Last day of early voting in Texas. Looking at my sample ballot and got super confused for a minute reading the propositions… A few of them are strange, then realized I was accidentally looking at the Republican side. 🤪

I’ve been critical of Instagram forever, and stopped posting on principle 9 years ago, but still it’s good to see Meta’s new work on alerting parents to a teen’s search about self-harm. The way Meta is handling this seems reasonable. Might’ve saved lives if it was in place years ago.

Open letter from employees of Google and OpenAI in support of Anthropic:

They’re trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in. That strategy only works if none of us know where the others stand. This letter serves to create shared understanding and solidarity in the face of this pressure from the Department of War.

The leadership of all the AI companies is fascinating to me. Dario Amodei perhaps the most so. I thought his essay Machines of Loving Grace was excellent, but I’ve watched many interviews with him and I sometimes come away kind of depressed about the future.

Catching up on Paul Frazee’s post comparing AT Proto’s decentralization to ActivityPub’s federation and Nostr’s “magical mesh” approach:

Our near-miss similarity to the two common models of decentralization is at least partially why we catch heat from them. We’re really similar, but we introduced changes that remove the legible markers of each technology: multiple app instances in the case of federation, and an absence of servers in the case of magical meshes.

It’s a good read. Most of the confusion in the fediverse about AT Proto is because people judge it based on Mastodon’s architecture.

Love that feeling when a new feature sort of actually works. All downhill from here to the release.

Terry Godier posted on the aftermath of shipping Current:

To not let all of the feedback (both good and bad) alter your ability to think clearly and put one foot in front the other and make a thing that’s true to you again. There’s such a strong pull mentally/emotionally to do more of what people liked, or less of what people didn’t, on the next “thing”

The best products take feedback from everywhere but filter it through the original vision. Otherwise you’ll eventually get a watered down or bloated thing with no uniquely defining purpose.

This upcoming book about Steve Jobs during the NeXT years sounds really good, via John Gruber:

With unprecedented access to unbroadcast footage of Jobs in NeXT meetings, private company documents, and interviews with his closest colleagues, Cain offers the definitive account of how failure transformed a brash wunderkind into a true business genius.

I got my first Mac during those years. Steve was legendary, NeXT machines felt almost mythical, and I’m not sure I ever considered that he would return to Apple. What an extraordinary life.

Sometimes when I’m walking and look up at trees or buildings moving past me, I imagine the world in layers like an old multiplane camera, or as seen through Tarzan’s deep canvas. If this programming and AI thing doesn’t pan out, I need to find my pencils. My brain is still wired for animation.

Kiki’s Delivery Service back in theaters next month:

More than three decades after it first enchanted audiences, Kiki’s Delivery Service is returning to North American cinemas in a newly remastered 4K presentation, heading exclusively to IMAX theaters on March 13.

One of my favorites. 🍿

Decided we should do a beta for the new RSS thing, starting this weekend and running about a week. If you’re interested, sign up on this form. You’ll get an email tomorrow. So excited to share this.

You can tell from the OpenClaw meetups how much this thing has captured people’s attention. There are of course a lot of dude programmers out there using it, but maybe it’s reaching more people… On the How I AI podcast, an interview with Jesse Genet who has bots helping organize her homeschool.

Thanks Jatan Mehta for reviewing my book! His post includes some quotes and commentary.

“To send my rhymes out to all the nations
Like Ma Bell, I got the ill communication”

I’ve been going back and forth about how to price the new RSS thing. It’s one of the best things I’ve built in a while. There are new costs, but it’s confusing to require Micro.blog Premium. Pretty sure the basics will be included for all Micro.blog subscribers, with one feature just for Premium.  

Reading through the proposals for Growing the Open Social Web, which is on Monday. I think the best suggestions are actionable. Real ideas that can be implemented.

Greg Mania writing at The New Yorker about Waymo:

Another car cuts in front of you. The Waymo brakes. It does not then surge forward to assert dominance. It does not briefly consider engaging in Reddit-sourced novice witchcraft to place a curse on the person who has wronged you.

🙂

The view from the state library building. Attended a talk by Sam Haynes, author of Unsettled Land. 📚

Ben Werdmuller has a long post about what happens now that AI coding tools actually work. There’s a lot to think about, but I’m going to pull one quote to comment on, not even central to Ben’s points:

They’re also expensive: while open source tools are decentralized and free, it’s incredibly easy to spend large amounts on Claude. Based on my own experimentation and anecdotes from friends and peer companies, any engineer that relies on Claude Code as part of their daily work is likely to spend hundreds of dollars a week…

Developers who still use Claude are burning cash. Codex is good.

This week we flipped the switch on better truncation in the Micro.blog timeline, preserving styles and links. It’s working well. See this screenshot of a slightly too-long post that is nicely truncated with italics, em dash, and inline link still there.