FeedCity

Great point from Jeff Johnson on the arbitrary tier 1 / tier 2 differences in Apple’s proposed EU rules:

What I found striking about the search differences between Tier 1 and Tier 2 is that in creating this distinction, Apple clearly considers App Store search to be a developer feature rather than a user feature. In other words, the user’s interest in finding an app via search is disregarded, and Apple is willing to be less helpful to users to the extent that app developers pay a lesser commission to Apple.

BTW, I think the right way to read Scripting News is getting the nightly email. That's the pulse. I jot stuff down during the day, mostly in the morning, and later add links and finish stuff up. The scripting.com feed is updated in realtime. So you may get many versions of an...

I'm working my way through The Bear, and it's great because you remember that you love all these characters and you can immediately start living the ongoing drama of their lives. The scene they paint is intriguing. I feel like a cat perched on a window watching everyone doing their daily stuff. Looking forward to going back to the beginning and starting over.

Glossary: Tiny Little Textbox.

I was asked this week about our policy when a subscription expires or sadly even if someone passes away. I know I’ve blogged about this, but I don’t think it was formally documented, so I wrote up a simple help page for it.

The longest continuously updated RSS feed in the known universe.

Experimenting with Gemini CLI to iterate on some web page changes. It’s free for basic usage. It does get confused sometimes, having to re-read files and apply changes multiple times, which makes it feel slow and a little wasteful.

Enjoyed listening to the copyright discussion on SharpTech this week. Copyright is not a universal truth. It’s effectively a limited monopoly given to creators. That’s helpful, but it must be balanced with the public good. Sometimes we go too far, like Mickey Mouse’s 95-year copyright.

This is the 96th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have David Wertheimer and his blog, Ideapad I love to have people who started blogging in the 90s as guests because I can only assume th...

Going to Ireland. brb

On Dot Social Episode #23 Ghost’s John O’Nolan and WordPress’s Matthias Pfefferle want to help blogs and long content thrive on the open social web. Meet “the longformers.”

I missed on my first reading of Apple’s new EU rules that “tier 1” developers won’t get automatic app updates. This is going to be very confusing for users. The whole thing seems unworkable to me. Small steps forward, but just barely. I’d like a “tier 0” with sideloading and a 0% commission.

As spelled out in a StoreKit addendum, Apple is replacing the Core Technology Fee in the EU with a Core Technology Commission. It’s a better deal, but on principle I’m against any fee for subscriptions outside of the App Store. Not sure this change is more compliant with the EU’s DMA, either.

Thursday session

Krugman doesn’t understand what’s coming for NYC. And doesn’t understand the leadership Cuomo uniquely provided at the height of Covid. It’s pretty likely what’s starting in NYC will be worse than Covid or 9-11. Funny thing is Krugman did get it, a few weeks ago when the crisis in Los Angeles was peaking. He wrote a piece that was terrified, and realistic. The National Guard had been nationalized. Marines were invading California. But now that Calif hasn't been in the news, it's easy to swing back. I bet if the election had happened during the worst of it, Cuomo would've won.

I, like a lot of other people, assumed that Americans would be terrible at authoritarianism. Shows we have a lot to learn. Americans are pretty good at it it turns out.

A fluffy dalgona coffee before some afternoon meetings.

Scott Alexander, of Slate Star Codex / Astral Codex Ten fame, ran an Everything-Except-Book Review Contest 2025 in February. The prompt: “Submit an ACX-length post reviewing something, anything, except a book.” The submissions were collected anonymously in a giant 450-page Google Doc. I don’t think the winners have been chosen yet, but there is one essay that … Continue reading Alpha School Insider →

Masked secret police is pure terrorism. We should ask NYPD what we have to do to protect ourselves from them, and then do it.