Garoo

@sdw@mastodon.social

Your GPS Is Wrong

@mhoye@mastodon.social

@futurebird Weirdly enough, Excel is probably the best evidence that learning to code really can empower people, entirely on the backs of mostly under-recognized, mostly pink-collar employees getting handed a smalltalk-inspired programming environment largely by accident.

Excel created a whole secret class of hidden programmers by sneaking a macro language into what used to be a basic calculation-and-display utility, and that whole stack became critical global infrastructure almost immediately.

What the fuck yes

MotorSlice - Official Reveal Trailer | Guerrilla Collective 2024

Watch the MotorSlice reveal trailer to see parkour gameplay elements and more from this upcoming action adventure game. MotorSlice will be available on PC in…

@carnage4life@mas.to

This dude has plot armor.

Forgot Banishers had come out, and didn’t know it had a demo. Dialogue is very well written, acting is excellent, and combat seems appropriately OP in story mode, so I’m definitely gonna have to check it out at some point.

(But maybe I should first get around to A Plague Tale: Requiem, which has the advantage of being on Game Pass, and installed on my hard drive since it came out.)

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden on Steam

Hunt ghosts as two memorable characters in a story-driven Action-RPG where your decisions carry dramatic consequences. Torn between honoring your oath to the living and saving your departed partner, how far will you go for love?

@carnage4life@mas.to

Microsoft Recall’s security issues weren’t anomalies but symptoms of a culture prioritizing cool features over protecting users.

A former employee has revealed how the company refused to fix the security hole that led to hacks of the Treasury, NIH, and nuclear secrets.

Microsoft chose not to fix the flaw that led to the SolarWinds hack to avoid risking billions in government contracts. That focus on profits has now become a national security issue.

Microsoft Chose Profit Over Security and Left U.S. Government Vulnerable to Russian Hack, Whistleblower Says

Former employee says software giant dismissed his warnings about a critical flaw because it feared losing government business. Russian hackers later used the weakness to breach the National Nuclear Security Administration, among others.

Wonder what the mood’s like in Seattle this week.

Apple is getting ChatGPT in their OS without spending a dime — no billion-dollar investment in the company, and actual server usage may even be subsidized by Microsoft and the preferential Azure prices it granted OpenAI.

At the same time, Apple demonstrates that using all of ChatGPT to run a simple assistant is a huge waste of power and environmental resources, when a much smaller model that runs on a phone is enough.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

@iKyle@mastodon.social

The Translation API was one of the few new APIs this year I was really looking forward to.

Such a disappointment it seems so terribly designed, at a fundamental level, being tied directly to a SwiftUI View.

@iKyle@mastodon.social

I wonder if these sort of horrible API designs are a consequence of Apple building features with SwiftUI natively now?

UIKit allows UI to be presented fairly freely from around your code, do to the view controller hierarchy being easily accessed.

SwiftUI needs an element anchored to a View to do anything.

If that's true, eventually virtually all APIs will need to be invoked via a method on View and I'm going to really hate the next few years of Apple API releases.

@colossal@mastodon.art

Nicola Turner’s monumental, undulating sculpture, “The Meddling Fiend,” appears to move on spindly legs and rise up to meet a statue of English painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, who holds a hand out to greet a delicate tendril.

#art #publicart

www.thisiscolossal.com

@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social

Somebody sent me this blog my way today so I had a dig into it for a few hours.

Yes, Amit is right. Visual Studio Marketplace is a clusterfuck.

✅ anybody can verify themselves using just a domain name
✅ anybody can set any display name
✅ extensions allow RCE, no sandboxing or limits at all
✅ full access to developer + build
✅ anybody can link any GitHub repo, even if it has nothing to do with the extension
✅ I’ve already found malware - backdoors, beacons etc etc

1/6 | How We Hacked Multi-Billion Dollar Companies in 30 Minutes Using a Fake VSCode Extension

30 minutes. 30 minutes is how long it took us to develop, publish, and polish a Visual Studio Code (The most popular IDE on the planet with…

I forgot to complain again that this is the third time they reinvent Applescript. (After Shortcuts and Automator.)

