It seems that being a Firefox user means being in a constant state of trepidation about whether the app will last the year. For a long while now, it has been well known that the browser’s very survival depends on the largesse of its search partner, Google. The Mozilla Foundation, which develops Firefox, is a non-profit, but it gets 85% of its funding thanks to the commercial interests of the biggest beneficiary of ad revenue on the internet.
It’s hard to believe that I hadn’t heard of Hookmark until recently. The crowd I follow online doesn’t tend to miss Mac productivity tools, but this one seems to have escaped mass publicity within that community. The premise seems like a powerful one:
Hookmark is the standalone contextual bookmarking app. It complements your launcher by also being the contextual launcher. Hookmark enables you to create and link robust bookmarks to files, emails, tasks and more, making it easy for you to access information without needing to search.
Amazon’s Rufus, which must be some kind of AI chatbot, wonders if I’ve got the following questions about Stereolab’s upcoming album Instant Holograms On Metal Film:
The future is cleaning your tub with space-age bachelor pad records.
I tend to place a great deal of emphasis on harmony between the different parts of my life. When there is some sort of discontinuity, it vexes me. This can play out in pretty serious cognitive dissonance.1 It can also filter down to less consequential choices. One struggle I’ve always had is around media formats for music.
Anna Kodé has a piece in the New York Times (gift article) about the early Space Age Googie style of architecture. The article is filled with eye candy and visual delights from the style, some prominent artifacts of which were still around when I was young. It brings a tremendous sense of nostalgia.
Nick Heer from Pixel Envy points out that Dell hasn’t lost its branding charm. When configuring a laptop on the website, he got an error message, “Composite Rule Error: Invalid selection in Processor Branding.” He was further informed about the error:
The Chassis Option requires the matching Memory size. The 16gb Memory is only available with the Ultra 5 236V/226V and Ultra 7 266V. The 32gb Memory is only available with the Ultra 5 238V and Ultra 7 268V.
I have often marveled at the challenging model names that PC manufacturers give their products, which starkly contrast to those from Apple. Everyday people can remember the names of their Apple devices. Not so for most of what PC manufacturers come up with.
Maybe it’s a bit early to be making New Year’s resolutions. Though this used to be a popular practice, many now don’t even believe in setting stretch goals just because the calendar changes. I confess that I have waxed and waned in my observance of making annual resolutions. This year, though, I have something lined up that I think will actually improve my life in meaningful ways.
Roon Audio has a new feature that should delight headphone lovers — OPRA (Open Profiles for Revealing Audio). OPRA is an open-source repository hosted on GitHub that contains precisely crafted headphone curves for different headphone models (and you get an equalizer, and you get an equalizer…).
I love Roon, although I’ve had my share of technical challenges — today I need to bring up two issues on the Roon Community forum. The ability of the platform to continuously innovate ways to give audio enthusiasts a better experience is impressive.
I disclosed my most fondest Christmas wish list item to my lady friend last night — a FiiO DM13 portable CD player. She laughed at me. You want a discman for Christmas?
How can I explain my love of single-purpose devices and high-fidelity to someone who lives on their iPad and sees no problem with lossy streaming music? I want something that doesn’t have a screen with which to focus on music and, for goodness’ sake, some time to part with my phone during the day.
Bluetooth codecs have progressed, but Apple hasn’t seen that as a priority in their annual device updates.1 Their hardware can’t even output the high-fidelity audio that you can stream from their Apple Music service. One could probably successfully argue that Apple is more of a mass-consumer device manufacturer now than the company that used to cater to creatives.
Or even in their headphone updates. ↩︎
The new anti-toxicity feature on Bluesky that allows a user to detach their original post from a quote post is ingenious. I can’t believe no one has shipped anything like this until now. In hindsight, it seems obvious.