I have this setup: XLR mic → ext. USB audio interface → Mac. The name of the audio interface (UMC22) has a trailing space, which macOS gets confused by every other day. It sanitizes the stored name, can’t find the device anymore, removes it, then finds a “new” device it doesn’t know and re-adds it. The mic works fine, but setting the audio interface as the default for anything doesn’t, because macOS keeps forgetting it.
Why Solarpunk is already happening in Africa:
What’s happening across Sub-Saharan Africa right now is the most ambitious infrastructure project in human history, except it’s not being built by governments or utilities or World Bank consortiums. It’s being built by startups selling solar panels to farmers on payment plans. And it’s working.
Over 30 million solar products sold in 2024. 400,000 new solar installations every month across Africa. 50% market share captured by companies that didn’t exist 15 years ago. Carbon credits subsidizing the cost. IoT chips in every device. 90%+ repayment rates on loans to people earning $2/day.
And if you understand what’s happening in Africa, you understand the template for how infrastructure will get built everywhere else for the next 50 years.
Really, really cool.
After updating both my Mac and iPhone to the latest OS 26 versions, Continuity/Handoff wasn’t working anymore, meaning no more cross-device copy-n-paste etc. Rebooting either device didn’t change anything. 15 mins of searching brought me to a Reddit post by /u/shesabadone which suggested resetting macOS' useractivityd: defaults delete com.apple.coreservices.useractivityd killall useractivityd It did the trick!
Yesterday, I released Linearis v2025.11.2, a new version of my CLI tool1 that lets you (and your LLM) work with the very good project management and ticketing system, Linear2. The headliner features for this update are: support for cycles3 support for project milestones4 issues now specify their sub-issues and parents Shout-out to @ryanrozich for the patch that added both cycles and project milestones. 🤘🏼 Also, I’m happy to announce that the tool is now a standard npm package, meaning that it’s installable with a simple npm install -g linearis call.
Quoting HN user yanhangyhy’s comment about Kimi K2 Thinking:
[…] China’s open-source strategy has many significant effects—not only because it aligns with the spirit of open source. For domestic Chinese companies, it also prevents startups from making reckless investments to develop mediocre models. Instead, everyone is pushed to start from a relatively high baseline. Of course, many small companies in the U.S., Japan, and Europe are also building on Qwen. Kimi is similar: before DeepSeek and others emerged, their model quality was pretty bad. Once the open-source strategy was set, these companies had no choice but to adjust their product lines and development approaches to improve their models.
Moreover, the ultimate competition between models will eventually become a competition over energy. China’s open-source models have major advantages in energy consumption, and China itself has a huge advantage in energy resources. They may not necessarily outperform the U.S., but they probably won’t fall too far behind either.
(Emphasis mine.)
Wild Wild Space: “HBO Original Documentary that chronicles the fierce competition to tackle humanity’s next great frontier and the dark side of capitalism’s insatiable appetite for profit”
A cool documentary to watch if you’re interested in the current commercial space race (like I am), showing some key players, and telling the story how it came to be. Based on Ashlee Vance’s book “When the Heavens Went on Sale” which I’ve yet to read.
BBC Radio 5 Live - Bugzy Malone’s Grandest Game
A loving look at the GTA series by BBC’s Chris Warburton and UK rapper Bugzy Malone. “It’s the game that shocked and thrilled the world: Grand Theft Auto. Its rise to domination is an incredible story." They look at how GTA came to be, how it grew, its controversies, and what it meant to different people. They talked with ex-Rockstar devs, modders, games journalists, players. Seven episodes, nicely produced, ace little treats right before bed time.
Peter Leyden: Why 2025 is the single most pivotal year in our lifetime
That was an interesting 15 min watch. What I liked a lot was that it briefly touched on massive inequality, too, it didn’t just ignore it – in fact, I think inequality’s very much part of Mr Leyden’s prediction:
The economic system […] that has worked for essentially the top 10% for sure and certainly for the top 1% has not been working for 80%. And it’s gotten to the point where they just have had it.
Anders Thoresson came up with a good addition to LLM system prompts (Claude, Codex, GLM et al). I’ve been using it for the last few weeks, and it definitely feels like I get better interactions out of Claude when tasking it with research, helping me think things through, or have it explain new concepts to me. The prompt: Meet me where I am (Vygotsky’s theory of zone of proximal development): Gauge my understanding from what I write.
