Technology

The Culling 2022, Twitter edition

Tonight I deactivated my Twitter account. I have 30 days to change my mind, and then it goes away forever.

Good.

Casey Newton, in today’s edition of his Platformer newsletter, wrote the following:

…observing Elon Musk’s escalated attacks on a former employee and continued promotion of far-right ideas and personalities, over the weekend I found myself thinking: I just don’t want to be on Twitter anymore. 

It has all been bad, of course. From the moment Musk dragged that sink into Twitter headquarters, assured the assembled employees there that he wasn’t about to eliminate 75 percent of them, and soon did exactly that, Musk’s hostile takeover of the company has been ugly to behold.

Any acquisition is bound to cause turmoil in the lives of its employees, but Musk seemed to revel in it: laying off employees so indiscriminately that he was forced to beg many to return a day after terminating them; forcing a mostly remote workforce back into the office on a day’s notice; imposing impossible deadlines on those that remained; requiring workers to sign a digital loyalty oath promising to be “extremely hardcore”; putting workers through regular “code reviews” that have often served as a pretext for firing them; purging workers who were found to have been critical of him in Slack or on Twitter; installing beds in the office to encourage workers to sleep there.

And:

More recently, he falsely stated that the company had “refused to take action on child exploitation for years” — an especially egregious statement given that he had just purged 80 percent of the company’s contract workforce, which included the majority of its content moderators. (We’ve reported that Twitter’s efforts here were indeed understaffed, but it’s not true that the company took no action.)

In recent days, Musk has increasingly advanced the narrative that Twitter was a den of corruption before he bought it. And over the weekend, he made his most disgusting smear to date. 

Here’s Dana Hull at Bloomberg:

Elon Musk posted tweets including an excerpt of Yoel Roth’s doctoral dissertation Saturday that suggested the former Twitter executive is an advocate for child sexualization — a baseless trope that leaves Roth susceptible to online abuse. […]

“Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis,” tweeted Musk, with an excerpt from the 300-page dissertation. “Gay Data,” the title of Roth’s 2016 dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania, is about Grindr, the geosocial networking service popular with the LGBTQ+ community.

To be clear, the dissertation is about how to keep predators away from children. But in an interview with Kara Swisher, Roth had dared to criticize Musk after resigning. And so this was his punishment: a smear pushed out to 121 million people, which led immediately to Roth being overwhelmed with death threats.

As if all of that weren’t terrible enough, Musk followed up by tweeting “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci” — a smooth-brained, Tucker Carlson-ass Mad Lib of a post that served to bolster the kind of anti-trans and anti-vaxx culture warriors that most people have absolutely no desire to hear from, ever. (Culture warriors who, I assume, made up a good number of the 60,000-plus accounts Musk recently returned to the platform after falsely saying he would first consult with a council of experts before doing so.) 

There’s more, but you get the point (Platformer is great if you enjoy reading about how social media is affecting our world. It can feel a bit like doomscrolling at times, but Newton writes good stuff).

It’s reached the point where Twitter–which I rarely used before, anyway–has gone from being worth watching in a “flaming train wreck” kind of way to where having an active account starts to make you feel at least a bit complicit in what Musk is doing. I’ll still see and hear about Twitter news, of course. It’s nearly inescapable if you read any sites, blogs or newsletters that cover social media, but I’ll be doing it as someone on the outside, looking in, not as someone participating directly in the hellscape Musk is making.

Clowning around (with appropriately terrifying results)

Using DiffusionBee on my Mac, I entered a photo of myself using the Image to Image feature, then entered the prompt Dressed as clown.

It produced this nightmare-inducing result:

Available to traumatize guests at your next birthday party

Original photo as reference:

I got a fancy cap in the process, along with a dress shirt (?), and it made the background more overgrown.

I will experiment more, but maybe with fewer clown prompts. Or more. I haven’t decided yet.

Mac vs. PC, 2022 edition

I have an Obsidian document that I’ve been working on for some time that chronicles my current take on the whole Mac vs. PC debate. I’ve added to it, tinkered with it, but it’s occurred to me that I may never actually finish it in a way that I’ll be satisfied with.

So today I’m presenting a more off the cuff take on this decades-old debate.

