John Cox

Blogs · @wyome

Tagged automation · everything

www.makeuseof.com

Your Mac has a powerful automation tool most people never open

macOS's built-in Shortcuts app offers a no-code way to automate tasks through a drag-and-drop interface that rivals Windows automation tools, making it accessible to users without programming experience. The app works by letting you stack pre-built actions together and then trigger them based on conditions like time of day or device connections, with support for third-party apps expanding what you can control beyond just system settings. The author demonstrates practical examples like auto-detecting keyboard connectivity to switch display layouts and launching focus modes when opening work apps, while noting the community at r/shortcuts showcases even more advanced automation possibilities.

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GitHub

omlahore/RemoveMacAI: Debloat macOS: turn off Apple Intelligence, analytics, ads and pop-ups. A native app and CLI, and every change can be undone.

RemoveMacAI is a tool that lets users selectively disable Apple Intelligence features, analytics, ads, and various system annoyances on macOS while preserving changes that can be undone. It offers both a graphical app and command-line interface with preset configurations (Recommended and Maximum Privacy) that show users exactly what will change before applying modifications. The tool also recovers disk space by removing AI models, old installers, and cached files, and can export configuration profiles for enterprise deployment via MDM systems.

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O’Reilly Media

The Agentic Data Science Playbook – O’Reilly

When AI agents can conduct entire analyses independently, data scientists shift from executing every step to framing questions, equipping agents with proper context and tools, organizing how investigations proceed, reviewing results critically, and converting lessons into reusable expertise. The piece demonstrates this through examples like a fraud-detection model that initially reported excellent metrics (F1: 0.87) using a temporally mixed test set and a leaking feature—problems that emerged only when proper framing was supplied, dropping real performance to F1: 0.70. Success requires specifying the analytical task (not just desired outcomes), building skills that encode recurring methodological requirements, protecting evaluation from the agent's modifications through bounded experiments or competing analyses, using independent agent reviewers to challenge conclusions, and systematically preserving evidence trails so that corrections become standing guidance for future work.

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Web Designer Depot

Traditional Web Development is Dead...(and Honestly? Good Riddance.)

Rather than traditional web development dying, AI and automation are simply the next layer of abstraction that will increase developer leverage—just as previous tools like frameworks and cloud services did before them. The real opportunity lies in shifting from "writing code" to "solving business problems," focusing on system architecture, product thinking, and AI integration rather than syntax proficiency. With AI handling routine boilerplate work, individual developers can now build complete products alone, making it feasible to launch micro-SaaS ventures or command premium consulting rates without needing entire teams.

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ClearList

ClearList — Sell Your Stuff Fast | AI Resale Manager

ClearList is an AI-powered resale platform that automatically generates complete listings (titles, descriptions, prices, dimensions) from photos, eliminating the manual work of pricing research and cross-posting to multiple platforms. Instead of managing endless messages asking "is this still available?", buyers queue up on a shared sale page, select time slots for pickup, and your address is only revealed to confirmed buyers—reducing the weekend chaos of selling used items to under two minutes of work.

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How-To Geek

How-To Geek

I built a dynamic GitHub app store with Claude, now I don't have to rely on Google for open-source app discovery

The author built a custom Claude-powered app store interface that sits atop GitHub to address the platform's poor user experience for discovering and installing open-source software. Using Claude's web search and API access, the system curates 10-15 relevant applications from multiple sources, presents them in a clean gallery with screenshots and metadata, performs basic security checks on the source code, verifies system dependencies, and can automate installation—translating developer jargon into plain language for non-technical users. The article includes a detailed prompt to create this as a reusable Claude skill, demonstrating how LLMs can make technical tools accessible to anyone regardless of coding knowledge.

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Skills

The Agent Skills Directory

I appreciate you sharing this, but this appears to be promotional material or a product landing page rather than a substantive article with an argument or report to summarize. The ASCII art header, product description, and call-to-action don't contain the kind of analytical content this tool is designed to capture. If you have an actual article, research paper, or news piece you'd like summarized, I'm ready to help with that instead.