Quoting Craig Mod once more:
Everyone was uniquely nuts. Each human contained their own special crazy. This was humanity’s gift to the universe. Humans were the “sensory organs” of the cosmos. The walker liked this framing — the purpose of humans was to meta-cognitize the universe itself. So to be, to observe, was to fulfill. If you thought about it like that, things were a lot less pressing.
Another excerpt from his ongoing (and lovely) pop-up newsletter, Between Two Mountains.
BTW, I think the origin of that framing is Carl Sagan: “We are a way for the universe to know itself”.
I am also reminded of a video short by Jason Silva that I watched about ten years ago (and which lived rent-free in my mind ever since for some reason), “Humans are the Sex Organs of Technology”. Different topic, sure, yet equally wild.
The ideas of humanity as a witness, or a parent/ midwife for something else to emerge are kind of mindbending.
Ein wirklich interessantes Interview mit dem Autoren Thomas Chatterton Williams beim ZEITmagazin: “Ein Klima, in dem viele lieber schwiegen. Das machte Woke so wirksam”. Ich finde es in Gänze sehr lesenswert, und hätte die Hälfte des gesamten Artikels zitieren können, daher hier nur ein kurzer Auszug:
ZEITmagazin: Was war das Gute an Wokeness?
Williams: Wokeness benannte vieles richtig. Ein Beispiel ist MeToo: Als heterosexueller Mann hatte ich nie darüber nachgedacht, mit welchen subtilen Hürden Frauen am Arbeitsplatz konfrontiert sind, etwa beim Netzwerken oder Bewerben. Wokeness machte solche Unsichtbarkeiten sichtbar. […] Problematisch wurde Wokeness dort, wo sie über das Ziel hinausschoss: Wenn Unschuldige durch bloße Anschuldigungen ruiniert wurden und das als Preis fürs größere Ganze galt. Ein Kurator des San Francisco Museum of Modern Art wurde zum Rückzug gedrängt, nachdem er gesagt hatte, er wolle weiterhin Kunst von weißen Künstlern kaufen. Der Präsident und der Vorstandsvorsitzende der Poetry Foundation mussten zurücktreten, weil sie zwar Black Lives Matter unterstützten, aber nicht entschieden genug.
ZEITmagazin: Black Lives Matter war der sichtbarste Ausdruck dieser neuen Sensibilität. Wo genau hat sich die Bewegung aus Ihrer Sicht verrannt?
Williams: Der ursprüngliche Impuls von Black Lives Matter war berechtigt. Die Zahl der tödlichen Polizeieinsätze in den USA ist skandalös. Aber schnell verlagerte sich der Fokus von der Gewalt selbst auf die Gruppenzugehörigkeit der Opfer. Das hat viele Menschen entfremdet. Es gibt etwa den Fall von Tony Timpa, einem weißen Mann, der 2016 in Dallas fast auf dieselbe Weise starb wie George Floyd: Polizisten knieten auf ihm, während er um Atem rang, sie lachten – und er starb. Doch das Video ging nicht viral. Warum? Weil der identitätspolitische Fokus fehlte. Genau das war langfristig kontraproduktiv: Statt sich gemeinsam gegen Polizeigewalt zu wenden, wurde alles durch eine identitätspolitische Brille betrachtet.
Quoting Craig Mod:
Tiny men with big sticks upend sanity the world ‘round and all you can do is try to find your footing and push back.
From the first missive of his current pop-up newsletter, Between Two Mountains.
Today I was pondering a feature idea for my macOS/iOS app Actions For Obsidian. That idea is loosely related to iCloud Drive. But ever since AFO’s release a few years back, I have received dozens of support requests from people who ran into issues while attempting to use iCloud Drive as a means of synchronizing their Obsidian vaults between their devices. Usually my one-word answer to these questions is “Don’t”, followed by a link to a FAQ entry that I wrote a while back: “Can I use iCloud Sync with Obsidian and Actions for Obsidian?
