People and blogs involved with and about the IndieWeb community, the fediverse, and/or the open web in general.
careful.industries/blog/2025-4-what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-ai
Technically, AI is a field of computer science that uses advanced methods of computing.
Socially, AI is a set of extractive tools used to concentrate power and wealth.
Thoughtful analysis from Ben (as always).
In exactly six weeks time, UX London is happening!
I am ridiculously excited about this year’s line-up—I can’t wait to see the talks and get hands-on in the workshops.
If you haven’t yet got your ticket, now is the time. There’s a flash sale this week: use the discount code FLASH20 to get a whopping 20% of any ticket. Do it before the end of Friday!
Whether you’re coming for all three days or choosing one focused day, you’re in for a treat.
Head on over to the website to get all the details and then get your discounted ticket.
See you there!
Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is extremely strange. Should’ve done more research before stopping here. Feels like Vegas but more spread out and no gambling, I guess? Also the Great Smokey Mountains are nearby.
Monday session
Listen to the contrarians. They’re sometimes wrong, but when they’re right, they’re right years before everyone else.
Dining al fresco (with Coco the cat for company).
Cory Doctorow coined a lovely word -- enshitified. In that spirit, I'd love to see a destodgified Harvard. See below.
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!
Uh oh, another good list of things to read for my list of things to read.
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.
