As I have spent the last couple weeks warming my hands and roasting marshmallows over the Elon-Twitter Dumpster Fire, the most-riveting campfire stories have primarily been scoops from Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer at Platformer. Their summary of today's particularly chaotic happenings over at Twitter HQ is an especially enamoring play-by-play of Elon Musk's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Some key snippets from the excellent piece...

On remote work:

Speaking of the value of in-person work, he said: “If you can physically make it to an office and you don’t show up, resignation accepted.”

On the state of Twitter's remaining employees:

Around that time, someone put a poll into Twitter’s Slack channel: “Is it too early for vodka?” the poll asked. (It was a little after 1PM PT.)

On Twitter's survival:

Depending on the length and severity of the recession, he said, the company could lose several billion dollars next year. He would not speculate how much runway Twitter had left. "Bankruptcy isn't out of the question," he said, as we were also first to report.

On cleaning up the mess he himself had made:

Seventeen minutes later, Musk followed up with a one-sentence email to the team labeled "Top Priority." "Over the next few days," he wrote, the absolute top priority is finding and suspending any verified bots/trolls/spam."

That tidbit just brings to mind this spot-on assessment from Kieran Healy:

[Me standing in the flames of the burning house I don't want but recently had to buy because I signed a piece of paper saying "I promise to buy this house" and which I myself doused in gasoline and set on fire ]: I have done everything I could to appease the activists

— Kieran Healy (@kjhealy) November 4, 2022

And, the key take-away:

Musk’s whim-based approach to product development, his rapidly depleting executive ranks, and the very real likelihood of hundreds or even thousands of additional departures at the company in coming weeks threaten to leave Twitter a shadow of its former self. And much of the reason for that is Musk himself: the way he treated his employees and the product they built; the sage advice he ignored; the business fundamentals that he misunderstood.

How Casey and Zoë have managed to secure all of the insider details a few weeks ago was at the time extremely impressive to me. Now? Well, based on how they've been treated thus far, I imagine most Twitter employees would relish the opportunity to share a "day in the life" under Elon Musk.

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Now is probably as good a time as any to let anyone reading this know that I am now on Mastodon @mvo@mastodon.social — you can follow me there if you'd like. And, of course, I still maintain Peer Reviewed and write from time to time. There's something to the idea of "owning your own platform", after all.

Some very unpleasant local news (content warning: car crash, loss of life) crossed my feed this morning in what is also the first incidence I've seen of the new iPhone's Crash Detection feature in action. Early Sunday morning in Lincoln, Nebraska (about 45 minutes from where I sit), the Lincoln Police Department report that they were alerted to a car crash via the iPhone 14 (or possibly Apple Watch S8)'s automatic Crash Detection feature. Sadly, this crash was particularly violent and resulted in the loss of six young lives after many hours of emergency crew efforts. From the WOWT story:

Police are still investigating the cause of the crash but said it was reported by an iPhone that detected the impact and called responders automatically when the phone’s owner didn’t respond.

Although in this horrible incident it seems the iPhone 14/Apple Watch S8 Crash Detection feature was not enough to save any lives, it is a remarkable example of the feature in action. Nearby neighbors seem to have been on the scene and immediately attempted to rescue the passengers, and no doubt would have called 9-1-1. I am hopeful, though, how much time was saved by iOS's automatic emergency alerting — and how much of an impact that saved time will have in future crashes.

In a simultaneously stunning-yet-entirely-expected move, President Biden outlined his plan for student loan forgiveness today — the outline of which POTUS shared on Twitter:

In keeping with my campaign promise, my Administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023.

I'll have more details this afternoon. pic.twitter.com/kuZNqoMe4I

— President Biden (@POTUS) August 24, 2022

In summary:

• $10,000 in loan forgiveness for all borrowers — doubled to $20,000 if you received Pell grants
• An income cap of $125,000 for individuals and $250,000 for households
• The COVID interest & payment pause ends on January 1st, 2023
• Big changes to the Income-Based Repayment plan

Now, President Biden's titillating Twitter teaser of his titular tab-clearing tactic leaves many questions unanswered — only a portion of which are covered by the Department of Education's new StudentAid.gov/DebtRelief page (which has been intermittently down throughout the day of the announcement, no doubt due to much debtor demand for details). So, I've taken it upon myself to collect what we know about the final form of Biden's Student Debt Relief Plan plan, what we can guess about it, and some exploration of potential loopholes and "pro-tips" for folks looking to maximize their debt forgiveness. But first, a few disclaimers:

1. Throughout this post, I will be referring exclusively to federal student loans — privately-held student loans do not benefit from Biden's new forgiveness plan, nor do they benefit from the pause resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. Nothing I write here should be construed as advice and you should consult a fiduciary before making big financial decisions.
3. There's already speculation about the fate of this plan if it is subject to an exsanguinating examination by our current conservative SCOTUS — please remember your obligatory grains of salt before proceeding further.

