Good post by Allen Pike about why ChatGPT for Mac is better than the competition. I remarked a year ago that there is clearly some AppKit goodness in the app.

Simon Willison marks the 3-year anniversary of the ChatGPT launch with a blog post about how it almost didn’t happen. Clearly being first matters, but also OpenAI still makes very good products, like their Mac app and Pulse. Hard to predict where things will be in another three years.

“He has a hundred ideas a day. Four of them are good, the other 96 downright dangerous.” — from Darkest Hour, although inspired by something FDR said 🍿

Got sidetracked looking at photos and satellite imagery of Hudson Yards, before and after the current redevelopment project covered half the tracks. Now I want to go back to New York. 🚂

Thinking longer for a better answer. ☕️

Amazing win by the Longhorns. I hope they end up making the playoffs. 🏈

Mickey Mouse holding horseshoe ornament. 🎄

Micro.blog’s CDN bill is up about 25% from last month, no surprise with the launch of better video hosting. I’m taking the opportunity to dig into CloudFront stats that I’ve never actually looked at. Seeing a few things that could be easy wins to optimize.

Manu Moreale:

…there is so much interesting content out there ready to be discovered. And discovering new content also means connecting with new people, getting exposed to new ideas, different cultures. That’s by far the best quality of the web if you ask me.

Federico Viticci blogging about AI results, matching my recent thoughts about the products and design mattering:

…since the baseline is now good enough, the app experience and how LLMs are woven into a people’s daily lives and workflows will be the differentiators going forward.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and I think this is the earliest we’ve ever gone Christmas tree shopping. Also we’re now measuring tree height in percentages of a Wembanyama. Got a tree that is about one Wemby tall.

Surprisingly quick one-day app reviews from Apple and Google, so we were able to release the new version of Strata today for both mobile platforms. If you use notes or bookmarks in Micro.blog, this update has a few improvements that make the app nicer to use.

Private encrypted notes in Micro.blog present some challenges, especially for search. If you only have a handful of notes, it’s no big deal, but I have over 2000 notes in Micro.blog now. So searching on the web, for example, has to load everything into the browser and decrypt it.

Cold weather is back in Austin. Morning coffee at Cosmic. ☕️ We’re preparing a few things for a new Strata release. I wonder if Apple and Google app review folks have to work on Thanksgiving. 🦃

Fun discussion on the latest ATP about the OpenAI “egg”. I’ve been saying for a year or two that there is a real product here and eventually someone will crack it. (Oops, unintended egg pun…) Sandbar’s ring is the current best-looking attempt, but it’s 6+ months away.

Dave Winer blogging about a new commenting system to connect blogs. I’ve been following his recent work on FeedLand and related projects, so curious how the plumbing for this is going to work:

The first thing to know is that all comments are blog posts. You write the comment on a blog that you own. And maybe that will be the only way anyone other than you will ever see it. But you don’t have to “go” to the blog to write the comment. You stay right where you are.

Sounds like there could be parallels with Webmention too.

While I was feeling terrible in bed yesterday, I couldn’t even sleep, my mind kept drifting to various online drama. I sometimes have a hard time shaking off old problems. But I’m feeling good this morning, ready to get some work done. ☕️

Finished reading: Relics of Ruin by Erin M. Evans. A great second book. Same feel of a mystery as the first book, lots of layers. 📚

World of Frozen opening in Disneyland Paris in March. Really impressed with the new robotic Olaf. ☃️

I like this quote from Jony Ive in the conversation:

There’s not a lot of humor in the products that are being designed and made, particularly in this area. I really sense very clearly there is a huge desire for us not to take ourselves quite so seriously, even though these are serious times.

Got my Covid vaccine yesterday and it floored me. Does the dosage need to be adjusted considering that Covid seems generally (not for everyone!) less severe than it used to be? I just want to stay in bed all morning. Watching this new video with Laurene Powell Jobs, Jony Ive, and Sam Altman.

Crazy comeback win from the Cowboys. When they couldn’t score at the 1 yard line, down 21 points, I would not have predicted this, and in fact turned it off for a while. Gotta play the whole game. 🏈

Thanks @numericcitizen for the new video about what’s new in Micro.blog! You can watch it on YouTube here and it should be available hosted directly on Micro.blog later too.

Watched: Wicked: For Good. In the first hour I almost started to doubt, thinking maybe it needed another pass at editing, but they won me over with No Good Deed. Cynthia Erivo is fantastic. 🍿

Went camping last night, then home early but a late start getting coffee. Drove by three coffee shops before finding one that wasn’t completely overrun with people. Don’t all these happy people enjoying coffee outside and talking with friends know that I’d like to sit here by myself and work? 🤪

Updated my state parks page. 27 down, a whole bunch to go. Glad to resume this challenge after several months that were too busy and too hot. 🏕️

Inks Lake State Park.

One mistake I made building the bed platform for my car is these flimsy little brackets. They ended up bending enough over months that they broke in half. Worked on fixing this today.

A thoughtful post today from Laurens Hof in the Fediverse Report about Mastodon’s new CEO and the project’s sustainability. It’ll be interesting to look back a year from now on whether there are visible changes. Hope in the meantime that Eugen Rochko gets some rest and a vacation or two.

We released Epilogue 2.1 for iOS and Android today. Now with easy blogging for movies. Here’s a short video to show the new interface.