Category: Tech

Good Things Come In Small Packages: The GL.iNet Beryl AX (GL-MT3000) Travel Router

This is quick review of my favorite gadget purchase of 2023. The GL.iNet Beryl AX (GL-MT3000) Travel Router proves that big and amazing things can come in small packages.  They need to work on that name though. It certainly doesn’t just roll off the tongue. This small router that fits in the palm of your hand allows you to do any number of router like things in order to get connected, stay connected, and stay safe while connected.

I started looking into travel routers early this past fall as my November/December schedule started firming up. Our family was expecting a new granddaughter. (Yay! She arrived and is gorgeous.) I had a work gig that was going to take me out of town the week before Christmas and for five weeks after that to direct The Lehman Trilogy at Playhouse on the Square in Memphis. That gig meant we had to do some of our many family holiday trips earlier in the month of December.

All of that combined meant some hotel stays and visits to relatives with large houses that don’t exactly have great WiFi coverage. Essentially I was looking for a way to piggyback on and extend WiFi reception in those destinations. Some of the travel would mean both my wife and I would be working at times from those various locations in addition to enjoying family time.

The GL.iNet Beryl AX (GL-MT3000) Travel Router filled that bill and more. Not only am I able to piggyback and extend WiFi when needed, but it provides built in VPN services that can help when you don’t exactly want to use hotel WiFi without some form of VPN protection.

In addition, it can combine an existing WiFi signal with a tethered connection to a smartphone to boost the signal even more. I’m not quite sure how they make that magic work, but they do. You can grab existing WiFi by plugging into a router or over the air. The connection can handle up to 70 devices. I don’t have that many, but when we’re traveling we have more than a few.

And as far as small packages go, the device is small enough to toss into your bag when you need to travel light. Once the show I’m working on moves into the theatre i’m looking forward to extending and boosting the signal of the public WiFi channel there where I work so I don’t have to log in to the networks we used for technical theatre operations.

I won’t get into all the technical ins and outs but I will say this is a bit fiddly to set up. But once you’re up and running it’s certainly a keeper for my kit. Here’s a link to a review from the Gadgeteer that goes into more detail if you’re interested.

All in all for a $100 purchase it’s already proven it’s value.

My Picks Of The Year for 2023

Here’s a list of my favorites of the year in entertainment, books, apps, and a favorite gadget purchase for good measure. I don’t believe in “Best of.” There’s too much good being created by too many good (and some not so good) folks out there, that I just pick favorites. Lots of mediocrity out there, but here’s the cream that rose to the top of my list, though I certainly didn’t see or consume everything.

Movies

  • Oppenheimer
  • Barbie
  • Maestro
  • FinestKind
  • Blackberry

TV and Streaming

  • The Bear
  • Mrs. Davis
  • Drops of God
  • Silo
  • Slow Horses
  • Fargo
  • The Fall of the House of Usher
  • The Last of Us
  • Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl Shorts on Netflix

These films and streaming shows mentioned above contained some outstanding performances by Carey Mulligan in Maestro and Emily Blunt and Robert Downey, Jr in Oppenheimer. As for Oppenheimer all the hype was about the big boom. I loved it more for the explosive intimacy of the brilliant film making in the human moments. Brilliant acting from that entire ensemble. Also, episodes 7 and 8 of Season 2 of The Bear were two or the richest small screen viewing experiences I think I’ve ever experienced. Masterpiece work.

Books

  • Prequel by Rachel Maddow
  • Undertow by Jeff Sharlett
  • Sapiens Yual Noah Harari
  • The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in the Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta
  • The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

Apps and Software

  • Paste. A terrific clipboard manager.
  • It’s an update to the iPhone, but The Action Button
  • Ivory. A Mastodon client.
  • IceCubes. Another Mastodon client.
  • Mona. Yet another Mastodon client.
  • Bartender 5 (It’s an update to an oldie, but always goodie)
  • The Double Tap Gesture on the “Is it legal or not legal?” Apple Watch

Gadget Purchase of the Year

GL.iNet Beryl AX (GL-MT3000) Travel Router. Excellent, powerful travel router in a tiny package that belies its size. Helps extend WiFi and provides on board VPN protection while traveling. A huge winner in a small package.

Here’s hoping you enjoy your New Year!

An Apple Christmas Wish List for 2023

Dear Santa Tim Cook,

I’m writing you to let you know what I would like from Apple for this Christmas. It’s not new hardware. The amount of Apple gear I own is more than enough and I’m quite happy with it. So thank you for that, and thanks ahead of time because I’m sure Apple’s vision is to keep cranking out new hardware in the future.