The Student Loan Repayment Pause

This is the most straightforward component of Biden's plan: perennially-renewed no more, the pause on student loan monthly payments and interest accumulation will come to an end after December of this year — meaning individuals in repayment will resume their monthly obligations starting in January of 2023. The pause in payments and interest began in March of 2020 in-step with the COVID-19 pandemic, and come December will have resulted in 34 months of deferred payments and null interest charges for over 40 million student loan borrowers across America.

The Student Loan Forgiveness Plan

This is where the complexities begin, in no small part due to the fact that President Biden hasn't actually signed (or even released!) his Executive Order — which means the fine print hasn't, err, been printed at all yet. All we know about the plan comes from various tweets, a few statements to a handful of news outlets, and two web pages: the aforementioned StudentAid.gov/DebtRelief, and this fact sheet released by the White House — not a lot to go off of when the difference is tens of thousands of dollars! Here's what we know (with links to the respective source):

• $10,000 in forgiveness to all borrowers, doubled to $20,000 if you received a Pell grant (StudentAid.gov/DebtRelief)
• Graduate loans and Parent PLUS loans are also eligible for $10,000 of forgiveness. Pell grants do not impact graduate loan forgiveness (Washington Post)
• Individual income must fall below $125,000 for individuals or $250,000 for married couples/head-of-household (StudentAid.gov/DebtRelief)
• Borrowers will be income-eligible if either their 2020 or 2021 income is below their respective cap (Washington Post)
• Forgiveness will be automatic for eligible individuals if the Department of Education has your income information on file (StudentAid.gov/DebtRelief)
• The application for forgiveness will open prior to loan payments resuming in January (White House Fact Sheet)
• Only loans originated prior to July 1st, 2022 are eligible for forgiveness (Washington Post)
• Any amount of student loan forgiveness you receive is not taxable (White House Fact Sheet)

While the White House — through both its pre-prepared webpages and via comments to various news orgs — has provided a good amount of insight into the plan specifics, there are still a few areas where we have to make assumptions. For example, the income cutoff never really specifies how income is being measured...but I think it is reasonable to assume they will compare your adjusted gross income to the cutoff levels, rather than your top-line gross income. In other words, if your salary is $130,000 you are still likely to qualify for debt forgiveness, since your AGI after the standard deduction would be $117,450 (based on 2021 tax parameters).

Unanswered questions still abound. For instance, how will the debt forgiveness be distributed to borrowers with more than one loan with different interest rates? Borrowers would be highly-motivated to prioritize a loan with a higher interest rate over a lower rate loan of equal principle — but no information is available yet as to how the forgiveness will consider varying interest rates. How this is handled could result in thousands of dollars of difference over the span of years for many borrowers. Also, how exactly will Parent PLUS loans be sorted out? It's been confirmed they are eligible for forgiveness...but does that mean an undergraduate student with, say, $10,000 in Stafford loans + $10,000 in Parent PLUS loans in their parent's name will essentially receive $20,000 in forgiveness? It's hard to say — by my reading of the details, that's how I expect the forgiveness to work; quite the boon to borrowers in this situation! However, the nitty-gritty of the forgiveness application is likely to iron this wrinkle flat. I also have some questions about the July 1st cutoff for loan origination — many students have signed their Master Promissory Note over the last few weeks, and have been therefore entirely excluded from the loan forgiveness portion of Biden's plan. Now, naturally, there needs to be some cutoff so folks don't take on more debt to work the system...but given it was announced on August 24th, I think August 31st may have been a more reasonable date. Serve those students who are just now taking on debt for their education, and still greatly minimize the risk of people taking on debt specifically with forgiveness in mind. We'll see if there is any wiggle-room on that cutoff date as specific Executive Order language emerges.

Changes to Income-Based Repayment Plans

President Biden also included some surprising and substantial revisions to the various Income-Based Repayment options available to most student loan borrowers. First-and-foremost, the maximum monthly payment under these plans has been reduced to 5% of discretionary income (which is less than your AGI, and therefore results in lower monthly payments than 5% of AGI) instead of the 10% maximum on previous income-driven repayment plans. This will effectively cut monthly payments in half for many borrowers — a change the Biden Administration projects will save the average borrower over $1,000 per year. Loans under income-based repayment plans will also be forgiven after 10 years instead of 20 years if their balances are under $12,000 — essentially a second round of student loan forgiveness resulting from this plan. The plan will also increase the floor for $0 monthly payments up to 225% of the federal poverty line — meaning many low-income borrowers can fulfill the requirements of IBR plans with $0 monthly payments. But, perhaps the most significant component of the changes to IBR plans also seems to be the least-mentioned: Borrowers making on-time payments under an income-based repayment plan will have their interest subsidized (read: fully-paid) for the duration of those eligible payments. This, in essence, is what many progressive activists have been campaigning for for years: reducing student loan interest rates to zero. Now, not all borrowers are eligible for income-based repayment...but the Department of Education states that "most" of borrowers are. This portion of the plan many be by-far the most impactful improvement of student loan policy since their inception — 0% interest rates for most borrowers.

