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Timeline
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Paul Ford: Aided by LLMs, people & companies are...
Reply sourcePaul Ford: Aided by LLMs, people & companies are producing lots of software. But where are the AI-coded killer apps? “[AI is] very good at reproducing things that look and feel like what came before.”
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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. 🦋
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The All of the Above Trail Fest is “deconstructing...
Reply sourceThe All of the Above Trail Fest is “deconstructing the very definition of a trail race, refiguring it into something more expansive and inclusive”. There are no gender divisions and winners are decided by who gets closest to their predicted finish time.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Podcast: Humans Are Reading Your ChatGPT Conversations
The contractors reading real ChatGPT users' prompts; the big out-and-back-in around Automattic; and a16z thinks enshittification isn't real.Reply source - Reply source
Claude Code, even though it had blocks preventing it from doing this, overwrote files on an S3 bucket that took one of my major apps off the air. Every customer must be grappling with the same thing. How do I trust it when it can't be trusted? More about this in a tweet earlier today.
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The Powerful Connection Between Smell & Memory
Reply sourceOne thing I didn’t get a chance to work into my post about the unexpected memory bomb triggered by my spice drawer was the tight, deep connection between smell and memory. I first learned about this relationship in college when I read A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman for a class. It’s still one of my favorite books. Here’s some of what she has to say about smell:
Smell is the most direct of all our senses. When I hold a violet to my nose and inhale, odor molecules float back into the nasal cavity behind the bridge of the nose, where they are absorbed by the mucosa containing receptor cells bearing microscopic hairs called cilia. Five million of these cells fire impulses to the brain’s olfactory bulb or smell center. Such cells are unique to the nose. If you destroy a neuron in the brain, it’s finished forever; it won’t regrow. If you damage neurons in your eyes or ears, both organs will be irreparably damaged. But the neurons in the nose are replaced about every thirty days and, unlike any other neurons in the body, they stick right out and wave in the air current like anemones on a coral reef.
And:
Unlike the other senses, smell needs no interpreter. The effect is immediate and undiluted by language, thought, or translation. A smell can be overwhelmingly nostalgic because it triggers powerful images and emotions before we have time to edit them. What you see and hear may quickly fade into the compost heap of short-term memory, but, as Edwin T. Morris points out in Fragrance, “there is almost no short-term memory with odors.” It’s all long term. Furthermore, smells stimulate learning and retention. “When children were given olfactory information along with a word list,” Morris noted, “the list was recalled much more easily and better retained in memory than when given without the olfactory cues.” When we give perfume to someone, we give them liquid memory. Kipling was right: “Smells are surer than sights and sounds to make your heart-strings crack.”
And:
Smell was the first of our senses, and it was so successful that in time the small lump of olfactory tissue atop the nerve cord grew into a brain. Our cerebral hemispheres were originally buds from the olfactory stalks. We think because we smelled.
Our sense of smell, like so many of our other body functions, is a throwback to that time, early in evolution, when we thrived in the oceans. An odor must first dissolve into a watery solution our mucous membranes can absorb before we can smell it. Scuba-diving in the Bahamas some years ago, I became aware of two things for the first time: that we carry the ocean within us; that our veins mirror the tides. As a human woman, with ovaries where eggs lie like roe, entering the smooth, undulating womb of the ocean from which our ancestors evolved millennia ago, I was so moved my eyes teared underwater, and I mixed my saltiness with the ocean’s. Distracted by such thoughts, I looked around to find my position vis-a-vis the boat, and couldn’t. But it didn’t matter: Home was everywhere.
I could basically quote the whole smell chapter…it’s interesting throughout. Great book — if you’ve never read it, I’d recommend checking it out.
Tags: A Natural History of the Senses · books · Diane Ackerman · senses · smell
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Bernie Sanders Tries To ‘Help’ Fix AI By Complaining With Steve Bannon, ‘Banning Superintelligence’
In an ideal world it’s certainly possible that the U.S. federal government could implement meaningful guardrails for AI development that protect innovation, national security, consumer privacy, public safety, and labor/creatives, while preventing market monopolization by the sector’s biggest players. But we don’t live in that ideal world. We live in a country where an historically […]Reply source -
We Must Create the Shit Machine . “I asked...
Reply sourceWe Must Create the Shit Machine. “I asked everyone I know at the BIG TECH HUMAN CENTIPEDE ROUNDTABLE, and we all agreed that UNCONTROLLABLE SHIT-RAIN IS USEFUL AND GREAT, and that EVERYONE WANTS IT.”
