CocoaHeads Boston will meet on Thursday, April 10 at the Microsoft NERD Center. Brian Cardarella will present Server-Driven UI with SwiftUI.
Details are available on Meetup. RSVPing via Meetup before April 2 is required; we have to give a list of attendees to building security.
FYI for local friends: Senator Warren is holding a town hall in Lowell tomorrow (Tuesday) evening.
Big crowd protesting on the Boston Common.
On the Boston Common
A press release for an audience of one: www.apple.com/newsroom/…
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These are photos from todayâs protest in Boston.
I participated in a protest today at the state house. These are some photos.
Iâm going to start tonight by stating the obvious: the Republicans control both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also control the White House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. And there would be very little the Democrats could do to stop that change.
But they are not doing that.
Instead, they are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk, whose investment of $290 million in Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election apparently has bought him freedom to run the government, to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and cancelling those programs that he, personally, dislikes.
The replacement of our constitutional system of government with the whims of an unelected private citizen is a coup. The U.S. president has no authority to cut programs created and funded by Congress, and a private citizen tapped by a president has even less standing to try anything so radical.
Calling this anything less than a coup at this point is sane-washing. This has to be stopped immediately.
I called the office of my congresswoman, my senators, my state governor, and my state attorney general. I talked to staffers where I could, and left voice messages elsewhere.
This is roughly the script I used:
The reason I am calling is that I am deeply concerned about Trumpâs moves over the past few weeks. What is most alarming to me is that Elon Musk is literally tearing apart the federal government. Reports are that government employees are getting locked out of their computer systems, and Elon Musk is getting access. He is taking entire government websites offline. He seems to have access to a boatload of information about government employees and about Americans who are getting social security or some kind of government assistance. I donât know specifically what heâs doing with that, but it canât be good.
This needs to stop right away, and I am pleading with you to do everything in your power to stop this.
Thank you.
Whenever I hear Tim Cook state that privacy is a fundamental human right, I am going to remember that he attended and donated a million dollars to the Presidential inauguration of someone who cares nothing about human rights.
I released Unread 4.4. This update makes it easier to subscribe to feeds offered by Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, and YouTube.
Scoop: Apple CEO Tim Cook donates $1 million to Trump inauguration www.axios.com/2025/01/0…
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Yesterday I wrote a blog post looking back at the past year in Unread improvements, and talking about what I am planning for the new year.
Rest in peace, Jimmy Carter. www.nytimes.com/live/2024…
Daniel Kennett describes the difficult process of getting Cascable Studio 7 approved for the Mac App Store. App Review made it a month-long ordeal.
CocoaHeads Boston will meet this Thursday evening at 7:00 PM at MIT. Join us in-person or via Zoom. Details (including important notes about parking and building access) at:
A random piece of train track.
Keyboard Shortcut Recorder for UIKit is a custom control for letting a user specify a hardware keyboard shortcut in an iPhone/iPad app. I built this control when implementing Unreadâs ability to set custom keyboard shortcuts for certain actions.
This control is inspired by KeyboardShortcuts by Sindre Sorhus, which I used in Unread for Mac.
Keyboard Shortcut Recorder for UIKit is available as an open source Swift package on GitHub.
I released Unread 4.3 with:
Detailed release notes are available.
This weekend is Indie Charity Weekend, an opportunity for you to discover some great apps while supporting charity at the same time. Thank you to Will Bishop for organizing this.
Check it out at: indiecharityweekend.com
CocoaHeads Boston will meet in person tomorrow (Thursday) evening at 7:00 PM. We will be in room 325 of the E-51 Building at MIT. After the meeting we will walk to MEX for dinner and socializing. The classroom portion of the meeting will also be available via Zoom.
Our political leaders need to acknowledge that Trump won and facilitate a peaceful transfer of power. Perhaps business leaders need to say they will work with the incoming administration.
But I do not understand why anyone needs to say âcongratulationsâ.
Some believe that the election results indicate a severe weakness in the Democratic party or of Kamala Harrisâ Presidential campaign. I wish I agreed, but the problem is bigger than that.
The danger of Trump seemed clear in 2016, but that danger has become much more apparent since that time. We had the Russia scandal, the Comey firing, the extortion of Ukraine, the COVID response, the insurrection, the stolen classified documents, and the Madison Square Garden hate rally. I could go on.
Despite all of that, this is the third Presidential election in which Trump got over 45% of the popular vote. Against three very different candidates. No primary challenger came close to defeating Trump either.
Voters know what they are getting with Trump. Roughly half the country wants an illiterate hate-mongering insurrectionist dictator as President.
Letâs do this, America.
I canceled my Washington Post subscription and my Amazon Prime subscription.