Of course, there are caveats and questions circling this provision as well: first, there are a variety of income-driven repayment plans with a similar variety of eligibility criteria, eligible loans, and eligibility date cutoffs — I won't be breaking all of those down here, but naturally these criteria will be meaningful to many borrowers. And a related question remains unanswered: do these changes apply to all of the income-based repayment options? Some of them? Just the helpfully-named "Income Based Repayment Plan", a specific plan among "income-based repayment plans"? It's hard to say — it's possible the eligible borrowers is reduced greatly via restriction of these changes to a single type of IBR plan...but again, we'll only know for sure when the specifics of the Executive Order (as well as Department of Education policy) is released.

Voluntary COVID-Times Payments

One other wrinkle of this plan is the matter of voluntary payments made during the pause on payments and interest due to the COVID-19. When people hear about "loan forgiveness" and think of the payments they made that otherwise might have been forgiven, there's not much to do (other than be happy for the people who will be benefited by the plan). But voluntary payments made during the COVID pause may pose an opportunity for a select group of borrowers to recoup their now-needless contributions. The Associated Press summarizes nicely:

WHAT IF I’VE ALREADY PAID OFF MY STUDENT LOANS — WILL I SEE RELIEF?

The debt forgiveness is expected to apply only to those currently holding student debt. But if you’ve voluntarily made payments since March 2020, when payments were paused, you can request a refund for those payments, according to the Federal Office of Student Aid. Contact your loan servicer to request a refund.

In short: borrowers may (not "will", may) benefit from requesting a refund of their voluntary payments during the COVID pause if they meet the following criteria:

• Their loans are eligible for forgiveness under the plan, and the current balance is < $10,000
• They made voluntary payments toward their between March 13th, 2020 and now
• (Speculation) They have not fully paid off their loan during the COVID pause

If these criteria are met, you can request a refund of a specified amount from your servicer...bringing your loan total back to $10,000 (or $20,000 if you are a Pell grant recipient!)...which will then theoretically be forgiven under President Biden's plan. Essentially, you're converting your voluntary payments during COVID into forgiven debt instead. So if you made $3,000 in payments during COVID towards your $10,000 loan balance (bringing it down to $7,000), you could request a refund now that you know with reasonable certainty that your $10,000 loan will be forgiven — and use that $3,000 for something else! Of course, my final bullet point labeled "Speculation" may be crucial for some folks: if you've fully paid off your loan during COVID times, requesting a refund may result in the origination of a new loan...after the July 1st cutoff for forgiveness! Consult with your servicer very carefully if you fall into this bucket, because loans originated after July 1st will not be eligible for forgiveness!

In Summary

If you couldn't tell from my constant couching throughout this post, there is much to dissect about what we know — even this post is not fully-comprehensive! — and much we don't know at all yet about this debt forgiveness plan. Hopefully we get to see more of the fine print over the coming weeks, and the political bellwether continues to discourage any blockage resulting from conservative consternation. I'll end by summarizing this entire post as succinctly as I can:

• Up to $10k ($20k for Pell grantees) knocked off your loan balance
• $125k ($250k if married) income cap, likely the lower of 2020/2021 AGI
• Application will be open before EOY
• Cutoff date for forgivable loans is July 1st, 2022
• Loan payment pause ends in Dec 2022, payments resume Jan 2023
• Forgiveness is non-taxable
• Income-based repayment plan monthly payments cut in half (5% of discretionary income)
• On-time income-based repayments = 0% interest for eligible loans (!!)
• 10 years of IBR payments results in forgiveness (reduced from 20 years)
• Certain borrowers may benefit from asking for a refund of voluntary COVID-times loan payments

During today's Ability Summit 2022, Microsoft announced their new line of Adaptive Accessories — hardware devices specifically designed with accessibility in mind. Michael Clark, writing at The Verge:

The lineup consists of three different devices: the Adaptive Mouse, Adaptive Buttons, and the Adaptive Hub. The mouse and buttons are made to support 3D-printed accessories so you can customize them to work the way you want them to.

The adaptive buttons let you add eight programmable inputs to your computer. That doesn’t mean you have to have eight physical buttons, though — the company showed a version with just two large, easy-to-press buttons. But because the mouse can also be used as, say, a joystick or as an eight-way D-pad, Microsoft says you can set the inputs to act as macros or complicated keyboard shortcuts, which could be difficult to execute for those with motor disabilities

Microsoft had a previous compelling entrant in the accessible hardware space with its Xbox Adaptive Controller, which already stood in a league of its own for gaming accessibility — this new line of hardware products further expands upon Microsoft's obvious commitment to those with disabilities.

What's most-intriguing to me about this initial offering — again: a mouse, the buttons, and the hub — is the deliberate planning for customization. The ability to 3D print attachments for the 8-switch Adaptive Button, for example, allows folks with poor motor skills to add custom joystick attachments and still get the most out of this clever little device. Gabi Michel, Microsoft's Director of Accessible Accessories, put it succinctly in Microsoft's accompanying promo video:

The Microsoft Adaptive input ecosystem is very adaptable and very customizable. Almost every part of it you can swap so that you create a setup that is unique to you — it is 'one size fits one'."

