Category: General Tech

I came across this link to an article on The Guardian via Justin Blanton’s blog, and got a kick out of it. Emma Beddington wrote back in October:

There’s a new buzz on TikTok – well, not a buzz exactly. It’s more of a hum, maybe waves crashing, a purring fan or steady, heavy rain. To me, it sounds like an empty aeroplane, cruising peacefully at altitude. It’s brown noise, a close cousin of the better-known white noise, and TikTok users, particularly the platform’s ADHD community, are all over it: there are 85.3m views for the #brownnoise hashtag.

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This video is hilarious, and I’m very happy to see my state of Tennessee do so well.

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Framework is a company creating PC notebooks that are designed to be upgraded and repaired over time, and they’ve refreshed their products, as Andrew Cunningham reports:

For the second year in a row, Framework has announced new upgrades for its modular, repairable Framework Laptop that can be installed directly in older versions of the Framework Laptop. There are two motherboards: one with a predictable upgrade from 12th-generation Intel Core CPUs to 13th-generation chips and one that brings AMD’s Ryzen laptop processors to the Framework Laptop for the first time.

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I love macOS wallpapers, so when I saw that Bing had incorporated image creation into its probably-not-going-to-kill-us-all-but-maybe AI tools, I took it for a spin with this prompt:

Make some wallpapers in the style of Mac OS wallpapers from Jaguar, Panther and Tiger

I got these back:

That’s not really what I had in mind, so while the AI’s reading of my prompt made me laugh, I decided to try again:

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Laine Nooney has a new book coming out all about the Apple II:

The Apple II was a versatile piece of hardware, but its most compelling story isn’t found in the feat of its engineering, the personalities of Apple’s founders, or the way it set the stage for the company’s multi-billion-dollar future. Instead, as historian Laine Nooney shows, what made the Apple II iconic was its software. In software, we discover the material reasons people bought computers. Not to hack, but to play. Not to code, but to calculate. Not to program, but to print. The story of personal computing in the United States is not about the evolution of hackers — it’s about the rise of everyday users.

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Nilay Patel, writing at The Verge:

Here’s the best printer in 2023: the Brother laser printer that everyone has. Stop thinking about it and just buy one. It will be fine!

Seriously, ask around or just look in the background of Zoom calls: there’s a black Brother laser printer sitting there. Some people have the bare-bones Brother HL-L2305DW, which costs like $120. We have the $270 Brother MFC-L2750DW, which adds a sheet-fed scanner, because my wife is a lawyer and scans things for judges or whatever she does with it. It doesn’t matter. We only bought that one to replace our previous Brother laser printer that we lost in a move, and even then, I didn’t even look at the model numbers. It has been connected to our Wi-Fi for like six years straight, and I have never replaced the toner. It prints Amazon return labels from my phone without complaining, and it does not feel like the CEO of Inkjet Supply and Hostage Situations Incorporated is waiting to mug me or enable DRM at the slightest provocation.

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You get something wonderful. Karl Buchka writes:

I’ve been working on this project on and off for the last six months or so. There’s still lots left to do, but I did the first major mock-up today and I’m pretty pleased with the outcome so far.

TL;DR summary:

• Framework powered Thinkpad 701C
• iPad 7 display panel (2160x1620)
• Fully working original keyboard and trackpoint
• Ports/peripherals: 3x USB-A, 2x USB-C, 1x GigE, headphone jack, Wifi, Bluetooth

Here’s a photo of the project:

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Ron Amadeo, Ars Technica:

The lights at Massachusetts’ Minnechaug Regional High School burn ever bright. They actually never turn off. They can’t turn off. The smart lighting system for the entire building is broken, and it’s stuck in the “on” position. It has apparently been this way for over a year now, and the electric bills are really starting to pile up.

“We are very much aware this is costing taxpayers a significant amount of money,” the school district’s assistant superintendent of finance, Aaron Osborne, told NBC News. “And we have been doing everything we can to get this problem solved.”

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I love bike riding — both on and off the road — but I hate riding in the cold weather, so for several months out of the year my road bike is mounted to a trainer in my garage.

Riding inside is great when it is cold outside, but it’s boring. For years, I would balance my iPad on something in the garage, hoping it wouldn’t tumble to its death, but this year, I came up with something quite a bit more sturdy:

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It’s hard to believe it is January again. The new year means I get to put another bundle of used Field Notes on my shelf:

Long time readers — and viewers — will know that I’ve done this for over a decade, but I carry a notebook with me just about all the time. Their contents range widely and I can’t imagine life without them.

Flipping through my 2022 notebooks, I spotted everything from Podcastathon planning and meeting notes to questions for my therapist and grocery lists. When one gets filled up, I scan it, toss the PDF on Dropbox and put the notebook on the shelf.

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It’s that time of year, so I’m happy to present my annual gift guide. If you have someone like me in your life, consider these suggestions:

• An Apple Lisa: A cool $9,999 on eBay
• Speedmaster Professional Moonwatch - $6,400.00 new from Omega
• This sick Macintosh t-shirt - $19.35 on Etsy
• “I was a Mac user when Apple was doomed” Enamel Pin - $12.12 on the Diesel Sweeties Store
• 20% off any annual Relay FM membership
• This sick Toyota pickup currently on Bring a Trailer. A clean first-generation 4-Runner is also acceptable.

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