critical to Google, prepare to have the rug pulled out from under you. Good on them for continuing to support the platform for now but you can already see the “sunset” blog post 12 months from now.

The HomePod Video

I’ve owned a lot of smart speakers in the past few years but I think the device I’ve enjoyed the most is the Google Nest Hub (I think that’s what they’re calling it this year). It does a few things really well: Music playback control Smart home controls Can be a video casting target, also […]

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Battle for the Soul of the Nation

This is one of Biden’s better speeches I’ve heard in some time. He’ll never be mistaken for the great orators of this or any generation but it’s so refreshing to hear someone earnestly speaking about how to heal the divisions in our country and represent all of us.

Safari 14 Extension Icons

Yesterday, alongside all of the iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/watchOS releases, Apple released Safari 14 for the Mac. The headline features are under the hood performance, tons of privacy enhancements, better tab management, tab start page improvements, site translation, and WebExtension API support. These are all great and so far I’m quite pleased with the features I’ve run across. […]

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