Hey, it's been a few weeks! So, welcome back. TimeMachiner is a labor of love for me. But part of that is balancing my personal life, job, etc, with writing and running this place. I love doing it and it's fantastic. No, this isn't a goodbye or announcement of any sort. TimeMachiner isn't going anywhere. What is happening is my time balance right now is... out of balance? Let me explain.
I love finding random stuff online. That turned into TimeMachiner. But it's something I do with the free time I generally have. Right now, that time has been swallowed nearly-whole with life. Kids doing sports things, life happenings, work being a bit more busy; it all chips away at time available for TimeMachiner. After missing an issue 2 weeks ago I thought I would write one post per day to start up a backlog (this worked splendidly in '22) in order to not miss a deadline... and then I wrote nothing. In fact, these words are being written on Monday evening in order to make sure I have something to send out.
So what does this all mean? I'm not sure. Some issues here may be real short for a bit. Some weeks may get skipped. And in some (and I hope most) instances I can get the time and mental space to bring you what you enjoy reading. My goal is to give you a quick lightning round of stuff I've found when an issue is going to be short. For today, I'm talking below about fast food and then you get the post of the week. It's not perfect, but I'd rather deliver something worthwhile than nothing at all. So many of you support my work and I don't want that to be something that's lost in all this. You deserve to have me write for you.
My hope is in the coming months I'll free up a bit more and anything I have going on will fade into the background enough where I can write more. When that happens, it'll just happen because it'll feel like old times here.
So that's what I've got for today. I hope you can stick around as best as you can and enjoy the randomness (slim issues or not) for the time being.
Thanks for reading. Now, onto the rest of today's issue.
]]>During a conference call earlier this month, Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner said that the Dublin, Ohio-based burger chain will start testing dynamic pricing, also known as surge pricing, as early as next year.
“Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and daypart offerings, along with AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling,” he said. “As we continue to show the benefit of this technology in our company-operated restaurants, franchisee interest in digital menu boards should increase, further supporting sales and profit growth across the system.”
AP News
This made a lot of news because it's fairly ridiculous to expect to pay more for fast food at different times (I'm going elsewhere if I roll up to a Wendy's and a meal is more expensive). But the company has tried to clarify (damage control) the situation according to Omar Fares at Salon.
Wendy's executives have since clarified that its dynamic pricing model would not increase prices for customers, saying in a news release the CEOs comments were "misconstrued." Wendy's said that while price adjustments could happen in both directions, the upper limit would remain the current price.
Salon
Whether Wendy's will actually do this or not, it goes back to my original point: companies are raking in money and want more. If that involves laying off employees? They do it. If that involves raising prices or "shrinkflation" in which products remain the same price but are now smaller in size, they do it. "Surge pricing" for a fast food meal doesn't seem so outlandish in that regard. But don't worry, they'll also save money by replacing the workers with robots and taking your order with AI while they're at it.
]]>This past weekend I was traveling and found myself nose-deep in my Kindle. I am still reading The Count of Monte Cristo, which I've already dubbed "The longest book" because, well, it is.
It's 1200+ pages. It's over 110 chapters long. And I'm 98% done with it.
Back in June when I wrote about this endeavor, I estimated I would finish it last year. That didn't happen. Between life and other things occupying my free time, I did not read as much as I would've liked. As such, it's only now at the end of February / beginning of March that I'm reaching the final parts of this book.
I've never read Monte Cristo before and it's a fascinating story in both how revenge overtakes a person's mission in life and also fascinating in how a person could write a book that is so damn long. At times Dumas has me enthralled and in other chapters I'm bored as all get out. I've stuck with it because I want to read the whole book and not skim past parts I don't like. Plus, my luck I'll miss a key point in some of those chapters.
But my Kindle shows me at 98% left and about one hour & twenty two minutes of reading time remaining. That is one thing I do love about the Kindle. It learns your reading speed and gives you those metrics per chapter or for the whole book. It's an enormous help when I begin a chapter to know when I'll be at the next stopping point.
