coperob @coperob@qoto.org

Tech industry, please hire more writers. I can happily read docs for 3h and get much more out of them than watching a video for 3h. And while I'm watching the video, I'm making copious notes so that I don't have to watch the video *again* later to refresh my memory. If it was written down in the first place with good indexing I wouldn't have to do that. Video is such a crap way to document things.

I'm posting this partially to acknowledge progress and to thank all who made it happen, but also to encourage those who get discouraged and think that one individual can't change anything big.
In 2018, I received my Census code in the mail. I'm totally blind and had difficulty performing OCR on the code, so I asked the Census Help Line if I could have the code texted to me. They first said that would be fine, but then said they couldn't do it for "security reasons" a standard phrase that is often used to fob people off.
After I issued a media release, being interviewed by several. media organisations and the Minister being asked to comment, a senior official from Statistics NZ actually came to our house on a Sunday afternoon to read me my code, which was absurd.
I started a Parliamentary petition. I appeared before a Select Committee. The Committee was sympathetic. I got a personal apology from the Minister sent to me as an inaccessible PDF image so they had to send it a second time. But in the end, I got a commitment that yes, blind people count and this debacle would never happen again.
Here we are in 2023 and its census time again. This year, I went to the fully accessible website, completed a fully accessible form to get my code texted to me, and have now completed the fully accessible form. I know this wouldn't have happened had I not taken a stand.
So when you think you can't change things for the better, please don't sell yourself short. Each of us have the ability, and I maintain we have the duty, to make good change in the world.
Thank you to all those involved in Government at all levels for getting it so right this time.

The fine folks at Tweetbot and the Iconfactory need your help.

If you were a subscriber to either, please re-install the app and click the button to decline your refund.

It's difficult, perhaps, to understand what a huge impact this would make on these folks, but your effort and small monetary sacrifice will help them more than you know.

More details in Daring Fireball's post: https://daringfireball.net/2023/03/tweetbot_and_twitterrific_face_the_cliff

@StewartLynch I have gone back to my blog posts multiple times because I forgot the details on how to implement things.

A thought: what if we built social media to enable true human-to-human connectivity?

Because, right now, that's not happening.

Right now, it's relevancy algorithms and bots and A.I. that's acting as a social media middleman that's inserting itself between you and your friends.

People aren't talking to people.

They are talking to algorithms in the hopes that algorithms will connect them with their friends -- though that's no guarantee.

Only roughly a third of Americans have a travel ready passport. It’s a privilege but if you can see how other countries work it’s a game changer for your own empathy. We have a lot of work to do. Many countries actually work quite well. SHOCKER. Also, more trains, please.

If you were a former paying customer of Tweetbot or Twitterrific who was happy with what they got out of the app before Twitter unceremoniously killed third-party clients, then consider launching the latest update and opting out of the refund. The money comes out of the developer's pockets, and the fact that the apps don't work anymore isn't really their fault—you can ease the load on them a bit. https://sixcolors.com/post/2023/03/tweetbot-and-twitterrific-updated-with-option-to-opt-out-of-subscription-refund/

Tweetbot and Twitterrific Face the Cliff:

https://daringfireball.net/2023/03/tweetbot_and_twitterrific_face_the_cliff

Imagine if this machine fell through a wormhole to 1992.

Saturn's moon Mimas in IR+UV expanded spectrum. Processed using images taken by Cassini on November 19 2006.

The dataset for the second image has frustratingly eluded processing for years. Data just didn't line up at all. Finally took the time to build out a cylindrical map from the observation then reproject it back to a camera perspective like I do with JunoCam images.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill

#Saturn #Mimas #Cassini #Space #Science

I've noticed a lot of people that complain to me about Mastodon engagement have more followers than follows. It suggests to me they are still stuck in a Twitter mode of trying to game the algorithm. On Mastodon the algorithm is people, you need to establish an active home feed and then participate in two way engagement.

Bunch of new followers so I guess I should do one of those #introduction things.

👋🏼 I’m Tim, an iOS Engineer who works on the Music App at Apple.

I’m currently located in Barcelona. I mostly post about tech things, films, and books. And maybe some other stuff in between.

Over on the other site, people keep telling me that a decentralized social media platform "could never" work. And yet... it is working?

"Too many tradeoffs" they tell me. There are tradeoffs, but when I add them up, they seem to favor the decentralized platform over the centralized one. So strange.

Do yourself a favor and reserve 10 minutes today to read this eye opening Oatmeal comic on the psychological "backfire effect”.

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

HomePod 2 review: A great smart speaker that struggles to stand out
https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/02/08/homepod-2-review-a-great-smart-speaker-that-struggles-to-stand-out?utm_medium=rss

Ice Cubes iOS 1.4.0 is out. This is a big milestone update because it finally offer solid timeline position save / restore whenever the app is launched or you're switching between account, etc...

Other new things include much faster loading time, swipe actions in the timeline, a bunch of new icons and a lot of new settings for even more customisations!

Check it out & download it on the App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ice-cubes-for-mastodon/id6444915884

Seeing a lot of discussion about making iPad a Mac replacement and moving on from that idea. It’s an interesting shift in discourse.

I believe the iPad is still a viable computer replacement. But, the bloggers, podcasters, and tech nerds who tried to do it and ended up back at a Mac, asking for macOS on iPad, never were going to do it in the first place.

It feels like we should. The iPad is 99% of the way there. But that 1% is a huge hurdle. We all have our pet features we could name that would make the iPad a perfect Mac alternative, for us.

It is a shame that the conversation had to shift to such a defeatist attitude after so many years of optimism. I’m going to continue hoping Apple sees the negativity towards iPad and fixes more of the low hanging fruit.

This comes at a time when the Mac is interesting again. Stage manager hasn’t found it’s legs on iPad yet. And everything feels a little awkward.

iPad is still an amazing computer alternative, for some, maybe not for you.

We will have to remove Twitter integration from NetNewsWire.

The iOS and Android UX divide is cultural.

Part of it are the folks that have historically cared about it, but also that Apple devoted significant resources to replenish the stocks of UX knowledge.

Their developer conference devotes an unusual amount of time to design, guidance and polish - something you barely see elsewhere. And I tried at Microsoft, but it is just not seen as having a worthy ROI.

They are oceans apart: https://mastodon.social/@gruber/109790664915941861

https://mastodon.social/@gruber/109790664915941861

BTW, mastodon has thoroughly eclipsed Twitter as the meeting place for developers and clear-thinking users. I don't imagine you'll see too many more Twitter links from me.