Just because Donald Trump has been kicked out of the White House doesn't mean he's going away. In fact, in the past week he's reportedly been talking about staying in politics—by starting a new political party. And he already has a name for it: the Patriot Party. — Read the rest

Jonathan Zdziarski, pushing back on the notion that “pro” users need more than 16 GB of RAM:

I fired up a bunch of apps and projects (more than I’d ever work on at one time) in every app I could possibly think of on my MacBook Pro. These included apps you’d find professional photographers, designers, software engineers, penetration testers, reverse engineers, and other types running — and I ran them all at once, and switched between them, making “professionally-type-stuff” happen as I go.

Here’s a list of everything I ran at once:

• VMware Fusion: Two running virtual machines (Windows 10, macOS Sierra)
• Adobe Photoshop CC: Four 1+gb 36 MP professional, multi-layer photos
• Adobe InDesign CC: A 22 page photography-intensive project
• Xcode: Four production Objective-C projects, all cleaned and rebuilt
• Microsoft PowerPoint: A slide deck presentation
• Microsoft Word: A 20* page document with graphics
• MachOView: Analyzing a daemon binary
• Mozilla FireFox: Viewing a website
• Safari: viewing a different website
• Preview: Three PDF books
• Hopper Disassembler: Performing an analysis on a binary
• WireShark: Performing a live network capture as I do all of this
• IDA Pro 64-bit: Analyzing a 64-bit intel binary
• Apple Mail: Viewing four mailboxes
• Tweetbot: Reading all the flames and trolls in my mentions
• iBooks: Currently viewing an ebook I paid for
• Skype: Logged in and idling
• Terminal: A few sessions idling
• iTunes
• Little Flocker
• Little Snitch
• OverSight
• Finder
• Messages
• Veracrypt
• Activity Monitor
• Path Finder
• Console
• Probably a lot I’ve missed

The result? I ran out of things to do before I ever ran out of RAM. I only ever made it to 14.5GB before the system decided to start paging out, so I didn’t even have the change to burn up all that delicious RAM.

I think it’s a legitimate complaint that you can’t get a new MacBook Pro with 32 GB of RAM, but agree with Zdziarski that the practical effects of having “only” 16 GB are overblown for most typical use cases, even with “pro” software.

Project Naptha is a browser extension that lets you copy text from images on the web.

Project Naptha automatically applies state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms on every image you see while browsing the web. The result is a seamless and intuitive experience, where you can highlight as well as copy and paste and even edit and translate the text formerly trapped within an image.

I was skeptical of this actually working, but it totally does...try it on xkcd or Frank Sinatra's "loosen up" letter to George Michael for example. The translation and editing features aren't enabled yet, but the project's creator is working on them. (via @tcarmody)

MIT scientists have determined the hardest twingtuster.

Try and say “pad kid poured curd pulled cod” 10 times fast.

Man, I can't even say it once.

The Sunday Assembly is a 501(c)3 charity that is creating massive Sunday events that are similar to church services, though they are atheist in approach (they don't insist that you be atheist in order to attend, but there are no supernatural beliefs espoused at the event). Atheists gather to sing, hear speeches about ethics, make friends, and organize community work. They call themselves "A godless congregation," and they've launched a 40 city roadshow along with a crowdfunding campaign to spread the non-gospel. There are already Assemblies in London, Bristol, Brighton, Melbourne, New York and many other cities, and there's instructions for starting your own..

The Sunday Assembly is a godless congregation that celebrate life. Our motto: live better, help often, wonder more. Our mission: to help everyone find and fulfill their full potential. Our vision: a godless congregation in every town, city and village that wants one.

We are here for everyone who wants to:

* Live Better. We aim to provide inspiring, thought-provoking and practical ideas that help people to live the lives they want to lead and be the people they want to be

* Help Often. Assemblies are communities of action building lives of purpose, encouraging us all to help anyone who needs it to support each other

* Wonder More. Hearing talks, singing as one, listening to readings and even playing games helps us to connect with each other and the awesome world we live in.

Sunday Assembly

Oyster's home page with some generic recommendations.

Oyster has already established a compelling elevator pitch: “Netflix for books.” Pay a monthly fee, get access to an unlimited number of 100,000 titles available in Oyster’s app. The app is beautifully designed and certainly rivals that of Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks version. But whether its business model is as much of a threat, and whether it lives up to the Netflix legacy it’s brought on itself, is another matter.

Right now, the Oyster app is limited to an iPhone-oriented version, though iPad and Android versions are in the works. The app already adopts the iOS 7 design touches, with flat, delicately drawn icons and plenty of white space. When users first open the app, it asks them to pick five books to drive the first batch of recommendations.

The home screen consists of rows of categorized recommendations, entirely like Netflix. There’s space for books that are “new and noteworthy” or “popular on Oyster” as well as different subjects: “sports stories,” “business essentials,” and “book to blockbuster” (books that became movies) are some of mine.

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