@glennf@twit.social
@glennf@twit.social avatar

glennf

@glennf@twit.social

Glenn researches and writes about the history of printing, focused particularly on newspaper comics and printing molds. Pre-order his book How Comics Were Made. He’s a long-time technology journalist, who contributes regularly to Macworld and TidBITS and writes books in the Take Control Books series. A former Amazon employee (1996–97) who used to eat burritos with Bezos, Glenn is more interestingly a two-time Jeopardy! winner.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Hm.

So my cell provider has no good plan for roaming to Europe. So the last time I was in France, I got a local phone number and a SIM card so I could use Internet while I was there. It was a bit of a pain to get the SIM so I put it somewhere I'd be able to find it* when I next needed it.

Now I can't find it.

Can anyone think of a way to get a French cell phone SIM either without leaving Toronto, or without leaving Charles De Gaulle?

  • Probably in that one purse I threw away a few years ago.
glennf,
@glennf@twit.social avatar

@mcc You have an eSIM in your phone or no? I used Airolo very happily on two European trips. Several companies will ship you a physical SIM, too, if you have time.

lilithsaintcrow, to random
@lilithsaintcrow@raggedfeathers.com avatar

"A product of combined manual, mechanical, and computational labor, the leaves were produced on Lyon’s famed Jacquard looms, their text and imagery encoded in hundreds of thousands of punch cards that directed the weaving..." https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/lyon-woven-prayer-book/

glennf,
@glennf@twit.social avatar

@lilithsaintcrow From the German Technology Museum in Berlin (2022 visit)!

Image of Jacquard loom with punchcards threaded through machine.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

Adobe did the thing companies that host and sync data keep doing: they updated their terms in what is a reasonable way without a) giving advance warning and a thorough explanation and b) realizing that the legal niceties sound horrifying to an average person. Adobe can’t legally safely host your content without a license. This updates mostly adds compliance issues that are govt focused—and should be examined. https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/06/06/clarification-adobe-terms-of-use

glennf,
@glennf@twit.social avatar

@mcc It’s already on their server! They expanded and clarified how they review data.

glennf,
@glennf@twit.social avatar

@mcc As long as companies have to handle your data in some fashion with your permission in some circumstances, they have to obtain a limited license. Adobe isn’t always handling your data (some people don't use sync or cloud services at all), but they have a generic license that covers if they do. As far as I can tell, their TOS is very similar to Dropbox, Apple, etc., in terms of the copyright liability that they need you to grant them a limited license that applies only to hosting.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

“It’s just stated as fact that Apple ‘has fallen behind in the AI arms race’ (that’s from yesterday in the WSJ) but the companies Apple has supposedly fallen behind are, on their own, described with words like unpolished, embarrassing, hallucinating, untrustworthy, and even baffling." — @gruber https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/06/06/nyt-humane

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

How about you bring back 10,000s of civilian Palestinians to life and restore their cities and reverse the devastation and starvation before asking students to tone it down?

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

Musk would shout on his way out, “I’m gone! Let that stink in!” while carrying a bag of old garbage, storm over to his CyberTruck parked in a disabled permit space, jump into the vehicle after several tries to open it, and then slam the door—causing all the panels to fall off in cartoon-like succession…and then a pause, and then all four wheels.
https://mastodon.social/@verge/112571252769186651

batkaren, to random
@batkaren@mastodon.online avatar

"Can everyone just stop?" I plead.

"Stop what?" they ask.

I frantically gesture at everything.

glennf,
@glennf@twit.social avatar

@batkaren You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

We should run an A/B test
https://mastodon.scot/

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

A bird just alit on my shoulder on the porch. My transformation into Snow White proceeds.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

These two images I just managed to find in the last few days are critical to a part of my upcoming book, How Comics Are Made. Both show people coloring comics in the transition era between the elaborate Ben Day process that required a lot of time and the early digital coloring period in the 1980s.

