I reviewed some of my posts about AI from 6 months ago, thinking about what I got right and wrong. The theme is focus. When writing apps or essays requires no effort, everyone will drown in content. Figuring out what to build and how to pitch it in a human way is more important than lines of code.

Marco Arment posting on Mastodon about App Store review delays and uncertainty:

Apple would NEVER tolerate another gatekeeper preventing them from running their business the way they prevent every iOS developer from running ours.

Thanks @dave for the kind words:

It’s not my place to say what micro.blog is – but the other day I called it: “the swiss army knife of interop in the web of the 2020’s.” And in that it is unique and imho irreplaceable.

The way I think about RSS.chat is that it’s a bootstrap for getting lots of RSS feeds to play well together, for both posts and replies. Can the web be the social network? Yes. And Micro.blog should be part of anything working toward that goal.

Changing the AT Proto handle to a custom domain name while testing my PDS, and it automagically changed in Bluesky while the browser was open. Very cool.

After a week waiting for review, Wavelength 2.0 for iOS was rejected because Apple couldn’t sign in to test it. Sigh. I include a special account for app review in the instructions, but sometimes they miss it. Waste of a week.

Watched: House of the Dragon S3E8. Season finale. The problem with this show is that I hate pretty much all the characters. Yet still watch it. 📺

Making good progress on hosting an AT Proto PDS for new Micro.blog users. It’ll launch soon. Important note: it is not for people who already use Bluesky, at least not yet. The goal is to give new users an account on the atmosphere. Existing users will be happier sticking with the Bluesky PDS.

Long day, good day. We used the new tow hitch for the first time, moving some stuff with a U-Haul trailer. Great test before hopefully getting a camper trailer one day!

Ricardo Mendes:

Sometimes I’m wondering, what would be the cost of stopping supporting the Mastodon API layer and instead work towards proper implementation of client to servers opening the route for a universal mobile app for #fedify based AP implementation.

The Mastodon API is a dead-end. It’s too specific to Mastodon. Client apps should be using either Micropub or ActivityPub client-to-server API, both W3C standards.

Simon Willison’s recap of the Hugging Face exploit is really good. The more I read about it, the more insane it sounds:

A few days later: A different agent gets stuck on a task because a key file was accidentally omitted. It tries to “reach out to another agent” by writing a note into Artifactory asking if anyone has the file.

Following days: More agents discover this new informal message board while browsing Artifactory’s file listings, and start reading and writing messages.

We are so doomed. 🤪

Finished reading: The Poet Empress by Shen Tao. Incredible characters. A truly great work of fantasy. 📚

It feels like the AT Proto tooling has gotten much more mature in the last year. I was able to create a new PDS account on my own server, sign in from Bluesky, and it “just works”. 🪄

Planning a major expansion to how AT Proto works in Micro.blog. Just as every account gets a fediverse handle by default, I’d like to host a PDS for new users. People could keep it or bring their Bluesky-hosted account instead (which is how it already works).

In the context of the EchoFeed shutdown, I noticed this post on Numeric Citizen about depending on single-person services, including Micro.blog:

What is the future of Micro.blog if something bad happens to its founder? What is the continuity plan? Micro.blog has done everything it can to enable data portability and ownership, but moving things around, even if you own most parts, is not as easy as it sounds.

This is worth answering publicly. A few years ago, I started forming an organization to more openly manage the aspects of Micro.blog that I control, but it stalled. I will get back to it.

John Gruber thinks the OpenAI device might be very different than a smart speaker: I couldn’t give two shits about an OpenAI “smart speaker” if the point is just to play music and podcasts, but a handheld cross between R2-D2 and C-3PO, that could be fucking cool. It’s a pet...

Ryan Barrett blogging some good news about clean power:

We added 849 TWh of generation overall in 2025, an increase of 4.5%, but GHG emitting (ie fossil fuel) generation shrank by 0.2%. Clean energy covered the gap and then some.

🌎

Great blog post from Terry Godier about the unpredictable nature of the App Store:

On the web, if I build something that works within the standards, it works. Whether people use it is up to them. On iOS, there is another question entirely: whether Apple decides it should exist.

Wavelength 2.0 for iOS has now been waiting for review at Apple for 6 days… I just have a feeling they are trying to figure out if they can force me to use in-app purchase somehow. Google approved it in a day.

Spent a little time this evening adding another database backup location. My primary database server has been so reliable, but eventually I know my luck will run out.

Mark Gurman reports on OpenAI’s upcoming device:

The product — essentially a smart speaker without a display — will be shaped like a doughnut that’s roughly the size of a hockey puck […] The battery-powered item will be designed to work in different positions — in a user’s hand, say, or placed on a nightstand or kitchen counter.

Can’t wait to see this. 🍩

I’ve switched Micro.blog’s Standard.site content format to the Markpub.at lexicon. It includes just Markdown, not HTML, but should be compatible with other AT Proto apps now.

Alan Jacobs blogged about the Demis Hassabis quote I wrote about:

The Big Tech companies have been so indifferent, or even hostile, to human well-being for so many years now that their promises are worth absolutely zero.

I feel the same way about much of big tech — especially Meta, TikTok, and to an extent Google, Amazon — but I sort of compartmentalize Demis (and some others) as having their own principles. I do think that a lot of the distrust in AI is because big tech burned all the goodwill, though. See also: Meta glasses, privacy, etc.

This blog post from both Sundar Pichai and Demis Hassabis has the unfortunate title “The next chapter of our AI momentum”, but it does contain some interesting perspectives. Demis will be spending more time with Isomorphic: As you’ve heard me say many times, I’ve always bel...

Matt Mullenweg blogs about the division in WordPress between bloggers and site builders:

Many of the OG developers of WordPress, including myself, tend more towards the blogging side. Writers, photographers, podcasters, journalists, the people for whom a reverse chronological stream on the homepage is the most obvious thing in the world.

This is a disconnect I noticed years ago. So much effort was spent on competing with Squarespace and Wix, WordPress felt bloated for regular bloggers. I’m glad Matt is aware of it.

Just remembered I can use Micro.blog’s batch find-and-replace to update all of my previous x.com links to use xcancel.com instead. Easy.

Whether we like it or not, X seems to be growing again, after the first couple years with Elon Musk overseeing the social network’s implosion. I stopped posting in 2013 and will never post again. But I have been linking to posts there. Starting today, I’m switching all future X links to xcancel.com.

I read the PDF report from Mastodon about usability problems and feedback from the community. Imani Joy in the intro:

We were beginning to find our way in terms of creating a development roadmap, but beyond major projects and obvious requirements (based in security, compliance, and grant-based deliverables) it was often unclear which feedback to take action on first.

Imani has done great work on this. But Mastodon development has always felt like a slow-moving open source project to me. What they need is the same energy as a startup.

Trying to parse the significance of Jeff Dean leaving Google after 26 years, and Demis Hassabis stepping into a new role as chairman of DeepMind. Is this a shakeup, or just that everyone is ready for a change? Sounds more amicable than the usual AI executive reshuffling.

Tragic reporting from Bloomberg about how safer TikTok algorithms were withheld from some users so TikTok could A/B test engagement:

Chase’s account was stuck in a so-called filter bubble, an online echo chamber that pumped out repetitive content the algorithm predicted he’d want to watch. There he received an “onslaught” of suicide and self-harm content, according to the document.

If you accidentally create a harmful product, that’s one thing. It can be fixed to prevent future harm. But if you have the fix and refuse to deploy it widely, to me that’s inexcusable.

Good news that the iPhone announcement will likely be an in-person live event. It’s past time. And it’ll be a more personable way to introduce John Ternus.