Maybe this one will stick — I don't have the energy these days to look at what the API looks like.

Maybe we’ll even be able to replace shortcuts with LLM macros 🥹

Apple can provide this guidance and it will be followed by a huge number of developers. That’s the big advantage an LLM-based Siri can have against Android — never mind Windows. (How long that’ll last, considering how they like to antagonize independent devs as well as major tech companies, is an open question.)

Marcos Tanaka (@mactanaka@mastodon.social)

Attached: 1 image Interesting change in guidance for App Intents this year, probably in preparation for upcoming Apple Intelligence features. Direct quote from ‘Design App Intents for system experiences’: “Previously, app intents were meant to be the most habitual tasks in your app that could be useful outside of your app. This meant an app was expected to only have a few app intents. In iOS 18, we’re changing this guidance to go beyond common functionality. Now, anything your app does should be an app intent.”

It’s gonna be so fun watching him melt down if they vote against his pay package — results will be counted tomorrow 🍿

(Institutional shareholders are divided, and 40% of the stock is owned by individuals, most of whom are longtime Musk fans, so I'm not all that hopeful, but it's fun to imagine.)

Honestly, as an aesthetic I kinda love it. I hope they don’t trash this version of the model before making it available to download.

@Dreamwieber@sigmoid.social

🤩Ok this is fun - some very pretty translucency effects can be achieved with the new blurred background shader graph node in Reality Composer Pro, on #applevisionpro beta.

Reacts to your live pass through environment. ✨

I wonder how well the Forza Horizon 5 expansion packs sold compared to the number of Game Pass players, and how the equation of [players who bought the DLCs] vs [players who stopped playing the game because they wouldn’t get the DLCs for ‘free’] works out for Microsoft and Playground.

Thought I doubt many people actually cancelled Game Pass because they were done with Horizon.

@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social

⚠️ New in iOS/iPadOS 18, a third-party app can be used as a quick-take camera experience from the Lock Screen, without unlocking your device first. There are new APIs to provide a Locked Camera Capture Extension, which must be launched via a button on the lock screen, Control Center, or the Action Button. (Not by swiping sideways on the lock screen)

developer.apple.com

Again, it’s wild that Apple sees users jumping through hoops to accomplish this using Shortcuts, and their answer is: Here’s an option to have every icon be the same color on a black background 🙃

Thibault Le Hégarat (@thibault_lh@mastodon.xyz)

Attached: 4 images Ça ne vous protègera pas de l’extrême-droite mais vous aurez un téléphone plus joli grâce à mon pack d’icônes et de fonds d’écran Zelda. En vente sur mes boutiques Gumroad https://thibaultlh.gumroad.com/l/zeldaicons et Etsy https://www.etsy.com/fr/listing/1731970486/the-legend-of-zelda-icons-for-smartphone #videogames #zelda #nintendo #ios #android #design #icons

If Apple’s promises about the opsec of their cloud AI implementation seemed a little nebulous from a user’s perspective — no matter what, you can’t remove the need to trust Apple itself — it sounds to me like that’s because their threat model is a server being compromised, either in a Chinese factory, or by a foreign mole in IT.

I don’t think any of this will help if a fascist US government forces Apple to start logging data with a gag order on top.

Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green@ioc.exchange)

Attached: 1 image Then they’re throwing all kinds of processes at the server hardware to make sure the hardware isn’t tampered with. I can’t tell if this prevents hardware attacks, but it seems like a start. 8/

@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social

⚠️ Talk about hidden features! The ‘Enterprise APIs' for visionOS 2 include things like access to the main camera, passthrough capture, and barcode/QR scanning.

But *only* for in-house or B2B apps; you can't ship this stuff to the App Store.

