FeedCity

Sometimes when I rewrite a blog post or email multiple times, it becomes hard to tell if it’s actually better, or if it lost whatever spark was in that first quick draft.

Micro.blog iPhone and iPad folks, the latest TestFlight beta has several bug fixes to text editing layout, keyboard, and the share sheet nav bar. Think I’ve finally got some of those glitches under control. If you’re not on the beta, you can join here.

There has been some lovely writing about self-driving this week, first in the New York Times where Jonathan Slotkin makes the medical case for autonomous vehicles. But I was really taken by The Economist’s look at how self-driving cars will transform urban economies. It’s behind a paywall. I enjoyed how they thought about the second-order … Continue reading Self-driving →

People using feedland.org -- may notice that some old items will appear in your timelines. I just installed a version of FeedLand on that server that does a better job of figuring out if a feed item has changed. There will be fewer false positives, which makes the software considerably more efficient, and means that you don't have to see things that didn't change. It should settle down fairly quickly, but it may be a little chatty for a while. Still diggin! (Also these changes will come to feedland.com as well.)

People seem to like Telex which makes developing WordPress user interfaces easier, via AI. Software is gradually adjusting this way, putting the AI where the problem is. For example I wanted to do a Google Form a few months ago and the best Gemini could do was tell me what commands to choose. But now if you go to make a form, using the Forms app, it offers to do it via AI.

If we really want tech to get back to basics we need pubs that function as product reviewers, like we have entertainment reviewers. There's so much software and so many isolated bubbles of developers, when there's a development that shakes the world less than ChatGPT, I might...

It’s Saturday morning, and I’m sitting here at my desk, working on client projects and sipping my coffee. While taking a break, I was clicking around the web, as one does, and found a post titled “Is Pixelfed sawing off the branch that the Fediverse is sitting on?” by Ploum ...

James LePage has a great write-up, SOTW 2025:The Year WordPress Became AI-Native.

November 28 through December 5, 2025 Recent Events From events.indieweb.org/archive: Homebrew Website Club - Eastern Wednesday, December 3 at 6:00pm Online! Zoom! Homebrew Website Club Europe/London Wednesday, December 3 at 7:00pm IndieWeb Black Friday Create Day —...

The obvious downside to AI creating answers and software we might not need is it feels wasteful. There is a cost. There is not enough energy and infrastructure. This is the OpenAI bet: that when they scale up, no one else will be able to do what they can do. Except Google.

ChatGPT Pulse still blows my mind. This morning it built a custom HTML app for visualizing train seating. I didn’t ask it for this, it just knew I had been looking at trains, so it churned on it overnight. In the future you can imagine software is more adaptable to each user.

Funny thing about yesterday's Supreme Court decision, if Texas goes ahead with their gerrymandering plan, it probably will backfire on them, cause them to lose a few seats instead of gain them. The news reports generally leave that out, probably figuring the sports fans who can understand the gambling on football and baseball couldn't understand that gerrymandering is a bet that you know which voters will turn out and who they'll vote for a year in the future. In fact NPR reports it as a victory for Repubs. Right now it looks very much like it is not a win for them.

Die Hard at Cosmic. ☕️

For all I know, John O'Nolan is a cool dude. He’s the founder of Ghost, a project that is also really cool. You know what’s also cool? RSS. And guess what, John just announced he’s working on a new RSS app (Reader? Tool? Service?) called Alcove and he blogged about it. All t...

When they say AI is just autocomplete on steroids, that's like saying a human is just a product of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur on steroids. It may be true, but it doesn't say anything useful. It's also like saying that a computer is just a collection of on and off switches.

I have been thinking about redesigning my website for a while. I wrote a bit about one of the design directions I explored recently. I loved doing the design part of the project, but knew there would be several hours of work to integrate the new style into my website. Today ...

I've come to think of WordPress as an API with a widely deployed and stable implementation behind it, where the user is in control and developers can build apps without having to get into the storage-selling business. It's an incredible bundle of web functionality that is largely unexplored. I've written two pieces this year, Think Different, and my input into Matt's State of the Word that explain what I'm doing, the best I can, for now.

Huge deal with Netflix buying Warner Bros. for $83 billion including HBO Max. If it goes through, will be in the top 10 largest acquisitions of all time. From The Verge, no immediate hope of combining subscriptions:

In its announcement Netflix suggests it has no immediate plans for drastic change at Warner Bros., describing HBO and HBO Max as a “compelling, complementary offering” alongside its own streaming service, and saying it will maintain the studio’s current operations “including theatrical releases for films.”

I assume they’ll have a bundle, similar to early Disney+ and Hulu.

Ghost founder John O’Nolan is working on a new RSS reader called Alcove:

I wish it were just all in one place. Without all the noise and engagement farming. Just a quiet little spot where I could catch up with things I care about.

I wonder which existing RSS reader he’s using that has noise and engagement farming? Anyhoo, we should probably accelerate our plans for a Micro.blog-based RSS reader. You can follow blogs in Micro.blog, but a full reader outside the social timeline has been a missing piece.