When I do finally reach the end and mark it as 'read' on Goodreads, The StoryGraph, and Hardcover (yes, I'm currently using 3 book tracking sites in my attempts to leave GoodReads), I'm going to first enjoy the accomplishment and then I may go "school required reading" style and watch the movie. I've seen there's a bunch of film adaptations of Monte Cristo so I have to figure out which will be entertaining, not six hours long, and most true to the source material.
One note I want to make is if you own any eReader or just want to read a book on your phone, consider Project Gutenberg to get classic and out-of-copyright books for free. It's criminal to pay for ebook versions of classics when they should be free. Project Gutenberg has over 70,000 public domain books available. And if that isn't enough, remember your library has ebooks for free; you simply need a library card.
Last year I completed only two books because of my choice to read this long book. This year, with the end coming in the next week or so, I'm excited to read something quick and short; say 300 pages? That's crazy-brief in my world these days.
If you love TimeMachiner, you should give Kyle’s Junk Drawer a look. Kyle's newsletter is a weekly roundup of recommended articles, Mastodon/Bluesky/Threads posts and videos on tech, entertainment & more. It's free every Sunday! Click here to visit Kyle.
Thanks for reading. Now, onto the rest of today's issue.
]]>These carbon microphones are incredible because you have @Samsonite1890 performing Five Foot Two on the banjo here in 2024 and yet it sounds perfectly like a recording a century ago. Originally developed in 1878 by David Hughes in England, the device used loosely packed carbon granules and the varying pressure exerted on the granules by the diaphragm from acoustic waves caused the resistance of the carbon to vary proportionally. This allowed a relatively accurate electrical reproduction of the sound signal. Hughes also coined the word microphone.
While Thomas Edison and Emile Berliner also independently developed this technology, Hughes decided not to take out a patent; instead, he made his invention a gift to the world according to Wikipedia. Here in the US, Edison fought and won the patent, because of course he did.
The video should play in Dave's embedded post above, but the original TikTok is below. You can also directly access it here.
]]>When it was his time to leave, McKay swapped out his existing profile picture for one that resembled an angrier version of Slackbot’s actual icon. He also changed his name to “Slackbot.” You can’t just change your name on Slack to “Slackbot,” by the way, as the service will tell you that name’s already been taken. It does work if you use a special character that resembles one of the letters inside Slackbot, though, such as replacing “o” with the Unicode character “о.”
The move camouflaged McKay’s active Slack account for months, letting his account evade deletion. It also allowed him to send bot-like messages to his colleagues such as, “Slackbot fact of the day: Hi, I’m Slackbot! That’s a fact. Have a Slack-ly day!” My colleague Victoria Song, who previously worked at Gizmodo, isn’t all that surprised that this situation unfolded, and says, “As Tom’s former coworker and a G/O Media survivor, this tracks.”
The Verge
If you've never used Slack, the Slackbot is a lightweight assistant built into the service. You can chat with it to give you reminders later on, set alarms, save information, and basically help you out with minimal tasks as needed.
What's crazier to me is how McKay was able to successfully hide and remain hidden from management for months. The ability to change a username shouldn't be enough to evade detection. Every Slack user is tied to an email address and in my experience, is your work email. If someone is being let go, deactivating someone in Slack should be handled by the email address on the account. Now, it's possible McKay changed his email too (I'm unsure if you can even do that in a paid / corporate Slack).
But as one person on Mastodon said: tell me you don't have an off boarding checklist without telling me you don't have an off boarding checklist.
]]>This past weekend I got my hands on an Apple Vision Pro. Now, I'm far from any YouTuber who gets press products nor wannabe 'influencers' who buy products, review them, then return them within Apple's 14-day return window. And I certainly don't have a spare $3,400 laying around.
On Saturday I had some free time and saw on Apple's website that I could schedule a 30-minute demo at a local Apple Store. It's free and requires no promise to purchase or anything else. I wasn't sure what to expect, but what I can say is the whole demo went real fast.
