Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
I’ve started rolling out an AT Protocol PDS — personal data server — for new Micro.blog users. In the Bluesky world, a PDS is what stores your posts, follows, photos, and other data from apps. In the same way that creating an account on Micro.blog automatically gives you a fediverse handle, I wanted people to be able to create a Micro.blog account and have everything they needed to sign into Bluesky.
This is extremely cool. Manton continues to add support to Micro.blog for as many open protocols as is possible. He has support for plain old static HTML pages, RSS, JSON Feed, cross posting to other services like Mastodon, Micropub, Webmention, Microsub, IndieAuth, Standard Site, and now AT Protocol PDS.
It’s an incredible publishing platform — I use it for my blog — and it’s super inexpensive at $5.00US per month.
MarsEdit 5.4.5 is now available on the MarsEdit site and on the Mac App Store.
This update is focused on performance and polish, with particular improvements to the speed of syntax highlighting and live preview updates. It also includes fixes for several issues that caused changes in the options panel not to be persisted when publishing a post. Finally, there are a good number of smaller fixes throughout the app:
This is my blogging tool of choice. Well, MarsEdit + Tot. 😀 MarsEdit works with a number of different blogging platforms so you can write and publish from one spot to multiple different places.
I use it for publishing to this site and for my Hayseed Blog, which is on WordPress. It also supports WordPress, Tumblr, Movable Type, and any blogging platform that supports XMLRPC, like Micro.blog.
It’s also very stable.
Congratulations on the new release, Daniel. 🥳
Apparently I write like a machine.
I’m 71.
That’s not an excuse.
It’s the explanation.
The Grumpy Welshman is a great writer so make sure you read his stuff. I linked to this piece after my brother experienced the same thing. He ran some of his writing through ChatGPT and it told him it was written by an AI. No, it wasn’t. It was written by Jerry Fahrni. He dumbed his writing down to appease the LLM.
Never, ever, do that. I’d suggest telling your readers you wrote it, not a pachinko machine.
The story Musk tells himself about himself clearly includes the idea he is funny and epic. This is a problem for him, because he is, speaking objectively, a grotesque and discomfiting figure with the ghastly pale dead-eyed face of a frozen mackerel, the sense of humor of a badly-socialized pre-teen who enjoys setting frogs on fire, and a nose-snickering stammering delivery that makes milk curdle, babies cry, and causes nearby songbirds to lay eggs filled with spiders.
Space Karen. What more can be said about the billionaire baby? He fails, a lot, and has been give far too much praise for the success of others. He’s diabolical and doesn’t care about the human race. He just wants to get to Mars and use the letter X as often as he can.
Meta was paying out-and-out neo-Nazis to post on Facebook, an investigation from Australia’s ABC News found.
These pages and individual creators posted content that appeared to be in clear violation of Facebook’s own hate speech policies. Nonetheless, they were able to earn money on their posts through the platform’s “Content Monetization” program — which is invitation-only.
Garbage company. Garbage CEO.
Windows 11’s built-in Weather app is basically MSN adware wearing a forecast icon, and it uses about five times the RAM of macOS native Weather, all while showing ads on an OS you already paid for.
I wrote a bit about this the other day. I hope Microsoft really digs in, defines a new UI — no glass, please — and delivers a fast, stable, set of world class native applications that fully embrace a well defined set of standards. It was that way all the way back to Windows 1.0 and, for some reason, drifted as newer and newer versions of the OS shipped.
It’s now kind of a mess with critical bits of the operating system UI written in Electron. Such a strange choice.
Oh, and please, for the love of Pete, abandon that horrible ribbon UI. It’s absolutely terrible and junks up the UI.
Side note. When I stopped using Windows in 2006 I don’t believe the ribbon was a thing.
Wow, I’ve been using a Mac for 20+ years now. That’s crazy. 😳
But the thing I do remember was the first time I came across Derek Powazek’s Fray online magazine. It was the first time I had seen a website look beautiful. This was without CSS and without Javascript. I still remember quite clearly an “issue” of Fray that used frames to create some kind of “doors” you could slide open to reveal an article inside.
Wow, Derek Powazek. He’s still around but now he’s a farmer. I’m a fan of their Orange Spice Roller. I use it on my knee, ankles, whatever aches. 😀
Jeff Johnson • Lapcat Software
Ten years and one day ago, on August 9, 2016, I abruptly quit my job. I mark this occasion as the beginning of my indie software developer career. Happy anniversary to me and to my customers!
I remember when Jeff went Indie and the struggles he went trough. It wasn’t pretty to watch from the outside and I can’t imagine what he was feeling on the inside. But, in the end, things seem to have worked out of him, which is a relief.
I’m happy for you Jeff!
When two cinematic legends cross paths, great things can happen. So, one might think that Tom Cruise starring in a movie from the venerated director Ridley Scott would be a recipe for success. Except, that’s not exactly how things played out when the two collaborated on the 1985 fantasy movie “Legend.” Though the film would eventually find more love, it was a box office flop during its initial theatrical run.
I liked Legend. I saw it in theaters and was taken with Tim Curry’s Darkness. It’s 100% the best portrayal of what we think of as the Devil in a traditional sense. Red skin, horns, and hooves.
