Reviewing some of the W3C policies, kind of interesting who can be part of a working group. Small companies can be members for $2k/year. Invited experts can also participate, but:
Invited Expert status is not normally granted to individuals employed by organizations which have significant business interest in results from W3C.
If they’re too strict about this, which I think is unlikely, it might create a hole where very small companies don't have a clear place.
A long story in The Hollywood Reporter about George R.R. Martin and all the work he is juggling. The problem with a book taking so long — I know this firsthand — is that the author’s expectations keep going up, as if it needs to be even more perfect. But it never will be. Maybe best to just ship it.
There's never been a better time to learn a little about nearly everything in web technology. 2026 will be a year for generalists and new tools that span platforms. And yet I see folks on the fediverse who have strong opinions about Bluesky without really understanding why it exists or how it works.
We officially have a new W3C working group to advance ActivityPub and related specifications (including IndieWeb standards). There has been a lot of work in the years since the last specs were updated, so it'll be good to see conventions formalized.
I’ve been watching some of the CNN live coverage from Minneapolis. Looks precarious. Sad and worried for a city that has already gone through so much.
Stay safe everyone.
Two co-founders of Thinking Machines are going back to OpenAI. Last July, a co-founder of Safe Superintelligence left for Meta.
Building a business is hard, even with funding. The near implosion of OpenAI and the board shakeup that led to these companies’ founding now feels like ancient history.
Reading this post on Daring Fireball today about the explosive growth of the iPhone made me curious what I had blogged about the launch. We tend to slightly reframe history when looking back, so older posts are a snapshot of how things really felt. My post in 2007 also collected some tweets.
Really unique design for Honda’s prototype camper trailer. I like it. There’s some video and commentary here on YouTube.
David Pierce writes that all the AI pieces are falling into place for Google:
Three years after being caught off guard by ChatGPT, Gemini appears to have everything it needs to take down OpenAI and everyone else.
And:
It announced an opt-in feature called “Personal Intelligence,” which connects Gemini to the vast ocean of information Google has about you in order to give you better responses.
I don’t think Gemini will ever reach the level of market share that Google search had. There’s still a lot of room for a few successful companies.
There's a major Verizon outage, still impacting us here in Austin. My phone is currently on SOS. I don't think I've ever seen something on this scale before... Despite how much we gripe about cellular service, it's actually very reliable.
To maintain Apple’s privacy pledge, the Gemini-based AI will run directly on Apple devices or its private cloud system, which is powered by Apple’s own server chips, rather than running on Google’s servers. Google put significant engineering effort into getting a version of Gemini working on Apple’s servers, according to a person familiar with the partnership talks.
No small thing for Apple to scale this up on their own. We'll see small improvements in iOS 26.4, with the biggest changes in the fall.
John Gruber commenting on Meta's plans to sell more glasses:
20 million units is a real number. But building the capacity for 20 million units isn’t the same as selling 20 million units, and, to my knowledge, actual sales of Meta Glasses are only Bezos Numbers.
In NYC last week, I walked by the Meta Lab store. There was a 30-minute wait to try Ray-Ban Display glasses. I don't want to actually buy them, so I didn't waste everyone's time by taking up a slot. The store had real people in it, though. (Not Apple Store level crowdedness, of course.)
Caught myself writing a blog post to complain about someone else's blog platform and API. Deleted the draft. There is plenty of complaining to go around already. "Everything is amazing and nobody is happy."
Running database migrations! 🤞 Deploying a bunch of new things this week.
Continuing to experiment with video. Here's a short one from this morning, working at Lazarus while it was raining.
When I switched to the iPhone Pro Max, I gave up my iPad Mini, thinking the larger iPhone is good enough most of the time, and I’ve got the Kindle for reading. With AI-assisted coding, maybe the iPad has a new role… Jotting down ideas or firing off coding tasks to run from anywhere without a Mac.
Sometimes there really are larger features that take time to get right, though. I've been working on a new thing that I teased in a screenshot a few weeks ago. It's complicated enough that I don't think I could build it all at once, so instead I iterate in small chunks over weeks or months.
I thought it would be interesting to share all the commits so far, about 75 messages. They illustrate the sort of meandering flow that a feature sometimes takes as I work out exactly what to build.
Still more testing to do, then I'll write up a formal announcement with details about what it is and why.
Another Micro.blog tool from @timapple, this one is for blogging from the command line. The year of micro apps.
Pretty significant bundle of apps in Apple Creator Studio. I've been using an old license of Final Cut Pro to edit my short videos recently, even though it's overkill. Probably will keep doing that for now, don't really need a new subscription.
OpenAI acquires health startup Torch:
We started Torch to build a medical memory for AI, unifying scattered records into a context engine that helps you see the full picture, connect the dots, and make sure nothing important gets lost in the noise again.
This is pretty much exactly what I was blogging about last week.
Also just announced: Claude for Healthcare.
Southwest is still my preferred airline but the new changes do hurt the experience. Paying for checked bags encourages people to stuff more bags overhead where they don’t fit. Paying for assigned seats ruins the checkout flow with upsells.
Something feels off about this Apple and Google statement on Siri and Gemini. I’m left with more questions than I started with, particularly around this Gemini “cloud technology” mentioned in the statement.
It does not matter if AI companies will not be able to get their money back and the stock market will crash. All that is irrelevant, in the long run. It does not matter if this or the other CEO of some unicorn is telling you something that is off putting, or absurd. Programming changed forever, anyway.
I've blogged a lot about AI. Part of it reminds me of this particular post from June last year. I can't believe it was less than a year ago... Feels like two years ago, so much has happened.
I'm glad this blog post from Norbert Heger is getting so much attention. I thought I was losing my mind trying to resize macOS Tahoe windows. Even keeping the rounded window corners, Apple should be able to fix this now that it's so perfectly illustrated.
You can subscribe to get an email each Monday of all my blog posts from the previous week. Even if no one subscribed, I’d keep this enabled because it’s nice to skim through and reflect on the last week. What was I focused on? What’s next? I’m usually surprised how many posts or photos there were.
The Internet Archive has more about the legacy of Stewart Cheifet and the digitization of his shows. Rest in peace. Glad to see such a long-running effort to archive his work.
Ben Thompson with a critique of the first live NBA game on Vision Pro:
Here’s the thing that you don’t seem to get, Apple: the entire reason why the Vision Pro is compelling is because it is not a 2D screen in my living room; it’s an immersive experience I wear on my head. That means that all of the lessons of TV sports production are immaterial.
Apple is overthinking it. People just want more content. One camera at every game instead of multiple cameras at only a handful of games. Worse is better.
I’m reading Station Eleven, finished a chapter and then checked the internet, my mind still halfway in the book. For a moment I wasn’t sure if I’d see people online talking about ICE, the federal reserve, or a new pandemic. Reality now as unsettling as fiction, and it all blurred together.
Matt Birchler on AI-assisted bespoke apps:
I'm calling it now: if 2025 was the year of "vibe coding," 2026 is going to be the year of "micro apps." It's the year a meaningful number of people begin to solve their own problems by building custom software tailored specifically to their needs.
Dan Moren makes a great point at Six Colors about the ongoing Grok is still in the App Store controversy:
It is absolutely unconscionable that, as of this writing, X is not only still on the App Store but is ranked #1 in “News” and that Grok is the #3 free app.
With trending lists, the platform owner cedes discovery to an algorithm. If Apple and Google aren't ready to ban Twitter / X, the very least they could do is stop recommending the app to new users through these lists.
Finished reading: Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb. Starts slow, took about a third in until I really got into it. Fantastic. 📚
