We saw the new Zilker Eagle today while going to Barton Springs. It looks really nice. Unfortunately it derailed on the switch while we were at the pool. No one was hurt because it goes extremely slow. 🚂 | Continue reading
Somehow on my recent trip I’ve gotten a scratch in the middle of my iPhone screen. I was already thinking about upgrading. Bad timing but this is going to drive me crazy over the next few months. | Continue reading
This article in The Washington Post about AI energy use has a lot in it, but still seems to paint an incomplete picture. Not a single mention of Apple? If Apple can roll out AI in millions of devices and still use 100% renewable for servers, should be within reach for others too. | Continue reading
Finished reading: Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang. This was excellent. It must’ve been a challenging book to write, fascinating magic and ambitious take on society. Really something special. 📚 | Continue reading
Great post by Anil Dash on how the board of directors for an organization actually works. I learned a lot. The timing of this post could not be more perfect for me right now. | Continue reading
Still no option for me to submit our Threads feature to Meta for review. Tried contacting developer support but that submission fails for unknown reasons. The issue seems to be that the Meta dev dashboard is not recognizing all the successful API calls we are already making. | Continue reading
I really dislike the Mastodon setting to require HTTP signatures for everything. It makes basic features like just grabbing some JSON for an actor more difficult. The user’s profile is on the public web anyway! We need apps that work natively with the web on its own terms, not mo … | Continue reading
Perplexity CEO addresses the recent questions about crawling, but I don’t think his answers are going to satisfy anyone. He is partially correct, though, that there is confusion about crawling to train models vs. ad-hoc downloading web pages. New info is that they outsource some … | Continue reading
“I only came back to myself when I decided something: all emotions are just energy, just potential fuel for action. Everything I felt about what I saw—the guilt and the terror—wasn’t poison. It was power.” — from Blood Over Bright Haven 📚 | Continue reading
On this week’s Core Int, we talk about the latest AI controversy including with Perplexity and how we think about robots.txt. Then Daniel gives an update on Swift Concurrency. | Continue reading
Great collection from Michael Tsai of posts on a range of reactions to Apple blaming the DMA for delaying Apple Intelligence in Europe. I don’t feel too strongly about it, but we know Apple is frustrated with the regulation, could be slow-rolling it as a tactic. | Continue reading
John Gruber blogs about how Trump personally measures up to the Ten Commandments that he apparently now supports showing everywhere. (Also can we add an 11th commandment to not post in all caps? Trump increasingly sounds deranged.) | Continue reading
Randomly stumbled on an old clip of Steve Jobs, thanks (no thanks) to the Threads algorithmic timeline distracting me. There still hasn’t been a tech leader in the last decade with his stage presence. One of a kind. | Continue reading
If you sent me an @-mention yesterday about automatic Threads cross-posting, I’ve invited you on Threads and enabled the feature for your account in Micro.blog. Here’s a quick video on YouTube about it. Don’t forget to accept the invite too, under your Threads account → Settings … | Continue reading
I don’t travel as much as a bunch of people I know, but the combination of road trip and flight over the last couple of weeks has left me kind of unmoored with work. My brain is still catching up to the fact that we’re 2/3 of the way through June already. Way behind in email. | Continue reading
I tried this AI-based social network Butterflies and it’s as bizarre as you’d expect. It’s more like a game. I don’t see this kind of thing taking off in “real” social networks. Infinite content will just reinforce the infinite algorithmic feed, which is unhealthy enough already. | Continue reading
Forgot to mention if you’re sending me your Threads username… You will have to go to your Threads account settings → Website Permissions to approve the tester invite for Micro.blog. | Continue reading
Micro.blog cross-posting to Threads is a bit in limbo because I’m not even sure how to submit the app for review. But we can have 500 testers! Reply with your Threads username if you’d like to be added. I will process any requests later today and “Add Threads” will show up on Acc … | Continue reading
Working with the Threads API reminds me of how frustrating it was to work with Facebook’s main app API years ago, and any silo API that requires manual approval like the App Store. The bureaucracy is at odds with Meta’s claim of supporting the open web and fediverse. | Continue reading
