People and blogs involved with and about the IndieWeb community, the fediverse, and/or the open web in general.
The new iPhone announcement is just a couple days away, and on today’s Core Int we give our thoughts about the upcoming event, including a discussion about AI.
Looking up, at Beyond Van Gogh. In the old Austin-American Statesman building.
This post about Marissa Mayer’s company Sunshine on Platformer is several months old, but I saw it linked again this week and wanted to highlight something:
Employees say they learn what they are working on each week during Monday morning standup meetings, and that their mandate shifts frequently as Mayer changes priorities.
This sounds exactly like how I run Micro.blog, actually. Founder mode, I guess? It sounds chaotic and “bad” but it’s also a strength of a very small team to change our minds quickly.
Good news, everyone. Accidentally left the garage door open and someone stole a couple random things — looks like mostly power tools that are easy to replace — but they left the Power Mac 7500 and Power Mac G5. Suckers! They have no sense of quality and value. 🤪
Matt Mullenweg
• Matt
I had a huge nostalgia blast today with this video from Lazy Game Reviews showing and setting up a Timex Datalink watch, which was a “smart” watch that would show data that you transmitted to it by holding it in front of your CRT monitor and it flashing a bunch of lines. It’s hard to … Continue reading Timex Datalink →
Do you think you've ever had an online chat with an AI impersonating a human without you knowing? Have you had such an experience with someone you know? If no, when do you think you will have such a conversation? Would you mind if a friend used an AI to front for them, so they could do other things while they were "chatting" with you? Would you be liable for anything your avatar did or said?
Also, when the Berlin Wall came down there were no blogs or podcasts. We got what we were given by the news networks and NYT and WSJ.
It's a fascinating moment, somewhat like when the Berlin Wall came down. When it happened, we were all kind of in a daze. That wall had been there my entire life. No one knew, for many years, what its disappearance would mean. Same with the wall betw the Democratic and Republican parties. It was still the same US when one or the other was in power, there were constants that didn't change. There was an agreement that politics ends at the border. But now, are there two parties? What became of the one we call Republican?
The next in the series of podcasts from 2004. This one was done driving from Banff to Kelowna, on the way to Seattle.
I found a bug in opml.visitAll in the OPML package I use in various software including Drummer and FeedLand. Had to fix it, even though there's a slight chance of breakage.
Talking to Daniel today for the next podcast episode, about AI, and afterwards I was thinking about why I find ChatGPT so effective instead of Google search. It’s not just the “here’s the answer” but also the very fast, clean results. Imagine a web search with 5-10 results that was as simple.
John Gruber has a long take-down on the DMA. There is plenty to think about in this, but a quick comment on his point about Chrome:
My guess is that, perhaps counterintuitively, the single biggest beneficiary of this mandatory browser choice screen will be Google Chrome, which I consider the single most dominant software monopoly in the world today.
This rings true. Google puts Chrome in your face everywhere. Perhaps one side effect of this is that Apple is going to need to do actual marketing for Safari.
I feel that I’ve been overpaying for sending email for years. Making another attempt at migrating to Amazon SES with a dedicated IP. Should cut my bill in half and hopefully fix some reliability problems. (If anything bounced at SendGrid, it would stop sending emails until reset… Not great.)
Journalism doesn't come back from the election of 2024, any more than the Republican Party does.
People worry that AI will take over what humans should be doing. It’s more profound than that. Using AI has helped me understand what actually makes us uniquely human. Love, creativity, leadership, fear, individualism, beauty. Let’s lean in to what only we can do and let that drive everything else.
Taking a short break from Threads and Bluesky. Nothing against those services, but I started over-thinking the post length differences. I need to focus on work and blogging first. Because my blog natively uses ActivityPub, Mastodon folks will still see my posts.
In my blog post series for upgrades to my Honda Element, this post is a little different. It’s not an actual change to the car like the posts about CarPlay, the WeBoost, or my bed platform.
It is usually too hot to camp in Texas during the summer. To help beat the heat, I’m currently using a few portable fans and a water-cooled fan, the Evapolar evaCHILL. It doesn’t blow cold air, but it does blow cool-ish air. Every little bit helps. It also draws very little energy, about 10W from my Jackery.
I also swear by these simple fans by Dorobeen. They charge via USB-C and double as batteries that can charge a phone.
I’m still considering a “real” air conditioning unit like the EcoFlow Wave or Zero Breeze, but they are a lot bigger. I don’t think it’s currently worth the trouble.
I got a beautiful new Pixel 9 Pro yesterday. It was amazingly easy to move the data from the old phone to the new one. Just turn both on near each other, and click a couple of dialogs and it works. Haven't used it for anything yet. Will report.
