FeedCity

A few weeks ago I decided to be bold and put out there that I had itches I wanted to scratch. It isn't something I normally do, as I usually reject myself before allowing others to do so. So, after the Wonders of Web Weaving podcast was published, I rejoiced online and said ...

Paul Kafasis, writing on the Rogue Amoeba blog: With last year’s release of MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple made a mess of app icons. In the first betas of MacOS 27 (Golden Gate), however, there are signs of a turnaround. We’re urging Apple to continue making improvements, by restoring the ability for MacOS app icons to […]⌥ Permalink

fascinating economic discovery from Fidelity: houses actually are cheaper now than in 2020!* * if you denominate them in an arbitrary asset that has appreciated over that time frame next up from Fidelity: groceries aren't getting more expensive** ** if you denominate their price in World of Warcraft gold Posted: July 15, 2026 at 1:40 AM UTC. Also posted to: Mastodon, Bluesky Tagged: crypto.

In my previous post I used the line “Can you dig it? I knew that you could.” It’s a line I've been using for fifty years, since I heard Billy Crystal deploy it in a routine on Saturday Night Live in which he portrayed an old jazzman called Face. 

Crystal’s routine was based on people he knew from his childhood, jazz musicians who came into the Commodore Music Shop on 42nd Street in Manhattan: 

That’s Billy Crystal’s father Jack in the plaid shirt on the right. Larger image here. 

Currently listening: Count 'Em 88, by the Ahmad Jamal Trio. Can you dig it? I knew that you could. ♫ 

Finished reading: A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies by David Thomson. Thomson is the best living writer on the movies, but this is his worst book, by miles. He seems to be judging movies for what was done to us by TV and the internet. Dyspeptic without being insightful. 📚

Dan Cohen: Call me an optimist, but I believe that the majority of scholars, despite being under enormous pressure to publish, would prefer to be more engaged than removed from the fundamental pursuits and texture of their discipline. They enjoy wrestling with sources, data...

demo.rss.chat: "This is a writing surface."

Phillip Maciak: There is something absurd about hearing a character in a movie utter the title of the movie they’re in out loud. It’s a moment that can be played for laughs, but it’s just as hard not to smirk when a film that takes itself seriously calls itself by its own name. Many filmmakers […]

Juli Clover: Apple today released the first public beta of macOS Golden Gate, expanding the macOS 27 beta test to non-developers. You can sign up to test the update on Apple’s beta website, and then download it by going to System Settings > General > Software Update and toggling on the macOS 27 beta. Jason […]

Juli Clover: Apple released the iOS 27 public beta today, and if you’ve been curious about the new software, now’s the time to try it out. iOS 27 brings Siri AI, performance improvements, and lots of new Apple Intelligence features. […] Everything feels snappier than it did in iOS 26. Animations are quicker, apps launch […]

Apple: In macOS 28 and later, the Mac OS Extended file system format will be supported only for volumes (disks and other storage devices) that aren’t encrypted. For future macOS compatibility, either decrypt or reformat any encrypted Mac OS Extended volumes. I think Apple removed the user interface for creating such volumes way back in […]

rss.chat is meant to be like MacWrite was on early Macs, give developers something to think about and lots of prior art for them to steal. All we want in return is interop. ;-)

If Bernie Sanders or AOC knew what we were doing here they would be turning somersaults. The tech right now is too esoteric. When they can join a community that works like this does, with full text, and the ability to communicate from one pod to another. Pod actually is a good name for what I have in mind, that and karass.

Speaking of AI, someone at Amazon decided I needed the new AI version of Alexa. I hate it. It's slow and it always makes the same mistake when I start breakfast. I say "Alexa WNYC" to which it responds, after a few seconds, I will now play you a mix of your favorite songs From Amazon Music." So first thing in the morning I have to tell this stranger in my freaking kitchen no I meant WNYC, which it then turns me over to. I learned on FB that if you tell it to go away it will, after a short discussion about how much you will be missing. Yeah sure, go away, goodbye, please no more of this.

Someone on Masto who I blocked used a nasty word to descript rss.chat. Let me be really clear here, this is an act of authorship by me. Claude is helping, a lot -- I doubt if I could have done this without its help, certainly not in the amount of time it took. And Claude could not have done it without me driving. It's basically good at a few things, but this is new territory, even I am feeling my way through this project. Having Claude is like having a car would be to someone who couldn't drive. All of a sudden you can go places. It takes a while to learn how to use that power, and so far the learning has not come close to leveling off. You couldn't find someone better in the world to do this project, and I'm working on this every day.

Oregon, September 2025.

I set up demo.rss.chat yesterday so people can try out the software. No guarantee that this is going to run for any period of time, so don't post things there that you want to be around for a long time.

The three careers of Vida Chenoweth.

Good morning. It will seem as if developers have taken over this blog, because we have real business to do. So much new stuff to show. Today's rss.chat goodie is an example app called ThreadWalker that crawls the network of replies under a single post, to all levels, printing them on screen in neat hierarchic form. It was written and documented by Claude. I reviewed the code, and looks good, and honestly doesn't look like anything I would write (not bad, just different). It could be used as a starter system that says when someone replied to something you wrote, or something deeper in the tree. All this is done by reading RSS feeds. This is where we begin to explore what's possible when you use a famous and familiar format like RSS 2.0. Always re-use instead of re-invent is one of my strongest held beliefs. BTW it came up with the name ThreadWalker.