That’s probably the biggest question as to how the public will respond.

Technically, they’ve shown that it can run on a tiny phone SotC, and they’ve talked about their custom AI-centric servers, so it shouldn’t be such a stretch to upgrade server-side Siri for more people.

Emotionally, forcing people who have anything but last year’s most expensive model to upgrade for a service that used to be cloud-based feels a bit like a slap in the face.

@rodhilton@mastodon.social

Apple's new Passwords app is basically too shitty for me to replace 1Password with it, but too good for NOBODY to replace 1Password with it, which will ensure that 1Password loses a whole bunch of revenue to the point where the product begins to suffer, prices increase, and broken features are added in a desperate move to standout, thereby ruining it for me.

Apple crushed all of humanity’s artistic and creative endeavors in a hydraulic press a month ago, I guess it shouldn't be a surprise they went and included DALL-E right in Messages, completely oblivious to how uncomfortable that might make a portion of the user base.

#WWDC24

I don’t know how obnoxious it will be in real-life usage, but the iPad’s new handwriting functionalities make it look like the actual magical paper it was supposed to be all along 😲

#WWDC24

The centered tab bar morphing into a lateral sidebar is an absolutely cursed interaction.

#WWDC24

This redesign of the Photos app would be pretty cool if real people’s photo rolls were actually full of photos they took of their adventures. Instead of every image they ever saved on their iPhone for any reason. (Remember back when we had file systems, and iPhoto actually only hosted your photo collection?)

#WWDC24

@Bas@mastodon.social

I found this website showing a tiny Rabbit R1-like case (concept?) for the Apple Watch.

I really liked the idea, so I created my own using 3D printing.

Perfect as a tiny iPod, desk clock or maybe… after today's #WWDC keynote… an AI voice assistant. ✨

#3DPrinting #Apple #AppleWatch #WWDC24

Cake

Discover Cake, the company transforming your Apple Watch into a playful, distraction-free phone alternative. Come see what we’re cooking up!

I was complaining about VS Code’s unvetted marketplace just a week ago. It’s wild that the industry responds to the ever-increasing threat of information theft by creating wide-open attack vectors like this, that we could absolutely do without.

Did they just go, “Well, Mimimi is shutting down, so no one can stop us from looting the corpse and picking up all their UI concepts”?

(A more charitable reading would have been that they’re picking up the mantle to everyone’s benefit, but if the universe had wanted me to be charitable tonight the day’s news should have been better.)

Sumerian Six on Steam

Lead an unlikely team of commando scientists behind enemy lines to fight Nazis, uncover arcane mysteries, and wield experimental technology to turn the tide of WWII in this real-time tactical stealth adventure.

Obviously they bought their way into it, but one can’t deny that Microsoft had a very good slate in their showcase.

Errant observations: Avowed looked rather more interesting than it had in previous showings. Making a new Max Caulfield game is a really weird idea when the best-liked character in the whole franchise gave up her life with the expectation she’d stop using her powers. And it’s kinda wild it took 18 years for Gears of War to think of exploring E-Day.

I don’t know anything about the context, but Blizzard still knows how to produce a short movie like few other studios can [CW: body horror]

Diablo IV | Vessel of Hatred | Offical Release Date Trailer - Xbox Games Showcase 2024

The battle against Hatred has only just begun.Journey into the new region of Nahantu in search of Neyrelle, who is both suffering the fate of her choice to i…

Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown has a free demo / stress test right now and… yikes. I can’t get it to look good on a 3070 Ti (a shame, Hong Kong looks gorgeous in trailers), AI traffic is broken, GPS subpar, auto gearbox glitchy…

Some of that may well be fixed by September, but the physics model won’t be (far too grippy, until it snaps and murders you like an old 911), nor the island taking *six minutes* to drive across in a starter car. It’s gonna be a tough sell when Forza Horizon exists.

