stephen.nyc

Tag: Technology

  • Trump Administration Drops Plan to Strip Visas From Foreign Students in Online Classes Amidst Lawsuits

    Trump Administration Drops Plan to Strip Visas From Foreign Students in Online Classes Amidst Lawsuits

    After 17 States, and the three of the Big Four decide to sue to the Trump Administration, do they rescind their racist plan to strip visas from foreign students. As a backdrop, we’re currently in the midst of colossal pandemic, with nearly half of million dead so far.

    Pretty foolish of the Trumpist to try to pull this stunt. In normal times, under a normal president, this would be political suicide months before an election. Hell, I’d normally say this was unbelievable, but honestly this was expected. Look at his racist executive actions with DACA. Thankfully, that order was blocked by the SCOTUS ruling just a month ago. But, DACA recipients still remain in a legal limbo until Congress passes a law to grant them citizenship.

  • Websites that look like desktop GUIs

    Websites that look like desktop GUIs

    Came across this post on Hacker News and just had to share it here too. This is one of my favorite things to see on the web and it never fails to make me smile. My favorite is JS Paint, I mean just look at it!

    Behold, MS Paint (essentially) in a broswer!

    I never really considered cataloging them in a blog post until now. Simone’s list is pretty great, check it out here.

    Update January 22, 2021: Check out this one from NBC’s The Office.

  • New site, who dis

    New site, who dis

    I haven’t developed a new WordPress theme for this website (that I really loved) in a long time. So naturally, it was time to re-examine my personal tech stack. If you personally know me, you know I’m a WordPress advocate. Big fan of ol trusty.

    There’s a few problems with WordPress I’ve been hung up on for a while now. It can be a bit slow (sometimes). Media managing can be painful on the front-end. Deployment processes are… all over the place. Historically, I’ve been a huge fan of Trellis from Roots. While we’re at it, I was a big fan of Bedrock too. Finally, I work with React and JavaScript all day long — why can’y my personal website run on a modern tech stack too?

    Well, I came across this post from Chris Coyier, and I was pretty much sold on the JAMStack concept immediately. At work, and at other organizations like Twitter, server-rendered pages are stupid fastest. Heck, they’re typically standard these days for most web apps. Enter the Gatsby + WordPress stack. Why abandon years of publishing paradigms when you can keep them?

    There’s no shortage of tutorials on the Gatsby + WordPress setup. Initially I played around with some starter projects, like this one. I personally started (and later forked) with egghead.io’s starter. It’s pretty spectacular out-of-the-box, and if you enjoy love @emotion theming or styled-components, I think you’ll dig too. But, really Gatsby itself has a lot to love. For example, Gatsby has drop-in support for server-rendering. Super cool stuff. I really enjoyed Juliano Rafael’s (@frontendwizard) notes on this subject:

    Progressive image loading? Inlining of critical CSS? Painless PWA configuration? You name it, Gatsby got you. It is really impressive. Don’t believe me? I encourage you to try it out.

    The solution for images is so good, that is constantly referred as a strong point of Gatsby, even thought it actually is a plugin. All you gotta do is add a couple of plugins into your Gatsby config file and you’re good to go. Your images will be available on the GraphQL API at build time and the image component will handle all the resize, picking the best file format and everything else. You even get a blur up effect to improve the user experience for free.

    That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Seriously. These web apps freakin purr. I’m overdue for writing a full tutorial on this subject, so stay tuned. But, for now I want to share a high-level overview of the technical lift I undertook for my site migration.

    My order of operations (yours might be slightly different):

    Now that we have our API-site prepped for deploy-hooks, exposed the frontpage and menus endpoints — we’re ready to consume the API with our server-rendered React app powered by Gatsby. Here’s a sample of my gatsby-config.js file:

    ...
resolve: `gatsby-source-wordpress`,
options: {
  // Your API WordPress source goes here.
  baseUrl: `example-api.https://stephen.nyc`,
  protocol: `https`,
  // Fetches posts, tags, categories, etc from the baseUrl.
  includedRoutes: [
    '**/menus',
    '**/categories',
    '**/frontpage',
    '**/media',
    '**/pages',
    '**/posts',
    '**/tags',
    '**/users'
  ],
  useACF: false,
},
...

    I absolutely love this setup.

    All of the un-fun configuration stuff is already handled by the WordPress/WP REST API side, and all of the actually fun conventional interface building is done on the… well, the interface side. A complete separation of church and state, if you will. It’s a thing of beauty. Absolute zen.

