FeedCity

The redesigned AT Proto site looks great. It even has a neat live firehose view.

I am in complete accord with Jeremy Keith’s post Magic. It goes perfectly well with my own post from 2024 Mistrust-Based Technology Choices But I still draw a line. When it comes to front-end development, that line is for me to stay as close as I can to raw HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. After all,...

A couple days ago I quietly made a rule for myself that I would not blog about AI at all this week. Halfway breaking it with a link to this AI-adjacent report from Mark Gurman about new Apple devices:

The pendant would essentially serve as an always-on camera for the smartphone that also includes a microphone for Siri input. Some Apple employees call it the “eyes and ears” of the phone.

Always listening is already a step too far for most people. Always filming? Apple’s strength is privacy, but on-device models don’t seem cut out for this right now. Will be fascinating to watch.

This is a test post.

Thinking lately about the friends I grew up with but haven’t seen in years or decades. I’d like to reach out to a few of them. We all get so busy with everyday life that the important things sometimes slip away, indefinitely postponed.

There are two wolves inside you…

My Builder side won’t let me just sit and think about unsolved problems, and my Thinker side is starving while I vibe-code. I am not sure if there will ever be a time again when both needs can be met at once.

adactio.com/links/22400

More details about video in the new Apple Podcasts in this post on Podnews:

…this is the first time Apple Podcasts has ever announced a feature that forces you to be a customer of a few large companies to use it.

So disappointing. Micro.blog already uses HLS for video and could support this tomorrow if Apple had just used RSS. This is why open formats matter. Apple has instead chosen lock-in.

My underlying model for everything that's happening

Terry Godier’s new feed reader Current is out. I had a feeling he was exploring ideas similar to what I was also working on. In an announcement post, he writes:

As items age, they dim. Eventually they’re gone, carried downstream. You don’t mark them as read. You don’t file them. They simply pass, the way water passes under a bridge.

I have a similar concept in my upcoming feed reader, that items “fade” away and change colors. If you miss them, it’s okay. But Current embraces the river and has all sorts of design ideas beyond that. Really well done.

In the California Primary on June 7, 1988 I cast my ballot for Jesse Jackson. Reverend Jackson got 1.1 million votes; Michael Dukakis: 1.9 million votes in California (source). A good showing. I woke up to the news that Jesse Jackson died this morning. I mourn him. I’ll quote just a short section of it...

BTW, people make the same mistake with AI that we make with every new tech. We focus on the creators not the users. As users we are learning a new skill, how to specify our needs precisely. Whether this is good or bad, I don't know.

Back when I ran a software company I'd help the team understand why they should be very very nice to our customers. "They have our money in their pockets." It generally got a laugh partially because I was their boss, but I like to think also because it's the truth.

Yesterday, I had to ship an envelope to the UK and got caught in dead ends at the Fedex and DHL sites. One of them said my zip code wasn't in the town I live in. How do you get past that?? These companies are losing business because their systems are broken. Maybe they worked at one time. I used ChatGPT as I often do to get help on one of these antiquated sites. And while ChatGPT has the technology and the Fedex has the info, they just have to get together and upgrade the user experience, and eventually of course is the AI version of the UI becomes the real one.

Paywalls that require you to subscribe to an Atlanta news org when you don’t live in Atlanta prob don’t generate much revenue. Why not instead charge per article. Like a toll you pay on a road you drive on once every few years. I wouldn't even have an exception for Atlanta residents. If they start spending more money than a subscription costs, you could offer a subscription then, as a way to save money. Kind of the way Amazon lets you buy a certain amount of coffee beans without requiring you to sign up for monthly delivery. They do tell you how much you'd save if you subscribed. Everyone appreciates a chance to save money, but still might not want the commitment. And asking someone from upstate NY to subscribe to the Atlanta Journal Constitution is a total bullshit. An insult to both our intelligences.

Aram Zucker-Scharff writes "I don't want to read one more thinkpiece about blackbox AI code factories until you can show me what they've produced." I've made the same request, and there was very little even brilliant programmers could show, including some who have become in...

My Twitter account is owned. I can't even see what people are doing with it because you have to be signed on (apparently) to read stuff on Twitter nowadays. I wish current Twitter management would put it out of its misery. Served me well for approx 20 years. Let's clean up the mess. Thanks for your attention this matter.

How Protocols for Publishers points to the future of journalism – and the web

I don’t like magic. I’m not talking about acts of prestidigitation and illusion. I mean the kind of magic that’s used to market technologies. It’s magic. It just works. Don’t think about it. I’ve written about seamless and seamful design before. Seamlessness is often toute...

Watching more of the Winter Olympics. Imagine if as developers we only had one try… Shipped a new app that had some bugs? Oh well, I guess improve it with an app update in four years.