Two years ago a big, loud open-top Lamborghini paraded under my windows for a couple nights in a row with a big Emirati jet-setters vibe. (I slept right over several expensive tourist-trap night bars at the time.) I remember idly wondering where the car came from — the idea that they’d rent it locally seemed somewhat off, never mind driving it there — but my brain never managed to reach “of course they fly it around the world” 🤦

TFW you’ve started a huge unnecessary construction project in Satisfactory and you now dread launching the game almost as much as opening one of your work projects 💀

Though I guess I can solve that by queuing up an audiobook. I can build an art-deco concrete tower while listening to a book but I can't develop an iPhone app.

I only ever played for a few minutes whichever Goat Simulator was on Game Pass, and I keep having to remind myself it’s the same studio that made the exceptionally well designed *and* well realized Satisfactory. That makes this trailer land differently; maybe it’s time I jump on that game the next time it’s on sale.

Goat Simulator 3 Multiverse of Nonsense Reveal Trailer - Future Games Show Summer Showcase 2024

A world premiere trailer revealed the Multiverse of Nonsense, a chaotic first DLC for Goat Simulator 3. It’s coming to PC, PlayStation and Xbox on the 19 Jun…

Photorealism by itself doesn’t make a game, but damn — this would have to have extremely bad gameplay to not be worth checking out.

Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream on Steam

Experience an isometric, narrative-driven stealth game and join Hanna’s adventure in the vibrant city of Eriksholm. The mysterious disappearance of her brother, Herman, ignites a chain of catastrophic events that will forever change their lives and the fate of the entire city.

Screenbound would make a lot more sense if it had you playing an AR game on your phone while dodging pedestrians and cars in a urban environment.

Enotria appears to ask “what if we made a beat-by-beat photocopy of Bloodborne, but under the Italian sun, and without a dodge-roll,” and the first part works for me, but the second doesn’t, at all. I’m not even sure the timing and distances are different; it just feels wrong. Not a fan either of the lack of fast weapons, at least in the beginning of the demo, but it seems good enough that I’ll give it a shot on Game Pass.

Enotria: The Last Song on Steam

Enotria: The Last Song is a soulslike set in a beautiful sun-lit world inspired by Italian folklore where the brightest sun casts the darkest shadow. Wear unique role-altering masks, face formidable foes and alter reality with the power of Ardore to unravel the secrets of Enotria.

I can’t believe New World is still running 😮

I couldn’t finish Zero Dawn because every backstory reveal was more depressing than the last. Lego Horizon Adventures should be everything that’s good about the franchise — from its fantastic visual design to Ashly Burch getting to just have fun — presumably with less of an emphasis on the apocalypse part of the setting. I don’t care how it plays, I just want it right now.

LEGO Horizon Adventures World Premiere Trailer | Summer Game Fest 2024

Watch the LEGO Horizon Adventures World Premiere Trailer from Summer Game Fest 2024 live from YouTube Theater in Los Angeles with host Geoff Keighley. #Summe…

@Flipboard@flipboard.social

People on ActivityPub-powered platforms like Mastodon, and Bluesky, which uses the AT Protocol, can now follow each other, see posts, like, reply, and repost them, thanks to the work of @snarfed.org, creator of Bridgy Fed. @Sarahp interviewed him for Tech Crunch about the future of bridging networks, how to bridge your account from the fediverse to Bluesky, and what to expect when you do.

#Fediverse #Federation #OpenSocialWeb #Bluesky #Bridgyfed #ActivityPub

Bluesky and Mastodon users can now talk to each other with Bridgy Fed | TechCrunch

Bridgy Fed is one of the efforts aimed at connecting the fediverse with the web, Bluesky and, perhaps later, other networks like Nostr.

Ooh I’m adding this to my list of 3D-printing projects (that I’ll never actually do)

NanoRaptor (@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social)

Attached: 1 image Retvrn.

