FeedCity

Didn’t realize until this week that the RSS.app feeds support RSS and JSON Feed. Very cool. I’m starting to use it to follow a couple Twitter / X folks from the AI industry. Hate giving X any attention, though.

Curtis Herbert is back with another Slopes Diaries post, making the argument that Apple’s 30% cut is worth it, but that external payment links will also open new opportunities. I think the perspective on this topic varies between developers partly based on whether you expect...

Sheldon Lake State Park. The ponds used to be part of a fish hatchery, then closed in 1975 and let nature take over. We saw some alligators. 🐊

With OpenAI adding 4.1, I’m having to think a little too much about which models I should be using. I generally use o4-mini for coding, 4o for simple, fast questions. What now? I expect GPT-5 will help consolidate some of these choices.

Thanks @numericcitizen for making another video about what’s new in Micro.blog! This one covers integration with Bluesky and Mastodon, and more.

Josh Miller has an update on the Dia browser, in a series of posts on Twitter / X. For a company with “browser” in its name, wouldn’t mind seeing a blog post of this instead of on X. 🤪 Some very interesting screenshots in the thread, though. I’m excited to try it.

Great post from Joan Westenberg about what has changed with Apple:

A company once defined by joyful provocation—by thinking different—is now defined by its defensiveness. Its leadership acts not like inventors but like stewards of a status quo. They protect margins like relics.

Justin Jackson on the threat to podcasts from YouTube, and why we should keep investing in RSS:

The benefit of investing in RSS is that any innovations will be shared across the entire ecosystem. When YouTube innovates, the benefits stay inside YouTube. When the podcast community innovates on RSS, everyone benefits: creators, listeners, and businesses alike.

A few years ago we were worried about Spotify locking down podcasts. YouTube feels a little different because video supplements rather than replaces audio podcasts. But Justin is right that we should be vigilant.

Before my talk at EFF Austin last night, I exported a PDF of my slides and asked ChatGPT (o4) to tell me about them. Here’s the chat transcript. It’s fascinating to me because this is without giving the speaker notes to ChatGPT, so it inferred everything from the slide conte...

I’m speaking at EFF Austin tonight! Getting coffee this morning and working on my slides. Last-minute panic that everything in my talk needs to change.

Mavs fans needed a win after losing Luka. Happy for them. And Spurs with the second pick… Amazing. Going to enjoy reading the conspiracy theories about this one. 🏀

From a “lunch with” profile of Sam Altman in the Financial Times:

I find Altman brimming with confidence as our conversation ranges from AI products to the existential question of an AI future that a handful of optimistic technologists are steadily leading us to, whether we like it or not. Radiating ambition, he sounds like a man convinced of his own destiny.

Perhaps you have to be a little overconfident to attempt this. Meanwhile most people are upset that Sam uses the wrong kind of expensive olive oil.

It’s that time of year again when I realize I’ve let Redis memory get completely out of hand, 45+ GB, so forking to save is mostly impossible. Think I’m going to take some time to truly trim out the bloat.

I posted a new video on YouTube that shows how filters work in Micro.blog, including a brand new feature: Micro.blog can analyze your blog posts using AI magic to generate keywords and file posts into categories. This is for Micro.blog Premium subscribers. 🪄

Just caught up with Andor through episode 9. What a great show. 📺

Nice update to the mnml theme for Micro.blog. It’s cool to see all those settings.

Time for some plants for the front yard. Mother’s Day shopping at Home Depot.

Made several little design updates to Micro.blog this weekend, including a more consistent, cleaner header for pages that have some text and a “new” button. Here’s a screenshot for posterity.

OpenAI rolls out new things so often that it’s a little surprising they haven’t replicated Claude’s Artifacts. It’s such a nice workflow to generate HTML, CSS, and JS with an interactive preview right in the app.

Dave Winer blogging about how software evolves with feedback from users:

Software isn’t a thing, it isn’t finished, it’s a process as it gets invented by the users. It’s a performing art. WordLand today is like a musician performing in a small club, working out the playlist, and hoping to be playing at theaters then arenas, and finally someday, if we’re very good, stadiums.

When we launched Micro.one, I was interested in simplifying the sidebar. I moved the link to manage blog post categories to another pane for all users. I now think that was a mistake. Today along with some other minor UI tweaks, I’ve added it back.

Great blog post by John Siracusa, distilling much of Apple’s current problem balancing doing good with making money:

Apple, as embodied by its leadership’s decisions over the past decade or more, no longer seems primarily motivated by the creation of great products. Time and time again, its policies have made its products worse for customers in exchange for more power, control, and, yes, money for Apple.

While testing something this morning, I made a careless blunder with one of our servers, causing some sporadic downtime. I’m very sorry. A couple things are slow right now but will be returning to normal shortly.

I don’t think I realized that you didn’t need to be in the EU to distribute apps via AltStore PAL. If Apple relaxes their notarization review in the future, I might use this to ship early iOS builds to the EU.

There are many challenges for the web and web publishers as AI upends search, but the only way to believe that the open web itself will be destroyed is to no longer believe in web browsers. As big as AI is, it’s not as big as the web. We’ll navigate through this.

“What we make stands testament to who we are.” — Jony Ive, in an interview at Stripe Sessions

Bill Gates writes about accelerating his plan to give away his wealth, winding down the Gates Foundation in 20 years:

People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that “he died rich” will not be one of them. There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.

Funny how people change. In the 1990s, I was a teenager learning to program the Mac while complaining about Bill Gates and Microsoft. Now I admire Bill and complain about Apple.

Reading through Apple’s motion to pause the external purchase ruling. A quick comment on this part:

A federal court cannot force Apple to permanently give away free access to its products and services, including intellectual property.

No one said that. Developers have been paying $99/year for this privilege since the beginning of the App Store.

Apple lawyers can spin this however they want. It will always come back to this: it’s absurd to take a cut of developer revenue that is not processed by Apple just for adding a website link in an app.

Realized last night while listening to music on our record player, which is connected to our Amazon Echo as a speaker… We have a couple newer Echos, but this one is the original Echo from 10 years ago. It’s the oldest gadget in our house still in regular use.

I was unexpectedly caught up in the news about a new Pope. Reading a little about him and translated bits of the inaugural address — an American, speaking of love and peace, not division.