There's a new trailer out for Disney's Hexed, showing the mom and other characters, and I think it's better than the first trailer. Looks fun.
I've been writing off and on about X this year because I think many folks who read my blog haven't noticed what is going on over there. If we care about the open web, we need to frequently reassess how silos are used by regular people.
John Gruber blogged over the weekend in more detail about this:
You may not like it that X has re-found its footing under Elon Musk’s ownership, but it has. I’m citing Apple executives here but they’re far from alone. There are hundreds of interesting people and accounts I follow that post on X very regularly and do not post anywhere else at all.
It's true. I don't post to X, but I skim through it because I'm obsessed with following AI news, and that's where it happens.
When I stopped posting to Twitter in 2012, I did it mostly on principle to make a statement about closed, developer-hostile platforms. I also gave a few presentations at meetups and conferences during that period where I expanded on the problems of hate, harassment, and misinformation. In contrast, many people who later left Twitter for Mastodon did it because of Elon Musk's takeover.
As I blogged briefly this year, it's not enough to be against something:
Just telling folks what we’re against has not been enough to rebalance the web to open platforms.
We also need to be clear-eyed about the new problems of small fediverse communities that act as filter bubbles. From another blog post about opposition not being enough:
Let’s say you leave a large social network because you dislike the person in charge, then create a Mastodon community where everyone feels safe and is mostly aligned on ideology. The software is decentralized, but identity and culture remain centralized around a single domain.
Often this works out great. I’ve been writing for years about the benefits of small communities. But with impulsive leadership, it can also create filter bubbles and mob behavior. Then you’ve recreated the thing you were trying to escape.
In a blog post by Lex Friedman responding to John Gruber's post, Lex outlines a dozen reasons not to support Elon Musk. Those receipts alone aren't likely to convince people on X to abandon it, because the behavior is effectively priced in already, part of the chaos that Elon brings to everything. Lex closes with this:
I miss what Twitter was. I wish I were still enjoying the party. But I sleep way better at night knowing I’m taking the steps I can to not make that smug, rich, hateful asshole any richer.
If the concern is money flowing to Elon, what about cancelling your Claude subscription? Anthropic pays Elon Musk's SpaceXAI $1.25 billion a month for hosting Claude. X may get a lot of attention, but financially it's a smaller source of revenue compared to the larger SpaceXAI empire. Tracking where our money goes gets complicated quickly.
I founded Micro.blog to show what a platform could look like if it prioritized both open web principles and building a safe community. That is still the best way forward. Not what we're against, but what we're for. Encouraging open standards, content ownership with domains, and cross-posting via POSSE. Doubling down on curation. Trying to be thoughtful about new features, algorithms, and social interactions.
Maybe you're feeling deflated right now that X's decline has stalled. If you like to write or share photos, go all-in on your own blog. Move your fediverse profile from someone else's server to your own domain name. If you're a developer, build something new for Bluesky and the atmosphere. Bluesky has the most traction with regular users and is doing cool stuff with open protocols.
There's a lot to do and there has never been a better time for building on the open web.
Another preview of Blog Audit, this time with my own blog. It's a sad commentary on link rot. 🙁
Got my little OpenClaw server set up at home after a few false starts. Debian wouldn't recognize the main disk. Went with Ubuntu instead and it's fine. I don't need the desktop UI, but it really has come a long way.
Watched: The Big Bang Theory S12E24. We binge-watched all 12 seasons in a few months. Great show. I'm not even usually much of a sitcom person, but this was fun and the cast really clicked. 📺
I think I missed this essay by Mustafa Suleyman when it was published last month, about Anthropic developing Claude with its own conscious:
If this is how AI is developed, it will have a disastrous impact on the well-being of humanity. We will have created a synthetic species with unprecedented intelligence and capability, and trained to expect that it may be conscious and deserving of independent agency. It is hard to imagine how we could control it.
It's similar to other things he has said. Very compelling.
Mark Gurman has more details on Apple's new home devices, including the name HomeView:
Unlike the iPhone, the HomeView isn’t designed for a wide variety of apps. The device will support a limited selection of Apple applications, with no App Store for downloading additional software, I’m told.
This highlights a problem I've been pointing out for years, that Siri is fragmented and likely won't work consistently across devices. So if I support App Intents in my iPhone app, people can't use that from HomeView. Contrast with making a ChatGPT plugin that works everywhere.
Settling into how OpenAI's dots are best used. My dot is a replacement for regular ChatGPT. It's a single thread that knows everything and can be my go-to for any random question. For coding, I use Codex directly, but I think the future is multiple dots that delegate to Codex.
Continuing to think about how to stay competitive when software is abundant. Support and trust are a big part of it. But also there are still things that take a lot of time to build or money to run.
I've been working on something new that I'm calling Blog Audit. It'll ship on Monday, here's a sneak peek screenshot from a test blog. It costs us more to run so will require Micro.blog Premium for now. (Not shown, the magic is the "Repair" button.)
