After working on something that not everyone will agree on, I love returning to something universally good: books! Here’s another view of the upcoming books calendar feature, with an agenda-style list that works well even for not many books. For your blog, you can choose this or the calendar view.
People and blogs involved with and about the IndieWeb community, the fediverse, and/or the open web in general.
Dave Winer has deployed a separate RSS.chat instance that other people can join to play around with: demo.rss.chat.
A couple days ago, OpenAI removed the 5-hour usage limit. I think it was meant to be temporary, but I wonder if they’ll make it permanent. It’s one less thing to worry about. Lots of numbers in a UI introduce friction, making your brain think about things that don’t really matter.
OpenAI responds
Three separate posts dropped yesterday with OpenAI’s side of the story in the Apple lawsuit. First, a more complete official statement from OpenAI, reported by various outlets:
While we take these allegations seriously, we’re not aware of any evidence that this complaint ha...
While all the new rss.chat business is going on, the WordPress news site that I started in May is growing at a nice clip. Referrers used to pinpoint where flows like this came from, but they stopped doing that at some point. If you have any clues as to who's pointing to it now, please let me know so I can thank them. And if you know of any sites that are not in the feed list, that do a good job of covering WordPress news, please let me know that too.
A lot more people have tried out rss.chat now that we have a demo site, and they are looking for stuff that isn't there. I wrote a longish post on X this morning explaining. If you want the gist, this is a bootstrap, and rss.chat is primarly a writing surface and a timeline f...
Thinking about Om Malik again. We only exchanged a handful of emails. I was able to interview him at Micro Camp, and I put an edited portion of it online here for my book, which I was skimming through today. It’s from 2023 but still feels relevant. Such a loss.
Demis Hassabis published a post — on X and LinkedIn — about needing a framework to steer AI development, with AGI possibly just a few years away:
Even if we solve these hard technical challenges, there will be further complex economic and philosophical questions to tackle: what sorts of new economic models will be needed to help everyone thrive in a post-scarcity world? What values do we want to live by, what will meaning and purpose be, and how might even the human condition itself change?
demo.rss.chat: "This is a writing surface."
Is it asking too much to want two World Cup semi-final upsets?
I put a lot of thought into reevaluating the X API from a blogging perspective. I also wrote a whole book about the problems with social media, and I updated it for Elon Musk. But it is stressful, and I’m in no hurry. For people who have asked for this to be re-enabled, let’s give it some more time.
Great analogy from JA Westenberg about SaaS and bread machines:
A company that decides to build its own version using AI coding tools is buying a bread machine. The ingredients are cheap, and the machine does most of the work, but they’re now the baker. They own the maintenance, edge cases, and security gaps that AI-generated code tends to introduce…
Most people just buy sliced bread ready to eat. Most people will still buy apps. Although the quality bar is higher now.
Space
This evening I listened to Peter Gabriel’s New Blood, after seeing the album mentioned on Thomas’ blog. As I listened, I kept thinking “this is my favourite song so far!” There were so many tracks that I liked. Downside-Up, Wallflower, and Mercy Street were all terrific.
Tow...
Congrats to Manu Moreale on 150 interviews for his People and Blogs series. It’s an incredible archive, what makes the web great. He’s downsizing now:
My digital life follows a somewhat regular rhythm and I alternate through phases of expansion, where I buy domain names, ship new projects, start newsletters, and chase a million ideas, and phases of contraction, where everything happens in reverse: domains are left to expire, projects are archived, newsletters are deleted, services are cancelled.
Sunset
The valley, almost invisible. The most intense degree of aerial perspective whitens the distance below the sun. Looking through the trees I see haze. The hills fade into the ether. The occasional contour of a tree in the distance is visible. I have never seen a sunset like th...
Life seems at once fleeting and yet almost long enough. At 50, I feel lucky to be able to look back on what feels like a complete life already. My kids are adults. I’ve had a good career with a few interesting twists. Joy, heartache. But also I want decades more. There’s so much to see and do.
Great memorial to Don Iwerks who passed away at 96:
An allergic reaction to photographic chemicals forced him out of the Process Lab and into the studio’s Machine Shop. It was a twist of fate that proved transformative for both Iwerks and the company. Over the next three decades, Iwerks designed cameras, optical printers, special effects systems, and projection technologies that became essential to Disney productions and attractions.
Not as well known as his father, Ub Iwerks, but what an amazing career. Rest in peace.
rss.chat is meant to be like MacWrite was on early Macs, give developers something to think about and lots of prior art for them to steal. All we want in return is interop. ;-)
Mixed feedback on my post about X, mostly good. I’m going to hold the rollout another week so I can consider everything. No deployments yet.
Also there’s some confusion about whether all paid Micro.blog subscriptions send money to X. Nope, this would be a change only for users who want to use X.