Some folks are really nitpicking the Ferrari Luce. I think it looks really good. Nice details inside too. Perhaps we want to find fault in it because we can’t afford it. 🤪

Apple insisting on approving beta versions of iOS apps that are going to just a handful of people remains one of the dumbest possible things about the App Store. A waste of time for everyone. Likely makes apps worse because it discourages beta testing.

Working a little on our Strata app this morning. There were a few changes for Android in the queue, those should be out this week. Also the Liquid Glass update for iOS.

He blocks among us. 🏀

Western conference finals, game 4. 🏀

Looking at the Daylight computer again, so nice. I love that the “smooth video playback” section uses Steamboat Willie for the video clip. Public domain Disney. 🎉

Trying out the new Bluesky support in the WordPress reader. Very cool. Similar to what we’ve tried to do with Micro.blog, but totally different user experience, which is great.

TechCrunch review of the Bee:

In a world where the average person is beset from all sides by constant digital surveillance, I appreciate any opportunity I can get to not be recorded. Therefore, the idea of walking around with an eavesdropping gizmo strapped to my wrist 24/7 was not particularly appealing.

None of these devices are quite right yet. Recording everything is too creepy. Recording too little (because of extra button clicks) isn’t as useful. I want something in between, that makes dictating thoughts effortless when I’m by myself. Maybe it shuts off when there are other voices.

Clicking around on Peter Steinberger’s release.bar. Interesting repo summaries. Because all the Micro.blog apps are open source, looking at my account provides a snapshot of recent changes.

I know it’s a temporary icon but every day I think about switching back to Apple Music just because of the Spotify disco ball. 🤪

I’m too slow finishing a book I checked out on Libby, so had to put the Kindle in airplane mode so it doesn’t expire. I do this a lot. But then they’ll be another book I’d like to get into at the same time and now can’t sync it. I hate to DNF books I’m 3/4 of the way through, just losing steam. 📚

Only just learned about Null Island. Love the name. There’s a CNN article today about cruise ships stopping there:

Just a few weeks ago, Holland America announced plans to include Null Island as a stop on its 129-day round-the-world voyage in 2028, following an earlier stop on its 2024 trip.

Amazing and fitting considering how GPS has changed so many things. 🗺️

I don’t use Plex, but I’ve seen a couple people mention this lifetime plan pricing increase. Mike Rockwell blogs:

But $750 feels insane. That’s more than ten times the price of the annual subscription. That feels like too high of a multiple to me.

That’s a lot to pay all at once. I’m not sure lifetime plans are workable for some types of hosted software anyway. I have plenty of server costs each month to run Micro.blog, and the subscriptions sustain that. If I want to keep running Micro.blog for let’s say 20 more years, it’s risky to have too much revenue upfront instead of later.

I was feeling good with that 15-0 start to the game, but this third quarter had been tough. Lots of fouls, not enough shots going in for the Spurs. 🏀

Watched the first part of the Starship v3 launch live, then the final minutes later. Never gets old. Extraordinary views. 🚀

Okay. 📷

Most users probably don’t use Micro.blog notes as much as I do, but still feels great to ship this latest bug fix update for Mac with much faster notes sync. The clunkiness had been bugging me for a while even though I use it all the time.

I don’t have AI start a draft of anything for me except photo accessibility text. But I do often have it check posts for grammar problems or confusing phrases. Super useful. I think my writing is at least slightly better because of it, but it’s still mine.

Everyone can choose to have AI help them write or not, but we’re past the point of needing to be lectured about it. When I’m at the store and see someone buying a greeting card with a poetic message that someone else wrote for them, I don’t give them a hard time. It’s fine.

After a full month of Apple rejections, the iOS version of Inkwell has been approved. Before I get to that, there is one additional update from Apple, this time from their trademarks team who I reached out to. This is part of the response I got this week: As we are sure you...

Loved the way they wrapped up the last episode of The Late Show. Nicely done. Heck of a run and good way to go out on top. 📺

The automatic backups introduced in Micro.blog for Mac earlier this month are working pretty well for me. But I’m going to adjust how many backups are stored from 5 to 3, or maybe configurable, because for blogs with thousands of photos the backup files can get pretty big.

Just some bedtime reading of the appeals court decision from December in Epic vs. Apple. I really hope we’re almost at the end of this mess. It has dragged on way too long.

Om Malik with a little late-night reading of the SpaceX prospectus:

The SpaceX IPO is a masterpiece of financial engineering. The prospectus is a perfect blend of reality, sci-fi, and skullduggery.

Along with other improvements today, I updated the home page for Inkwell so it’s a little less plain. Now includes a screenshot and download links for all the platforms. For iOS, still linking to the TestFlight version while we wait for Apple.

“No servitude is more disgraceful than that which is self-imposed.”

Last night’s game 2, quick thoughts. I could blame all the blatant fouling with the Thunder holding Wemby every possession, which also contributed to the Thunder getting offensive rebounds, but really it’s the turnovers. Gotta clean that up, hopefully with De’Aaron Fox and Dylan Harper back soon. 🏀

From the SpaceX filing, we learned that Anthropic will be paying xAI $1.25 billion per month to host Claude. And Tom Brown of Anthropic posted on X that they’ll also expand into Colossus 2:

Appreciate elonmusk and the team helping us find good homes for the Claudes.

Strange partnership. Only a couple months ago, Dario Amodei griped about Greg Brockman donating money to Trump, although to his credit he walked it back. Now Anthropic is putting Claude’s future into the hands of Elon Musk, with all of Elon’s political baggage.

As companies get bigger, maybe there are market forces that take over from stated principles. Or maybe we ascribe values to companies that were never really there. To be fair, though, I was also just considering giving X money to re-enable tweet cross-posting for my users. Micro.blog is so small, I can choose not to.

Big update to Inkwell for Mac today, version 1.4. It adds saving and editing draft blog posts, fixes glitches in the text editor, and improves a few other little things in the UI. Getting closer to a unified platform for reading and writing blog posts.

I published Indie Microblogging on the web a few years ago, continued to tweak it a little, but I had to solve a couple layout issues before I could print it and send to backers. The book includes 400+ links, which I’ve converted to footnotes for print. Here’s an example page.