This is a wish list about a number of nagging things that I think you and your elves need to pay more attention to in your operating systems and software. Let’s call them fixes. Most of these nagging issues have been around for a while and oft-reported so it’s surprising you’d allow them to hang around for the users who love your products. I, and many others, have been reminding you of them quite frequently and for quite a while.

I know your elves are busy, but if they could find some time to address these things it would be one of those gifts that gives all year long, and for years to come.

So, here’s my wish list for iOS and macOS.

iCloud

This is the big ticket item on my wish list. You’ve tied so many services and functionality to iCloud and a user’s AppleID. That makes good sense for the eco-system and when it works it’s great. When it doesn’t it causes problems for users, your support personnel, and completely diminishes much of the good it intends to provide. I’ve been on the hunt for solutions to my iCloud woes for quite some time now. I won’t go into detail here, but you can follow the links in this article that chronicle my journey.

But just so you know, the issues aren’t resolved, aren’t closed to being resolved, and tend to pop up with some sort of Santa-like omniscience, knowing when we users can least afford a problem.

Your elves I’ve spoken with thought this had been resolved with Sonoma and were quite disappointed to find out that wasn’t the case. So they’re as perplexed as your users.

These iCloud issues affect features like Handoff/Continuity and Sign in with Apple Watch not working. They also include Photos not syncing, Shortcuts not syncing, Mail not syncing, Reminders not syncing, iMessages not syncing, and the list goes on. To be fair, Photos, Shortcuts, Mail, Reminders and iMessages eventually do sync and catch up. But when they randomly don’t and you’re counting on them it’s like receiving a hastily scribbled note in your Christmas stocking telling you the gift you were expecting will be arriving later. Certainly survivable, but disappointing and certainly not magical.

While, at times, the reoccurrence of these issues seems random, there seems to be some predictability about it. They far too often (not always) crop up just before or just after an update is released whether it be the next official OS release or the beta for the next version. My hunch, after months of observation, and talking with other users and your elves, is that each time you issue a software update for devices (beta or official), whatever accompanies that on the back end keeps stacking problems on top of unsolved problems.

To be quite honest it feels more and more like regardless of if we run OS betas or not, (I do not), non-beta users are subject to the same vagaries that any beta can bring and/or fall prey to back end operations that are required by these updates.

Mac Notifications in General

Please, oh, please. We all know notifications are tricky. We all know they are a mess. But please, oh, please give Mac users a way to bail out and dismiss all notifications with one button the way we can on iOS devices. Or at least time them out.

Reminder Notifications

I’m very pleased with the continual progress in the Reminders app. I like using Reminders for shared lists with my wife. But the notifications when adding a shared Reminder to a list need to at least follow the same rule as other Reminder notifications do and disappear after a short time, waiting to be recalled. I used to find it humorous that my wife could add a Reminder to our shared grocery list while I was on the way to the store. But not so funny after I picked up the item and cleared the item in the Reminders app, had returned home and placed the item in the fridge only to find the shared Reminder still showed up on my devices. I let some of these linger for a day once. And they never disappeared until I manually removed the notification.

Stand By

This is a nice new feature that I like quite a bit. Please fix it so the widgets I choose to show stay on the screen and don’t change randomly after I’ve set up my preferences. This feature either needs to be less smart or much more intelligent.

Apple Mail

I use Flags and Rules in Apple mail to help me manage my Mail workflow between projects. Different projects have different colored Flags. That works well most of the time switching between Macs. But not always. In fact currently the counts are so drastically off between my two Macs that it’s a little ridiculous. And it’s always changing.

I watch over a course of days how those numbers can change trying to sync up. When the counts get off so drastically, it tells me something is happening server side on the back end. That doesn’t help when I am attempting to use this organization structure to accomplish a task. By the way the differences in numbers is more often than not off between Mac and OS devices also.

I’d also like to be able to more easily track via color distinction those same Flags in iOS by having another menu drop down allowing access to the different color categories instead of just a list of emails with all of the different colored Flags.

When I’m triaging email I’d like to be able to choose a colored Flag after using the swipe gesture to Flag an email instead of having to go back and choose the correct color later.

