If you run multiple Apple devices, you might notice that apps from your other devices occasionally pop in your Mac’s dock. The Messages app might appear, for instance, if you’re looking at a message on your watch. A Safari tab from your desktop Mac can appear as a suggestion in your laptop’s dock.

That’s called Handoff.

Is this convenient? Yes! Is it mind-bogglingly annoying if you keep a meticulously crafted dock? Also, yes.

Here’s how to kick dock continuity out to the ranch:

• Open System Settings on the Mac in question
• Navigate to General and then Airdrop & Handoff
• Toggle off “Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices”

And voilà: no more unsolicited app cameos in your dock.

(While you’re there, you might want to prevent your machine from acting as an AirPlay Receiver. You can toggle that off in the same menu.)

Hugh Laurie: Let Them Talk (2011), Didn’t It Rain (2013)

Aimee Mann: Lost In Space (2002), The Forgotten Arm (2005), One More Drifter in the Snow (2006), @#%&*! Smilers (2008), Charmer (2012), Mental Illness (2017)

Alexi Murdoch: Time Without Consequence (2006)

Regina Spektor: What We Saw From The Cheap Seats (2012), Remember Us to Life (2016)

Ray LaMontagne: God Willin' & the Creek Don’t Rise (2010)

Sara Bareilles: Amidst the Chaos (2019)

Sharon Von Etten: We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong (2022)

Tift Merrit: Stitch of the World (2017)

I’m the proud new caretaker of a Dayton Audio hybrid tube amplifier. I’ve wanted to get into tube amplification for a long time. This solution seems like a great starting point– the efficiency (and temperature) of solid-state power amplification with the sweetness (and warmth) of a tube preamplifier.

It’s got a bunch of features, but here are some standouts:

• For inputs: Phono stage, RCA in, Bluetooth 5, optical, coaxial, AND it functions as a DAC when you connect it to a computer via USB. Perfection.
• The headphone out sounds incredible, has gobs of power, and is (rightfully) quarter-inch.
• Hot VU meters? At this price point? With this feature set? Seriously?
• The whole unit looks incredible (and weighs as much as it looks like it does), but the gorgeous cage enclosure for the tubes is a level above.
• The USB input supports audio balance adjustment in MacOS, a massive win for those of us who require accommodations.

I’ve spent a bit over a week with the HTA100, and I’ve been really impressed. I’ve been driving headphones (Grado SR80x, Master & Dynamic MH40), in-ears (Salnotes Zero 2, Starfield 2 and Aria from Moondrop) and some Polk bookshelves. The real test is soon to come: I would like to hook it up to my main boys, the Polk Monitor 10s.

To do that, however, I’ll need to get it off my desk. And it sounds really good right now.

Re: Rapid Log, I’ve established a daily log in Obsidian and installed the Actions for Obsidian app on all the platforms to hopefully allow my work iPad, work PC, home Mac, and phone to log to the note. Quick entry with the Stream Deck?? #shortcuts #obsidian

Love optimized charging. Sits patiently after gassing up to top off before I get up around 6.

Thinking about the idea of a daily rapid log that gets archived every night. Supported by something like a Drafts action that appends something to the end of a note. Maybe a shortcut connected into Obsidian.

I’d love to build a basic automation in Omnifocus that allows me to tie a focus mode to certain perspectives. When I’m in my office, for example, a geofence triggers my Work focus mode. That focus mode already filters my calendars (in the iOS Calendar) and my email inboxes (in Spark). When I trigger my personal focus modes, my work calendars and inboxes are filtered out. I like that those hooks easily screen out things that might be distracting for me. I want to do the same with Omnifocus so that I don’t see any tasks, perspectives, or projects that might be distractions/emotional triggers for me.

I assume that this could be accomplished with something like Apple Script on the Mac (perhaps through a shortcut that’s triggered when the focus activates?), but I’m still at the early searching stages.

If I come across anything that solves the problem easily, I will post it here in the interest of working with the garage door up.

A few months ago, Apple’s Music app decided I needed to back up my music. At least, that’s what I’m assuming happened. Somehow, by some act of God, my music library was populated with a duplicate file of every song in my collection. We’re talking hundreds of gigabytes, here, filled with absolute junk. Every folder went something like this:

Anna Burch: Quit the Curse

2 Cool 2 Care.flac, 2 Cool 2 Care 1.flac, Tea-Soaked Letter.flac, Tea-Soaked Letter 1.flac

…on and on, for **thousands upon thousands** of files.

For a ton of obvious reasons, this broke my brain. Once I set aside questions of why and how, and after deleting the Music app, I was left with hundreds of gigabytes of mess. On top of that, I’m itching to integrate my father’s collection of music into my own– but it’s useless to try and organize a mess like that.