  • Mondo releases an Original MSX2 Metal Gear Video Game Soundtrack 10″

    Mondo releases an Original MSX2 Metal Gear Video Game Soundtrack 10″

    The MSX2 was a home computer that pre-dated Nintendo’s Entertainment System (NES). Just like the NES, the MSX2 had a top-slot cartridge port. It was a pretty cool design, and other home computers that came before (and after) it featured a similar top-slot design. Here’s a MSX2 computer fabricated by Phillips:

    The MSX was originally release in 1983, however this specific model produced by Phillips was released in 1986.

    Japan (as is normally the case) was ahead of the curve, as they believed a home computer could be at the center of every home. Oddly enough, they were right.

    One of the smash-hit titles that was released for the MSX2 was Metal Gear (メタルギア) in 1987 by Konami. Metal Gear was a legendary action-adventure stealth and espionage video game title. The game, and the franchise that followed, was so successful that successors and sequels continue to be produced to this day. Here’s the original Metal Gear artwork:

    Special Force Group: Fox Hound — heck yeah, so sick.

    This had a legendary musical score (check out a sample here). The original score is credited to composer Motoaki Furukawa. He was a key member of Konami’s in-house band (that’s right, Konami has an in-house band), Konami Kukeiha Club. The band has been in operation since the 1980’s.

    Mondo, a purveyor of extraordinarily fine goods, t-shirts, media, sci-fi paraphernalia and god-knows-what-else — is dropping a 10″ original soundtrack pressing of Metal Gear replete with new artwork and camouflage colored vinyl:

    This premiere physical release of the soundtrack is cut at 45RPM, and features all new original artwork by Paul Mann that pays tribute to the 80’s action films that inspired the game, and is pressed on heavyweight Camouflage colored vinyl.

    If you are a fan of chiptunes, looking for an edge-up on your next DJ set, or simply just a Metal Gear superfan, this record is an absolute must-have. You can pick up this super-dope limited release at Mondo, here.

  • Will Netflix survive the streaming wars?

    Will Netflix survive the streaming wars?

    The short answer: it’s unclear.

    What is clear, is that the streaming wars are becoming increasingly expensive. Everyone is vying for the customer’s prime-time attention. Just to watch the latest new original series X on streaming service Y is a mind-bending calculation. Just between those two variables alone, and conservative estimates on new original content: roughly 10 services with original content, 5 new series per year at 10 episodes each, comes to about 250 episodes to stream. That’s roughly 250 hours worth of content to stream pear year. America’s greatest export is after all, entertainment.

    That’s a lot to keep up with, and that doesn’t even include cable studio production releases that come from favorites such as FX or SYFY.

    Professor Scott Galloway makes a great point that SVODs that have an economic flywheel (e.g. companies that attract customers via Prime or iPhone sales, and enjoy the benefits of staying within those ecosystems such as Prime Video or Apple TV+ respectively) are immune to economic downturns. A couple of obvious giants that fit that mould are Amazon and Apple:

    Chart: No Mercy / No Malice, Professor Scott Galloway

    Following that rubric, Disney+ doesn’t enjoy the flywheel designations and Netflix is experiencing an especially painful truth — producing original content is very expensive:

    I’m not even sure Netflix gets out alive. Netflix is now the US economy, vulnerable to a spike in interest rates as it takes on increasing amounts of debt to fund staggering investments in original content. The original gangster can’t rely on gross margin dollars from Mandalorian action figures, handsets, or paper towels (no flywheel). The key question is can Netflix’s first-mover advantage/skill be replicated in other markets.

    If Netflix isn’t careful, when the next recession or economic downturn hits, (reminder: the American deficit is nearing $1 Trillion) it’s entirely possible that Netflix won’t survive.

  • Foxconn’s production continues to be recalled as Coronavirus takes hold

    Foxconn’s production continues to be recalled as Coronavirus takes hold

    Apple generates $27M in profit every couple of hours.

    That’s important to understand because the fuel for that economic furnace is powered by people. You’d think it’s devices (and it is really), but at the end of the day, it’s people who assemble these ivory devices. Apple’s device sales generate the bulk of their cash. That’s why Apple has been focused on other revenue segments such as services and entertainment recently. Foxconn, is Apple’s primary fabricator and production darling, located in Shenzhen.