I had a dedicated Apple employee, Pedro in my case, with me the whole time. One of the tables in the store was clear and in use only for demos. Pedro had an iPad that allowed him to see what I would see in the Vision Pro.
First thing's first: I wear glasses. Pedro took my glasses over to a machine that read my prescription. Next we used my iPhone to do a head measurement so the demo device could get the right sized light seal. After a few failed tries (you can't do the measurements with glasses on) it got the scan and we were set. About 5-minutes later a Vision Pro came out on a wooden platter all set up and ready.
After putting it on and tightening the strap, a single button-push was all I needed to turn it on and see the entire store. The passthrough video had really no lag and it only took a few seconds to get used to it. Yes, the video quality wasn't stunning, but it was certainly good. I easily grabbed my iPhone and took a selfie without even thinking about it.
Pedro walked me through an eye scan so the headset could track my eyes. It took only a minute and we were off to the races. He asked that I stick to the things he asked me to open and do, which was likely due to time constraints.
The 'experiences' as I'll call them came quick.
First I opened Photos. It looks like Photos on an iPad and it was very clear. Windows just stick in space. No jittering or drifting around. I used my fingers to move to the next photo. We moved to a panoramic photo and enlarged it to be a 180-degree view. It looked fantastic. Spacial videos and photos are essentially 3D items. When open their borders are fuzzy and you can't really tell where they end and the rest of the space begins. I liked them, but they move around as your head does. For someone who deals with motion sickness, I kinda wished they stayed in place. But... they looked really cool.
Next we opened Safari and then a cooking app. The goal was simply to show how you could open multiple apps, place them anywhere, and scroll through websites that looked crisp. Of course, I put Safari on the ceiling because why not.
The AppleTV app was next and a clip from the Super Mario movie started playing. It took a minute to realize it was in 3D. This looked so good and really should be the way to watch 3D movies. The color was vibrant. I loved how I could move the 'screen' anywhere. We then watched a 180-degree 'experiences' clip showing immersive videos you could watch in the Vision Pro. It was a commercial of sorts but gave you the idea of how things could be.
One thing that stuck out was a few clips from a baseball game. The camera was right on the baseline and I would love for all sports broadcasts to get 'front row viewing' set up for these devices. Imagine watching your team's games from the best seat while on your couch. Easily could be a premium offering from the four major sports leagues.
And that was it. The demo was over really fast. I wanted to try out more, but Pedro let me know it was time to take the Vision Pro off and tell him what I thought.
The thing that impressed me the most was the sound. If you've ever been in an Apple Store, you know it's always noisy. The built-in speakers sounded great. I couldn't hear everything but I heard most of what was playing.
But this thing is heavy. As soon as I put it on, I could feel the weight and had that resting near my eyebrows the entire time. When I took the thing off, it felt like a relief. It also had me realize there was some perspiration going on in there. For all the rumors of Apple's reducing of weight to the point of making the battery external, this thing is still heavy.
Vision Pro looks cool and has some great tricks. But it's a solitary device. I still can't come up with a 'must have' app or experience in which I want to use this in a practical way. The Vision Pro has a lot of party tricks and 'wow' moments. But the present is very much as Version 1, MVP device.
I saw in a review that this will be the worst Vision Pro device Apple will ship. And that is true. In the next three years, there will be radical improvements and my guess is by then the price will come down and we'll know what it's best at. That is the future I'm most interested in seeing.
Thanks for reading. Now, onto the rest of today's issue.
]]>First it was Apple's legal loss resulting in it being forced to allow outside payments from the App Store. On the surface this ruling looks like a big win for the likes of Spotify, Netflix, and any other company that doesn't want to pay a 30% cut to Apple for all purchases. Fair enough.
But Apple, always one to want total control, is going the Full-Greed route wherein it will charge a 27% comission on outside purchases. Companies must keep records of purchases outside the App Store and submit to audits by Apple. This, combined with the standard 3% credit card processing fees (sometimes higher) means companies using outside payments will... you guessed it, still pay 30%. Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac has a great roundup of this saga.