Enter Hazel, a powerful piece of file and folder automation software that solved my headaches. The solution to my problem was as simple as a few smart rules in Hazel, and I was done. I wrote a rule that searched every file within my music library, and isolated files that ended in “_1” (without quotes, obviously, and this example utilizes an underscore instead of a space). From there, I wrote another rule that created a subfolder within the file’s location named “Duplicate Files” and automatically sorted each duplicate into that subfolder. Then one more rule searched the library for all folders with the name “Duplicate Files” and moved them all out of the music library into one top-level folder for my review.

I thought about writing the rule so as to command Hazel to delete each duplicate, but I realized in a moment of (possible) genius that one downside of that rule would be automatically removing any song names that organically end in “_1”. I don’t think too many songs would match that rule, but for all I know I’ve got some demo take from a Bill Evans record titled “My Funny Valentine Take 1” that would get obliterated by automated deletion. Moving everything into a special quarantine zone worked for my brain.

This has my brain absolutely spinning. I could automate so many things with Hazel!

Current home screens— I’m working on stripping out as many icons as possible and replacing them with shortcuts designed to trigger the specific things I need those apps for.

I’m fascinated by workspaces and studios. I love to see the infrastructure behind creation and creativity.

From an interesting piece on The Verge:

They each seem to have spontaneously discovered that shortform videos from strangers are simply more compelling than the posts and messages from friends that made up traditional social media. Call it the carcinization of social media, an inevitable outcome for feeds built only around engagement and popularity. So one day — it’s hard to say exactly when — a switch was flipped. Away from news, away from followers, away from real friends — toward the final answer to earning more time from users: highly addictive shortform videos that magically appear to numb a chaotic, crowded brain.

But where did the shift come from? I spent years in academia, and I know my script: the big bad evil capitalists did some wicked inception and got us to want something that in our beautiful tabula rasa we’d never want. But the picture isn’t this clear (it never is):

I’ve spent a lot of time blaming founders for changing their products at the whims of advertisers, but to any social platform’s credit, the users do indeed do it to themselves. In our own eternal quests for social validation, we’re out for growth, too! We readily give in to convenient, advertiser-friendly features like Stories, which prioritize broadcasting over simply communicating. We add more and more friends — because it feels good! — until our close friend group has become our audience.

We shift ourselves and our constitutions over time, from sharer to broadcaster, because this is the mode that is most appealing. We want to be broadcasters. The lights, the frame of perfection, the being of the act of appearing, of being seen and therefore known. The world we were raised in was one that prized the broadcaster, and all of humanity found the spotlight warm and inviting.

More:

“People want to be a product!” technology writer Rob Horning wrote to me via email. “Being a product is coded as success in our society… What people don’t want is to be exploited or misled — and that is hard to avoid in the context of ad-supported media.” And so, a bizarre symbiosis is formed between platform, user, and advertiser. The apps had changed, but so had users, leaving that precious early social media feeling out in the cold again.

We’re all disgusting broadcasters now. It started years ago when PR-speak crept into Facebook posts and most of your friends stopped talking to you in favor of issuing you witty press releases.

It’s worth checking out the piece in full–

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/18/23672769/social-media-inevitable-death-monetization-growth-hacks

File under “Well this certainly won’t help your case, Jim.”

TikTok Browser Can Track Users’ Keystrokes, According to New Research

In the web browser used within the TikTok app, supplementary code lets the company track every character typed by users. The company said the capability was for troubleshooting…As with many apps, TikTok offers few chances for people to click away from its service. Instead of redirecting to mobile web browsers like Safari or Chrome, an in-app browser appears when users click on ads or links embedded within the profiles of other users. These are often the moments people enter key information like credit card details or passwords.

Justice Dept. Investigating TikTok’s Owner Over Possible Spying on Journalists

The inquiry appears to be tied to an admission by the app’s owner, ByteDance, that employees had inappropriately obtained Americans’ data. The company said it had fired the workers involved…The investigation, which began late last year, appears to be tied to the admission in December by the company, ByteDance, that its employees had inappropriately obtained the data of American TikTok users, including that of two reporters and a few of their associates. The department’s criminal division, the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia are investigating ByteDance, which is based in Beijing and has close ties with China’s government, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Have you seen this cat?

Please always remember that the only one who wins is Mr. McBean.

I’ve never been more proud of an Arkham Horror deck title than I am for my “Darrell Simmons, the Photographer” deck.

“Gentle on the ear you whisper softly, rumors of a dawn so embracing. Breathless love awaits darkened souls; soon will we know of the morning.”

The point of art is encounter, experience– if you’re continually framing that encounter as primarily a function of your own brand or politics, you’ll lose the track on what makes art important in the first place.

“I get ideas in fragments…it’s as if in the other room, there’s a puzzle; all the pieces are together. But in my room, they just flip one piece at a time into me. The first piece that I get is a fragment of the whole puzzle, but I fall in love with this fragment…and it holds a promise for more. I keep it, I write it down. And then I say that having the fragment is more bait on the hook…it pulls in more, and the more that come in, the faster the rest come in.”

You’ve heard of “Elf on a Shelf.” Now get ready for: