The news blog has been full of mobile app releases, but I’ve also been deploying little improvements to the server this week. Not much that has clear release notes. Just some things are faster, more efficient, less buggy.

Sam Altman in an op-ed about safety for the Financial Times:

Democratic institutions must not cede their responsibilities to AI labs. The labs develop the technology, but citizens and their elected representatives must make the rules. The most important decisions about how this technology is used should be made through democratic processes, not by a small number of companies in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, in a twist because it’s an election year, Greg Abbott has decided he’s against data centers despite previously championing them.

Amazing, but please no one else try this:

Two people who reached the top of the antenna on the Empire State Building in New York City on Wednesday afternoon are in custody, according to the New York Police Department.

The masked individuals also appeared to get engaged while atop the building.

More photos and videos from these crazy lovebirds on Instagram.

Wow, NBA summer league is almost here already, starting on Friday. I like re-signing Harrison Barnes and Julian Champagnie. Plus the new rookies, great roster, don’t mess with what worked last season. 🏀

Testing the redesigned Wavelength app that @vincent has been working on and it looks so nice. The original app hasn’t gotten much attention. The new app is a modernized rewrite and we’re bringing it to Android too.

Federico Viticci blogged about how well suited the Mac is to AI agents, even running headless, compared to the more sandboxed iPad:

What’s different in 2026 is that these powerful agentic tools that are redefining coding and knowledge work, and which are centralizing productivity inside so-called “super apps”, aren’t coming to the iPad, but not for political or financial reasons: they’re Mac-only because only macOS is mature and open enough to support them.

Siri AI attempts to get around this limitation with an API that is only available to Apple, creating a kind of personal data silo.

LeBron James is moving on from the Lakers. LeBron has won an NBA championship with every team he’s played on. I’m curious to see how he wants to close out his career. 🏀

A thoughtful blog post from Vlad Campos about a sort of “paradox” with Micro.blog’s integration with the fediverse. Most software design is a series of tradeoffs, and while imperfect I think the decisions we’ve made are right for Micro.blog. But we can evolve too… Trying to keep an open mind.

Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship. Seemed obvious, but you never know these days. NPR:

…as Chief Justice Roberts observed, the men who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution after the Civil War defined citizenship in broad terms on purpose, rejecting the views of those who wanted to limit citizenship. The resulting language of the amendment says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

🇺🇸

Food delivery robot trying to navigate a tight space. I thought for sure it was going to get stuck.

Thanks Dave for the kind words. There’s a lot to do but I know we’re on the right path. Still digging! 🙂

Not a great time for my car’s A/C to start failing, driving back from Dallas. Way too hot out. Wish I was back at the beach.

Village Burger Bar. Ginormous onion rings.

My focus is making Micro.blog a great blogging platform. But on the social side, I also love that it’s maybe the last social network that is ambivalent to metrics and engagement. Every other platform — even Mastodon — has algorithmic feeds or trends. That’s fine for them, but not what I want to do.

I’m not much of a meme person, but this Frog and Toad + Claude is hilarious and true. “Cookies” is an all-time great story. 🍪

I loved seeing this: Why Inkwell is so useful while on vacation. Inkwell tries to have an interface that works for staying current with everything today but also for skimming through things you might have missed that are important. Good for vacations or taking breaks from the internet.

I’m a broken record on the futility of TestFlight beta approvals, but I was reminded of it again when I considered doing a new beta for Epilogue over the weekend. If it requires Apple approval, now I have another thing to manage, in addition to all these apps. Might as well just ship to everyone.

John Gruber in a comment linking to more Om Malik blog posts:

If you’re going to get into something, you ought to pursue it to its full extent. If you’re not interested enough to do that, don’t bother getting into it. Find the few things you love; don’t waste your time on the many things you merely like.

Rush. 🎸

Dave Winer puts out a call for others building tools that support RSS and especially inbound RSS:

If you’re working on a social web app that supports inbound and outbound RSS, I’d like to help, so our products can interop beautifully. That’s the reason I’m doing this work, to establish a baseline for interop in the social web. RSS is the obvious candidate. If we didn’t have it, we’d have to invent it.

I’m actually not aware of any social platforms that support inbound RSS except Micro.blog. It would be great to have more.

Another beautiful remembrance of Om Malik, highlighting his photos on Glass:

It’s not lost on us that Om’s photography, often taken in frozen lands in or around the arctic circle, was the polar opposite of his personality. While he focused on subtle shapes and hidden landscapes, he was the sun of any group he was in.

Watched the first episode of Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness. Funny. Great to have Larry David back on TV. 📺

I’m testing a Liquid Glass update for Epilogue, but I almost don’t want to ship it until iOS 27 because the translucency on the tab bar is so bad with book covers behind it. I’ll likely work around it, though, so it doesn’t hold up any other features.

Mark Gurman reporting for Bloomberg that Apple’s vice president of Vision Pro and smart glasses is leaving for OpenAI:

Paul Meade, a vice president, is set to leave Apple by next week and will then start at OpenAI’s hardware unit, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Meade will work on OpenAI’s upcoming family of AI-powered devices, said the people, who declined to be named discussing unannounced personnel moves.

Interesting that he’s leaving before the Apple smart glasses announcement. I’ll be a little surprised if we even hear about the glasses this year.

IndieWebCamp Nuremberg is happening this weekend. I’m looking over the notes for the books session.

Semafor reports that Mythos can now be released to select companies. Also:

The letter is silent on Fable 5, a weaker version of Mythos that was briefly the most powerful AI model widely available to consumers. People close to the talks said they are moving toward releasing Fable as well, though that timeline is unclear.

Presumably the company list is the same for both Mythos and GPT-5.6 announced today. Whether intended or not, the way this was handled has effectively pulled back Anthropic’s perceived lead by a couple weeks, perhaps aligning the latest frontier releases.

For all the talk of the programming jobs market on the verge of collapse, this sure feels like a great time to be a developer. Reminds me of being young when I’d stay up until 3am coding, except now I can go to bed at 9pm.

I said earlier this month that I like Anthropic’s model names. OpenAI is now trying something similar with the new names Sol, Terra, and Luna for GPT-5.6. Less descriptive but more friendly than the technical “mini” and “nano” we had previously. I like it.

A little surprised that Fable is still held up. Maybe the administration’s slant toward vindictiveness means that we’ll see GPT-5.6 generally available first.

Sad but inspired to read the many remembrances of Om Malik. I love this idea from Matt Mullenweg:

Om loved putting on a good conference, and I’d like to celebrate his life with an awesome event on September 29, 2026 (his 60th) in San Francisco, like an OmFest. I’ll find a space where every community from the many facets of Om can come together. In the spirit of Open Source and co-creation, we can have some booths, flash talks, a gallery of his photography, pen showcase, and whatever other fun ideas people want to contribute.