FeedCity

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fight Between Carnival and Lent. Very large version here. As Auden reminds us, one of the most noteworthy elements of these crowded Bruegel paintings is the depiction of people going about their own business, completely oblivious to whatever theme or topic the painting is supposed to be depicting.

I saw a product announcement from Jake Spurlock -- a new feed reader called Today. From the description sounds well-thought-out. He explains -- "Google killed Reader in 2013. I've been chasing that feeling ever since. So I built it." I also know someone named John Spurloc...

New account on Twitter: DWiner43240. The old one dating back to the dawn of time is disabled, so at least the new owners can't post anything there, if I understand correctly.

Currently reading: Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer by Christopher Beha 📚

Mary Elizabeth Groom’s engravings from the 1937 Golden Cockerel Press edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost:

Last week I announced to my BMAC supporters that I’ll be severely curtailing my Big Blog for the foreseeable future, but I’ve discovered that I have a few drafts of essays — nearly finished or else complete but with no obvious home — that I could post. So one of those went up today: it’s on making movies and making war. I wrote it after reading Dan Wang’s Breakneck.

Hartley Charlton, MacRumors: Apple invited select members of the media to the event in three major cities around the world. It is simply described as a “special Apple Experience,” and there is no further information about what it may entail. The invitation features a 3D ...

I’m grateful to Amanda Patchin for this generous review of my Paradise Lost biography.

Update. I've been able to create an account on Twitter, but it's not @davewiner. If you're on Twitter, it would help if you'd RT the post. Thanks!

Juli Clover: Starting with iOS 26.4, Stolen Device Protection will be enabled by default and turned on for all iPhone users. […] Stolen Device Protection requires additional authentication through Face ID or Touch ID to access certain iPhone features like the Passwords app, Lost mode in Find My , Safari purchases, and more. Some features […]

Tim Hardwick: Apple’s iOS 27 update will prioritize cleaning up the operating system’s internals, with engineers making changes that could result in better battery life, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The effort is said to be similar to what Apple did with its Snow Leopard Mac update years ago, and will involve removing old code, […]

Howard Oakley: [Y]ou’ll then be invited to choose from the available diagnostic suites according to your Mac’s hardware, from: Mac Resource Inspector, to test the main Mac hardware over a period of 1-7 minutes; Display Anomalies, for any built-in LCD panel; Keyboard, only when built-in; Trackpad, only when built-in; Touch ID, for any built-in Touch […]

Indiana, February 2026.

At least according to Apple’s own numbers from the App Store, iOS 26 adoption is pretty much exactly in line with the rates for iOS 18 and 17.

Apple Support: If iPhone isn’t responding, and you can’t turn it off then on, try forcing it to restart. Press and quickly release the volume up button. Press and quickly release the volume down button. Press and hold the side button. When the Apple logo appears, relea...

BTW, people make the same mistake with AI that we make with every new tech. We focus on the creators not the users. As users we are learning a new skill, how to specify our needs precisely. Whether this is good or bad, I don't know.

Back when I ran a software company I'd help the team understand why they should be very very nice to our customers. "They have our money in their pockets." It generally got a laugh partially because I was their boss, but I like to think also because it's the truth.

Yesterday, I had to ship an envelope to the UK and got caught in dead ends at the Fedex and DHL sites. One of them said my zip code wasn't in the town I live in. How do you get past that?? These companies are losing business because their systems are broken. Maybe they worked at one time. I used ChatGPT as I often do to get help on one of these antiquated sites. And while ChatGPT has the technology and the Fedex has the info, they just have to get together and upgrade the user experience, and eventually of course is the AI version of the UI becomes the real one.

Paywalls that require you to subscribe to an Atlanta news org when you don’t live in Atlanta prob don’t generate much revenue. Why not instead charge per article. Like a toll you pay on a road you drive on once every few years. I wouldn't even have an exception for Atlanta residents. If they start spending more money than a subscription costs, you could offer a subscription then, as a way to save money. Kind of the way Amazon lets you buy a certain amount of coffee beans without requiring you to sign up for monthly delivery. They do tell you how much you'd save if you subscribed. Everyone appreciates a chance to save money, but still might not want the commitment. And asking someone from upstate NY to subscribe to the Atlanta Journal Constitution is a total bullshit. An insult to both our intelligences.

Aram Zucker-Scharff writes "I don't want to read one more thinkpiece about blackbox AI code factories until you can show me what they've produced." I've made the same request, and there was very little even brilliant programmers could show, including some who have become in...