Apple’s “Foundation" has bothered me for a while since it’s just not Asimov’s “Foundation” except in name …

But today’s episode is so full of crap in so many ways that I can’t even begin to get into it 😛

There were logic holes, plot holes, and holes of all sorts. Ugh.

#TV #Foundation

So this is my day so far:
Update iPhone to iOS 17 RC ✅
Update macBook to macOS 14 RC ✅
Update Xcode to Xcode 15 RC ✅

Now to actually get work done 😛

#DevLife #BetaCycle #iOS #macOS

Would have had to stay up to watch the Apple event last night. Went to sleep instead.

Got up in the morning and discovered I'd missed nothing since all the important stuff had already been leaked weeks in advance 😛

#Apple #iPhone #NewHardware

My wife and I, we watch almost everything together — movies, TV shows, even YouTube videos.

This can be challenging during travel since we prefer to watch our own content instead of that provided by the airline. Watching on a single iPad with shared headphones is not a great experience.

I'm thinking of an app to fix this issue which allows us to watch the same content on two different devices, but synced.

Not sure if this helps anybody but us? Anybody else find this useful?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and have been hoping somebody else would fix it (like Apple VisionPro) but not sure that’ll happen …

So I’m going to take a stab at fixing it myself 🙂

#Entertainment #Sharing #iOS #macOS #Coding

"Rocky aur Rani kii Prem Kahaani" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14993250) is a wonderful movie which challenges stereotypes, bias, prejudice, and a lot more things.

Plus, it's funny (if you like a certain type of humour) and revives some great Bollywood songs too 😛

I didn't think I'd like the movie as much as I did since the beginning was a bit ... umm rocky for me. But then the movie hit its stride and just kept going full steam ahead!

If you’ve watched “Santhosh Subramaniyam”, you might see some similarities, but I think they did it better with regards to highlighting socially relevant themes here …

Definitely worth a watch!

#Movies #Hindi #Bollywood #Indian

I finally got around to trying out the AGD Interactive version of "King's Quest I" (http://agdinteractive.com/games/kq1/about/about.html) and it looks much nicer than the VGA remake from Sierra 🙂

Comparison screenshots below ...

Their macOS app is 32-bit and so won't work on my version of macOS, so I had to resort to CrossOver (https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover) to get it working. But it does work fine on the latest CrossOver (with some tweaking ...)

The CrossOver compatibility database says that the game will install but won’t run. And that’s how it looked on first install with CrossOver 23 too, but once I enabled the DXVK option (which enables Vulcan for Direct3D, if I’m not mistaken), it seemed to work fine …

#Games #KingsQuest #Remake #CrossOver

Was feeling bored yesterday and didn't want to start a new coding project and so decided to play "King's Quest" 🙂

Dusted off DOSBox-X (https://dosbox-x.com), which has a bunch of features which makes it easier to use than DOSBox, and I was off to the races!

I hadn't played the VGA version of the game before and so it was actually enjoyable.

Now maybe I should look into getting the AGDI version of the game (https://agdinteractive.com/games…) working? Trouble is, the macOS version of the game is 32-bit only and I’m too lazy to set up a VM and do all that. Same with the Windows version, which requires at least Windows ME …

#DOSBox #RetroGaming #DOSGames
A screenshot from King's Quest …

Honestly, I don't really understand the logic in “Star Wars” much of the time since they just rely on stupid decisions to move things along 😛

The latest in a long line appears to be to let Sabine do whatever she wants and trusting in her even though she keeps making one stupid decision after another in “Ahsoka” …

I do realize that the story would be very short if not for Sabine’s not-at-all-well-thought-out decisions, but honestly, this is very lazy story telling where you rely on characters to mess up and have other characters act as if they don’t see this sort of thing coming at all …

#TV #StarWars #Ahsoka

"Barbie" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1517268) is probably the best Hollywood movie I've seen in at least two years, maybe longer 🙂

It's brilliant, funny, subversive, thought-provoking and so full of quotes that I think I'm going to love (and use) for a while.

Oh, and the expressiveness of Margot Robbie’s face was just such a joy to watch!

Also, did anybody notice that the palm tree in the roundabout in front of Barbie's house works like a sundial? Or was that just my imagination?