People are gonna refuse to put anything in writing anywhere, and revert to phone calls for everything 😱😱😱

@dmoren@zeppelin.flights

If you’re looking to remove all the Bartender files and you have homebrew installed, one useful command (per Reddit) is “brew rm —zap —force bartender”, which seems to trash a lot of the ancillary files, even if you didn’t install via homebrew. (No guarantee it’ll get everything, of course.)

TIL there are two very different technologies for color e-ink screens: one with distinct CMYK microcapsules (that’s the version I remember reading about years ago) and a much simpler implementation that’s just a black e-ink screen behind a layer of RGB subpixel filters. No wonder reviews find recent color e-readers looking dull in comparison to monochrome.

Is Color E-Ink Worth The Hype? An Honest Assessment

Those are all Color E-Ink devices, and if someone told me 2 years ago that we’d see that many in 2024 I honestly wouldn’t have believed it. But as you can se…

@tek@freeradical.zone

A friend just pointed out:

“ADHD creates impulse control issues and, consequently, advertising takes advantage of a disability.  Ergo, ad blockers are assistive devices and interfering with their operation for commercial gain constitutes a willful violation of the ADA.”

Let’s do this.

@TalesFromTheArmchair@hachyderm.io

@cstross I can’t find the post now, but someone made the point that Recall (a) exfiltrates the contents of E2E chat programs (b) is readable by anyone who has remote access to the machine including Microsoft. It’s literally exactly the on-device surveillance functionality that law enforcement has been asking for the world over under names such as Chat Control. Quite plausibly it wasn’t even Microsoft’s own idea to include it in every copy of Windows.

@craiggrannell@mastodon.social

This Reddit thread does not inspire confidence about the future of Bartender. And that sucks, because Bartender is a great app.

From: @lapcatsoftware

Jeff Johnson (@lapcatsoftware@mastodon.social)

Bartender app has been acquired. It’s not clear by whom, though. https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1d7zjv8/comment/l73h9gv/

Password managers should have an option to help you memorize an important password by prompting you every day for a month after you changed it. And then quiz you once a month forever.

Not for every password obviously, that would defeat the point, but for the important ones — Apple, Google, and the entire chain of authentication that gives you access to your synced passwords themselves.

@kottke@mastodon.social

Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it. “As the texts escalated in complexity and rage, I sympathized with their plight. I mean, not enough to unlock my phone.”

Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it

Don’t fall for these texts from scammers trying to crack into your stolen phone.

@dev@discuss.systems

I’ve found the best wifi name. In awe of whoever’s network it is. ᓚᕠᗢ.

(Figured out the symbols after consulting a Unicode consortium friend)

@lettosprey@tech.lgbt

Many, many years ago, a new specification called “XML” emerged. After a bit, people realized it was kinda useful for some stuff.

Then, something happened.

MANAGERS!

I imagine many conversations between managers / developers somewhat like this:

M: “So, what is the nice thing with #XML

D: “oh, it is a specification that simplifies stuff, since tools have a clean format to work with.”

M: “So, what kinda specifications?”

D: “Oh, it can be more or less anything.”

M: *starry eyed!* “an.. an… anything?”

I was teaching computer courses for companies at that point. Suddenly, my calendar was just packed with XML courses.

It is like very limited what you can teach, it is not really complex, so you talk surrounding technologies. But not…

“Our boss wants us to replace the SQL db with XML?”

“what?”

“We gonna use XML instead of MS SQL”

“… what?”

“He said XML can be used for anything…”

If you think companies with #AI plans have actual plans, with a strategy make sense, please think of this story.

Twitter used to be too big for app stores to enforce their normal rules about adult content. I suspect that might not be so true anymore, and it’d be pretty funny if X officially endorsing porn might be the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back, and gets the app removed.

(I mean, it’s not a good thing that Apple and Google decide what content we see on our phones. But Musk’s app getting the boot would still be funny.)

X tweaks rules to formally allow adult content | TechCrunch

X will now allow users to post consensually produced NSFW content as long as it is prominently labeled as such.