Short answer: They both suck! And they are both pretty good!

Longer answer:

First, a tiny bit of background:

My first PC was acquired in 1994. It came with a floppy drive and no CD-ROM drive. I added the former later, at a cost of $200, so I could play Myst.

My first Mac nearly came four years earlier, when I considered a Macintosh Plus for around $1,000 while attending university. I dropped out of school and abandoned the plan to get a Macintosh. My first actual Mac was a MacBook Air I got in 2013, with stock specs. I ended up not really taking a shine to what was then OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and sold the Air a year later, getting a Surface Pro 3 at a now-defunct Microsoft Store. It would be seven more years before I’d get my next Mac.

Currently, I have:

  • A custom-built PC I put together in April 2019, with 32 GB of ram, a pair of 1 TB SSDs and a GeForce 2070 video card
  • A base Mac Studio with the M1 Max: 32 GB of ram and a 512 GB SSD, with a 2 TB external SSD attached
  • A 2020 MacBook Air with M1, upgraded at purchase to 16 GB of ram and a 512 GB SSD

The Air is kind of vestigial at this point, since I currently have no need for a laptop. I will either sell or trade it in eventually.

So! What is my take on Mac vs. PC in 2022?

It depends, but it’s mostly down to preference for very specific things.

If you are doing most of your work in a web browser, and at a desk, there is almost no functional difference between the two. I use Firefox on both and the experience is so similar they could be the same machine. The only difference I’ve noticed is that Google Maps seems to load faster and scroll more smoothly on the Mac, for reasons unclear to me. Firefox is happy to crash in either OS, though thankfully this is fairly rare.

The one exception to the browser experience is if you use Safari, as it’s only available on Apple devices.

Obsidian is pretty much the same.

Discord and Signal are the same.

These similarities are less surprising when you consider that the above are Electron apps, so they’re basically web apps in a wrapper, modified just enough to run on specific platforms. None of these feel especially Mac or Windows-like.

If you use Apple for your music, the Mac experience is better because Windows is still saddled with the decrepit iTunes. But Apple has already confirmed their Apple Music app is coming in 2023, so that won’t be an issue much longer.

The choices come down to a few things and again, this is specific to desktop-only.

Where Macs win out:

  • Interoperability between Apple devices. If you have an iPhone and/or an iPad, Apple makes it easy to share data, messages and photos among all three. You can still do this to some degree on a Windows PC, but it’s not as seamless or effortless. But this is where the Mac has a clear (and obvious) advantage. It’s probably the best reason to get a Mac desktop, so if you also have a Pixel 7 and a Samsung Galaxy 8 tablet, this may not be so compelling.
  • Mac-only apps. A lot of smaller companies and developers make apps that are only available on Mac. A few examples are Ulysses (a writing app) and Pixelmator Pro (photo editing). If you rely on these apps, you can find approximate equivalents on Windows, but nothing quite the same.
  • The menu bar. Apple has had a menu bar along the top of the screen since the first Macintosh in 1984. It’s home to tons of little utilities that some Mac users absolutely love having. The closest equivalent on Windows is the System Tray, which is not as accessible or flexible.
  • Font rendering. While Macs have issues with resolution scaling, the approach to font rendering looks nicer to my eyes than Windows. It’s easy to see (ho ho) why so many writers use Macs.

Where Windows wins out:

  • Gaming. The Windows gaming scene is decades-old and is both deep and wide. Many people will buy PCs exclusively for gaming. Apple has improved the state of gaming on Macs with its own silicon, but it trails far, far behind the PC.
  • Windows-only apps. Macs usually get a version of most popular software out there, but not always. The situation here is probably better for Mac users overall (which is to say, there are more Mac-only apps than there are Windows-only).
  • Cost. Do you have a small budget? Windows PCs run the gamut from dirt cheap to ultra high-end. The same variety simply doesn’t exist on the Mac, which start with “premium” pricing and go up from there.
  • Variety of form factors. Do you desire a particular form factor? Speaking of variety, on the desktop, Apple gives you the Mac Mini, the Studio (which is basically a tall, souped-up Mini) or the pretty much obsolete and outrageously overpriced Mac Pro. And that’s it. Meanwhile, on the PC side, you can get everything from adorably tiny NUCs to monster gaming rigs and everything in-between.
  • Window management. The ability to easily and flexibly snap windows is built-in and can be easily expanded further with the officially supported PowerToys app. Apple’s options are crude and insufficient by comparison, forcing you to go the third party route.
  • Multi-monitor support. Both systems can work with multiple monitors, but on Windows it’s effortless and largely glitch-free. On the Mac, it’s more fiddly if you use third-party monitors, and there are bizarre decisions like only having the dock show on the active monitor (and needing a weird mouse gesture to get it to appear on another monitor).

