Category: General Tech

Last night, Federico sent a wild-looking screenshot to the Connected iMessage thread and I urged him to blog about it.

Thankfully, he did:

I have an Analogue Pocket, which is an outstanding modern take on the Game Boy that can play original Game Boy cartridges. I also have the Analogue Pocket dock, which lets me play Game Boy games on a big screen by taking advantage of the Pocket’s excellent upscaling mode for Game Boy graphics. And, of course, Nintendo made everyone’s favorite camera from the late 90s, which you can get pretty cheap these days on eBay. If I could use the Game Boy Camera on a Pocket and send the video feed from the console to the iPad Pro, would I then be able to do a FaceTime call with someone while looking like a character straight out of a Game Boy game?

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This is just great:

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Tom and Dan are back on Kickstarter with a new product named Keen, a very clever utility knife:

Like our Mark One pen, Keen is a simple object with a single interface, in this case the slider. Our job was so make that interaction as satisfying as possible, so that Keen is a delight to use every time you pick it up. We spent a lot of time getting the feel of the blade deployment just right. It is spring loaded, requiring just the right amount of force to slide out, and to not be too fatiguing when held out. When cutting, the slider is held by your thumb, then simply released to suck the blade back in. Not only is this satisfying every time, it’s safer, as the blade can never be left in the “out” position. An internal magnet helps secure the blade when closed, and adds a satisfying snap to the deployment.

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Haiku is probably my favorite project dedicated to keeping vintage software alive. Michael MJD has an in-depth tour up on his channel:

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I find something about this story charming, then I think about how much antique hardware and software is helping keep the U.S. government up and running.

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Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn, writing at Axios:

Vox Media, the parent company to websites such as New York Magazine, Eater and SB Nation, will no longer use Chorus — its proprietary content management system — to power its own websites, sources told Axios.

[…]

Vox Media will move its own websites off of Chorus and into WordPress VIP, the enterprise arm of the 20-year-old CMS company.

As a CMS Nerd, this strikes me as a real shame; everything I’ve ever heard about Chorus has been positive.

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David Pierce:

Humane, the buzzy company started by former Apple employees that has been making big promises about an AI-first and post-smartphone future, announced today that its first gadget will be called the Humane Ai Pin. It’ll be powered by “an advanced Snapdragon platform” in partnership with Qualcomm, and it’s coming later this year.

That’s really all we know so far. Humane continues to be mysterious about how the Ai Pin works, what exactly it will do, and even what it looks like. (Most mysterious of all: why in the world is “AI” not capitalized? What is “Ai?” Am I supposed to pronounce it like “eye?” I am confident this will infuriate The Verge’s copy desk and me in equal measure for years to come.)

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Last night, I finished reading a fascinating book by Brian Dear titled The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the Rise of Cyberculture.

The book covers the history of PLATO, a computer system initially designed to bring computers into the classroom back in the 1960s and 1970s. As Dear writes, the culture that came up around PLATO took the technology much farther than spelling tests and multiplication tables.

Before reading this, I had never heard of PLATO, but the truth is that it birthed many of the things we take for granted on the Internet today. PLATO is perhaps the most amazing “it was ahead of its time then it died” stories I’ve ever come across. The Friendly Orange Glow is a long read, but I was engrossed the entire time. Had history been knocked off course by just a few degrees, PLATO would have been the backbone of the early Internet, without a doubt.

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I hope you spend some time weekend just thinking about this thing. I know I will.

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Kevin Purdy at Ars Technica:

You don’t hear nearly as much about Drobo boxes as you used to, especially on sites like Ars Technica. We now have some news, but it isn’t good.

StorCentric, the holding company for the Drobo and Retrospect brands, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late June 2022. Now, AppleInsider reports that, based on an email sent by StorCentric, the bankruptcy shifted from reorganization-minded Chapter 11 to liquidation-focused Chapter 7 in late April.

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Chance Miller at 9to5Mac has written an absolute banger of a story about Brydge, the accessory maker best known for their line of iPad keyboards:

Brydge, a once thriving startup making popular keyboard accessories for iPad, Mac, and Microsoft Surface products, is ceasing operations. According to nearly a dozen former Brydge employees who spoke to 9to5Mac, Brydge has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs within the past year after at least two failed acquisitions.

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While I’m linking to the transcript of the interview, you should totally take the time to listen to it. It’s just wild. The part about content moderation on Substack is particularly troubling.

Nilay: Wow. I mean, I just want to be clear, if somebody shows up on Substack and says “all brown people are animals and they shouldn’t be allowed in America,” you’re going to censor that. That’s just flatly against your terms of service.

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