tech

Tesla over the air updates.

Marco Arment on Twitter: “The designers at @Tesla “cleaned up” the bottom bar of the control screen to replace my defroster and seat heaters with this customizable app list. Thanks a lot. But the only “apps” I want there are seat heaters and THE F’N DEFROSTER, HAVE YOU EVER DRIVEN A CAR BEFORE?!

[And then Dave]

Scripting News: Why not drive a Tesla:

I found out in the latest update. I had the temperature in the car set to 65 degrees, the same temperature I have my house thermostat set to. When I got into my updated car, the temperature was 72. It said so very clearly on the big display in the middle of the dash. So I did what I did before, touched the temperature, up pops the environment panel, but I couldn’t find any way to change the temp back to 65. I know how to scan a UI from left to right and top to bottom to find the thing that should be big, in the middle the display. A slider that sets the temperature. It wasn’t there. I sat in the car in my garage for a few minutes before I had a brilliant idea. Try doing it on the phone where the UI didn’t change. Voila. Back to comfort.

[I’ve always enjoyed “over the air” updates for the apps I use. For sure, you’re at the mercy of the developers involved, but overall they’ve worked for me. But I don’t know what to make of these updates Tesla owners are “enjoying”. I’m not sure a purely virtual interface is a good thing in a car where you can’t feel the button or stalk, or more importantly engage with it with “muscle memory”. And all the touch screens seem to suffer from targets that are too small if the car is bouncing even a little (your arm extended toward the screen doesn’t make for the steadiest of platforms to poke a small spot on the screen). Breakage in a car seems like a terrible idea, and burying things so that they’re not easy to find seems even worse.]

Putting an Ear to the Ground of Apple’s Audio Efforts — Pixel Envy

Putting an Ear to the Ground of Apple’s Audio Efforts — Pixel Envy:

Parsons presses the two Apple representatives on new stuff released this year, like the third-generation AirPods and spatial audio. But it is when asked about lossless audio that Geaves gives the most intriguing answer:

“Obviously the wireless technology is critical for the content delivery that you talk about”, he says, “but also things like the amount of latency you get when you move your head, and if that’s too long, between you moving your head and the sound changing or remaining static, it will make you feel quite ill, so we have to concentrate very hard on squeezing the most that we can out of the Bluetooth technology, and there’s a number of tricks we can play to maximise or get around some of the limits of Bluetooth. But it’s fair to say that we would like more bandwidth and… I’ll stop right there. We would like more bandwidth”, he smiles.

Given that AirPods Max and Apple Music’s lossless audio option were announced within six months of each other, yet were incompatible for bandwidth reasons, it seemed like something had to give. It felt like a plot hole in both products’ respective stories.

[Feels like classic technology stuff. One group develops, another sees great potential but runs out of room. Onward!]

Broadband & Internet is Growing Everywhere

Broadband & Internet is Growing Everywhere:

What’s not such good news is the cost of broadband in the United States. According to The Cost of Connectivity, a research report from the Open Technology Institute, the average cost of broadband in the US is about $68.38. That is higher than average prices in large parts of the world.

Blame it on lack of any real competition — cable and phone guys are our only broadband option. And they hate competition, especially from independent or municipal networks. Incumbents do their best to thwart progress.

[And lots of folks still cannot get broadband no matter how loosely defined. But it’s nice to see some progress on connectedness, even if the power structure continues to prevent coompetition.]

Source: On my Om

Sparkle 2.0

Sparkle 2.0:

Sparkle:

Sparkle 2 adds support for application sandboxing, custom user interfaces, updating external bundles, and a more modern architecture which includes faster and more reliable installs.

This has been many years in the making.

Release notes:

Moves extraction, validation, and installation into a submitted launchd agent/daemon with XPC communication

[…]

Adoption of improved atomic-safe updates leveraging APFS

[Lots of work in there…]

Source: Michael Tsai

Please don’t use Discord for FOSS projects

Please don’t use Discord for FOSS projects:

You are making an investment when you choose to use one service over another. When you choose Discord, you are legitimizing their platform and divesting from FOSS platforms. Even if you think they have a bigger reach and a bigger audience,2 choosing them is a short-term, individualist play which signals a lack of faith in and support for the long-term goals of the FOSS ecosystem as a whole. The FOSS ecosystem needs your investment. FOSS platforms generally don’t have access to venture capital or large marketing budgets, and are less willing to use dark patterns and predatory tactics to secure their market segment. They need your support to succeed, and you need theirs. Why should someone choose to use your FOSS project when you refused to choose theirs? Solidarity and mutual support is the key to success.

[ A difficult issue for sure…]

Source: Dave Winer’s Twitter

Meet the Self-Hosters, Taking Back the Internet One Server at a Time

Meet the Self-Hosters, Taking Back the Internet One Server at a Time:

Much of this growth can be seen on Reddit, with r/selfhosted hitting over 136,000 members and continuing to rise, up from 84,000 just a year ago. The discussions involve self-hosting software that spans dozens of categories, from home automation, genealogy, and media streaming to document collaboration and e-commerce. The list maintained by nodiscc and the community has grown so long that its stewards say it needs more curation and better navigation.

The quality of free and easy-to-use self-hosting software has increased too, making the practice increasingly accessible to the less-technically savvy. Add to that the rise of cheap, credit card-sized single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi, which lower the starting costs of creating a home server to as little as $5 or $10. “Between high-available hosting environments, to one-click/one-command deploy options for hundreds of different softwares, the barrier for entry has dramatically been lowered over the years,” said KmisterK.

[I did this for a long time and then messed up a transition, lost a bunch of things, and tossed in the towel. It still makes me sad, but it remains clear that while it would have been nice to not lose all that history, it has had no overwhelmingly detrimental effect. I’m glad to be blogging again, it had been so long when I felt I had lost my voice, but it seems it was just hiding behind the couch. And I’m working on a podcast as well, (something I thought I’ve never do…) but I have some thoughts. Birth of a notion and all that.]

Thunderbolt™ 3 & 4 Explained

Thunderbolt™ 3 & 4 Explained:

Thunderbolt 4 is compatible with plenty of connections or interfaces including:

DisplayPort
PCle
USB4
It’s even backwards compatible with previous versions of Thunderbolt and connects via USB Type-C
When it comes to speed, Thunderbolt 4 ports have 40Gbps bandwidth. However, Thunderbolt 4 stands out by increasing Thunderbolt 3’s minimum PCIe data requirements from 16Gbps to 32Gbps. That means more room for higher transfer rates and better performance.

For external devices that use PCIe, Thunderbolt 4 will work like a charm.

Games can be transferred and stored onto an external drive and be played from there, rather than having to transfer the files to the system instead
Last and certainly not least, especially for laptop enthusiasts, Thunderbolt 4 is capable of charging various devices and you won’t need a separate power supply to charge your device.

[The confusion continues…]

DuckDuckGo in 2021: Building the Privacy Super App

DuckDuckGo in 2021: Building the Privacy Super App:

Like we’ve done on mobile, DuckDuckGo for desktop will redefine user expectations of everyday online privacy. No complicated settings, no misleading warnings, no “levels” of privacy protection – just robust privacy protection that works by default, across search, browsing, email, and more. It’s not a “privacy browser”; it’s an everyday browsing app that respects your privacy because there’s never a bad time to stop companies from spying on your search and browsing history.

[This is great news…]