Nuclear Monster

  • Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island creators Gary Winnick and Ron Gilbert have just put out a new adventure game, Thimbleweed Park. It’s a mystery set in 1987 featuring five new weirdos to do adventure with, and has full controller support. I’m on-board, but Ron Gilbert doesn’t need much to sell me on his work.

    Thimbleweed Park is out now for $20 on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Xbox.

  • Before January 20th one of our national embarrassment’s favorite things to criticize President Obama about (over Twitter) was his penchant for golfing:

    This shameful embarrassment has been golfing 12 times in his first few months as president. Each trip costs us a few million dollars, and of course he promised “We’re not gonna be big on vacation.” while he was decrying the Obama administration.

  • Today’s software updates from Apple are notable for a lot of reasons. macOS 10.12.4 gets Night Shift from iOS, I can now find my AirPods in the Find My iPhone app, there are the beginnings of a standard to control apps that nag you for reviews on iOS 10.3, Siri enhancements on watchOS 3.2, but the most important change is he first switch from HFS+ to APFS. APFS is Apple’s new file system for iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. It’ll be installed with the latest iOS update, and will come to macOS in the future.

    File systems keep track of where your files are on a storage medium like a hard drive or SD card, and Apple has been using some variation of the same file system, HFS and HFS+, for the past thirty years.

    APFS should be an improvement in performance and reliability because it is targeted towards modern computing devices that use flash memory instead of spinning disks, but it is going to be a little bit like pulling a table cloth out from under a plated dinner and table setting in order for the operating system to replace the file system on the devices during the update.

    I made sure my iCloud backups were all up to date before starting the upgrade, you should too.

  • Matthew Panzarino has the scoop:

    Workflow the app is being acquired, along with the team of Weinstein, Conrad Kramer, Ayaka Nonaka and Nick Frey. In a somewhat uncommon move for Apple, the app will continue to be made available on the App Store and will be made free later today.

    This is terrific news. Workflow is an automation app that helps you get real shit done on iOS. I’ve used it to do things like clipping headlines out of articles and preparing a link in the format I use to link to posts like this one. Or you could use it for a simpler task like tapping one button to send a text message to your significant other and let them know how long it’ll take you to get home.

    Workflow can do all kinds of things, but it is the kind of thing that it’s great to see Apple embrace because it means they’re serious about improving the functionality of iOS for more than reading, watching, and playing. If folks who grow up with iOS ever want to hope of being productive on those devices instead of learning desktop computing, this is going to be a tremendous start.

  • Jim Sterling writing about the reactions YouTube celebrities have had to their racism being reported on:

    The Internet has warped the idea of “free speech” to mean “speech without consequence” and that’s simply not what it is.

    Absolutely, JonTron can share a Trumpian view on immigration and claim discrimination isn’t a problem, but other people have the exact same right to call him out on it. Given how insular YouTube communities can be, it’s easy to see why some might believe they’re free from the consequences of speech, but as their entertainment empires grow and more people become aware of them, they’re going to find those consequences are very real and they hit like a sack of bricks.