Amazon's explanation last week that it was closing Quidsi because the unit was unprofitable didn't sound much like Jeff Bezos. The Amazon founder is famous for operating retail businesses at such slim margins that rivals can't compete. Quidsi employees had another reason to be surprised. From a report: As recently as late 2016, at Quidsi's quarterly all-hands meeting in Jersey City, NJ, executives from Amazon headquarters in Seattle spoke to the unit's 250-plus workers and affirmed the parent company's commitment to Quidsi's business, according to multiple people who were in attendance. One of the executives to present was John Boumphrey, Amazon's vice president who oversees baby products, and the direct boss of Quidsi CEO Emilie Arel Scott, said the sources, who asked not to be named because the meeting was confidential. Yet last Wednesday, with the first quarter coming to a close, employees were informed that Amazon was shutting Quidsi down and laying off hundreds of workers, ostensibly because the division was unable to make a profit. The diapers, toiletries, beauty products and pet care items sold by the various Quidsi brands would all be available on Amazon.com, the company said. [...] In the fourth quarter of 2015, Amazon started redirecting inventory from Quidsi's three fulfillment centers -- in Nevada, Kansas and Pennsylvania -- to Amazon's own massive network of warehouses, sources said. That process continued throughout 2016 and is still underway, two people told us. Quidsi's facilities were running out of capacity.

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Following the release of macOS 10.12.4, Adam talks with PDF-savvy developers to see how well Apple is doing at fixing bugs in its rewritten PDFKit framework. The consensus is that Apple has indeed addressed some bugs but has simultaneously introduced new ones. Tread carefully.

 

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Following the release of macOS 10.12.4, Adam talks with PDF-savvy developers to see how well Apple is doing at fixing bugs in its rewritten PDFKit framework. The consensus is that Apple has indeed addressed some bugs but has simultaneously introduced new ones. Tread carefully.

 

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Netflix now offers offline streaming via its Windows 10 PC application, meaning you'll have even more options wherever you're stuck without Internet access. From a report: Netflix added the offline viewing options as part of the most recent update to the Netflix app on Windows 10. Because the Windows Store doesn't show you what version of the Netflix app you're using, just make sure you check for updates using the large blue button in the upper-right corner of the Windows Store app to receive the latest version. You won't need the Creators Update to take advantage of the new feature, either. When you open the app, Netflix will show you a large splash screen that advertises the new "download and go" capability. Unfortunately, if you click the Find me something to download button, the Netflix app doesn't currently display a list of downloadable titles; you'll have to hunt them down yourself. Netflix introduced the same capability on iOS and Android late last year. It's a bold move by Netflix to bring this feature to desktop. There is always the risk of someone finding out a way to break the DRM and easily distribute the files.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It’s been years since I could build the Frontier kernel — but I finally got it building.

It’s really a ’90s Mac app that’s been Carbonized just enough to run on MacOS, but it’s by no means modern: it uses QuickDraw and early Carbon APIs. It’s written entirely in C.

I got it building by installing MacOS 10.6.8 Server in VMWare. Installed Xcode 3.2.6. And now, finally, I can build and run it.

What is Frontier?

Frontier — as some of you know — was a UserLand Software product in the ’90s and 2000s. I worked there for about six years.

The app is a development environment and runtime: a persistent, hierarchical database with a scripting language and a GUI for browsing and editing the database and for writing, debugging, and running scripts.

The Nerd’s Guide to Frontier gives some idea of what it’s like, though it was written before many of the later advances.

Maybe you’ve never heard of it. But here’s the thing: it was in Frontier that the following were either invented or popularized and fleshed-out: scripted and templated websites, weblogs, hosted weblogs, web services over http, RSS, RSS readers, and OPML. (And things I’m forgetting.)

Those innovations were due to the person — Dave Winer — and to the times, the relatively early web days. But they were also in part due to the tool: Frontier was a fantastic tool for implementing and iterating quickly.

The Goal

The high-level goal is to make that tool available again, because I think we need it.

The plan is to turn it into a modern Mac app, a 64-bit Cocoa app, and then add new features that make sense these days. (There are so many!) But that first step is a big one.

The first part of the first step is simple, and it’s where I am now: mass deletions of code. Every reference to THINK_C and MPWC has to go. All references to the 68K and PPC versions must go. There was a Windows port, and all that code is getting tossed. And then I’ll see the scale of what needs to be done.

(Note: my repo is a fork, and it’s not even on the web yet. The code I’m deleting is never really gone.)

I’m doing a blog diary on it because it helps keep me focused. Otherwise I’m jumping around on my side projects. But if I have to write about it, then I’ll stay on target.

Cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett believes the human brain might not be that special.

As Jacob Zuma faces backlash over the sacking of ex-finance minister Pravin Gordhan, agency cuts country's rating grade.

As Jacob Zuma faces backlash over the sacking of ex-finance minister Pravin Gordhan, agency cuts country's rating grade.

Human Rights Watch says Israel and Egypt are preventing researchers from entering Gaza to document alleged abuses.

Human Rights Watch says Israel and Egypt are preventing researchers from entering Gaza to document alleged abuses.

Tesla's Elon Musk poked fun at short sellers as his electric-car maker's stock surged to a record, vaulting its market value past century-old rival Ford. From a report on Bloomberg: "Stormy weather in Shortville..." the chief executive officer tweeted Monday, as Tesla shares climbed as much as 5.8 percent. The maker of Model S sedans and Model X crossovers saw its capitalization surge to about $48.2 billion, $3.1 billion more than Ford, the No. 2 automaker in the U.S. after General Motors Co. Tesla has long been a popular target by short sellers such as Jim Chanos, who famously bet early on energy company Enron's failure -- and was proved right. Short interest in Tesla has risen to 29 percent of its free float from a 52-week low of 20 percent in mid-October, according to Markit data. Tesla's move past Ford came one day after Musk's company reported worldwide shipments of 25,000 cars and SUVs in the first quarter, exceeding analysts' estimates. While Ford delivered about nine times as many vehicles in just the U.S. last month, its sales missed projections and the shares fell.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tesla's Elon Musk poked fun at short sellers as his electric-car maker's stock surged to a record, vaulting its market value past century-old rival Ford. From a report on Bloomberg: "Stormy weather in Shortville..." the chief executive officer tweeted Monday, as Tesla shares climbed as much as 5.8 percent. The maker of Model S sedans and Model X crossovers saw its capitalization surge to about $48.2 billion, $3.1 billion more than Ford, the No. 2 automaker in the U.S. after General Motors Co. Tesla has long been a popular target by short sellers such as Jim Chanos, who famously bet early on energy company Enron's failure -- and was proved right. Short interest in Tesla has risen to 29 percent of its free float from a 52-week low of 20 percent in mid-October, according to Markit data. Tesla's move past Ford came one day after Musk's company reported worldwide shipments of 25,000 cars and SUVs in the first quarter, exceeding analysts' estimates. While Ford delivered about nine times as many vehicles in just the U.S. last month, its sales missed projections and the shares fell.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenSSL support for LWP