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The More-Present Edition Monday, February 17, 2025

The One Change That Worked: I Set My Phone To ‘Do Not Disturb’ Three Years Ago – And Have Never Looked Back, by Chloë Hamilton, The Guardian

I think – I hope – my change has made me a better, more present mother. There are, after all, few things that seek quite as much attention as toddlers and WhatsApp groups. If I had to choose, I’d rather give that attention to the three-year-old trying to climb the curtains/put the dog in the washing machine/feed his baby brother a stick of chalk, than a phone that fizzes and bleats with alerts that masquerade as urgent but, really, are anything but.

Coming Soon?

Gurman: M4 MacBook Air Models To Launch By March 'At The Latest', by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

Apple will begin selling new MacBook Air models featuring its latest M4 chip by March "at the latest," mirroring the time frame of the M3 MacBook Air launch last year, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Apple Maps Might Start Showing Ads, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple is "exploring" the idea of showing search ads in the Apple Maps app, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

[...]

Ads in the Apple Maps app would not be the traditional banner ads that you see on websites, but rather paid search results.

Stuff

‘Reading Is Part Of My Identity’: The Woman Taking On Goodreads Owner Amazon, by David Barnett, The Guardian

Nadia Odunayo never planned to take on the mighty global juggernaut that is Amazon, but for many book ­lovers, she has become the hero they didn’t know they needed.

Develop

"A Calculator App? Anyone Could Make That.", by Chad Nauseam

The purpose of a calculator app is to give you correct answers. Floating point numbers are imprecise - they cannot represent 0.3 or 10^100.

This means a calculator built on floating point numbers is like a house built on sand.

Notes

Is The International Film Industry Starting To Embrace AI?, by Scott Roxborough, Hollywood Reporter

In this period of creative and financial crisis for the indie film industry, many are starting to see a different possibility — one where AI, if implemented with care, could be a catalyst for creativity rather than a threat to it.

This Artist Collaborates With AI And Robots, by Stephen Ornes, MIT Technology Review

Many artists worry about the encroachment of artificial intelligence on artistic creation. But Sougwen Chung, a nonbinary Canadian-Chinese artist, instead sees AI as an opportunity for artists to embrace uncertainty and challenge people to think about technology and creativity in unexpected ways.

Bottom of the Page

I seldom turns on "Do not Disturb" on my iPhone… but I do intentionally pare down notifications from apps that I feel it is worthwhile to be disturbed by every notification that makes a sound.

There are notifications that, even though I allow, I turn off the sound. These basically fall under two categories: work apps, such as Teams, and banking apps that mixes their 2FA notifications with marketing notifications.

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Thanks for reading.