For Brandon Sanderson fans, he read the first two chapters of a new Cosmere novel last week. I finished listening to it last night. The livestream was very long, so here’s a link on YouTube to the reading spot. 📚

One of these days, gonna need to sit down and come up with a more universal way to add sidebars to Micro.blog themes that works everywhere. There’s so much flexibility in Hugo, but every theme can have a completely different structure. Feel like microhooks are the way.

Good morning, Austin. 🏙️

I’ve tried to have a thoughtful approach to AI-based features in Micro.blog, like the opt-out checkbox to disable everything. I’m still open to reevaluating models too. I’ve tried my own servers, but it’s more expensive and would actually use more energy running 24/7 instead of on-demand.

Sometimes when I rewrite a blog post or email multiple times, it becomes hard to tell if it’s actually better, or if it lost whatever spark was in that first quick draft.

Micro.blog iPhone and iPad folks, the latest TestFlight beta has several bug fixes to text editing layout, keyboard, and the share sheet nav bar. Think I’ve finally got some of those glitches under control. If you’re not on the beta, you can join here.

The obvious downside to AI creating answers and software we might not need is it feels wasteful. There is a cost. There is not enough energy and infrastructure. This is the OpenAI bet: that when they scale up, no one else will be able to do what they can do. Except Google.

ChatGPT Pulse still blows my mind. This morning it built a custom HTML app for visualizing train seating. I didn’t ask it for this, it just knew I had been looking at trains, so it churned on it overnight. In the future you can imagine software is more adaptable to each user.

Die Hard at Cosmic. ☕️

Ghost founder John O’Nolan is working on a new RSS reader called Alcove:

I wish it were just all in one place. Without all the noise and engagement farming. Just a quiet little spot where I could catch up with things I care about.

I wonder which existing RSS reader he’s using that has noise and engagement farming? Anyhoo, we should probably accelerate our plans for a Micro.blog-based RSS reader. You can follow blogs in Micro.blog, but a full reader outside the social timeline has been a missing piece.

Huge deal with Netflix buying Warner Bros. for $83 billion including HBO Max. If it goes through, will be in the top 10 largest acquisitions of all time. From The Verge, no immediate hope of combining subscriptions:

In its announcement Netflix suggests it has no immediate plans for drastic change at Warner Bros., describing HBO and HBO Max as a “compelling, complementary offering” alongside its own streaming service, and saying it will maintain the studio’s current operations “including theatrical releases for films.”

I assume they’ll have a bundle, similar to early Disney+ and Hulu.

Watching some of the Nexus livestream. Brandon and Emily Sanderson are announcing a free coin for people struggling with depression, as a physical reminder to keep going and get help. Seems really well thought out, with resources and a letter from Brandon:

I challenge you to recognize that the experience you have gained through your struggles with mental health is also a strength. The stronger person is not the one who has never struggled; it is the person who has developed, step by step, the power to keep walking.

I watched Train Dreams last week and I’m still forming an opinion about it. I like this review in The New Yorker:

This is craftsmanship of an undeniably majestic order, and it has a way of both dropping your jaw and raising an eyebrow; you begin to wonder, at a certain point, if the film’s visual splendor has begun to outstrip its meaning.

I have the novella on hold.

Louie Mantia blogging about Alan Dye leaving Apple, and more generally the trend away from user-centered design:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but they started making products that appealed to themselves. Because since Steve Jobs died, Apple, its executives, and its corporate employees got significantly wealthier. It wasn’t just Jony who took an interest in luxury.

Tree and stained glass at Lazarus on Airport. ☕️

We’re planning a winter-y, holiday challenge for this month. Announcement coming on Monday! 🎄

I’ve been wanting to make this change for months, finally rolled it out. When you’re on the pages for your managing your blog, the header looks better now, less clutter and fewer lines. Required a surprising amount of HTML and CSS restructuring.

Talking to Alexa+ this morning, I do think it’s an improvement. More conversational. It took them a while from announcement to now to get there, but seems fairly solid to me. I would use Siri if it was that good.

Puzzle is starting to come together.

Dario Amodei takes some shots at OpenAI in a DealBook Summit interview:

Let’s say you’re a person who just kind of constitutionally wants to YOLO things or just likes big numbers, then you may turn the dial too far.

There’s a world where Anthropic has an IPO next year and keeps growing in the enterprise, while OpenAI is all-in on everything and collapses. But I think a lot would have to go wrong for that to happen.