Podcast episodes, sorted by location: MapsFM

I'm planning a trip for next summer. I hope to visit the convention in Philadelphia in August '24 and then to visit the Adirondack Mountains in the upper New York State area 😃 

So currently I'm compiling a list of all the places that seem to be worth a visit. This is hard work. If only I could find a podcast that takes place or talks about this area 😅 

By chance I happened upon a Hacker News link that points to just such a website. Maps.fm literally shows you a map and on top of it, a bunch of podcast episodes that mention the place on the map. I will give this a try soon™️ 

After 1 month: is the iPhone 15 pro worth it?

I've now been using my iPhone 15 pro for about one month. Before this I used an iPhone 12 mini. 

In short: I'm happy with the upgrade, but is so big.

The size

If you are a small guy with small hands like me the iPhone 15 pro (I'm not even talking about the "Max" or "Ultra" models here) is quite big. 

Not so big that it looks like an iPad mini, but big nonetheless. Is it too big? Well, no. It still fits in my pants and jackets pockets so it's doable. 

Also the weight is quite noticeable. My 12 mini was basically invisible and I would regularly lose the phone when it slid out of my pockets. The 15 pro is so noticeably present that when it isn't there, I notice it. 

The camera

When I described the M1 SOC I called it alien technology. I would say that the camera on the iPhone 15 pro is similarly so very good that it looks like a thing out of a sci-fi movie. 

The zoom lens is only 2x (or 77mm in full frame jargon)  but then it zooms further and allows me to get something 15x closer in my view by using the new 48 megapixel CCD. 

This combination makes the camera useful for filming and photographing birds up close from a non disturbing distance. I love it.  

The stabilizer is also very good so when I do zoom in the videos and photos are not blurry. 

On a recent trip up the Ardenne mountains, a friend and I both made photos of some friends who stayed behind in the valley below. Of course his 200mm lens on a Panasonic APS-C body made a better quality photo. But not much better. 

The best camera is the one you have with you. And your iPhone is usually in reach. 

The battery 

The only real reason my iPhone 12 mini was no longer good enough for me was the fact that from day one the battery life wasn't good enough. 

So what changed after 3 years? Well, the 12 mini's lightning port stopped working, which means I can't use a power bank to charge it on the go anymore. 

Since I was in the market for a replacement (getting the lightning port fixed would not solve the too small battery) I looked for a pro model. 

My mum was unhappy about empty batteries too and has been a happy 11 pro user for a while now. I wanted the pro model for the battery life. 

So, how good is it? Well, I've not charged my phone since this morning 06:15 am. It's now 23:03 pm and my battery is at 24%. 

In other words: it was a long day and after reading, navigating and downloading and listening to podcasts, my battery is still full enough. I'm happy with the iPhone 15 pro's battery as it is. 

Conclusion 

I've not even talked about the new A17 chip. It's fast. But, really, my iPhone 12 mini was still fast too, so really I don't notice it being faster at all.

But the camera with optic zoom is a big upgrade and the battery that actually lasts longer than I do is a big plus for me as well. 

But truth be told: possibly the normal iPhone 15 would get me a similar battery life? I don't know and now that I own this model, I don't want to know. 

CBF: Underrated Cause of Tech Debt – Pursuit Of Laziness – A blog by Jesse Duffield

Some gold nuggets of wisdom about how to approach work as a programmer. And really any other kind of work. 

Is it burnout? Maybe. Is it a lack of Growth Mindset? Hard to say. Is it just the reality of my personality? Who knows.

As I continue my journey as a developer I learn more about myself, and one of the things I've learnt is that my motivation ebbs and flows. I'll have a good run, inhabiting the persona of the developers I look up to, however imperfectly, until I once again find myself with the constraint that trumps all the extrinsic constraints of the project at hand: a deficiency of motivation.