Where neither wins out:

  • GUI and overall user experience. While some may prefer the aesthetic of macOS over Windows 11 or vice-versa, the reality is they are much more alike than they have ever been. They both have light and dark modes, they both have rounded corners on the windows, they both have a bar/dock at the bottom of the screen (though only Apple now lets you move theirs). For me, neither OS really looks better than the other, it’s just a matter of personal preference.
  • File management. Both have notable flaws or quirks. Windows has File Explorer, which is actually pretty good (and even better now that they added tabs) but it often seems slow, as if it’s indexing a folder every time you open it. On Macs, Finder is solid but has weird design choices, like not showing all folders in certain views, requiring an extra click to “Show All.” Maddening busywork for no benefit!
  • Bugs. Apple and Microsoft have both proven equally capable of shipping bug-riddled software. Enjoy!

In the end I spend most of my time on Windows because I’ve used it longer and am just more comfortable with it, plus I game and as I said above, Macs are not great gaming rigs, though they are improving. I mainly use my Mac for writing and when I want a more distraction-free environment (ie. my vast Windows gaming library is unavailable).

Obligatory GIF:

Culling 2022 (bonus post): From many lists to one

Another recent culling decision was to move to a single reminder/to-do app, and the winner there ended up being Microsoft To Do. TickTick was a close second, and I could see myself possibly going back to it eventually.

The things I like about Microsoft To Do:

  • It’s free, with no limitations (free is good, no subscription was my real preference)
  • At first, the My Day feature bugged me, but I’ve come to embrace it. It’s basically a blank page for you to add things to and it’s easy to add daily stuff (which is also viewable elsewhere). It provides a way to focus, which I need.
  • The UI is unusually pleasant
  • Sync works fine, regardless of platform (PC, Mac, phone)

The thing I don’t like:

  • The name. Come on, they didn’t even try! And this replaced Wunderlist, which is an absolutely delightful name.

And here is a CGI cat writing a list in Stable Diffusion:

AI likes cats

I asked the AI chat tool ChatGPT to write a blog post about cats. This is what it came up with. It seems very pro-cat.

A Blog Post About Cats

Cats are fascinating creatures that have been beloved by humans for thousands of years. From their playful personalities to their graceful movements, there is something captivating about these mysterious animals.

One of the most interesting things about cats is their unique ability to make themselves at home in any environment. Whether they are living in a cozy house with their human family or roaming the streets as a feral feline, cats are experts at adapting to their surroundings.

Another thing that makes cats special is their independent nature. Unlike dogs, which are known for their loyalty and eagerness to please their human companions, cats tend to be more self-sufficient and aloof. This can make them somewhat challenging to understand, but it also adds to their charm and allure.

Despite their independent nature, cats are also highly social animals. They are known for their strong bonds with other cats, and they can form close relationships with their human companions as well. Many cat owners describe their feline friends as being like family members, and there is something deeply satisfying about the special bond that can develop between a human and a cat.

In conclusion, cats are fascinating creatures that are full of surprises. From their adaptability to their independent nature, there is always something new and interesting to discover about these captivating animals. Whether you are a lifelong cat lover or just getting to know these mysterious creatures, there is no doubt that cats are truly one of a kind.

***

And here’s a picture of cat from DALL-E (prompt: house cat sunning itself indoors) to round off this AI edition of cats cats cats:

And a somewhat less successful (that “face”) “digital art” version:

The best Twitter/Titanic comparison

I use Twitter very little, so its possible demise is not something I would lament on a personal level, though I realize it has immense value for some communities.

