FeedCity

Old steps to nowhere in east Austin. Someone’s house used to be here.

As usual I’m working on a few different things in parallel. Server bug fixes, mobile app updates, and something new… Sneak peek in this screenshot. Can’t share more for now, it’s too early! But I love the potential.

Upgraded to macOS Sequoia. iPhone Mirroring is fascinating. It’s better and more native-y for clicks and scrolling than using the iOS simulator.

Interesting heads-up from Gareth Edwards that .io might be going away:

Once this treaty is signed, the British Indian Ocean Territory will cease to exist. Various international bodies will update their records. In particular, the International Standard for Organization (ISO) will remove country code “IO” from its specification.

I will be surprised if there isn’t a special case for .io renewals because of how widespread it is. I have a few registrations myself.

There are stories about both Trump and Biden in this overview of Bob Woodward’s new book War, but the headline is definitely this Covid intro:

As the coronavirus tore through the world in 2020, and the United States and other countries confronted a shortage of tests designed to detect the illness, then-President Donald Trump secretly sent coveted tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use.

Again and again Trump shows that he’s not on our side. And yet the election is close. 🇺🇸

This is an only slightly exaggerated story that I see play out again and again from customers: “Micro.blog looks like a good idea. I’m sick of social media and want to blog more.” Blog, blog, blog, microblog, microblog, reply, blog. “Not getting enough engagement. Let’s try...

Happy to get Micro.blog for iOS version 3.3 released. Includes the under-the-hood navigation rewrite that @vincent worked on, new icons for iOS 18, and several other improvements. Much better in lots of small ways.

Odd dream last night. I wrote an April Fool’s press release for Micro.blog announcing full-length blog posts, note taking, audio transcripts, newsletters, reading goals, and bookmarks… Everyone was like “Ha, would be funny if Micro.blog did all of that” and I was like “No, it does, that’s the joke.”

Dusted off my Rabbit R1 after listening to the latest interview with Jesse Lyu on Decoder. It needed a bunch of software updates. Even though I haven’t used it in a while, no regrets buying it… It’s a neat device and their vision for AI still has potential.

This ruling for Epic vs. Google goes way further than the concessions Apple has had to make for the EU. From The Verge:

Google will have to distribute rival third-party app stores within Google Play, and it must give rival third-party app stores access to the full catalog of Google Play apps, unless developers opt out individually.

Perfect example of how Apple and Google not opening up app distribution years ago will ultimately cost them much more now.

Dave Winer celebrating 30 years of blogging today:

Every time you post something you’re proud of on a social media site, how about taking a moment and posting it to your blog too. And while there, if appropriate, link to something from some part of your post, even though the social media sites don’t support linking, the web is still there and it still does.

One year since the Hamas attack on Israel. Hostages still not released. Peace still far off. Gaza still in ruin. At the height of the protests, I wrote this blog post. I stand by it, but of course I have new thoughts today. Not gonna blog, so the old post will have to serve as a snapshot of 2024.

Less than a month until election day. The deadline to register to vote in Texas is today. Similar for other states, so now is the time for folks who have been procrastinating. 🇺🇸

We saw Megalopolis yesterday and I’m still trying to make sense of it. Feels like there were some interesting ideas, and a couple beautiful scenes, but it didn’t come together as a coherent movie for me. Glad I saw it just because it’s different. 🍿

Finished Rings of Power season 2. I enjoyed it as long as I don’t hold it to the high standard of how a perfect adaptation looks in my mind. Hobbits and dwarves were the strongest this season for me. Elves dialogue is always overly dramatic. Still all the money on screen, some stunning sequences. 📺

The controversy with WordPress continues. In fact, it’s escalating as WP Engine has filed a lawsuit against Automattic, and even some employees inside Automattic are frustrated with Matt Mullenweg’s leadership. Matt blogged about offering Automattic employees a chance to lea...

Experimenting with OpenAI’s new canvas feature. Pretty incredible what it can do. There are a lot of nice UI touches too to help show progress, like how it highlights and rewrites text.

Multiple confirmations from folks that the black screen crashes (reboots?) are an 18.1 beta problem. Without evidence, my gut says this is Apple Intelligence hitting the 8 GB RAM ceiling for local models. It again makes me question Apple not moving more AI to the cloud.

John Gruber on the news that Starlink will offer free service to Hurricane Helene disaster areas:

It’s hard to overstate how differently Elon Musk would be perceived if he weren’t a whackjob on political and cultural issues.

If Elon had never bought Twitter, never tweeted even, he’d still be considered a visionary leader comparable to Steve Jobs, maybe over time even greater. Instead he destroyed his reputation for nothing.

Overall the iPhone 16 Pro Max is amazing. A couple minor gripes:

• Camera button is a little hard to get used to because it’s not raised. Too easy to accidentally change the zoom.
• Apps will randomly crash to a black screen and spinner. I’ve never seen this on iOS before. Maybe 18.1 beta eating RAM?

I don’t like captchas and will never force them on my customers. With AI, captchas will become increasingly useless anyway. See also, John Mulaney: “I’ve devised a question no robot could ever answer…Which of these pictures does not have a stop sign in it?”

Here’s what the new prompt for email newsletter subscriptions looks like for your blog. The extra step lets us generate some random values hidden from real users, inspired by this post from Jeremy Keith, to make it a tiny bit harder for bots. Could do more later now that this is in place.

Think I figured out my high bounce and complaint rate for email sending. Spammers are trying to (probably accidentally) sign up to customer’s newsletters with fake email addresses. Working on making it harder for bots to navigate this.

We just shipped an update to Strata for iOS, our private notes app for Micro.blog, with Android to follow later in the week. This adds a QR code scanning option to get your secret key moved over from another platform. For Apple folks, it also syncs the key via iCloud, but nice to have options.

Thinking about the difference between companies who use AI to make existing features better and companies who try to rethink everything. I’ve been using the iOS 18.1 beta for a while. I don’t think Apple really believes in AI the way OpenAI, Anthropic, or Microsoft do. See Microsoft’s memo from Mustafa Suleyman:

This is a new era of technology that doesn’t just “solve problems”, it’s there to support you, teach you, help you. In this sense, Copilots really are different to that last wave of the web and mobile. This is the beginning of a fundamental shift in what’s possible for all of us.

Just in case folks missed the other notices about this, I’m running a big server upgrade in 30 minutes. Wish I could keep Micro.blog fully up during the upgrade but it’s going to be smoother and hopefully faster to just rip the bandaid off. Seeya on the other side.

If I could give advice to Tim Walz for tonight’s debate: just be yourself. Don’t stress about scoring points. Don’t debate as if you went to Yale Law School. Remind people how unhinged Trump has become, and show that you’re competent, empathetic, and ready. 🇺🇸

Spent a bunch of time in encryption land, debugging an issue with the next Strata update. Almost shocked that I eventually solved it. I was starting to lose my mind watching scrambled bytes of data go back and forth between platforms.

There was a trailer for Flow before The Wild Robot. It looks fantastic. The release is coming in December according to Cartoon Brew.

Croissant is getting some great press. Just a few I’ve noticed: Six Colors, MacStories, TechCrunch. I don’t need it because Micro.blog cross-posts to everything from my blog, but would be cool if the app could post to blogs in the future too.