If you use Quarry Park, please take a moment to complete the survey.

San Mateo County Parks is working with Avid Trails to develop Single-track Mountain Bike Trail Standards that will guide the planning of sustainable, safe, and enjoyable single-track mountain bike trails in Quarry Park.

We’re seeking input from both bike riders and non-bike riders to understand how people currently use Quarry Park and what recreation opportunities, amenities, and improvements they would like to see in the future.

Take the Quarry Park Public Recreation Survey

We’re learning how people currently use Quarry Park and what recreation opportunities, amenities, and improvements they would like in the future. Your feedback will help in the development of Single-track Mountain Bike Trail Standards for the park.

www.smcgov.org

Hana Kiros, writing at The Atlantic:

TrendForce, a consumer-research firm, anticipates that laptop prices will rise by more than a third in the next few years. Computers under $500 will be extinct by 2028, according to a report from Gartner. Put differently, cheaper computers may fall off the map. “The $300 Chromebook and the $150 Android phone were products of a specific era—one where memory was cheap because nobody else was competing for it at this scale,” Nate Jones, an AI analyst, told me. “That era is ending.”

I’ll take the analyst assessment with a grain of salt, but RAM prices are certain to have interesting (bad) second-order effects aside from just more expensive computers. Hopefully my new one will last a while.

If You Need a Laptop, Buy It Now

Electronics are getting more expensive and worse. Blame the AI boom.

www.theatlantic.com

Artemis II on Flickr

NASA is uploading photos from Artemis II to Flickr. Here are some of my favorites. “Peeking at the Earth” was shot with the D5, as mentioned in my last post, but “Artemis II in Eclipse” was done with the Z9, and “Spaceship Earth” with the iPhone 17 Pro Max. It’s so awesome that we’re getting images from such varied tools.

Artemis II in Eclipse

art002e009301 (April 6, 2026) – Captured by the Artemis II crew during their lunar flyby on April 6, 2026, this image shows the Moon fully eclipsing the Sun. From the crew’s perspective, the Moon appears large enough to completely block the Sun, creating nearly 54 minutes of totality and extending the view far beyond what is possible from Earth. We see a glowing halo around the dark lunar disk. The science community is investigating whether this effect is due to the corona, zodiacal light, or a combination of the two. Also visible are stars, typically too faint to see when imaging the Moon, but with the Moon in darkness stars are readily imaged. This unique vantage point provides both a striking visual and a valuable opportunity for astronauts to document their observations during humanity’s return to deep space. The faint glow of the nearside of the Moon is visible in this image, having been illuminated by light reflected off the Earth. Credit: NASA

www.flickr.com

Peeking at the Earth

art002e009286 (April 6, 2026) – As the Artemis II crew came close to passing behind the Moon and experiencing a planned loss of signal, they captured this image of a crescent Earth setting on the Moon’s limb. The edge of the visible surface of the Moon is called the “lunar limb.” Seen from afar, it almost looks like a circular arc – except when backlit, as in other images captured by the Artemis II crew. In this photo, the dark portion of Earth is experiencing nighttime, while Australia and Oceania are in the daylight. In the foreground, the Ohm crater is visible, with terraced edges and a flat floor interrupted by central peaks. Peaks such as these form in complex craters when the lunar surface is liquified on impact, and the liquefied surface splashes upward during the crater’s formation. Credit: NASA

www.flickr.com

Spaceship Earth

NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft’s main cabin windows, looking back at Earth, as the crew travels towards the Moon. Credit: NASA

www.flickr.com

“The 10-Year-Old Nikon D5 DSLR Really Is the Best Camera for Artemis II”

I wondered, while watching the live coverage of Artemis II yesterday, why they were taking photos with Nikon D5s, which is an older, discontinued camera. This article answers that question. tl;dr: Known quantity; build quality; still class-leading low-light performance.

The 10-Year-Old Nikon D5 DSLR Really Is the Best Camera for Artemis II

The Nikon D5 may be relatively old, but it’s also uniquely powerful in low light.

petapixel.com

“Don’t Let Fear Flatten Progress on E-Bikes”

Amy Thomson, Justin Hu-Nguyen, Claire Amable, and Warren Wells, writing at Streetsblog San Francisco:

This past January, New Jersey legislators swung a regulatory sledgehammer that threatens the future of sustainable transportation across the country, with State Bill S4834 classifying all e-bikes as motorcycles, a drastic move that would require licenses, registration, and insurance. By conflating legal e-bikes with electric dirt bikes falsely advertised as e-bikes (widely referred to as “e-motos” which are not street legal), this law broadly penalizes active mobility without offering any substantial changes that make it safer for pedestrians, cyclists, or drivers sharing the road. … The stakes are too high for us to get this wrong. E-bikes have the potential to make biking a mainstream mode of transportation, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, and creating more livable, connected, and joyful neighborhoods. This future depends on sensible regulation that encourages, rather than punishes, those choosing to ride. We all want safe streets, and the Bay Area can lead, if we have the courage to choose progress over fear.

This article thoughtfully articulates the current backlash against e-motos, the conflation with legal e-bikes, and the danger to the latter. We need to be able to embrace e-bikes as true micro-mobility vehicles while getting control of kids riding e-motos dangerously.

