FeedCity

Though the stream didn’t work as we hoped, the recording of this year’s State of the Word, which in many ways was our best one yet, is up now.

To be honest, I’m really enjoying the waves in the past week. I said the other day: Many sessions result in rides that are better than any wave I’ve ever ridden. I’m not using the word “best.” I had a person ask me if I meant “best” with that awkward phrase. I don’t. “Best” has...

Today's song: Old Folks Boogie. Sooooo you know that you're over the hill when your mind makes a promise that your body can't fill.

There's a question going around in WordPressLand as to whether there are any RSS apps. Yes, of course there are. Have a look at daveverse, in the right margin. That's a feed reader. All the feeds I follow personally. When one of them updates they go to the top of the list. You can see the five most recent posts by clicking on the wedge next to the title, and from there, you can go to the website by clicking a link. That's available as a WordPress plug-in. It works.

I asked ChatGPT to write an email to Sam Altman for me. It's about a possible way to compete with Google.

Nick Heer blogs a little Siri + AI skepticism. It’s a good point, why do we keep expecting the next guy is going to fix this? I was just looking at my first post about Alexa from 10 years ago. That whole time, Siri hasn’t changed significantly that I can tell.

Tuesday session

Fiddlers three

Just noticed that the bottle of Dr. Pepper they gave me at the restaurant last night looks like a 20 oz bottle, but it’s 16.9 oz / 500 mL. Shrinkflation? Sort of makes sense to standardize on an even number like 500 mL for global distribution.

Anthropic acquires the JavaScript tool Bun. A quote from Mike Krieger:

Bun represents exactly the kind of technical excellence we want to bring into Anthropic.

Curious where they take this. Bun is our default for building the Micro.blog mobile apps. It’s good.

On Saturday I reported a problem with WordPress feeds that created a problem for the software I was working on. It's Tuesday now, and it's fixed. This really feels good. Thanks Jeremy! The WordPress community is special. Never seen a big product like WordPress respond so quickly.

Trying out Fizzy from 37signals. I don’t need another tool… Tools are kind of like code dependencies: fewer is probably better. But I’m sure there are some interesting choices in the UI to draw inspiration from.

Why Europe's alternative tech vision needs community, not just compliance

I took another (unsuccessful) run at the previously-failed neckline for the knitalong sweater this weekend. I have learned that I have much to learn about taking off ribbing with circular knitting but also I don't want to talk about it. Instead let's talk about these! ...

"In physical space, Western children are almost comically sheltered. But in digital space, they’re entirely beyond our command; and increasingly, that’s where children spend most of their time."

Theories on what's actually going on. It's a love story between Carol and Zosia. You can fall in love with a person with no sense of self. They plotted to have Helen killed, and waited until Carol's "f*ckable" judgement turns into real love. They fall in love and and get m...

I spent some time reviewing various Mastodon drama from over a year ago that I thought contributed to Eugen Rochko eventually stepping away from a leadership role in the project. In Eugen’s announcement post: I steer clear of showing vulnerability online, but there was a pa...

Good Stratechery update today on OpenAI’s “code red”, with Sam Altman telling the company to refocus:

Altman’s declaration raises another long-standing Stratechery concern about OpenAI: the lack of focus. I wanted the company for years to give up their enterprise business and focus on ChatGPT; I eventually conceded on this point, but there sure do seem to be some focus issues at play with this news!

I have mixed feelings. I like when companies try lots of things. But OpenAI’s strength is they have good products, so prioritizing ChatGPT also makes sense. Ads would get in the way too.

The State of the Word is tomorrow, and it’s so fun to see SF abuzz with WordPress open source energy. We’re doing a lot of firsts tomorrow, including the first release timed to the State of the Word, and we’ll have a good chunk of the release team there to push the button and bring … Continue reading SoTW Eve →

New_ Public announced its new community platform is being co-developed with five local US communities - and there's a lot more to come.