Trying this type of post again. I always find so many things, and forget to log them here.

Researchers: AI in connected cars eased rush hour congestion | AP News

Researchers find that just a few cars using adaptive cruise control and sharing speed data can alleviate traffic jams that aren’t crash-related.

Where are the Passkeys?

David raises questions I too have… Passkeys could be very good for non-nerd security.

What is Mastodon

Drawn to help you explain Mastodon to non-nerds (originally posted to… Mastodon).

Study companion videos on YouTube

There’s a whole genre on YouTube of long form videos with chill music, video ambience, and…people studying? The internet never ceases…

This past week I’ve had significant trouble getting my weather station software to run on macOS Monterey. Seeing a weather station with no moving parts that takes care of uploading its data to the cloud all by itself is looking pretty attractive right now.

This volcano in the South Pacific that caused a tsunami that went up rivers in California is an incredible story. This NYT article has a video collage of satellite and other footage which is pretty impressive.

My Twitter account turned 15 this year. I guess next year it can get its drivers license.

Had a lot of trouble with Apple Messages recently, as well as CarPlay. iOS 15.2.1 claimed to fix both. So far so good. At the same time, my phone has been having difficulty joining the cellular network when I drive away from our WiFi network, which is further complicated by the fact that we live in a dark zone so we have no usable reception until we’re a minute or two down the road. It appears that the difficulty is from our 1.1.1.1 service having trouble connecting, so we’ve disabled it over cellular. It’s been a great service, especially for free. I hope CloudFlare straightens it out. Still using it with our home router which is still fast and stable.

Rumors are swirling about Apple working on wireless headphones that support lossless music. Currently this is not possible over wireless headphones. I would find it difficult not to upgrade my AirPods for these. The current AirPods Pro (which my wife adores) do weird things to my ear canal pressure, so I’ve stuck with the 2nd generation AirPods, and they sound great for what they are. But I love Apple Music’s lossless support on my speakers (AirPlay to my Sonos speakers) and look forward to enjoying it in my headphones and while we are at it, direct support for lossless in the Sonos app, so it doesn’t burn my phone’s battery.

I have begun a concerted effort to retain links that I have found worthy of sending to friends and family, since I must send 4 or 5 things a day out to people. Most of those I would classify as “bloggable”, and I find gold in other people’s link lists, so I should repay the universe. On to this week’s…

Links of Note

“This is the most difficult science experiment humans have ever attempted.” This is a film about the James Webb Telescope

I haven’t read Jason Kottke’s site much over the past few years, but it’s still my favorite blog of all time.

Jason Kottke: 52 Things I Learned in 2021

A Note of Reassurance from Your School District Regarding Our Updated Omicron Policies - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

I don’t foresee moving from 1Password back to Apple’s Keychain, but it’s nice to know it’s possible.

An open-source engineer wrote a series of posts supporting a presentation he gives on working remotely. His specific focus is declaring that (to him) the only proper way to work remotely is asynchronously. That is… maybe a meeting once a week, and almost no text chats, either. I would love to know if he’s ever worked with designers, or if only with well-defined problems, as his method of not ever collaborating in real time seems to me to be far better suited to the latter. Either way, a really compelling look into how he works:

No. We Won’t Have a Video Call for That

I was curious as to why humans started heating up animal parts before eating them. I found this book excerpt on DuckDuckGo:

Why and How Exactly Did Humans Start Cooking

I’ve been enjoying and benefiting from David Spark’s work in the Apple community for at least a decade. Now he does that full-time:

Why I’m No Longer Practicing Law - MacSparky

If you use Gmail on your Mac, you should have a look at this product built by a former member of Apple’s Mail team:

Mimestream | A native macOS email client for Gmail

I learned Dave Berry is still writing: Dave Barry’s 2021 Year in Review

Disclaimer: I’m pretty sure I lifted the term “Links of Note” from another blog. Apologies and appreciation.

Sometimes doing something impactful isn’t the result of being more clever, sometimes it’s just setting yourself down to do the things other people just won’t. Saw this linked in a few places this past week.

I wouldn’t put myself in the category of Swiftie by any stretch, although my daughters love her. I continue to be fascinated with the professional who is Taylor Swift. Discount her talents and guile at your own peril. After the recent news of her re-recording her past albums that she did not own the masters to, I finally watched her Netflix documentary with the family (warning, occasional coarse language) and also enjoyed this Ben Thompson piece on Taylor’s recent business moves from a business perspective.

Continuing in music, I read this article about a Boston based band, Really From that toes the line between indie rock and jazz, with prominent brass, and apparently in a previous incarnation they were a punk band? That pops through on occasion. (Don’t be scared off my the mention of “ska”, if ska offends you. In two albums I only heard one short flourish that brought that comparison to mind.)

I pulled up their self-titled most recent, and “Verse” their previous album. Interesting stuff with good musicianship and lush layering. Hard to guess where the songs turn next, which is refreshing.

And finally, a reminder that Craig Mod is an interesting writer and creator. I explored some of his work this week, after being reminded of him through his appearance in John Gruber’s The Talk Show podcast.

Starting a new series of posts here tonight, gathering links I’ve been browsing that don’t need their own dedicated post.

I have a long term interest in ed-tech and distance education, two interesting articles I came across this week…

The pandemic’s remote learning legacy: A lot worth keeping - Christian Science Monitor

Nearly One-Third Of Parents May Stick With Remote Learning - NPR

Other nonsense I found interesting this week…

The state of Apple TV and end of HomePod warrants a Home strategy roundtable - 9to5Mac

Apple’s Perplexing Home Strategy - MacStories

Amplifi Alien WiFi6 router

Cities are paying people up to $16,000 to move there—this directory lists them - CNBC Apple News link

I enjoyed this piece reviewing Panic’s new code editor Nova, which has been out for a bit now.

My wife and I have been catching up on The Crown and I found this section in the show’s Wikipedia page about Historical Accuracy was pretty interesting. It’s almost like the show is collage instead of a portrait. The Crown also got me to read the tremendously long article on The Troubles which the show spent surprisingly little time on.