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Blank. At first, I thought it was a joke. It’s not.
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Hello, Bluesky. Nice to Meet You.
In my Friday Notes edition #102, I shared my thoughts about my last four months without Twitter and how calm and quiet my digital life has become. I even wrote that I might ignore Bluesky. But that was last week.
Well, it didnāt take long to contradict myself! As you might have guessed, Iām now on Bluesky as @numericcitizen (of course), thanks to a generous donator of an invite link (looking at you @Maique).
Please make no mistake; itās an experiment. Iām not planning to spend too much time on Bluesky, but Iām genuinely curious about its evolution and the traction it gets, if any.
Iām allowing myself to get on board for a simple reason: Manton from Micro.blog added support for cross-posting content to Bluesky. It didnāt take long. For me, itās like getting a seal of approval from him. I highly value his opinion on Bluesky and the open web in general. So, I made the jump without really knowing what to do next except to enable the cross-posting of my content posted on MB.
Now, I wish Bluesky doesnāt get filled up with too many dark clouds. My fingers are crossed.
PS. Iām curious how Micro.blog will push that post onto the Bluesky universe. See you on the other side.
PPS. Iām gathering my thoughts and observations for an upcoming experiment status report. Stay tuned.
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And Just Like That Micro.blog Syncs with Readwise.io
Today, I unexpectedly came across this announcement from Micro.blog: Highlights are now synced to Readwise.io, provided that you have an account with them and that you are on an Micro.blog Premium plan! How cool is that!
I immediately configured my Readwise.io connection in the Bookmarks section and exported past highlights in a CSV file. Next, I tried the feature on an article from MacRumors.
After a few minutes, I could read the archived version of the article and highlight some portions. And sure enough, my highlights were saved to Readwise.io in a snap.
The nice thing is that Inoreader also supports saving my highlights to Readwise.io. Everything going at the same place. Occasionally, I export and then import my highlights into Craft. Readwise remembers the point of my last export session.
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How Amazon put Ukraine’s ‘government in a box’ ā and saved its economy from Russia
Since the day Russia launched its invasion Feb. 24, Amazon has been working closely with the Ukrainian government to download essential data and ferry it out of the country in suitcase-sized solid-state computer storage units called Snowball Edge, then funnelling the data into Amazonās cloud computing system.
As a guy working in IT for nearly 30 years, I can imagine how complex and critical this project was for Ukraine. Transferring a vast amount of data doesn’t happen overnight. Preparing a landing zone in a cloud provider is a complex project. AWS’s (Amazon) contribution is essential, and I wonder if their contribution covers the subscription fees too. I wish I could work on this kind of project myself.
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Thereās a lot of talk about how AI can get facts wrong. Thatās fair, but in my experience itās correct most of the time. Even when itās slightly off, thereās usually some useful truth in the answer. Much more frustrating is voice assistants who canāt even begin to give an answer. Source: Manton Reece
You may be mind blown or not with ChatGPT and the like, but comparing these tools to Siri’s capabilities makes Siri look really bad. Not sure if comparing Alexa makes any difference. These assistant were leapfrogged.
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Arm-based notebooks will gain share over Intel and AMD, almost doubling their shipment share to 25% by 2027 from 14% today.
Arm-based PC SoCs are highly customizable. Unlike x86 CPUs, which are designed to be general-purpose processors, Arm-based SoCs can be tailored to specific use cases. This means that SoCs can be designed with a greater number of high-performance CPU cores and highly integrated memory, enabling them to compete with x86 CPUs
Arm-based SoCs offer several advantages over x86 CPUs, including lower power consumption and improved thermal efficiency. Additionally, their integrated AI-feature cores make them superior to x86 CPUs.
One question: how is Intel going to fight back against ARM? Is this even possible without starting over? ARM advances are, simply put: massive.
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BasicAppleGuy writes about his website turning three:
Today marks the third anniversary of basicappleguy.com. A challenging but also very successful year; I want to continue the tradition of recapping the year and thanking you all for the tremendous support.
I worked from home for the first two years of the site because of the pandemic. That meant 19,200 minutes saved on commuting each year alone, which afforded me hundreds of hours to write and work on new wallpapers. This also meant I had around-the-clock access to a Mac (and a good internet connection), giving me abundant opportunities to work on projects with much more freedom. Source: 3 ā Basic Apple Guy
His blog post resonates with me a lot. Since March 13, 2020, I have worked from home, and I also save a lot of commute time. I couldn’t do all that content creation that I did since then if I was returning to the office downtown. I’m super appreciative of that, and I hope that it will stay that way. I don’t see why it would change.
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Apple Entering the Journal App Landscape Soon? Hell Yeah, Count Me In!
As reported by the Wall Street Journal (since itās paywalled, look at MacRumors report instead), Apple is supposedly working on its own journaling application. Code named Ā«Ā JurassicĀ Ā», many interesting details are emerging from this report.