Photo shows someone working on an acetate overlay of comics for coloring. Some other comics are off to the side. The only thing you can see if the person is a sleeve and a white sweater. It’s unclear what action they have taking.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

Revanchism is a catchall for a part of this: a refusal to back down in the face of defeat, but fight endlessly to recover lost ground
https://bird.makeup/users/himbopresident/statuses/1798090090691870852

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

Writing a book is often about cutting huge numbers of words. An entire section on the transition from hot-metal typesetting to “cold type” (phototype and CRT-based type) won’t be in How Comics Were Made. But you can enjoy as one of my public posts at my Patreon campaign! https://www.patreon.com/posts/youre-as-cold-as-105721371?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Computers and exposure units (reel-to-reel magnetic tape in banks in the back; wide setting machines in the front, mostly white) at the New York Times in the 1970s.
Photo: Airman 1st Class Tracy S. Koehn of the 552nd Airborne Warning and Control Division graphics section sitting at a Compugraphic EditWriter 7500 typesetting machine, with a tiny CRT screen. She is at right in a less-formal military uniform. She is looking to her left at copy to be typeset while she has her fingers on the keyboard. (CC-BY 2.0 – Flickr ©expertinfantry⁠)
A photo of a collection of phototype fonts from the 1950s to the 1980s, showing disks, strips, and other cutouts across the composition. ©2014 Frank Romano, used with permission. Originally appeared in Frank Romano’s History of the Phototypesetting Era.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

However Trump and Biden are exactly alike
https://masto.ai/@Nonilex/112571497527912181

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

He and Ginny should show the proof of their convictions and get divorced due to miscegenation laws. https://masto.ai/@Nonilex/112566175052343709

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

I'm not happy with the new owners of macOS's Bartender app’s transparency about their purchase and actions. I've installed Ice (free, open source), but it's still on the road to the features I need. Anyone like a third path that's got clarity about ownership and privacy?

jsnell, to random
@jsnell@zeppelin.flights avatar

New Upgrade: It's time for our ninth annual competition regarding what will happen at Apple's WWDC keynote! What will be announced? Will it be all AI, all the time? And a new wrinkle is added to the draft format!

https://www.relay.fm/upgrade/515

glennf,
@glennf@twit.social avatar

@jsnell i’ll get you yet, Snell!

glennf,
@glennf@twit.social avatar

@jsnell You missed the bagpipes on the Zamboni

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

I rarely try to warn people off from watching some piece of media. Usually, only if it’s traumatic or explicative. However, I make the exception for Bodkin, the Netflix series. It has some very strong acting and narrative elements, but nothing ever resolves, and the last episode was ridiculous. Terrible. I am angry about how they wasted their opportunity. No blame on the actors at all! It is not worth watching. If you do watch it, you can tell me if you agree with me. But I urge you not to.

andybaio, to random
@andybaio@xoxo.zone avatar

I don’t know how else to describe this, but parts of downtown St. Louis smell distinctly like a used bookstore. Like a room stuffed full of musty aging books and yellowing magazines.

glennf,
@glennf@twit.social avatar

@andybaio I grew up sometimes downwind of the Weyerhaeuser pulp mill in Eugene, Ore., and that smell apparently materialized typically on off days (the smell came when they weren't actively processing?). Faintly, it might smell like used books—it's kind of like "earthy book smell.”

glennf,
@glennf@twit.social avatar

@jpf @andybaio Might as well face it, I’m addicted to lib

tvaziri, to random
@tvaziri@mastodon.social avatar

Amazing work that no one is thinking about when they watch the show.

"The Crown” | VFX Reel, s06e03
https://youtu.be/u3gMFyOuRdc?si=bLWXL0A3Jao0ukyR

glennf,
@glennf@twit.social avatar

@rstevens Everything is real, approximated to some resolution and frame rate

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

“Instagram confirmed it’s testing unskippable ads after screenshots of the feature began circulating across social media." Federated photos, here I come.

exchgr, to random
@exchgr@mastodon.world avatar

lmfao https://mas.to/@alternativeto/112560286201826906

glennf,
@glennf@twit.social avatar

@exchgr Oh, I’ll break something.

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