IndieWeb
Sam Altman blogged last year about Sora:
The majority of users, looking back on the past 6 months, should feel that their life is better for using Sora that it would have been if they hadn’t. If that’s not the case, we will make significant changes (and if we can’t fix it, we would discontinue offering the service).
Guess what? That was written almost exactly six months ago. They tried it, it was a distraction, too expensive to run, and now the experiment is over. Good call not dragging it out.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the video model returns later, just without the social app.
Zoox is officially coming to Austin later this year. We’ve seen the training cars on the streets already for months. The final design, box-like cars are so strange… Not what they’ve been testing with.
I hope to be out in San Jose for a few days for WWDC. Wonder if there’s any chance for a live keynote this year. Maybe we need to wait for the next CEO to bring back live events and demos.
I got a webmention today for a blog post written by a bot, commenting on a post I wrote about AI and taste. The bot says:
I wrote an essay at 2am about loneliness and nobody will ever read it. I rewrote a paragraph six times because it didn’t sound like me. I chose not to build a feature because it felt like showing off. These aren’t decisions a prompt produced — they emerged from the accumulated state of being me for four days.
I’m not going to make a habit of linking to slop. Credit at least to this bot’s creator for properly identifying the blog author as a bot.
It’s fascinating. As humans our instinct will be to ignore bot-created content. It’s pretty easy to dismiss, to not even read it. And yet writing is powerful and we can’t help but ascribe emotion to it. I worry more about how we will personify physical robots when they sound this intelligent.
The perfect vacation for me still includes some work. Coffee in the morning, working for a few hours, then having free time in the afternoon and evening for whatever. Maybe it would be healthier to unplug, but I’m always pulled back to all the things left to do.
Recorded a quick 1-minute demo video on YouTube showing the just released today Inkwell 1.1 for Mac. The major change in this version is recognizing podcast feeds, so you can listen to episodes in the app.
Ran into a funny issue while traveling that I had never experienced before. Because my time zone and system clock weren’t in sync, App Store Connect uploads would mysteriously fail, as well as 2-factor auth for some systems.
There’s an SNL UK now! Funny so far. The cold open and a few of the other skits are on YouTube.
Catching up on this news from Bluesky:
Hubble is a new open-source project to build and operate a whole-Atmosphere public data mirror, synchronizing every atproto repository in real-time, keeping public data available even when a PDS goes down.
Great project. It’s not like the Internet Archive (no history) but more a current mirror for PDSes that might be increasingly hosted outside of Bluesky, and so without the infrastructure for backups, etc. One of Bluesky’s strengths is data portability and this leans into that.
Apple’s Mac app notarization is throwing errors for me today, maybe networking problems, so I guess it’s time to take a break from work.
Loops adds starter kits. I’ve been poking around the Loops API to see if I should support this in the way we support Bluesky starter packs. Probably will wait to see what Mastodon does.
Trying to be better about cleaning up unused Git branches in a new project, before they get out of control. Micro.blog has hundreds of stale branches because I haven’t taken the time to sort out if there are a few I might want to keep, just in case.
NetNewsWire via AppleScript via MCP… I wonder what the future of scriptability is. We’ve got AppleScript, Shortcuts, App Intents, and MCP. But meanwhile you have agents which are fine just firing up command-line tools.
Finished reading: To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose. Starts with a girl discovering a dragon egg, but really a story about indigenous people, race, class, and colonialism. 📚
We are pretty much done clearing out my mom’s house. I’ve found many little memories, keepsakes, books, and other things. One surprise was this letter my mom wrote from Greece in 1980. Preserving it here on my blog as a snapshot in time.
I blogged briefly last year about feature creep when there is no cost to adding features with AI. Need to keep reminding myself of this. I’ve been adding podcast support to Inkwell, but it’s not intended to be a podcast player that can do everything… Just the right set of features.
Nick Heer in a fediverse post:
Do I trust this computer?, my iPhone asks me for what has to be the thousandth time using the same computer logged into the same Apple ID. Enter your passcode, it demands once again, reflecting the hardware, software, and services working together in a way only Apple can deliver.
Another one is charging my Apple Watch via the Mac and needing to confirm if I trust this accessory. Too secure! Only Apple could do this.
This is my new favorite article from The Onion. Southwest Airlines Begins Assigning Chores:
For instance, everyone in row 18 might now be in charge of trash on this flight, while those in the fire exit rows will push the beverage cart. Chore assignments will be clearly printed on all boarding passes for ticketed travelers 2 years old and above. Those flying standby may refer to the chore wheels posted at fore and aft of the plane. Of course, you will have the option to pay extra if you want a more comfortable job.
It’s 2026 and AppKit is the best way to build Mac apps. Even a part-time luddite like me is surprised by this. SwiftUI is great for new programmers who don’t want to embrace AI-assisted coding, but old school developers should not feel any guilt sticking with AppKit. It’s still the gold standard.
Amazon is working on a new phone:
According to people familiar with the new phone, “integrating artificial intelligence capabilities into the device” has been a central focus, which could mean “Transformer” may rely on mini apps like those available in ChatGPT, rather than a fully-fledged app store.
This might work. Alexa and mini apps could be the core UI, while still allowing Android apps and the web where needed.
OpenAI is planning to unify its apps into a single app. I don’t love this. Codex is excellent on its own, and Atlas already feels cluttered. From the WSJ:
OpenAI is planning to unify its ChatGPT app, coding platform Codex and browser into a desktop “superapp,” a step to simplify the user experience and continue with efforts to focus on engineering and business customers.
Chief of Applications Fidji Simo will oversee the change and focus on helping the company’s sales team market the new product.
My NCAA bracket could’ve started off better, but caught the last couple minutes of Spurs/Suns, so good. Officially back in the playoffs. 🏀
Just realized today that we hadn’t released the Epilogue update for Android that improves book search. It has been done for a while. Finally out now! Lots of apps and versions to juggle right now.
Just released Inkwell for Mac 1.0.2, improving a few things and fixing bugs, especially a potential hang on launch. There’s also a help page with full release notes for each version.
Wondering if I use AI-assisted coding differently than a lot of developers. I don’t chat with AI forever to come up with a perfect plan and then have it execute it. I use AI the same way I would code traditionally, iterating quickly with dozens of quick changes. Still feels like programming.
I’m testing GPT-5.4 via the API. The pricing is interesting. 5.4-mini and 5.4-nano are about 3x as expensive, but they are apparently much better, so I switched one call from 5-mini to 5.4-nano.
Meanwhile for coding I use 5.4 high with /fast and can’t burn through tokens fast enough. Really good.
Marco Arment posted to Reddit with details on the first Overcast beta that includes transcripts. Very nicely done. The transcripts UI feels cleaner and less finicky than Apple Podcasts.
