Brant Point Lighthouse, Nantucket.
I get the distrust of AI bots but I think discussions to sabotage crawled data go too far, potentially making a mess of the open web. There has never been a system like AI before, and old assumptions about what is fair use don’t really fit. But robots.txt still works! No need to burn everything down yet.
Congrats to the Celtics. The NBA finals had a couple good moments, but the result never seemed that much in doubt. Only watched a little of game 5 tonight because for some reason this hotel TV has lots of channels but not ABC? I'm sure there's a reason, can't be a good one. 🏀
Because of the recent pushback against AI bots, I've added a help page to Micro.blog with details about how to block crawling of your blog.
The upcoming Zelda where you can play as Zelda looks fantastic. Love the design and approach to solving puzzles.
The New York Times: Biden gives legal protections to undocumented spouses. Biden’s administration has been effective and consequential. All he really needed to do was get us out of the pandemic, but there’s been a lot more. He deserves our vote. 🇺🇸
Last night in Newport. Another lighthouse, with the sunset at Castle Hill.
Rough Point. This view brought to you by a contribution from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
Working with the Threads API reminds me of how frustrating it was to work with Facebook's main app API years ago, and any silo API that requires manual approval like the App Store. The bureaucracy is at odds with Meta's claim of supporting the open web and fediverse.
Micro.blog cross-posting to Threads is a bit in limbo because I'm not even sure how to submit the app for review. But we can have 500 testers! Reply with your Threads username if you'd like to be added. I will process any requests later today and "Add Threads" will show up on Account → Edit Sources.
Forgot to mention if you're sending me your Threads username… You will have to go to your Threads account settings → Website Permissions to approve the tester invite for Micro.blog.
I tried this AI-based social network Butterflies and it’s as bizarre as you’d expect. It’s more like a game. I don’t see this kind of thing taking off in “real” social networks. Infinite content will just reinforce the infinite algorithmic feed, which is unhealthy enough already.
I don't travel as much as a bunch of people I know, but the combination of road trip and flight over the last couple of weeks has left me kind of unmoored with work. My brain is still catching up to the fact that we're 2/3 of the way through June already. Way behind in email.
If you sent me an @-mention yesterday about automatic Threads cross-posting, I've invited you on Threads and enabled the feature for your account in Micro.blog. Here's a quick video on YouTube about it. Don't forget to accept the invite too, under your Threads account → Settings → Website Permissions.
Randomly stumbled on an old clip of Steve Jobs, thanks (no thanks) to the Threads algorithmic timeline distracting me. There still hasn't been a tech leader in the last decade with his stage presence. One of a kind.
John Gruber blogs about how Trump personally measures up to the Ten Commandments that he apparently now supports showing everywhere. (Also can we add an 11th commandment to not post in all caps? Trump increasingly sounds deranged.)
Great collection from Michael Tsai of posts on a range of reactions to Apple blaming the DMA for delaying Apple Intelligence in Europe. I don’t feel too strongly about it, but we know Apple is frustrated with the regulation, could be slow-rolling it as a tactic.
On this week’s Core Int, we talk about the latest AI controversy including with Perplexity and how we think about robots.txt. Then Daniel gives an update on Swift Concurrency.
“I only came back to myself when I decided something: all emotions are just energy, just potential fuel for action. Everything I felt about what I saw—the guilt and the terror—wasn’t poison. It was power.” — from Blood Over Bright Haven 📚
Perplexity CEO addresses the recent questions about crawling, but I don't think his answers are going to satisfy anyone. He is partially correct, though, that there is confusion about crawling to train models vs. ad-hoc downloading web pages. New info is that they outsource some crawling, which seems bad if that's your core business. Seems fixable.
I really dislike the Mastodon setting to require HTTP signatures for everything. It makes basic features like just grabbing some JSON for an actor more difficult. The user's profile is on the public web anyway! We need apps that work natively with the web on its own terms, not more protocol layers.
Still no option for me to submit our Threads feature to Meta for review. Tried contacting developer support but that submission fails for unknown reasons. The issue seems to be that the Meta dev dashboard is not recognizing all the successful API calls we are already making.
Great post by Anil Dash on how the board of directors for an organization actually works. I learned a lot. The timing of this post could not be more perfect for me right now.
Finished reading: Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang. This was excellent. It must’ve been a challenging book to write, fascinating magic and ambitious take on society. Really something special. 📚
This article in The Washington Post about AI energy use has a lot in it, but still seems to paint an incomplete picture. Not a single mention of Apple? If Apple can roll out AI in millions of devices and still use 100% renewable for servers, should be within reach for others too.
Somehow on my recent trip I’ve gotten a scratch in the middle of my iPhone screen. I was already thinking about upgrading. Bad timing but this is going to drive me crazy over the next few months.
We saw the new Zilker Eagle today while going to Barton Springs. It looks really nice. Unfortunately it derailed on the switch while we were at the pool. No one was hurt because it goes extremely slow. 🚂
Decided to promote the "Edit Sources & Cross-posting" screen to its own link in the sidebar. It's called simply "Sources". This is a powerful part of Micro.blog and needs more visibility. (Using a feed icon, even if one day we might have other feed reader-related sidebar things.)
I was wondering when someone would bring up that the Internet Archive ignores robots.txt, and today's Stratechery is the first I've seen to raise that point. I view most debates through the lens of what is good for the open web. There's now so much of an anti-AI undercurrent, we risk over-correcting.
European Commission preliminary findings that the App Store is in breach of the DMA. Even if there's some compromise, this should lead to improved rules for developers. Still unresolved is whether the CTF is valid, and how much Apple is going to fight to keep it.
It's bizarre to see developers effectively siding with Apple over the DMA. The EU is trying to make things better for developers. We can nitpick whether the DMA is well-written, too broad, etc. But there are specific sections that address real problems with the App Store that Apple won't fix on their own.