He was kind of scary looking. And Tim Curry’s twisted mouth delivery of his lines was perfect.
I want to connect RSS to AT Proto, both ways, inbound and out. Toward that end, today I helped Leaflet, a very nice editor for AT Proto, make their outbound RSS feed better. We should have all our best editors, everywhere, hooked up over popular web standards. And I want my posts to show up not only in Bluesky but also in standard.site. I was able to do that with micro.blog which is the swiss army knife of interop in the web of the 2020’s.
High praise from Dave for Manton Reece, Micro.blog founder. As I said earlier, Micro.blog is a fine example of the open web.
Blaney rolled out a new helmet this weekend that features various pictures from Busch’s career and different color elements to match paint schemes from Busch’s legendary career. It was shown for the first time during the USA Sports qualifying broadcast on Saturday.
I didn’t find time to watch the race live or recorded but it’s nice to see NASCAR continue to celebrate the life of Kyle Busch.
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t really have a favorite racer, but I often times pulled for Kyle Busch to win, as well as Kyle Larson. I wanted to see him get to 70 wins and retire. That would’ve been incredible.
The Kyle Busch Bow is legendary.
This weekend Ty Gibbs will be sporting a beautiful M&M’s livery on his 54. If you zoom in you can see a collage of his victories. A beautiful tribute. It’s too bad he didn’t run the 18 — Kyle’s old JGR number — on the side. I’d imagine that has issues of its own to deal with.
On the morning of April 17, 2025, Phoenix Ikner was using ChatGPT to prepare. Over nearly three hours, the Florida State University student asked OpenAI’s popular chatbot eight questions about firearms and 11 others about mass shootings—including how the media and public would react to a potential attack at FSU.
ChatGPT responded in detail each time and encouraged Ikner to keep chatting. When he uploaded images of shotgun shells and a Glock pistol, it confirmed the shells were “extremely lethal at close range” and said his Glock would be “quick to use under stress.”
Folks who are already unstable do not need a chat bot encouraging them to do harm to others.
Is the AI race really worth all the damage its done? No, not really. Especially when you look at, not only this tragedy, but the environmental damage it’s doing to an already fragile planet.
Spotify is terrifying much of the podcast industry with a tiny little widget.
Last week, the audio streaming giant tweaked its streaming interface, adding a feature that allows some users to more effectively skip through the parts of a podcast no one wants — notably ads, as well as promotions and filler content — as long as they aren’t sold directly by Spotify. Spotify cast the move as streamlining a feature that already exists, the 15-second skip button, which users in practice often use to bypass ads.
The best podcasts I listen to support chapters in their audio files so I can pick and choose what to listen to and what to skip. Some even include the ad reads as a chapter, so you can skip them. Sure, you get a little bit of the read in the next chapter, the important part that tells you where to get the deal and what code to use, but that’s it.
Hey, I use the skip ahead button a lot in Castro, even for podcasts that don’t provide chapters.
Is this really a way to kill off podcasts? I don’t think so. Remember, it’s not a podcast if it doesn’t have a feed. Platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts lock up your podcast behind a wall. It’s your content. If folks want to hear it they’ll find a way to locate it outside of Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Yes, I know, I know, distribution and visibility are why you use the platform. Find a way around it. Form your own distribution networks. Use the open web to your benefit. Podcasting is open. It doesn’t require a specific platform.
I’ve heard Scott Galloway on Pivot go on about how Podcasting is better than traditional media. He’s right to a point. Podcasts can very easily be recorded and produced by a single person in their bedroom. They do not require a team to get out the door. Just like the don’t require a specific platform to be successful. It just means that the podcasters may have to work harder to get attention. That’s just an open market, right? Sure, you’ll have some attrition but the podcasts people find and love will survive and thrive.
Now, if only I could figure out how to make my software survive and thrive, that would be quite an accomplishment. 😁
What started out as a personal email project has become a large-scale effort to warn businesses and other groups that they have misconfigured their internal systems and are accidentally sharing sensitive information. Solovewicz, who presented his work at the Defcon security conference yesterday, says ultimately he is relieved that he ended up with the domains rather than criminal hackers or nation states who could use the data maliciously.
“I did not realize that this was going to be as big of a problem as it is,” says Solovewicz, who is not publicly naming impacted entities. The researcher has been alerting affected companies of their problems, encouraging them to fix the errors and misconfigurations. “I just want companies and organizations to do the right thing and to be auditing their systems and fixing their stuff.”
Wow. This is crazy but also very cool. At least Mr. Solovewicz is not a scum bag criminal doing odious things with the data.
We’re all very lucky he’s the one with the domain names. 🍀
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed. Barely a quarter favor these projects, with 7% strongly in favor.
This doesn’t surprise me given all the negative attention AI data centers, in particular, have received over the past couple years. When you have scumbags like Musk and Zuckerberg building fast and loose they’re bound to cut corners and ignore environmental regulations.
They should know better. Go beyond what’s required. Be a model for how to build data centers. Make them environmentally friendly. Solve the water problem and supply your own power. Heck, make your neighbors love you by making your data centers silent, no light pollution, no water pollution, and add electricity back to the grid for their sake.
Be a real neighbor, not a taker.
