I wrote most of my book years ago, so this is the first time I’ve actually run it through AI to get some feedback on structure, redundancies to trim, and grammar problems. It’s valuable, but it’s also leaving me with doubt that I didn’t have before. Let’s say I let AI come u...

When I experimented with not federating my posts for a few months, I also accidentally muted everything from Mastodon. Now that I’m seeing everything again, I’m not sure my life is better. Perhaps there should be a preference to temporary hide external posts — Mastodon, Bluesky, Tumblr, etc.

Sean Heber blogs about the continued devaluation of software, comparing it to Zork in the 1980s.

In 2026 there is going to be more software than ever, much of at least AI-assisted if not outright slop, and so more competition. More indie developers, but maybe fewer successful ones.

Intrigued by the upcoming LEGO smart bricks. It’s crazy what is possible now. I ordered a few widgets from SparkFun the other day to experiment with… So tiny and powerful.

Satya Nadella started a new blog at the end of 2025. A couple interesting things about it… There is no mention of Microsoft, so it feels like a personal blog, and he quotes Steve Jobs:

A new concept that evolves “bicycles for the mind” such that we always think of AI as a scaffolding for human potential vs a substitute. What matters is not the power of any given model, but how people choose to apply it to achieve their goals.

Also his blog is using Hugo.

Great post today by Ben Thompson on the changes coming in the future, even as AI replaces some jobs:

All of that could very well be replaced by AI, but the point is that the history of humans is the continual creation of new jobs to be done — jobs that couldn’t have been conceived of before they were obvious, and which pay dramatically more than whatever baseline existed before technological change.

There will always be something to do. And humans will always seek out art and writing and anything crafted by humans, because we feel a connection with it.

John Voorhees revived his old Objective-C app with Claude Code and came away floored:

What I see is the foundation of a fundamental shift in the economics of building and maintaining apps. […] Will new opportunities emerge for indie developers to serve even narrower user segments as the time and effort to build new utility apps drops?

Yes. Small developers (especially generalists) have a new competitive advantage because they have all the capability of larger teams and none of the bureaucracy.

My book has about 65 short chapters. Each chapter has a quote at the beginning. I thought it would be fun to gather all of these together in a blog post, so here they are. (They aren’t in book order.) It’s not all the quotes in the book. There are hundreds of block quotes an...

Last week I started making one final editing pass on my book, trimming some sections and adding new text for Bluesky and other recent social web developments. I’ll publish all the changes soon. This will really be the last time I touch the text.

Can’t believe I’m just now learning that the people mover in the Houston airport was built by Disney (WED, now Imagineering).

A short video with some clips from driving to Lake Brownwood this weekend. Apparently I say “stopped real quick” frequently.

Driving back into Austin there was an incredible view of the huge moon low over downtown, just touching the UT tower. Unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Almost pulled over to take a photo, but instead I snapped this from the car. Kind of neat in its own way.

Longhorn Cavern State Park.

Wind power, rail power.

Hiking at Lake Brownwood State Park, came up on this red cardinal.

Stopped for a view of the sunset along the road to Brownwood, with Honda Element micro-camper.

Joan Westenberg’s blog post this week is such a perfect start to 2026. It sets the tone for what we should keep working on throughout the year. Just picking out a few things to quote… On the value of exploring ideas through longer blog posts: You can write a post working th...

While traveling last week, I found myself thinking back to when Kindles came with free cellular connectivity. It’s a minor problem, but it’s not worth the trouble of connecting a Kindle to hotel wi-fi, so if juggling multiple devices you miss sync. I’ll sometimes read on both a Kindle and my iPhone.

Working on support for standard.site in Micro.blog. I had blogged earlier this year about potential AT Proto lexicons for long-form posts, but I didn’t get much feedback, so I’m happy to follow the work that has already been done here by Leaflet and others.

Watched: Down Cemetery Road S1E1, Almost True. I haven’t been able to get into the other new shows that everyone seems to love. I thought this was a very strong start, though. 📺

Ben Werdmuller on LLMs for coding:

I also think we’re going to see a real split in the tech industry (and everywhere code is written) between people who are outcome-driven and are excited to get to the part where they can test their work with users faster, and people who are process-driven and get their meaning from the engineering itself and are upset about having that taken away.

I’ve been saying some variation on this too. Is the art the engineering work or the final product? Tech generalists are going to be very successful.

Starting the new year with some Micro.blog home page tweaks for signed-out users. Added a new Atmosphere page with an overview of Bluesky and AT Protocol features.

Watched: LotR: The Return of the King, Extended Edition. I always forget that it’s actually four hours long. Still a few nitpicks but not enough to overshadow some amazing sequences. What I blogged in 2002 generally about the film adaptation also still feels right. 🍿

Meghana Indurti writing for The New Yorker on our optimized, convenient lives:

During the drive, I instruct my A.I. assistant to send custom responses to all my friends’ and family members’ text messages. Some of them text back right away with laughing emojis. I guess my A.I. has learned to emulate my sense of humor. I smile, knowing how much time I must have saved today, unlike my ancestors who had to engage in the hours-long, monotonous task of corresponding with their loved ones.

🙂

In 2026 we’re going to see incredible advances in AI and also incredible pushback.

Jason Snell has some good predictions for Apple at Macworld:

I doubt any new-and-improved Siri will be as good as we dream it might be, but I think it’ll be appreciably better than it is today. (And the arrival of a better Siri will unlock Apple’s ability to ship new smart home products, which the company has been itching to do for at least a year.)

I still think Apple’s whole AI approach works against having a universal Siri across devices. Hoping for some surprises in 2026.

Watching LotR: The Two Towers and started looking through old Hobbit history and revisions. I don’t think I had ever read the 1937 version. This website has the original and updated text for chapter 5.

Paul Frazee blogs about AT Protocol and building different kinds of apps on the same underlying architecture and storage:

Connected clouds solve a lot of problems. You still have the always-on convenience, but you can also store your own data and run your own programs.

Nice post from Allan Pike examining how AI-enabled web browsers attempt to route queries to web search or answers. I like Dia but still prefer using a dedicated chat app when I actually want AI.

Had to redo my 2025 reading post because there was a comically wrong cached book cover. Guess it’s a reminder that I need to figure out a better way to preview Hugo shortcodes.

Parker Ortolani blogs five takes on 2025. On OpenAI:

OpenAI does its best work when it focuses on the models and the core app, which I fear it is getting slightly distracted away from.

I agree they are distracted, but I think the products are just as important as the models. Pulse could be built with any model, but only OpenAI has done it.

Parker also has a defense of Alan Dye:

iOS 7, watchOS, tvOS, the iPhone X experience, the Big Sur redesign, the Dynamic Island, visionOS, Liquid Glass and so much more have all defined his time at the company.