Finished my first play through of #BaldursGate3 and holy shit was that a good game!
Manage iCloud Email Rules on iOS
Is this new? You can actually manage iCloud email rules through iOS now.
Apple āScary Fastā Mac launch event: the 4 biggest announcements
Emma Roth writing for The Verge (Apple News)
The new lineup includes the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips, which Apple says mark the āfirst personal computer chipsā made using the more efficient 3-nanometer process.
In addition to offering a āfaster and more efficient CPU,ā the trio of chips comes with an updated GPU that supports ray tracing, mesh shading, and Dynamic Caching ā a feature that optimizes the amount of memory the device uses during tasks.
Amazon enables passwordless passkeys on iOS and the web
Umar Shakir writing for The Verge (Apple News)
Amazon is the latest company to add passkey support for customers to securely access their accounts without a password. Just keep in mind that most companies still retain passwords on accounts, so the world wonāt be genuinely password-free for a while.
WordPress now offers official support for ActivityPub
Mia Sato writing for The Verge (Apple News)
In the case of a WordPress.com blog, audiences will be able to follow a publisher through other federated platforms like Mastodon. Responses on other platforms will automatically turn into comments on a publisherās WordPress post, allowing them to interact directly with off-platform audiences. The setting is available across WordPress sites on free, personal, and premium tiers ā millions of blogs will now be able to join the fediverse in a few seconds.
The sounds in #BaldursGate3 are amazing. The voice acting, the music, but especially the spells, they feel powerful and substantial āļø
Google Podcasts is going away ā here are some alternatives
Barbara Krasnoff writing for The Verge (Apple News)
According to the YouTube blog, Google will be discontinuing the Podcasts app ālater in 2024.ā
Add another one to the Google graveyard.
I wish I could play #BaldursGate3 on my iPad. I think the game would lend itself very well to a touch interface.
Baldurās Gate 3 Mac countdown: Exact release date and time
Max Miceli writing for DOT ESPORTS (Apple News)
Baldurās Gate 3 officially launches for Mac on Thursday, Sept. 21. The launch will coincide with the release of the gameās third patch. Larian Studios has not yet released an exact time for the launch.
I’ve been playing the pre-release version on my Mac for a couple of weeks now, just trying to get a sense of the gameplay, controls and classes. Can’t wait to dive into the full thing!
Remember when Googleās motto was donāt be evil? Now their latest initiatives are to slurp up as much data as possible to train their generative AI, track the websites their users visit to package up and provide to advertisers, and allow websites to refuse to load content if they donāt like something running on the userās computer.
Chromeās āTopicsā advertising system is here, whether you want it or not
Ron Amadeo writing for Ars Technica (Apple News)
Google seems to view user tracking as a mandatory part of Internet usage, and instead of third-party cookies, it wants to build a user-tracking system directly into its Chrome browser.
Now’s the time to stop using Chrome.
Love seeing console level games on iPhone. I want to be able to play #BaldursGate3 on my iPad, so seeing this gives me hope.
Chrome is the new IE
Bought #BaldursGate3 on MacOS assuming it was coming out Sep 6. When I found out it wasnāt coming out until later in Sep I decided Iād wait to play until the full game was released. Well, today I decided to just play around in the character creator, then I started playing the starting mission, and man, I just wish the full game was released for Mac already!
Elon Musk can filter offensive tweets for advertisers. Why not for users?
Chris Taylor writing for Mashable (Apple News)
But there’s another reason why the advertising options are self-defeating: Because they bring up another troubling question for users who are sick of the site’s lack of content moderation. If Twitter/X can identify and filter out content such as hate speech “with a 99% efficacy rate,” according to the company’s blog, why only offer that service to advertisers? Plenty of users would also prefer a version of Twitter that is 99% Nazi free, too. By offering that option to advertisers but not caring about the potential customers they’re trying to reach, Musk’s company is drawing attention to the fact in a way that serves neither.
Physicists achieve fusion with net energy gain for second time
Tim Wilson and Alice Hancock writing for Ars Technical (Apple News)
US government scientists have achieved net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the second time, a result that is set to fuel optimism that progress is being made toward the dream of limitless, zero-carbon power.
Wouldn’t that be amazing, limitless, zero-carbon power.
Size of data
Saw this on Mastodon, great way to understand the different sizes of data.
A jargon-free explanation of how AI large language models work
Timothy B. Lee and Sean Trott writing for Ars Technical (Apple News)
Why use such a baroque notation? Hereās an analogy. Washington, DC, is located at 38.9 degrees north and 77 degrees west. We can represent this using a vector notation:
Washington, DC, is at [38.9, 77] New York is at [40.7, 74] London is at [51.5, 0.1] Paris is at [48.9, -2.4] This is useful for reasoning about spatial relationships. You can tell New York is close to Washington, DC, because 38.9 is close to 40.7 and 77 is close to 74. By the same token, Paris is close to London. But Paris is far from Washington, DC.
Twitter commandeers @X username from man who had it since 2007
Jon Brodkin writing for Ars Technica
Hwang is still on Twitter with the new handle of @x12345678998765. “Alls well that ends well,” he tweeted last night. He told Ars that @x12345678998765 is the handle Twitter moved him to temporarily before he picks a new name.
GM announces a new Ultium-based Chevrolet Bolt during Q2 report
Jonathan M. Gitlin writing for ArsTechnica
Since the Bolt, GM has gone on to develop a new battery platform called Ultium, with much lower costs per kWh than the LG cells that power the Bolt. And it will use those cells in the next Bolt, although GM says we need to wait until a later date for anything more specific.
Iād love for #AppleNotes to get #markdown support. Maybe next year š¤š¼
Whimsical Chaos on macOS Sonoma
Greg Morris - Apple Notes Is Just About Perfect in iOS17
Greg Morris writing on his blog
The biggest update to Apple Notes is linking between notes easily, and itās not an exaggeration to say Apple absolutely nailed the implementation. You can tap link and just type out the name of the note you want to link to, thereās no double bracket or back linking bandwagon joining, itās simple, elegant and exactly what is needed.
I’m really looking forward to this update to Notes. I have over 2,000 notes in Apple Notes, so I think I’m a fairly heavy user. This new feature coupled with tags, which were introduced a couple of years ago, and folders, will make organizing and navigating all those notes much easier. The improvements to Notes over the years has been great, I hope Apple keeps it up.
Breakfast at Epcot
Met some friends at breakfast this morning.