Whew lord, got a bunch of stuff to share with y’all in this one. If you missed the previous reading list, you can find it here.
Links
- Apple Details How It Plans to Comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act by John Vorhees for MacStories
- I abandoned OpenLiteSpeed and went back to good ol’ Nginx by Lee Hutchinson for Ars Technica
- Review: Framework’s Laptop 16 is unique, laudable, fascinating, and flawed by Andrew Cunningham for Ars Technica
- Mint’s Games of the Year 2023 by Mint
- In Loving Memory of Square Checkbox by Niki
- The Last Of Us Part II Remastered – Revving The ViolenCycle! (Review) by James Stephanie Sterling
- Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not by Nilay Patel for The Verge
- What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he’s not coming back? by Eric Berger for Ars Technica
- Scares vs. Phobias: Home Safety Hotline’s Accessible Horror by Patrick Klepek for Remap Radio
- The Damage by Nathan Grayson for Aftermath
- I’m Stuck On Top Of This Mountain In The Long Dark by Riley MacLeod for Aftermath
- Baldur’s Gate 3’s Nocturne is a landmark in trans representation, but for her voice actor it’s just the beginning by Sarah Guinevere Smit for Rock Paper Shotgun
- The Next 40 by Craig Hockenberry
- Spatial Computing by John Siracusa
- The Performance Inequality Gap, 2024 by Alex Russell
Notes
I found Lee Hutchinson’s piece on being a sysadmin and the nature of change in technical systems to be in line with my own thinking.
Folks, change isn’t fun. Change is awful. In life, change is often necessary, but when it comes to information systems that are functional and stable, change is the enemy of uptime. Do not embrace change for change’s sake. Only embrace change when you have a set of logical, requirements-driven reasons that are forcing that change upon you. It’s a lesson I thought I knew, and it’s been driven home yet again.
Lee Hutchinson in I abandoned OpenLiteSpeed and went back to good ol’ Nginx
Apple did a couple of newsworthy things over the past week or so, they released their compliance plans for the DMA, which I wrote about earlier this week. They also released the Apple Vision Pro to consumers and reviewers which meant we got a fantastic review from Nilay Patel over at The Verge. Well worth a read.
That is a lot of tradeoffs — big tradeoffs, not little ones. And the biggest tradeoff of all is that using the Vision Pro is such a lonely experience, regardless of the weird ghost eyes on the front. You’re in there, having experiences all by yourself that no one else can take part in. After using the Vision Pro for a while, I’ve come to agree with what Tim Cook has been saying for so long: headsets are inherently isolating. That’s fine for traditional VR headsets, which have basically turned into single-use game consoles over the past decade, but it’s a lot weirder for a primary computing device.
I don’t want to get work done in the Vision Pro. I get my work done with other people, and I’d rather be out here with them.
Nilay Patel in Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not
I also found Abigail Thorn’s thoughts on representation important to remember in our current times.
[…] Trans representation is nice, but I prefer to think in terms of Trans Power. We need to control our own lives, and that means cis people like NHS managers need to give up some of the power they have over us. If me being in movies and TV shows and games helps with that then great, but the goal is liberation not celebrity.
Abigail Thorne in Baldur’s Gate 3’s Nocturne is a landmark in trans representation, but for her voice actor it’s just the beginning
Meanwhile Alex Russell continues to tell web developers to do better by all their users.
The problem is now visible and demands a solution, but the answers will be largely social, not technical. User-centered values must contest the airtime previouly taken by failed trickle-down DX mantras. Only when the dominant story changes will better architectures and tools win.
Alex Russell in The Performance Inequality Gap, 2024
That’s all from me, see y’all later!