Some quotes I loved (possibly paraphrased a little) were:

"I know I’m stereotypical barbie and therefore don’t form conjectures concerning casualty of adjacent unfolding events but some things have been happening that might be related.”

"You guys are clearly not doing patriarchy well.”

"I'm a man with no power, does that make me a woman?"

"I'm ready to be your long-term, long-distance, casual, low-commitment girlfriend.”

#Movies #English #Hollywood

"Ustaad" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27116302) is a beautiful, wonderful, and though-provoking movie.

Nothing extraordinary in terms of plot or hook — no mysteries, no capers, nothing earthshaking. Just the story of a guy's life.

But the moments are beautiful and some of the scenery in the movie was just breathtakingly beautiful!

I enjoyed every minute of it since stories about fate, destiny, coincidence — whatever you want to call it — and going for what you love are always close to my heart 🙂

If you like that kind of thing, highly recommended!

#Movies #Telugu #Indian #JustALifeLived #Tollywood

In the past year, I've seen at least 3 - 4 Indian movies in different languages about foreign pharmaceutical corporations coming to India and doing dangerous drug trials on children (generally in orphanages) and/or poor people in a given area.

Is this just movie-makers following a trend? Or a political attempt to foster isolationism through (subtle) propaganda? Or based on a kernel of truth?

Anybody know?

#Movies #India #Tamil #Telugu #DrugTrials #PropagandaOrTruth

It's interesting how posting/editing on the various platforms varies due to text length for a single post ..

On Bluesky, I have to really pare it down to fit within the 300-char limit. On Threads, I can expand upon the thought a bit more since posts can be a bit longer, and on Fedi, (where I can have 8k char posts), I can go to town ... 😛

But are my posts here better for it?

I don’t know. I just write here and don’t worry about whether I’m repeating myself, or if my thoughts can be expressed better.

But especially on Bluesky, I find myself looking at each sentence and figuring out what can be cut and how things can be made shorter and yet retain the essence of the thought.

Does that make me a better editor/writer? Maybe?

#Thoughts #PostingOnSocialMedia #Writing #Editing

I used to use the #AIArt hashtag for the art I post on social media that was machine generated. But no longer ...

The current systems are not intelligent — they are just statistical predictive systems.

I now use the hashtag #GenerativeArt for my machine learning generated art. I think that might be a better description? I don't know that for sure, but it certainly feels better than continuing to use the #AIArt tag 😛

It's an interesting thing about Tamil — Indians (or at least some Indians) say that Sri Lankan Tamils speak the same language as us and so they are our brothers/sisters.

And yet, when they show Sri Lankan Tamils in Tamil/Indian movies, they always speak a variant of Tamil that sets them apart. Even weirder still, the Tamil they speak sounds weird to me since I’ve never heard that kind of Tamil from any of the Sri Lankan Tamil people I’ve talked to/associated with 😛

So why use this weird Tamil? Is that shorthand for “they are different than us”? And if yes, isn’t that lazy? And also possibly breaks the whole “they are our brethren” sentiment?

I don’t know … People are strange … And of course, movies are stranger still 😀

#Movies #Tamil #India #SriLanka

*Ring* It's the telephone.

“Hello?” I say tentatively.

“We are calling from your bank. We are updating the security on all our debit cards. We need to verify some information.”

Alarm bells are going off all over in my head already.

“You called me. I don’t know who you are.” I say.

“Oh, we are sending you an SMS from Abu Dhabi police. That should verify us,” they say breezily.

"Why is the Abu Dhabi police sending messages for a bank?” I wonder. But the other person is rattling off stuff and not giving me time to think. I check the phone and sure enough, there’s an SMS from “ADPolice” (“That can be anyone, or even spoofed,” my mind counters …)

I decided to play along for a little while longer and see what happened.

“OK, I got the SMS,” I say.

“See? That verifies that I am who I said, I am,” the guy says enthusiastically. “Can you verify your card number? The first digits are … “ He reads out the first few digits, which I knew would be common and well-known.

So I should probably have hung up at this point. Or, better still in hindsight, given a fake set of numbers for the card to see if they accepted it. If they accepted the fake number, then they can’t be from the bank, right?

I didn’t think of that though. But I figured they already had my card number and so gave them the number. Then they ask for the expiration date and I provide that too.

