I have been fumbling on what to tell high school and college students about the future of computer science and software engineering. What to focus on? It’s obvious now. I can be so dense.

All I know is everything I needed to know to do everything I’ve ever done. I never once in my life thought about what I wanted to study. I just tried to make things that I wanted to make and learned what I had to learn. Just do that. And those ideas can be 100x bigger than mine were, that’s fine, that’s great.

Every year I end up revisiting the fact that #Apple #Photos has absolutely crap exporting and archiving features, so this year I decided to rewrite my #macOS #export scripts in #Swift:

https://github.com/rcarmo/PhotosExport

Mathematicians occasionally uses "tack" symbols, ⊥ and ⊤, for various purposes. They're called that because they look like thumb-tacks from the side. But if you need a particular tack, what do you call it? Is "⊥" the "up" tack, because the pointy bit is up? Or is "⊤" the "up" tack, because it's the normal, safe orientation for using a thumb-tack?

Today I learned that not only do people disagree about this, the two approaches are delightfully named the "London" and "Bosworth" conventions.

Even better, the symbols in Unicode were initially named according to the Bosworth convention, then renamed to the London convention, BUT NOT ALL OF THEM! So U+234E APL FUNCTIONAL SYMBOL DOWN TACK JOT is actually an up-tack, and vice-versa. Nothing can ever be simple. :)

https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~ljdickey/apl-rep/tables/note1.html

Did you know your MacBook has a sensor that knows the exact angle of the screen hinge?

It’s not exposed as a public API, but I figured out a way to read it and make it sound like an old wooden door.

Source code and a downloadable app to try it yourself: https://github.com/samhenrigold/LidAngleSensor

Would any app creators/designers be willing to go on the record regarding their thoughts on Liquid Glass for a piece I’m writing? If so, please DM me. (Can be pointing out issues with it, or even being in favour.)

(Reposts appreciated!)