Maybe you don't have the energy to write perfect code, but honesty requires less creativity than lying. It's a breath of fresh air when a contributor admits some element of their pull request is lacking because they're lazy. At least then you have the opportunity to judge for yourself whether their laziness exceeds your own standards or whether their time is indeed better spent working on the next thing. That's a much easier game to play than bandying software engineering maxims.

iPhones have been getting cheaper, if we consider the SE models.

As some of you may know, I've had an iPhone in the family since the 3G model came out in Europe. At that time, this must have been around 2008 I guess, I heard that Apple's iPhone would be sold in the Netherlands. I dragged my mother to the store and told her it was a great deal and a great phone to own. 

If memory serves me, the iPhone was originally sold only with one provider and one type of plan: the T-Mobile unlimited-data plan with 150 calls/texts. I think at that time we had 2G/3G coverage, mostly 2G where we lived, but it was fine: e-mails and whatsapp messages would come in no matter what. 

All for a sudden my mother would no longer ask me how to open an email or how to send a document. She knew how to do this on her phone and only needed my help with more difficult tasks. 

Since then I've been an Apple fan of sorts. I made my parents get an iPad instead of a new computer or laptop and only bought a bluetooth keyboard and AirPrint-supporting printer as peripherals. I can't even remember the last time they had technical difficulties 😊.

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One drawback that I do remember was the price: a two year plan with the phone included would set you back about €800. This was a lot of money back then. I guess about €600 of that was the price of the phone itself, the rest being the price of the data and calls/texts plan. So €600 for a piece of plastic that you just keep in your pockets 🤔 ?

I had owned several PDA's, some of which would run Windows CE, and a Nokia E63, so I was more accustomed to paying half a months salary for a gadget, but still, it is a lot of money. Looking back the price wasn't that bad. If we could get a new iPhone today for that amount, wouldn't we jump on the opportunity?

Well, maybe we can, sort of? The iPhone SE isn't the flagship by any account. In fact, it only features tested-and-true tech that has been in the various more flashy models for years. But it just works. It's a phone. It takes photos. It allows you to run almost all of the latest apps. The storage options 64GB/128GB/256GB are more than enough for most use cases. You'll receive 5 years of iOS updates (and security updates even longer, sort of). And it only costs €599 for the 128GB model. So in 15 years time the price of an iPhone has stayed constant. Or has it? 

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The iPhone has in fact been getting cheaper. 🤔 Yes indeed. If we take into account the inflation in the eurozone of the last few years, we see that 2008 €600 would be €835 in today's money. Or put another way, the new iPhone SE price of €599 would have been €430 in 2008. 

To compare prices honestly is difficult over time. This is one of the reasons why economists must perform a "hedonic adjustment" (not as nasty as it sounds) on the selection of products they use to compare prices between past and present prices.  

Instead of getting into an academic debate, let me ask you this: what do you use your phone for? If it's not mainly photography, then why would you need an iPhone pro, or even the "middle" model? Isn't it wonderful that we can own a very powerful and useful device for the low price of €599?

I've previously owned an iPhone SE myself (the model that looked like an iPhone 4), but I found the battery and camera lacking. I'm currently using the iPhone 15 Pro which has a more-then-all-day battery life and a wonderful set of camera lenses. But if I ever had to live on a thighter budget, I wouldn't mind going back to an iPhone SE (with a power bank on-hand, maybe). 

Many scientists don’t want to tell the truth about climate change. Here’s why.

If meeting the climate goals is not going to happen anyways, then why try?

Well, for one thing, we need to be able to look ourselves just the eye. And also we need to give the next generations hope. The only way to do that is to keep lying. 

https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2023/10/03/1-5-degrees-celcius-un-climate-change-report-barbara-moran

But I think that 1.5 C has moved from "ambitious goal" to "magical thinking." And the scientists are telling themselves a story to stave off despair.

There's something else going on, too: Scientists are shielding the public. They say: "We don't want people to give up," or "We don't want the island nations to feel abandoned," or "We don't want people to lose hope."

