People and blogs involved with and about the IndieWeb community, the fediverse, and/or the open web in general.
The new park around the old Mueller tower. Walked by here today and hadn’t seen it since the area was under construction.
OpenAI version numbers continue to be hilarious. Looks like the actual release order will be: 3.5, 4.0, o1, o3, 4.5, 4.1. The joke’s on us though because the naming does make a certain amount of sense given the parallel development.
Found leaked technical diagrams of a new roller coaster at Disneyland. No, wait… That’s just the last 5 days of Apple stock. 🤪
For all the negative anecdotes in The Information story, it actually ends on a positive note about Craig Federighi:
Federighi, for one, often knows more technical details about software projects than the junior engineers working on them. Rockwell, who joined Apple in 2015, is seen within the company as a leader with vision, who can bring fresh thinking to projects while skillfully navigating the corporate culture.
AI is incredibly technical. Apple needs someone who actually understands it in charge. I like Craig’s chances for turning Siri around.
Wrapping up the next Micro.blog for Mac bug fix update today. Any bugs we’ve missed recently? Let me know and maybe they can get squeezed in. 🐛
I haven’t read the full report in The Information yet, but just the MacRumors summary is pretty detailed. One comment on this bit:
The indecision and repeated changes in direction reportedly frustrated engineers and prompted some members of staff to leave Apple.
I assume that some of the sources for the story were people who left Apple, so that might’ve slanted the reporting, but this underscores the serious lack of vision we’ve assumed for a year. Apple was fumbling around like AI was a minor optional feature, not the potentially disruptive new foundation for assistants it likely will be.
If I were a sassy Democratic Party leader I'd cop to being woke. "Why yes I am woke. Aren't you?" The Repubs have never explained why it's bad to be awake. Dems have to learn how to engage to win. Another one -- "read, fire, aim" is how Trump leads, just look at the tariffs, and it's been a huge disaster for hard-working American wage-earners of all generations. The "all generations" part opens an interesting conversation, how it isn't just old people or young people, it's also people who are working today whose earnings are being stolen, and those of us who have been working for 50 years who were paying into a fund so we could benefit when we retire. That money is coming out of your paycheck with no intention of ever paying it back. That's the Republican-run America. Not so great.
As long as the Chinese company BYD is making such interesting and inexpensive EVs, and Tesla is a shithole company, if I were in charge, I'd give BYD a negative tariff to encourage them to flood the US market with nice cheap EVs so we can get rid of the shitstain Tesla once and for all. I'd give them an even better price if they agreed to recycle Teslas as trade-ins so we don't have to feel ecologically irresponsible. And yes, dear MAGAs, I am woke. You all can go back to sleep now. Zzzz.
This Saturday, April 12th, is Record Store Day. To mark the occasion, Salter Cane will be playing a stripped-down set at Union Music Store in Lewes. That’s the place that Jamie used to run, so it has a special place in our hearts.
Liza Lo will be playing at midday.
Salter Cane are on at 1pm.
If you’re in the neighbourbood, please swing by! We’re really looking forward to playing a mix of some old songs and some brand new songs from our brand new album.
<a href="https://saltercane.bandcamp.com/album/deep-black-water" target="_blank" rel="external noopener">Deep Black Water by Salter Cane</a>I’m happy to announce that something I and others have worked on very hard for the past few years has been published by the W3C Advisory Board (AB) and sent to the W3C Advisory Committee (AC) for a vote to make it official:Vision for W3C: https://www.w3.org/TR/2025/NOTE-w3c-vision-20250402/Official announcement: https://www.w3.org/news/2025/proposal-to-endorse-vision-for-w3c-as-a-w3c-statement/If your company is a W3C Member¹, please ask your Advisory Committee Representative² to vote to support publication of the Vision for W3C as an official W3C Statement:https://www.w3.org/wbs/33280/Vision2025/ (W3C Member-only link)Thank you for your support.#W3CVision #Vision #VisionForW3C #W3C (@w3c@w3c.social) #W3CAB (@ab@w3c.social)¹ https://www.w3.org/membership/list/² https://www.w3.org/Member/ACList (W3C Member-only link)
Was looking forward to a relaxing train trip to Phoenix tonight, with time to read and work, but finally had to bail on the plan. Currently a 10-hour delay after a freight train was blocking the track, plus other random Amtrak problems. I’ll have to start plotting some other trip in the future. 🚂
Waterloo Park. 🌳
Just watched B. J. Novak’s directorial debut, Vengeance (2022) and oh boy, it’s a hoot. A hearty recommendation from me.
Matt Haughey blogs about the uncertainty for small businesses and how bad things might get if the world loses trust in the US dollar:
Not only were the tariffs announced and rolled out haphazardly and far too quickly, but within a few days the tariff against China doubled again. This is no way to let US-based small businesses plan for anything, and what we have today is total chaos in the aftermath.
Matt Mullenweg blogs about the new AI-powered WordPress design builder:
The long-anticipated “Big Sky” AI site builder on WordPress.com went live today. It combines several models and can create logos, site designs, typography, color schemes, and content. It’s an entirely new way to interact with and edit a brand-new or existing WordPress site.
I went through their interface to get a sense of what they’re doing. The AI will create a basic design, then you can tweak the layout, colors, and fonts by clicking around. To actually make the blog live, you have to upgrade to a paid plan.
