History is going to view Joe Biden very favorably. He accomplished a lot that we’re only just starting to see results from. Competent management of the pandemic and a peace deal for Gaza are bookends. Thanks Joe. 🇺🇸

Looking for a headshot-style photo, it’s surprisingly hard to find something good in my photo library that doesn’t have other people in the photo. Maybe I need to take more selfies.

Was SwiftUI a mistake? Steve Troughton-Smith writes on Mastodon:

"Boy do I wish Apple had built a real Apple-quality next-gen UIKit/AppKit-like first-party cross-[Apple]-platform UI framework instead of SwiftUI. The closest thing Apple makes is still Catalyst, but they completely squandered their opportunity to make something better than what came before. Going all-in on SwiftUI is the kind of mistake that will hurt for decades to come"

This is a frequent topic on Core Intuition. For the Mac, there are pros and cons for choosing AppKit, Catalyst, or SwiftUI. It shouldn’t be that way. https://mastodon.social/@stroughtonsmith/113833445143176875

Micro.blog’s tweets import sometimes struggles, and it needed a few kicks before we finally got Romit Mehta’s tweet archive of over 140k tweets imported. But it works! The cool thing about the architecture is that after import it makes everything available on a separate blog and via an API. https://romitmehta.com/tweets/

Good article by Jason Snell at Macworld about how Apple’s previous playback is in conflict with recent products like the Vision Pro and Apple Intelligence. Also this bit about how Apple’s culture is still in the 1990s despite their massive success:

"Today’s Apple is a titan, but it still behaves like it’s a put-upon underdog in danger of being taken advantage of by the cold, cruel world."

I’m sure I’ve blogged the same thing. I still think we hit peak Apple about a year ago. https://www.macworld.com/article/2577072 https://www.manton.org/2024/05/15/a-couple-months.html

ChatGPT scheduled tasks are interesting. I’ve tried a few things — sending me a news summary or programming tip at a certain time — and it works as advertised. Not sure I have a good use case right now, so for fun I’m having it send me a haiku. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10291617-scheduled-tasks-in-chatgpt

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bug related to == vs. === in JavaScript. Half the time we’re comparing strings anyway and it just doesn’t matter, so I why ugly up your code with an extra =? Also while I’ve being controversial, real tabs are great. 🤪

Sara Dietschy’s latest video about AI voice and video clones is really good. Both the technical side and also finding the right balance: using AI sparingly where it fits, recognizing that most content should be created the old-fashioned way. People want to feel a connection with a real human. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdQaiDT-Ecg

Revisiting my tweet import code (see this post) to see what can be optimized. I really hope Twitter / X doesn’t change their export file format anytime soon. May not be worth updating my code again for major changes. https://www.manton.org/2023/04/11/importing-tweets-to.html

I plan to ignore Trump for most of the next few years, and I’m not even ready to read the special counsel report yet. But John Gruber’s post rings true to me. We needed a trial to educate voters, to cut through the disinformation. It was a major failure that they didn’t happen. 🇺🇸 https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/01/14/smith-special-counsel-report-vol-1

Dave Winer in a longer post collecting thoughts on Matt Mullenweg and other things:

"I don’t like that people have called him things like the Mad King. People used to say stuff like that about me. It’s a substitute for trying to understand where someone is coming from."

I’ve adopted the “mad king” phrasing in recent posts about Matt and about Automattic. I just find it amusing, a way to poke fun at the whole drama. I don’t actually think he’s crazy. http://scripting.com/2025/01/14/131116.html?title=anInternetOfIdeas https://www.manton.org/2024/12/21/i-support-the.html https://www.manton.org/2025/01/10/automattic-and-blog.html

Starting up a new TestFlight beta for Micro.blog for iOS. This release will include support for photo collections. You can tap a photo to add it to a collection, or create a new collection in the app. https://testflight.apple.com/join/lWxM21hn https://www.manton.org/2025/01/14/starting-up-a-new-testflight.html

Do I brag too much or not enough? It occurred to me that Micro.blog might be on the only platform of its kind that has built-in support for exporting content in several different file formats. And multiple APIs to get your data out? JSON, XML-RPC, Micropub. Our commitment to portability is absolute.

From an article at NPR about what might happen to TikTok when the law goes into effect:

"It’s also possible that users will be able to access the app but it may be buggy, operate slowly or crash often, the TikTok official said."

Buggy and crash? I guess it’s possible that if some backend services were shut down it could cause problems for the app. Sounds more like made up nonsense, though, as TikTok scrambles to figure out what to do because they only had literal years notice this might happen. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/13/nx-s1-5258151/tiktok-ban-us-impact-prepare-workaround

Free Our Feeds looks like a sincere effort but it’s a little vague. $30 million is a lot of money to raise via donations. I’d love to see this team communicate in more detail what they want to do. https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-free-social-media-from-billionaires

Funny how “billionaire” is now effectively a synonym for “anyone rich”. It’s almost a cheat — like a shortcut to describe venture capital or any profit. Won’t anyone think of the poor millionaires who are unfairly grouped together with the super-rich? 🤪

Automattic and .blog https://www.manton.org/2025/01/10/automattic-and-blog.html

Good morning, IndieWeb! We’ve got a meetup this Wednesday in Austin, at Radio Coffee & Beer. You can RSVP here or just show up. ☕️🍺 https://events.indieweb.org/2025/01/indieweb-meetup-austin-zFL9jqPFAgIK

As more people follow Bluesky users in Micro.blog, there are more posts that are flowing into our platform, so you’ll start to see the occasional Bluesky post in Discover too. Discover can evolve to be a snapshot of interesting microblogs anywhere, Mastodon too, even if it’s mostly Micro.blog users.

Thanks David Pierce for including my home screen in the latest Installer at The Verge! I mention some of the apps on my home screen and why they’re there. Lots of great CES coverage at The Verge this last week too. https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/12/24340864/ces-2025-tvs-nvidia-ai-gaming-installer