Nuclear Monster

  • Reed Albergotti writing for the Washington Post:

    Workers at Apple’s flagship Grand Central Terminal retail location in Manhattan have begun to formally collect signatures to form a union, according to a newly-updated website launched by the organizers, setting the stage for a showdown between the iPhone maker and the employees who sell them.

    The organizers, who have dubbed themselves “Fruit Stand Workers United,” say they voted Feb. 21 to affiliate with Workers United, a national labor union that has supported the successful unionization efforts of Starbucks employees around the country, according to the site. People involved in the organizing effort told The Washington Post that they have endured months of efforts by Apple to convince employees that unionizing is a bad idea, accusing the company of “union busting” tactics. Now, they are handing out signature cards to would-be union members.

    Very exciting news, happy to see these workers countering the anti-union message from Apple and I love the name.

  • Cook, Serve, Delicious!, already has three games in the series and now Cook Serve Forever (maybe it should have been Cook Serve 4Ever?) is on the way for early 2023 with promises of local co-op through the campaign about a food-cart chef who wants to be a celebrity chef like their hero. It looks like Cook Serve Forever is continuing with similar gameplay of combining what the developer says are hundreds of new ingredients to make new recipes. Watch the video above for more on that.

    I reached out to Vertigo Gaming and asked about Linux and an Apple Silicon native macOS port but Vertigo’s Production Manager Erik Johnson said anything other than Windows would have to wait for after Cook, Serve, Forever hits 1.0 some time early next year. Cook, Serve, Delicious!  & Cook Serve, Delicious! 2!! shipped for Linux & macOS, but Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! only released for Windows and macOS, it never got to Linux.

  • The tenth episode of Tim Hunkin’s The Secret Life of Components is up. Linkages & Mechanisms does what it says on the tin as Tim Hunkin shares his knowledge and experience with us about the parts that amplify forces and make his machines move.

    This is honestly my favorite video so far, we get to see Hunkin’s joyful perspective on watching a digging crane at a local scrapyard pick up, move, and destroy rubbish. The crane picks things up using linkages and Hunkin’s happy to just watch them in motion and share that with us which is a little unusual but much appreciated.

  • Returning as a mostly online-only event, Apple’s WWDC is coming back on June 6th to 10th. At the pre-recorded developer-focused infomercial on the 6th we should find out about new operating system features that will come out in the Fall and potentially new hardware as well.

    Notably, the logo for this year’s event almost looks like an application icon for the Apple’s Swift programming language. Could be something to do with improvements in developing in Swift on the iPad. Could be something else.

    Either way, I plan to write about the infomercial on the 6th. You can find out more about the development focused activities for students and others at WWDC 2022 here.

  • There’s a lot to love about the custom mechanical keyboard community, especially when there are major innovations in the underlying technology. One of the most innovative mechanical keyboards is the Emugotchi macropad. It is shaped a little bit like an egg or Tamagotchi, and uses a M5Stack Core2 ESP32 microcontroller that appears to be more like a complete mini computer with a screen, SD card slot, wireless communications and more built-in. The major downside to the Emugotchi is that it is only available in Japan, and all of the instructions and software appear to be in Japanese.

    I’ve ordered one despite the language barrier, the Yushakobo shop will ship the Emugotchi outside of Japan. If you are in Japan there are more Emugotchi options available from the Booth shop of the Emugotchi’s designer, including silly easter bunny ears. The Emugotchi was about $60 shipped from Yushakobo and the M5Stack Core2 was about $50. You’d still need keycaps and switches to complete the build.

    The designer also has a small ortholinear mechanical keyboard called the AZ-M5ortho with the same M5Stack Core2 microcontroller.