FREN

#FF00AA


28 mar. 2024

I don’t do enough photography these days to justify buying it right now, but the idea of a management app that can handle both iCloud Photos and local files in the same interface is very tempting.

Nitro® for macOS

So absurd in 2024, but so beautiful. I have a note at the top of my Notion that I need to design myself a round seal. For no practical use whatsoever.

何もない金属面から文字が現れる新しい印鑑を作るプロセス。1つ16万円も

👁 岩井プレス株式会社☎️ TEL:0554-21-5000🏠 http://iwai-press.co.jp/🛍️ https://hobby-metal.com/海外向けEC https://hobbymetal-japan.com/products/mirain🚩 https://maps.app….


27 mar. 2024

Playing with FrameMaker in NeXTstep in my browser is wild. I dreamed so hard of these machines back then 👨‍🦳

At one point I even made a Windows app that displayed a NeXT menu and vertical dock, with the proper style and controls. The menu didn't really do anything, but the dock did launch apps you could define in an ini file 🥲

Maybe it would still run — unlike a Mac app compiled three years ago — but I have no idea where it might be.

Paul Haddad :tapbots_logo: (@paul@tapbots.social)

Attached: 1 image This is pretty cool. https://infinitemac.org/1994/NeXTSTEP%203.3?saved_hd=false

Laser engraving looks so cool, I want one 🥺

Laser Marking 3d Printed Parts

I wanted to use my fiber laser to mark 3d printed parts. I tested out pretty much every filament type I had and figured out all the right settings so you do…

@orion@hci.social

I made an HTML/DOM viewer you can paste into your console to view or debug any website in 3D. Choose from random/gradient/clear colors or whether layers have sides.

You can save it as a bookmarklet so it’s 1 click away. It’s just a tiny IIFE JS function.

3D DOM viewer, copy-paste this into your console to visualise the DOM topographically.

3D DOM viewer, copy-paste this into your console to visualise the DOM topographically. - DOM3D.js

@waxy@xoxo.zone

Infinite Mac adds NeXT emulation: making an important part of computer history easily accessible, go try out Tim Berners-Lee’s original WorldWideWeb browser

Infinite Mac: Turning To The Dark Side


26 mar. 2024

@ismh@eworld.social

I had forgotten about the “New” ribbon.

sam henri gold (@samhenrigold@hachyderm.io)

Attached: 1 image “it’s okay, the original duolingo icon can’t hurt you” are you absolutely sure about that???


25 mar. 2024

I’ve just realized that writing custom Arduino code to control RGB lights with an ESP32 microcontroller must be the most fun I’ve had programming in years 😐

Nick Lockwood (@nicklockwood@mastodon.social)

In principle Picotron represents everything I loved about programming when I first got into it. It was an instabuy for me, and I spent a pleasant afternoon reading the docs like 🥹 And yet… I can’t muster any enthusiasm to make games for it. I suspect it’s because on some level it feels like playing pretend at programming instead of doing it for real. I truly wish that computers were still simple, understandable machines like they used to be, I really do. But you can’t go home again.

I’ve been watching Outer Wilds videos again (🥹) because it's been mentioned several times in relation to Pacific Drive (still can't bring myself to deal with the grind in that game) and here's an odd thing: I can't find anyone even discussing the idea of modding ray-traced lighting into it.

I'm not saying I want it, I have no idea if it would look good or be playable, but isn't it a bit weird to have a game that no one’s trying to RTX up?

@carnage4life@mas.to

Apple’s greatest superpower has been its ability to go all in on supplication to the Chinese government while receiving minimal blowback in the US. There is effectively a proxy war happening with tech companies as the pawns and Tim Cook plays both sides admirably well.

I might be underestimating how much of a pain it is to develop UI within a game engine. But then, the GM controls don’t actually *have* to be in the game engine. So it’s even better: outsource that part to desktop app developers and you won’t have to do any UI at all! The game engine already has to receive world events from netcode, doesn’t it?

Just watched a video presentation for Starship Simulator that mentions a “DM mode” (as in, a dungeon master taking control of events) and started thinking — *any* game that supports multiplayer should have that!