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Hackers Stole Flock’s Camera Software, Revealing How the Company Tracks Cars and People
While people around the U.S. are tearing down Flock cameras, one group of hackers went a step further: extracting the camera's software too.Reply source -
The frontier Anthropic & OpenAI models are only ~4...
Reply sourceThe frontier Anthropic & OpenAI models are only ~4 months ahead of open models — at 5x the price. “Most organizations should ideally be using open models as the default for the majority of their work, according to [a report] from Mozilla…”
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RFK Jr. To Give Keynote At Conference For Anti-Vaxxer Organization He Co-Founded
Whatever mask RFK Jr. was attempting to wear to convince the world he isn’t a pure anti-vaxxer clown is now officially off. The man who has spent his time as Secretary of HHS overseeing the worst outbreak of measles in America in decades, who just can’t stop citing fake health studies and misinterpreting others, who […]Reply source -
The High Crime Of “LMAO”: How Cops Are Treating Flock Mass Surveillance As A Joke
Here’s a riddle: Why did a Goshen Police Department officer search 6,474 automated license plate reader (ALPR) networks, representing data from 82,413 cameras, on May 7, 2025? If your answer is “I don’t know,” it turns out you’re 100% correct. The officer left the letters “idk” in the search field where cops are supposed to […]Reply source -
Last year in Ireland, a bouncy castle infested with a...
Reply sourceLast year in Ireland, a bouncy castle infested with a “hypervirulent, multidrug-resistant pathogen” infected almost 50 children. Reality: always weirder than the weirdest sci-fi.
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Naomi Klein : “Extreme wealth has a deranging...
Reply sourceNaomi Klein: “Extreme wealth has a deranging effect. It turns you into a supremacist.” Klein’s new book, End Times Fascism, written with Astra Taylor, is out today.
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Trump’s DOJ Says ‘Become Ungovernable’ Is Antifa Evidence. Trump’s Convention Put It On The Wall.
“Become ungovernable” is a phrase that has traveled around the world and morphed in meaning over time, but in the last few years has basically become an internet culture joke meme, with vaguely anarchist seasoning. But, now, in the Trump administration, it has apparently taken on a Schrodinger-esque meaning as either… a slogan for libertarian-leaning […]Reply source -
AI Agent Platform Reinvents Spam, Floods Inboxes Worldwide
iLands and its AI agents are doing completely useless tasks, then begging for money.Reply source -
Taryn Simon’s Father Country I Do Love You
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Father Country I Do Love You sounds like a doozy of a new exhibition from photographer Taryn Simon. The project focuses on the life and work of an unnamed, retired FBI agent. From the NY Times: She Spent Years on a Giant Project About One Man. The Result Is Monumental.
As it turned out, his work had touched many catastrophes of American life — the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, for example, which the agent helped to inspect, or the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11, when the agent was in charge of sifting debris in the immediate aftermath — and also lesser-known events, historical footnotes that were nonetheless telling. What interested Simon were not just the events themselves, but also their reverberations, far beyond any immediate blast radius. What happened, for instance, to the physical ruins from the TWA crash? What became of the woman who tried to take a photograph of the smoldering Pentagon, whose film the F.B.I. agent had confiscated? Or to the Iraqi diplomat who ran the country’s U.S. embassy during the Persian Gulf war, whom the agent had monitored? Or to the child of a couple accused of being Russian spies, whose house the agent had raided?
The piece describes the project, which includes over 1000 photographs and other material, as “a Great American Novel in visual form” and “huge and fractal: biography as butterfly effect”, which sounds fascinating.
Even Jodie Foster makes an appearance; this particular agent had trained Foster at the FBI Academy in Quantico as preparation for her role as Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs.
Father Country I Do Love You debuts at the Guggenheim in NYC on September 18 and runs through March 14, 2027.
Tags: art · Guggenheim Museum · Jodie Foster · museums · photography · Taryn Simon
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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.
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The Tube Computer was recently constructed from...
Reply sourceThe Tube Computer was recently constructed from hundreds of 1950s vacuum tubes sourced from Eastern Europe. “The Tube Computer has a pleasant homely aroma from the hundreds of double triodes, all quietly burning off their dust.” It heats the room too.
