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.

Lots of talk in the AI space about moats. Does any model have such an outsized advantage that it just can’t be beat, protecting the business from competition? But the best moat is a great product. OpenAI still has a technical and UX lead across their suite of products. Might not always be that way.

You know what was great last night? Spurs vs. Hawks, first game with De’Aaron Fox in the lineup. I missed some of it and rewatched the last 5 minutes on tape delay. 🏀

I wrote a script last night that can take any missing photos on a blog and restore them from the Wayback Machine. Feels like it should be tucked away somewhere as a Micro.blog feature, but not sure where yet.

Simple goals for today:

• Meet with the gutter guy about installing gutters for the roof.
• Answer emails. Support email feels manageable for the first time in a year.
• Find some small thing I can deploy to Micro.blog, a fix or feature, to make life a tiny bit better.

Tonight Adam Newbold posted about receiving a cease and desist. Some people assumed it was from me, but I had never heard of it. Micro.blog has not sent anyone a cease and desist. I have been focused on making Micro.blog better and hiring Sven to help answer customer questions, not hiring lawyers.

New home internet update: Verizon 5G router arrived and it’s… alright. 100 Mbps if the wind is blowing the right direction. 🤪 Trying to be patient until fiber is ready.

Today we’re rolling out two plug-in changes to Micro.blog. The first is that for new users, the Sumo theme by Matt Langford is now the default theme. This is a great theme that I think will serve new users better than our previous default theme Marfa. Sumo is better maintained and easier to customize.

Inspired by the good work that plug-in developers are doing, we’re also starting to sprinkle in donation buttons on your plug-ins list. The buttons can say either donate, tip, or buy me a coffee. Here’s an example:

I’ve been manually wiring these up, but later we’ll automate this so that Micro.blog can discover the donation link via a plug-in’s config or readme. If you’ve created a plug-in that accepts donations, let me know and I’ll update the listing.

Federico Viticci blogging about timeline apps:

My problem with timeline apps is that I struggle to understand their pitch as alternatives to browsing Mastodon and Bluesky (supported by both Tapestry and Reeder) when they don’t support key functionalities of those services such as posting, replying, reposting, or marking items as favorites.

There’s no reason these apps can’t also support creating new posts. Sort of like how the Micro.blog iOS app can post to WordPress. I don’t think apps need to support all social features, though.

Amazon’s Kindle Vella is shutting down with only a few weeks notice. I never read any stories but I thought it was an interesting idea — serialized novels delivered in short episodes like a chapter at a time, mostly fantasy and romance. Perhaps should’ve been more integrated with Kindle Unlimited.

Tapestry from the Iconfactory is out! Of course I love that it supports Micro.blog. And it makes me happy just seeing developers experiment with new ways to mix open social platforms together.

We’re a few days in to not having internet at the house, which means no YouTube TV, Max, Netflix, Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, FanDuel Sports, and Hulu. Our over-the-air antenna reception looks amazing, though. Sort of want to cancel everything and start over with local TV.

When you’re late to the game, do less, better. Apple used to know this. When the original iPod arrived at my house, I could tell it was a breakthrough. Famously less space than a Nomad, but an innovative UI, great design, and fast FireWire. It was so good it set in motion ev...

Jason Snell wonders if AltStore should’ve poked the bear. He covers both sides well:

Is notarization a tool Apple can use to bypass all of Europe’s regulations of Apple whenever it feels like preventing users from running MacPaint on an iPad? Or is it something out of Apple’s hands?

Apple’s iOS “notarization” is a flawed approach, clearly at odds with the DMA. It’s appropriate for them to be called out until they fix this so that it matches macOS notarization, which requires no human review.

Finished reading: Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson. Not even sure what to say. Still letting the end of the first arc sink in. 📚

This interview with Bookshop CEO Andy Hunter on Decoder is excellent. Andy seems like the kind of person who will change things. I can’t believe he wasn’t on my radar even though we’ve linked to Bookshop in Micro.blog bookshelves for a few years.

Me complaining a year ago:

No, I don’t want to rate the app, or the Skype call, or the mechanic, or the quality of a support email, or a song, or my doctor’s appointment, or whether the web page answered my question… I don’t really want to rate anything ever again! If I actually have feedback, I know how to send it.

The prompts have only gotten worse since then. By trying to improve customer service, they’ve actually destroyed it.

A small, pointless Apple Intelligence chat completion failure as I’m chatting with Verizon support… It thinks I’m talking to myself? I know it’s a cheap shot to gripe about AI, but this is really basic stuff.

Trying to get internet at the new place. AT&T will only talk on the phone and they make everything complicated. Google Fiber is in the neighborhood but not on our street. Verizon was supposed to overnight a 5G router a few days ago, it hasn’t shipped. Trying to avoid cable if fiber is imminent.

There are so many great quotes in the Six Colors report card for 2024. Hardware is good, the Mac is good, but Apple has run their relationship with developers into the ground, and most people think Apple Intelligence is a miss.

Bayou is a new theme for Micro.blog that prioritizes long-form content. Looks great! Thanks @Mtt.

Parker Ortolani blogs about Bluesky clients:

I want Tweetbot or Twitterrific, but for Bluesky. I’m not seeing that yet. The opportunity is clearly there, it has tens of millions of users making it three times the size of Mastodon.

John Gruber adds a note on Daring Fireball about timeline position sync.

Many people want an app that can manage multiple accounts on different networks. That’s fine. But what I want is one identity that can interact with all open platforms. A client app can never provide that, only new platforms like Micro.blog.

I don’t see myself using Bookshop.org’s new e-books until there’s Kindle support, but now that I’ve read this article on Wired, I’m convinced they’re on the right track. From CEO Andy Hunter:

The first step is to launch the platform. Our second step is to make it popular, so we have leverage. And then we can start fixing what we consider to be the industry problems around ebooks.

Micro.blog iOS folks on the TestFlight beta, the latest build fixes an issue editing longer blog posts. If anyone sees any new problems, please let me know. We’ll do the App Store release this week.

Just reading more about the Luka Dončić trade to the Lakers. Can still hardly believe it. I thought Luka might be the kind of player would stay in Dallas forever. 🏀

Dave Winer writes about links on the social web:

Support for links is the basic requirement of the web, the same way we say feeds are required to be a podcast. If you don’t support links not only aren’t you the web, you’re anti-web.

Yesterday Sam Altman and a few other folks from OpenAI did an ask me anything on Reddit. Some interesting answers about upcoming models, showing more thinking like R1, and this comment on open weights from Sam:

i personally think we have been on the wrong side of history here and need to figure out a different open source strategy; not everyone at openai shares this view, and it’s also not our current highest priority.

Very nice video preview of smart replies in @gregmorris’s app Micro Social. I think a lot of people on Micro.blog are going to like this.