FeedCity

Another shot from Washington, D.C. — the Carnegie Library, also probably the most beautiful Apple Store I’ve ever visited. Needed to pick up a new MacBook charger since I somehow left mine in NYC.

Loved all the greenery at Maman this morning. Got there early enough that there was lots of space, but it filled up. ☕️

If Harvard could become more American and less elite, that could change things. Make a contribution directly to the well-being of Americans. Big courage would be required for that. A great university, empowered withe the latest online information distribution systems, could be the source of reliable information to the people that's missing because the major corporations who own the media outlets are playing it safe. Harvard is no longer in a position where playing it safe is an option. The Trumps will continue to cast doubt on the truth, but in a contest between Trump and Harvard, I bet a lot of people, maybe even most, would trust Harvard first.

Micro.blog is now sponsoring blogroll.org. We’re going to try a few new things to get the word out about Micro.blog, especially supporting small platforms and podcasts. If you haven’t checked out blogroll.org yet, consider adding your own blog there!

I hadn’t seen the new Perplexity voice mode until Federico Viticci blogged about it. Looks impressive. I also think Federico is exactly right on this: Looking at the big picture for a second, I do think Apple is in a precarious situation here. The fact that the company make...

Uh oh, another good list of things to read for my list of things to read.

https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/executive-disorder/

I’m sick of saying this over and over, the Dems need a regular snark-filled irreverent presence on social media to condemn every freaking fascist thing the Trumps do. They had it with the Kamala accounts, but they shut them down on Election Day. It’s so freaking simple. Not...

I mentioned this in yesterday's podcast -- new problems popped up with websockets in WordLand. I worked through the whole tree of possibilities with ChatGPT and it came to the conclusion that the source was an out of date package, and it was confident if I replaced it with the one "everyone else" is using, the problems will go away. Now this is the moment when human judgement prevails. I'm going to experiment in a very small app first, to make sure I have the approach right, then I will cautiously make the change on my test WordLand server, and if it works there, then I will figure out how to install it on the main site. It couldn't break all that much because for some reason the WS code stopped working, completely, with no code changes anywhere.

Cool to see the POSSE photo I snapped at Fediverse House used in this blog post:

The encouraging thing about IndieWeb is that it’s presented as a series of incremental improvements. It’s not an all-or-nothing replacement and it’s possible to expand in parallel.

I’ve uploaded a copy of the photo to the IndieWeb wiki too. Public domain, CC0.

Well it looks like the new email app is working. I got some really nice lookin emails last night, hope you did too. Subscribe here. And there's a basis on which to build. I will now proceed to turn off the old email app that has been serving us so well since 2017 or thereabouts. Goodbye old friend. Hello new world!

Over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge into Washington, D.C.

Things I’ve now learned driving in the two largest cities in America:

• Los Angeles: You have to run a red light to turn left.
• New York: You have to double park to do anything.

New podcast: ChatGPT deserves our respect (at least).

I'd love to read an article or listen to a mainstream news podcast that explained how people are using ChatGPT-like apps, and why they think it's such a big deal, as opposed to debunking it for not being intelligent, or making stuff up, or stealing intellectual property. This has all been adequately reported.

It also is the most revolutionary use of computer technology ever, in terms of the augmentation of human intelligence. And yes, dear news person, this matters.

It's a tool for our minds, it makes up for our relatively slow processes, how long it takes us to learn new facts, and is able organize organize things to help us make better choices.

It really is amazing.

20 minutes

If you're getting this via email, things might look different.

Lots of news reports about Trump's polls. But it isn't surprising that in the transition from a democracy to autocracy the people would become increasingly unhappy with the change, until we basically give up, and the polls from some pollsters are always this way, but the polls from others tell a different story. Fox News still runs polls the old way, as does the NYT and others. But that will change, as the lawyers have, and the Washington Post and NY Times have, in their editorial functions. And they just arrested a judge in Wisconsin. Makes you think maybe it doesn't matter if the polls say what they say, if there isn't something behind them.

For Bluesky fans, we’re now cross-posting the Micro.blog news blog over to Bluesky at @micro.blog. Good way to stay up to date on new features or fixes.

For beta testers on iOS, there’s a new build of Micro.blog with a button to toggle just showing draft blog posts. This matches the functionality we’ve had on the web and Mac apps for a while. Useful if you manage lots of drafts.

If you’re not on the beta yet, feel free to sign up at this TestFlight link. We’ll release it to all customers in the coming week.

o4-mini is good at road trip planning. I fire off some parameters like roughly where I want to stop or how long to drive, let it come up with routes, hotels, things to see. It doesn’t take the joy out of travel… Still a lot of details to review and decide on.

If all goes as planned, if you're subscribed to the nightly email, you should get two copies of the posts for April 27, one sent by the old software, and one sent by the new. The story I had to do a rewrite because I misunderstood how CSS styling works in some/most email c...