Chris Aldrich
• Chris Aldrich
People and blogs involved with and about the IndieWeb community, the fediverse, and/or the open web in general.
🗓️ The Level Up
The Level Up is an indie improv showcase. Join us as we watch amazing New York indie improv talents gain XP on the Magnet stage, unlock new achievements, and reach new milestones. Or do comedy.
Come support Michael as he dons his hosting-duties cap for three exciting indie teams!
- BIZZO (IG: @bizzonyc)
- AM 2 PM (IG: @anthonyjulian_improv)
- UP TO NO GOD (IG: @uptonogod)
I’ll be playing with Bizzo, as well as with Michael and the rest of the Level Up!
Looking forward to it! And to seeing you there!! (Yes, you. Come on out!!!)
Saturday January 24th, 2026 @ 10:30pm
Magnet Theater
254 West 29th St (btwn 7th and 8th Ave.)
New York City, NY 10001
Tickets $10: https://magnettheater.com/show/tickets/60293/
Mark Gurman pulls together a bunch of Siri AI news for Bloomberg:
The company has been planning an announcement of the new Siri in the second half of February, when it will give demonstrations of the functionality.
Also more details about cloud-based models. On-device just isn’t good enough yet.
This site Bugs Apple Loves might be a little unfair, but the iCloud photos part is good:
You took some photos. iCloud says ‘Uploading 847 items’. You wait. Next day: ‘Uploading 847 items’. Week later: ‘Uploading 847 items’. Is it stuck? Is it working? Is there an error? There’s no progress bar. No ETA.
In my experience, Apple tries to optimize when it syncs based on battery life or network or some other hidden criteria. In practice this just makes photo sync slow and unreliable.
They should host games on ChatGPT.
They couldn't have chosen a more ideal liberal state to own. I don't think any of this is an accident. Next time they will kill two, American citizens of course. And we'll protest. And then 25. It's starting to sink in that this is not just a bad dream and it's not going to end.
Gonna try to watch all the Oscar nominations this year. Over the weekend caught up on Bugonia (what the heck?) and The Smashing Machine (not much plot, but really liked the characters). 🍿
Michelle Obama was wrong when she said "when they go low we go high." There is a difference. We always try to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is pretty damn low.
Best Picture nominees
Nominated for best picture of 2025, ranked by Metacritic rating.
- One Battle After Another. 95
- The Secret Agent. 91
- Marty Supreme. 89
- Train Dreams. 88
- Sentimental Value. 86
- Hamnet. 84
- Sinners. 84
- Frankenstein. 78
- Bugonia. 72
- F1: The Movie. 68
BigCo companies and countries
Another BTW, I think perhaps just for fun we should create an XML-RPC implementation of the wpcom API. I have just the thing to base it on.
At some point we're going to want to make it as easy to set up a WordPress site as it is to create a new Bluesky account, because the two things will be basically the same thing. Either one will get you access to a network of bloggers.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Hiring in an era of fake candidates, real scams and AI slop
"Red flags that both job seekers and employers should watch for, in an era of AI slop and application scams."
Backseat Software – Mike Swanson’s Blog
People use “enshittification” to describe platform decay. What I’m describing here is one of the mechanisms that makes that decay feel personal. It’s the constant conversion of your attention into a KPI.
39C3 - Persist, resist, stitch - YouTube
A fascinating talk looking at the history of the intersection of knitting and stitching with wartime cryptography and resistance.
Manuel Moreale — Everything Feed
• Manuel Moreale

