Seems there aren’t many notes apps that are end-to-end encrypted. Obsidian is one, and there’s also Day One for journals. Wondering how important this is to folks. Personally, I like that Day One is encrypted but I would use it even if it wasn’t. And most of my notes are just on Dropbox.
Happy anniversary ChatGPT https://www.manton.org/2023/11/30/happy-anniversary-chatgpt.html
Not sure what to make of Elon Musk’s interview yesterday. It’s so easy to say he’s unhinged that I’m questioning whether I should dig deeper. Ultimately my core belief about huge social networks hasn’t changed in years: too much centralized power opens the door for user-hostile, dev-hostile leaders.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/29/23981928/elon-musk-ad-boycott-go-fuck-yourself-destroy-x
MarsEdit 5.1 is out with support for posting to Mastodon and improvements for Micro.blog too, like attaching photos in the micropost window and updated character counts. Congrats @danielpunkass!
https://redsweater.com/blog/4036/marsedit-5-1-mastodon-support-is-here https://micro.blog/danielpunkass
Usually I work on improvements to Micro.blog for a couple days or weeks and roll them out. Very rarely does something sit for months before customers see it. But sometimes very big features need a little more process and restraint… Working on something new off and on that will launch in January.
Interesting conversation about web hosting and AI in this interview on Decoder with Avishai Abrahami, CEO of Wix. But this also stuck out to me:
"The developers, they just read a very fantastic post by somebody on how to do something in a much nicer or interesting way, and then they want to try it. They want to play with it. They want to build something with it. And suddenly, it’s like, “Oh, no, this is how we do it. You have to do it like that.”"
It takes a lot of discipline to ignore tech fads. I’m convinced this is why large teams often spin their wheels, getting very little done for users.
https://www.theverge.com/23977985/wix-ceo-avishai-abrahami-generative-ai-web-google-search-interview
Transfer domains to Micro.blog https://www.manton.org/2023/11/29/transfer-domains-to.html
Playing around with Raindrop.io today. It’s really nicely done. I’ve added support for importing Raindrop.io bookmarks to Micro.blog bookmarks. There’s also an API, so maybe we’ll have more integration later.
Default apps for 2023 https://www.manton.org/2023/11/28/default-apps-for.html
I’ve been eyeing a specific domain name for several months. It’s a premium TLD and I can’t really justify the price. But every once in a while like today I come this close to grabbing it, then talk myself out of it. Whew.
Reminded by this post from Vincent that Arq exists. I used it years ago when I was frustrated with something from Backblaze, but I didn’t stick with it. Going back to it, backing up to S3 and skipping a backup subscription altogether.
Sarah Perez writing at TechCrunch about Evernote’s experiments with a more limited free plan:
"…a pop-up message that informed them that unless they upgraded to a paid plan, they would now be limited to only 1 notebook and 50 notes. That change would dramatically limit the service for longtime Evernote users who have accumulated hundreds or thousands of notes over the years."
Evernote is a perfect example of a company getting too big for what it’s trying to do. It could’ve been a great 20-person company. The billion-dollar valuation ruined it.
Roomba vs. dog. It takes a lot for Ollie to move… Certainly more than a robot nudge. If he’s sitting in front of a door you want to open, for example, forget it.
Fixing one last thing after our server problems yesterday. I almost finished it last night but realized I was too tired to risk making a mistake restoring data. Much better in the morning with coffee and triple-checking backups and scripts. One day we’ll have a full-time sysadmin!
We talk about domain names as your web identity, how it’s more permanent and meaningful when you’re microblogging on your own site instead of someone else’s domain. Some social network is down? Shrug. Your web site is down? That feels personal. We’ve had good uptime but it’s gotta be even better.
Dealing with fallout from another server failure. We have pretty good redundancy most places, except ironically some of the most stable parts that always felt low on the list to prioritize because they never failed… until they did. Picking up the pieces, improving a few things for later.
Cool driving by REI on Black Friday and seeing the store closed. Kudos for thinking of employees and customers before profit. On the other hand, we participated in the shopping craziness by getting a Roomba. Figured the vacuum robot tech must be well along by now. Mixed results in the first run.
Super Mario Wonder is excellent on replay. I’m slowly finding all the levels I missed. Some of the levels are actually kind of difficult, which I love, and seems rare since the NES and SNES days. 🍄
The ads on TV for Humane’s pin are pretty effective. I don’t expect much success for the first version of the pin, but I do think they’re on to something if they can keep iterating. Best comparison is the Newton — a little ahead of its time.
Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃 I finished Mario Wonder. Great game, I’ve been playing a couple levels every day since its release. Missed a few things that I can still go back to, or play different characters. 🕹️