A Week With St. Jude

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I spent the week with ALSAC — the fundraising organization at St. Jude — with half a dozen Relay folks and a few hundred other content creators who are using their platforms for fundraising.

(Most of the events were at the Peabody Hotel here in Memphis, so there were some ducks hanging around as well.)

Those creators ranged from fitness and health to beauty and fashion to gamers and us podcasters. We spent time hearing from folks at St. Jude about the hospital’s mission and the tools it is developing to enable communities to fundraise in new and existing ways.

St. Jude sign

It quickly became apparent to me that while we exist in different online spaces, our group of nerdy podcasters are really doing the same thing as people streaming games on Twitch, throwing online dance parties, or talking to their followers about health or fashion. We all want to rally our communities to get them excited about the life-saving work of St. Jude.

In just a couple of weeks, my family will celebrate the 15th anniversary of our son’s cancer diagnosis. This fall, he will turn 16 and is doing very well. He continues to be an inspiration to us, but 15 years is a long time, and some times those early years feel like they happened to someone else.

One of my favorite things over the last week was going on a tour of the St. Jude campus. While I know it well, it was really something to watch other people get to experience it for the first time. The sheer scale of St. Jude is hard to convey unless you’re walking around some of the buildings, learning about the interplay of research and patient care that is unique to St. Jude.

Getting back on the bus after the campus tour, people are buzzing about what they had seen, making conversation about what struck them the most. It was refreshing to hear the excitement, knowing that all of these creators now feel supercharged to go back and tell their communities about what they had seen.

For us, that will start when September rolls around. We’re hard at work planning the campaign and the 12-hour Podcastathon, which will take place on Friday, September 20.

Until then, I want to leave you with these photos that Casey Liss snapped on our campus tour:

St. Jude notes

Reflecting on the Fusion Drive →

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Howard Oakley:

When Apple introduced Fusion Drives back in late 2012, they were an attractive option for many iMacs and Mac minis. At a time when SSDs of 1 TB and greater size were expensive, the Fusion Drive seemed to offer the best of both worlds, with a capacious hard disk and a smaller but much faster SSD working in tandem. Since Apple discontinued the iMac 21.5-inch 2019 in April 2021, no Mac has offered a Fusion Drive option, and most significantly they’ve never been available in any model with a T2 or Apple silicon chip. This article considers whether the Fusion Drive was such a good idea, and why they have gone.

Logitech’s Mouse Software Now Includes ChatGPT Support, Adds Janky ‘ai_overlay_tmp’ Directory to Users’ Home Folders

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I recently noticed a new folder in the root level of my Home directory, named ai_overlay_tmp:

ai_overlay_tmp

In preparation for a Mac Power Users episode, I’ve been playing with a bunch of AI software, and I assumed something I downloaded generated this folder. I deleted it, just to be frustrated when the folder reappeared on its own.

Adding a new folder to the Home directory is a Cardinal Sin of Mac Programming, so I was on a mission to root out the cause. After some searching online, it seems that this folder was generated by Logi Options+, the software that came with my mouse, the Logitech MX Master 3S.1

Version 1.70 of Logi Options+ launched last week with — I kid you not — AI tools you can launch anywhere your cursor is located:

In today’s fast-paced, technology-enabled world, everyone is learning to work differently with breakthroughs in Generative AI.

Mastering prompt building enhances your efficiency and creativity. That’s why we developed the Logi AI Prompt Builder, a time and click-saving solution. Rephrase, summarize, and create custom-made prompt recipes with ChatGPT faster, with virtually no disruption to your workflow.

I cannot tell how little I want THE SOFTWARE FOR MY MOUSE to include features tied to ChatGPT … let alone a mouse with a built-in button to start a prompt.

These features are spun up into their own process named “Logi Al Prompt Builder” as you can see here:

Logi AI Prompt Builder

Best I can tell, there’s no way to disable these features, and they are automatically loaded with the Logi Options+ software is running. Some people have suggested running the “Offline” version of Options+ to avoid these features.

Update: You can also jump through these hoops to disable the AI features in the regular versions of Options+.

That seems to have done it for me, but only after I nuked everything Logitech off my system, including a 700 MB support folder buried in my Home folder. (Thanks, Hazel!)

Of course, you don’t need Logitech software to use a Logitech mouse once the initial settings are in place. For future tinkering, I’ve decided to check out SteerMouse and keep Logitech software off of my system.

As you can see, it can be used to adjust parameters on my MX Master 3S just fine, without any AI-powered bloatware:

Steermouse

I know AI is all the rage right now and having a deal to bring ChatGPT into your software is trendy, but including a tool like this in what is basically a mouse driver is ridiculous. I’m not opposed to using AI in software. I’m just opposed to when it shows up as an unexpected, poorly-implemented feature in software that doesn’t need it.

At least Logitech’s Mac developers did such a bad job with it, that it was easy to spot.

Voyager 1 is Back Online →

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Robert Lea, writing about our far-flung friend:

NASA’s interstellar explorer Voyager 1 is finally communicating with ground control in an understandable way again. On Saturday (April 20), Voyager 1 updated ground control about its health status for the first time in 5 months. While the Voyager 1 spacecraft still isn’t sending valid science data back to Earth, it is now returning usable information about the health and operating status of its onboard engineering systems.

Charles Edge Passed Away on Friday →

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Adam Engst, writing at TidBITS:

This one is way too close to home. News started to spread this morning on the MacAdmins Slack, Rich Trouton’s Der Flounder blog, and Tom Bridge’s site about how our friend and Take Control author Charles Edge died suddenly and unexpectedly on 19 April 2024.

I spoke to Tom and Charles a couple of times over the years about their podcast, and he had a way of explaining technical details that few do. Charles was a giant in the Mac Admin community, and he will be missed.

FineWoven is Unraveling →

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Hartley Charlton, writing at MacRumors:

Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories, according to the Apple leaker and prototype collector known as “Kosutami.”

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Kosutami explained that Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories due to its poor durability. The company may move to another non-leather material for its premium accessories in the future.

As he points out, Kosutami has published correct leaks on FineWoven for months. I suspect that Apple is going to be changing direction yet again when it comes to its accessories.

Widgetsmith 6.2 →

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Earlier today, David and I shipped version 6.2 of Widgetsmith. This release is for both iOS and visionOS, and packs some cool goodies:

Widgetsmith 6.2 brings a brand-new widget type: Background Sounds!

Beyond the standard White and Brown Noises, this release includes sounds from nature, including various intensities of rain, forest sounds for both daytime and nighttime and waves at the beach. These sounds are high quality and uncompressed, creating seamless loops for a rich soundscape. Create an immersive ambiance right from your home screen with the following sounds. All users have access to White Noise and Stream.

My favorite element to this new feature is being able to build a photo widget that doubles as a background sound widget. When David sent me a note about building that, I was pretty pumped.

I humbly suggest you give Brown Noise a test run. It’s my background noise of choice.