IndieWebCamp Nuremberg is happening this weekend. I’m looking over the notes for the books session.

Semafor reports that Mythos can now be released to select companies. Also:

The letter is silent on Fable 5, a weaker version of Mythos that was briefly the most powerful AI model widely available to consumers. People close to the talks said they are moving toward releasing Fable as well, though that timeline is unclear.

Presumably the company list is the same for both Mythos and GPT-5.6 announced today. Whether intended or not, the way this was handled has effectively pulled back Anthropic’s perceived lead by a couple weeks, perhaps aligning the latest frontier releases.

For all the talk of the programming jobs market on the verge of collapse, this sure feels like a great time to be a developer. Reminds me of being young when I’d stay up until 3am coding, except now I can go to bed at 9pm.

I said earlier this month that I like Anthropic’s model names. OpenAI is now trying something similar with the new names Sol, Terra, and Luna for GPT-5.6. Less descriptive but more friendly than the technical “mini” and “nano” we had previously. I like it.

A little surprised that Fable is still held up. Maybe the administration’s slant toward vindictiveness means that we’ll see GPT-5.6 generally available first.

Sad but inspired to read the many remembrances of Om Malik. I love this idea from Matt Mullenweg:

Om loved putting on a good conference, and I’d like to celebrate his life with an awesome event on September 29, 2026 (his 60th) in San Francisco, like an OmFest. I’ll find a space where every community from the many facets of Om can come together. In the spirit of Open Source and co-creation, we can have some booths, flash talks, a gallery of his photography, pen showcase, and whatever other fun ideas people want to contribute.

Took a little time this morning to customize the CSS for the Micro.blog documentation pages to strip out all the Discourse-y things that aren’t needed. For example, the Inkwell page.

Productive week for software releases:

• Micro.blog 4.0.3 for Mac
• Inkwell 1.5 for Mac
• Inkwell 1.1 for Android
• Epilogue 2.3.1 for iOS
• Epilogue 2.3.1 for Android

Not sure we’ve ever had this many updates at once. Still waiting on Apple to approve Inkwell 1.1 for iOS.

Finished reading: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. Unfolds with an interesting island setting and mystery. I liked it, but as the layers are pulled back, there is mostly grief. 📚

Heartbreaking to hear that Om Malik has passed away. I can hardly believe it. Even just this year, it felt like he was doing some of his best writing. Very thankful for the time he gave us at Micro Camp 2023… I was so excited to talk to him. Rest in peace.

The Spurs picked up 4 new players in the draft. Lots of potential. Some folks are annoyed with De’Aaron Fox, but he was a big part of the Spurs getting 62 wins and making it so far, even if it’s weird that he’s gonna make so much more money than any other Spurs player. 🏀

Due to the rising costs of memory and storage, a standard Micro.blog subscription will remain $5 for the foreseeable future. 🙂

Settled into a perfect routine while away on vacation over the last week: walk or bike for coffee, work a couple hours, picnic at the beach with family, lots of book reading, nice dinner out. 🏖️ Working a little each day actually makes me more relaxed. Got updates to Epilogue and Inkwell ready.

Apple price increases are significant. Now that I see them, it does make sense to change the prices for all the Macs and iPads at the same time. It would feel out of balance to have e.g. the Air stay low and the Neo increase.

I have a nice M3 MacBook Pro and plan to keep it for a couple more years.

I prefer more open systems, so of course I lean toward supporting the EU’s DMA. Third-party marketplaces on iOS represent real progress that wouldn’t have happened without regulation. But what about Siri AI? It is not coming to the EU because Apple doesn’t trust other develo...

Love that this bookstore (Sundog Books) had too many books to fit properly on the shelves. 📚

It took a week and a half on the waitlist, but I’ve now got new Siri AI enabled on my phone. Seems to work so far. Not totally sure what to use it for yet.

Updated the Inkwell app for Mac this morning. If you haven’t tried it yet, I think it’s a very nice version of our Inkwell feed reader. Includes subscribing to blogs, of course, but also making text highlights, viewing conversations, and replying to Micro.blog posts.

I still have “wow” moments with AI. Codex Security was one of those… It reviews the Micro.blog backend source regularly and not only flags potential bugs but also drafts patches. Today another one: I asked for a draft of release notes and it guessed to put them directly in the edited appcast XML.

As we get closer (next year) to the 10th anniversary of Micro.blog, I’m thinking about whether our strategy with indie blogging is still relevant for the next decade. What is true now that will continue to be true years from now? Some thoughts… While there will be a lot of ...

Vacation is winding down.

There’s a new iOS app for Micro.blog! MicroSphere from @marc0janssen. Looks great, I’m playing around with it today.

Black Bear Bread Co. ☕️

Ben Thompson closing out today’s post:

The only possible way to curb Apple’s dominance is through competition, and if Apple wants to open up a vector for competitive hardware to arise, that’s fine! And, if in response to competition, they open up their platform, that’s great too.

AI is the best opportunity to compete with Apple and Google since the launch of the iPhone. And yet hardly anyone is going for it. It’s easy to complain that Apple fumbled around with AI for a couple years, but no potential new competitors capitalized on it.

Submitted the new Epilogue to Google for review this morning. Apple approved it really quickly yesterday. A few more quick reviews will almost make up for Apple holding up the Inkwell release for a month. 🤪

Seaside, Florida. Burgers outside at Pickles. 🍔

Got a whole bunch of little things finished this morning for the next release of Epilogue. Finally showing a checkmark for the current bookshelf, and a new default for the Movies tab to show movies and TV shows people are blogging about. Just submitting to Apple for review.

Having so many apps, the context switch between code bases is starting to become a problem. Thinking about how we can improve this going forward. Ideally each major app or platform would have someone leading it.

Matt Mullenweg blogged about the surprising twist with Midjourney Medical:

David Holz, one of the most underrated pioneers in AI, has taken money from making cat pictures to build a full-body ultrasound scanner that can give you incredible visibility in 60 seconds.

Watched: The Truman Show. So good. Haven’t seen it in years and it holds up perfectly. 🍿