I've discussed before how innovations and explorations in "odd" hardware products like the Elgato Stream Deck Pedal and the new Adaptive Accessories line can make monumental differences in the lives of folks who rely on their computers just as much as any of us do...but have physical barriers to using them to their full potential. Microsoft's promo video for the Adaptive Accessories is a remarkable showcase of exactly that: life-changing hardware that reduces the barrier to entry for so much of our world today — go give it a watch and see for yourself.

Apple just announced some much-needed improvements to the Find My network specifically addressing the stalking concerns surrounding AirTags and other Find My accessories — which I discussed at length in a recent post. The list of changes is lengthy (which is good), and addresses many areas of improvement to the Find My network's privacy and anti-stalking feature-set. Chance Miller covered all of the changes in detail over at 9to5Mac, but in short the list of promised improvements includes:

• Clear language during AirTags setup about the intent of the product, and their anti-stalking features.
• Improved nearby device alerts that more-specifically identify the device detected near you
• Expanded support documentation on what users should do if they get such a Find My alert.
• Availability of the Precision Finding feature to recipients of "unwanted tracker" notifications.
• On-device alerts when nearby AirTags begin playing a chime in an attempt to be found.
• "Refined unwanted tracking alert logic" — hopefully improvements to the required duration before an alert, etc.
• Louder AirTag tones to make finding them much easier.

All of these improvements are very good iterations on an already-outstanding system. As I harped on in my previous post, AirTags and the Find My network stand entirely alone in the tracker market in terms of anti-stalking protections, and these additions only reaffirm that position. I even posited that Apple's approach to AirTags privacy features might result in more creeps getting caught, as opposed to any increase in stalking in general, due to AirTags automatically alerting any would-be victims. Apple provided some commentary (albeit lacking in specifics) on this topic in their post as well:

We have been actively working with law enforcement on all AirTag-related requests we’ve received. Based on our knowledge and on discussions with law enforcement, incidents of AirTag misuse are rare; however, each instance is one too many.

Every AirTag has a unique serial number, and paired AirTags are associated with an Apple ID. Apple can provide the paired account details in response to a subpoena or valid request from law enforcement. We have successfully partnered with them on cases where information we provided has been used to trace an AirTag back to the perpetrator, who was then apprehended and charged.

The fact that every AirTag has a unique ID, is tied to an Apple ID, and alerts its victims to its presence makes it an incredibly bad choice for creeps to commit crimes; as I speculated, a quick subpoena for the owner of a malicious AirTag provides law enforcement with all the information they need to make a quick arrest — and Apple seems more than happy to help with such efforts (as they should be).

The only major component missing from Apple's AirTags adjustment announcement are accommodations for any Android-users who may fall victim to stalking. Chance Miller sums up the issue nicely:

Going forward, the biggest hole in the Find My and AirTag alerts ecosystem continues to be on the Android side of things. While Apple does offer a “Tracker Detect” application to locate nearby AirTags with an Android device, the app doesn’t scan for nearby accessories in the background. Instead, it only scans a user’s surroundings when the user initiates the scan.

It might require some sort of cross-platform collaboration between Apple and Google, but ideally there’s more that can be done in this regard to protect Android users.

I couldn't agree more — I think if Apple partnered with Google to bring background tracker scanning to Android, all of the obvious holes in the Find My network would be patched and any would-be stalkers using AirTags would probably just be signing up to be ID'd and quite possibly arrested.

As was recently foretold, Apple has announced Tap to Pay support on iPhone models with NFC chips — Chance Miller, reporting at 9to5Mac:

Apple has officially announced a new Tap to Pay feature for iPhone. This feature, coming later this year, will allow businesses to use their iPhone to “seamlessly and securely” accept Apple Pay payments with a simple tap. The feature will also work for contactless credit cards and debit cards, as well as other digital wallets.

Even better, Apple has promised a full SDK for third-party developers to integrate touchless payment support in their own iPhone apps and has already partnered with Stripe as the first payment processor to support the feature. From the Apple Newsroom release:

Tap to Pay on iPhone will be available to participating payment platforms and their app developer partners to leverage in their software developer kits (SDKs) in an upcoming iOS software beta.

One other interesting wrinkle in this story is the lack of any mention of iPad support for this feature — presumably because no current iPad models include NFC support (despite certain models ostensibly including an NFC chip, disabled or otherwise). Given that so many small shop payment terminals are just iPads on swivel stands, you'd think Apple would prioritize adding this feature to iPad hardware as well. Recent rumors have suggested unexpectedly-imminent refreshes to the base iPad as well as the iPad Air, as well as more-timely iPad Pro updates. Zach Knox connected the dots for us in the Relay FM Members Discord:

Zach Knox, connecting the dots with red twine and thumbtacks.