    The majority of confirmed COVID-19 cases are in China, and as The People Republic of China contains its spread, only a fraction of workers are allowed to go back to work. Foxconn is deeply affected by this. Only about 10% reported back to work in Shenzhen last week. That’s painful for Apple, but for Foxconn, every day they aren’t producing, it eats into their margins as production estimates slip. They’ve begun to recall workers back to their factories in phases according to the Financial Times.

    If only Foxconn would’ve built this mysterious factory in Mount Pleasant sooner. In fact, Foxconn has yet to manufacture a single thing in Wisconsin at all. They risk losing their Republican-apportioned tax credits and now they risk their razor-thin margins due to an outbreak that could have been contained much sooner.

  • Sonos is bricking old devices with ‘Recycled Mode’

    Sonos is bricking old devices with ‘Recycled Mode’

    Chris Welch reporting at The Verge writes:

    Late last week, Sonos was called out on Twitter by Devin Wilson for its practices around sustainability. The company drew particular attention for a “Recycle Mode” software feature that, once activated, begins a countdown that eventually renders older Sonos devices basically inoperable. Recycle Mode is part of the trade-up program that Sonos announced back in October, which lets customers get a discount on newer Sonos speakers like the One, Beam, or the Port that Nilay just reviewed.

    At first glance, the Recycle Mode seems like a good idea. Except for this one crucial feature of the Sonos App:

    Recycle Mode is a state your device enters 21 days after recycling confirmation in the Sonos app. In Recycle Mode, all data is erased and the device is permanently deactivated so you can safely and securely dispose of it. Once a device is in Recycle Mode, it cannot be reactivated.

    Wait. What the fuck? This is so fucked. I’m all for reducing, reusing and recycling. But, I prefer to do the reducing and reusing first.

    Forcing customers to brick their devices, to force them to recycle is not ideal. In fact, forcing consumers to brick their devices should be illegal. It turns out that recycling isn’t even the most effective way to recover materials. Simply put, shipping our recyclables to China (or elsewhere) for processing isn’t working. As a result, many cities are moving away from recycle programs. In fact, many are forced to recover energy from plastics and trash by burning it in furnaces, and in many cases this is the most green scenario. So, why on Earth is Sonos doing this? To edge up profits in this fierce smart-speaker market of course.

  • Every Two Weeks, a Language Dies

    Every Two Weeks, a Language Dies

    Nina Strochlic at National Geographic writes:

    Between 1950 and 2010, 230 languages went extinct, according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. Today, a third of the world’s languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers left. Every two weeks a language dies with its last speaker, 50 to 90 percent of them are predicted to disappear by the next century.

    In rare cases, political will and a thorough written record can resurrect a lost language. Hebrew was extinct from the fourth century BC to the 1800s, and Catalan only bloomed during a government transition in the 1970s. In 2001, more than 40 years after the last native speaker died, the language of Oklahoma’s Miami tribe started being learned by students at Miami University in Ohio. The internet has connected rare language speakers with each other and with researchers. Even texting has helped formalize languages that don’t have a set writing system.

    Other languages have not been so lucky in a post-internet world. Many, will never return from extinction. But it’s true that being more connected, we have more opportunities to connect and preserve our ancestral dialects and languages. In National Geographic’s article, they share a video of two surviving speakers of Gottscheerish:

    For more information, check out WikiTongues, the seed bank of the world’s languages.

  • Travis Kalanick Sells Remaining Uber Shares, Leaving Board

    Travis Kalanick Sells Remaining Uber Shares, Leaving Board

    After selling more than $2B of his shares, Travis Kalanick has severed his final ties to Uber. The New York Times reports:

    Travis Kalanick, the founder and former chief executive of Uber, has stepped down from the company’s board of directors, severing his last tie with the company. 

    Mr. Kalanick, 43, started the Uber in 2009 with co-founder Garrett Camp, and grew it from a small start-up to a behemoth that defined the ride hailing industry. The company went public in May, and has since struggled on the public market. The board forced Mr. Kalanick to resign as chief executive in 2017 after a series of sexual harassment and privacy incidents.

    Talk about selling out. Kalanick’s reign of burning a seemingly endless supply of cash may have finally come to an end, but Uber continues to hemorrhage cash. Travis has been riding the IPO pony to cash out slowly (which, I should add, many others were not so lucky). A majority of his shares have been locked-up since the IPO, which is why he didn’t sell them en masse. There’s no ambiguity about this $2B conclusion, he’s done with Uber.

