I enjoyed this article about Chi-Fi from at The Verge:

The factories that make the drivers don’t care who they sell to; they maintain a certain level of quality because their clients depend on that. And once you’ve sourced the parts, it’s not expensive at all to put them together. “If you have a van and a bottle of glue,” Klasco says, “you can be in the business.”

I am a happy customer of one of the oldest Chi-Fi brands, HifiMan, which makes planar magnetic headphones at super low prices. Well, their prices are low for what types of products they sell, but in real dollar terms, they are pretty high: HifiMan mostly sell multi-hundred-dollar headphones, not $25 AirPods rip-offs.

I avoid most other Chi-Fi brands, because I would be concerned that build quality, and therefore produce longevity, would be very low. That said, I have paid lots of money for headphones from well-known, well-regarded, non-Chinese brands, and had them break in under two years.

I voted in my town’s local election this evening. It worries me, in a way that it hadn’t before, that our voting machines do not create a hard copy record of our votes—just an idiotic, digital bloop. I hope my vote still counts.

I am not sure why, but I keep thinking lately that I need to read poetry by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

I had to reboot my iPad (iPadOS 13.2) to get the Files app to show me the same files on iCloud Drive that my iPhone (iOS 13.2) shows. As the developer of a Files-based app, this kind of thing is really frustrating! 😢

Call me crazy, but the last thing I want to read is “How Trump Reshaped the Presidency in 11,000 Tweets.”

I think the clock change today actually allowed my family to catch up on a little sleep today. That’s a first!

I have a cold. 🤒😤

I made it through Halloween without eating any candy! I did eat a little homemade brownie, but I don’t feel too guilty about that.

I both (1) don’t want everything to be partisan, and (2) don’t understand why two Democratic representatives in the House (including one from my state) voted against the Trump impeachment rules resolution. Note that I already don’t expect_any_ of the Republicans to act in good faith.

Foul weather, though not as foul as expected, canceled my daughter’s Halloween parade this morning. We’ll see in a couple hours how trick-or-treating will be affected. It’s not raining right now, so who knows?

[Tove Danovich writes about the Teal Pumpkin project on NPR.org](Teal Pumpkins Make Halloween Less Tricky For Kids With Food Allergies):

Having a teal pumpkin on the doorstep (teal being the color of food allergy awareness) is a way to signal to people with food allergies that this is a safe home for trick-or-treating, says Jennifer Norris, president of the Food Allergy Community of East Tennessee (FACET), which started the project.

I learned about the teal pumpkins a couple years ago, and we have been a teal pumpkin house on Halloween ever since.

Since discovering that my children have peanut allergies, Halloween has moved from a fun tradition to an endless, irritating minefield of peanut-containing, and potentially peanut-contaminated, foods. (Practically every candy or baked good with chocolate may be contaminated with peanuts. As parents, my wife and I have to be very strict and diligent.) So much candy is off limits to my kids that it makes me feel sad for them. I think they do miss out on a huge, terribly unheathy part of the experience: the candy. We are baking some brownies and have purchased some truly safe, peanut-free chocolate for them, so Halloween will still be fun, even if the collecting candy part of trick-or-treating is kind of pointless.

Kate Conger of the New York Times reports:

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, said on Wednesday that the social media service would ban political ads on its platform, in a stark contrast to rival Facebook, which has faced blowback for taking a hands-off approach to political advertising.

This is definitely the correct position to take, based on what we already know about the scale and effectiveness of social media disinformation campaigns, which are largely driven through social media advertising. Facebook, in contrast to Twitter, seems to be doubling down on their willingness for “anything goes” political advertising on its platform.

I ordered an Apple Watch Series 3 for my wife last night. I hope she loves it. I wonder if we will actually use the walkie-talkie feature.

🎵 R.E.M.’s Monster is an underrated album, though it certainly is very much of its moment (the mid 1990s).

I am currently baffled that Apple’s NSDataDetector will not identify the “tel:” link in the string “call tel:1-212-555-1415” but will identify it in the string “call_ tel:1-212-555-1415” and in the string “call www.google.com tel:212-555-1415”. I guess “call” is a magic word when it precedes " tel:" for some reason.

The Secret Ingredient That Improves Meat Every Time is mayonnaise. Nope. No, no, no! I think you’re a genius, Kenji, but no.

My wife really wants an Apple Watch. I can’t believe it. She is eyeing the Series 3 (the lower price is a big factor, as is the smaller size).

Samit Sarkar reports about the impending closure on Polygon:

“Unfortunately, the highly competitive Pay TV industry, with expensive content and network deals, has been slower to change than we expected,” said John Kodera, deputy president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, in a statement on the PlayStation Blog. “Because of this, we have decided to remain focused on our core gaming business.”

That’s too bad, but not at all surprising.

I never understood why someone would want to watch TV on their PlayStation. For me, at least, gaming and TV don’t mix at all. I feel a huge mode switch between interactive and non-interactive entertainment. It wouldn’t occur to me to want to do anything other than game on a gaming console.

Also, to me at least, Sony is not a brand I strongly identify with and want to align with additional areas of my life. I do like my Sony headphones, and did have a Playstation Portable long ago, but Sony has never been, in my opinion, a warm and appealing brand.

🎵 Peter Buck and Mike Mills (of R.E.M. fame) are in a supergroup that only performs original songs about baseball. The world is a weird and wonderful place.

Maybe macOS 10.15.1 will stop Xcode edit windows form tearing and revealing snapshots “The Matrix” behind them when I switch tabs. 🤞

I hate to admit it, but I love reading a good pan of an expensive restauarant. Case in point, today’s review of Peter Luger, the Brooklyn steakhouse, by Pete Wells, in the New York Times:

The restaurant will always have its loyalists. They will laugh away the prices, the $16.95 sliced tomatoes that taste like 1979, the $229.80 porterhouse for four. They will say that nobody goes to Luger for the sole, nobody goes to Luger for the wine, nobody goes to Luger for the salad, nobody goes to Luger for the service. The list goes on, and gets harder to swallow, until you start to wonder who really needs to go to Peter Luger, and start to think the answer is nobody.

Once again, WinSCP is making me happy. It would be even nicer if I could drag from one instance of it to another, though.

🎮 I got the Xbox Wireless Controller that I ordered today, after a weekend of telling myself I will cut back on the hours I spend on gaming (only a few per week, but still).

📺 I remain excited for the “His Dark Materials” series. The last preview I saw made me wonder if it would be more goofy than good, but this teaser, in which author Philip Pullman provides some soundbites, has pulled me back in to being into it.

Dan Moren, on Six Colors, reports:

Boasting a new design with flexible ear tips, the AirPods Pro add the highly-anticipated Active Noise Cancellation feature to remove background noise and provide better sound.

I am happy that the AirPods Pro will not replace the base AirPods model, which I like precisely because it (1) does not fit inside the ear canal, and (2) lets outside noises in, which is great for safety and comfort.