This Is My Last

Just finished reading: The Ending Writes Itself, by Evelyn Clarke. This novel is advertised as a mystery. "Debut mystery", no less. Well, I am not sure what genre this novel fits in, but I don't quite see this as a mystery. Yes, the identity of the murderer -- there is a murderer, and you can tell there will be a murderer just by looking at the book cover, so it's not really a spoiler -- is not revealed until the last chapters. But the story doesn't seem to invite the reader to figure out who…

Bridges were definitely burnt. ~ Link: Tech (Or Political?) Choices, by Rodrigo Ghedin, Manual do Usuário

Pei-Jeane: The only way out is through. I know this. ~ Link: Sitting in My Discomfort, by Pei-Jeane, Pretend Typewriter

Faster chips, higher price, same look. If you are in U.S. or the other 29 countries and regions, you can pre-order while Mr Tim Cook is still the CEO, and the computers will start to ship when Mr John Ternus is CEO. Specifically, staring Sept 22. Also, according to Mr John Gruber, Apple confirmed that the new computers will ship with macOS 27. So, asked will macOS 27 also be released to the public by Sept 22? "Apple just sort of smiled and said they had no comment". And, no, I am not making any…

Links. We have links. Links are back. Imagine an Organism, by David Lobina, Inference When My Husband Died in a Surfing Accident, Life As I Knew It Was Destroyed. Ten Years On, This Is What I’ve Learned About Grief, by Hannah Richell, The Guardian The Curious Case of the Missing Couscous, by Arthur Asseraf, Vittles

Apple has reversed its decision to move Hide My Email addresses to a separate private.icloud.com domain that would have make it easier for others to differentiate between ‘real’ and pseudo email addresses. Why was this even considered, from a company that prides itself on privacy for customers? No idea, but according to John Gruber sources, it wasn’t anything like an unanimous decision inside Apple, and customer feedback has helped pushed Apple to not go ahead. ~ Links: Update: New domain for…

David Nield: Six decades on, the view has lost none of its impact. ~ Link: Five Images, Six Decades: Capturing the Iconic “Earthrise” Photo, by David Nield, Nautilus

3D? ScreenX? Ultra AVX? WTF? ~ Link: Movie Theater Headache, by Ariadne, Noisy Deadlines

The read-it-later apps seems to be making a comeback? Instapaper recently refreshed its user interface, while there is a new entry to the market from Matt Birchler called Quick Reads. Did Apple make any improvements to its Reading List feature in Safari? I don’t recall any. ~ Link: On Integrating Quick Reads Into My Digital Ecosystem, by JF Martin, Numeric Citizen Space

Nikhil's Blog: What you love becomes your identity. This can also become a trap that prevents you from exploring anything else. I agree. This little (new) corner of the web is one of the result. :-) ~ Link: Practice Living Without What You Love, by Nikhil's Blog

Of all the podcasts in my subscriptions, there is one that I've unsubscribed and resubscribed so many times that I've lost count: BBC's Global News Podcast. There will be days when I think that I want to keep up with world affairs in my ears, and I will go subscribe to this podcast. Then, after a few days, I will be tired of all the bad things that is happening around the world that I will go unsubscribe. Repeat this verse. Yes, there is a happy-pod episode every week with this podcast. The…

When Apple TV+ first launched, it seems Apple is chasing after HBO by emphasising on quality over quantity. Throw money at talent, focus on storytelling. That strategy seems to be working -- except that it still need to figure out how to bring in subscribers despite winning at Emmys and Oscars. I don't know what Apple is thinking when they started chasing after sports. It doesn't seem to be going for quality, and it doesn't seem to be going after quantity like ESPN. And whatever the strategy…

I do enjoy a cup of tea from time to time. My happy tea is camomile. Tea Is So Hot Right Now, by Bettina Makalintal, Eater Where's The Beef?, by Erin Somers, Harper's Magazine Should You Believe in Fate?, by Joshua Rothman, New Yorker

Ashlie D. Stevens: And increasingly, there is an app for almost every place we eat. The fast-food standards have them, of course, but so do regional chains and neighborhood coffee shops: download this, order ahead, skip the line, collect points, save your usual. The bargain is convenience, and often it genuinely is convenient. But increasingly, buying a sandwich or a cup of coffee also means initiating an ongoing relationship — one in which the restaurant gets a permanent little doorway into…

Apple Music will be adding labels to songs that are "materially generated using AI" later this year. I hope that customers will be able to filter off these 'songs' easily in all places. ~ Link: Apple Music to Add Labels for AI-Generated Music Later This Year, by Kristin Robinson, Billboard

I once read a novel about a cartographer that didnt know that trap streets in maps — intentional fake streets and the likes to catch plagiarisms. That immediate pulled me out of the story and I couldn’t suspend my disbelief anymore, and I abandoned reading that novel shortly afterwards. I am now currently reading a novel where an aspiring young writer — haven’t published, but already with an agent — haven’t heard of the term “MacGuffin. I will continue reading this novel because it is an…