  • Dennis Muilenburg Fired From Boeing Amid 737 Max Crisis

    Dennis Muilenburg Fired From Boeing Amid 737 Max Crisis

    The New York Times reports:

    The company has been mired in the worst crisis in its 103-year history since the crashes of two 737 Max jets killed 346 people. The plane has been grounded since March, and Boeing has faced cascading delays as it tries to return the Max to the air. 

    The company said David Calhoun, the chairman, would replace Mr. Muilenburg on Jan. 13. Until then, Boeing’s chief financial officer, Greg Smith, will serve as interim chief executive, the company said.

    Firing Muilenburg won’t mend the damaged reputation nor will it fix the highly problematic MCAS system that plagues the 737 Max aircraft, but it will catalyze Boeing to switch gears. Never mind the fact, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft test over the weekend was an orbital failure.

    Previously, the ramifications of Boeings accumulated failures had begun as a slow moving tidal wave affecting airline operators such as Southwest being forced to leave Newark. Now, as the plane’s future remains unclear, aerospace supply chains have begun to feel the pressure as well. Boeing, just a week ago — halted the production of the Boeing 737 Max airplane. As many as 8,000 suppliers and third-party vendors will be affected by the halted production.

    Not good.

  • Interfaces, People and Machines: Good Design Goes Beyond Just Good Looks

    Interfaces, People and Machines: Good Design Goes Beyond Just Good Looks

    Interface: people, machines, design, is a new show exhibiting at the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences in New South Wales, Australia. From the exhibition’s description:

    Interface: people, machines, design explores how design has been applied to information technology products; about how a handful of companies made complicated technology appealing and easy to use. What they did effectively was, look at what you do, think about what you need and create what you want. Interface is about the visionaries who started some of the great consumer product companies of the 20th century, including Olivetti, Braun and Apple, and how the designers and engineers they hired found a means of imparting their ideals into the products they designed.

    I’m a huge fan of user-centric design. We often forget that everything is designed. While most items are not thoughtfully designed, the most successful are (and therefor, plenty of products are emulations or forked from original products without permission, such as mass-market SEM watches). The Conversation has an excellent summary of the exhibit core-focus on human-centric engineering and design:

    While we nowadays associate interfaces with digital computing, this show suggests we should think otherwise. Tactile buttons, knobs, dials and machined surfaces abound.

    […]

    Featuring the work of well-known designers such as Dieter Rams, Jonathan Ive, Ettore Sottsass, Susan Kare and Peter Behrens, the show does more than acknowledge the genius of the “superstar”. It also presents an “archaeology” of how material, function and form morph across time.

    More than this, Interface underscores the importance and continuity of what we now call “user-centered design”. It shows this across a range of practices – and not just modern information design.

    2+7 Telephone. Designed by Marcello Nizzoli, made by SAFNAT, Italy, 1958. Powerhouse Museum
    Divisumma 18 portable calculator, designed by Mario Bellini, made by Olivetti, Italy, 1973. Photo: Powerhouse Museum. Powerhouse Museum

  • Microsoft Announces New Next-gen Console, Xbox Series X

    Microsoft Announces New Next-gen Console, Xbox Series X

    Pretty big announcement from Microsoft happened yesterday. Tom Warren for The Verge reports:

    Microsoft has been working on Xbox Series X under the name Project Scarlett previously, and today’s naming follows confirmation from Sony that it’s choosing PlayStation 5 for the name of its next console. Microsoft is also claiming Xbox Series X will be the “fastest” and “most powerful,” in what could be a reference to having a more powerful console than Sony’s PlayStation 5.

    Earlier this month, Project Scarlett (the alias the Xbox has been known as up until now), officially became Phil Spencer’s (Phil is Microsoft’s Head of Xbox) primary console at his home:

    Well, now we have a few more details, and can expect it to go on sale in 2020. It kinda looks like a boxy Mac Pro with a slot-loading disk drive. While we don’t have a list of specs or internal photography, looking at this design so far I would be concerned about thermals. The Mac Pro wrestled with that problem til the very end, and the Series X is supposed to be playable resting upward or on its side like a soundbar.