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Minneapolis ICE Observer Sues DHS For Its Retaliatory Stripping Of His Global Entry Status
The lowest common denominator administration continues to roll. It doesn’t care what’s legal or what’s proper. It just does what it wants because the shittiest people are in it and its basest of voter bases will feverishly clap their sweaty hands together in applause whenever it does whatever it wants to do. It will be […]Reply source -
Daily Deal: The Mastering Linux Development Bundle
The Mastering Linux Development Bundle has 7 courses to help you become a Linux expert. Courses cover Kali Linux, Ubuntu, Secure Shell, Command Line, and more. It’s on sale for $20. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackSocial. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products […]Reply source - Reply source
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.
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Tycho’s Burning Man Sunrise Set for 2026
Reply sourceFor the 93rd year in a row or something like that I didn’t check the math, Tycho has released his sunrise set from Burning Man. I am not a Burning Man person but I always enjoy this set.
See also a playlist of every 2026 Burning Man set on Soundcloud, currently 147 tracks and some 252 hours of music. (via @mikeakers.bsky.social)
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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.
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SCOTUS Won’t Revive Trump’s Ballot-Blocking Rule; Alito Thinks Imaginary Fraud Is The Bigger Problem
A couple weeks ago, we wrote about the USPS whistleblower who revealed that the Postal Service had violated a preliminary injunction from a Massachusetts court in preparing to implement a horrifying Trump executive order designed to get the USPS to block the mailing of many mail-in ballots. We won’t go through all the details again, […]Reply source - Reply source
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.
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Charges Against Man Who Destroyed 3D-Printed ‘Decoy’ Flock Camera Drastically Reduced After State Admits It Was Not Very Valuable
Three felonies have suddenly become two second-degree misdemeanors.Reply source -
Alex Gibney’s documentary reveals that Elon Musk has...
Reply sourceAlex Gibney’s documentary reveals that Elon Musk has always been a racist, sexist fraud. “Musk’s ex-wife Justine, whom he married in 2000 and divorced in 2008, says the man the world began to see in 2020 was the one she’d always known.”
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A Digital Fly Brain Has Taken Over the Internet
How to make a fly play Doom, Minecraft, Beat Saber, parallel park, trade bitcoin, cut doner kebab, and more.Reply source - Reply source
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.
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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.
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With a new installment every seven years since 1964, the...
Reply sourceWith a new installment every seven years since 1964, the Seven Up series has followed a group of 14 British schoolchildren from adolescence to adulthood. The final installment, 70 Up, directed by Asif Kapadia (Senna, Amy), is out this week.
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There’s a 100% Chance AI Agents Are Already Ruining the Internet
“AI agents” now have enough power and permission to be extremely annoying online.Reply source - Reply source
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.
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Until we start working together and for each other it’s going to keep getting worse.
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Excited that it's The Fires of December release day for backers. I've loaded up the ePub to read later.
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The Spice Drawer
Reply sourceOver the past six months (leisurely) and in the past three weeks (intensely), I’ve cleaned out and packed up my entire house where I’ve been living for the past 10 years. I went through every bit and bob of what I owned and either:
- gave it away (fiddle leaf fig, grill, chairs, stuffed animals,1 blender, rugs)
- sold it (car, coffee table, lamp, iPad)
- put it into storage (art, mementos, chairs)
- took it with me (very little, mostly clothes & computing things)
Parting with my possessions was surprisingly easy. I’d been planning this move for a while now and had time to get used to the idea and say my farewells. And the concept of having a bunch of stuff, 95% of which I never used or thought about or even remembered owning, was really starting to make me itch. So out it went; I felt lighter with each thing that exited the house.
But I wasn’t expecting the spice drawer.
I was working my way through the kitchen when I opened the drawer with all of my spices and baking supplies. A pause. What do I do with these? I picked up a jar of smoked paprika and was suddenly flung back in time to 12 years ago. I remember exactly where I bought that paprika and why.
I’d recently moved into my own apartment after separating from my wife and was still trying to figure out how my new household was going to work. My kids came over a few times a week; what the hell were we going to eat for dinner? I was competent but not confident in the kitchen; Meg is a great cook and I couldn’t match her effort or output. I had to come up with my own meals that a) I could cook, b) the kids would actually eat, and c) were somewhat healthy.
One of the recipes I found was for smoky corn chowder, so I headed to the grocery store on 23rd St. to buy ingredients, including a jar of smoked paprika. The kids loved the corn chowder and it became a favorite of ours — something that they only ate over at Dad’s house.
