FeedCity

TikTok has finally been sold, sort of. New partners include Silver Lake, the private equity firm that owns WP Engine. It’s almost like Silver Lake doesn’t care much about the open web.

John Gruber’s one-sentence take on Apple adding more ads to the App Store:

I have a bad feeling about this.

Yep. Even ignoring that Apple shouldn’t be in the ads business, the problem with App Store search ads is they take up half the phone screen! It’s a lot of junk to scroll through.

I asked Claude.ai to do the show notes -- something I really don't enjoy or have time for. So if this doesn't adequately describe the podcast, blame the AI. ;-) There's tired frustration among web developers who remember Firefox's heyday. This podcast is for those who experi...

Podcast: What Would Firefox Do?

For day five of the photo challenge: beard.

I learned about a feature in Inoreader that's like a river in my earlier feed readers and in FeedLand Their feature is called HTML clips. Here's a link to an HTML clip I created for my podcast list. Not exactly sure what it's doing, it appears to show news in reverse chronologic order like a timeline, as in a river. Otherwise Inoreader seems to be a mailbox style reader. Thanks to Randy Lauen for the tip.

You have been warned, spoilers follow... The whole thing is the book Carol is writing, about writing a book, inside the book she's writing another book. The book I'm speaking of is the one where it's all about Carol. Everywhere she goes people stop and say hello, and address...

1997: A big tree falls!

Going to Arizona. brb

I have a page on my site, /post, which lists all of my blog posts. For at least the last year, the HTML document title used on the page has been Posts in the Post Category. This is because the page uses the same template as my other category pages. Posts in the Coffee Categor...

1997: When a big tree falls, sunlight shines on smaller plants and they get a chance to grow.

Billy Crystal: "There is a line from one of Rob’s favorite films, It’s a Wonderful Life, 'Each man’s life touches so many other lives, and when he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?' You have no idea.

Maybe a good name for dynamic OPML is "feed sharing."

Predictions for journalism; paperbacks are dead; feeling the fear.

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Kathleen Fisher, whose blog can be found at aspeckledtrout.com. Tired of RSS? Read this in your browser or sign up for the newsletter. The People and Blogs series is supported by Emmanuel Odon...

I hope this message finds you well. I’m a senior full-stack freelance developer with 10+ years of experience building and scaling production-grade software for businesses. I specialize in LAMP, MEAN, MERN, Python-based frameworks, and AI-first solutions. I have successfully delivered many projects across different industries, focusing on performance, clean architecture, and user experience. I’m currently...

It’s exciting to announce that Stephen Wolfram has joined as a special advisor to Automattic. I promise this is not just because he is such an incredible blogger, using WordPress, natch. If you don’t know about Stephen Wolfram, his about page is not a bad place to start, but far more interesting is his 2019 … Continue reading Wolfram Automattica →

Casey Newton has predictions for 2026: the bubble will continue even as some AI companies fail, OpenAI will retire Sora, social media will increasingly be 16+, and other mostly AI-related predictions. On politics:

I predict AI concerns will take a backseat to the economy and a backlash to Trump’s authoritarianism. That said, I do think we’ll see the beginnings of an anti-AI movement — and perhaps a bipartisan one.

2026 might be too early for a substantial, mainstream backlash. But I do think as AI improves, both proponents and detractors will become more extreme.

Evergreen. Got our tree so early this year, it’s losing more and more needles every day. Just needs to last another week. 🎄

Stocking stuffers anyone? Santa brought 6,000 index cards down the proverbial chimney today. Should have enough now to index all the books in the house?