Seriously underestimated how long this db migration was going to take, leading to a deployment blunder that introduced a temporary cross-posting glitch. I’ve been juggling too much this week, making careless mistakes. Getting a lot done, though!

Last week’s Sharp Tech about data centers is really good. Misinformation, the lost opportunity with nuclear power, and SpaceX craziness.

The most compelling point: it’s possible that the demand for intelligence has almost no limit. If so, a lot of the insane scale starts to sound reasonable.

Finished watching Hacks season 5 this week. Great series. Each season had its own theme and arc, and they knew when to call it, not drag on past the story they set out to tell. 📺

Federico Viticci blogs about RemCTL, a command-line tool he built for Reminders:

So I decided to take matters into my own hands and build the Reminders CLI of my dreams with Codex. After about two months of work and everyday tests, the result is RemCTL (short for “Reminders Control”): to the best of my knowledge, it’s the only Reminders CLI that can read and write any kind of reminder and Reminders metadata…

Really impressive. I installed it to play with, even though I don’t really use Reminders. Works well.

Feels like a great, tight series even with a couple blowouts like tonight. As a Spurs fan, that run in the 3rd quarter was fun to watch. Expecting game 7 to be close, though, maybe more like OT in game 1. 🏀

Anthropic released Opus 4.8 today. GPT-5.6 is probably soon. Which is better seems increasingly subjective. It’s hard to notice small steps forward when you’re already at really good.

People will stick to the tools they are comfortable with. The next big advance will be a new app, not a new model.

Jill Biden says she wondered if Joe Biden was having a stroke during the presidential debate. One of the great what ifs to think what would’ve happened if the debate had been a week earlier or a week later. 🇺🇸

Bluesky is now showing Standard.site info in the timeline:

Starting today, Standard.site links will have an enhanced render in the Bluesky app, with extra, actionable metadata about the post, including the publication and author.

Very cool. Support for Standard.site in Micro.blog coming soon.

Making good progress on Micro.blog 3.7 for iOS. You can follow along with the beta version on TestFlight. The blog post text editor has been rewritten. Getting rid of Obj-C hacks that I bolted on in previous versions.

Thinking about this perspective from Alan Jacobs about AI and people wanting to be recognized: Millions of people desperately want affirmation. They don’t want to go to the trouble of writing or painting or drawing or making music, but they want people to believe that they ...

More details from Mark Gurman about the upcoming Siri redesign:

Apple has redesigned Siri for modern iPhone hardware, making it live inside the Dynamic Island as an always-on agent that can help users get things done across the operating system and within apps. […] Apple plans to let users swipe down from the top center of the iPhone anywhere in the system to launch a new Search or Ask interface.

So close to WWDC, I assume these leaks are accurate.

Spurs vs. Thunder tonight, game 6. It has taken all my restraint not to buy tickets. Feeling really lucky that I’ve been able to go to a couple playoffs games this year. And just in case this is the last game of the season, what an amazing season it has been, even if we want more. 🏀

Looking forward to resuming my Texas state parks visits, including eventually the new Silver Lake State Park under development. It will be the state’s second-largest park at 54k acres:

The new park has limestone cliffs rising above rolling hills covered in live oak and juniper, with miles of river frontage along the West Nueces River, along with spring-fed Silver Lake and two water holes.

Amazing that Texas just has these huge areas that are basically unknown to everyone.

Now that Jony Ive is done with the Ferrari, I hope he and OpenAI get to shipping the AI assistant hardware. I don’t think it’s a distracting side quest like Sora was. A new device could be one of their most important products. Few companies have the design talent and infrastructure to pull it off.

Continuing to work through the upgrade to our books database in Micro.blog. We now have metadata for over 30 million books. Next up is a rewrite of the search, and more code to self-heal book records and covers from other sources.

On the 23rd anniversary of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg writes an emotional and personal blog post about the ongoing WP Engine saga:

Silver Lake, you have already extracted all your pounds of flesh. I missed my Mom’s knee surgery. If you wanted me to suffer for my sins, I have, and probably deeper than you will ever know.

See also: from the end of 2024, my blog post about the mad king. It might hold up even better today than when I published it.

I’ve read several big sections of Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas — magnificent humanity. The whole thing is essentially a book at 40k words. It’s fascinating and at times even great. Some of the most interesting parts of the text aren’t really about AI, but more about wh...

Now that we have Inkwell 1.0 through app review, Apple doesn’t seem quite as picky. Hopefully. 🤞 They’ve approved 1.0.1 with some fixes and restoring the ability to save highlights in text. The plan is to roll out a couple more minor releases that bring the app forward to what we expected for 1.0.

At the beginning of the 4th quarter, I thought the Spurs might come back, but just not their night. Wish there were a couple days off before game 6. This series has been amazing but exhausting. 🏀

Wandering around Half Price Books yesterday, flipped to the current day in this reflections book, Sunset Gratitide. Good day for books, also stopped at First Light and picked up a copy of Homebound. 📚

The New York Times on Victor Wembanyama’s love of reading and its influence on San Antonio:

Turquoise, pink and orange words mount an exhibit of books immediately noticeable when patrons walk into San Antonio’s Central Library, the bright red building in the middle of the city’s downtown: “Read Like Wemby.”

Basketball and books are two of my favorite things. 📚

Did a little more research on the Utah data center, because the numbers seem unbelievable. But the scope really is that big, at least over time. Another missed opportunity to require investment in clean energy. And Kevin O’Leary is the perfect villain. I feel like he played himself in Marty Supreme.

Some folks are really nitpicking the Ferrari Luce. I think it looks really good. Nice details inside too. Perhaps we want to find fault in it because we can’t afford it. 🤪

Apple insisting on approving beta versions of iOS apps that are going to just a handful of people remains one of the dumbest possible things about the App Store. A waste of time for everyone. Likely makes apps worse because it discourages beta testing.

Working a little on our Strata app this morning. There were a few changes for Android in the queue, those should be out this week. Also the Liquid Glass update for iOS.

He blocks among us. 🏀

Western conference finals, game 4. 🏀

Looking at the Daylight computer again, so nice. I love that the “smooth video playback” section uses Steamboat Willie for the video clip. Public domain Disney. 🎉

Trying out the new Bluesky support in the WordPress reader. Very cool. Similar to what we’ve tried to do with Micro.blog, but totally different user experience, which is great.

TechCrunch review of the Bee:

In a world where the average person is beset from all sides by constant digital surveillance, I appreciate any opportunity I can get to not be recorded. Therefore, the idea of walking around with an eavesdropping gizmo strapped to my wrist 24/7 was not particularly appealing.

None of these devices are quite right yet. Recording everything is too creepy. Recording too little (because of extra button clicks) isn’t as useful. I want something in between, that makes dictating thoughts effortless when I’m by myself. Maybe it shuts off when there are other voices.