John Gruber writing over at Daring Fireball None of these Android clients would garner any attention at all on iOS. Tooot and the official Mastodon client are also available on iOS, and seemingly offer the same features and same basic interfaces on both platforms. There’s a reason third-party clients are overwhelmingly more popular on iOS than Mastodon’s official client — yet the Mastodon app is clearly among the best on Android. It’s really just a different world over in Androidtown. Things like fluid scrolling, swipe gestures, and tap-and-hold contextual menus are table stakes for an iOS app. None of the Android clients scroll fluidly, none offer swipe gestures, and only Tooot seems to offer a tap-and-hold contextual menu. But more broadly they all just look and especially feel inert and rigid. Nothing shrinks or stretches. There’s no life to them.

Zack Zwiezen writing for Kotaku Bungie realized that this was being caused after it moved some “currently incompletable” challenges into a different area of the game’s data. To do this, Bungie used a “very powerful” tool that lets the studio tinker with a player’s game state and account. Apparently, due to a configuration error, Bungie accidentally “re-ran an older state migration process” used in a past update. Because of this error, the tool copied old data from this past update into the current version of the game, which basically undid some players’ recent in-game accomplishments

This is too funny 😂 🤦🏻‍♂️ From @nickheer@c.im over on Mastodon.

From Bungie TL;DR: Consolidation is a major theme in many of the changes you’ll be seeing today. The current (pre-Lightfall) mod system has been built piecemeal over the years and contains a lot of redundancies. The Loadouts system empowers Guardians to suit up for whatever task, on the fly. Up to ten slots available to save multiple loadouts. This single-screen system also provides opportunities for players to create and share their loadouts with the community more easily. The Mod Customization screen will make managing your mods easier with them all in one place. Like the Guardian Appearance screen, this screen creates an easy to reference space where you can see all your armor pieces and mods at any given time. Champion counters are being spread between Artifact perks, subclass abilities, and more. Updates to mods streamline the process and bring new and exciting build potential to Destiny 2. We’re taking the opportunity to touch and tune every single mod in Destiny 2. We’re removing Energy types from mods and armor, giving players more flexibility in crafting their builds. No more switching between Energy types to find the mod you want. We’re reducing the pressure on Armor Energy by re-tuning armor mod costs and changing Artifact perks to no longer require mod slots. We’re moving from weapon-type-specific mods to damage-type-specific mods for increased flexibility in builds. All of this is coming in Lightfall. This all sounds great, simplifed mods, loadout system in game and champion counters built into the subclasses; I can’t wait!

Oliver Haslam writing for iMore The issue, which is affecting Twitter apps on all platforms including iOS, macOS, Android, and Windows, hasn’t yet been confirmed by Twitter, and, worryingly, it isn’t yet known whether the problem is a glitch or the result of a decision made by Twitter itself. Still no word from Twitter. My guess is this is intentional, but we’ll see.

Took a few tries, but got it done in the end. 💥

Jon Porter writing for The Verge (Apple News) Pixel 7 owners are taking to Twitter and Reddit to report that the glass covering the phone’s rear camera is shattering, despite the phone apparently not being knocked or dropped. PhoneArena and Android Police have pulled together photos from numerous owners showing the damage to their handsets, with reports stretching back at least as far as November — just a month after the phone went on general sale.

Joseph Menn writing for The Washington Post The step is likely to draw protests from multiple governments, some of which could take legislative or court action or deny Apple access to their markets. Top law enforcement officials in the United States, Britain and other democracies have railed against strong encryption, and some have passed laws they could use to try to force companies to cooperate against their customers. There are plenty of ways “the bad guys” can encrypt/hide their communications. Forcing companies to make their products less secure/private isn’t what democratic governments should be doing.

Jonas Degrave writing on Engraved Today, Frederic Besse told me that he managed to do something different. Did you know, that you can run a whole virtual machine inside of ChatGPT? This is crazy! None of these commands are actually running, the output is just what the AI thinks should be the output. Thing is, it’s almost always right.

Manuel Vonau writing for Android Police Spotted by Google malware reverse engineering expert Łukasz Siewierski (via Mishaal Rahman), the certificates in question are platform certificates meant to verify the authenticity of the “android” application that’s part of every phone, but are also used to sign individual apps from manufacturers. The problem is that this core android application has the highest level of access to the system, allowing it almost unrestricted access to user data. Since the android application is basically what makes your phone run in the first place, this makes sense for it. That’s why it’s a big issue when malware gets its hands on the platform certificate used by the android application. Bad actors can gain the same far-reaching permissions as this core service.

Peter Johnson writing for electrek Beam’s EV ARC chargers can generate and store their own electricity by harnessing renewable energy from the sun. The charging infrastructure is designed to handle extreme weather with flood-proof capabilities up to 9.5 feet and wind resistance of 125 mph. I wonder how long this takes to charge. I assume it charges up a portable battery over time and then uses that to charge a vehicle. So how long does it take to charge up the battery from the solar panels? I imagine it must take a long time.

Some pictures from our recent Holland America cruise through the Caribbean. Cruise Ship Nieuw Statendam Guitar Sculpture Island Bridge Sunset

Lounging on the deck, sailing to Aruba.