Via The Verge:

Moonbase is more than just a power strip—it's a futuristic command center for your gaming setup, creative workspace, or office on the moon. With a sleek, futuristic lunar base-inspired design, it combines the best of both worlds: a power strip with 3 spacious AC “nodes” and a 240 W GaN USB-C charger with 4 USB-C ports. Ultra fast charging for 7 devices at once including multiple laptops, gaming handhelds, tablets, phones, and more—all while keeping your setup clutter-free and looking interstellar.

Love it! Backed.

"GENKI: Moonbase, Moonlinks, & TurboCharger"

www.indiegogo.com

Mark Gurman, via Gruber (since I don't have a Bloomberg sub): "Apple is now working on a major effort to support third-party hand controllers in the device’s visionOS software and has teamed up with Sony Group Corp. to make it happen."

That's great news, if true. The hand controls are good, but they're not good enough for a lot of games.

Gurman: Apple and Sony Are Working to Bring PlayStation VR Hand Controller Support to Vision Pro

Link to: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-12-08/apple-sony-talk-playstation-vr-ps-vr2-hand-controller-support-for-vision-pro

daringfireball.net

OpenAI:

"Today, we’re adding ChatGPT Pro, a $200 monthly plan that enables scaled access to the best of OpenAI’s models and tools. This plan includes unlimited access to our smartest model, OpenAI o1, as well as to o1-mini, GPT-4o, and Advanced Voice."

It looks like you’ll have to pay the $200/mo if you really want to use o1 for much. I’ve been using the existing $20/mo. ChatGPT Plus plan this weekend…not that much…and got the following: “You have 5 responses from o1 remaining. If you hit the limit, responses will switch to another model until it resets December 10, 2024.” Claude backs me off for a few hours sometimes, but days? Oof.

"Introducing ChatGPT Pro"

openai.com

The New York Times: "The First New Film Camera in 20 Years Was Just Released". While this is definitely not that—Leica came out with a new version of the M6 just a couple years ago—it is neat. I love the look of it, although $500 is pretty steep for a point-and-shoot.

The First New Film Camera in 20 Years Was Just Released. Our Photo Experts Think It’s Fascinating.

The Pentax 17 is a bold experiment: a brand-new, $500 film camera with a quirky design. Can it survive—and even thrive—in a digital world?

www.nytimes.com

"Fully documented source code for Elite on the Commodore 64"

Mark Moxon, posting on Mastodon:

"I'm really proud to present my fully documented source code for Elite on the Commodore 64. This is the original 1985 source, recently released by Ian Bell, with every single line of code explained. It’s a thing of beauty. Enjoy!"

Incredible! Also be sure to check out the website with much more. What a labor of love! I played this game so much back in the day.

Mark Moxon (@markmoxon@universeodon.com)

I'm really proud to present my fully documented source code for Elite on the Commodore 64. This is the original 1985 source, recently released by Ian Bell, with every single line of code explained. It’s a thing of beauty. Enjoy! https://github.com/markmoxon/elite-source-code-commodore-64 #retrocomputing #retrogaming #8bit #C64 #Commodore64 #Elite

universeodon.com

The company behind Arc is building a new AI web browser called Dia. I really liked Arc, their previous browser, and that's part of the problem: it's been clear that they have been spending less time on Arc, starting with their AI-driven mobile browser. They also spent a lot of time on Arc for Windows, which slowed Arc's feature progress. Now they're making a whole new browser.

In the meantime, I started using Safari more, mostly to try out some of its new features, but I ended up not going back to Arc. I get that companies have to find a way to sustain themselves, and the lack of a way to make a business out of Arc was one of my concerns in adopting it. I'm not as angry as people in the comments section on that article are, but it is disappointing. Maybe this new thing will be amazing someday, but I'm not going to jump in until it's clear that it has a future.

The company behind Arc is building a new AI web browser called Dia

With an AI cursor that knows what to say when you don’t.

www.theverge.com

"When a Telescope Is a National-Security Risk"

Ross Andersen, writing at The Atlantic:

In the early months of 2023, the astronomer Željko Ivezić found himself taking part in a highly unusual negotiation. Ivezić is the 59-year-old director of the Vera Rubin Observatory, a $1 billion telescope that the United States has been developing in the Chilean high desert for more than 20 years. He was trying to reach an agreement that would keep his telescope from compromising America’s national security when it starts stargazing next year.

This task was odd enough for any scientist, and it was made more so by the fact that Ivezić had no idea with whom he was negotiating. “I didn’t even know which agency I was talking to,” he told me on a recent video call from his field office in Chile. Whoever it was would communicate with him only through intermediaries at the National Science Foundation. Ivezić didn’t even know whether one person or several people were on the other side of the exchange. All he knew was that they were very security-minded. Also, they seemed to know a great deal about astronomy.

Interesting story. $5M to build a secure network to redact and delay live results is a pretty wild outcome.

When a Telescope Is a National-Security Risk

How do you know what you’re not allowed to see?

www.theatlantic.com

Nilay Patel, writing at The Verge:

"The Verge is 13 years old now, which feels remarkable to say — we’ve outlasted a lot of our peers, and we’ve mostly done it because we’re stubborn as hell. We’ve never chased metrics, we’ve never taken money to say what other people want us to say, and we’ve never shied away from caring deeply about technology and how it makes people feel. Launching a subscription is a big change, but it’s the foundation of how we’ll stubbornly make it another 13 years.

I hope you can help support us — and if you can’t, we’ll do our best to earn your support in the future.

I've been reading The Verge since the beginning (well, before the beginning, I guess: I followed them from Engadget to This is My Next and ultimately to The Verge), so I subscribed. I think full-text RSS feeds as a subscriber benefit are a great idea, and getting fewer ads is always nice (although I have to say that for $50/year, I'd prefer ad-free). Anyway, if you're looking for something to spend the subscription money you saved by canceling The Washington Post, I can happily recommend The Verge.

Here we go: The Verge now has a subscription

A lot of our site will remain free, but you can now pay to get fewer ads and unlimited access to all of our work.

www.theverge.com

Joe Biden:

"Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision."

I can't blame him, given Trump's victory. There's no telling what would befall Biden's son once Trump had him in his hands. I do wonder if this would still have happened if Harris had won. Perhaps, given the reasoning, which is also hard to fault.

Read Joe Biden’s Statement and His Grant of Clemency (Published 2024)

President Biden issued the statement after signing a pardon for Hunter Biden Sunday night.

www.nytimes.com