On coding, tech, privacy, AI and whatever else comes to this mind.

  • After a while corespeechd is constantly using 100% of one CPU core on my new Mac Mini. Annoying. Haven’t found another way than to kill it on a schedule.

  • Hey Siri, pre-heat my car

    When I got my Renault Zoe, I was excited to see that it came with an accompanying app, which let’s you remotely pre-heat (or cool) the car and also check the charge status of the battery. Being able to pre-condition the car is great as the process takes a few minutes and it’s nice when it’s finished by the time you’re getting into the car. And having remote access to the charging status is especially handy on road trips: Firstly, it’s annoying to go back to the car and find that it still needs to charge for another half hour and you could have gotten a coffee or went for a nice walk. Secondly, you might be wasting money by remaining plugged in when the car is already full, if you’re getting charged by the minute. So there’s real utility to such an app.

    The excitement about the app didn’t last too long. It feels neglected, is slow to use, and routinely forgets my login credentials. It doesn’t support current OS features such as the iPhone X-sized screen, Siri or Shortcuts either.

    However, luckily the app is built using an API that other curious minds have since reverse-engineered – Kudos in particular to Terence Eden and aironaut.ch for sharing their insights. This allows you to replicate the features of the app in a different package.

    What I wanted to do was this: Be able to use Siri on my phone or watch to ask “How’s my car” to get the charging status, and “Pre-heat my car” to start pre-heating it.

    Knowing the API is the first half, the second half is picking a tool that let’s me query the API from Siri. This should be possible with Apple’s Shortcuts app, but I prefer to use a textual rather than visual programming language. The right tool for me was the excellent Pythonista which has a beta version available that adds support for running scripts via Siri and the Shortcuts app.

    The result: I can now say “Hey Siri, pre-heat Moritz” and a few seconds later it’ll start pre-heating, or say “How’s Moritz?” and get the current charge, current range, and when it’ll reach 100% charge. I can also trigger both of those without saying a word through the Shortcuts widget on my lock screen. Works like a charm!


    If anyone wants to replicate this, below is the script. Copy it into Pythonista, adjust your username and password, optionally set a custom name for the car. Then use Pythonista’s built-in feature to add Siri Shortcut to use it with Siri. By default this will run the “battery status” part, for the pre-conditioning use a single argument precondition. Once you’ve added the command to Siri, you can also use it in the Shortcuts app.1

    #!python3
    
    import datetime
    import requests
    import shortcuts
    import sys
    
    username = "you@domain.com"
    password = "YourPassw0rd"
    carname = "Zoe"
    
    ### Fetches auth token and VIN
    def login():
      headers = {"Content-Type": "application/json"}
      body = {"username": username, "password": password}
      url = f"https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/user/login"
      
      result = requests.post(url, json=body, headers=headers).json()
      token = result['token']
      vin = result['user']['vehicle_details']['VIN']
      return {"token": token, "vin": vin}
      
    def get_battery():
      creds = login()
      headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {creds['token']}"}
      url = f"https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/{creds['vin']}/battery"
      
      result = requests.get(url, headers=headers).json()
      if result['charging']:
        minutes = result['remaining_time']
        remaining = fuzzy_duration(minutes)
        status = f"done charging in {remaining}"
      else:
        status = "is not charging"
      return f"{carname} can go {result['remaining_range']}km. Battery is {result['charge_level']}% full and {status}."
      
    def fuzzy_duration(minutes):
      if minutes < 90:
        return f"{minutes} minutes"
      if minutes < 3 * 60:
        half_hours = round(minutes / 30) / 2
        return f"{half_hours} hours"
      else:
        hours = round(minutes / 60)
        return f"{hours} hours"
        
    def precondition():
      creds = login()
      headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {creds['token']}"}
      url = f"https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/{creds['vin']}/air-conditioning"
      result = requests.post(url, headers=headers)
      if 200 <= result.status_code < 300:
        return f"{carname} is warming up"
      else:
        return f"{carname} is not responding"
      
    def main():
      if len(sys.argv) > 1 and sys.argv[1] == "precondition":
        text = precondition()
      else:
        text = get_battery()
        
      if shortcuts.is_shortcut():
        shortcuts.set_spoken_output(text)
      else:
        # For debugging in the main app (normally, this script would run in a Siri shortcut):
        print(text)
          
    if __name__ == '__main__':
      main()
    

