Strait of Hormuz Difficulty Adjustment occurs every 10 days.

Schrödinger’s Regime Change.

Schrödinger’s Ceasefire.

Apple puts a mechanical engineer in charge. That’s a good thing… —-————- Cook to Step Down at Apple BY ROLFE WINKLER The Wall Street Journal Apr 21, 2026 CEO to move up to executive chairman in September, hand the reins to insider Ternus Tim Cook, the longtime leader of Apple, is stepping down after transforming the iPhone maker into a titan of the technology industry, handing the reins to a veteran engineer. The company said Monday that John Ternus will take over as CEO, elevating an affable mechanical engineer and 25-year veteran of the company’s hardware division. Ternus, 50 years old, takes the lead of Apple as it works to rekindle its creative fire and chart a hardware-heavy future in the AI era. He follows Steve Jobs, who led the invention of the most popular consumer product in history, and Cook, who squeezed so much profit from the device that Apple became the world’s most valuable company. His appointment will take effect Sept. 1, when Cook will become executive chairman, succeeding longtime chair Art Levinson. Cook, 65, will be remembered for creating immense value. During his tenure, Apple’s market capitalization grew by nearly $3.7 trillion, to about $4 trillion, surpassing the value created by any other American CEO in total dollars, save Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. Known for deft politicking inside the company, Ternus had been widely seen as the leading candidate to succeed Cook. As a top hardware executive, he worked on the iPad, then later the Mac and AirPods, before taking over responsibility for all of Apple’s products, including its most important, the iPhone. “John is a deep collaborator,” said Chris Deaver, a former Apple human resources staffer who worked with him. “Having a great product leader at the helm right now is a good future indicator for Apple.” A key question for Ternus is how he can help Apple maintain its dominance at a time when most of its rivals are investing hundreds of billions of dollars into computing infrastructure and embedding cutting-edge artificial-intelligence tools into their products and daily workflows. Recent company moves have offered a hint at its strategy. Ternus has little experience with AI and the company has fallen behind rivals in developing and releasing frontier models. It is not out of the race entirely, however, as iPhones are still a primary way consumers access AI apps. The company’s App Store AI revenue is set to top $1 billion this year simply by collecting subscription fees from companies such as OpenAI. Analysts see that role expanding as Apple prepares to release an overhauled version of its Siri assistant later this year. AI providers who want to reach users of the 2.5 billion active Apple devices in circulation will have to pay Apple handsomely, a likelihood expected to give the company more time to create new AI solutions that can work without the massive computing costs its peers are facing. Ternus will also need to revive Apple’s spirit of innovation, which some critics feel has been lost under Cook. The company’s most successful products since the iPhone are AirPods earbuds and the Apple Watch, which are big businesses on their own, yet pale next to the iPhone. Other efforts have been less successful. The Vision Pro headset has been a sales dud. A project to build a self-driving car was killed after the company spent billions of dollars on its development. One of Ternus’s central accomplishments was working with Apple’s in-house silicon team to replace Intel chips inside Mac computers with chips designed by Apple itself. The chips proved more energy-efficient, and Mac sales soared after the change, which came in 2020. Ternus is known inside Apple for his even demeanor and engineering competence. He has helped lead a redesign of Apple’s iPhone lineup, one that began with so-called “liquid glass” software revamp and continued with the iPhone Air last year and a foldable device expected in the fall. Apple has raised Ternus’s profile of late, allowing him to unveil the iPhone Air at its annual iPhone event. Cook is likely to be remembered as one of the most consequential chief executives in the history of capitalism, a master of the supply chain who found novel ways to squeeze more value from the iPhone and expand its base of users. Through much of his years leading Apple, he had an almost monastic commitment to the company, waking up before 4 a.m. to review global sales data. He also met with top staff on Fridays, a meeting some called “date night with Tim” because it stretched late into the evening. Over his tenure, he navigated Apple through countless political controversies in the U.S. and abroad, establishing a style of personal CEO diplomacy with world leaders from Barack Obama to President Trump and China’s Xi Jinping. In recent years, as U.S. politics have been defined by severe polarization, Cook has stressed the value of engaging on important issues, especially when people disagree. Cook spoke often about Apple’s values. In 2014, he came out as gay, saying he decided to do so in the interest of the greater good, despite his general desire for privacy. On many occasions, Cook has harked back to the advice he received from Jobs before he died in 2011, when the Apple co-founder famously told his successor never ask what he would do and just do “what’s right.” “In the long arc of time, people change their mind on companies, but we’ve always suited up and fought,” Cook said at a Wall Street Journal event shortly after he took the helm. “Our North Star is always on making the best products.” Shared via PressReader connecting people through news

Everything collapses to 32 bytes

Everything Collapses to 32 Bytes

How Objects, Controllers, and Events form a minimal digital fabric

A few pics from my bike ride #bikestr

Rail bridge crossing.

The trails are still underwater.

Nice pic from this morning

npubs act in their own self-interest

The protocol is the system.

Proposed new #superpower for the nostr protocol - using the “o” tag to store the sha256 digest of any original document/byte array (pdf, jpg, bin, etc). That means the digest is automatically indexed searchable as the “#o” tag in a filter. I’ve tested it. It works. I am planning to use this for transferable title documents, such as electronic bills of lading (printed as a PDFs). This approach also releases me from those janky proprietary certificate authority schemes, like Adobe Acrobat that try to trick you into a subscription service when all you want to do is issue and validate the authenticity of a f***ing pdf, without using some paid certificate authority racket.

#Nostr is the protocol that keeps on giving. Over the weekend, I experimented with publishing events with an “o” tag having the sha256 digest of an original document (pdf, jpg, etc). Then using a separate script to calculate the digest of a selected document to see if there is a corresponding event. It worked, because according to NIP-01, single letter tags are indexed, so I could filter for the event. This is a big deal because now I have the basis to build an electronic transferable record (ETR) system that does not require any “blockchain”. This can be used to manage title documents such as a bills of lading. Even, better, since payments is already tightly integrated (nip57, lud16) adding payments for title transfer will be a breeze! Onward!

Logic computes. Law recognizes.

That time of year where the river is like a fast moving lake. Another couple of weeks before the crest passes, where the water level reaches and surpasses the stone wall by the path.

I’ve been busy working on #nostr #safebox as part of the @nosfabrica Web of Trust #hackathon, which is concluding soon. You can see what I’ve developed for health record sharing and payment - all done with Nostr, Blossom and Cashu.

I've been busy with #nostr #safebox, participating in the @nosfabrica Web of Trust #hackathon, which is concluding soon. To see what I've done, have a peek here: #WoTaThon

Always by my side...