Nice live blog at The Verge of the interview session with iJustine. Nilay Patel comments: I think Apple really wants to seem transparent and open about their AI plans, especially around privacy, and having Federighi and Giannandrea this much on the record in basically every publi … | Continue reading
Random shot of San Jose light rail train, interrupted by a bus. | Continue reading
Lots of details in this Apple blog post about the new AI models. Looks like the on-device models are similar to other small-ish LLMs, and the server models are roughly comparable to GPT-3.5. GPT-4o is still bigger, which is why the OpenAI partnership fits. I think Apple’s strateg … | Continue reading
Vaguely keeping up with the Platform State of the Union in the hotel lobby. Thinking I’ll update to macOS Sequoia later, but not on this wi-fi. | Continue reading
Apple’s little custom icon to indicate what’s an AI summary is nice. I’ve been using a robot icon for summaries in Micro.blog, but maybe Apple’s icon will catch on. | Continue reading
So far so good with Apple Intelligence. I have a lot of questions but the framing seems right, with the private cloud compute and working with app data. LLMs will make Siri so much better at interpreting your questions. | Continue reading
iPhone mirroring seems… really strange. Can’t wait to try it, though. | Continue reading
Math Notes is super impressive. No mention of AI or machine learning but it’s gotta be all over this. | Continue reading
I know social networks aren’t Apple’s thing, but I still think it would be cool for them to have a platform for sharing personal spacial videos (and photos) for visionOS shot on iPhones. Would help the content problem. | Continue reading
Good morning from San Jose! With this first guess in Wordle, I thought this would be a “2” day, but nope. Maybe Apple’s luck with the keynote will be better. Wordle 1,087 4/6 ⬛🟩🟩🟩⬛ ⬛🟩🟩🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛ … | Continue reading
Finished reading: Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas. Fast-paced. This was a stronger book than the first one. 📚 | Continue reading
I’m always surprised when coffee shop wi-fi is way slower than LTE tethering. It’s great the cell networks are usually so fast now, but it feels all backwards (and in a way, kind of wasteful). | Continue reading
Field of Light in Paso Robles. I was expecting something different and beautiful, and it was that. But it also made me wonder if we’re in an era of synthetic art, where ideas matter more than craftsmanship. (This is about AI too.) Glad I stopped here to see it. | Continue reading
Bad Boys opens with $21 million box office Friday, on track for $50 million for the weekend. I’ve been curious about whether Will Smith gets a second chance. No legal charge was filed at the Oscars, so the punishment was a 10-year Academy ban, which we’re a couple years into. Som … | Continue reading
I’m experimenting with an OpenAI-based assistant powered by my own writing. It is wild. See this transcript of me testing it with a couple questions. It does hallucinate sometimes, but as a powerful search or just for fun, this could be something. | Continue reading
Working this morning at Honey Cup, a little coffee shop in Thousand Oaks. Finally have uninterrupted time to solve the increasingly slow posting in Micro.blog. Turns out a database index wasn’t good enough and hit some kind of tipping point recently, pushed from “fast enough” to … | Continue reading
Nick Heer on the eroding trust in tech as companies plow ahead with new features: These product introductions all look like hubris. Arrogance, really — recognition of the significant power these corporations wield and the lack of competition they face. Clearly a big part of WWDC’ … | Continue reading
Four hostages freed in assault in Gaza. I wonder how this affects feelings about the war from Israelis. To be honest, and I’m sorry this is dark, but it is a war… I was assuming that most of the remaining hostages were dead. | Continue reading
Each time I take an extended solo road trip, I learn something new about how to make life a little easier. Something that has worked well for me the last couple trips: when it’s time to do laundry, drop clothes off at a cleaners or wash-and-fold place. More pricey but saves so mu … | Continue reading
Only just skimmed through Mark Gurman’s comprehensive WWDC article. Most of the AI rumors sound about right, but I glossed over a few details so there still might be minor surprises. My most pressing question: can I wait to get a new phone? I like my iPhone 14 Pro. | Continue reading
Made it to the coast, settling in at Point Mugu State Park. Way too crowded, almost left, but I like my tree. | Continue reading
Listening to Pivot today, Scott Galloway goes on a tangent about how Hillary Clinton would’ve been a great president, and how so many things would be different today if as a country we hadn’t screwed up the 2016 election. We’ll be paying the price for years. Not sure I’ll ever fu … | Continue reading
Whenever I’m anywhere near Los Angeles, I think, “I should stop at Disneyland for the afternoon.” It never works out, but I always check maps to be sure. If the Splash Mountain redesign was ready, I’d be especially tempted today. 🏰 | Continue reading