“Thank you. I’m transferring you over to my supervisor now,” he says.

Another guy, more brusque and officious sounding comes on.

“We are upgrading the card security since you might have used the card at a mall or online,” he says. This makes no sense at all to me. Everybody uses cards online etc. Do they upgrade security each time.

“OK.” I say.

“Can you read me the number on the back of your card for verification purposes?” he asks.

I know that this is as far as I can go. I say, “No.”

He says, “Why not?”

“You might be a scammer. I get lots of fake calls”.

“Yes, there are fake calls, but this is real,” he counters. “I’ll send you an SMS from the government to prove it,” he continues.

I get an SMS from a government site asking me to verify a transaction for 1 AED. This is not a verification, just somebody trying to get me to pay them 1 AED. Again, not very bank-like.

I ask further questions, but the guy starts getting loud and obnoxious, repeating the same things he’d said before.

“Don’t yell at me!” I say. He gets quieter, but still demands information, saying that the bank has all my info and that they just need to verify it. I realize that this is not going any further and hang up.

They call again 6 - 7 times. I know a bank would never do that. They’d simply move on to the next customer, not that calling each customer individually to verify is what they’d do in a situation like this anyway …

So, the moral of the story, don’t give away any info at all. And provide fake info if you suspect it’s a fake/fraud call. If they don’t recognize that the info is fake, then they aren’t who they say they are …

#UAE #Scammers #FakeCalls #CreditCardPhishing #Fraudsters

He: “What's this second base and third base?”

She: “Ask one of your friends …”

He: “My father won’t know these things …”

“Satyaprem Ki Katha” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14914988)

#HindiMovieMoments #Bollywood #Hindi #WhatDoYouSay

Hi rectangle friends. I love RSS. I have lots of wonderful blogs in my RSS feedcatcher. But! I have audited my subscriptions and confirmed my feeling that a high percentage of the people whose blogs I regularly read are white. Since I mostly subscribe to new blogs via links from existing subscriptions, I think I'm stuck in a bit of a bubble, and I'd like some help discovering technical blogs and feeds run or authored by non-white people!

If you or someone you know a) is non-white b) has a blog about Rust, Python, web tech, Linux, systems programming, tech and society, or other, related topics that c) can be subscribed to via RSS, please reply and I will check it out and boost it!

Those are the only requirements. If you don't feel like you're an "expert", have only written one blog post, haven't posted in a year, etc please still let me know and I will check it out. Everyone's voice is valuable.

Thank you 💜 Boosts are appreciated!

I've been trying out ComfyUI and trying different image workflows, but haven’t been happy with the output till now … I finally have a workflow which produces images that I’m happy with 🙂

So here are my images for the day for the prompt: “rabbit astronauts on a arboreal world, colorful, highly detailed, cinematic, artstation”

Of course, dragging any of the images onto the ComfyUI interface should load the prompt and settings for you — provided the server is not stripping anything off of the images …

#StableDiffusion #GeneratedArt #ComfyUI

Started watching “Chatrapathi” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13545522) since I’d heard a few comments that the main actor did a great job in the movie …

But then one of the first scenes was somebody saying how much they loved someone and then a few scenes later believing a lie about the person they professed to love, without any proof, and without any investigation. How deep was their love/trust if they are so easily swayed?

That basically coloured my view of the movie from that point on … I haven’t gotten a lot further, but I can already tell that this is not a movie that’s going to be crafted in a way that I’ll actually like it 😛

#Movies #Hindi #Bollywood

Watched "Jailer" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11663228) and while it has the usual Rajnikanth style, though at a slightly more muted level given his advancing age, it was overall not a movie that probably would not appeal to anybody other than die-hard Rajni fans since it really doesn’t make a lot of sense 😛

The first half of the movie might have kind of worked, given some suspension-of-disbelief, since it was a fairly straightforward story which (kind of worked). But the latter half had a heist segment which didn’t make a lot of sense nor was warranted since the application of a smidgen of logic at the end of the first half would have prevented that storyline altogether 🙂

Overall though, it was good to see Rajni in action (and Mohanlal too) and I think I’ll leave it at that …

#Movies #Tamil #Kollywood #Rajnikanth #Mohanlal