I made this in 2013 and the Browns keep living up to it

Just realized my ideal mechanical keyboard is just Batman Returns

I genuinely love that the Manningcast brings the production quality of a zoom call to sports broadcasting. Every time there’s a bad connection or someone’s headphone mic rubbing against their hair I’m delighted.

Playoff baseball is a mood

The Browns despair this year feels a like 2009 under the abysmal Eric Mangini regime. That was the year that broke me as a Browns fan. They went 1-11 to start the year and their only win in that stretch was 6-3 baseball score.

Not sure if ChatGPT is the best LLM out there, but it’s consistently the one with which I can iterate the fastest. I tried using Gemini for some image-generation tasks. DALLE is so good for making small edits to colors, aspect ratio, etc. With Gemini, I couldn’t get it to stop making square images.

Just tried using Gemini for image generation and I can’t seem to get it to output any other aspect ratios than square. I’m trying to get it to make a 16:9 YouTube background based on a podcast logo and it keeps giving me square images and getting the color palette wrong.

Did you know you can catch the live video version of It’s a Thing with Molly Wood and Tom Merritt on YouTube? Streaming today at 6 pm ET www.youtube.com/live/MJx4…

Excited for this week’s Cyber Security Headlines Week in Review with Jason Shockey. Talking about Salt Typhoon taking advantage of wiretap access, privacy destroying smart glasses, and insurers funding ransomware payments. Goes live at 3:30pm ET. www.youtube.com/watch

I hadn’t updated my Micro Blog sources in a while and didn’t realize I can crosspost to Threads now, super useful!

A few thoughts on Microsoft’s recent AI-PC and Surface announcements:

1. It’s weird to describe the new Surface Laptop as “outperforming” the MacBook Air. I know the Apple Silicon launch gave that laptop new performance chops, but the Air set the consumer laptop standard for years before that with middling Intel chips. It was a success because it nailed the fundamentals, namely great battery life, the right form factor, and a great trackpad. Microsoft must be confident in its performance because it isn’t claiming the Surface laptop will be thinner, lighter, offers better web-browsing battery, or a brighter screen.
2. To the Surface Laptop’s credit, it looks great, has better I/O (a card reader on the 15-inch version!), offers removable SSDs, and doesn’t think variable refresh rates is a pro-level feature.
3. It seems like the moment is here for Windows to succeed on Arm processors. Microsoft has it’s OEM ecosystem all ready to fire with Arm as a platform. More importantly, the software support will be there too.
4. Let’s assume that Microsoft and its OEMs have figured out a killer Arm platform. Let’s take better performance than Apple’s M3 as a given. Great. Apple definitely got a lot of people to upgrade Macs with the release of M1. But did it actually move any market share? It doesn’t seem like it. Apple grew PC market share about 1.5% from 2015 to 2023. There’s much more variability within the Windows OEM ecosystem quarter to quarter than what Apple could achieve with a breakthrough processor. So even if it’s framing this as a blow to Apple, Microsoft… doesn’t care?
5. The bigger question is what does this new class of Windows PC look like in the next 2-4 years. I imagine the first generation of these machines will all be very similar, based on the same platform with virtually the same components. Will this just be OEMs waiting on Qualcomm’s chip release cadence? Will x86 PCs become budget options that you’re mad your parents bought at Best Buy without calling you first? Apple may still have a distinct advantage with product selection simplicity. Although as said about, none of that really seems to translate to market share.
6. I keep thinking about this.

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Intel’s chip making business lost $222 a second in 2023.

I enjoy that the Verge’s AI content policy is to only include it sarcastically on Brother laser printer posts.

“Instagram founders' news app acquired by Yahoo” is the most ignoble form of death.

I continue to be impressed by 404 Media. Full text RSS is definitely a feature I’d pay for.

I was very tempted to get this two-year lease deal on an Hyundai Ioniq 6. I’ve been wanting to get an EV and this would be the perfect secondary car to test the waters for a limited time. Problem is there are currently only 6 listed for sale within 300 miles of my house (which has a bunch of fairly large markets, like Chicago, Indy, Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh), and all of these seem to have already left dealer lots. Looks like my EV dreams will have to wait.

Also the entire process of contacting any dealer is a hellscape.

Extremely good vibes on the CISO Series Week in Review with Gerald Auger. He brought the Simply Cyber crew in the chat, super fun time. Also I may have solved IOT security in the episode. www.youtube.com/live/mJvm…

I can buy Topo Chico hard seltzer and mixers in Cleveland, but not regular Topo Chico

The launch of Threads is proof that Meta can keep shipping good usable products. But I often don’t like engaging with it on a very personal level. It suffers from the “birthday” problem, where friends and family find one of your interests and then that’s all you ever get for gifts for the rest of time. I know if I mention something I enjoy, Threads default feed will soon serve it back to me, with a heaping of engagement bait influencers on top. So I keep it pretty chill and use its algorithmic feed for internet zeitgeist stuff.

