No, Facebook. I wasn’t doing that, you idiots. Not even close.
This is the second warning I’ve received in two days, when any fool could see that I wasn’t doing that at all.
Remind me again why I’m still on Facebook? Oh, yeah, it’s because most of my friends and family who are online are there.
One more thing about Overcast
Reading this post it seems if you lose your playlists or podcast lists, force-quitting the app should fix the problem.
I’m pretty sure I tried that last night, but I think the developer changed the back-end afterward.
So far, I’m satisfied with the new version, but I’m also finding it a bit buggy. For example, changing filter settings on playlists doesn’t work until I force-quit the app.
The new version of the Overcast podcast app seems to be working OK for me now after a bad start.
It initially failed to show me any of my custom playlists or my list of podcasts.
Here’s what I did: I reverted to the beta, then deleted it, restarted my iPhone, and downloaded the new version. It seems good now.
Marco Arment, who developed the app, advises force-quitting it and says that should fix it, but I’m pretty sure I tried that alone, and it didn’t work.
The new version of the Overcast podcast player is completely unusable for me. I have filed a bug report and reverted to the previous beta.
RIP James Sikking, who played the gung-ho militaristic Lt. Howard Hunter on “Hill Street Blues." He also played Doogie Howser’s father.
I loved that show so much. I want to be Frank Furillo when I grow up.
Today’s fashion hate-reads
Sock height is now a “fierce controversy.. No-show socks make you look old. Crew socks are now fashionable. Unless you’re already old, in which case crew socks make you look old too.
This article has it all, including gratuitous Boomer-bashing and a grown-ass man who is devastated that teenagers are making fun of his socks at Disney World.
I take great pride in not caring about socks. As long as they’re approximately the same color, that’s good enough for me.
Also: Carolyn Hax advises a woman who is aghast that her sister-in-law wore white jeans to a wedding reception, when the invitations SPECIFICALLY SAID “festive cocktail attire.” The only person in this letter who is NOT horrible is the woman in white jeans.
If someone asked me to wear “festive cocktail attire” to an event, I would have no idea what that is. I guess that’s a big reason why we never get those kinds of invitations.
Good profile of J.D. Vance, Trump’s VP pick, in the form of a 55-point list at Politico.
TL;DR: Vance is a crackpot conspiracy theorist and LGBT-phobe motivated strongly by a desire to pwn the Libs. Also, he either had a 180-degree change of heart about Trump, or he’s a sociopathic opportunist; in 2016, he said Trump is an “idiot” and might well be America’s Hitler.
I would not bet on Vance surviving long. Trump tried to have his last VP whacked.
Something I noticed re-reading Roger Zelazny's "Doorways in the Sand"
I recently re-read Roger Zelazny’s “Doorways in the Sand,” which I last read when I was a teen-ager. I loved it as much today as I did then. One of my favorite Zelazny books, which makes it one of my favorite books.
In that novel, a character in his 60s is looking back on his life and says that the world goes through one massive change after another—but they happen one at a time, spaced out at long intervals, and after each change life goes back to pretty much what it was before, so you can convince yourself nothing has changed.
Then you look back over the course of 40+ years and the world is completely different from when you were 20 years old.
I glided over that passage when reading it first as a teen, but re-reading it again over the past few months it hit me hard.
In my adult lifetime, we’ve seen the emergence of he Internet, smartphones, the rise of China, the end of the Cold War, Covid, Donald Trump, the fall of the USSR—after each of these events, we could say, “That was a big deal but still our day-to-day lives are not much different than they were before” And yet you put it all together and the world is very, very different than it was in 1981.
This rule does not apply if you or someone close to you is personally affected by any of these global changes. And these changes can affect hundreds of millions of people — that’s what makes them global. But billions of people are not directly affected by these changes. For them, each individual change is a jolt and then life goes on mostly as it has done before.
Meet the thing I've been working on for three months: Fierce Network Research
I’m excited to unveil what I’ve been working on for the past three months: Helping to launch Fierce Network Research, the research arm of the Fierce Network technology news portal.
Fierce Network Research is dedicated to delivering insights on the impact, benefits and challenges of the new era of smart networking for communications service providers (CSPs) and enterprises.
We call this new-era networking Smart Cloud. It combines cloud, observability, automation, AI and security to build communications infrastructure essential to global economic and societal transformation.
We’re seeing the entire built world become intelligent — smart transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, automation, healthcare, energy and more. Everything that drives the economy and society is becoming connected, saturated with sensors and using artificial intelligence and automation to make smart decisions that improve productivity and efficiency.
None of that works without Smart Cloud connectivity.
I’m part of the Fierce Network Research team as Chief Analyst, defining the research business’s point of view and taking overall responsibility for its research into the latest global trends.
About me: I’ve been covering enterprise and telco technology for more than 30 years, including leadership positions at Light Reading and InformationWeek. I also helped drive content marketing in a full-time position at Oracle and as a consultant for business-to-business technology companies for the data center, cloud platform, networking and security spaces.
For more information on our current and upcoming reports, go here: It’s time to meet Fierce Network Research
And here’s the website: research.fierce-network.com
