FeedCity

[Simon Willison] Prompt injection attacks have been one of the bugbears for AI: it's an unsolved problem that has meant that it can be quite dangerous to expose LLMs to direct user input, among other things. A lot of people have worked on the problem, but pr...

A long time ago, based on my experience at Berkman in the 00s, I proposed the idea of a Developing Better Developers function at a university, as a pilot, to create a teaching hospital atmosphere around creating new communication systems out the web and (key point) not compromising the openness of the web. It would be as sacred at academic freedom is in the university, or the First Amendment of the Constitution. It seemed to me that a university is the perfect place to create something like this. It just occurred to me that if we had such a setup, anywhere, at this time -- we would be working in earnest on an open alternative to twitter, one that is truly billionaire-proof right now, as opposed to "would be nice to have sometime in the future."

[Andy Bounds in the Financial Times] The last few months have radically changed the risk assessment for people traveling to the US from abroad - as well as Americans who plan to cross the US border. In this case, it's European Commission staff: "The Europea...

Dave Winer writes a longer blog post about inbound RSS. The idea is let’s have more systems able to both generate RSS feeds and read them in automatically. If you have that complete loop for posts, you don’t need much else to have a social platform.

A question on a thread on Manton's micro.blog site wishing to know what Inbound RSS is. Here's an edited version of my response. It looks like the first time I used the term on my blog was in 2022, when I was explaining how I was thinking, in 2017, about using Substack to ...

When I write about what I am building with technology, I often love showing off something I made and explaining how it works. With that said, I can only get to the point of something ready to share after thinking, experimenting, and following the direction that feels right as...

A workshop on resilient CSS layouts

Oh, hell yes!

Do not hesitate—sign yourself up to this series of three online workshops by Miriam. This is the quickest to level up your working knowledge of the most powerful parts of CSS.

By the end of this you’re going to feel like Neo in that bit of The Matrix when he says “I know kung-fu!” …except kung-fu isn’t very useful for building resilient and maintainable websites, whereas modern CSS absolutely is.

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We believe the World Wide Web should be inclusive and respectful of all participants: a Web that supports facts over falsehoods, people over profits, humanity over hate.

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Apparently there will be big updates to the design in the next iOS and iPadOS, but I assume it will be mostly superficial. I’d like to see a rethink of text selection and editing. It’s still too finicky without a keyboard and mouse.

If everything is working correctly, this is the first post from my website syndicated to Bluesky via Indiekit. 🤞

Rob Fahrni blogs more thoughts on Dave Winer’s call for inbound RSS:

The problem is the platform folks tend to say “use our API.” Which makes sense, but most API’s are painful in some way because of authentication or some hoop you have to go through. If the platform natively supported inbound RSS it would greatly simplify the developer and user experience.

Micro.blog was designed around inbound RSS. We had that before we had blog hosting. It’s still a unique architecture that I haven’t seen any other platforms replicate.

My Garmin watch did not sync activities with the Garmin Connect iOS app upon returning home from a week of travels. It did sync my steps from the day I landed, my sleep that night, and steps the following day. It just failed to pick up my running, hiking, and other activities...

Accounts of one’s personal website – from the story of why one started a website to the decisions made and lessons learned while making and using the site – are plentiful. Rightfully so. I love reading others’ perspectives on websites, too. I love writing about my website. It...

Here is an example of a link that, when clicked, sends you to a YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsEZmictANA The URL structure could be so much better. Without clicking on the link, the only context you have is that the site being linked to is YouTube.com. Man...

The joy of: Walking and cherry blossom petals falling around you. Noticing how charming a building you have walked past dozens of times is. I noticed a clock at the top of a building that I have never seen before. Seeing someone with their hands up their sleeves on a spring day. Like me! Noticing the first red tulips emerge this season. Seeing people rest under trees in the park on a warm spring morning. Hearing talented musicians play acoustic songs in a public square. Seeing people smile. Seeing flowers in pots growing at doorsteps. The warmth of the sun on your cheek on a sunny day. Looking out over hills. Sharing stories. Conversations where you notice someone’s eyes light up. Hearing someone talk about something they enjoy. Warm hugs.

My static site generator orders posts by file name. Post file names follow this structure: yyyy-mm-dd-slug.md For example, the title of this page is 2025-04-13-ordering-posts.md. While this works to ensure posts are ordered depending on their publication day, there is one s...