Consistency Across Platforms

I know things are different between macOS and iOS. And yet, it seems like you keep trying to bring them into more and more into sync. (“Sync” might be a poor word choice there, given all the syncing issues you have. Or maybe it’s just too darn appropriate.) In trying to sync some things up you’ve created some cognitive dissonance and user frustration. These issues cut across Apps and Services like Shortcuts, the Share Sheet, Mail, Notes, Reminders, even Apple Music, Apple TV+ and Apple News. Features are almost the same, but not quite the same enough.

There are times when using a feature on one platform is just a small enough degree different than on the other that it creates a logjam in getting things done and makes me think I’ve lost track of how to perform the task. At times it makes me wish things were more separate and not less. But I know that’s not the goal much less the desire.

Wrapping Up

So that’s it. With the exception of the issues related to iCloud, I think it’s  a manageable list. Here’s hoping Apple’s vision for the future includes cleaning up these longstanding nagging issues before adding new ones on top of the old.

Merry Christmas!

Artificial Intelligence is No Match for Human Goofiness

Everyone’s intelligence is being challenged given the decidely human drama going on over OpenAI’s adventures in whatever it is adventuring in. The story’s not over by any stretch of the imagination (or hallucinating) but from what we know it only proves that anything humans touch, humans can screw up.

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Here’s a link to a story on TechCrunch about what, at the time of its publishing, was the latest news that Microsoft. CEO Satya Nadella,  exercising the muscles Microsoft built up with its 10 billion dollar investment in the company, hired Altman and the company president Greg Brockman after a weekend of boards, CEOs, directors, and investors doing what they typically do. Employees of OpenAI have signed a letter saying they’ll leave unless Altman is brought back. Even the guy who suggested outing Altman has signed on to do so. Goofy? You bet.

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But I’m thinking all the horses are out of the barn into more Azure pastures.

All of this is about AI, a powerful and world changing technology, fraught with possibly as much potential harm as promise. That genie is out of the bottle, never to be put back in with a future no human or AI model can really predict. This story will continue to unfold, as will the technology. What won’t change is what I said in the opening paragraph: Anything humans touch, humans can screw up.

Sunday Morning Reading

Chili was on the menu last night and it’s a chlly Autumn Sunday morning. So it’s time to share some Sunday Morning Reading featuring a little poetry, some politics, some not so intelligent moves in the Artificial Intelligence world (is it a world?) and just some damn good writing worth your time.

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Let’s start with the poetry. One of my favorite new writing discoveries is NatashaMH on Medium. She popped out a piece of poetry, Pereginations, the other day on Ellemeno and this morning she’s got a terrific piece called The Day I Learned Poetry. Good stuff. Good times. Good fun. Nothing artifcial about the intelligence happening there.

Speaking of AI, it was and still is quite a weekend on that front. OpenAI’s board surprisingly fired poster boy CEO Sam Altman, now he may come back after lots of hueing and crying.  Or he may not. Who knows. Om Malik has a great piece called Foundational Risks of OpenAI looking at the story but rightly hitting the bullseye that this is more than about corporate chaos and investment returns. I’m not sure AI, or its champions, is built for looking back with a long view.

Our politics here in the U.S is still a mess with no foreseable correction in the cards. Dan Balz, Clara Ence Morse and Nick Mourtoupalas take a look at some of the foundational biases in the U.S. Senate that, in my belief, need to change before any next card can be revealed. Check out The Hidden Biases at Play in the U.S. Senate.

Sometimes an outside view is needed for perspective. In this case not so much. Even so, The Economist weighing in with Donald Trump Poses The Biggest Danger to the World in 2024 offers good context in its global round up.

Like it or not, much of our life on the Internet is changing. Social Media is a crazy free-for-all and so is the world of entertainment. In How Social Media Is Turning Into Old-Fashioned Broadcast Media, Christopher Mims takes a look at the stew that’s stewing.

And where would we be without critics? Probably better off, but that’s not necessarily the point of Siskel, Ebert, and the Secret of Criticism by Richard Brody. Here’s a quote:

Criticism is a fraught profession because it’s parasitical. It depends on the work of artists, without which criticism couldn’t exist. A critic who acknowledges and accepts the fact of this dependence is trying to salvage the dignity of the activity; critics who don’t are just trying to salvage their own dignity.

David Todd McCarty is starting a daily column entitled A Bit Dodgy. I recommend subscribing, following, but most of all reading. I’m sure it will be quite a ride.

