Strange juxtaposition with the war in Iran happening at the same time as the controversy around Anthropic, OpenAI, and the Pentagon. OpenAI has a post with the details of their agreement, which also includes red lines on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons: "We think our agreement has more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic’s." I’m confused about how Anthropic’s proposed contract differs from the contract that OpenAI has shared. If the Pentagon offered the same agreement to Anthropic, would they accept it? Lots of questions. https://openai.com/index/our-agreement-with-the-department-of-war/

FediForum starts tomorrow and runs for a couple days. It’s an online conference for folks who want to discuss and build for the future of the social web, from Mastodon to Bluesky. There has been a lot of new developer activity over on the Bluesky side, so I’m curious if any of that will bubble up.

FediForum

FediForum

FediForum: moving the Open Social Web forward

For all the folks overseas, I’d like to do more for localization in Micro.blog. Not the main UI, but the parts that show up on your own blog, e.g. “Finished reading”, “Watched this movie”… I tried AI to dynamically translate a few things on the fly, but it’s a dead end. Maybe crowdsourced later.

Parker Ortolani blogs early praise for Meta’s Ray-Ban Display glasses. They are solving completely different problems than the Vision Pro: "At one point I was walking down the street, spotted a coffee shop across the way, and simply popped up the maps app on the glasses to see details."

My First 24 Hours with Meta's Incredible New Glasses & Muscle-Reading Wristband

Let’s just start out with this, Meta is onto something. After the first 24 hours with my very own pair of Meta Ray Ban Displays, I must say, that...

Really good Stratechery update this morning from Ben Thompson about Sora’s rise to #1 in the App Store. People are having fun with the app, but I don’t think creativity with prompts is the same as real photography and filmmaking. I’m also pessimistic about the effects of infinite scrollable content.

Sora, AI Bicycles, and Meta Disruption – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

Watched One Battle After Another. Even though I saw the trailer, didn’t actually know what it was about. Intense, excellent. 🍿

One Battle After Another (2025)

When their evil nemesis resurfaces after 16 years, a band of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue the daughter of one of their own.

Brent Simmons blogged about why NetNewsWire isn’t a web app, along the way making the case for Apple letting us use our devices as the computers that they are: "What I want to see happen is for Apple to allow iPhone and iPad users to load — not sideload, a term I detest, because it assumes Apple’s side of things — whatever apps they want to. Because those devices are computers."

inessential: Why NetNewsWire Is Not a Web App

Manu Moreale blogs about posting on social media as a performance: "By doing it publicly, you can be part of the mob of the day, find yourself in the company of like-minded individuals (that you likely don’t know and might as well hate you in real life), and have fun berating someone."

On public online behaviour – Manu

I’m currently in “digital fasting” mode, trying to consume as little content as possible here on the internet. But I do have to be here for w...

Our attention

Manton Reece - Our attention

I think we need to do something fun, so I’m swapping the order of new features rolling out this week. First, movies search and easy blogging about movies. Second, new video hosting plan. 🍿

Nice walk with the dog today. Also digging in the yard and thinking. Here’s my new rule for when online discussions get heated: let’s pay attention to who are the firefighters and who are the arsonists.

Got so derailed yesterday that I had to stop working on a feature in the middle of a change before I had even committed it. This pushes back the new video hosting support a day or two, but still should be able to launch it next week. Just working through some HDR issues.

That reply I mentioned wanting to delete last night didn’t seem to get synced everywhere. Oh well, I’ll let it stand. If anyone was following along, know that I’m wrong sometimes but I never lie. I try to assume the best in people and sometimes get burned, but thankfully very rarely.

Laughed a little when I saw this sign yesterday. I’ve been taking this elevator a bunch over the last week and it always shakes and rattles like maybe you’re lucky when it successfully makes it back to the first floor. Came back at night and it seems fixed. 🤞

Lost my cool today and sent a reply I shouldn’t have. I’m deleting it, which is very unusual for me. I never delete posts! Ironically it was just hours after I blogged that we’re all human and make occasional mistakes.

Manton Reece - Apparently there was some drama on Blues...

I wasn’t going to announce this until later, but today feels right… Earlier this week, I hired someone to fill the role of community manager at Micro.blog. I’ll be officially welcoming her in a couple weeks. Thanks everyone for your patience while we figured this out!

I’m exhausted of the attacks. After a nice morning with friends, I had to rush back to my mom’s bedside at rehab to hold her hand, talking to the doctor, all while people online were again questioning my integrity. I’ve said this before: you don’t know what people are going through. Give them space.

Lake Austin from Mozart’s. ☕️

Paul Kafasis with a single-sentence blog post that says everything about Apple removing ICEBlock from the App Store: "Gosh, it’s almost like Apple serving as the exclusive gatekeeper for what software can be installed on the iPhone (and iPad, and Apple TV, and Apple Watch, and Vision Pro) is a bad thing that creates a single point of failure which can be abused by increasingly authoritarian governments."

ICEBlock Blocked

Tell me again how a lack of sideloading is making me safer?

Really liking The Life of a Showgirl so far. Not through the whole album yet, but it starts great. 🎶