Thinking about the last time I seriously ran Linux at home, I found this old blog posts from 2003. I can barely remember some of this. Good thing I wrote it down.
This Astra launch video spoof is so well done — "ChatGPT for Dishwashing". 🙂
This video on X from OpenAI's Max Stoiber about ChatGPT plugin review is a reminder of just how much better and more transparent Apple could be with managing the App Store. Sounds like Max is actually on the side of developers, not against us, while still balancing the needs of users.
Attacks on James Talarico are ramping up. I'm getting more texts from campaigns and PACs. More complaining from the GOP in the news. But it's October... A little late for them to change the narrative. 🇺🇸
On the home AI front, I decided to get the Beelink EQi. Transferring the brain of my OpenClaw to it today. I wish this could be a Mac mini, but the cost of Apple storage is ridiculous. Much easier to drop a 4 TB SSD in this.
Neat example from Simon Willison of using voice to develop a feature for his blog while cooking, talking and watching the preview on his laptop:
We went on like this for about half an hour (the time it took to cook dinner). The model would reply and occasionally ask clarifying questions, then get to work modifying the code.
As much as everything has been turned upside down, the flow is the same: make a change, see how it looks, make another change.
I keep thinking about this story I read on NPR yesterday about a chance encounter and a stranger's kindness. 一期一会. "One time, one meeting." We're all just passing briefly in and out of each other's lives.
The first Spurs preseason game is tonight! They've changed the streaming provider yet again, now on DAZN. 🏀
Recorded a short video to explain a new batch selection interface for uploaded photos, just rolled out today in Micro.blog.
Poking around in WordPress because I wanted to see how they handle something in the UI, and I just noticed the "Create AI Podcast" sidebar menu item:
Pick a date range or a few specific posts and we’ll generate a two-host conversation, complete with narration and a ready-to-publish draft. Edit, refine, and hit Publish when you’re happy.
I want more people to podcast, but creating a podcast with multiple fake hosts (for what is likely a solo personal blog) is weird and unnecessary. This is why so many people hate AI.
Love this Apple video of embroidery for the logo to announce the October 13th event. 🧵
Thought maybe I wouldn't bother downloading the latest Xcode 27.1 from a coffee shop, but I'm glad I tried. Actually getting 300 Mbps.
If programming languages don't matter much anymore, but reviewing code matters more than ever, can we resurrect RubyCocoa? Ruby is still one of the most elegant, readable languages. Wish I could use it everywhere.
Andrew Shell actually built a Markdown browser:
I quickly realized that much of this was already present with sites like mine that serve markdown for LLMs.
I knew about /llms.txt, but didn’t realize there were so many people using HTTP content negotiation with text/markdown.
Nick Heer has a blog post about Meta charging if you want to link outside their silos:
Instagram has never supported links of any kind in individual posts, so that is a new feature with two links per month permitted for free, and more enabled by this pricey subscription — starting at $50 USD per month for four posts per month containing external links
How the turn tables... Remember when Australia and Canada wanted Facebook to pay newspapers for linking to their articles? This is some twisted karma. In both cases, paying for links is fundamentally anti-web.
Coming up with solutions and new ideas was an adventure. Dedication and commitment were a given. Mutual respect was across the board. Because software was a mystery, a black box, upper management gave us total freedom and trust. We had to find a way, and we did.
There's an amazing photo of her standing with print-outs of code for Apollo missions. Rest in peace.
Reading Dave Winer's notes on a hypothetical Markdown web browser. I don't think we need to reinvent the web or HTML, but it would be neat if web browsers had built-in Markdown preview by default. Why not? Browsers render PDF and all sorts of files.
There's a bit of accidental gamification going on with my releases.md gist. Feels good to work on something and then see it reflected in that file.
I like to hide tabs in GitHub projects that I don't need. Finally figured out how to get rid of the Agents tab on the web. Go to your profile → Copilot settings → Visibility.
Maybe I should've clarified in my post today that I stopped posting to Twitter ages ago, won't be posting there again no matter what happens. Micro.blog supports several platforms that I don't personally use. LinkedIn, for example.
Casey Newton plans to return to X in the coming days. He wrote in Platformer this week:
The community of people working in and around artificial intelligence product and policy simply refuses to move away from X, no matter how bad it gets.
And:
I am among those who believe that the next year will be decisive in shaping the future of AI policy, regulation, and safety. And increasingly, attempting to influence the AI policy conversation without participating on X (or Substack) has made me feel like I am fighting with both hands tied behind my back.
Three months ago, I blogged about reevaluating support for X in Micro.blog. I got mixed feedback about it, but ultimately decided that the negative feedback was enough for me to shelve the rollout. It was not worth the controversy.
