FeedCity

[Dan Kennedy at Media Nation] Dan Kennedy picks up on a detail in Brian Stelter's Atlantic article about troubles at the Washington Post: "The Post’s content-management system, Arc, which was supposed to be a money-maker, had instead turned out to be a drag ...

This is a terrific presentation from Paul. He gives a history lesson and then focuses on what makes the indie web such a powerful idea (hint: it’s not about specific technologies).

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In an earlier era, startups could build on the web and, if one browser didn’t provide the features they needed, they could just recommend that their users try a better one. But that’s not possible on iOS.

I’m extremly concerned about the newest bug in iOS 18:

On-screen keyboard does not show up for installed web apps (PWAs) when focusing a text input of any kind

Whaa? That’s just shockingly dreadful!

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This is a very handy piece of work by Rich:

The idea is to set sensible typographic defaults for use on prose (a column of text), making particular use of the font features provided by OpenType. The main principle is that it can be used as starting point for all projects, so doesn’t include design-specific aspects such as font choice, type scale or layout (including how you might like to set the line-length).

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Finished watching the first season of Shōgun. Fantastic. 📺

Good post at WP Tavern highlighting the major plot points of the ongoing WordPress drama. I also listened to the Twitter X space (ugh) where Matt Mullenweg answers questions on the fallout from his WordCamp talk. I don’t envy folks trying to navigate this… Such a big community and lots of money.

During the pandemic I accidentally let my P.O. Box expire. I almost never checked it anyway, but I felt bad that there was a chance of letters being returned or lost into the void. Today I finally fixed it. Was able to go in person and restore the same number which luckily wasn’t being used yet.

Now that ActivityPub is claiming to be the Social Web, I feel like Lloyd Bentsen at the debate with Dan Quayle. ActivityPub is not the web any more than Dan Quayle was Jack Kennedy. The web is simple. That was hard to do. Very little since then lives up to that standard of simplicity, definitely not ActivityPub. The web is the web is the web is the web etc. Pick another more humble name. If it ever does achieve the utility of the web does we can take another look.

More coverage of the Social Web Foundation has been rolling in today. (See my coverage of the announcement over here.) The New Stack: The fediverse has been a critical development in the open web over the past several years, since most of the social media landscape is ...

First, a couple of examples/case studies. 1. About ten years ago I was trying to figure out how to get started with Node.js. I knew a little JavaScript, but nothing I read about Node made it click. It's server software, so there must be a way to write a server? From there, I...

Can’t shake the feeling today that I’m going to have to do this all on my own.

Imagine no doctor would treat you for a serious illness until it was on the verge of killing you. That's the situation women with troubled pregnancy, if she lives in the wrong state, is in, in the United States, now. Imagine the frustration of people in the medical system. I...

Molly White is doing something on her blog that I don’t think I’ve seen before. When linking some people’s names, she will include tiny links to Wikipedia or social web profiles. Here’s a screenshot with the links highlighted, in this case Wikipedia, Mastodon, and Bluesky:

Social Web Foundation:

The Social Web Foundation works to grow this new ecosystem in an open, healthy, and sustainable way—working with technologists and the public to build a new global town square that works for everyone.

This looks very interesting. I’m going to be honest, though, even though I know this is petty: I’m insulted that Micro.blog wasn’t given a heads-up about this before launch. We’ve only supported ActivityPub since 2018. 🤪

Not in a good mood this morning, so all of my blog posts are going to be tinged with a little bit of unwarranted frustration. Apologies in advance. 🙂

Going to restart the public beta for Micro.blog on iOS. Just waiting for Apple to approve the beta, because Micro.blog has only been around for 7 years with dozens of public releases, so we must be devious hackers trying to exploit the App Store. So tired of Apple as a babysitter.

I’m extraordinarily excited about the launch of the Social Web Foundation, which has been created to promote and support the growth of the Fediverse: the interoperable social network powered by the ActivityPub protocol. Users of services on the Fediverse can follow, sh...

Listening to the latest Decoder podcast with The Browser Company’s Josh Miller and enjoying it so far. I haven’t completely bought in to Arc, but we should be exploring new browser ideas. A little shocked that they have 80 employees and zero revenue, though. Not confident they can last.

[Casey Newton at Platformer] This fantastic round-up post focuses on Platformer's decision in January to leave Substack in protest of its content policies that permitted full-throated Nazis to earn money on the platform. With a long-term view, it's been a go...

It would be great if we could make voting a party, a celebration, something to look forward to, not something you have to make time for. That would probably do more to improve the lives of all Americans than any other single thing. It's like the SuperBowl, the NBA Finals, Coachella or the Oscars, only better -- because we are the stars.