And in case you’re wondering, worried, or concerned about all of the insanity happening in the world that makes it feel like we’re approaching the End Times, Jeannie Ortega Law tells us that Left Behind author, Jerry Jenkins thinks that all of those End Times prophecies have been fulfilled. So check that off your list.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. 

Sunday Morning Reading

It’s an Autumn Sunday morning. That means there’s Sunday Morning Reading to share. There’s a real mix this week from con artists to cruelty, from the political and the cultural to famous fart jokesters and a bit of tech thrown in for good measure.

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Con (I hesitate to call them) Artists are thriving in all forms of human endeavors these days. As blatant as some are, you never know who’s conning who. Pick your field and you’ll find them picking your pocket and often celebrated for it. Sean Williams takes a look at the True Story of Maverick Miles Nehemiah and The CONfidence Chroncies. Great story.

What is it about evil? Natasha MH cuts through some of the wonder in The Cost of Knowing and Our Thirst for Cruelty. “We are who we are. The question is can we live with the truth of who we are, and with the things we’ve done?”

Did you know that there was a new anarchy? Adrienne La France takes a look in The New Anarchy, arguing that here in this country we don’t know how to stop extermist violence. I’d say she’s spot on.

It’s the end of an era. Jezebel, long a source for great coverage of women’s issues is shutting down. Erin Gloria Ryan takes a good look back in Jezebel Is Dead. Long Live Jezebel.

In How the World’s Most Famous Book Was Made Tanya Kirk lays out a history of how Shakespeare’s First Folio was created and published.

Back to the con game that is life these days, Mike Lofgren takes a look at how Right-Wing Fake History is Making a Big Comeback—But It Never Went Away.

Did you know that an egg laying mammal that shared the planet with the dinosaurs still exists? They’ve been called ‘living fossils’ and are extremely rare. Jordan King takes a look in Echidna: Egg-Laying Mammal ‘Who Roamed the Earth With Dinosaurs’ is Rediscovered.

Technology drives so much of our lives. Always has. Always will. Joan Westenberg argues that 20 Years of Tech Has Made Life Easier, Not Better. I happen to agree with her.

On the other hand (or lapel) is the newly announced AI Pin. I’m not sold on the concept but find the technology cool, even if the announcement left me a bit cold. Om Malik is excited about it and lays out his thoughts in The Real Personal (AI) Personal Computer and also interviews one of the founders, Imran Chaudhri. This will be worth paying attention to as AI becomes more and more a part of our lives. I’m just not sure this product is the fulcrum.

And to round out this week, how about a look at 9 Outlandish Stories Of Court Jesters Throughout History, From the Medieval Flatulist to Lord Minimus from Austin Harvey. Thought you could use a laugh.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. 

The AI Pin Feels Less Than Humane

It’s tough to do a hot take on the AI Pin from Humane given how creepy cold the launch and the video was. The makers’ chill approach sure didn’t light any fires of enthusiasm. I’ve seen friends in a hangover stupor with more enthusiasm about their prospects of greeting a new day. If that’s the sort of calm, cool, and collected monotone our future AI world promises it sure doesn’t feel like a very Humane one. 

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As for the technology, certainly at some point in the future we’re headed to something like this and I’ll give the makers credit for their efforts so far. At this point there’s no way to really judge the product or its future, but you can see a certain promise in this kind of Star Trek type of human to computer interaction. 

Even so, whether collated and sorted by AI or generated by apps you still need to somehow get something “on screen” at some point. And I’m thinking that needs to be larger than your palm. I can’t imagine negotiating with a laser image of someone’s face in my palm, and “voice only” only gets you so far.

That’s the big disconnect in my first reaction. The AI Pin feels more like an input accessory than an end point. If I’m out for the day and snap a few pictures or video they need to be viewed before they are of any value other than further training an AI engine or sending location tracking data.  And yes, i can imagine a future with some sort of headset or glasses to view those images, but I also imagine whatever that face computer might be, it will also have the same approximate features as the AI Pin. 

So, I say kudos for pushing the discussion. Push it with a little more human enthusiasm next time around. 

Here’s the video.

Apple Taking Heat for 8GB Base Configs on New M3 Hardware

If you have to a discussion about whether 8GB of memory is enough in Apple’s latest M3 Mac hardware, then 8GB is not enough. And there’s a discussion going on. Apple’s latest Mac hardware comes with 8GB of memory in the starting configurations of the various machines. Quite a few folks think that’s not enough. Especially at the price Apple charges for larger memory capacities. And also in regards to our seemingly unstoppable AI future. I’m in that camp.