Since that blog post, Federico Viticci and John Voorhees returned to X. Other people started posting to X who had never even posted to Twitter before, like Jensen Huang and Jeffrey Katzenberg. While I still believe X is doomed in the long run — closed, rudderless, and toxic to many — the AI community has held on to a remnant of the old Twitter, and in fact that community is growing, apparently immune to the decay of a platform that has no soul.
I should've followed my gut back in July. If I had brought back X cross-posting, I could now reach out to Federico or Casey and pitch them on posting simultaneously to their microblogs and X. Instead, I'll watch from the sidelines as the most pivotal discussions about AI remain heavily centered around X instead of the open web.
Surely the problems with Christa Pike’s failed execution rise to the level of cruel and unusual punishment set in the constitution. Can’t believe in 2026 we are still even debating this.
If you squint, there are parallels this week between PhotoCraft, an AI re-implementation of Photoshop, and OpenAI dropping a GitHub repo with hundreds of solutions to open math problems. There are some professions that will need to be continuously rethought.
Fascinating online magazine from Microsoft. Looks like some thoughtful essays in this:
The Humanist Review of AI is a quarterly publication funded by Microsoft AI. We bring together thinkers from different fields to explore the impact of AI on society
Great start to FediForum. Really enjoyed Anil Dash's talk, and now Daniel Holmgren is just wrapping up on AT Proto Spaces. Lots more for me to dig into with Spaces.
Toni Schneider revealed that Bluesky is trying to make a .bsky top-level domain. Interesting strategy. Hopefully they can monetize this while keeping it open for anyone to use, like Automattic did with .blog.
I got some pushback when I compared Muse to ChatGPT Work, where I was mostly thinking about having access to a server in the cloud to run agents from your phone. That comparison wasn’t quite right. Feels like there’s a lot that is OpenClaw-inspired in it too.
Xserve ready to make a comeback? 9to5Mac blogs about a report from The Information about M8 servers. The Information says they might use NVLink:
Apple has considered connecting the M8 chips in the server using an Nvidia set of products called NVLink Fusion, which includes switches, chiplets and software that help chips communicate with each other in data centers.
If Apple has to build these for themselves, they might as well sell them. Quite the leap from selling Mac minis to AI enthusiasts.
I recorded a 3-minute screencast video on YouTube that walks through what it looks like for a brand new Micro.blog user to start using AT Protocol right away with our PDS, without having to create a separate account in Bluesky first. Love open standards. 🦋
Excited for the new show from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose, Machine Gods. I was a big fan of their Hard Fork podcast. Seems smart to partner with NPR on this too.
Editing the auto-generated transcript on a YouTube video. Actually surprised at the fairly poor quality of initial transcript. Simple things like "blue sky" instead of "Bluesky", or "crossosting" instead of "cross-posting" that usually an LLM would get right, I think.
Great blog post from John Gruber on the Apple announcements. On the Siri recap feature, he actually has the opposite perspective that I had:
I think it’s better for Apple to lead with privacy-minded versions of ambient transcripts and AI-generated conversation summaries than to follow after other products have hit the market with all-day recordings and whole-life transcripts.
I don't think Apple needs to push the state of the art here. But I'm only 50% sure. John has a good point too.
Microsoft's Humanist AI document is long, I'm still reading it, but so far I like it. It's a rejection of the idea that AI could one day be a peer of humanity:
At Microsoft AI, we begin with a simple premise: people matter more than AI. Technology’s purpose is to advance human civilization and to accelerate human flourishing.
It complements my recent blog post on AGI.
We're rolling out a series of improvements for podcasts in Micro.blog. The first was last month with a better web playback UI. Now there's also a Listen Later feature that builds on bookmarking. Coming soon: a new version of Wavelength with audio narration for posts and more.
Muse is in the 2nd spot in the App Store now, behind the perpetually 1st place ChatGPT. I'm not planning to use Muse, but it's fascinating if it resonates with Meta's user base after the initial interest. It's basically ChatGPT Work but simplified, slightly less capable, and maybe less confusing.
I've been quietly improving the saved links feature in Micro.blog, available to Premium subscribers. Nice way to find what you've linked to on your blog. This screenshot of the Mac app shows the new web page thumbnail previews for quick scanning.
Not totally sure when to update to macOS 27. I just submitted an app update to Apple with Xcode 26. Feels safest to stick on that until the iPhone Duo simulator is out.
Today's Dithering podcast is fun. Ben Thompson leaning in to the "liberty or death" take from his Monday post. For me, AI pacing is good, but also he and John Gruber have a good point that we don't need to accept the narrative of possible human extinction.
Another interesting acquisition by OpenAI of former Apple folks:
Glass Imaging was founded by Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, a pair of former Apple engineers who previously led the team that developed Apple’s Portrait Mode. This background directly informs the work they now do at Glass Imaging, where they use AI to overcome the physical size constraints of smartphone cameras.
OpenAI clearing thinking beyond the first device they will reveal this year.
Excited that it's The Fires of December release day for backers. I've loaded up the ePub to read later.