As an avid user of Dayone (read Ā«Ā Documenting My Numeric Life With DayoneĀ Ā»). , I find the prospect of having Apple entering the journaling apps landscape quite exciting. The idea of using journaling to help users with mental health issues is pretty clever. There is so much information available on our devices from which, I guess, we can infer some mental states. Iām guessing machine learning can be of some tremendous help here. Coupled with Appleās stance on privacy, this provides a potentially very compelling story for a lot of people. Me included. Yet, some people could find this move to be crossing a line that is not acceptable for them. We will see.
The WSJ story is referring to very specific detailed aspects of the rumoured app. For example, journaling suggestions would be based on call history and iMessage conversations, and be ephemeral. After four week they would vanish from suggestions. Iām guessing this would help automate some aspects of daily journaling.
I asked this question to ChatGPT: Ā«Ā _Is the young generation into journal as much as older generations?Ā _Ā». Here is what it has to say:
_Ā There is no definitive answer to this question, as attitudes towards journaling can vary widely among individuals of all ages. However, some studies suggest that younger generations may be more likely to engage in forms of expressive writing such as blogging or social media updates, which could be seen as a form of journaling._
The debate might still be out if the youngsters generation is very into the writing journey, but having some part of the journaling automated would alleviate some rebarbative aspects of maintaining a journal.
Can you imagine having the journal app assembling photos, messages, phone calls, geo locations into pre populated journaling suggestions? Wow. Iām really looking forward into that one.
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I read the “Making Something Wonderful” book during my vacations. It’s full of great reading moments, for sure. Albeit not as personal as I would have liked, that last picture of Steve Jobs glasses took me off-guard and got me on the verge of crying. Go and find them.
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the leaker also claimed that the “Action” button will replace the volume up button for taking photos in the Camera app, with force-sensitivity enabling a light press to auto-focus the camera, a hard press to take a picture, and a hard/long press to record video.
Ok, this is a rumour, but it’s an interesting one. If Apple does this, it would bring the iPhone 15 Pro / Max closer to traditional camera behaviour. Coupled with the upgraded cameras and possible addition of the periscope lens, Apple seems geared to make the next iPhone iteration another potential winner.
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Just curious here, is anyone paying OpenAI to get one of their apps (like Raycast AI) to work with ChatGPT?
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RIP Twitter 2007-2022 is now live (well, mostly live as tweets are still being processed and imported). Thanks for this @manton!
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Coming back from vacations. š¬ Returning to normal programming this week. Vacations are always a great opportunity to disconnect and let new ideas pop up.
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Still alive. Only on vacation. š
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What I Should Have Done Earlier
Iāve been following the war in Ukraine on a daily basis since the very beginning. Itās an enduring journey, to say the least. Imanyo has many sad and ugly stories and so many images from this conflict. Some of them are powerful symbols of any war’s ugly side. What I should have done was to collect images so I can remember what Ukrainians went (and are still) going through. Historic moments are being played right before our eyes; we should pay attention as they will define the next decades of international relations.
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Brazil's Stupid Suggestion to End Ukrainian War
As reported by The Kyiv Independent, Brazilās proposal to get a peaceful resolution between Russia and Ukraine:
āBrazilās President Luiz InĆ”cio Lula da Silva suggested that Ukraine should be open to the idea of giving up Crimea in exchange for peace with Russia.ā ā Luiz InĆ”cio Lula da Silva
Wow. Thatās quite a suggestion. How can a sound man be so sure and trust Russia to bring peace by giving up a piece of land? Who do they think Putinās Russia is? They already had Crimea, for godās sake!!! It didnāt stop them from invading the rest of the country! Putin and Russia cannot be trusted, now and in the future. I find this proposal utterly irresponsible and lacking any sense of realism. What a clown.
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When AI Failed to Inspire Me
I was looking for inspiration all week to write my next Friday Notes edition. Early morning yesterday, I was still unsure if I could make it, but at lunchtime, I tried ChatGPT with āGive me some blog post ideas about the positive effects on creativity of going on vacation for a weekā. It came back with phrases that looked taken from a travel agency ad. I tried again with different variations of my question. It failed to impress and to inspire me. Iāll pass this weekās edition.
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The Trees of Death
These are the trees of death. This is what I call them. This scene was taken from a video in a combat zone near Bakmut. They all look the same; only the base trunk is standing, and the rest is pulverized with repetitive bombing and shelling. These skeletons of what used to be trees with thinner branches, leaves, and life are now dead in a vegetative expression. Itās all gone now. it will take a generation or two before it comes back. So sad. -
Iām currently testing Little Snitch mini. I had the Little Snitch app on my radar for a while, but this week they released what could be a better & lighter solution for me. The problem? As an IT guy, I like to know what is happening in my machines, and this little piece of well-crafted software could be the answer. So far, I really like what Iām seeing. It makes me think of Flighty from a visual design perspective. It could replace a portion of Stats, an open-source replacement for iStats Menu. Iāll decide once Iām back from vacation.
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Still in my spring cleanup phase, Iām archiving all my bookmarks and references to build a Hugo-based static website. Iām happy to keep my focus on content instead of trying to understand and configure a web site built on Hugo tech.