The pre-announcement of Tap to Pay support on iPhone is surely setting the stage for the alleged March 8th Apple Event, which is set to include new iPad hardware spanning the entire line. I expect NFC support will be explicitly called out in any new iPads announced at this event, perhaps even with a shout-out to the new Tap to Pay support as well.

The one remaining question: What percentage of Tap to Pay transactions does Apple plan to skim off the top for themselves?

Apple’s AirTags are one of the most feature-rich and useful consumer tracking products on the market — extensive OS integration, pinpoint tracking accuracy using Apple’s U1 chip, and perhaps the biggest benefit of all: the unrivaled network of iOS devices on the Find My network, which essentially guarantees a lost item is able to “ping” its owner with a location. That said, easy, affordable, and ubiquitous tracking devices have caused some considerable concern particularly from victims of stalking — Ryan Mac and Kashmir Hill summarize the issue well in their New York Times coverage:

Ms. Estrada is not alone in her experience. In recent months, people have posted on TikTok, Reddit and Twitter about finding AirTags on their cars and in their belongings. There is growing concern that the devices may be abetting a new form of stalking, which privacy groups predicted could happen when Apple introduced the devices in April.

The sharp increase in reports of people being unknowingly tracked by bad actors using AirTags is clearly indicative of a major problem — but the question I’ve been wrestling with since these stories began is “Has Apple made the problem of stalking worse with AirTags, or just easier to discover?” This question stems from one of the primary features of AirTags that most competing products entirely lack: the “anti-stalking features” baked into iOS. From the AirTag’s product page:

AirTag is designed to discourage unwanted tracking. If someone else’s AirTag finds its way into your stuff, your iPhone will notice it’s traveling with you and send you an alert. After a while, if you still haven’t found it, the AirTag will start playing a sound to let you know it’s there.

Put simply, if an unknown AirTag is seen moving with you for a period of time your iPhone will send you a notification to let you know, and even cause the offending AirTag to beep and give away its location. I’ve gotten this notification myself on a day where I had my wife’s car keys, “unknown” AirTag included. Since the AirTag did not belong to my iCloud account, I got a warning notification after about four hours of driving around town on my errands. Obviously, in my situation the warning notification was frivolous and almost worth a chuckle (after all, I knew my wife’s keys were the culprit) — but to someone who finds an AirTag in their purse after a party or on the underside of their car? I imagine discovering that some stranger is tracking your location (and has been for a couple hours) would be greatly distressing.

AirTag Notifications and the Frequency Illusion

For a moment, let’s place the many recent stories about unwanted AirTag stalking in context with Apple’s anti-stalking feature (which notifies iOS users of the fact they are being tracked) and the surrounding market of other readily-available tracking devices (Tile, Chipolo, or no-name options from Amazon and Alibaba) with no such anti-stalking features to speak of. Yes, Apple’s AirTags have the U1 chip, which greatly narrows the accuracy of the device to under one foot versus the bluetooth-limited range of 30 feet for most other trackers. That said, I would argue a nefarious individual wanting to stalk someone would debatably be foolish to use an AirTag to do so…since their victim has a high probability of being alerted to the tracking device (if they have an iPhone — more on that later). Surely to a criminal, the benefit of AirTags’ highly-pinpoint accuracy is immediately overwhelmed by the downside of getting caught. AirTags’ anti-stalking features make the discovery of an unwanted tracker trivially-easy (for iPhone-users), and each AirTag being paired to a specific iCloud account (and in the case of a surreptitiously-placed AirTag: a specific criminal’s iCloud account) creates a scenario in which victims are readily-notified and perpetrators are easily identified by law enforcement (presumably with a simple subpoena for the owner of the discovered AirTag). In fact, I think the increase in news stories about AirTag stalking situations are less indicative of AirTags causing more stalking, and more indicative of how frequently stalkings already occur — with AirTags’ anti-stalking features simply bringing more of these horrible situations to light. These stories may be a classic example of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (AKA the "Frequency Illusion") — in which increased awareness of creeps using AirTags to stalk women creates the illusion that it is happening more often, or even that AirTags are responsible for this illusory increase in incidence.

Finding More Solutions

Stalking is a serious problem, and Apple’s foray into the tracker market places the hefty responsibility of harm mitigation on their shoulders — if nothing else due to their sheer scale making trackers like AirTags so much more ubiquitous. Apple’s iteration on AirTags’ anti-stalking features seems to indicate the company is aware of their role in protecting users, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Perhaps the highest-priority item should be bringing the iOS-integrated unknown tracker notification to Android devices as well, as Benjamin Mayo from 9to5mac and others have suggested. Apple has released a dedicated Android app so users can “scan” for nearby AirTags, but the lack of constant background checks and the necessity of manually seeking out the app in the first place renders it all but useless. I’d guess most of the foundational work for Android system-level tracker alerts was done with Apple and Google’s joint effort on the (painfully underutilized) COVID exposure notification API, so a partnership with Google to further-reduce the harm of stalking is probably feasible. In addition, the nebulous amount of time (usually on the order of hours) that an unwanted AirTag needs to be following you seems somewhat untenable if preventing stalking is the goal. If it takes five hours of moving around before you’re notified that you may be being stalked, is the harm really prevented? I proposed on Twitter that Apple (and perhaps Google down the road) should add the ability to lower the time before such a warning is sent to a user’s preference — or perhaps even better, set the default duration very low (30 minutes?) and allow users to raise it if they feel comfortable with the added risk.

