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On my Om Valid
• Om Malik

We Are Now An Upload (Broadband) Nation

For thirty-odd years, broadband has been sold as a one-way pipe. The download speed was all that mattered. Bigger the number, better. No one cared about the upload speeds, because the internet was mostly something you consumed. Streaming video, loading pages, pulling files from the cloud. Upload was an afterthought. All that changed when the …

Daring Fireball Valid
John Gruber

‘A List of Chain Restaurants Whose Names Contain Unusual Structures’

onefoottsunami.com/2026/03/18/a-list-of-chain-restaurants-whose-names-contain-unusual-structures/

When I first read this post from my friend Paul Kafasis last week — a One Foot Tsunami instant classic — I was hoping that I could think of an example that he missed. I can’t say I did. The closest, though, is ShowBiz Pizza Place, a 1980s archrival to Chuck E. Cheese. (Inst...

blog - aows Valid
• Adrian Vila

Bernal Ships, II

San Francisco, March 2026.

From the video One adventure a day keeps burnout away.

Daring Fireball Valid
John Gruber

Improved Analytics in App Store Connect

developer.apple.com/news/?id=hh6v4b55

Apple Developer: Analytics in App Store Connect receives its biggest update since its launch, including a refreshed user experience that makes it easier to measure the performance of your apps and games. There’s a lot that’s new, but all the data is still collected wit...

On my Om Valid
• Om Malik

23 years!

Rudyard Kipling was right! “San Francisco has only one drawback — ’tis hard to leave.” I thought I would be here for two years, maybe. And then go back to New York. And here I am, still here. The city has given me more than I have given it. The rush of a modern gold …

Alan Jacobs Supports Webmention Valid

Accidental glamour shot 

Scripting News Valid

WordPress can now connect via MCP for both reading and writing. This sounds like a possible alternative for the wpcom api that we're building on in WordLand. Sometimes it feels like everything is being reinvented. If the world would just stand still for a moment we might be able to do some building. I wonder how the advent of AI is affecting how WordPress is being developed. I know it's changing everything here.

Scripting News Valid

Meanwhile I have to tend to the past. I had a server go down the other day, and haven't been able to get it running again. It's a very old one, the first I used PagePark for hosting the apps. So I'd rather not have to dig into whatever it is that's keeping it from running. This morning I moved the test app for XML-RPC, betty.userland.com, to another server, so this page now works again.

Daring Fireball Valid
John Gruber

Claude Can Now Take Control of Your Mac

claude.com/blog/dispatch-and-computer-use

Claude: In Claude Cowork and Claude Code, you can now enable Claude to use your computer to complete tasks. When Claude doesn’t have access to the tools it needs, it will point, click, and navigate what’s on your screen to perform the task itself. It can open files, use ...

Daring Fireball Valid
John Gruber

WSJ: ‘OpenAI Plans Launch of Desktop “Superapp”’

wsj.com/tech/openai-plans-launch-of-desktop-superapp-to-refocus-simplify-user-experience-9e19931d?st=25wiu1

Berber Jin, reporting last week for The Wall Street Journal (gift link): OpenAI is planning to unify its ChatGPT app, coding platform Codex and browser into a desktop “superapp,” a step to simplify the user experience and continue with efforts to focus on engineering and...

Daring Fireball Valid
John Gruber

OpenAI Is Closing Sora

x.com/soraofficialapp/status/2036546752535470382

Sora, on Twitter/X:

We’re saying goodbye to the Sora app. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing.

We’ll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work.

Sora was kind of fun for a week or two. But, contrary to the above, nothing anyone made with Sora mattered. It was just a very (very) expensive lark.

 ★ 

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John Gruber

iOS 26.4

macrumors.com/guide/ios-26-4-features/

Good rundown of everything new and changed, as usual, from Juli Clover at MacRumors. This has been a noticeable change for me:

The App Store merges apps and purchase history, and has a dedicated section for app updates. It now takes two taps to get to app updates rather than having them available at the bottom of the profile page.

At first the extra tap irked me, but it really does make more sense for Updates to have its own section. I update apps manually, because I like reading release notes from developers who take the time to document changes, and I also like reading “Bug fixes and performance improvements” over and over and over again from developers who do not.

 ★ 

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John Gruber

Following Google’s Lead With Pixel Phones, Samsung Announces AirDrop Support With Galaxy S26 Phones

news.samsung.com/us/samsung-airdrop-quick-share-galaxy-s26-series/

Samsung: Samsung is introducing AirDrop support to the Galaxy S26 series, making it easier for users to share content between devices using Quick Share. The feature will begin rolling out from March 23, starting in Korea and expanding to more regions including Europe, H...

Scripting News Valid

Democrats could have been

Democrats could run an ad that would give an estimate of how much work you'd have to do to vote if the Republican plan passes.

And roughly how many people are like you and how likely they are to vote Democratic.

People can understand March Madness, they can understand this. You have to help though. The first question could be:

The first question could be:

  1. Do you have your birth certificate or passport?

In the ad we could also estimate what the probable makeup of Congress would be if the law passed.

And keep an open mind, it's possible this move could backfire on the Republicans. Who knows how people will vote after this kind of madness becomes law.

They might want to keep things as they are.

Scripting News Valid

Mozilla could have been

I’ve watched Mozilla not get it for what feels like decades.

Their only legit function imho is to make the real actual web be a great platform for independent developers.

For that, start by adding user controlled storage to the web, a few standard formats, and let app devs take it from there.

Daring Fireball Valid
John Gruber

★ What to Do About Those Menu Item Icons in MacOS 26 Tahoe

If this worked to hide *all* of these cursed little turds smeared across the menu bar items of Apple’s system apps in Tahoe, this hidden preference would be a proverbial pitcher of ice water in hell. As it stands, alas, it’s more like half a glass of tepid water.

Scripting News Valid

Memory lane for Frontier users

I had to find out which domains being served by a problem server were still mapping to its domain. This server had been running for six years, and I was pretty sure some of the apps had moved.

So I wrote a script in Frontier, it was the best tool available to me, and got my answer in 20 minutes, code written from scratch.

The script visited each subfolder, the filename is the domain of the folder, finds out which server it's supposed to be running on, based on a DNS lookup, and adds a line to a list.

Here's a screen shot of the domains folder.

Here's the script as a screen shot and GitHub doc.

This is just a way to preserve a little of the Frontier culture. Hard to explain in words. Easier to show as screen shots.

Alan Jacobs Supports Webmention Valid

Hergé’s dragon

Alan Jacobs Supports Webmention Valid

The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom, from Book VIII: “Mustn’t it first be told how the transformation from timarchy to oligarchy takes place?” “Yes.” “And really,” I said, “the way it is transformed is plain even to a blind man.” “How?” “The treasure house full of go...

Scripting News Valid

Online suckage is everywhere

The 300 char limit here has as much suckage as Claude pretending you want to know what it thinks you're trying to do. It's another freaking algorithm. Bluesky assumes you can say whatever you have to say in 300 characters. It's a fucking machine, how could it possibly know....