Elon Musk’s so-far disastrous stewardship of the social media platform has produced many metaphors, but I think this one from the comments on an Ars Technica article might be my favourite because it encapsulates the absurdity of so much of what Musk has done, and his so-far unerring ability to then make tihngs even worse.

Even more 2022 pruning: No way, no HEY

Apologies for the terrible title.

I knew the people behind HEY’s email service had controversial opinions on running a business, and I mostly ignored them, because I found HEY does some genuinely interesting stuff with email. But after reading the latest piece from co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson I could no longer in good conscience continue to use the service. I’m paid up until April 23, 2023, so I have plenty of time to move stuff over to another email platform, likely Outlook as I already have an active account with the service, but it’s still going to be a big ol’ bother after having already done this once already moving away from Gmail.

But when you throw in with monumentally shitty people like Elon Musk, you are basically telling me you don’t want my business. So I am done with HEY. And I save $100 a year as a bonus. HEY, that’s pretty nice.

The Culling Continues: Blowing away iCloud Photos

While this is independent of the rather freaky story on MacRumors about corrupted videos and photos from unknown sources appearing on iCloud for Windows, I have still decided to ultimately turn off iCloud Photos. The biggest downside to this is I’ll no longer have photos taken on my iPhone automatically be made available on other devices, which is an admittedly nice feature.

Turning this off also means I’ll no longer have a backup of my photos on Apple’s servers (which may not be a bad thing if the above story hints to the stability and security of their infrastructure), so I’ll need an alternative. Here’s my plan, because I love a good plan and also lists:

  • Store photos in another cloud service. I have OneDrive, and it’s already automatically uploading photos from my phone to its cloud server, so this part is happening now.
  • Store photos in a NAS (local network storage). I’ve had a Synology NAS for awhile and have now set up the Synology Photos app to backup my photos from the phone. I’ll move the photos over in batches (I have…a few) until they are all in place, then will have the app on the phone set to only upload new photos going forward.

Once I have both of the above in place, I’ll delete the photos I have stored in iCloud and then turn off iCloud Photos. This will also make it easier to drop all Apple services save for Apple Music (I’m still paying for 200 GB of iCloud storage), and make it easier to move to a different phone in the future if I decide to do that.

You may be thinking I am souring on Apple–and you would be right! But that is a rant for another day.

Riding the elephant

Yes, I created a Mastodon account.

No, I don’t really use Twitter all that much and may use Mastodon even less, but I like the idea of being on a decentralized social media platform that isn’t about hate and being clever at the expense of others. We’ll see how it goes.

Here I am. Follow me!

@stanjames@mstdn.social

Two simple things I like about Scrivener and Ulysses

When it comes to writing fiction (and specifically fiction), there are two things I like that both Scrivener and Ulysses offer that, perhaps surprisingly, very few other writing apps do. One is nice to have, the other I consider more essential.

  1. A list of scenes that can be re-ordered. Both programs show a list of scenes to the left of the main writing window, acting as containers for scenes/chapters. You can move them around in any order that you want. I rarely move scenes around, but having them visually laid out next to the main editing window helps me get a visual overview of a novel, a case where technology really does offer something you can’t easily replicate going old school with pen and paper (or typewriter).
  2. Indents on paragraphs. This might seem trivial, but hear me out! When I write blog posts like this one, I hit Enter (or Return, for Mac purists) and a new paragraph begins. This can work in fiction, too, though you’ll never see a book printed this way (it would add many more pages and drive up costs on paper books, for one). In paper books and their digital brethren, the first line of each paragraph is indented to distinguish it from the one before. If you use a typical markdown editor, hitting Enter will only start a new line, it won’t add a blank line (WordPress does not use Markdown and is coded to add the blank line automatically). You need to hit Enter twice for that. In fiction, you can have a lot of short paragraphs, such as when there is a back-and-forth dialog between characters. This means you are constantly having to hit Enter twice to properly separate paragraphs and avoid getting what looks like a wall of text. Ulysses cheats by using a modified version of Markdown that allows indents on the first line of a paragraph. Scrivener avoids this entirely by adopting a Word-like WYSIWYG approach.