Rough Point. This view brought to you by a contribution from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. | Continue reading
Last night in Newport. Another lighthouse, with the sunset at Castle Hill. | Continue reading
The New York Times: Biden gives legal protections to undocumented spouses. Biden’s administration has been effective and consequential. All he really needed to do was get us out of the pandemic, but there’s been a lot more. He deserves our vote. 🇺🇸 | Continue reading
The upcoming Zelda where you can play as Zelda looks fantastic. Love the design and approach to solving puzzles. | Continue reading
Because of the recent pushback against AI bots, I’ve added a help page to Micro.blog with details about how to block crawling of your blog. | Continue reading
Congrats to the Celtics. The NBA finals had a couple good moments, but the result never seemed that much in doubt. Only watched a little of game 5 tonight because for some reason this hotel TV has lots of channels but not ABC? I’m sure there’s a reason, can’t be a good one. … | Continue reading
I get the distrust of AI bots but I think discussions to sabotage crawled data go too far, potentially making a mess of the open web. There has never been a system like AI before, and old assumptions about what is fair use don’t really fit. But robots.txt still works! No need to … | Continue reading
The Breakers. Beautiful walk along the cliffs and in the mansion. The Vanderbilts really had a stunning amount of wealth. | Continue reading
Our WWDC episode of Core Intuition is out! We talk about visiting San Jose, Apple Intelligence, and more. | Continue reading
Last month I got sucked into an auction for Disney artwork and came away with a sequence of drawings of Scrooge in Mickey’s Christmas Carol, from 1983. They arrived! Need to figure out how to frame them. | Continue reading
Jason Snell paints a picture of Apple as sort of irritatedly getting on board the AI hype train. On the OpenAI deal, I don’t think either side has clearly won. It brings to mind Draft Day: “This is a good deal… This is a good deal for both of us.” | Continue reading
What if personal domain name registrations could essentially renew on auto-pilot, regardless of changing or expired payment, for decades? It has always bothered me that blogs are like self-published books that self-destruct when expired. After lots of waffling, I think I’m ready … | Continue reading
Now that I’m back home from WWDC, my excitement about installing the betas has evaporated. Will probably wait until Apple Intelligence is enabled. Doesn’t seem much for new APIs I can use it. | Continue reading
Good interview from Kara Swisher with Mira Murati, CTO of OpenAI. She led the GPT-4o announcement and in an alternate timeline was CEO for more than a few days. They talk data deals, the voice controversy, disinformation, and the promise of AI in education. | Continue reading
Stopped overnight in Roswell, New Mexico to visit with the aliens. Queueing up the audiobook The Terraformers for the final leg back to Austin. I had started with the e-book a couple weeks ago. 🛸 | Continue reading
One thing I didn’t appreciate before this year’s WWDC is how limited Apple’s on-device models could be. Apple is going for easy wins and generally not biting off more than they can chew. Summarizing or rewriting text is something LLMs are great at, with almost no risk for getting … | Continue reading
In 1979 my uncle wrote a book about solar power — or more specifically, although I haven’t read it, about how the fossil fuel industry had too much influence on the future. 45 years later, solar panels are now cheap and widely deployed. Nearly free energy, falling like rain. It c … | Continue reading
Finished reading: Sunbringer by Hannah Kaner. This was excellent. Loved the way it revealed more of who the characters are and built up toward the end, setting up what I assume will be a third and final book. 📚 | Continue reading
A couple days after the WWDC keynote, starting to see a couple cracks in Apple’s AI strategy. I’ll blog more later. But I think the architecture for small on-device models and larger models in the cloud that are extremely locked down is very smart. This is flexible and can scale, … | Continue reading
Yesterday was a blur. I was planning to camp at Lake Havasu but it’s just too hot, so I continued driving to Flagstaff. Really long day. Caught up on nearly all the WWDC-related podcasts plus progress on audiobooks. | Continue reading
This text without any vending machines is like a cruel mirage in what feels like the middle of the desert of southern California this afternoon, outside Boron. | Continue reading