FeedCity

Wednesday session

I cleaned out my desk a little over five years ago. It feels like last week. I was leading engineering at ForUsAll, a fintech company that seeks to make it easier for small businesses to offer retirement plans for their employees. The co-founder, David, had been wearing a m...

Dave Rupert on ads, enshittification, and taste:

I can feel it in my bones when an app or website has prioritized revenue over user experience. A person without taste or high emotional intelligence broke the unspoken contract we had built on mutual respect.

Simon Willison attempts to clarify vibe coding:

I’m seeing people apply the term “vibe coding” to all forms of code written with the assistance of AI. I think that both dilutes the term and gives a false impression of what’s possible with responsible AI-assisted programming.

The basic thing about tech is that it's filled with people who take things that don't belong to them. There's no policing. The richest people are the ones who are best at grabbing control of other people's creations. That's the common theme. Now they're in DC, going for all of it. The whole thing. But they're like the dog that catches the car. They don't have the slightest idea what to do with what they're taking. How could they? It's incomprehensibly vast.

I wonder if a civilisation closer to the galactic centre might worship Sagittarius A* as a god.

AI can be incredibly useful when deployed skillfully in creative endeavors—as an ideation partner, as a scaffolding tool, by eliminating tedious tasks, etc.—but anyone making anything truly good with it is probably somebody who could already make something good first without it.

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I can’t recommend React to any project or customer anymore.

Using almost any other modern alternative, you will save time, money and nerves, even if you haven’t used them before.

Don’t stick to technology just because you know it.

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A piece that Paul Krugman should write. How what Musk is doing to the US is worse than the 2009 near-collapse of the world economy. People who think he's going to bring down just the US, should recall how close we all came to falling into the abyss. But this time there will be no one to save us.

Books for all, and roses too!

https://ethanmarcotte.com/books/you-deserve-a-tech-union/

American workers, this is the book you need.

Obama once said to the bankers who just crashed the economy, much like Trump/Musk are trying to do now -- that his administration is the "only thing between you and the pitchforks.” These are the same people. They’re back from 2009 and this time they want everything. They don't care what's left, they're like machines. All they know how to do is to consume things. Squeeze one penny of value from every dollar. This clip from Goodfellas explains.

There’s a new proposal for giving developers more control over styling form controls. I like it. It’s clearly based on the fantastic work being done by the Open UI group on the select element. The proposal suggests that authors can opt-in to the new styling possibilities by...

If you ran into a problem sharing photos from Google Photos to Micro.blog on iOS, check out the latest TestFlight beta. Still have another fix to editing to finish, then will release to everyone.

The data behind a WordLand blog post I wrote a few days ago. I'm publishing these so people get an idea of the structures we're working with. It's basically a WordPress post with added metadata. They have these kinds of structures in RSS, Atom, ActivityPub and AT Proto. Event...

Wow, the Swarm app has been completely redesigned. I don’t think it changed a single pixel in the last 5 years. Looks pretty good, now combining some of the explore functionality previously in Foursquare.

Techdirt has a well-deserved rep for exposing the false claims tech companies make. I’d love to see a Techdirt analysis of Bluesky’s claim that they’re billionaire-proof and they don’t lock users in. For background check out this TechCrunch piece from SXSW.

Of course I'm getting ready to ditch my Tesla Model Y, and thinking about what my options are. I saw someone comment on the Rivian truck, and I've seen them around but didn't imagine they'd have the same muscle car profile as the Tesla, but apparently they do. That's the thing I'd miss the most about the Model Y. Its power and handling. It's a big car, but it drives in many ways like the Miata I drove in the 90s.

“Tell me, what are words for?” They are for blogging!Earlier today during an informal espresso live stream in the #indieweb cafe, Spotify was playing an auto-generated daylist, something like “romantic 80s tuesday morning”, and the 1982 song “Words”¹ by the band Missing Perso...

Mac apps and web apps:

• Make code change.
• Release to customers.

iOS apps:

• Make code change.
• Wait for Apple to approve TestFlight beta.
• Wait even longer if the build is stuck “processing” for unknown reasons.
• Wait for Apple to approve final version.
• Release to customers.

Just a stark difference. ☹️

Welcome back to earth, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. 🚀