📱 My phone is always on silent, putting Macs out to pasture, and more - This Geek in Review for 2022-07-08

My phone is always on silent

A few years ago I decided I was going to control my phone, and not the other way around. At the time, I set my default notification sound to silence, along with the default text tone and ringtone. (Ringtone was a pain, there isn’t a silent option but it was easy to make a silent ringtone in Garageband). Certain contacts did get a tone, but for the most part, my phone did not interrupt my day.

Now it appears that some people can’t handle that. I feel sorry for these people that believe they have to see every notification as it comes in.

If you message me, don’t worry, I’ll see it. But it will be on my time.

• Turning phones on silent may increase phone checking | Penn State University

My 2010 MacBook Pro still has some life left in it

Ars Technica collected data on how long Macs get updates. I agree that it is becoming a problem. My 2010 Macbook Pro has 16GB of RAM and an SSD, but the latest macOS it can run is 10.13. In the next few years I’ll have to switch to Linux or Windows, but even Windows is getting into the game. My desktop is 5 years old this September, but it cannot run Windows 11.

Linux is looking pretty good right now.

• Some Macs are getting fewer updates than they used to. Here’s why it’s a problem | Ars Technica

Internet Travels

Geek

• cohost!
• Man arrested on suspicion of stealing $10,000 Star Wars replica, claims he was testing Disney World security
• Nerdly Pleasures: Mass Storage and the Apple II - Conquering the Final Frontier
• Eaten by a Grue: A Brief History of Zork | Mental Floss
• Thanks to fans, the weirdest official Doom game is now playable on Windows | Ars Technica
• The most expensive drink in the galaxy, the $5,000 Kaiburr Crystal drink

Retro

• SNES Manuals
• Excerpt: How the designers of GoldenEye 007 made use of “Anti-Game Design” | Ars Technica
• Raspberry Pi Pico “Modchip” Unlocks The GameCube | Hackaday
• Long lost Atari game Airworld appears out of thin air | TweakTown
• Hackaday Prize 2022: The Baffatari 2600 Adds Atari Compatibility To Retrocomputers | Hackaday

Videogames

• Microsoft’s xCloud game streaming looks worse on Linux than Windows | Ars Technica
• The best game-exploiting speedruns of Summer Games Done Quick 2022 | Ars Technica
• Zero Wing, the ‘all your base are belong to us’ game, is now available on Nintendo Switch - The Verge
• Cuphead expansion pack review: As good as DLC gets | Ars Technica
• Jason Brassard Spent His Lifetime Collecting the Rarest Video Games. Until the Heist. | Vanity Fair
• The Playdate’s launch was a unique opportunity for small game developers - The Verge

Technology

• Gartner foresees steep drop in global PC shipments • The Register
• Apps and advertisers are coming for your lock screen, and it’s going to be exhausting - The Verge
• Meet the guy behind RadioShack’s horny Twitter account
• “what’s making my Zoom calls stutter every 60s” and this time the culprit was… APPLE #!*$ING MAPS.
• New Firefox privacy feature strips URLs of tracking parameters
• FCC lets Starlink offer Internet service on moving vehicles throughout US | Ars Technica
• The FCC authorizes SpaceX’s Starlink system to be used on vehicles in motion - The Verge
• Smart contact lens prototype puts a Micro LED display on top of the eye | Ars Technica
• USB installer tool removes Windows 11’s Microsoft account requirements (and more) | Ars Technica
• FCC says it closed a loophole that many robocallers used to evade blocking | Ars Technica
• The Technium: Robots Will Make Us Better Humans
• The tiniest Raspberry Pi gets a new version with built-in Wi-Fi | Ars Technica

Science

• Humans Hear Much Better Underwater Than Previously Thought – At Times Better Than Seals
• Miners Discover a Frozen Baby Mammoth in Canada - The New York Times
• A better heat engine | MIT Technology Review
• A Person Got COVID from a Cat in First Confirmed Case - Scientific American

Pop Culture

• Clerks III trailer: Jersey nerd trilogy goes meta in 2-night theater run | Ars Technica
• How 'Adventures in Babysitting’ led to Elisabeth Shue's Oscar-nominated role
• ‘Who’s The Boss?’ Sequel w Tony Danza & Alyssa Milano In Works At Freevee – Deadline

Pot Pourri

• Monitoring Employees Makes Them More Likely to Break Rules
• Amazon Prime subscribers now get Grubhub Plus free for a year - The Verge
• Keith Haring on Our Resistance to Change, the Dangers of Certainty, and the Root of Creativity – The Marginalian
• the art of non-conformity blog - The T-Rex Takeover: How We Smashed a Guinness World Record
• Rob Manfred wants you to know: He doesn’t hate baseball, he wants to save it
• Two 5 inch pizzas do not equal one 9 inch pizza

• Asides
• Tgir