Ultimately, I don’t think AirTags are to blame for any perceived increase in stalking incidents since their release — in fact, I think their innovative anti-stalking features are likely resulting in more unaware victims discovering the unwanted trackers and avoiding much worse outcomes. That being said, the ball is still in Apple’s court to take a very negative PR situation and apply some creative solutions (like the ones suggested above) to deliver real-world protections for potential victims of stalking. AirTags’ anti-stalking features have already put pressure on other tracking companies like Tile to develop similar anti-stalking solutions, and hopefully further improvements will make stalking someone with a consumer tracker dingus much more difficult for creeps and weirdos; or if nothing else, results in more of them getting caught.

Chance Miller, reporting today via 9to5Mac:

With Find My integration, the Chipolo Card Spot can be paired with the Find My app on your iPhone and easily located using the Find My network. You can also receive a notification when you leave your wallet behind using the new “Notify When Left Behind” feature of iOS 15.

The Chipolo Card Spot looks to be the best offering available to anyone looking for Find My compatibility in a wallet tracker. Apple's lackluster attempt in the MagSafe Wallet with Find My is such a compromised and incomplete implementation of "Find My" compatibility that the product description includes two asterisks. I covered my disappointment with the MagSafe Wallet back in September, when it's primary feature (left-behind notifications) was quickly revealed to be more annoyance than loss-avoidance with its lack of smarts. The only other way to add true Find My integration to a wallet are the many grotesqueries that lash entire AirTag to your wallet (with the obvious and unacceptable caveat of...an entire AirTag bulging out of your pocket).

Chipolo's new product (which is available now for pre-order, shipping in February) is better in almost every possible way than either of these solutions. The Card Spot is $35 (vs $29 for an AirTag or $59 for the MagSafe Leather Wallet), but offers fully-featured tracking using the Find My network (vs the MagSafe Wallet only remembering where it was removed from your phone), in a slim credit card form factor (as opposed to an AirTag-shaped bone spur jutting out of your pocket). It also has all of the primary features of the AirTag, including Lost Mode (which notifies you when your item is found near any iOS device) and the ability to play a sound when nearby. Oh, and no more obnoxious "Wallet Disconnected" notifications! Truly the best of all possible worlds. The only downside I currently see with Chipolo's offering is the lack of a replaceable battery — though this trade-off is somewhat mitigated by Chipolo offering a 50% discount and prepaid recycling for its customers.

When I got the MagSafe Leather Wallet with Find My, I was hoping for a solution that would A. Hold my credit cards and B. Help me find my wallet if I lost it. While it succeeds at A, it fails spectacularly at B. Chipolo has created a product that would actually help me find my wallet if it were lost or stolen. I immediately pre-ordered it, and hope to have a positive update when it arrives in February.

Every year, Relay FM and its surrounding community of tech nerds and podcast listeners rally together to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital — one of the premier pediatric cancer research institutions in the world. The fundraiser is back and better than ever with sticker rewards for certain donors, donation thresholds for Flight Simulator streams, a horrifying amount of stickers, and the annual Podcastathon live stream on September 17th. Relay hopes to raise $333,333.33 (though I have a feeling that goal will be raised, since they racked up $456,000 last year to bring their cumulative total to well-over $1,000,000. I’m always delighted to donate to this cause because St. Jude does such amazing work, and this year I also worked out a way to track their progress live right on my iPhone home screen.

Relay runs their St. Jude fundraiser using Tiltify — a service that focuses entirely on campaigns like this, and importantly has a public-facing API. Because of that, it’s fairly easy to pull updates from Relay’s donation page using a POST request and parsing the (rather large) JSON dictionary that returns. An intrepid member of the Relay FM members Discord discovered this fact and created a Siri Shortcut to quickly display the total amount raised…but that gave me a better idea: what about a home screen widget?

When you need to call an API and create a dynamic home screen widget, two apps come to mind: Scriptable and Pyto — given that my only serviceable programming know-how is in Python, I chose the latter and got to work cobbling together a script.

Displaying Campaign Data, Dr. Drang-Style

The first thing I needed to do was connect to the Tiltify campaign with a POST request — big thanks to Ben in the Relay Discord for doing most of the heavy lifting with his Siri Shortcut! Tiltify expects a nightmarishly-long JSON payload in a POST request, but the JSON data it returns is much more straight-forward. Using Pyto, I called the API and parsed the JSON key:value pairs in the returned data to snag the totalAmountRaised and goal values from Relay’s 2021 St. Jude campaign. A little conversion turns those raw floats into properly-formatted dollar values with thousands-commas and dollar signs.