You’ve created the world, the mechanics, you have a working network layer. Pretty much all that’s missing is a big chunk of UI — and I know game developers hate UI, but that’s still relatively little work for something that could add so much value and longevity to the game.


24 mar. 2024

I’ve long been annoyed by Notion’s special handling for GitHub links that refuses to create a regular banner with title and description. (I don’t understand how they could think that was a good idea, but since their pivot to enterprise they’re not interested in feedback from regular paying customers so I haven’t tried emailing them about that.)

I've just accidentally discovered you get a proper banner if you paste a link to the README.md file instead of the whole project 🎉

I’d completely forgotten that the iOS dock had the same glossy shelf look as OS X, before the Great Flattening 😢

@ironicsans@mastodon.social

An interview with the NY Times accessibility visuals editor has this exchange which is probably also useful to keep in mind when writing alt text on here.

An Editor Who Makes Times Visuals Accessible to All

Jaime Tanner, The New York Times’s first accessibility visuals editor, wants to remove barriers to make sure readers with disabilities can engage with Times visual journalism.

I love that she has time to explain what the system is doing while waiting for it to reply 🙃

And I guess, since the LLM delay isn’t deterministic, they couldn’t time her speech precisely to fill the gaps, so sometimes it starts answering while she’s still talking and sometimes there’s an awkward pause as she waits.

Also… it didn't occur to anyone to mic the device separately?

What is Ai Pin?

Humane founders Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri give an overview of Ai Pin and talk about where we’re going next. Order your Ai Pin today, receive it in…

I have zero interest in retro-style games, but this thing looks so cute.

I’ve been feeling very nostalgic lately of old pixelated interfaces, and it took me some time to figure out why. The blandness and shapelessness of modern UI design has gotten quite dispiriting — but the thing is, older designs like Aqua and pre-flat iOS do *feel* outdated, because your sense of style can’t escape the influence of the world you live in. So the only escape is retro design.

Picotron by Lexaloffle

@samhenrigold@hachyderm.io

alright it took the better part of my weekend but I finally back-ported Mastodon to iOS 4


22 mar. 2024

Haven’t tried the demo yet, looks like it might be fun for a while, but mostly I just love the electron-microscope visuals.

Edit: The demo is fun, I’ve wishlisted the game. (It’s a weird choice though, in a game that’s all about ants transporting stuff, to have infinite teleportation between the storage inputs and outputs. But probably necessary to make the game playable.)

NEW Automation Colony Sim!? - Microtopia - Factory Management Base Builder

Microtopia gameplay with Orbital Potato! Become the hive mind of a robot ant colony in Microtopia! Use pheromone trails to create, automate and optimize supp…

Of course, since the Powers That Be have decided that using foreach() on nothing is a sin and it should throw an error instead of sensibly enumerating nothing, it’s probably gonna be less convenient as I’ll have to check rowCount() first 😒

💭 If PHP 8 is removing while(each()) because it's inefficient compared to foreach(), why is PDO still making us iterating through results with a while(fetch())?

💭 Wait a second, I should check before posting…

🗣️ WTF you can do a foreach() directly on the PDOStatement and no one ever told me! Actually, judging from a quick Google search, it seems like no one knows.

So pretty 😍

Jeff Geerling (@geerlingguy@mastodon.social)

Attached: 2 images I spent the past couple months restoring two old Macs. And now I understand why every retro computer enthusiast has racks and racks of old hardware… 😬 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4604SvoyBc #MARCHintosh

@dnanian@mas.to

While I’m talking about something other than music and stuff…let’s talk external SSDs for a minute.

High speed devices demand a lot from their connection. These drives tend to come with very short cables…for a reason. The longer the cable, the higher quality it has to be (often with electronic enhancements).

Don’t replace the cable with a long one “for convenience”. Use the cable that came with the drive, or invest in an expensive Apple cable…don’t snag a $15 random-letter-brand one.

@ianbetteridge@writing.exchange

And here’s the key point. Importantly, the DOJ didn’t have to *legislate* to keep Microsoft out of mobile: the chilling effect of worrying about the antitrust implications slowed the company down enough to make space for others.

@ianbetteridge@writing.exchange

Aside, it’s worth remembering that the DOJ historically loves a quick consent decree over a long trial. What few people remembering is that Microsoft/DOJ kicked off in 1993 and was settled with a consent decree in 1994. It took Microsoft breaking that consent decree to take the case back to court.

