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.

So happy with how well the new video hosting with Micro.blog Studio is going. I used to fumble around with video file sizes or just give up and use YouTube. Now I can post everything to my blog.

Android app review submissions have been going through very quickly. Nice work by Google. Even when Apple’s reviews are 1-2 days, I wish they were hours.

Raining finally. The new tree is getting a much-needed soak. I decided a few days ago to go camping tomorrow… Looks like it might clear up at least for a day. 🌧️

I wonder if this proposed Algorithm Accountability Act has the right idea. Instead of wiping away Section 230, we could chip away at very specific aspects of it. I feel like this could have broad support.

Some folks are addicted to refreshing social media all day. Not me, but I have noticed that I’m now sort of addicted to asking AI dumb questions and getting random ideas for how to implement things whenever I’m bored. If this was a human assistant, they would be annoyed with my endless questions.

Experimenting with a new Movies tab in our mobile app Epilogue. Feels a little weird… The app is for books. But also, I think it works here better than in the main app. I’m going to finish implementing it and use it and then decide for sure.

In today’s Stratechery interview they talk about the potential revenue that OpenAI lost by not having any ads in ChatGPT for the last three years. But there would’ve been a cost to having ads too! The product would’ve been slightly worse.