thermal bug

Jim Dalrymple has the scoop on the firmware fix for the overheating MacBook Pros (via Daring Fireball):

“Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we’ve identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro,” An Apple representative told me. “A bug fix is included in today’s macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update and is recommended. We apologize to any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new systems. Customers can expect the new 15-inch MacBook Pro to be up to 70% faster, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to be up to 2X faster, as shown in the performance results on our website.”

That was quick.

Microsoft Surface is the billionaire cockroach that won’t die.

From Wired: Surface Go Is Microsoft’s Big Bet on a Tiny-Computer Future:

Panos Panay is the betting type. You can see the evidence in Microsoft’s Building 37, where two $1 bills stick out from beneath a Surface tablet sitting on a shelf.

When I ask Panay about the dollars during a recent visit to Microsoft, he says it was a wager he made a few years back on a specific product. I ask if it was a bet on Surface RT, the very first Surface product Microsoft made, and he seems genuinely surprised. “I would have lost that bet, and I’m going to win this one,” he says. “It’s about a product that’s in market right now.” And that’s all he’ll volunteer.

Panay, Microsoft’s chief product officer, isn’t there to talk about the ghosts of Surface’s past, or even the present. Panay wants to talk about his next big bet in the Surface product lineup: the brand-new Surface Go. But to call it “big” would be a misnomer, because the Surface Go was designed to disappear.

I have to hand it to the people at Microsoft. They won’t give up on Surface. You cannot give up in the hardware game when you have billions of dollars in your pockets already.

I’ve thought Panos Panay is particularly adorable ever since he introduced the Surface Book back in 2015. Look at him, the little-big engine that could. You get excited at your show-and-tell day at school! Yeah!

Panos is clearly the right guy for the job, but the real question is whether Surface is the right hardware for the job. I can’t find Microsoft having any meaningful representation on tablet marketshare stats for 2018 (or 2017 or 2016).

But hey, what do I know? If Apple starts screwing up iPads like they’re currently screwing up their MacBook Pros, maybe Microsoft has a shot at getting in the race (just kidding, they don’t).

“No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant”

From the Editorial Board of The New York Times:

The last time President Trump claimed that “both sides” were responsible for bad behavior, it didn’t go well.

That was nearly a year ago, after a march of neo-Nazis descended into violence and a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of peaceful protesters, killing a woman.

On Monday, Mr. Trump again engaged in immoral equivalence, this time during a gobsmacking news conference after his meeting in Helsinki, Finland, with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. A reporter referred to last week’s indictments of 12 Russian military officials for a coordinated cyberattack on the 2016 election and asked Mr. Trump if he held Russia responsible. “I hold both countries responsible,” Mr. Trump said.

Even in a presidency replete with self-defeating moments for the United States, Mr. Trump’s comments on Monday, which were broadcast live around the world, stand out.

The title of this opinion piece is ‘Why Won’t Donald Trump Speak for America?’ and they don’t answer that question because no one but Trump knows, yet.

Categories:

Politics

Instapaper

Instapaper is going independent (via 9to5Mac):

Today, we’re announcing that Pinterest has entered into an agreement to transfer ownership of Instapaper to Instant Paper, Inc., a new company owned and operated by the same people who’ve been working on Instapaper since it was sold to betaworks by Marco Arment in 2013. The ownership transfer will occur after a 21 day waiting period designed to give our users fair notice about the change of control with respect to their personal information.

We want to emphasize that not much is changing for the Instapaper product outside the new ownership. The product will continue to be built and maintained by the same people who’ve been working on Instapaper for the past five years. We plan to continue offering a robust service that focuses on readers and the reading experience for the foreseeable future.

Lastly, we want to express our deepest gratitude to Pinterest for being such great stewards of the product over the past two years. With their support, we rebuilt search, introduced an extension for Firefox, made a variety of optimizations for the latest mobile operating systems and more. Our focus is providing a great reading application to our users, we appreciated the opportunity to do that at Pinterest, and are excited to continue our work.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns please let us know by sending an email to support@help.instapaper.com or replying directly to this email.

– Instapaper Team

When I got my iPhone in 2008 one of my first wishes was an app that let me read articles from the Web while I was in the subway without Internet access. Then Instapaper came out and made my day.

