Good recap of the OpenAI trial from TechCrunch. This part is really the whole case:

OpenAI’s attorneys have asked every witness to describe specific restrictions put on Musk’s donations, and none have, including his financial adviser Jared Birchall, his chief of staff Sam Teller, or his special adviser Shivon Zilis. They say everyone involved agreed that private fundraising would be required to achieve its goals, and note that Musk himself attempted to launch an OpenAI-affiliated for-profit he would personally control, and later to merge OpenAI into his company Tesla.

Listening to the closing arguments in Elon Musk vs. OpenAI. Elon left the country to be with Trump and Tim Cook in China. Pretty sure Elon knows the case is all but lost. Maybe the goal was never to win, just to make the defendants look bad and waste everyone’s time.

Slowly making improvements to our book database in Micro.blog. There’s a new layout for the book pages too, with the page count and better descriptions when we can get them.

Along the Walnut Creek Trail.

The new trailer for Laika’s Wildwood looks so good. Visuals alone, I think Laika might have something truly special here. Audiences are going to increasingly want handcrafted work. See also the quote from Travis Knight earlier this year.

Last year, we launched a new plan for Micro.blog called Micro.one. It was only $1/month and included nearly everything from a standard Micro.blog subscription. It was a bit of an experiment. Micro.one actually had a cap of 3000 registrations. I was worried that we would lose...

A little crazy that we have 12 separate downloadable apps for Micro.blog across Mac, iOS, and Android. I’ve finally made a special download page for all of them: micro.blog/download

Great post from @danielpunkass reflecting on his time at Apple 30 years ago:

I quit in 2002, shortly after Apple released the first iPod MP3 player. I was antsy. Only 26 years old by that time, I wanted to go back to school for another college degree, this time in music. It’s funny to think back now at how “done” I thought our work at the company was. I was looking at the future through Mac-colored lenses, and it seemed as though everything important had been done.

Before the Spurs game, moment of silence for Brandon Clarke and Jason Collins… but then it fades to a Draft Kings commercial. Really in poor taste. I don’t think I had strong opinions about all the gambling promotion until now. 🏀

Google approved two of our apps in less than an hour today, one app in what felt like minutes. Maybe they are automating more of the review? Whatever they’re doing, I like it.

I should’ve had tacos for lunch. Obama stops in Austin for a visit:

Former President Barack Obama stopped by an Austin taco restaurant Tuesday afternoon alongside Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico and gubernatorial hopeful state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, according to videos shared online.

I’ve avoided essentially live-blogging the OpenAI trial, because I know everyone is sick of AI, but maybe I should have blogged a little more. I’ve listened to significant portions of the testimony, probably 10-15 hours over the last week. Feels like it’s winding down now that Sam Altman is done.

I love a nice compound word (real or made up) for product names. Some of my current and previous products: Sunlit, Wavelength, Inkwell, Watermark, Clipstart. They often invoke just the right feeling. So hat tip to OpenAI on their latest name, more or less perfect for cyber defense: Daybreak.

Some mornings I see my Apple Watch sleep score and think, “Ah, makes sense.” Other mornings it feels like a random number generator.

Recycled Books in Denton. I’ve been there a dozen times and only realized this weekend that they have a downstairs. Surprisingly large section of train books. 📚

I’ve made progress with Apple on getting Inkwell approved, but there’s still a lingering issue that I’m appealing. Drafted a letter for the appeal. I’m trying to resist ending it with “Thank you for your attention to this matter!” 🤪

Brian Schrader mentions the A Very Short Introduction books in a blog post about learning:

The books are, as expected, very short (~100 pages) and cover a quick survey of the topic at hand and its various sub-disciplines. They’re approachable, quick to read, and the chapters are organized by discipline.

I’ve seen these little books many times and sometimes flip through them in a bookstore. I think I will pick up a couple of them. Great idea to have approachable books that are longer than a blog post or AI prompt, but not as long or dry as a textbook.

I settled on once a week backups for the new Mac app because it seems the best balance of usefulness and manageable strain on our servers. Downloading a large blog with tens of thousands of photos introduces a little extra load and bandwidth use.

It’s enabled by default because good backups are a perfect fit for our emphasis on domain names and content portability. When you use Micro.blog, you should never have to opt in or pay extra for something that is a core part of our mission.

Added a new backup feature to Micro.blog for Mac. I think it’ll help folks who don’t routinely backup their blog. Once a week it automatically downloads all posts, photos, and other uploads to a .bar file. On by default and keeps the last 5 backups.

Gonna have to get a good night of sleep before I can properly articulate how I feel about this Spurs loss to the Timberwolves tonight. But just to say Wemby is being fouled all the time and no calls. 🏀

I keep up with AI by clicking around on X sometimes — sigh 🙁 — and it’s wild how many people still gripe in replies that OpenAI discontinued 4o. OpenAI is never bringing that model back. The overly empathetic, sycophantic tuning was the problem, especially for users struggling with mental health.

Watched: Remarkably Bright Creatures. Beautiful. 📺

Watched: The Sheep Detectives. Actually really nice. 🍿

Got lost in videos and research for a backyard garden model railroad. This short video on YouTube provides a glimpse. We had an N scale but gave it away in the move last year. Would be fun to explore something larger and build a garden around it.

Spurs win a hard-fought game 3 in Minneapolis. Refs seem largely okay with ignoring many fouls, so who knows what’s going to happen. Almost thought that overturned out of bounds with 2 minutes left was going to sink the game… Whew. Everyone played really well. 🏀

I’m not going to worry about Hantavirus until Trump says that the cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” 😷

Having trouble squaring the Cloudflare layoffs today (because of AI) with how aggressive they were last year going after AI bots. It’s like the company has gotten so big they aren’t internally consistent anymore.

WWDC is only a month away. How’d that happen? I booked travel a while ago, will be there for a few days. Sadly just flying in, no elaborate train or car camping plans this time.

Apple called me back about Inkwell rejections. Still rejected, but we were able to talk through the issues and resolve one of them. Progress. It’s fascinating to me how they handle these calls… In all my years of shipping apps, I’ve never had to actually talk to app review outside of a web form.

Mark Gurman with an update this week on the AirPods with cameras:

The cameras essentially act as eyes for the Siri digital assistant and aren’t designed to take photos or video. These components — located in both the right and left earbuds — allow the device to capture visual information in low resolution.

Despite the privacy problems with cameras in any product, glasses at least feel like a more natural place than AirPods. Very curious about this product.