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Ungeniused #3: The Ghost Army & Inflatable Tanks⇢
The newest episode of Ungeniused is here:
During World War II, the United States Army deployed a division made up of artists armed with inflatable tanks, sound equipment and more, all designed to deceive and manipulate the enemy.
Liftoff #24: All Juno, All the Time⇢
This fortnight, Jason and I dive into Juno, NASA’s current mission to Jupiter.
My thanks to our sponsor for this episode:
- CuriosityStream: The world’s first, ad- free non fiction streaming service. Use the code RELAYFM to get two months free.
One Year Indie
One year ago, I published this:
I’m leaving my 9-5 job to work on Relay FM, 512 Pixels and my freelance business full time.
The last 12 months have been nothing short of amazing. If you’ll forgive the introspection, I’d like to talk about what I’ve been up to for the past year.
In the fall, I attended both Release Notes and XOXO Festival. My Relay FM co-founder Myke Hurley gave the keynote address at Release Notes, and killed it. It was great to meet so many people in the indie design and development field outside of Twitter and WWDC.
Connected #98: My Brain is Cruising eBay at Night⇢
This week’s Connected got weird:
Federico was late to the show so Stephen got to talk about Hackintoshes before the new beta of iOS 10 dropped and rocked the Europeans to their core.
My thanks to our sponsors this week:
- Squarespace: Enter offer code WORLD at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
- Ring: Create a ring of security that starts at your front door. Get $50 off!
Juno powered by a PowerPC chip⇢
Like many past spacecraft, Jupiter’s new orbiter is powered by a PPC chip:
When you want radiation-hardened CPU designs (to guard against naughty things like cosmic rays flipping bits and zapping traces), you want BAE’s RAD series, and that means you want … PowerPC. Yes, Juno’s brain is a lowly RAD750 running at 200MHz, essentially a beige Power Mac G3 with cojones of pure lead. It has 128MB of the baddest, meanest, toughest DRAM there is and 256MB of flash on board with a system bus providing 100Mbps of instrument bandwidth for pure awesome.
Kbase Article of the Week: Mac OS X 10.2: Kernel Extension (kext) Files May Generate Security Warning⇢
Today, kernel extensions must be signed with a valid Apple developer account to run. That hasn’t always been the case, but even way back in OS X 10.2, Apple was trying to make them more secure:
Mac OS X 10.2 and later has stricter security checking of kernel extensions. These files should have permissions that restrict any user other than the system software (the “root” user) from making changes to the file. If a kernel extension has less restrictive privileges, it will trigger this alert.
iOS 10 bringing national organ donor registration to iPhone⇢
Apple and Donate Life America announced today that, for the first time ever, iPhone users will be able to sign up to be an organ, eye and tissue donor right from the Health app with the release of iOS 10. Through a simple sign up process, iPhone users can learn more and take action with just a few taps. All registrations submitted from iPhone are sent directly to the National Donate Life Registry managed by Donate Life America. The ability to quickly and easily become a nationally-registered donor enables people to carry their decision with them wherever they go.
Juno in Jupiter’s orbit⇢
Last night was an exciting one for space fans. Five years after launch, NASA’s Juno spacecraft entered orbit around Jupiter.
That isn’t a simple thing to accomplish. The spacecraft had to slow down enough to be captured by the planet’s gravity to swing around the gas giant. Slow down too much and the orbit would be too wide; miss the mark and the spacecraft could have met an early demise.
Today’s Hackintoshes⇢
Way back in 2009, I ran OS X Leopard on a Dell Mini 9 netbook, after screwing around with it on an HP Mini 1000. When I gave up on the project, I think I just assumed Hackintoshes weren’t really a thing anyone cared about.
I’ve seen articles here and there over the last few years about running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, but it seems that it’s actually pretty easy to get a Hackintosh up and running. Here’s Mike Rundle:
Juno to enter Jupiter’s orbit today⇢
Loren Grush has the details on how to watch.
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Summer’s the time for new plans and fresh projects and great new ideas. Whether you’re mapping out your next novel, finishing your dissertation, planning a product, or writing memories for your grandkids, these great tools will help.