I’m happy Pinterest sold Instapaper. They haven’t updated their own service, let alone Instapaper. Seriously, Pinterest has been coasting for at least 3 years with no feature updates.

Shame on them.

Categories:

Software

Blindspotting

Last week I went to an advanced screening of Blindspotting.

It was written by and stars Oakland natives Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal and was directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada. It’s an honest look into the hipsterification of Oakland and the experiences of both locals and transplants. Intense & hilarious. I highly recommend you see it if you can.

I was lucky enough to see Blindspotting in a Dolby Atmos theatre at the Dolby headquarters in San Francisco thanks to my wife who works at Dolby. Not only was the sound quality incredible, but the picture was insane too (neither my wife nor Dolby paid me to say that).

playing to an empty room

The Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one:

“It’s kind of exhausting playing to an empty room day in and day out with no results,” one Redditor wrote on a now-deleted thread on r/Twitch.

“It’s fucking hard to stay positive when doing this 5 days a week when it feels like nobody drops by,” another Redditor wrote in a different thread, after spending months streaming to nobody. “I’ve come to a realization that streaming just isn’t working for me.”

“Been streaming on and off for 4+ years and everytime I come back I go weeks where the majority of time I’m streaming to no one,” another Redditor wrote. “It’s tough.”

I think about this story in the context of this website and my podcast. I maintain both of them more for myself than to have what I do seen and heard by others. Sure, I’d love to have an audience that grows every day, but I do these things as hobbies and mental exercises more than anything else.

I’ve become a better writer from writing here since 2006, and I’ve become a better speaker from doing a podcast semi-regularly since 2014.

The same goes for my Instagram account. The fact that I have around 1,100 people interested in my photos street cars is great, but I was doing it way before Instagram existed (how about me with a 2.1 MPX Canon PowerShot ELPH S100 on the streets of Manhattan in 2000).

Clearly some Twitch streamers enjoy the sense of community they get from it, but for the streamers who don’t enjoy the actual process of streaming, then maybe it’s not the right hobby for them.

Categories:

Community

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Russia’s got the clearance to run the interference.

12 Russian Agents Indicted in Mueller Investigation:

Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, on Friday announced new charges against 12 Russian intelligence officers accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The announcement came just a few days before President Trump is expected to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Helsinki, Finland.

The 11-count indictment includes charges of conspiracy by the Russian intelligence officials against the United States, money laundering and attempts to break into state boards of elections and other government agencies.

The indictment is part of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. It’s become increasingly obvious over the last 2 years Russians have been interfering in American politics for quite some time. The Mueller investigation is just further confirmation.

A good trick I learned when listening to Trump is just think of the opposite of what he says to know what’s really going on. If he says the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt, it’s not a witch hunt. If he says Putin is a strong leader, he’s really a scumbag. If he claims he didn’t criticize British prime minister Theresa May yesterday, he did criticize her.

Categories:

Politics, Tromp

Restaurant as Workspace

Nellie Bowles looks into the rise of restaurants in big cities being converted into co-working spacing during off-hours:

The company that laid the extension cords and power strips across Elite Cafe’s copper tables is called Spacious. Since it was started two years ago, Spacious has converted 25 upscale restaurants in New York and San Francisco into weekday work spaces. Membership, which allows entry into any location, is $99 a month for a year, or $129 by the month. With $9 million in venture capital it received in May, Spacious plans to expand this year to up to 100 spaces. A restaurant makes for the perfect conversion, the Spacious team argues. Bars become standing desks. Booths become conference rooms. The lighting tends to be nicer, less harsh and fluorescent, than an office, and the music makes for a nice ambience.

Originally, the founders of Spacious thought they would have to sell restaurateurs on the idea. Instead, restaurants, struggling to pay rent and wages and frustrated with disappointing lunch traffic, are coming to them, eager to strike deals for a slice of the membership dues. Only 5 percent have made the cut to become Spacious spaces, said the company, which is unprofitable.

It’s interesting to see businesses adapting to the changes in industries and technologies. The idea of using restaurant space when meals aren’t being served makes a lot of sense, but I wonder if this business model is a solution or a band-aid.

This article reminds me of a book on my to-read list, Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.

Categories:

Business, Career