Traveling to Egypt and Jordan: Some of My Random Travel Notes

  • One of my favourite things while flying is seeing a plane go in the opposite direction at a distance, ideally close enough to feel the raw speed of the plane added to mine.

  • I loved Egypt, but the chaos of Cairo can be overwhelming and tiring. I prefer the relative calm of Jordan’s cities. I may be getting too old for some scenery.

  • WhatsApp is a dominant communication platform worldwide, except in North America. Too bad it is so awkward to navigate and is owned by Meta.

  • Taking pictures of the scene from my hublot is a good time killer and can produce fascinating images. I have so many of them.

  • Posted many pictures on my personal and custom-made photo-sharing website, and it worked beautifully. Of course, a selection of my photos was also posted on my Glass page. More to come in the next few weeks.

  • My personal custom-built RSS web app proved to be super handy when I wanted a quick overview of the news.

  • These notes were gathered and written using Raycast for iOS before being edited and published. Raycast > Tot, in my opinion.

  • I encountered several planes equipped with electronically activated polarization shields on the windows, which produce unusual lighting effects both outside and inside the cabin. Some shields do not completely block external light. Additionally, these shields are centrally controlled during flight, which can be frustrating.

  • Most airports remain and will always be customer-hostile and unfriendly. It seems to be getting worse every year, everywhere, as air travel continues to increase.

  • I brought my newly acquired Ubiquity Travel Router with me, but it was of no use; all hotel Wi-Fi, including the cruise ship, allowed many devices to connect with a single activation.

  • Taking a break from the intensity of the digital world is salutary. But I’m glad to be back online now.

Having a great time in Egypt so far. Internet connectivity is spotty which explains why I’m not posting more photos. You will be flooded in due time!

Anthropic cements its position as the not-OpenAI with no-ads pledge — The Register

Anthropic has committed to keeping its Claude AI model ad-free, emphasizing user trust and avoiding potential conflicts of interest that could arise from advertising. The company believes serving ads in chat sessions could introduce incentives that might compromise the AI’s helpfulness and neutrality, distinguishing itself from rivals like OpenAI who are exploring ad-supported models. This decision aligns with Anthropic’s principle-driven approach and focus on maintaining user privacy and genuine assistance.

How long will it last? In today’s tech world, cynicism prevails.

“Today, Apple is proud to report a remarkable, record-breaking quarter, with revenue of $143.8 billion, up 16 percent from a year ago and well above our expectations,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone had its best-ever quarter driven by unprecedented demand, with all-time records across every geographic segment, and Services also achieved an all-time revenue record, up 14 percent from a year ago. We are also excited to announce that our installed base now has more than 2.5 billion active devices, which is a testament to incredible customer satisfaction for the very best products and services in the world.”

How can Apple think they are doing anything wrong with these numbers? You tell me.

Manton Reece on Aeronaut

Trying out Aeronaut for Bluesky. Very nice. I don’t actually visit Bluesky directly that often because I post to it and follow within Micro.blog. Good to have a dedicated app for things like feeds, though.

Tried it for five minutes on my Mac. Nice, indeed. Certainly better than Bluesky’s offering which is iPhone only. The only thing is that I never quite remember what to use as my Bluesky username.

Yesterday night I installed and configured ClawdBot on my M4 Mac mini sitting on my home office desk. Now, I’m remote-controlling it with Discord, preferring it over Telegram or iMessage because Discord support in ClawdBot felt more mature. I can ask simple things and get simple answer. It’s exciting. Yet, it was more complicated than I originally thought. ClawdBot is a nerdy thing for really nerd people. More comments about ClawdBot can be found on MacStories.

I see a lot of potential for learning and testing new things with ClawdBot. I’ll probably dedicate a lot of my spare time to it in the coming months. But for now, because I’m very close to leaving for a vacation trip to Egypt, I’ll put that aside for a few weeks.