FeedCity

I found the TechDirt piece about being a democracy blog disturbing because imho it should have been about democracy at least since 2017, when it was clear that Twitter had just elected a president of the United States. That was a clear strong signal that tech and democracy w...

Seth Godin blogs about making the most of a second chance with customers:

If a customer service call goes wrong, or if a new employee is stumbling, this is the moment to escalate and get the second impression just right. It shows that we can recover, that we’re listening, and that the relationship is worth something to us.

[Mike Masnick at Techdirt] Mike Masnick on why tech journalism has a huge part to play in decoding current events right now: "We’ve spent decades documenting how technology and entrepreneurship can either strengthen or undermine democratic institutions. We ...

Check it out—here’s the line-up for UX London 2025! This is going to be so good! Grab a ticket if you haven’t got one yet. UX London take...

This looks like a really interesting proposal for allowing developers more control over styling inputs. Based on the work being done the customisable select element, it starts with a declaration of appearance: base.

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Received in generally workable shape, though without ribbon; definitely dirty; internal foam disintegrating; brights are going to need a load of polish; temporary photos to provide some idea of condition until I get the chance to clean it up. My wide carriage 1958 FPE was so nice I thought I’d try out the larger face … Continue reading

[Gaby Del Valle at The Verge] This is dystopian: "The Trump administration may soon demand the social media accounts of people applying for green cards, US citizenship, and asylum or refugee status. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — the feder...

I’ve finally broken a small barrier and am now ranked as typewriter hunter #115 on the Typewriter Database. I have a few machines that should arrive soon which in combination with doing some repairs and uploading some data should help me finally break into the top 100.

Listening to the Decoder episode with Panos Panay, I’m almost convinced that what Amazon is trying with Alexa+ will work. Everyone’s expectations are so low with voice assistants. If they actually pull it off, it will be impressive.

Parker Ortolani blogging about the new MacBook Air. I hadn’t even thought about the color until now:

For the first time in 24 years, since the introduction of the first white iBook, Apple has a blue laptop again. While the new MacBook Airs are most certainly a “spec bump,” they make for a pretty good one.

When I ask a personal question on one of the AI bots, all of a sudden on Facebook I'm getting ads about what I asked about. It could be a coincidence, but it's happened a few times, on more than one system. And I'm a paying customer on all of them.

Interesting new post from OpenAI about safety. About humans being in control:

Our approach to alignment centers humans. We aim to develop mechanisms that empower human stakeholders to express their intent clearly and supervise⁠ AI systems effectively - even in complex situations, and as AI capabilities scale beyond human capabilities.

This is probably my biggest concern, AI agents running without human supervision and executing tasks that are beyond what we even know how to do. There are many positive benefits to AI, but there are also some things we shouldn’t attempt.

Wednesday session

Tapbots is working on a Bluesky client, called Phoenix. On making it a separate app, they say:

While there may be some conveniences of an app that supports multiple social media protocols, we believe the experience will be much better overall if we keep them separate. We do plan to provide a way to cross-post between them so you don’t have to write duplicate posts.

This is fine, but I think eventually more people will just post to their own blogs and not have to manage separate apps or accounts.

Very quick video of the latest Micro.blog for Mac with new blog post summary field. You can type your own summary that will be used in the timeline and cross-posting, or have it generate one for you.

Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars

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Reminder for folks in Austin, Fediverse House is this weekend, Sunday and Monday. I’ll be there. In a happy coincidence, Sunday is also the anniversary of the first post to my blog. 23 years.

People who criticize Dems for weak opposition at the SOTU are not hypocrites only if they said before the event what they would do. I was glad not to have to choose. I think in the end they did what made sense to each one individually. The range of response by the Dems was much broader than the Repubs. We should be thankful they haven't capitulated, as so many have, esp in what we used to think of as journalism.

We need a new kind of social network designed to run an effective response to fascism. So far all we have are profit centers for billionaires and wannabe billionaires.

So, yes, hi, I have a Tesla. It’s a long range Model 3 which I bought in 2021. At the time, my mother really wanted an electric car to drive to and from her dialysis sessions, for environmental reasons. She couldn’t afford one, so I bought one for her to use. She died before...