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I joked that I wouldn’t sleep without a win
Good thing we clutched that last game, after multiple back-to-back loses. I can sleep now.
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Mac fn key: Remap to emoji picker
Great tip from Sindre. Apparently Mac OS settings allow one to map the fn key to the emoji picker. I use the emoji picker many times a day. This remap must be a fantastic time saver.
Control + Command + Space
is the default shortcut for those curious.I like Slack-style emoji picker though, where I can type
:
followed by the emoji name. That displays a horizontal list to choose from, vs Mac fn key popup display. It’s considerably faster, but not all apps support that. I know only of Slack, Flock, Telegram and Signal as apps that support it. -
Snowball fight is back on VALORANT!
Snowball fight is back on VALORANT! The mode is different from the regular modes, in that the primary gear is replaced with a snowball shooter. It does not offer agents the abilities though, and is based on the same maps as regular ones. My first game of the day was based at Icebox, where I clutched the MVP title with 15 kills.
Along with this update, a new agent by the name KAY/O is announced. Apparently they can block the enemy agents’ skills! I cannot wait to unlock them.
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Day One: My new private blogging app
I am a Day One user now!
The team joined Automattic this month. The acquisition is perfect. Automattic is a pioneer in the web publishing and blogging space, while Day One champions the private journaling experience. I am excited to see what the future holds for Day One, and how Automattic integrates its products with it. Publishing from the app to a WordPress site, the other way around and Gutenberg on the app are few examples of great things that can happen.
Day One on iPhone Today on the company-wide townhall, the Day One team met the rest of Automattic. We had a quick overview of the Day One apps. They also offered a premium subscription for everyone working at Automattic. That’s very cool!
I have not been into private journaling most of my life. I have written pieces on and off though. The first time I started private blogging, it was during my college days. I remember maintaining a notebook. That was my first time away from home/neighborhood and writing was a great way to cope with the change. I remember moving to a Dropbox later, where I stored them as text files, encrypted with Cryptomator.
Day One, on the other hand, is a fully encrypted, cross-platform app. Android is an exception though. It does not support end-to-end encryption. I published a copy of this blog post as an entry as well. The Mac app seems polished with a great deal of features. I will not be using the Android app just yet. Hopefully an end-to-end encrypted version is available in the near future.
Download the app
If you are looking forward to trying the app, they do offer a 7 day free trial of the premium subscription. The premium version offers unlimited media storage, sync, and backup, amidst a whole bunch of other features. Get it on Google Play Store or the App Store.
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First look at Among Us 15 players update
The popular, cross-platform, LAN and internet-based social deduction game Among Us is dropping a big update today! They are finally supporting lobbies with upto 15 players. This is a big news to me, as my team at work has 11 members. I know teams that are larger as well, and someone always had to sit out, or had to create two different games.
Along with the update to player count, there are a few other changes that I have noticed on the team stream that Innersloth is hosting at the moment.
We’re LIVE! π
β Among Us π 15 players today & 3rd anniversary!!! (@AmongUsGame) June 15, 2021
Team stream to celebrate Among Us’ 3rd Anniversary and to show off the 15 player update before it launches.
See you there!!
βΆοΈ https://t.co/DSMBZu2DBM https://t.co/YlB8MPMqcAChanges that stand out immediately:
- New voting screen.
- Voting animation gets a new look as well (video below)
- Dead bodies look different. Is it the backpack which the beans carry that gives the rectangle appearance?
A screenshot of the new Among Us gameplay with 15 players A screenshot from the Among Us gameplay that shows the new dead body style A screenshot from the new Among Us gameplay, showing the new body report animation A screenshot of the new Among Us gameplay with the new Discuss animation
I got a chance to record the new voting animation as well. I think it’s a welcome change as it significantly improves the time taken to show all the votes, especially important in a lobby that’s sized 15.
Besides these, the team announced support for mobile controllers and a certain new “honk” system on Airship. I am not curious about the mobile controller as I am a desktop player, but I am keen on seeing what the honk system is about. The update drops by 3PM EST, which is 12.30am IST. I am hoping to download the release tomorrow morning the first thing. π
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Opt out WiFi from Google and Microsoft location tracking
I was reading a Hacker News piece about Amazon opting out of Google’s FLoC and I learned something even more interesting. Google and Microsoft have been using information of WiFi networks, including residential properties, for location tracking purposes. It’s mind blowing that companies are able to make decisions as such. These requests must be opt-in, vs being an opt-out which is the case today.
Apparently this has been a thing for over a decade, and the earliest article that I could find on this is this blog post from Google where they outline a way to opt-out one’s access points and routers from this location tracking service. It’s fairly straightforward — one has to append
_nomap
to their router SSID.As for Microsoft’s equivalent of opting-out, one may add
_optout
to any part of the router’s SSID.To chain both opt-outs,
_optout_nomap
must do the trick. I did so on both bands on router – 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz.This is generally done by accessing the web-based software for your WiFi router and somewhere on the settings menu, you will see an option to change its name.
Related: Setting up pihole on the Tailscale network to block ads and telemetry on the go.
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VALORANT: I like this post-kill effect
This makes a great background for a desktop, right? Clutched to secure the game On my latest VALORANT game, we had the lead at 4-3, and it was our final plant. 5 Viper agents vs 5 Yoru agents. My team sped to site A while I took the other direction. Besides one agent B, everyone else were A. Tackled the one at B and ran fast to the other site, via their base. We were 3-1 agents by that time.
The other 2 die. I backtrack a bit, reach mid ground, walk to site A, clutched with a final headshot. A nice blue background appeared as well, which apparently is a skill from Yoru. I am yet to try Yoru.
On that note, Replication is back on VALORANT! If you are yet to try, the game is available on Riot’s website.
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Taildrop: free, p2p file sharing feature
Tailscale has been on my mind lately. It’s a fantastic software that’s available across multiple operating systems. It allows you to set up your own VPN network that you can connect to from anywhere. I use Tailscale to host my pi-hole nodes, a web server at home and my favorite use-case today is the new Taildrop feature.
It is a p2p (peer-to-peer) file sharing system that doesn’t upload your files to the cloud. Best of all, it works between two different works (laptop on WiFi and mobile device on mobile data) as well. That’s because it runs on the top of the Tailscale network.
It costs us, effectively, nothing to run, because itβs your bandwidth (mostly LAN bandwidth), not ours. We just bust some NATs and negotiate the session. Which is why we can give Taildrop away to everybody, for unlimited use, with no file size limits, as part of the Tailscale free plan. Itβs also open source.
Avery’s blog post is a great read!