Matthew Haughey: The car industry accidentally did something I've always wanted to see, which was to release basically the same car under two brands and models, with one major consumer-facing difference. It's kind of remarkable how good of a experimental design this is, since the performance and driving characteristics of both cars are identical, but drivers in one model get a major phone integration the others do not. No, I am also not surprised. ~ Link: The Car Industry A/B Tested Selling a…

I like eggs. I like all sort of eggs. Hard-boiled, sunny-side-up-ed, poached, fried, omelette-d, scrambled, salted, steamed, benedicted, soft-boiled, and even centuried. I used to dislike century eggs, but as I get older, I get to appreciate its taste and texture. Especially if it is in a bowl of pipping hot porridge. I believe eggs is a dish that really can’t go wrong. It will take an extraordinary effort to mess up cooking eggs. It is my comfort food, and even an amateurish cook like me can’t…

Besides fines and restrictions on what gatekeepers can do, IMHO, regulators and lawmakers need to create a landscape to encourage new competitors and startups. Over time, fines become just the cost of doing business. Restrictions become red tapes. And only big companies can afford the high cost and red tapes, and they become even more entrenched. ~ Link: Brussels Changes Gear on Big Tech Enforcement, by Jacob Parry, Politico

This is still not a link blog, but here are some links that I've enjoyed, that I am delighted to share them with, and which I have nothing else to add. Adventures in Utopia, by Carline Tromp, translated by Caroline Waight, The Dial On That Disgraceful, Disreputable, (Wonderful) Form of Punctuation: The Parenthesis, by Florence Hazrat, Literary Hub The Pleasures of Censorship, by Adam Phillips, Salmagundi Is Immortality Possible?, by Elena Kazamia, Nautilus

Looks like Apple and the EU both have something they can finally agree on and can live with. Apple has never, as far as I can tell, sold iPhones as general-purpose computers, and Apple should be able to sell things that are not general-purpose computers. A general-purpose computer that is free and pocket-able is still yet to be available. We are so beyond waiting for the year of linux on the desktop. (Of course, in this economy of sky-high RAM and chip prices, don't expect anything new from…

Michelle Barker: And maybe there will be a resurgence, as more people eschew the algorithms, remember the joy of coding, of craft. From the charred remains, green shoots. New life. Maybe we’ll wake up to find little websites everywhere. ~ Link: Little Websites Everywhere., by Michelle Barker

I enjoying walking. I enjoy just moving my legs, one at a time. A while back, I realized (don’t we all at some point in our lives) that I may not be able to walk well in the future. So, while I still can, maybe I should do more walking. In an unrelated event, I’ve also decided to eat less daily. I am ‘old’ now, and I think a little hunger here and there may be good for my health. Besides, I’ll have less money to spent as I reach retirement, so why not start practicing? And the unintended…

Time for some links, time for some reading? Democracy v the Machine: the Birth of the Digital Age and the Warnings That Were Ignored, by Jill Lepore, The Guardian The Great Romance Slump, by Faith Hill, The Atlantic Your Friendly Neighborhood Hooters, by Hannah Goldfield, New Yorker

Time to, once again, update all your operating systems. ~ Links: Apple Backpatches Beta Security Fixes into macOS 26.6.2, iOS/iPadOS 26.6.1, and iOS/iPadOS 18.7.10, by Adam Engst, TidBITS Hackers Exploit macOS Screen Sharing Flaw to Deploy Monero Miner, by Bill Toulas, BleepingComputer

It seems there will be AirPods with cameras attached, as MacRumors discovered a video inside a macOS beta demonstrating Visual Intelligence. My first thought: I hope this will not greatly affect my future AirPods purchasing budget. ~ Link: Apple's Camera-Equipped AirPods Confirmed: See Them in Action, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Spotify, it seems, will be adding a button to skip all the ads in a podcast — except for ads sold by Spotify. I have no idea how good a podcast player is Spotify. I have no desire to find out. ~ Link: Spotify's Unskippable Podcast Ads, Plus Could They Skip Yours Automatically?, by James Cridland, Podnews

We are all newbies at being adults. It’s just that some has been a newbie for a little longer than others. We all are newbies at being of age 21. Or 35. Or 56. So do be kind. We are all newbies. We are doing a lot of the things for the very first time. Musings from a Tangled Mind: There I stood, holding a pack of brand-name ultra-soft toilet paper in my right hand and the store-brand double-roll in my left. And I was seriously weighing the financial trade-offs. […] That was it. That was the…

Yes, for all the travels I have made with my family, we did scheduled visits to supermarkets, small and big. And, when available, we also visited wet markets and farmers markets. During the last trip, we bought noodle sauces, potato chips, and soup ingredients. Flew them all the way home, and have some delicious after-vacation meals. (Yes, potato chips can be meals.) ~ Link: [Why Travellers Are Obsessed With Foreign Supermarkets]{https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260811-the-supermarket-is-bec…

The way forward is to make more things that are complex simple, and more things that are impossible possible. ~ Link: WEBMASTER@ A Manifesto for Everyone, by Brennan Kenneth Brown