    Changelog:

    1. For detailed steps on how to do this, see a related post on the Pythonista forum


  • Tech Note: Sharing iCloud Drive documents from your app
  • Switching Mojave's dark and light themes using touch bar

    Mac OS Mojave introduces both a pretty dark mode and a way to trigger Automator scripts right from the Touch Bar. The two go together nicely:

    1. Open Automator and create a “Quick Action”. This should receive “no input” and have a single “Run AppleScript” action with the following content:
    tell application "System Events"
      tell appearance preferences
        set dark mode to not dark mode
      end tell
    end tell
    
    1. Save it, which will then land in your ~/Library/Services folder.
    2. In your System Preferences > Keyboard > “Customise Touch Bar…”, drag the “Quick Actions” to your Touch Bar.

    And – bam! – two taps on the Touch Bar, and you toggle between light and dark.


    I also tried (desperately) to switch the accent colour at the same time, but to no avail. The script below shows that there’s highlight color: orange, but I couldn’t get this to work. I’d appreciate any help from AppleScript pros.

    tell application "System Events"
      tell appearance preferences
        get properties
        set highlight color to orange -- does nothing visually, though it does change that property :(
      end tell
    end tell
    

  • Tech Note: RxSwift in custom views, the clean way
  • Just came across Mirrorshades which is as minimalist as web analytics can get. Adorable simplicity!

  • Tech Note: Importing app module in unit test fails to compile
  • I very much enjoyed this mathematical and easy to follow explanation of the benefits of vaccinations to the community – including those who don’t or can’t get vaccinated themselves: “How Math (and Vaccines) Keep You Safe From the Flu” by Patrick Honner

  • Nick Bilton on Vanity Fair:

    As a society, we feel like we’re at war with a computer algorithm, and the only winning move is not to play.

    This is in a nutshell why privacy matters, even if you don’t have anything to hide.

  • iPad Pro 12.9 vs. 10.5

    The iPad Pro is a great device and I’ve been happily using the 12.9 inch model for a good 1.5 years. At times it felt too large though – especially when using it on the couch. So when I got the chance to get a new iPad for work, I decided to give the 10.5 inch model a try. What follows are my observations after a few months of using the 10.5 inch model running iOS 11.

    On the screen real estate:

    1. Having two apps in 50/50 split screen mode gives both the iPhone appearance, i.e., you typically just get a single column of content, not two.
    2. However, several apps, such as Safari gets a special mode for when it is in a 50/50 split with another app or you use its own split screen mode: you get a toolbar on the bottom like on an iPad, but you still get the tabs at the top as when using fullsceen.
    3. No more 3-column views when using Apple’s apps full-screen. Say, in Mail you don’t have a view where you can see both the message, the list of messages and the list of folders. I used this a fair bit to quickly drag and drop messages to folders, and this is simply not possible – you never get to see both the list of messages and the list of folders on one screen. The same applies to Notes. However, third-party apps behave differently and, say, Ulysses and Bear still have the three column view.
    4. You only get 13 slots in the Dock, not 15. However, when you cram it full and have the recent apps visible on the right, the tap targets become so small in portrait mode that I had several cases of hitting the wrong app, which is something that never happened on the 12.9. I’m sticking to 11 apps plus the recent ones because of that.

    On the software keyboard:

    1. You don’t get the additional keyboard row with numbers, but you do get the swipe down on keys to get to numbers and special characters.
    2. You also don’t get a tab key (nor a caps lock key). Makes filling in forms slower and a disadvantage if you do coding on the iPad.
    3. 10 finger typing on the software keyboard is also possible. Took me less than a day to adjust and I feel like I am making less mistakes on the 10.5 inch screen than in the 12.9 one.
    4. No more oversized old software keyboard for apps that haven’t yet been updated for the 12.9 size - unfortunately that’s still quite a few apps. You still notice those apps as the lack of being optimised for the 10.5 inch screen means they don’t look as sharp as updated apps.

    On the pencil:

    1. My primary use case on the pencil is hand-written notes and sketches. The 10.5 works just fine for that.

    My summary: I feel less of a need to always use split screen mode as fullscreen apps don’t overwhelm you as easily as on the large iPad. I missed the 3-column views initially, but adopting my workflow for sorting my mails did not take long. I’m very happy with the “tiny” iPad. It’s good for typing, more suitable for the couch and much more portable.


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