Just posted our preview for next week’s WWDC, Core Int episode 602. Lots more about AI and other thoughts leading up to the conference. | Continue reading
NBA finals time. Feels like Boston is the more complete team but I have no real idea how this series is going to go. Also congrats to Doris Burke! First woman to be a game analyst in the NBA finals and in fact in any men’s championship series in the major US sports. 🏀 | Continue reading
I don’t ask Siri hard questions. Today I threw her a softball while driving down I-15, “What time zone is Las Vegas in?” She has no clue. These are the kind of simple problems an LLM will solve. | Continue reading
Hiking in the sun yesterday, it was a bit of a wake-up call, especially with the looming heat wave. I had planned to camp at Death Valley tonight, but gonna skip it and detour to Vegas to catch up on work. NBA finals game 1, which might be a dangerous time to be in the gambling c … | Continue reading
Great post on TechCrunch by Sarah Perez about Bridgy Fed’s support for Bluesky. The social web can be multiple protocols. We need more platforms that embrace the web wherever users are, shifting away from monoculture. | Continue reading
Redis has ballooned in size again, after sizable reductions in memory usage last year to make things more stable. Going to have to tackle this tomorrow, hopefully the primary server will be fine through the night. We do have better redundancy now, but it’s not being utilized like … | Continue reading
Catching up on a bunch of random online things as I wait for the day to cool down enough to feel like cooking dinner. Just spent way too much time drafting replies to posts and then not sending them. 🤪 Need to step away from the computer and read a book. | Continue reading
This is a pretty simple one, another addition to my blog post series about upgrading my Honda Element. These rain guards attach above each window, so you can crack the window while it’s raining and not get water in the car. They just stick on, but they seem surprisingly sturdy. | Continue reading
Jason Snell, writing about how Apple may frame the announcements next week at WWDC: Apple has the chance to depict itself as the adult in the room, a company committed to using AI for features that make its customers’ lives better–not competing to do the best unreproducible magic … | Continue reading
Bryce Canyon National Park. Didn’t catch this view at the right time for the best lighting, but it really is extraordinary. Hiked down and up and now I’m so exhausted just going to chill for the afternoon. | Continue reading
Siri is much too limited and inconsistent. The only time I ever use Siri is when driving, for responding to text messages and dictating notes. Many people will have different use cases, and so when people say “Siri sucks” they probably all mean different things. There are many th … | Continue reading
Micro.blog-hosted blogs have had good uptime the last couple months, but of course two servers crashed while I’m settling in at my campsite in Bryce Canyon National Park. Is this some kind of joke? 🤪 Luckily quite good LTE here tonight. | Continue reading
When driving directions in maps lets you know there’s a much slower route available, every once in a while you should take it. | Continue reading
Love these book updates from Brandon Sanderson, on Reddit: Finished the last interlude today at 5:21. That is a wrap: Wind and Truth, Book five of the Stormlight Archive, is finished. Tomorrow morning, I’ll hand it off to the proofreading and copyediting team. 491k words. I could … | Continue reading
I’ve blogged before about AI hallucinations, but I wanted to tie together a few new posts I’ve read recently. Let’s start with Dave Winer: To people who say you get wrong answers from ChatGPT, if I wanted my car to kill me I could drive into oncoming traffic. If I wanted my calcu … | Continue reading
Winding up along the Animas River. I’m in the last car of a 15-car train, so around the curves it’s a great view ahead. A beautiful route. 🚂 | Continue reading
Good morning from Colorado! All aboard the Durango & Silverton Railroad. 🚂 | Continue reading
Traffic completely stopped on I-40 earlier today because of road work, and I had a view from a side street of this ridiculous line of 18-wheelers stretching seemingly forever. Hardly any normal cars, just trucks. Seemed especially inefficient as a freight train went by. | Continue reading
Finished reading: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. Some good ideas in this, formalizing what we often have an instinct about with our work day but maybe haven’t put into practice. 📚 | Continue reading
Woke to slight rain. Really bad visibility on the small Texas highway meandering back to the interstate, probably couldn’t see more than 50 feet. Along the side of the road, spaced rows of hay bales fading off into the mist. | Continue reading
Left late from home today, but still arrived at Caprock Canyons State Park before dark. Not pictured, there was a band playing at the visitors center, a nice welcome. | Continue reading
Ben Thompson’s interview with Casey Handmer of Terraform pretty much blew my mind. Smart, optimistic. I suddenly have the urge to go buy some solar panels. | Continue reading