FeedCity

When I get a questionable notification summary in the iOS 18.1 beta, I run the original text through OpenAI to compare. It’s usually better. Certainly not a deal-breaker, but the thing about AI is it needs to actually be good or you lose the illusion.

Don’t depend on Threads to validate the Fediverse. That’s not what they’re doing. Some of the people working there have good hearts and mean well, but Meta is a huge company, competing with other huge companies, and the goals of the Fediverse do not show up in their roadmap.

I got a notice that Threads had deleted one of my posts because they said it violated their rules. They thought I was claiming to have written something I had not written. I didn't keep the notice (it popped up when I signed on). I shrugged it off when I got it, but then realized that we are very far away from the web. It has been turned into Disneyland where the cops are algorithms and they err on the side of stopping innocent things. I was just passing on a link to someone else's blog, something I thought an informed person would want to know about (that's the idea behind every link I share). We really do need to dig our way out of this hole, again. This is of course no better than Twitter or Facebook. Not a place to get work done.

[Samantha Lai and Yoel Roth at Tech Policy Press] "Decentralized social media platforms offer the promise of alternative governance structures that empower consumers and rebuild social media on a foundation of trust. However, over two years after Elon Musk’s...

It's amazing that the million-plus Americans who died from Covid during Trump's tenure aren't even mentioned as a campaign issue. Maybe people don't want to be reminded of those dark days.

Last night the Mets were eliminated by the Dodgers playing in Los Angeles, so the good news is we don't have to tear down Citi Field. And I don't know about you but I'm really happy how the season turned out. I didn't think the mets would make it through any of the hurdles, ...

WNBA finals, game 5, a minute and a half left, tied game… This is what it’s all about. 🏀

Ben Werdmuller has several ideas for building on the fediverse, including add-on services, SDKs, rebuilding his platform Known, and a “fediverse VIP” for professionals.

As regular readers know, I care a lot about growing the open social web: the rapidly-growing decentralized network of interoperable social platforms that includes Mastodon, Threads, Ghost, Flipboard, and many other platforms, both emerging and established. This is for a few...

WP Engine has filed hundreds pages of legal documents seeking an injunction against me and Automattic. They say this about community or some nonsense, but if you look at the core, what they’re trying to do is ask a judge to curtail my First Amendment rights. The First Amendment is the basis of our democracy. … Continue reading My Freedom of Speech →

Sunny day in Austin. Finally got the adapter for my new solar panel so I can actually test everything. Getting about 60 watts. Not a lot but plenty to keep my Jackery in the car topped off for charging gadgets.

A second elimination game for the Mets tonight. I almost don't want the Mets to win, because the World Series opponent from the "other" league are the Janks from the Bronx. I love the Bronx. That's about all I have to say about that at this time.

I did a podcast this morning about the reality of Musk owning Twitter, which is now completely settling in. He might have enough influence on the election to push Trump over. He wins even if Trump loses, he gets a moon mission project to boot up a Musk Party. It's coming for sure, either way. Probably will pick up what's left over after Trump, who clearly is losing it, and even if he's president, someone else will be pulling the strings. I can't imagine the billionaire will let JD Vance do it. And by "billionaire" I mean Musk.

Some of us do most of our writing on desktop computers. I guess we're in a very small minority. We can use a much better twitter-like system than the people who use mobile devices to tweet. I'm one of the desktop people. So I want textcasting. Mobile people either don't care or don't want it. So it stands to reason we need a different user interface. We can use the same network, we just need a different UI for editing. Since the twitter-like systems already carry links to stories written by people on desktops, there's room in their pipes for our writing too. And it can work more efficiently if the stories are part of the message as opposed to living off-site. Think of it as a web of writing. A writer's web that also carries short messages.

Love this episode of The Vergecast about a YouTuber opening a coffee shop. I would also like to open a coffee shop / bookstore one day… I browse commercial real estate listing way too often.

Sunday session

Mimi Uploader is now free for the rest of the year. Great opportunity to do more photo-blogging on Micro.blog.

Speaking of serendipity, not long after I wrote about making a static archive of The Session for people to download and share, I came across a piece by Alex Chan about using static websites for tiny archives. The use-case is slightly different—this is about personal archive...

I described using my feed reader like this: I would hate if catching up on RSS feeds felt like catching up on email. Instead it’s like this: When I open my RSS reader to catch up on the feeds I’m subscribed to, it doesn’t feel like opening my email client. It feels...

[Hannah Devlin, Tom Burgis, David Pegg and Jason Wilson at The Guardian] Quite a disturbing new startup coming to light in The Guardian: “The footage appears to show experimental genetic selection techniques being advertised to prospective parents. A Heliosp...