It’s silly how excited I am to see the 40th anniversary release of Transformers: The Movie tonight. Feels like I’m 11 years old again. Also hope my wife enjoys it at least for the 1980s music!

There’s a great list of all flagship iPhone releases at the beginning of John Gruber’s new iPhone 18 Pro review. The only thing I’d add is the 3GS was the first with video recording. Big deal, especially for me because at the time I had my little video Mac app Clipstart.

Welcome news for the environment, via Ryan Barrett:

For the first time, the growth in China’s clean power generation has caused the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall despite rapid power demand growth.

See also: Texas wind and solar combined generation is now about the same as gas.

Listening to the Decoder interview with Mustafa Suleyman. I find his arguments very compelling. If we tell AI that it might be conscious or have feelings, it’s going to be harder to control it. You can’t have “alignment” with another conscious being.

This Apple developer page has a screenshot of what the new App Tracking Transparency screens can look like in the EU. Apple should make this change worldwide. It’s more clear. The “Ask App Not to Track” button is just too long anyway.

Switching gears to do some server maintenance. It’s always tempting to put off, because I could be using every minute to make the platform and apps better instead. But inching closer to a forced reboot of some servers on Linode in a couple weeks.

For the first time, I’ve actually run out of tokens on my OpenAI plan, with a couple days in the week remaining. Maybe a reminder I need to slow down.

Very cool to see Anil Dash announced as the keynote speaker at next month’s FediForum. Should be a good one! I try to join every FediForum, at least to lurk, and whenever I pop into a discussion it has been really valuable.

I got some pushback when I compared Muse to ChatGPT Work, where I was mostly thinking about having access to a server in the cloud to run agents from your phone. That comparison wasn’t quite right. Feels like there’s a lot that is OpenClaw-inspired in it too.

Xserve ready to make a comeback? 9to5Mac blogs about a report from The Information about M8 servers. The Information says they might use NVLink:

Apple has considered connecting the M8 chips in the server using an Nvidia set of products called NVLink Fusion, which includes switches, chiplets and software that help chips communicate with each other in data centers.

If Apple has to build these for themselves, they might as well sell them. Quite the leap from selling Mac minis to AI enthusiasts.

I recorded a 3-minute screencast video on YouTube that walks through what it looks like for a brand new Micro.blog user to start using AT Protocol right away with our PDS, without having to create a separate account in Bluesky first. Love open standards. 🦋

Excited for the new show from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose, Machine Gods. I was a big fan of their Hard Fork podcast. Seems smart to partner with NPR on this too.

Editing the auto-generated transcript on a YouTube video. Actually surprised at the fairly poor quality of initial transcript. Simple things like “blue sky” instead of “Bluesky”, or “crossosting” instead of “cross-posting” that usually an LLM would get right, I think.

Great blog post from John Gruber on the Apple announcements. On the Siri recap feature, he actually has the opposite perspective that I had:

I think it’s better for Apple to lead with privacy-minded versions of ambient transcripts and AI-generated conversation summaries than to follow after other products have hit the market with all-day recordings and whole-life transcripts.

I don’t think Apple needs to push the state of the art here. But I’m only 50% sure. John has a good point too.

Microsoft’s Humanist AI document is long, I’m still reading it, but so far I like it. It’s a rejection of the idea that AI could one day be a peer of humanity:

At Microsoft AI, we begin with a simple premise: people matter more than AI. Technology’s purpose is to advance human civilization and to accelerate human flourishing.

It complements my recent blog post on AGI.

We’re rolling out a series of improvements for podcasts in Micro.blog. The first was last month with a better web playback UI. Now there’s also a Listen Later feature that builds on bookmarking. Coming soon: a new version of Wavelength with audio narration for posts and more.

Muse is in the 2nd spot in the App Store now, behind the perpetually 1st place ChatGPT. I’m not planning to use Muse, but it’s fascinating if it resonates with Meta’s user base after the initial interest. It’s basically ChatGPT Work but simplified, slightly less capable, and maybe less confusing.

I’ve been quietly improving the saved links feature in Micro.blog, available to Premium subscribers. Nice way to find what you’ve linked to on your blog. This screenshot of the Mac app shows the new web page thumbnail previews for quick scanning.

Not totally sure when to update to macOS 27. I just submitted an app update to Apple with Xcode 26. Feels safest to stick on that until the iPhone Duo simulator is out.

Today’s Dithering podcast is fun. Ben Thompson leaning in to the “liberty or death” take from his Monday post. For me, AI pacing is good, but also he and John Gruber have a good point that we don’t need to accept the narrative of possible human extinction.

Another interesting acquisition by OpenAI of former Apple folks:

Glass Imaging was founded by Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, a pair of former Apple engineers who previously led the team that developed Apple’s Portrait Mode. This background directly informs the work they now do at Glass Imaging, where they use AI to overcome the physical size constraints of smartphone cameras.

OpenAI clearing thinking beyond the first device they will reveal this year.

Excited that it’s The Fires of December release day for backers. I’ve loaded up the ePub to read later.

Started reading Alchemised by SenLinYu and was surprised that it felt pretty dark, because for some reason I thought it was YA. Nope, just regular adult fantasy. I tend to read books that sound interesting while ignoring most of the back-cover blurb. 📚

For the last week in Codex, I’ve been using a single pinned thread for each app instead of deciding when to start new threads. Basically just let Codex compact its context whenever it needs to. Seems to work well.

Federico Viticci’s iOS 27 review is out, with a very good chapter on Siri AI. That is the perspective I’ve been most interested in reading about.

This quote from Craig Federighi fits the discussion Daniel Jalkut and I had on last week’s Core Int about the Duo replacing the need for both iPhone and iPad. Just makes sense unless you need a big iPad or shared iPad for the whole family.

Just discovered this IndieWeb starter pack on Bluesky and followed a few more people from it. It includes some accounts bridged to Mastodon too, so you can follow everyone in one place on Bluesky or Micro.blog.

I’m not sure I agree with all the implications in the closing of today’s Stratechery update, but like all good essays it is forcing me to really think about my own view:

… it’s worth noting that the very idea of a national or — worse! — global regulatory regime on intelligence is so deeply off-putting that I’d rather roll the dice and bet on humans figuring it out. Surviving isn’t everything; living freely counts for an awful lot as well.

Congrats to Lex Friedman on the release of a new version of Strategery, taking over development after the game was going to stop working. So cool to give an old app new life.

John Gruber blogged about XCancel shutting down yet again, adding this in a parenthetical:

…let’s admit it at this point, there’s not just a lot posted on X, it’s resurgent in popularity

It’s true. Just telling folks what we’re against has not been enough to rebalance the web to open platforms.