Isn’t this just the smartest visual design ever for sneaking through tall grass? (Ignore the fact that the fake leaves look like obvious props, that’s because the game takes place on a theater stage. Of sorts.) Has any game done this before? Not counting Call of Duty’s ghillie suits. (Video from the GamesRadar review.)

Funny how unlocking railways in Satisfactory immediately turned me from making the smallest possible factories and integrating them within the landscape to “fuck it I’ll just bomb this forest to make way for my monumental viaduct.” I didn’t even want to build highways before! This game is a better condensed history of capitalism than I’ve ever seen before.

(I haven’t taken photos of the bridge yet because it’s far from finished, but here’s a view *from* the viaduct. This game is *so pretty*.)


21 mar. 2024

@carnage4life@mas.to

The root of Apple’s recent success Apple to use dominance of the iPhone to push for dominance elsewhere (see Pay, Watch, AirPods). Even then it’s still shockingly bold that Apple told car manufacturers that the only way to keep CarPlay is if they let Apple take over the dash.

@arstechnica@mastodon.social

Hackers can extract secret encryption keys from Apple’s Mac chips

Fixing newly discovered side channel will likely take a major toll on performance.

Unpatchable vulnerability in Apple chip leaks secret encryption keys

Fixing newly discovered side channel will likely take a major toll on performance.


19 mar. 2024

I had to use a character counter.

The first result was a javascript page that only displayed the count once you clicked a button 🙃

It really feels like end-of-days when the website best known for keeping its users anonymous scrambles to amass as much personal identifiable information as possible, presumably to court advertisers and data brokers and extract whatever value they can before imploding.

(I don’t want to use the word — is “e14n” a thing? Oh, turns out it is, marginally. Can’t think of an apter way to work around that word I hate.)

Users ditch Glassdoor, stunned by site adding real names without consent

Anonymous review site Glassdoor now consults public sources to identify users.

I can’t imagine Apple paying Google to feature Gemini on the iPhone. Not only because it would be a rather uncharacteristic admission of failure, but it’s not *that* hard to make an LLM that’s, at least, better than Siri. There are even open-source models out there.

The only way this makes sense to me is if Google provides it for free — both model and server usage — in order to solidify their foothold on the [data] market 🤢

But that would be a damn hard sell for Apple.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

@maletero@mas.to

@rstevens Mac OS9 San Junipero

@rstevens@mastodon.social

if i ever retire, i won't golf. i’ll spend my days in mac os 9.

Well, it’s official, I don’t like PHP 8 and it doesn't like me. They’ve removed all the fun shortcuts and now everything throws a fatal error. (Great for backward compatibility! What is this, Swift?) What's the point of using PHP if it's gonna be as strict as other, better languages?

After Apple deprecated Objective-C, PHP was the last language I didn’t hate working with, and they’ve destroyed that. It’s really time I retire from programming and pick up woodworking 👨‍🦳


18 mar. 2024

I was looking forward to PHP 8 for named function parameters, but sizeof(null) throwing a fatal error is kicking my ass 😭

@alternativeto@mas.to

Russian roulette

@grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.place

Roger Ebert once said “The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don’t wait for her.” I am constantly forgetting this as I procrastinate writing only to discover her again once I start.


17 mar. 2024

TIL about the Great Eastern, an 1858 paddlewheel… ocean liner 😵

Graydon (@graydon@canada.masto.host)

@cstross@wandering.shop It’s a really clear demonstration of target versus metric. SLS wants to keep getting paid and for there to not be significant change, because that’s what an incumbent always wants. There’s a lot of metrics involved, all negotiable, but no target. SpaceX wants to do something that they need the launch capability for. (It doesn’t matter a whole lot that the thing is not well thought out; the example of the steamship GREAT EASTERN comes to mind.) They have a target they can’t negotiate.

Someone ought to make a Vision Pro app that allows you to download any STL from one of the major 3D-printing websites, virtually paint it, and display it anywhere you like in your space. I’d love to be that someone but I can’t imagine developing such an app in the simulator.

