No, I don’t want to rate the app, or the Skype call, or the mechanic, or the quality of a support email, or a song, or my doctor’s appointment, or whether the web page answered my question… I don’t really want to rate anything ever again! If I actually have feedback, I know how t … | Continue reading
Still votes to count in the Michigan primary, but seems like the protest vote against Biden will settle out around 15%. Which sounds significant except that the protest vote against Trump is 30%. 🇺🇸 | Continue reading
The Verge’s early look at Humane’s AI Pin sounds about right: It’s a darn cool gadget. It’s just buried under a layer of marketing so thick that it’s hard to appreciate what it actually could be if Humane wasn’t so self-serious. As I’ve said before, there’s a good idea here somew … | Continue reading
I never want to see layoffs, but it’s the right move for Apple to officially cancel the car project. It always seemed like a bad fit. I’d love to see a book or web site with all the designs and tech they came up with along the way, though! Must’ve been interesting. | Continue reading
Tracks across Navasota Street, before having lunch with an old friend at Cosmic. | Continue reading
I’ve seen a couple links to this post on 404 Media that Automattic may sell user data to AI companies. We’ll see how it shakes out, but just in case anyone is worried about Micro.blog: our terms of service make it clear that users own their data, not us. We put this in to avoid a … | Continue reading
When we simplified our pricing, some folks asked if it was such a good deal for customers that we would be losing money as a company. I calculated what the initial revenue hit would be before making the decision. We decided it was worth it to make Micro.blog Premium more appealin … | Continue reading
Netflix is turning off the existing paid subscriptions for people who signed up years ago using iOS in-app purchase. I’d love to know how much money this represents. On the sort of eve of the DMA, just highlights that there’s no chance Netflix ever adopts in-app purchase again. | Continue reading
February has been busy. Pausing to reflect on everything that has happened in one month: new notes feature, new app Strata, new extensions for Firefox and Chrome, new pricing structure with multiple blogs, app updates to Micro.blog for macOS and Epilogue for iOS, keyword muting. … | Continue reading
Congrats @cheesemaker on shipping a new iOS app Calamity! It pulls in potential disasters near you — earthquakes, wildfires, flooding, near-miss asteroids, and other bad news. | Continue reading
Just in time for an election year in the US, from @news today: Added muting words or phrases to the timeline! On the web, click Account → Edit Muted and Blocked Users. Note that after some changes, it may take a minute to update the timeline. Micro.blog News https://news.micro.bl … | Continue reading
Sometimes I get carried away using Redis. Made another change a couple days ago that shaved over 12 GB off our memory usage. Probably more we can do. | Continue reading
Good summary blog post on some of the IndieWeb-related improvements @paulrobertlloyd has made recently. The updated design of the IndieWeb wiki pages is a nice improvement. Paul and others will be gathering in Brighton for IndieWebCamp… I’ll try to join remotely too if the time z … | Continue reading
On a bit of a roll with iOS app updates this week. Some minor improvements to both Strata and Epilogue in the queue for Apple to review. Love how the new icons look in my iPhone dock. | Continue reading
Just posted the latest episode of Core Intuition. We talked a lot about the Micro.blog notes rollout, and the new iOS app Strata, plus the pricing of Black Ink’s subscription. | Continue reading
Posted a new beta of Epilogue on TestFlight. Having mixed feelings about the Open Library integration, so I’ve removed the tab that was in previous betas. Might bring it back later. | Continue reading
Bluesky has a couple new blog posts and info around the production deploy of federation. From their main blog post: The ability to host your own data, just as you might run your own website, provides the fundamental guarantee that social media will never again be controlled by on … | Continue reading
I didn’t think Apple needed to make a sports app, but now that they have, it’ll be my default. I agree with John Gruber’s post that being fast matters: …the truth is ad tech, combined with poor programming, has made most sports apps slow to load. Most apps, period, really. Just b … | Continue reading
Really happy with the feedback on our pricing change. I think it’s resonating well with folks because there’s essentially no downside! It’s either the same price, or cheaper, or you get more features. It’s also simpler for us because everyone gets it, no need to manage “legacy” s … | Continue reading
Tired of running out of disk space, finally decided to move Xcode and the DerivedData folder to a little external SSD. Might’ve bought myself another year with this older MacBook Pro. | Continue reading
Micro.blog has always had per-blog pricing. Hosting one blog was $5, two blogs was $10, three blogs was $15, and so on. On top of that, Micro.blog Premium added additional features either to a specific blog (like podcast hosting, video, and email newsletters) or across the platfo … | Continue reading
I wouldn’t mind an AI assistant that could call my doctor’s office, wait on hold forever, and make a 6-month follow-up appointment. Seems like we should be close to that. 🤖 | Continue reading
Had to take Groq.com out for a spin (not xAI’s Grok). Continue to be pretty happy with OpenAI, though, especially to outsource our AI features — transcribing podcasts and summarizing bookmarked web pages. It’s such a narrow use case that the costs are easily manageable. | Continue reading