Considering how easy it is to compost coffee and paper filters, I’m glad to see Keurig finally removing K-cup landfill waste with their new Alta system. But let’s not delude ourselves into seeing this as just another way to make a proprietary coffee pod, the environmental optics are gravy.

It’s amazing how little space in my head is left for this social network. Saw that X is doing articles and was amused how little it mattered to me.

With Nikon buying the cinema camera maker RED, I was trying to research what this deal would mean. Certainly it gives Nikon access to a new market. While professional DSLRs/mirrorless cameras have had a place in movie production for decades, they can’t be rigged out like a proper cinema camera. It’s a market that’s projected to grow long term, even if relatively small.

I was trying to get a picture of what this market looks like. Looking at Canon, Fuji, and Sony, they don’t break out cinema cameras from their respective imaging segment revenue. So we have to assume their standard mirrorless offerings makes up the vast majority of revenue (otherwise they’d crow about it). Arri, Blackmagic, and RED are all private, so we don’t have a sense of how big those businesses are.

The analyst report I linked above is paywalled, but it lists the market at around $300 million in 2022. Nikon’s imaging unit generated about $500 million in revenue in its latest earnings report. So this isn’t going to move the needle too much for their bottom line. But given that I expect the margins on RED cinema cameras are significant, it plays well with the overall strategy. Nikon noted its imaging unit was the only part of its business that saw increasing operating profit on the year, due to the shift to higher end cameras. In that vein, cinema cameras make sense to pad those profits.

The acquisition also helps the optics of where Nikon is as a brand. While certainly respected, they’ve definitely been late to the mirrorless camera video revolution, where Sony and Canon dominate. Getting a respected brand like RED aboard, with devotees like MKBHD helps change that perception.

Camera manuals are never not great

Lomography often gets chided by some in the film photography community. The rub is usually something like they make cheap overpriced cameras for hipsters and rebrand Kodak films at a markup. And while the company’s brand is more focused on casual and experimental users, I think this whole perception does a grave disservice to their place in the film community.

The company just released a new 110 film camera. It is not overstating it to say that the 110 film format only still exists because of Lomography. They are the only company producing the film at scale. Up until now that kept old 110 cameras in use. But now they are helping to keep the camera supply available. And while the cameras aren’t dirt cheap, the prices seem fair for a brand new camera with warranty with a decent amount of features. And just look at it! Lomography has never lacked for style, but the Lomomatic 110 looks a step above their usual efforts.

As I said in my review of the Lomo LC-A 120, Lomography continues to invest significantly in R&D, on both the film and camera supply side. The past few years have seen an explosion of DIY and 3D printed camera. These are great, but rarely come with something like a warranty, and often still rely on vintage lenses or other parts to really work. 110 film might not be my thing, but it’s really impressive to see Lomography invest significantly in what can only be described as a niche within a niche.

I’ve got something of a soft spot of 110 cameras. My family wasn’t into photography, so we had a number of these simple 110 point and shoots growing up. The whole format wreaks of nostalgia for me. I remember playing with one, firing the shutter with the back open to see how quickly it would open and close.

Two years ago I pledged to focus on buying new cameras as a way to further support these efforts. This almost necessitated I go with Lomography. I’ve bought the LC-A 120 and LomoGraflok (to use with my Cameradactyl Rex). I’m now more focused on trying to reduce my camera kit for more focus, I’m more than happy to keep supporting this company, especially when I see them investing like this. I’m assuming this makes some sort of business sense for them, but I’m grateful for these film lunatics.

Saw this report of Linux desktop marketshare hitting 4%, up 1% in less than a year. Curiously it doesn’t mention the Steam Deck, the hit gaming handheld that runs a version of Arch Linux. The article mentions reasons for the Linux marketshare increase that don’t seem to hold water:

The rise in Linux’s popularity can be attributed to several factors. Firstly, the open-source nature of Linux has made it a favored choice among developers, IT professionals, and tech enthusiasts who appreciate the flexibility and control it offers.

Additionally, the security and stability of Linux have been key selling points, making it an attractive option for both personal and professional use.

None of that is wrong, but also has been true for 20 years. The reason it jumped from 3 to 4% so quickly seems directly tied to millions of Steam Decks now in the wild.

I always find Steam’s user survey more interesting for these kind of figures. While skewed toward Windows gaming, we still see Linux with more marketshare than macOS. Unsurprisingly, Arch remains the post popular single distribution.