What an amazing run. I don't recall when I first started using it, but over 20 years ago sounds right.

NetNewsWire - NetNewsWire Turns 23

NetNewsWire 1.0 for Mac shipped 23 years ago today! 🎸🎩🕶️ Here’s where things are on this particular February 11: we just shipped 7.0 for Mac and iOS, and now we’re working on NetNewsWire 7.0.1. After a big release, no matter how careful we are, there are often some regressions to fix and tweaks to make right away, so we’re working on those. Here’s the milestone with the current to-do list.

netnewswire.blog

Sean Hollister, at The Verge:

I print whistles because reality still matters; whistles get neighbors to come running, make sure enough people are recording, so when the regime pretends there’s only one camera angle of Renee Good’s death, we know the truth.

I also make whistles because it’s easy. You can literally do it in your sleep. I’ve made over 12,000 whistles since January 15th with three printers and almost zero optimization. I’ll harvest 300 of them tomorrow morning, 300 in the late afternoon, and another 100 in the evening before I do it all again.

While it's sad that this is necessary, I love that people are using the tech they have at home to help any way they can.

This whistle fights fascists

I print whistles now. You can too.

www.theverge.com

Micah Toll, writing at Electrek:

Florida is the latest US state to wade into the increasingly crowded waters of e-bike regulation, with lawmakers advancing a bill that would impose a situational 10 mph (16 km/h) speed limit for e-bikes on shared-use paths. It’s a move that fits squarely into a broader national trend, as states and cities across the country reconsider how electric bikes fit into public spaces that were never designed with fast, motor-assisted travel in mind.

I commute by bike and train from Belmont (in the Bay Area) to San Francisco about weekly. After the holidays and a lot of travel in January disrupted that schedule, last week was the first time in a while that I've made the trip.

I'm riding a Brompton G-Line, but not the e-bike version I wrote about earlier, so I move only as fast as my own legs will propel me. My route in the city largely comprises good bike lanes, sometimes protected lanes and with their own traffic lights, which is about as good a situation as you can hope for in a major US city. However, the bike lanes are crowded with all manner of vehicles, from human-powered bikes like mine to e-bikes and electric scooters. (The electric scooters—the ones that look like a big skateboard with a handlebar on the front—are frequently among the fastest things in the bike lane, some capable of doing 20-25 MPH very quickly.) There are occasionally way more exotic things like the Honda Motocompacto and the odd food delivery robot. I've also seen full-on gas-powered motor scooters illegally using the bike lanes.

While I'm not advocating for a 10 MPH limit like the article reports are coming in several states, I do understand where the pressure is coming from: the speed and skill disparity (none of these vehicles, save the gas-powered scooter that legally is a motorcycle requires a test or license of any kind to pilot) does make for some nervous moments. While I haven't been involved in an accident myself, nor have I even seen many, I did witness one person on a very fast scooter eat it when a car suddenly swerved into the bike lane (the scooter rider seemed fine after collecting himself).

The laws are coming for "e-bikes", but it's not vanilla e-bikes that are even the thing that strike me as the most dangerous: it's the e-motos (very fast electric dirt bikes) and e-scooters that have really made me take notice. And there are so many form factors that regulating what can use the bike lanes is going to be difficult.

Why another US state is preparing a 10 mph e-bike speed limit [Update]

Florida is the latest US state to wade into the increasingly crowded waters of e-bike regulation, with lawmakers advancing a...

electrek.co

... I have some incredible and previously unseen footage of Battlezone cabinets being built at Atari from late summer/early fall 1980.

...

The video I’m sharing today comes from inside Atari’s Coin-Op Manufacturing Facility at Sunnyvale, California, and although there’s no narration, it doesn’t need any. The footage speaks for itself.

Very cool! I loved playing that game back when I was a kid. It's really neat that the pictures and video footage of the production exist.

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Cabinet Production

Note: I’ve seen some online chatter about the possibility that the footage shared in this post could be AI generated (which is pretty depressing, but here we are I suppose). I just wanted to ...

arcadeblogger.com

Kristen Radtke, at The Verge:

There is something destabilizing about having known someone only as a child and then hearing they were gunned down in the street. The person you see in your mind lying in that street is still a child. I’m sure his mother feels that way, too, or she sees him at every age all at once, including those he did not live to see.

A touching tribute to someone struck down so needlessly.

I grew up with Alex Pretti

The kind-hearted ICU nurse shot by federal agents was my childhood best friend.

www.theverge.com

"Monsters"

Paul Krugman:

It has been clear for a long time, to anyone willing to see, that the people running the federal government — Trump, Miller, Noem, Bovino and more — are monsters. It has been equally obvious that ICE and the Border Patrol are now filled with sadistic thugs. Yet many people — almost the entire GOP, everyone serving in the Trump administration, some Democrats, a significant part of the media — were too cowardly to admit the obvious.

At this point, however, there are no more excuses. In a way the cowards and opportunists enabling Trump are more to blame for where we are than Trump and company themselves: monsters are monsters and can’t help themselves, but the enablers have a choice. And they have chosen, again and again, to accommodate and facilitate evil.

What's happening in Minnesota is disgusting and un-American. The people running the government are, as Krugman's post points out, monsters. Perhaps worst of all are the craven enablers.

Monsters

And their enablers are accessories to murder

paulkrugman.substack.com

Micah Toll, writing at Electrek:

But crashes aren’t happening because the bike gets to top speed in 6 seconds instead of 9 seconds. They’re happening because parents bought their 14 year old an e-bike and the kid didn’t have the rider training to use it responsibly or understand the rules of the road to ride safely in traffic. So I think the goal of reigning in motor wattage with an eye on safety is misguided.

I agree with this article, which basically says that CA Assembly Bill 1557, which tries to limit the legal amount of power an e-bike can be rated for to a certain wattage number, is well meaning, but misguided. I'm all for clear classification and regulation of e-bikes, but this isn't it.

California is trying to close the last major electric bike loophole

California lawmakers are once again taking aim at the gray areas of electric bike regulation, this time by targeting what...

electrek.co

Dune: Imperium–Uprising

I was introduced to Dune: Imperium–Uprising last night, and I had fun playing it. It's a lot more complicated than the games we usually play at home, which is to say it's probably super easy if you're a hard core board gamer, but I had enough fun that my own copy is on its way.

The ecosystem around the Dune board games is a bit confusing. This game is a spinoff of Dune: Imperium. Despite sharing the "Imperium" name, it's really a standalone game; nothing else is needed to play it.

From the game's description on Board Game Geek:

Dune: Imperium Uprising is a standalone spinoff to Dune: Imperium that expands on that game's blend of deck-building and worker placement, while introducing a new six-player mode that pits two teams against one other in the biggest struggle yet.

The Dune: Imperium expansions Rise of Ix and Immortality work with Uprising, as do almost all of the cards from the base game, and elements of Uprising can be used with Dune: Imperium.

It's a spinoff with a similar name, which has its own expansions! Whatever...I'm looking forward to introducing it at our next game night.