/reader

While I was feeling terrible in bed yesterday, I couldn't even sleep, my mind kept drifting to various online drama. I sometimes have a hard time shaking off old problems. But I'm feeling good this morning, ready to get some work done. ☕️

Finished reading: Relics of Ruin by Erin M. Evans. A great second book. Same feel of a mystery as the first book, lots of layers. 📚

World of Frozen opening in Disneyland Paris in March. Really impressed with the new robotic Olaf. ☃️

I like this quote from Jony Ive in the conversation:

There's not a lot of humor in the products that are being designed and made, particularly in this area. I really sense very clearly there is a huge desire for us not to take ourselves quite so seriously, even though these are serious times.

Got my Covid vaccine yesterday and it floored me. Does the dosage need to be adjusted considering that Covid seems generally (not for everyone!) less severe than it used to be? I just want to stay in bed all morning. Watching this new video with Laurene Powell Jobs, Jony Ive, and Sam Altman.

Crazy comeback win from the Cowboys. When they couldn’t score at the 1 yard line, down 21 points, I would not have predicted this, and in fact turned it off for a while. Gotta play the whole game. 🏈

Thanks @numericcitizen for the new video about what’s new in Micro.blog! You can watch it on YouTube here and it should be available hosted directly on Micro.blog later too.

Watched: Wicked: For Good. In the first hour I almost started to doubt, thinking maybe it needed another pass at editing, but they won me over with No Good Deed. Cynthia Erivo is fantastic. 🍿

Updated my state parks page. 27 down, a whole bunch to go. Glad to resume this challenge after several months that were too busy and too hot. 🏕️

Went camping last night, then home early but a late start getting coffee. Drove by three coffee shops before finding one that wasn't completely overrun with people. Don't all these happy people enjoying coffee outside and talking with friends know that I'd like to sit here by myself and work? 🤪

Inks Lake State Park.

One mistake I made building the bed platform for my car is these flimsy little brackets. They ended up bending enough over months that they broke in half. Worked on fixing this today.

A thoughtful post today from Laurens Hof in the Fediverse Report about Mastodon’s new CEO and the project’s sustainability. It’ll be interesting to look back a year from now on whether there are visible changes. Hope in the meantime that Eugen Rochko gets some rest and a vacation or two.

We released Epilogue 2.1 for iOS and Android today. Now with easy blogging for movies. Here's a short video to show the new interface.

So happy with how well the new video hosting with Micro.blog Studio is going. I used to fumble around with video file sizes or just give up and use YouTube. Now I can post everything to my blog.

Android app review submissions have been going through very quickly. Nice work by Google. Even when Apple’s reviews are 1-2 days, I wish they were hours.

Raining finally. The new tree is getting a much-needed soak. I decided a few days ago to go camping tomorrow... Looks like it might clear up at least for a day. 🌧️

I wonder if this proposed Algorithm Accountability Act has the right idea. Instead of wiping away Section 230, we could chip away at very specific aspects of it. I feel like this could have broad support.

Some folks are addicted to refreshing social media all day. Not me, but I have noticed that I'm now sort of addicted to asking AI dumb questions and getting random ideas for how to implement things whenever I'm bored. If this was a human assistant, they would be annoyed with my endless questions.

In today's Stratechery interview they talk about the potential revenue that OpenAI lost by not having any ads in ChatGPT for the last three years. But there would've been a cost to having ads too! The product would've been slightly worse.

Experimenting with a new Movies tab in our mobile app Epilogue. Feels a little weird... The app is for books. But also, I think it works here better than in the main app. I'm going to finish implementing it and use it and then decide for sure.

Jensen Huang on the Nvidia earnings call:

There has been a lot of talk about an AI bubble. From our vantage point, we see something very different.

I guess he would know, but this growth doesn’t seem sustainable to me. We’re not going to keep building data centers at the current pace.

Finally worked through some Epilogue for Android issues. Submitted to Google for review! 🤞

Bluesky is expanding their moderation tools and the granularity of reporting. Sounds like good changes:

Not every violation leads to immediate account suspension - this approach prioritizes user education and gradual enforcement for lower-risk violations. But repeated violations escalate consequences, ensuring patterns of harmful behavior face appropriate accountability.

Congrats to Gus Mueller on Acorn's recognition as a finalist in the App Store Awards! I use Acorn pretty much every day, sometimes for design or mockups, and sometimes just as a scratchpad of screenshots and other graphics that need a quick crop or edit before uploading to my blog.

Love the covers on these special TikTok editions of a few of Brandon Sanderson's books. Might've ordered a set for gifts. And I'll keep The Emperor's Soul, which I don't have in print. 📚

After a rocky bit early in the year, I feel that Micro.blog is in a really good place right now. New users are joining and the features are the best they've ever been. So now I'm nervous that something else is about to go wrong. 🤪

This report from Matthew Prince about Cloudflare's outage yesterday shows the mind-boggling scale of their network. The graph has 25 million HTTP 500 errors per second.

New trailer for Project Hail Mary! This is going to be great. I’m going to try to re-read the book before the movie comes out.

Love this blog post from Ton Zijlstra about discovering a train ticket in an old book:

While the book is in excellent condition, not at all ‘well traveled’, it does make me wonder about its path through the world. From that 1991 train trip up the valley towards the St. Gotthard massif, to a bookshop in Galway, Ireland. And now to my bookshelves.

In 1999 when my wife and I were traveling in Europe, I left a book in a hostel in Italy. I wrote a note in it for the next reader. I still wonder where that book ended up.