Trying a new coffee place. Cafe at the Loren with a nice view across Riverside. Where I’m sitting used to be a Taco Cabana. ☕️

Don’t sleep on the “Custom home page” plug-in for Micro.blog if you need something simple for an extra site. I use it for standalone, single-page websites with a little HTML and CSS (or even JS).

Slack can sometimes be overwhelming. I make it work by limiting myself to about 3 channels in the Mac and iOS apps. Others can be viewed on the web as needed. Also, I mute almost everything, even channels I care about. The only flaw is that @here bypasses mutes, which I don’t think it should.

Threads cross-posting is finally rolling out more broadly for Micro.blog folks. Sorry if I didn’t get to your request for the beta earlier. I’m catching up and replying to everyone who asked about it in email.

I’m not interested in a Tesla, or any new car, but I watched the robotaxi event because it felt like it was going to be a spectacle. I do think self-driving will be safer than human drivers. I’m not on board with humanoid robots, though. AI should be confined to software and small gadgets only.

Get your 🎃 and 👻 emoji ready. I’m brewing up something fun for Halloween.

Thinking more about this blog post from Nick Radcliffe about effectively rebranding Micro.blog. I want to turn Micro.blog into a sort of bundle (think Apple One) because it does several things. But I don’t know if I can give up the “micro” name as much as redefine it. Small name. Big features. 🙂

It’s less than a month until election day. I believe Kamala Harris is going to win. Knock on wood, many things are breaking her way in the final weeks of the campaign, in a way that they did not for Hillary Clinton when she was also on her way to winning the presidency. Howe...

Making progress on enabling Threads cross-posting for everyone in Micro.blog. Meta approved the app this week, now waiting for them to approve the business account. It has been slow going because after each rejection I have to work on something else to clear my head.

It will always be valuable to know a programming language inside and out, but AI is erasing old headaches of context switching between platforms. Code in your favorite language, have AI port it to another language, review and tweak the results. In the future, we may develop largely in pseudo code.

Nice update to Mimi for Micro.blog to batch generate alt text for a bunch of photos at once.

Most mornings while eating breakfast at home, I flip between Morning Joe and CNN. Today, too many ads, so watched some of Good Morning America and they really got me with that story about a teacher. Eyes might be watering a little. The show producers know their craft.

New Core Int just published. We talk about Meta’s Orion prototype, Daniel trying to remember his Apple Vision Pro password, and more about the future of computers that we put on our face.

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.