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9to5mac.com

Apple Home recently got better in three ways, here’s what’s new

Rounds up three concrete Apple Home improvements that shipped during the iOS 26 cycle, ahead of the bigger Siri-driven Home overhaul expected with iOS 27: Adaptive Temperature, which uses on-device intelligence to auto-adjust supported smart thermostats (first implemented in Aqara's W200) based on sleep schedules, arrival prediction, and away status; Apple Home Key paired with Ultra Wideband on Aqara's new U400 lock, enabling precise presence-based auto-lock/unlock; and iOS 26.2's multipack pairing feature that lets a single setup code enroll several identical accessories at once. Worth keeping as a practical snapshot of incremental Home/HomeKit upgrades and specific Aqara products to check out.

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www.makeuseof.com

6 creative ways to use NFC tags that feel like magic

NFC tags are cheap programmable stickers ($15–$20 per pack) that can be placed around your home to automate repetitive phone tasks with a single tap, eliminating friction from daily routines like bedtime sequences, work focus modes, cooking with recipes, guest Wi-Fi sharing, laundry reminders, and car music setup. The author argues that while individually small, these automations collectively reduce phone unlocking and task-switching throughout the day, and the physical tap provides psychological satisfaction that voice assistants don't match. At roughly $1 per tag, the low cost makes experimentation practical for identifying which automations would most benefit your personal habits.

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otter.ai

Otter Meeting Agent - AI Notetaker, Transcription, Insights

Otter.ai is an AI meeting transcription and summarization tool that records conversations, generates real-time transcripts in multiple languages, and automatically captures action items and key decisions for teams to reference later. The platform integrates with CRMs, calendar apps, and AI chat tools like ChatGPT, allowing users to search across meetings and automate follow-ups, with testimonials claiming time savings of 30-40% per week. It offers flexible deployment options including bot-free desktop recording, browser extensions, and mobile capture, with tiered pricing from free basic plans to enterprise solutions.

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www.nytimes.com

Opinion | How Life as a Trucker Devolved Into a Dystopian Nightmare

Long-haul truckers endure extreme surveillance, declining real wages since the 1970s, and dangerous working conditions—forced to work excessive hours because they're paid by the mile rather than hourly—which creates the endemic exhaustion that safety systems are deployed to manage. Deregulation in the 1970s destroyed the unionized trucking industry, triggering a 91 percent turnover rate as workers flee wages and conditions that have become progressively worse. The vaccine mandate that sparked the Canadian trucker protest resonated precisely because truckers already experience such total control over their labor and bodies that this additional government mandate became the breaking point for an industry that has been "a keg of dynamite waiting to explode for 39 years."

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www.freelancer.com

Telerik Blogs

JavaScript for OS X Automation by Example -Telerik Developer Network

Apple's OS X Yosemite operating system includes JavaScript as an automation tool for OS X, a feature that received little attention from tech journalists but proved significant enough for developer tools company Telerik to highlight through practical examples. The post demonstrates how developers can leverage JavaScript for system-level automation tasks on Mac computers, expanding the scripting capabilities beyond traditional AppleScript approaches.

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tylergaw.com

Building OS X Apps with JavaScript by Tyler Gaw

OS X Yosemite's JavaScript for Automation feature allows developers to write native Mac applications using JavaScript instead of AppleScript, with full access to Objective-C frameworks through a bridge that lets you import and use classes like Cocoa for building GUIs. The post provides a detailed walkthrough of building a complete example app that lets users select and display images, explaining the syntax conversions needed to use Objective-C methods in JavaScript, how to create UI elements, handle button clicks through subclassing, and work with file dialogs. The author argues this is significant because it removes barriers to Mac app development by letting anyone with JavaScript knowledge build native applications without additional tools or installations.

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scrutinizer-ci.com

gruntjs.com

Grunt: The JavaScript Task Runner

Grunt is a task runner that automates repetitive development workflows like linting, testing, minification, and compilation through a configuration file, eliminating manual repetition for individual developers and teams. The Grunt ecosystem offers hundreds of plugins that cover most automation needs, and creating custom plugins for publication is straightforward. The example demonstrates how a single Grunt command can sequentially lint code, run unit tests, clean build directories, concatenate files, and minify output—accomplishing in seconds what would take minutes to do manually.

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