FeedCity

There are problems people aren't talking about, that are immediate, and go against all the security practices the web has been built on. Here's a story of what happened in my setup in mid-August. First fact, Claude Code (CC) is different from regular Claude in that it is us...

Behind the JSTOR paywall, but the essay that made Wendell Berry an essential guide and companion for me is “Standing by Words.”  Against Mr. Winterowd's definition of literature, it will be instructive to place a definition by Gary Snyder, who says of poetry that it is...

An Annie Dillard essay I think of often: “Singing with the Fundamentalists” (1985). 

Every few years some bold and sincere Christian student at this university disagrees with a professor in class — usually about the professor's out-of-hand dismissal of Christianity. Members of the faculty, outraged, repeat the stories of these rare and uneven encounters for years on end, as if to prove that the crazies are everywhere, and gaining ground. The notion is, apparently, that these kinds can't think for themselves. Or they wouldn't disagree.

Brent Nonbgri: The Machine for Casting Lots for Positions at the Chariot Races

It’s always fun when Neal Stephenson goes down a physical-mechanics rabbit hole.

Well I got a lot done today. We had a bit of a meltdown due to a Atlantis bug, where it couldn't handle some text that I threw at it that was a huge file of includes used in everything I do, and I was feeling pretty cheeky, and it blew up. For about an hour you couldn't read my lovely words. But by remembering "slow down to hurry up" Claude figured out what went wrong as I asked 20 questions to narrow it down. And to celebrate, I decided to do something easy -- created a podcast. And it showed up in all the right places. Might be worth listening to as well. Now let's see if this shows up on daveverse.org, that's what I'm really testing. (It worked.)

Am 28. Oktober findet in Lausanne in der Schweiz die jährliche Konferenz der Swiss Data Alliance (SDA) statt. Die Swiss Data Alliance ist ein unabhängiger Think-Tank, der den Dialog über Daten und Digitalisierung zwischen Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Verwaltung fördern will. Die Konferenz findet statt unter dem Titel Swiss Data Space Forum 2026: Unlocking Data for […]

New podcast. Knicks in Five! (It's not about the Knicks.)

I wish there were a way to set the dock icons on a Mac. In going from the old machine to the new, the icons are all different. I am juggling so many apps right now, and totally don't appreciate that.

Splendid video. Love that Stalman shot photos side-by-side with a film SLR using Kodak Portra 400, for comparison to Apple’s new film-look Photographic Styles.

Austin Mann:

I’m here at the beautiful Dunton River Camp in southwest Colorado, where I’ve spent the last week testing the new camera and features on the iPhone 18 Pro.

Beyond the variable aperture and Pro Controls, Apple also built in a bunch of other new features like Photographic Styles 3 with film texture and grain control, 4K Time-lapse and Focus Tracking. As always, when I start a field test I’m asking one question:

How will this new tech make our pictures and videos better?

Outstanding example photos, a terrific video that illustrates how some of the new “pro controls” in the Camera app work, and some terrific examples of Photographic Styles 3.

(I love how Mann takes these new phones to exotic locales around the globe each year, and I take them to the hardware store.)

Cleaning up my notes this morning, I realized I forgot to write about the new under-display Face ID sensor in the iPhones 18 Pro, and the corresponding change to the Dynamic Island. I just added it to my review. For those of you who’ve already read the review, here’s the new...

When Claude has a clear task to do, it does it well, and exhaustively in a way no human could manage.

I'm now trying to come up with projects I can try that change things in visible ways so I can see which parts don't work. For example, I have a new Snarky Slogan to add to the list.

Finished reading: The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore. It’s a brilliant book — right down my alley in a dozen different ways. There’s a problem, though: it’s a book, and the people in government and the tech sector who most need to understand the s...

I am working on the new system now. It feels like I had a nice enough house that I have lived in for decades, sitting across the way, where I've been constructing a new super luxury house with all the things a modern personal publisher and code-partner to Claude would want. But until yesterday I could only simulate what it would be like to use it, I was still living in the old comfortable well-worn and out of date in so many ways. Today I'm sitting at the other chair typing this. Now the question is -- when I click the Publish button what will happen? Here we go. Well fuck me, it worked the first fucking time. Knicks in five! :-)

“Mr Pochettino? Call from London for you.”

Phil Christman: She called herself a “gregarious recluse,” but there was in her single-mindedness no retreat from the world. She had simply found her place in it, and through luck and privilege (which is also, finally, at the individual level, just luck), been allowed to st...