Next up is the Digital Markets Act (DMA) ruling in the EU. This was a legal case that has deemed it illegal to not allow competing app stores on a device. So Apple, now forced to allow other app stores on its platform, has gone ahead and charges a slightly-less-than-the-US rate of 17% comission. Then they're lobbing on a "Core Technology Fee" of about 54-cents per app install. Because... fees. Jon Porter and David Pierce at The Verge have a good breakdown of this cumbersome situation in the link above.
Lastly comes news this past week that in EU versions of iOS, Apple is pulling support for PWAs. What's a PWA? Simply put, it's when you go to any website and then use the Save To Homescreen feature of your iPhone. This creates a Progressive Web Application which basically takes a website and turns it in a pseudo-app on your phone. Apple invested in PWAs lately by adding push notification abilities and other quality of life features.
The advantage of PWA over an app is, well, it's not an app. No downloading or creating more accounts, or other nonsense you don't want to deal with. However, Apple is pulling PWA support in the EU because of the aforementioned DMA ruling. Juli Clover at MacRumors has more.
According to Apple, Home Screen web apps are built on WebKit and its security architecture, and are designed to "align with the privacy and security model for native apps on iOS." Storage isolation and system prompts to access privacy functions on a per-site basis are crucial.
Without isolation, Apple claims that malicious web apps could read data from other web apps and gain access to a user's camera, microphone, and location without user consent. To fix these security issues, Apple would need to build a new integration architecture, which it says is not practical because of the other Digital Markets Act requirements and because Home Screen web apps aren't used by many people.
MacRumors
This is a lot of words that boils down to: Apple believes it's too difficult to support PWAs when it would have to find a solution that enables PWAs for competing web browsers.
In other words, Apple, a company that essentially claims to bend the laws of physics in order to bring you a face computer from the future also believes supporting PWAs is too hard and can't be done.
Apple's malicious compliance with new laws and regulations reeks of greed, a betrayal of customers it claims to embrace, and a willingness to kneecap its products simply to spite governments. None of this surprises me. What does surprise me is how public Apple is about this.
Apple makes really good hardware. That's no secret. And the 'ecosystem' of how devices work together is far and away its biggest strength. But when the unstoppable need to wring every penny out of developers and companies for the privilage of developing on its platform (which is that company's voluntary choice) comes out like this, Apple needs to tread lightly.
The Vision Pro's app store has about 1,000 apps as of this writing. It has been in the news that major players like YouTube and Netflix explicitly opted out its apps from Vision Pro. Without a healthy and vibrant app marketplace, modern devices cannot survive. A lack of apps was the death knell for Microsoft's Windows Phone. People want apps and a piece of tech that doesn't have the software people want will not go far.
If Apple pisses off enough people with its greed, companies will back out of developing for its platforms. The Apple Watch has lost many 3rd party apps over the years and the iPad struggles with getting apps on it. Google took so long to make native iPad apps that it was a running joke. Vision Pro could easily miss out on everything it needs to be successful with Apple's alienation of developers.
Time will tell how things go in all these areas. As smart as the people at Apple are, now is a good reminder that in 2024 they have not proved to be smart enough to do the right things.
]]>A raccoon was behind the massive power outage that knocked out electricity to some 7,000 customers in downtown Toronto for hours Thursday night.
Hydro One said a raccoon “made contact with equipment” at a downtown station, which cut the lights for parts of the city. The raccoon's condition is currently unknown.
“We’re currently responding to an outage affecting customers in and around the following boundaries: St. Clair Avenue W to Gerrard Street W and Avenue Road to the Don Valley Parkway,” Toronto Hydro said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.
CTV
This isn't the first time we've seen Canadian wildlife disrupt things. Only six months ago did we have an entire town's internet go offline due to beavers.
While the article states the raccoon's condition is currently unknown, I can't find more info on it. Let's hope the little guy is a-okay.
]]>