People and blogs involved with and about the IndieWeb community, the fediverse, and/or the open web in general.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
In 2024, A Book Apart closed its doors after publishing a much-loved collection of more than 50 brief books for people who make websites. The rights to each book have reverted to the authors — hi, that’s us — and we’ve put together this semi-official directory to help you find our books in their new homes.
…now including Going Offline.
A shame that this must-read book won’t be out in time for Christmas—’twould make a great stocking filler for a lot of people I know.
A smart, incisive look at the technologies sold as artificial intelligence, the drawbacks and pitfalls of technology sold under this banner, and why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors at work and in the world.
Feature suggestion: an end-of-year Spotify Unwrapped thingy but for Wikipedia contributions (maybe it would encourage me to contribute more).
Cool to see Redis creator Salvatore Sanfilippo (antirez) back working on Redis after several years away. Redis is a fantastic, unique tool. He shares his thoughts on the licensing drama, using AI, and new data structures that could be added to Redis.
Tuesday session
This is a great post by Laurens Hof of the Fediverse Report on the incomplete ActivityPub rollout in Threads, why it might be going so slowly, and whether Meta is committed to the fediverse at all. It seems clear now that it will not be practical to move an account away from Threads. Empty promises.
Day One can no longer import Instagram photos because of an API change:
We regret to inform you that, starting December 4, 2024, Instagram no longer allows apps to import content through the Instagram Basic Display API. This change means that Day One users will no longer be able to connect their Instagram accounts to import photos and posts into their journals.
Related to my short post this morning. Meta just doesn’t care much if they burn developers who invest in their platform.
Many Tesla drivers wish they'd evict Elon Musk. On the other hand can your car do this?
My Apple Watch can unlock my Model Y, turn the heat on, open the frunk.This time of year every day feels like Sunday.
Seth Godin blogged recently about constructive complaining vs. whining:
Whining is communication that exasperates others, because it is complaint without benefit or action. The best traveling companions are often those that don’t whine, even when they have a very good reason to. Whining is empty commentary where no action is possible, about something we already understand.
Here's a sad fact. When something open takes off, the vultures swoop in and try to own it. You wouldn't believe the greed I've seen. It's a virus, and it needs to stop, or at least be exposed as it's happening.
Because we are a very small team, I’ve always been good with “use whatever coding style you want!” I try to adapt to the conventions used in other people’s projects. But lately, I just want to go all-in on mandating real tabs. I’m getting too old to deal with tabs-as-spaces.
Yesterday I did a podcast about why it's important to choose humble names for groups of developers working on open formats, using podcasting as an example. Another case in point, the Social Web Foundation, which is about ActivityPub and the Fediverse, when there are many other forms of the social web. Here's where the rubber meets the road. They're having a meeting in Brussels where people can demo their social web apps, but it's only about ActivityPub. If you have a project for Bluesky, or Threads, or non-ActivityPub Mastodon, or RSS for that matter, you should feel welcome there, regardless of what their Call For Participation says.
It’s hard to take Meta’s effort with more open APIs like ActivityPub seriously when their own Threads API is so locked down, requiring frequent re-approval. Open APIs shouldn’t make developers jump through hoops, over and over. Enough with the gatekeeping already.
Coding up a new window for a Mac app, even a very simple window, just feels better than making changes to almost any other kind of app. There is something “new”-er about a unique window on macOS compared to iOS.
Matt Mullenweg
• Matt
This week, DrupalCon Singapore is bringing together an incredible community of Drupal platform creators, developers, and supporters. Last year, I had the chance to share the stage with Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, and the conversation stuck with me. It highlighted the profound impact we can have when communities like ours come together to … Continue reading DrupalCon Singapore →
Matt Mullenweg
• Matt
Very excited to share that we’ve acquired WPAI and the team is joining Automattic. They have some very cool products including CodeWP, AgentWP, and WP.chat.
“Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” 🍔
Monday session