Just another day digging through the Mastodon source code to understand what in the world it’s doing to verify remote accounts. Fixed a couple issues on my side. Can’t wait for the test suites that folks are working on. | Continue reading
Not sure when our luck with Apple is going to run out, but we’ve now had a few quick app approvals without any issues. So nice to just get little improvements out. Strata 1.0.2 is available now. | Continue reading
New sticker, Books Are Magic. Also started reading The Bone Season. | Continue reading
Posted another short video on YouTube about notes, this time with Micro.blog for macOS. The app has a slightly different UI and auto-saves notes, encrypted back to the server. | Continue reading
Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky… If you’re feeling overwhelmed by our post-Twitter social web, this post from Ben Werdmuller should hit home. My advice: don’t read everything. Post to your blog first, then dip into other apps whenever you have time. Never reload the never-ending algor … | Continue reading
Last night’s downtown revealed yet more holes in server redundancy that should’ve been solved earlier. Another thing to add to my week’s to-do list. | Continue reading
Interesting thread from Mastodon’s Renaud Chaput, noticed via The Fediverse Report, about how Mastodon is approaching quote posts: It is a complex task and we have been working on defining the feature and the protocol-level details for some time. We are moving forward, and there … | Continue reading
Eugen Rochko on recent Mastodon spam. I haven’t noticed any problems yet but I expect some spam DMs will hit Micro.blog from this as well: There is an ongoing spam attack on the fediverse for the last couple of days. It’s more widespread than before, as attackers are targeting sm … | Continue reading
It’s easy to be blinded by past decisions. I took a fresh look at our pricing this weekend and ran some numbers. Going to try to simplify things even further. (No price increase. $5 is the ideal price for all things, from a latte to blog hosting.) | Continue reading
Fun 3-point contest tonight, especially the Steph vs. Sabrina addition. Hope they keep some version of that going in future years. Watching the dunks now but the scoring is usually so subjective it distracts from how amazing everything is. | Continue reading
I hadn’t read Tantek Çelik’s post on the ephemeral web yet when I blogged about Mastodon yesterday, otherwise I would’ve linked to it. Really good: All reply-contexts of and replies to such posts and conversations lost, like threads unraveled from an ancient tapestry, scattered t … | Continue reading
Quiet morning working on Mac software. Fixed a handful of bugs in Micro.blog and released a new version. Will continue to roll out server improvements for the new notes feature as I have them ready. | Continue reading
Letitia James, after New York’s $350 million fine on Trump: The scale and the scope of Donald Trump’s fraud is staggering. And so too is his ego, and his believe that the rules do not apply to him. Today we are holding Donald Trump accountable. We are holding him accountable for … | Continue reading
Fani Willis testifying in Fulton County, Georgia yesterday: You’re confused. You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. Before this, I was receptive to the idea that maybe she should step aside to avoid this trial going off the rail … | Continue reading
We’re two weeks in to the Vision Pro launch! On today’s Core Intuition, I start by asking Daniel if he’s returning it. We talk about whether Apple should be worried about the rollout, Mark Zuckerberg’s comparison to the Quest 3, and more thoughts on how (and whether) the Vision P … | Continue reading
To balance my criticism of Apple today, it appears Apple is letting Epic Games have a dev account in Europe, and presumably a marketplace later. From Tim Sweeney on Twitter X: I’ll be the first to acknowledge a good faith move by Apple amidst our cataclysmic antitrust battle, in … | Continue reading
I get frustrated when a company is actively making the web worse instead of better. Spare me the justifications. If I demonstrated any hostility toward my platform’s users, developers, or the open web more broadly, I hope people would call me on it too. | Continue reading
I don’t want my whole life to be writing blog posts and podcasting about Apple’s changes for the EU’s Digital Markets Act, but this latest developer update from Apple feels like an insult to developers, playing us for fools. Let’s start with how Apple keeps mentioning all the new … | Continue reading
Some of my best blog posts are buried behind really boring, unhelpful post titles. If a post resonates with folks and is shared, it can only be because someone actually read it. The opposite of clickbait. | Continue reading
I’ve been thinking about Mastodon and the fallout from Bridgy’s plan to connect ActivityPub servers to Bluesky. For a snapshot of how this blew up, see this GitHub issue discussion, now thankfully closed after it devolved into personal attacks. It often feels that (some) Mastodon … | Continue reading
Great post from @writingslowly on how categories and filters work in Micro.blog. | Continue reading
If you’ve been following the Bridgy and Mastodon drama, consider that many Mastodon users don’t want a bridge that allows Bluesky to federate with Mastodon, but they do want Bluesky to support ActivityPub so Bluesky can… also federate with Mastodon. | Continue reading
Jason Snell writing at Macworld: What I’m saying is that if Apple would take the chance on four or five wild ideas, it might learn enough to create one or two hits. Given the sluggish growth in its Wearables, Home, and Accessories product category lately, it feels like it might b … | Continue reading
Excellent interview with Jay Graber on Techmeme Ride Home, on YouTube here. Clear framing of Bluesky’s goals and how the platform fits into the web. Sometimes I still can’t believe we’re all working toward a more open, social web again. | Continue reading