#Pull data from the returned JSON payload.
info = (r.json())
rawraised = info["data"]["campaign"]["totalAmountRaised"]["value"]
rawgoal = info["data"]["campaign"]["goal"]["value"]
# Convert pulled values into properly-formatted dollar values:
raised = "$" + '{0:,.2f}'.format(float(rawraised))
goal = "$" + '{0:,.2f}'.format(float(rawgoal))

Once I was able to pull the fundraiser's goal and the current amount raised, the next challenge was displaying that information within an iOS home screen widget. First and foremost, I really wanted a dynamic progress bar but wanted to generate one as simply as possible. My brother (a much more experienced programmer) helped me write this clever snippet of code to simply display a string of emojis 12 characters long, with two emojis (⬜ and 🟩) proportionally placed to form the progress bar. Here's what the code looks like:

# Generate a progress bar using emojis
def progressbar(raised, goal):
    # Modify these emoji to change the "empty" and "full" sections of the progress bar.
    progress_full = "🟩" 
    progress_empty = "⬜"
    bar_length = 12 # Modify this number to adjust the max width of the progress bar.
    progress_percent = float(raised)/float(goal)
    progress = ""
    progress = progress_full * int(bar_length * progress_percent)
    return '{:⬜<{x}}'.format(progress, x=bar_length) 
    #If you modify progress_empty above, you need to put it in this return statement as well.

The length of the progress bar needs to be fiddled with based on the width of the device; I'm sure there are much more clever ways to generate the proper number of emojis based on the device the code is being run on, but that was above my pay grade! Twelve emojis wide was just about perfect for a medium widget on my iPhone XS — your mileage may vary based on your device.

All that's left is to actually generate the widget to display all of this data on my home screen. I was expecting this to be much more challenging, since I had never used Pyto or its widget library, but luckily when you open a new script Pyto offers to automatically populate an example widget! A bit of hacking around with the example code and some digging in their widget documentation let me insert the variables I was interested in, change the background color, and remove the option of a small widget (it's just too small). In short order, I could present the amount raised, the fundraiser goal, the percent progress, and a delightful emoji progress bar right on my home screen! Here's the code:

if wd.link is None:
    widget = wd.Widget()
    wd.wait_for_internet_connection()
    background = wd.Color.rgb(219.7/255, 182.8/255, 72.2/255) 
    #You can modify the background color by altering the RGB values to your liking

    # Populate four rows of data, and accompanying font sizes:
    text1 = wd.Text("Raised: " + raised) 
    text1.font = wd.Font.bold_system_font_of_size(20)
    text2 = wd.Text("Goal: " + goal)
    text2.font = wd.Font.bold_system_font_of_size(20)
    text3 = wd.Text("Progress: " + progress)
    text3.font = wd.Font.bold_system_font_of_size(20)
    text4 = wd.Text(bar) #Progress bar
    text4.font = wd.Font.bold_system_font_of_size(18)

    # Supported layouts (the small widget is too small)
    layouts = [widget.medium_layout, widget.large_layout]
    for layout in layouts:
        layout.add_row([text1])
        layout.add_row([text2])
        layout.add_row([text3])
        layout.add_row([wd.Spacer()])
        layout.add_row([text4])
        layout.set_background_color(background)
        layout.set_link("https://stjude.org/relay")
    wd.schedule_next_reload(900) # Suggested refresh time in seconds
    wd.show_widget(widget)
else:
    open(wd.link) #This opens the link above when the widget is tapped.

And here's what the resulting widget looks like:

The widget looks quite nice to me, and can be further modified in the Pyto code to your liking!

I think it looks pretty nice, given that I spent almost zero time optimizing the padding, font size, and background color in the Pyto code. Their widget documentation has many more UI customization options that intrepid readers can explore to make more advanced or aesthetically appealing widgets for themselves, but I'm pretty happy with where this simple version landed. As a nice bonus, Pyto also has a way to alter what tapping on the widget does — you'll notice that the entire widget generation code is wrapped in an IF-ELSE statement; tapping the widget sets wd.link to TRUE and instead runs the open(wd.link) function...which naturally directs to Relay's St. Jude Fundraiser page (if you've read this far and haven't donated yet, now's the time!). I think that having to bounce back into Pyto to make this happen is a bit clunky, but beggars can't be choosers. The widget also seems to refresh relatively often — Apple says that widgets dynamically refresh somewhere between 15-70 minutes depending on user behavior, which is more than enough to keep the raised amount relatively up-to-date.

I Don't Want to Read Your Code, I Just Want the Widget!