TL;DR: I built a CLI tool for Linear.app with JSON output, smart ID resolution, and optimized GraphQL queries; designed for LLM agents and humans who prefer structured data. I use Linear daily, in all my projects. It just such a nice piece of thoughtful software. It’s fast, well-laid out, flexible without being overwhelming, and respectful of my time both as a planner and a dev. And it looks good.
I finally pulled the trigger on booking the Danish language course (level A1) at our fine local Dansk Centralbibliotek 🎉
2 weeks, 40h – the “pressure-cooker” version to get started!
Why? Well, Denmark is right around the corner, we moved here 3+ years ago, and at this point, me still not being able to speak the language feels rude somehow. 😉 Also, it opens up opportunities. I mean, we’re still toying with the idea of moving farther North. Who knows?
Dear creators, Hosting your newsletter on Substack or posting on X says “I am fine with my Nazi neighbours”. Because that’s what these platforms are: Nazi bars, run by right-wing people and fascists. Using them as a creator means that you are actively helping them grow and succeed. Your brain power and creations are propping up their Klan crosses. There’s no two sides to seeing this, there simply isn’t. Whatever your reasons, you are not only tolerating what they do, you directly and indirectly help legitimize their shit, and help them make money.
Sometimes the best software comes from scratching your own itch. That’s definitely the case with BarCuts, my take on a contextual macOS Shortcuts launcher. What started as a personal annoyance turned into a proper little utility that I’m genuinely proud of – and it’s been quite the journey getting here. The Problem That Started It All Picture this: you’ve got dozens of Shortcuts workflows on your Mac. Some are for processing files in Finder, others for grabbing URLs from Safari, maybe a few for formatting text in your notes app.
Yesterday, I finally got around to moving my Discourse forum to a new hoster. The last two years I had it running at Communiteq – rock-solid, but the (reasonable!) $50/month is more than I am willing to keep spending on a very low-traffic forum. So I looked into a couple of hosting companies and, in the end, decided to go with PikaPods. It’s a European outfit (Malta); I like what they have on offer, and my stuff resides in the EU.
Update 2025-09-16: This morning, I received an email from Dave M. @ Google: […] you should be able to get to our models without Proxyman now. Use https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/openai as the URL, and we should now handle the rest. I gave it a spin, and indeed: The proxying described in the original post below is no longer needed. So in Xcode 26, this is the form input now: Type: Internet Hosted URL: https://generativelanguage.
macOS 26β is out, and so is Xcode 26β with LLM support. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any of it to run as the beta refuses to allow me to use Apple Intelligence – because apparently Apple Intelligence isn’t available in virtual machines at all? Wild. But not being able to set up Apple Intelligence means not being able to use the ChatGPT models in Xcode 26β which is one of its main draws for me.
When life gets rough, it’s easy to become sarcastic or cynical, but I realized a long time ago that that’s not healthy at all. In a way it’s like really having to pee when you’re in a swimming pool with other people (bear with me). You could be blasé about it, and every time there’s a bitter laugh about the situation, you pee a tiny bit. It’s a big pool, right?
The day the new US monarchy declares they want the Panama Canal “back”, the French govt should request the immediate return of the Statue of Liberty.
Just an idea.
While everything seems to be terribly bleak right now, please remember that not everything is. There’s a lot of good stuff done by good people all around the world. Societal progress isn’t a fantasy, it’s happening all around us. These #newsletter show what’s already working: climate solutions ready to scale up, environmental policies making progress, successful conservation efforts, and real advances in human rights. Good things are happening everywhere. Here are a few links to sites and newsletters highlighting those.
November was a blur.1 We were preparing for a move (new apartment!) and dealing with a number of things. I didn’t have many spare cycles left for mindful consumption of anything media. 🎮 Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Xbox – GLORIOUS. Dragon Age: Inquisition is one of my favourite games of all time, and Veilguard looks like a worthy follow-up, at the very least! Elle Griffin: Mondragon as the new City-State – Great, clear-eyed independent look at one of the largest group of worker coöperations in the World, the Mondragon Corporation in Spains Basque region.
📚 Just finished “Impact Analysis” by Trevor Hopkins: a fan fiction novel set in the late Iain M. Banks’s Culture universe.
Mr Hopkins has some big ideas, and he can write! IMHO, his works are fit to become part of #TheCulture canon.