Deploying a range of optimizations today, across the Micro.blog servers and Mac app. A couple things are dramatically faster. A couple things a tiny bit faster.

Starting to see the gold Tesla Cybercabs in Texas. I don’t plan to ride in one, but to their credit it sounds like the cameras might be better than the ones in a normal Tesla. I just don’t get stubbornly ignoring LiDAR when the technology is right there.

Of course Waymo ageees. From a Waymo blog post:

Cameras are incredible, but they aren’t enough.

Cybercabs can probably drive a little better than the average human, but not much better.

Kind of love the all-lowercase “hello” as John Ternus’s first X post. Maybe we’re in for a new, more informal style. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Still holding out hope for a CEO personal blog one day, to offset all the opaque corporate-y communication.

One way to read the OpenAI vs. Anthropic rivalry — and Claude Code’s success — is that while OpenAI was off in the weeds playing with Sora, Anthropic was training Mythos. OpenAI spent 2026 catching up. Reading about Astra rumors, I expect OpenAI to have a significant advantage through the fall. 🤖

I noticed when I quit Twitter in 2013 that my blog posts became more my own, less influenced by my old online community. I think it’s a good idea every once in a while for us to poke our heads outside whatever the current filter bubble is. The web is a big place. That diversity is a strength.

Still weird that today is Tim Cook’s last day as CEO. I got my first Mac toward the end of the John Sculley era. To me he’s the third most consequential, behind Steve and Tim.

Heck of a company. Two years ago I blogged that we were at peak Apple. John Ternus now gets to figure out if that’s true.

Reading Parker Ortolani’s blog post about the Pebble Index, I almost wish I hadn’t cancelled my pre-order. I still don’t think I would wear it, but it does seem closest to what I want for note taking.

Micro.blog has had great support for blogging about books for years, including through our companion app Epilogue for iOS and Android. But one thing has always bugged me: when you blog about a book, by default it creates a link to a special URL on Micro.blog with the book de...

Started catching up on email and RSS links at 11:30am instead of 8am, and already I feel like I’m behind on everything. Monday morning, I guess.

Stopped in San Antonio for coffee + work. Just updated my state parks page with last night’s visit to Goliad. Plotting a few more parks I can knock out this fall. ☕️

Goliad State Park. Finally getting back to my state park quest. Summer is too hot, but I’m testing a new portable air conditioner.

County courthouse in Lockhart.

Successful launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope:

Roman pairs a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to explore vast swaths of the sky and probe deeply into cosmic history. This flagship mission will help astronomers explore dark matter, dark energy, and worlds outside of our solar system, known as exoplanets.

🚀

Watched: Coyote vs. Acme. So much fun. They nailed it. 🍿

Working on something new for blog book detail pages. I’ve been wanting to do this for years, finally getting around to it.

Anthropic announced a limits change on X in the most convoluted way possible:

Starting September 14, we’re permanently raising standard weekly limits in Claude Code by 25% for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans. Until then, the current 50% increase will be in place.

Compared to today, this works out to a 17% reduction in weekly limits on Claude Code. We’re working on exciting changes that will make it feel like you’re getting more from Claude, while having more visibility and control of your usage. Can’t wait to share them.

I had to read it a few times. It’s actually bad news.

As a practical example of Standard.site in Micro.blog, you can view my latest blog post in Standard Reader. It pulls the Markdown from the PDS, and also shows Bluesky replies if any.

After sleeping on the Cursor + OpenAI news from last night, I think it points to a broader question of openness. I don’t actually use Cursor, so it doesn’t affect me, but I’m interested in the dynamics of the industry. There were two ways to use GPT-5.6 inside Cursor: With ...

New social photo journal web app Moments has added Micropub for posting. It also includes custom domain names and RSS feeds. This means you can post from apps like our own Sunlit, or add the posts automatically to the Micro.blog timeline.

Amazing what can be done with just feeds and a posting API.

Late Friday night news from OpenAI. They are winding down their partnership with Cursor:

This decision was incredibly tough, as we care deeply about our models being broadly available for developers. We are making this choice because we cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts.

Sort of makes sense with all the bad blood between OpenAI and Elon Musk, but the announcement is confusing. This is going to burn some goodwill at a time when things are going well with developers.

9to5Mac has a summary of yet another response from OpenAI. They don’t believe any specific trade secrets are even alleged:

Apple all but admits that it has not yet identified the alleged trade secrets, promising an “iterative process” of discovery, after which it will tell Defendants and the Court what the alleged trade secrets are.

The hearing is October 1st. OpenAI’s DevDay is September 29th. Hopefully we’ll see the new device before the lawsuit goes much further.

I thought it was a dead pixel, but there’s actually a tiny chip in the glass of my MacBook Pro screen. Annoying in the nitpicky, small life problems kind of way. Really want to keep this machine another couple years.

Got notice from Linode that 8 of my servers need to rebooted in the next month. A couple of them have 2-year uptime! There won’t be downtime except for one of the servers, might be a short blip, which I’ll schedule ahead of time.

I’ve been randomly reading and listening to physics topics, not sure why, including lectures by Richard Feynman. Something finally clicked with understanding relativity and spacetime. I sort of got it before, but not really. 🤯

I don’t get the Claudeforce name. Why tie your product to a single model? That’s someone else’s brand. And whenever a competitor like OpenAI does something good, your own product will feel out of step too.

I wonder if Apple will ever merge App Store Connect into developer.apple.com. Pretty weird that things are still fragmented. (“Oh, you want to update an app ID? Better go somewhere else.”)

It’s a minor nitpick. Just the whole backend feels stagnant because they have a monopoly on app distribution.

Myke Hurley blogging about the upcoming campaign for St. Jude:

We are now within reaching distance of $5 million raised. What an incredible achievement in less than 10 years. I don’t think I could have imagined what we would all achieve together. But time and time again, the Relay community has stood by us and believed in this cause.

Great story at Cartoon Brew about Peter Cullen’s voice acting work. I had never really thought why he was so good as Optimus Prime:

His brother’s idea of heroism became central to Cullen’s interpretation of the character and arguably had a tremendous impact on generations of children who could look up to a strong leader who didn’t rely on bravado or overt displays of aggression.

Rest in peace.

I shaved off about half a second while loading the Micro.blog home page timeline. It helps, but also doesn’t have as dramatic a perceived effect as I was hoping. Performance is so many small things.

The tariffs were largely a waste of time and money, but still nice to see this part of it resolving well: Panic is refunding tariff fees for Playdate purchases, via Lex Friedman’s new blog.