Fair enough, let's actually walk through the steps for you, dear reader, to get this widget on your iPhone:

1. Download Pyto from the app store. Pyto has a 3-day free trial, but you'll need to pay the $2.99 in-app purchase to run this script beyond then.
2. Download this python script from my GitHub page. It handles all of the steps I discussed above: Pulling the fundraiser data, generating a progress bar, and creating the widget using Pyto. Save it in the Files app so you can run it using Pyto (please don't judge my horrendous code too harshly, I'm still new to programming!) If you're feeling adventurous, you can also modify the font size and color, background color, and even what text is displayed — just dive into the code!
3. Run the script once using Pyto
4. Edit your home screen, and add the Run Script widget from Pyto (Medium or Large, your choice). Configure that widget to run the StJudeRelay2021.py script you just saved in Pyto

And just like that, you'll be able to monitor Relay's annual St. Jude fundraiser from your home screen. If you still haven't donated, you absolutely should click here now and do so — there's no better cause than St. Jude, and the Relay folks' partnership with them is exceptionally wholesome. And after you donate, you'll want to mark your calendar for the culmination of the campaign: the Podcastathon on September 17th over on Relay's Twitch channel. It's always a wild and wacky event full of fun shenanigans, all for a spectacular cause.

The flowers are blooming, the birds are chirping, and Tim Cook is eager to show off some new products — and undoubtedly some engaging graphs — ripe for the season remotely from Apple Park. I thought it would be fun to add some of my product predictions to the fertile soil of supply chain rumors, curated event drafts, and previsioni di passione 🤌.

• AirTags are announced. I consider this one low-hanging fruit. This product won’t go the way of AirPower; it will arrive precisely when it means to (especially given indications like the Find My Items tab in iOS 14.5 and the just-added support for third-party tracking devices). I expect they’ll probably come in a 3-pack, and retail for $49.99 (just slightly more than I would like them to be).
• New iPads, both Pro and Mini. Another freebie — updated iPad Pros have been in the rumor pipeline for a while, and the timing lines up with previous updates to the line. I have my doubts that the fancy new miniLED screen technology is ready to ship, but I also struggle to think of other improvements to the iPad Pro hardware worthy of stage time — it’s just so good. Sure, another USB-C port (nay: a USB-4/Thunderbolt port), a landscape-oriented FaceTime camera, and a new processor would all be great...but my 2018 11” iPad Pro still feels delightfully brand-new. The real (if still insufficient) iPad Pro improvements will ultimately arrive at WWDC in June, when iPadOS gets its opportunity to catch up with its hardware. I expect the iPad Mini will also get a refresh — everyone is hoping for an iPad-Pro like design to grace the smaller form factor of the iPad Mini, but my guess is that it looks just about the same with a slightly newer chip (leftover A13s, perhaps).
• The Apple Pencil 3. Of the potential products unveiled at this event, AirTags and a new Apple Pencil are the ones I am most likely to purchase. The 2nd-gen Apple Pencil (much like the 2018 iPad Pro it is attached to) still feels like magic to me, and is hands-down the best stylus I’ve ever used. Ultimately, the only thing I expect Apple to add to its successor is an “input” surface on the eraser-side of the Pencil for, well, erasing things. Microsoft’s Surface Pen has had this feature (and, get this, a button too!) since 2012 — an eraser is the next logical addition to one of Apple’s best accessories, especially given their investment in handwriting on iPad with the addition of Scribble support in iPadOS 14.
• The iMac Redesign. I think this is probably the boldest of my predictions: this event is in essence a vehicle to announce completely redesigned iMacs shipping with Apple Silicon chips. I expect radically smaller bezels (and a chin-ectomy), a re-evaluation of the iMac stand (perhaps taking hints from the oft-mocked Pro Display XDR stand...and maybe the reason behind the event’s “springy” branding?), and a selection of new colors to boot (silver, space gray, rose gold, and perhaps a blue hue). All of this is great news for folks in the market for a desktop Mac with a great screen — I just hope that Apple has the good sense to ship it with a 1080p webcam.
• Wild Card: A New Apple TV and an Accompanying Services Segment. Ok, I lied, I’ve got one even bolder prediction: A brand-new Apple TV is announced, complete with a new Siri Remote. And, to keep projecting my own desires: the new Apple TV will be an Apple TV/HomePod love-child that has cropped up in recent supply chain rumors. This prediction is entirely destined to be wrong, but I want this product so badly that I have to put it out into the world in hopes of it being right. I also think Apple scarcely misses an opportunity for a Services segment, and what better way to segue into an Apple TV+ promo than by announcing new TV hardware?

I think tomorrow’s Apple event will largely go exactly as the rumors and pundits expect it to — which means about half of my predictions are bound to be wrong. Either way, it’s always nice to have an opportunity to wish-cast about something other than vaccine rollouts — a brief reprieve in the form of excitement in a world so thoroughly exhausted. That said, most of this event’s products won’t be “for me” — I might pick up some AirTags, and a new Apple Pencil is intriguing to me, but my 2018 iPad Pro is still more capable (well, hardware-wise) than I need it to be. I’m mostly just along for the ride of collective joy that Apple events engender in the communities I frequent.