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Tom MacWright describes how simple it is to drop Google in 2018:

Switching off of Google in 2018 is easy because you’ve probably abandoned most of their products anyway, and the ones you’re still using are stagnating.

The Zebro autonomous swarming robot developed for rescue operations is an interesting idea:

Equipped with audio sensors, a ‘self-deploying sensor network’ and the ability to call for human assistance, they can swarm en masse like insects across difficult or damaged terrains to search for anyone who needs help.

How to edit the titles of iCloud Photos Memories:

On iOS, you have to start the movie, and then you can tap the edit button.

There you can change the title, title image and remove photos.

I only discovered this useful feature a few months ago. And although on iOS it feels like more of a workaround, I now use it regularly.

Wow! Beautiful.

Wow! Google is going to make podcast listening on Android a first-class experience. And there is a world to win, because:

(..) the majority of people who listen to podcasts do so on an iPhone. It’s actually so egregious that on a device-by-device basis, the average iPhone listens to over ten times more podcasting than the average Android.

It’s also Google’s first serious move in trying to become the dominant player in the podcast space. The question is: what will Apple do?

I finally read the New Yorker article on Susan Kare, ‘The Woman Who Gave the Macintosh a Smile’. And loved this detail about the Command icon on every Mac keyboard:

The command icon, still right there to the left of your space bar, was based on a Swedish campground sign meaning “interesting feature,” pulled from a book of historical symbols.

The hardest icons were actions that didn’t have a real world equivalent, like Undo. And what about the Copy icon?

At one point, there was to be an icon of a copy machine for making a copy of a file, and users would drag and drop a file onto it to copy it, but it was difficult to render a copier at that scale. Kare also tried a cat in a mirror, for copycat. Neither made the cut.

Earth Day achievement ✅🏃‍♂️

In Espresso in the Mountains: an Interview with Alex Strohl, he notes:

I think that photography and coffee meet somewhere on the scale of dedication and precision.

I love that.

Good news from The Guardian:

Scientists have created a mutant enzyme that breaks down plastic drinks bottles – by accident. The breakthrough could help solve the global plastic pollution crisis by enabling for the first time the full recycling of bottles.

(via @adamproctor)

Very interesting article by Rob Rhyne on one of the main characters in The Expanse and Back Burner thinking:

I rely on my sub-conscious brain to churn through what I observe, and process everything into a cohesive picture. The shower, the dinner table, and the car are most often the places where an idea will surface that pulls everything together for me. At times I’ll gaze into the distance. Other times, I need a monotonous task which requires only a little attention.

An early manager—who really understands engineers—used to tell me I was a “burst worker”. That is, I would sit on a problem, and think it completely through. Then I’d open a text editor and dash out a solution in an afternoon. The process was neither slower, or faster, than my fellow engineers. But unless you observed an entire cycle, I would either appear a procrastinator, or a 10x engineer.

It took me years to figure out (some of) the different types of people in my surroundings. And how every one of them thinks, works and reacts in a different way.

I just switched from Feed Wrangler to Feedbin as my RSS reader of choice. Because Feedbin already added a share to Micro.blog feature, but mainly because I really like the very deliberate product development and the clean UI.

Great point by @jamesshelley: Stop wasting other people’s lives.

The Guardian:

'Plastic is literally everywhere': the epidemic attacking Australia's oceans

This is just disturbing.

It’s weekend, so I have some time to review my RSS feeds. The best iOS news seems to be that Microsoft Office now supports directly opening documents from the Files app.

Brent Toderian (city planning expert) explains that any city can transform its infrastructure from 🚘 focused to 🚲 focused: twitter.com/roelgroen…

Morning mist.

Serenity Caldwell thinks that the 2018 iPad with Apple Pencil is the best bisection of technology and liberal arts on the market today.

She even created her entire video review on such an iPad.

This is an interesting development: Forget Congress. Facebook’s real problem is in Europe. - The Washington Post. Also see this Twitter thread.