Listening to Rabbit founder Jesse Lyu on This Week in Startups and learning a lot. They aren’t selling the R1 at a loss. Also more details about how the LAM works.
David Smith blogs about Stephen Hackett joining his indie company:
"I am extraordinarily proud of being an “indie”, it is a meaningful part of my professional identity. As such I held on too long to a sense of needing to do it all myself. But I’ve grown in this regard and I am extremely excited about what Stephen and I will be able to accomplish together."
As Jonathan Rentzsch said at the C4 conference in 2007, indie really means “non-large”. Small team, usually bootstrapped. You know it when you see it.
https://www.david-smith.org/blog/2024/01/23/independent-as-in-freedom/
There are a lot of new blogging systems popping up. This is a good thing. Micro.blog will be competitive with almost anything, but also there’s the bigger picture… If the open web is getting better, we’re better too. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Daniel Jalkut has shipped Black Ink for iOS! I’m sure we’ll be talking about this on the next Core Intuition. This release has been years in the making, most of which I imagine was just Daniel trying to figure out when to call it done. With software, there’s always more to do.
From the blog post for Day One shared journals, they do a great job of explaining why the feature exists and what to use it for. No obvious way to share a journal entry to anyone on the web though, right? I thought after being acquired by Automattic they might do more there.
This is a really nice feature from Feedbin: Fixable Feeds. I noticed this in the UI just by accident a few days ago and updated a few feeds that were out of date.
Posts reply count UI https://www.manton.org/2024/01/22/posts-reply-count.html
As long as she has support and money, Nikki Haley should stay in the race. I don’t think she’s in it for VP. It’s more to be the alternative if everything implodes. Such a difficult path, though, because too many delegates will be awarded before Trump’s trial starts in DC, if it even starts on time.
Another blog post from Paul Frazee on the thinking behind Bluesky’s technical plumbing:
"We ended up calling the AT Protocol a “federated” network because we couldn’t think of a more appropriate term, but it’s not really a kind of federation that anyone is familiar with. The peer-to-peer influence is too significant to neatly slot into that archetype. It also confuses with ActivityPub’s model of federation which is now popularly understood."
I’m following AT Protocol closely (and using it in Micro.blog!) and I still haven’t fully wrapped my head around all of this. More to learn.
Interesting take by Dave Winer (in audio, here’s the download link) about the sort of post-Twitter technical mess we might be in, specifically around ActivityPub and the complications of federation. I do worry about new standards being so difficult compared to the old social web.
I wonder if there’s an update on how Apple is helping employees in Texas deal with the abortion ban. Not finding much newer than this 2021 article in The New York Times:
"Asked what Apple was doing to protect its employees from Texas’ abortion restrictions, Mr. Cook said that the company was looking into whether it could aid the legal fight against the new law and that its medical insurance would help pay for Apple workers in Texas if they needed to travel to other states for an abortion."
As an Austinite, I don’t love seeing all of Texas painted with the same brush, but I understand it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/technology/apple-employee-unrest.html
Jason Snell writing at Macworld:
"Now that today’s iMacs and iPads are essentially the same in terms of their internal hardware, maybe it’s time for Apple to do the unthinkable and allow the iPad Pro (and only the iPad Pro) to run macOS in a virtual machine."
I love this, no matter how unlikely.
Accidentally stumbled on my old post from 2011 titled “30% of the future”:
"The new Apple has fallen into the trap of thinking they should also be an advertising company and an overpriced payment processor. It’s a slippery slope from here to becoming just another mega-corp that has their hands in everything that can make money instead of standing for something."
Thirteen years later… Mission accomplished.
https://www.manton.org/2011/02/22/of-the-future.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oAB83Z1ydE
I wonder if there’s an update on how Apple is helping employees in Texas deal with the abortion ban. Not finding much newer than this 2021 article in The New York Times:
"Asked what Apple was doing to protect its employees from Texas’ abortion restrictions, Mr. Cook said that the company was looking into whether it could aid the legal fight against the new law and that its medical insurance would help pay for Apple workers in Texas if they needed to travel to other states for an abortion."
As an Austinite, I don’t love seeing all of Texas painted with the same brush, but I understand it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/technology/apple-employee-unrest.html
This is a nice write-up by @leonp of the iPhone app Beluga, which essentially publishes a static microblog site to S3. Includes a tip for integrating with Micro.blog too.
https://www.thisdaysportion.com/posts/using-beluga/ https://micro.blog/leonp
Speaking of Alec Baldwin, I loved his Trump impressions on SNL, but James Austin Johnson as Trump is uncanny. It’s funny but also real, not overplayed. Last night’s opening (video clip on YouTube here) is one of his best… Just perfect.
I’ve read too many articles about the accident with Alec Baldwin’s gun firing on the Rust set, like this new one in The New York Times, and I still don’t get it. Prosecutors really don’t have anything else to do? It’s a tragedy, but I’m not losing sleep that Alec is out there running free.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/20/movies/alec-baldwin-criminal-case.html
John Gruber asks the relevant question for Apple’s new linking rules:
"Here’s a simple thought I had today regarding whether Apple’s new External Purchase Links entitlement policy is a good faith compliance with Judge Gonzales’ order: Will any developers actually choose to use it?"
It is hard to imagine even a single developer using this entitlement, even among the many developers like me who want to link outside the store. It doesn’t save money and just creates a whole new headache of tracking users and extra bookkeeping.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/01/20/spotify-app-store-outrage
David Pierce at The Verge on the Vision Pro and Safari-based web apps:
"Embracing the web will mean threatening the very things that have made Apple so powerful and so rich in the mobile era, but at least at first, the open web is Apple’s best chance to make its headset a winner. Because at least so far, it seems developers are not exactly jumping to build new apps for Apple’s new platform."
It’ll be great if we see Safari improvements because of this. Maybe Apple can relax the 7-day cookies and local storage.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/20/24044343/apple-vision-pro-safari-killer-app https://www.macstories.net/news/a-survey-of-popular-apps-currently-compatible-with-apple-vision-pro/
About halfway through the 4th season of For All Mankind. Enjoying it. Sort of forgot some of the characters from previous seasons… Would love to rewatch the whole series when it wraps up.