FeedCity

Wow, has it really been a full year since the last Epilogue release for Android? Today I’ve gathered up all the recent changes and shipped them on Android, available at Google Play here. Screenshots still out of date, but it’s got the new icon and mostly the same features as iOS.

Nice write-up from Chris Enns on using Micro.blog for hosting short podcasts and adding stats with OP3.

Working in Android and Google Play a bunch this week. It’s just similar enough to the Apple ecosystem to feel like I know what I’m doing, even when I get lost in the weeds of compiler errors and dependencies changing out from under me.

We’ve got a new minor update to Epilogue for iOS ready. This release focuses on the context menu in the book details screen. Many people didn’t know the menu was there. Now there’s an ellipsis button to make it more discoverable, plus a couple other additions to the menu.

Jack Smith knows what he’s doing. January 6th indictment reworked to accommodate the Supreme Court’s ruling:

Prosecutors have not dropped any of the four charges that they initially brought against the former president. However, the newly retooled indictment has carved out some of Trump’s alleged conduct, including allegations about the attempts to use the Justice Department to promote his false claims of election fraud.

Submitted on app update to Apple and now feel kind of in limbo, like I can’t do anything else until they approve it. Checking email… reload, reload. It’s not even a major update.

Claude’s Artifacts feature is really well done. I asked it to create a web page with various info, and it previews the page right next to the chat, with a toggle to go from HTML to rendered. ChatGPT is still my go-to AI helper but this is impressive.

Good news from The Verge, the Biden administration is providing $521 million to states to expand EV charging. Houston’s getting a bunch of cash. Also interesting: grants for tribes in Washington and Florida to install charging stations on reservations. But not New Mexico? I-40 could use something.

Doug Jones has a roundup of several XOXO blog posts.

Rainy morning at Lazarus on Airport. The sun is starting to come out now and I want the rain back. ☕️

Craig Hockenberry’s slop is good pairs well with John Gruber’s post I linked to yesterday about trusting sources in a web filled with AI-generated content. Craig:

Search engines you can’t trust because they are cesspools of slop is hard to imagine. But that end feels inevitable at this point. We will need a new web.

We’re going to see more and more Google alternatives, maybe some paid like Kagi. And some will even need to use AI just to get rid of all the AI-generated content. 🤪

A small, probably unfair, book rant… When I start a fantasy book and discover it’s written in first person, I groan a little. It takes a unique story or very good author to pull it off. (Thinking of Robin Hobb.) Even great books would be a little better in third person, with multiple perspectives. 📚

Molly White after speaking at XOXO:

I mentioned that I’ve been feeling this a lot over the last few years, even as I too am witnessing what many of us think about as “the web” rotting right in front of our eyes. Working outside of that rot pile, and perhaps motivated by it, there are so many people who are excited about the potential for a better web.

New AI-based Alexa set to launch in October, possibly as a $10 subscription:

The revamp of the voice assistant, which documents say will include a daily AI-generated news summary, would come just weeks before the U.S. presidential election.

I think this price will be a tough sell, but running AI does cost money. It’s just that Alexa is not a productivity tool in the way ChatGPT Plus can be.

We’re starting to know more about Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest:

Durov was being temporarily detained on suspicion of involvement with distributing child sex abuse material and drugs, money laundering and working with organized crime, according to a press statement released by French prosecutor Laure Beccuau.

When news broke yesterday, I noticed several bloggers write that we didn’t know enough yet to really judge, a restrained take that I appreciate. I figured this might come down to refusal to honor search warrants, but could be deeper too.

John Gruber blogging about the AI-enhanced photos in Google Pixel 9:

Everyone alive today has grown up in a world where you can’t believe everything you read. Now we need to adapt to a world where that applies just as equally to photos and videos. Trusting the sources of what we believe is becoming more important than ever.

This is it. If we want authenticity, we have to be intentional in what we read and watch. “For you” is a trap.

Updates from @Mtt for folks using these themes:

I just pushed out updates for both Tiny Theme and Sumo Theme with some bug fixes. Nothing major, but a couple of things that needed to be worked out.

It’s a good idea to stay current on themes. Nothing auto-updates, so just click on Plug-ins to see if there are new versions.

Joe Crawford blogs about open web themes at XOXO:

During XOXO, Andy Baio said “Every one of you should have a home on the web not controlled by a billionaire.” Cabel Sasser recommended that we all “put up the dang portfolio.” Molly White asked us to think back to “when was the first time you thought the web was magic?”

Wow, I hadn’t heard about this yet but can’t wait. War of the Rohirrim coming at the end of the year, trailer here on YouTube. Love an animated Lord of the Rings.

More on the fediverse stars symbol, this time from Manuel Moreale:

I am no fediverse citizen but I do consider myself a good citizen of the web. I try my best to make it a better place and I try to encourage people to own their corners of the web. Am I excluded from your fancy club because I don’t “federate”?

This gets back to my point about “social web” vs. fediverse. Manu has a fantastic blog and he’s making the web better. The social web (IndieWeb!) should connect seamlessly to blogs without an extra protocol layer over the web.

Nice update to ChatGPT for Mac: option-space now brings up results in a small floating window. Good for quick answers, but can still be collapsed back into the main window. Whoever is working on the Mac app is doing good work. It’s like a case study in sticking with AppKit.

Finished reading: The Exchange by John Grisham. A sequel to The Firm. I usually try to find something positive to say about a book… I didn’t enjoy this after the first few chapters. But it’s short and I wanted to know how it ended. 📚

Penn family farm at Cedar Hill State Park.

Loco Cafe in Denton. ☕️

Ben Werdmuller follows up on the fediverse symbol, blogging that Meta should be commended for adopting ActivityPub before any other large network:

Whatever you think about Meta’s goals for participating, I do also think Meta’s presence gives the network a sort of legitimacy that it was otherwise struggling to achieve.

I agree. I have nitpicks with the (for now) partial rollout on Threads, but overall it’s a good thing.

I like the proposed symbol for the fediverse: ⁂. It’s just unicode so doesn’t need anything special to use everywhere on the web. Part of me still thinks we should move toward “social web” as a phrase, though. The web should be the social network.

Sounds like we’re in for an interest rate cut next month. We sold our house last year, starting to explore what’s next, so this will be a welcome change.

From The Information, fascinating to see the different approaches in headset strategy. Meta: we can’t make this for $1000, so forget it. Apple: it must be the best, and the best costs $3500, ship it.

Apple may embrace JPEG XL, via Jade van Dörsten’s microblog. It feels better for XL to be the standard, because it’s backwards compatible and we can just call it JPEG, rather than using WebP or HEIC. Chrome is still a problem, though.

Between me and my kids, we share birthdays with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and… Kamala Harris’s dad. I don’t know what this means but I like it.