Over the years, the kids and I amassed a small collection of recipes we loved and often had at my house — caldo verde, lasagne, buttermilk pancakes, taco salad, apple pie, and others — and the spices to cook them: oregano, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder, basil, baking soda, Ortega Taco Seasoning Mix 😂. I pulled each spice container out of the drawer and tried to remember what I’d cooked with it, what dishes it was in that we’d eaten together. I opened the tops to sniff some of the spices and was more strongly pulled back into those times when my kids were small and I was worried — no, I was terrified — about not being up to the task of filling their tummies, minds, and souls with the good stuff on my watch.
Man, so much of our time together revolved around food. The spice drawer hit me hard because it was a powerful olfactory reminder not only of the delicious meals we’d shared but also of my insecurity around parenting, how I slowly gained confidence, and how I eventually found freedom & pride in what I was able to offer my kids.
In the end, I had to throw all the spices out — no takers for half-used, decade-old containers of parsley flakes or jars of cumin — but I’ll always remember cleaning out that drawer and all of the memories it stirred up. Proust had his madeleines, but I doubt I’ll ever pass by a jar of smoked paprika in the supermarket or in someone’s spice drawer without feeling all of it all over again.
I gave away a bunch of miscellaneous stuffed animals that my kids had accumulated over the years — not the beloved ones — and I was sitting working on my deck when a woman showed up to collect them. “Are you the stuffed animal guy?” she called to me. “Yes,” I said, “and I don’t think I’ve been referred to like that before.” In telling this story to others, she became “the stuffed animal lady”. Everything is relative. ↩
Tags: food · Jason Kottke · parenting
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A declaration signed by 25 Fields medalists : “The...
Reply sourceA declaration signed by 25 Fields medalists: “The goals of the AI companies and the goals of the mathematical community are severely misaligned.”
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LG TVs Snoop Your Local Network, Listen To You When ‘Off’
LG hasn’t been making many friends lately. It annoyed some LG “smart” TV users recently when it tried to force them to use Microsoft’s Copilot AI system. It’s also been force-installing surveillance bloatware on many LG user’s monitors as it ramps up data surveillance and monetization. Now LG is in hot water again, after YouTube […]Reply source -
Adult Woman Dies From Measles Complications In Pennsylvania
Despite RFK Jr.’s assurances that he’s absolutely killing it combating this pesky measles thing that resurfaced after decades under his leadership, the only thing that is being killed are American citizens who contract measles. While we first eclipsed the measles case count of 2025 in mid-summer of 2026, there has also been no slowdown of […]Reply source -
Following: The government doesn't want to regulate AI
The leaders of AI labs agree that the United States to act, and soon. But the president and the speaker of the House aren't interestedReply source -
Appeals Court Sees Nothing Wrong With Terrorizing A 14-Year-Old To Obtain A Confession
It’s easy to get submerged by the wave of bad news generated by the current administration on what often seems to be an hourly basis. Ask me how I know. My time is pretty much split between whatever ICE is doing and whatever Flock is doing, which results a whole lot of bad law enforcement […]Reply source - Reply source
Started reading Alchemised by SenLinYu and was surprised that it felt pretty dark, because for some reason I thought it was YA. Nope, just regular adult fantasy. I tend to read books that sound interesting while ignoring most of the back-cover blurb. 📚
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From a curator at the Getty, ratings of every...
Reply sourceFrom a curator at the Getty, ratings of every “framed picture” emoji. “A total rejection of nature and reality. Why is the horizon rounded? Has this artist seen planet earth before?”
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Elon Musk’s SLAPP Threat Over ‘Space Lasers’ Doc Sort Of Admits The ‘Space Lasers’ Part
By now, calling Elon Musk a “free speech absolutist” is a joke. We have so many stories of him suppressing speech, or threatening, or suing people for their speech. At this point, anyone who still claims that Musk supports free speech is either (1) lying, (2) stupid, or (3) employed by him. So, it’s little […]Reply source - Reply source
For the last week in Codex, I've been using a single pinned thread for each app instead of deciding when to start new threads. Basically just let Codex compact its context whenever it needs to. Seems to work well.
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The 2026 winners of the Ig Nobel Prize include papers...
Reply sourceThe 2026 winners of the Ig Nobel Prize include papers on “a more precise definition of kissing”, “An Aerodynamic Study of the Nose Blowing”, and the discovery “that milk proteins from cockroaches pack 3X as much energy as milk proteins from cows”.