Checking Out 7 New 3D Apps on Vision Pro

Join me as I check out some cool new AR apps for #apple #visionpro #techreview Some codes for the first app, Magic Room:KWREKJWE3WEAELF34FETK7AR6YYK6T4MPTMLF…

How can anyone complain about the use of generative AI in development when we’d already gotten to the point where it’s perfectly normal to add an unvetted dependency to your project in order to left-pad a string.

(It only just occurred to me that npm is an automated version of copying and pasting from Stack Overflow.)

Luke Kanies (@lkanies@hachyderm.io)

Attached: 1 image I know almost nothing about npm, but I know this is where this story takes an insane turn that Gödel would be proud and ashamed of. iykyk npm install everything, and the complete and utter chaos that follows https://boehs.org/node/npm-everything

Whoa. I started Satisfactory less than a month ago and it's already second on my most played games on Steam — higher than the games I played while listening to audiobooks during long covid 😳 (Not counting SnowRunner and Forza Horizon that I didn't get on Steam.)

And I've finally stalled a bit, not because I'm bored of the game, but because I've finally unlocked trains and I'm overwhelmed at the thought of designing and building my railway system 😱

This game has no business being so engrossing.


16 mar. 2024

I’ve been waiting forever for someone to release a split gamepad for iPad mini, and it never occurred to me to just… stretch a phone-sized gamepad beyond its limit 😨

Right now I feel a little reluctant to buy a 60 € device for this, but maybe I'll be more confident when I get my 3D printer back and can make some kind of custom housing. Or maybe someone will finally realize there's a market before I get to it. The iPad mini would make such a great Steam Link console!

I turned my massive iPad Pro into a handheld games console - and it’s every bit as weird as it sounds | Stuff

iPad Pro + GameSir X2s: is this Franken-tablet a monstrous mash-up or a mobile marvel?

@tomayac@toot.cafe

You Want `border-color: transparent`, Not `border: none`: . Eye-opening post by @davatron5000. 👀

You Want border-color: transparent, Not border: none

If you find yourself removing a border from an element that has a border and are tempted to use border: 0 , border: none, or outline: none, I’d urge you to stop for a moment and reconsider. It’s li…

This game is… interesting. It's basically a collection of IQ-test puzzles, but strewn throughout a large explorable world with needlessly high production values (though minus the cohesive aspects of The Witness or Talos Principle). Plus it's an MMO for no particular reason 🙃

And I'm afraid I like it 🙈 Especially at the current sale price.

Save 40% on Islands of Insight on Steam

Seek out and solve 10,000+ puzzles at your own pace across this sublime shared-world puzzle game.

I'm finding Paranormasight quite annoying from an interaction design point of view, and I doubt I'll go any further with it, but I love the idea of a first-person visual novel with 360-degree backgrounds to explore. But not if it's gonna devolve into a hidden-object game. (And also some parallax would be nice while we're at it.)


15 mar. 2024

I’ve set my iPhone to monochrome for a bit — I do it every so often for no very definite reason — and it’s a mess of low-contrast icons, as most of them rely on saturated colors rather than strong designs for identity. Reminding me that it’s absolutely galling that Apple won’t let you change app icons (without going through absurd workarounds using Shortcuts). Not a new complaint, but whose fucking device is it, mine or theirs?!

@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org

Hearing from more and more people who were pushed into using passkeys on their accounts and ended up confused and locked out as a result. JUST AS PREDICTED.

Finally tried installing Linux on my Surface Laptop last night. Unfortunately I can’t get the very pretty Mac OS 9 theme to work (probably because it hasn’t been updated in five years). More problematic, I can’t get sound out, and the trackpad has issues (it works in most places but I need to click with two fingers when I want to move a window, weird). Still, less annoying to use than Windows 11. And a lot less laggy — even though it’s installed on a three-year-old USB key. I might keep going.

Huh, the EA WRC game has a five-hour demo and I had no idea - the EA app never told me, and I only found out by reading Steam reviews 🙃

Good thing I did, because I was about to buy it on sale and I wouldn't have been happy with my purchase, even at -60%. I struggle to find the fun with a gamepad (I miss my steering wheel… hopefully getting it back soon), and sound is broken, clipping more and more as I progress through a stage. Physics do seem good, at least.

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