Op-Ed: Don’t Let Fear Flatten Progress on E-Bikes - Streetsblog San Francisco

Advocates react to E-bike legislation

sf.streetsblog.org

Thanks, Mom & Dad

This is the 50th anniversary of Apple Computer, and the sites you’d expect are publishing their love letters to Apple’s early products, including the Apple ][.

As I was reading these articles and listening to a related podcast yesterday, walking down the proverbial memory lane, I was struck by how lucky I was to have parents who supported and encouraged my love of computing back then. Buying those computers for me and feeding my curiosity and interest was a commitment. We weren’t poor, but I understand now, much better than I did then, that it wasn’t easy for them to make big purchases like those. It’s no exaggeration to say that it was truly something that shaped the course of my life and career, and I appreciate not only their financial sacrifice, but them enabling something that was pretty foreign and new at the time.

You have to remember that, in the late ’70s and early ’80s, there was no internet, and it was uncommon to have a computer in one’s home, let alone one’s bedroom. We didn’t even have cable TV, which was also relatively uncommon at the time, in our house. Computers were portrayed as the domain of super nerds, or science fiction—WarGames was an example of the way the media commonly portrayed them in the zeitgeist. As the Apple ][ article I linked to earlier asserts, it absolutely was a thing back then for parents to want their kids to “learn computers”, but I had many friends whose parents weren’t so open to that (or able to make that purchase), and it was really something special to grow up with those resources and encouragement.

So, thank you Mom and Dad. ❤️

Seen: Somehow this manages to be both nerdy in that only-in-San Francisco manner, and also thoroughly tasteless.

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“Apple Should Set and Enforce Some Basic Standards for Custom Video Players on tvOS”

Sorry for so many links to Daring Fireball, but Gruber is on a roll this weekend.

I sort of agree that Apple should have required apps to use the system player, but it would really have had to be customizable in a way that Apple doesn’t usually do. And in the case where they weren’t going to do that, allowing custom players is the only path.

That said, I totally agree that custom players should be made to implement platform standards. And, yes, Apple should use its App Store review process to enforce standards here too. The elephant in the room, of course, is: What does Apple do if Netflix calls their bluff and takes their app off of Apple TV? Would Apple ever be willing to remove Netflix from the iPhone and iPad as well? Does Apple need Netflix more than Netflix needs Apple?

Apple Should Set and Enforce Some Basic Standards for Custom Video Players on tvOS

Link to: https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/quickly_toggling_closed_captions_on_apple_tv

daringfireball.net

“Apple Announces Ads Are Coming to Apple Maps”

John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball:

But more and more it’s becoming clear that while Apple’s devotion to protecting user privacy remains as high as ever, their devotion to delivering the best possible user experience does not. Here’s Apple’s own screenshot showing what these ads are supposedly going to look like. It looks fine. But these ads seem highly unlikely to make the overall experience of using Apple Maps better. Perhaps, in practice, they will not make the experience worse, and it’ll be a wash. But I can’t help but suspect that they’re going to make the experience worse, and the question is really just how much worse. The addition of ads to the App Store unquestionably has made the experience worse.

I was super disappointed to read about ads coming to Apple Maps. I admit that I’m more allergic to ads than most, and will go to greater lengths to avoid them. For me, the screenshot looks, as Gruber says, fine. But it’s never how it looks at first that matters—Google’s ads looked fine at first too. It’s once they get hooked on the ad revenue, it becomes a game of how far they can push it before they start to lose users. And, as I said, most users are far more tolerant of ads than I am. Ads are cancer for products that, once introduced, only get worse over time.

YouTube Premium is arguably the best bang-for-the-buck in the entire world of content subscriptions. Why should Apple One subscribers still see these ads in Apple Maps?

I agree. I pay for YouTube Premium (and also agree about its value), as well as Apple One (which is definitely expensive for what it is). I’d prefer to have an ad-free experience be a benefit of being an Apple One member.

Apple Announces Ads Are Coming to Apple Maps

Link to: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/introducing-apple-business-a-new-all-in-one-platform-for-businesses-of-all-sizes/

daringfireball.net

A Man on the Inside

As I mentioned in my last post, we’ve been watching A Man on the Inside. The first season was very good: touching and well crafted, ★★★★☆. The second season is not nearly as charming, and already feels like it’s cruising and following a formula. It’s nice to see the characters that had been so lovingly crafted and portrayed in the first season, but it’s just OK, ★★☆☆☆.

The first season tells a complete story, so I’d recommend watching it and moving on unless you really want more.

“Netflix Wrecked Their tvOS Video Player”

Honestly, between the ever-increasing monthly prices and their complete refusal to be a good citizen on Apple platforms, let alone actively making their apps worse, Netflix makes me want to cancel so badly. It’s the very definition of enshittification. My family won’t let me do it, though (that lock-in is a key part of the enshittification!).

(My wife knows I’ve been hating Netflix, even before this move. The other day, one of our Apple TVs was logged out, and she was having trouble signing back in. She literally messaged me to ask if I’d cancelled it before troubleshooting at all. One of these days, the answer is going to be “yes”.)

Netflix Wrecked Their tvOS Video Player

Link to: https://www.pocket-lint.com/netflix-just-made-their-app-worse-and-theres-no-way-to-fix-it/

daringfireball.net