FeedCity

The joy of looking out the window and seeing a beautiful sunset. The sun has set at the intersection of two hills. I am not sure I have seen the sun set at exactly this angle, at this time. A colorful pink hue paints the nearby sky — some clouds on the periphery have a faint lavender tint. The birds are singing. I feel relaxed. I tried to take a picture but my phone can’t express the colours. The world is too pretty.

When evaluating any technology I understand why it’s important to ask “how might this benefit me” but it’s more important to first ask “how might this harm others”.

Just for fun, let’s see who can come closest to a make, model and year for this lovely typewriter I’ve got on the bench this week for restoration. Please, no more than two guesses per player.  Answer to be posted Friday.

We just released a new version of Micro.blog for iOS that adds two improvements:

• Redesigned the reply pane to be smaller, with a new username bar for adding or removing people from your reply. Non-modal so you can scroll the timeline behind it.
• Added a new publishing progress pane, to give better status of what’s going on with a new blog post.

Here are a couple screenshots showing the changes:

We’re wrapping up the Android version too. Hope to submit it to Google for approval later this week.

The Browser Company has a long post about why they’re working on Dia instead of Arc. On how chatbots and browsers will merge:

Our tabs aren’t expendable, they are our core context. That is why we think the most powerful interface to AI on desktop won’t be a web browser or an AI chat interface — it’ll be both. Like peanut butter and jelly.

I asked ChatGPT to review my archive on the Knicks and to summarize my feelings about the team over the years. This is what they said. "Your sentiments toward the New York Knicks over the years appear to be a blend of enduring loyalty, cautious optimism, and occasional frustration. Your writings reflect a deep-rooted connection to the team, celebrating their victories and expressing hope during promising times. At the same time, you don't shy away from critiquing management decisions or expressing disappointment during less successful periods. This combination suggests a passionate fan who remains committed to the Knicks, appreciating their highs and thoughtfully analyzing their lows."

The Knicks are playing the Pacers tonight. Very pivotal. If the Knicks win, it becomes a best of three series, and two of the three games are played at home. Not necessarily so great for the Knicks, they do well on the road. The players say it has something to do with being able to focus on the game and not on family, that came from Mikal Bridges.

I don’t use large language models. My objection is to using them is ethical. I know how the sausage is made. I wanted to clarify that. I’m not rejecting large language models because they’re useless. They can absolutely be useful. I just don’t think the usefulness outweighs...

Great article on The New Yorker about The Rehearsal:

The first season of “The Rehearsal” seemed to exhaust all possibilities for the conceit that acting—the science of the artificial—could provide a prophylactic for life. It did not. The second season is, somehow, even more berserk than the first, but it’s also more disciplined and coherent.

Do not read this if you haven’t seen season 2. It spoils everything in the show.

John O’Nolan celebrates 12 years of Ghost. Congrats to the team! Amazing success, and the revenue is an inspiration for much smaller platforms like Micro.blog to aspire to:

Fast forward to 2025 and I still have no idea what I’m doing, but we’ve come a long way nevertheless. What started as little more than an idealistic open source pipedream has blossomed into a business with $8M/year in annual recurring revenue and a full-time team of 34.

[John O' Nolan at Ghost]

This is a lovely reflection on 12 years of Ghost, the non-profit, open source publishing platform that powers independent publishers and allows them to make a living on their own terms.

"Over the years, we've focused consistently on building the best

Nice to see Clearleft’s browser support policy get a shoutout from Rachel during her Google IO talk.

adactio.com/links/21931

Must be something in the air.

adactio.com/links/21932

Testing out new cat microchip feeders

Looking at LLM usage and promotion as a cultural phenomenon, it has all of the markings of a status game. The material gains from the LLM (which are usually quite marginal) really aren’t why people are doing it: they’re doing it because in many spaces, using ChatGPT and being very optimistic about AI being the “future” raises their social status. It’s important not only to be using it, but to be seen using it and be seen supporting it and telling people who don’t use it that they’re stupid luddites who’ll inevitably be left behind by technology.

adactio.com/links/21930

I did a few random experiments with my life over the years and they were always interesting. Life has this tendency to set itself in some sort of autopilot mode and you slip into weird habits without realizing it. So the idea of forcing myself to do things differently is qui...

Testing out new cabinet pulls for the wet bar. These are a lot lighter and smaller than the ones in the kitchen so I think they go a lot better with the wet bar cabinets.