I could, for example, use Obsidian, a free Markdown editor I am using for notes, to write a novel. There’s even a community plugin called Longform made just for this purpose. But there’s no support for indents, so I’d be doing the double Enter thing, and in my experience it breaks flow just enough to be consistently annoying. Maybe I’ll try again as an experiment on a short story or something, because there are aspects of both Scrivener and Ulysses I don’t like, so finding an alternative to both would be nice.

And for the extra-curious, here are some of the things I don’t like about each:

Scrivener:

  • Does not handle cloud saves well at all
  • Cumbersome, ugly and unconventional interface (yes, even on the Mac)

Ulysses:

  • No Windows version
  • Requires subscription (I think it’s a great example of how a subscription is great for developers while being a poor value for the user)

Again, both of these things may seem relatively small, but together they add a lot to make the experience of writing fiction a better one for me. And I really can’t think of other writing apps that offer both, which is kind of weird!

Scaling new heights of ERR

I was up at 5 a.m. this morning due to gallstones. Not my gallstones, mind you.

Since I was up, I went about my usual morning routine, which includes the daily weigh-in on my trusty Fitbit Aria scale. There were shenanigans.

It began after the weigh-in, when it failed to sync my weight to the Fitbit Google hivemind. Yesterday I installed a new Wi-Fi hub and because the app for setting it up would not allow spaces in the Wi-Fi network name, it changed slightly, thus forcing us to manually reconnect every device on our Wi-Fi network. Hooray.

Remembering this, I figured I’d have to run the setup for the Aria scale to get it connected to the new space-free Wi-Fi network.

  • I put the scale in setup mode
  • I launch the Fitbit app on my phone
  • The Fitbit app says the Aria scale is no longer supported, set it up through a web browser, chump
  • I follow the link provided
  • I go through the process, which requires treating the Aria as a new device
  • I get to the last step, entering the password for our Wi-Fi
  • I watch as it joins the network
  • I watch as it fails with an ERR message. That’s all, just ERR. Like it is clearing its throat.
  • I start the process over from the beginning, as there is no other way to do just the joining part again
  • I get another ERR
  • I try again, more ERR
  • I get angry
  • I become resigned
  • I decide not to spend more of my time chasing an unspecified error on no-longer-supported hardware
  • I record my weight, because it still actually does that part
  • I think about getting a non-Fitbit scale again

UPDATE: I remembered the Aria connects via Wi-Fi via a USB receiver on the Windows PC. Said PC was not connected to the new Wi-Fi network, so maybe that was the issue? I have fixed this and will try getting the scale working again tomorrow. It’ll be fun.

The Great Culling of 2022 Continues

Yesterday I trimmed down a few more subscriptions. Yes, I am the poster boy for subscription fatigue. Beware, SaaS purveyors!

  • After dropping the Todoist sub, I have now also dropped the TickTick sub. I’ll see how the free version goes, but if it proves too limiting, I’m already running Microsoft’s To Do, and it seems to meet my needs, even if it’s “My Day” feature is a bit weird compared to a more conventional “Today” list (mainly, you have to move stuff to My Day, as it always starts blank).
  • Apple emailed me announcing my already expensive Apple One Premier subscription was going from $33.95 a month to $37.95 a month. Since they made $20 billion in PROFIT just last quarter, I opted to slim down to the Apple One Family package for $24.95 per month. I suspect the company will manage to scrape by. And I’ll save $13 by not getting stuff I don’t need, like:
    • Fitness+: I have literally never used this.
    • Apple News+: An ad-riddled hellscape, even as a paid service.
    • 2TB iCloud storage: I’m using 150 GB and only because of my photos. The new plan gives me 200GB. Since I’m now using OneDrive for photos, this shouldn’t be an issue.

Apple has become a fat, greedy company that seems determined to worsen the customer experience in exchange for squeezing as much revenue out of everyone as they can. I don’t think the company is going to fail or anything, but I think the long, gradual decline has begun. Maybe the ghost of Steve Jobs will visit Tim Cook at Christmas and be all, “WTF you doing, Tim?” and then Tim will retire on the few dollars he has put aside. BUT NOT $48 PER YEAR OF MY FEW DOLLARS. TAKE THAT, TIM.

Anyway, the number of subs I have is much slimmer now than at the start of 2022. My email is no longer full of newsletters I no longer read. I feel much less burdened now. And I like it!