FeedCity

Jason Snell writing at Macworld about Apple’s AI missteps being more about rushed UI design than even the technical underpinnings:

It’s clear that when Apple began its crash program to add Apple Intelligence to its operating systems, the goal was not to solve user problems but to insert AI features anywhere it could. This is the antithesis of Apple’s usual philosophy of solving problems rather than adopting the latest technology, and it has burned the company in some high-profile ways.

Micro.blog is getting clobbered today with thousands of dumb requests for phpinfo and .env. Hello hackers, this does not work! Sigh.

There are several principles that led to Micro.blog, but everything is built on the premise that if social networks are based on blogs it will encourage more people to blog, some people even writing longer posts, and so the web will be better. Social is a roller coaster today but this fact remains.

Trust is built by consistently doing the same thing, hopefully the right thing, over years. There’s no shortcut. And to destroy trust requires either that same kind of repetition, in the opposite direction, or for people to have missed everything that came before. Misinforma...

Excited to see a new iOS app for Micro.blog released: Micro Social. From developer Greg Morris:

Micro.blog is an incredible platform, but I wanted a cleaner, more intuitive way to engage with my timeline, conversations, and the things I care about most—books, photos, and blogging.

Amazing post from @heyloura about using Micro.blog’s private notes API. Personally I’m using notes more and more, often for posts that could be drafts but where my thoughts aren’t really put together yet.

NPR article on immigrants in Chicago skipping care because of fear of ICE raids. I expect nurses all over the country have heartbreaking stories like this. And it’ll just exacerbate problems in our upside down health care system since everyone is worse off when people who are sick can’t get treated.

Cool to see hints that Tumblr is continuing with the WordPress backend transition. TechCrunch:

Automattic confirmed to TechCrunch that when the migration is complete, every Tumblr user will be able to federate their blog via ActivityPub, just as every WordPress.com user can today.

Ben Werdmueller adds:

Given the long tail of ActivityPub and the simultaneous rise of Bluesky, which is connected to the ActivityPub network via Bridgy Fed, the future of the open social web is very bright.

Now I wonder if Automattic pulling folks from WordPress core has actually made more time for Tumblr.

Wrapped up coding on a couple new fediverse settings that will ship in Micro.blog tomorrow. I’ll have a full blog post about it. There wouldn’t be much point in having our own ActivityPub implementation if we didn’t do things a little differently than Mastodon. See also: IndieWeb monoculture.

I’ve linked to magician Dani DaOrtiz before and this new video from him is so good too. His style just makes me happy. A master with cards and misdirection.

Loved this blog post by Robin Sloan on whether AI is okay. The subject is complicated and deserves longer posts like this. It’s a whole new thing. It’s not definitely good or bad. The part about writing code also resonated with me: I think the case of code is especiall...

Great post at Daring Fireball about Fox’s new scorebug, with relevant points for a lot of design:

I say Fox’s new scorebug is better, and raised a ruckus only because it’s so much better that what most viewers noticed is only that it’s so different.

Also covered on today’s episode of Dithering.

After the move, our TV started making a faint noise occasionally that seemed new. Today it won’t turn on! The movers wrapped the heck out of it in bubble wrap, seems like it would’ve been very hard to damage. I’m tempted to try to get it repaired just to fight the “everything is disposable” economy.

I didn’t end up watching the Super Bowl. I used the afternoon to unpack boxes and other tasks leftover from moving. But I did really like this ChatGPT ad. It has a little whimsy reminiscent of some Apple ads, while still uniquely its own thing.

Hope folks are having a good weekend. I rolled out a few changes this morning, including this “New Post…” menu option on the Uploads page. Surprised we never had this before.

I missed the memo for the outside space at this coffee shop… There are like 20 little kids and families running around here. Not a distraction, just makes me smile remembering how good life was with little kids. The bittersweet irony with parenting is not knowing until years later what you had.

John Gruber on the implications for sideloading if TikTok remains unavailable in the App Store:

If I’m wrong and TikTok remains in this half-zombie state in the US — unavailable in the App Store or Play Store, but operational if you have the app installed on your phone — it’ll be interesting if TikTok is the app that makes the mass market actually care about the lack of sideloading on iOS. It’ll be interesting too if sideloading on Android goes mainstream because of this.

TikTok should make an iOS marketplace app in the EU to demonstrate to US customers what they’re missing.

Sent another Micro.blog iOS build out to beta folks, also decided to submit this one to Apple. Need to get these fixes out to everyone, even if there’s more to do.

If you haven’t read Wind and Truth, book 5 of the Stormlight Archive, please skip this post. Spoilers ahead. Knowing someone else’s opinion about a book before you read it risks ruining your own interpretation. I finished Wind and Truth last week and generally loved most of...

Saturday morning is a great time to draft a couple blog posts that won’t be published until later. I usually work a little every day, but the weekend should be quiet. Sometimes I wish I had the discipline to only announce new things on Tuesdays like Apple.

Worked on some iPad fixes and pushed a new TestFlight beta, then settled in to watch the Spurs. Stephon Castle with 30+ points, really showing what he can do. 🏀

Love this photo from Stephen Hackett of his notebooks. Also very smart to have digital copies. I’ve scanned some of my old journals in but not all of them. Really want to finish that task because it makes me very nervous to lose the journals.

This is cool: a new sidebar plug-in by Leon Mika for the Bayou theme.

Spots 7-10 for the NBA play-in are shaping up to be very interesting! Spurs look good. Blazers have won their last 9 of 10 games. Warriors and Mavs will both look a little different for the rest of the season. 🏀

I’m the guest on the latest Hanselminutes podcast! It was great talking to Scott. We covered a lot in just half an hour: blogging, domain names, social networks, the fediverse, POSSE, discovery, and the Micro.one launch.

So many nails and staples.

Micro.one and Micro.blog onboarding is not very good. And yet new people join every day and start blogging. Welcome! We’ll make it better. Thanks for jumping through the hoops to get here.

Inoreader adds support for Bluesky. This uses the API, not the RSS feeds, so there’s more flexibility in how they can integrate the content:

Bluesky content is displayed in our custom microblog layout, designed for platforms like Bluesky, Facebook, and Micro.blog that don’t follow the traditional headline + content format. It’s a clean, streamlined reading experience we’re sure you’ll love!

Manu Moreale blogs about how we label people, how we define them based on large groups instead of who they are:

The moment you started using these definitions, you lost me. Not because I’m offended by them, but because it saddens me to see the complete annihilation of individuality which is what makes us uniquely interesting. The moment you decide to simply label someone as anything, you prime yourself to be incapable of recognizing that there’s a lot more beneath the surface.

People are complicated. If we oversimplify, we risk only highlighting our differences instead of what connects us.

Old trains.