This is paternalism. (Or maybe maternalism?) Scientists are telling us a story to protect us from despair.

A review of Beeper, a unified chats app.

“All your chats in one app. Yes, really” (but with some side notes). A short review of @onBeeper, a unified chats' app. 
 
 
On 02-08-2023[1] I received my invitation to give Beeper a try. Now, to understand why I am so well-stocked to try this app, you must understand that since forever, I've been on the lookout for ✨The Unified Inbox App That Will Solve All My Problems✨
 
I have to tell you now, Beeper is close, but not “it.”

The Good

To use Beeper, you are required to set up an account with them and download the desktop app. From the desktop app you can select messaging services that you want to connect to, like Instagram Direct Message, Twitter DM, WhatsApp, Signal, LinkedIn, SMS, iMessage, Telegram, and so on. Lastly, you log in to each of these services and use the connect-to-desktop-app or some-such feature that they have all built-in.

This is where the magic happens: some of these services do not give third-party apps access to your data. The thing is: most of these services are very user hostile. In their eyes (and in the fine print we all ignore forgot to read) they will have some wording to the extent that your data really isn’t your data but theirs, and they can lock it up as much as they see fit. 

The one thing that is saving us now is that they all see the benefit in having a desktop version of their platform in one way or the other. Beeper high jacks that system to link all these chat streams to itself, instead of the intended native app. 

So, after setting up all the links with your chat platforms of choice, you can log into the iOS app, and you will see all your chats in one unified list. 

And person or group chat that you mark in Beeper as favourite will always be shown on top.

The Bad

As I mentioned before, you are required to download and set up a desktop app. For many today, this is a big hurdle for the simple reason that owning a laptop or desktop isn't standard any more. Many people simply live by using their smartphone alone. 
Another drawback is a missing feature: unified chats. 
 
Say whaaaat? Let's say René sends me an SMS and later a message over Signal. Then Beeper will show two separate messages in the list, both labelled by sender “René.” I would really have loved for Beeper to unify the chats into one chat stream so that I simply see two messages under the chat of “René.” 

To prevent confusion on the receiving end, I would propose that whenever I reply to a message in Beeper, the message goes to whichever platform was last used by the recipient. 

Unfortunately, Beeper doesn’t support unified chats and there are no plans to support this in the future. 😢

Lastly, a big pain point at this time is the fact that all links to the platforms are randomly getting dropped. I then have to use the desktop Beeper app to set up the link again. I guess this due partly to bugs in Beeper and partly to do with bugs (or purposefully bugging) by all the platforms that Beeper is connecting to.

The Ugly

To connect Beeper to my iMessages (I barely use it because most of my friends do not live in the United States) I had to give Beeper full access to my Apple ID. 

That is some scary stuff. Not only do I now “trust” a company with FULL access to EVERYTHING, but also, I put the burden of keeping my data out of the wrong hands in their laps. 😱

This is a bad situation for me and Beeper both. To be clear: it’s not their fault. Apple simply hasn’t opened up iMessage to competitors yet. Soon they will have to either open up or stop the iMessage service in all the European Union countries under the new Digital Markets Act. But for now, we are stuck with this lose-lose franken-monster solution. 🙄

And now?

I'm guessing that because of the aforementioned DMA, numerous platforms will give some kind of access to their platforms, either via a free to use API or by switching over to an open standard like the Matrix protocol or RCS. Beeper is basically a fancy Matrix client, by the way. 

For now, I’m using Beeper just for the convenience of not having to have installed the LinkedIn and Instagram apps and still be able to respond to the (very few) messages that I get on those platforms. 
If Beeper started charging money, and they hadn’t implemented unified-chats by that time yet, then I would simply stop using the service altogether.
We will see.

I would love to read your thoughts on my article, and the future of unified chats' apps in general on Hacker News.

[1] Yes, I start with the day, then the month and then the year, I go from small to big, like God intended dates to be written.