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Apple is touting its new GPU Dynamic Caching on the M3 machines as industry leading and why 8GB is enough. But as Jacob Roach says nobody knows exactly how it works. He’s got a pretty plausible theory that’s worth a read.

Jason Cross takes Apple to task in this MacWorld article in a piece that focuses on the marketing and the pricing and less on the tech.

But Apple is defending its choices with an interesting statement sure to keep the discussion fires burning. MacRumors quotes a recent interview with Chinese ML enginner and content creator Lin YilYi in which Apple’s VP of worldwide product marketing Bob Borchers says this:

Comparing our memory to other system’s memory actually isn’t equivalent, because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory, and we use memory compression, and we have a unified memory architecture.

Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems. We just happen to be able to use it much more efficiently. And so what I would say is I would have people come in and try what they want to do on their systems, and they will I think see incredible performance. If you look at the raw data and capabilities of these systems, it really is phenomenal. And this is the place where I think people need to see beyond the specs, and actually go and look beyond the capabilities, and listen to trusted people like you who have actually used the systems.

People need to look beyond the specifications and actually go and understand how that technology is being used. That’s the true test.

That may well be true on some levels and for some users. I’m not buying it big picture though. We can talk about smaller memory allocations clogging up with browser tabs and heavy duty, poorly coded applications all we want today. That’s still real. Tomorrow’s memory migraines are all about AI as its going to be the culprit gobbling up GPU cycles going forward.

From a PR perspective it’s a dropped ball by Apple. It’s like that old saying in politics, if you’re defending you’re not winning.

Netfilx Prices Going Up and the Internet Yawns

Once again Netflix is raising prices. Gotta keep that bottom line solid, show some growth, or maybe it’s to help fund the new Netflix Destination nonsense. Who knows. The reality is Netflix is raising prices. And the Internet just yawns. Sure, people are bitching on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, etc…and probably around a kitchen table or two. But the cash registers still ring.

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There’s really nothing to keep streamers and other “got you for life” services from raising prices. Except customers simply amputating the stream. But obviously not enough to staunch the bleeding. Certainly there are reasons people don’t want to let go, but doesn’t this seem just tailor made for an Internet protest moment?

I mean everything gets a protest these days. Most don’t matter. But I would think that any loosely organized Internet campaign getting users to cancel Netflix for a month or a quarter would be able to gather some quick steam before it fizzles out. One hit on those quarterly numbers might have an effect.  But that’s probably just hot air. It would have to be large numbers to have any real meaning. It takes a lot to overcome inertia.

The wheel always turns and the prices will always go up. Pipers have to be paid and quarterly numbers have to show growth. Until they don’t.

Sunday Morning Reading

Time for another edition of Sunday Morning Reading. Today’s collection is a scattered selection of topics some of which might feel a bit dark. But it is a dark time scattering many of us into our corners or maybe to have an extra drink or two.

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For reasons, other than stupidity, we’re steal dealing with forces that want to ban books in America. This sadly isn’t a new thing, and Chris Klimek gives us A Brief History of Banned Books in America in this podcast transcript from the Smithsonian magazine podcast “There’s More To That.”

What’s happening and about to happen in the Middle East has the world on edge. Technology brings these moments to us in moments. Joanna Stern in the Wall St. Journal gives us a look in When Our Smartphones Became Windows to a War.

Continuing with that news of the moment Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic gives us There Are No Rules. As she describes it, our norms and values define how the world ought to work. We continually learn that’s not the reality.

Here’s a pallet cleanser with the first of a couple of tech topics. Jared Newman in Fast Company takes a look at the note-taking app Obsidian in The Cult of Obsidian: Why People Are Obssesed With The Note-Taking App. 

If you’ve paid attention to my tech writings here you’ll know I’m having some challenges with Apple’s iCloud failings and flailings. I’m not the only one and my challenge isn’t the only iCloud issue. In TidBits Glenn Fleishman describes his in Cloudy With A Chance of Insanity: Unsticking iCloud Drive.

And back on the politics and follies of mankind beat, this piece by Michael Tomasky, I Never Thought I’d Live to See Democracy Die. But Now I Wonder is worth a look. He’s not alone in his wondering if Democracy is just a phase.

And after all of that, if you think you might need a drink, here’s a look at The Bad Law That Made Good Bars, from Peter Suderman on The Raines Law. Never heard of it? Pour yourself a beverage of choice and take a read.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.