    Here’s the new trailer, it’s a little over-the-top, but definitely a tour-de-force of creative CGI that can be appreciated. The console appears around 1:18

    Here’s a few stills from the video:

  • “Raspbaby Yoda” Raspberry Pie

    “Raspbaby Yoda” Raspberry Pie

    I hope you’ve been following The Mandalorian on Disney+. Wether you have (or have not) seen the show yet, matters not. All you need to know is, Baby Yoda, (or as he is officially known, The Child) is pretty much the cutest thing ever to grace the Star Wars universe.

    What happens when you combine stellar baking artistry and a love for the cutest alien sidekick ever? You get a Raspbaby Yoda. Get it?

    You can follow this incredible pie artist here on Instagram (via u/ThePieous on Reddit).

  • Duolingo Earns $100M in Annual Bookings, Raises $30M from Alphabet

    Duolingo Earns $100M in Annual Bookings, Raises $30M from Alphabet

    Duolingo’s Premium subscription offering, which launched in 2017, has contributed to a meteoric increase in annual bookings. It continues to invest more and more R&D into AI and machine learning to power its tutoring software and growth. Duolingo raised some serious money from Alphabet bringing the total valuation of the charming Pittsburgh startup, to roughly $9 billion:

    Popular language learning app Duolingo has raised $30 million in a series F round of funding from Alphabet’s investment arm CapitalG. […]

    Duolingo claims 30 million users are actively learning languages on its platform, and it has emerged as one of the most downloaded educational apps globally. Since its last funding round more than two years ago, it has more than doubled its employees from 95 to 200 and has opened additional offices in Seattle, New York, and Beijing. It also now claims annual bookings of $100 million after it launched its premium plan in 2017, a significant increase from the $33 million it drew in last year.

    (via VentureBeat)

  • Lil Bub, the Internet’s Favorite Cat Has Died

    Lil Bub, the Internet’s Favorite Cat Has Died

    From Mashable:

    On Monday, Lil Bub’s human, Mike Bridavsky, shared the sad news on social media, along with a side-by-side photo composite featuring the first and last photo the two took together.

    Per the post, Lil Bub was born in June 2011 and passed away on Sunday, Dec. 1. She was born with several genetic anomalies, including a rare bone condition called osteopetrosis, disproportionately small limbs, a lack of teeth, and an extra toe on all four paws. According to Bridavsky, before she died she was battling an “aggressive bone infection.”

    Rest easy Lil Bub, you showed us love and you will be missed ????. Lil Bub passed away at the young tender age of 8, but may she will live on forever in our hearts.

    https://twitter.com/kylegaddo/status/1201558679474057218
  • The Motorola RAZR is Back

    The Motorola RAZR is Back

    Chaim Gartenberg for The Verge reports:

    The hinge is also a bit stiff so you won’t be able to just whip it open with a flick of a wrist — closing it with one hand also involves some more finger contortions to start the closing action. It’s just more practical to close it with your other hand.

    Even with these caveats, the whole opening and closing mechanism is supremely satisfying to do, with crisp snaps in both directions. Snapping the phone shut to hang up on a call is a particular delight; there really is no better way to end a call than the classic flip phone snap, and it’s excellent to see that Motorola has kept it alive here. The hardware feels great, too, with solid-feeling stainless steel and glass on the outside and a wonderfully textured back that’s nice and grippy, which is essential for not dropping it while flipping it open and shut. (It is a fingerprint magnet, though.)

    A freaking… hinge! Did you hear that?!

    Photo: The Verge

    Pretty wild right? What year is this? Check out The Verge’s review video below. At the 1:20 mark, Chaim makes a fantastic point. All the other foldables seem to have run into the same problem. They all have terrible hinge designs, among other unmemorable product design issues. For other unknown reasons, most of the other devices fold hamburger style instead of hotdog. Perplexing really. Remember the Samsung Galaxy Fold? It was atrocious, and If you recall, it failed spectacularly.

    Sure, the new RAZR isn’t exactly the most beautiful smart device either. It does after all run on Android and will likely employ Google RCS. Nonetheless, it does raise some eyebrows. It brings Motorola back into the fray, and it brings the flip back to smart phones in such a memorable way. One major upside for this design? No more glass screens, which means no more cracked screens for those that fumble (myself included). I think that’s a bright future we can all hope for.

    Overall, I’m not sure if I would love it owning a RAZR (I never owned the original RAZR in the first place, but I did own a Sidekick 3 once upon a time), but it has certainly piqued my interest. I think it’s entirely possible that this foldable mobile-device paradigm just might make a comeback. What do ya’ll think?