Numeric Citizen Blog

The usefulness of ChatGPT for me is as a replacement for using Google when I have to learn something new (eg an API). Formerly, I would have Googled, and then visited a bunch of results, and learnt a little on each page until I had built up an answer for myself. I see ChatGPT as a Google mashup. It …

My wish for the iPhone 15 Action Button: Let me change the Action Button based on what app I’m in. Camera? Click the shutter. Safari? Go to next tab or Reload. Also, let me assign functions to a double or triple-tap. Agree with this? Any other ideas? 💡🤔 #Apple #iPhone #ActionButton …

RABBIT HOLE: A growing collection of Steve Jobs anecdotes, enjoy... 🍿 https://allaboutstevejobs.com/verbatim/anecdotes #Apple #History #SteveJobs

It’s a special photo challenge for day 23: a day in the life. This is me testing my camera this morning before being interviewed by @numericcitizen.

iPhone 15 Pro Max — Natural Titanium. First impressions: • so much nicer to hold. weight, balance, and rounded edges are great improvements. • love the color. brushed finish is barely visible, which is great. the tint of the back glass could be a bit warmer. it's very neutral grey now. • the camera… …

The FineWoven case is the new iPod sock. #apple #finewoven #iphone15

How I Automatically Include a Blog Description in My RSS Feed

Timeline. 🙂 https://www.michalzelazny.com/timeline/

Over the weekend while I was working on my Letters from Europe page, I integrated footnotes using the Barefoot library. Completely forgot that @jsonbecker had already created a Bigfoot.js plug-in for Micro.blog. Anyway, now there are more plug-in options for footnotes! …

@mako Also, I think most people who use mind maps would be better off with outliners... Mind maps are overrated.

@manton enjoyed the interview, nice! 👏 I like People and Blogs for raising visibility on the value of blogging and publishing on the web. Good stuff!

Nice blog post from Allen Pike about link formatting. I’d add that overthinking SEO is a good way to lose your way. Design links for readers and the rest will take care of itself. allenpike.com

Threads, Twitter, & Social Photos

Has putting Apple silicon in the iPad set unrealistic expectations?

The iPad discussion is all about moving goal posts and hand wavy things. In other words, it’s about framing and context. But it’s also about fluff. Let’s start with the fluff. It’s kinda like cotton candy. Sweet and interesting at first but not a lot there when you really bite into it. A few days …

Apple Event - We hope to see you on September 12, 2023 at 10:00 a.m. PST https://www.apple.com/apple-events/ www.apple.com

Why Camera Makers Will Be Dead (Soonish)

And to follow up on this, there’s a little known policy for Micro.blog hosting: when you have a paid subscription, we continue to host your blog forever even after you cancel and stop paying. Good URLs don’t change and don’t go away, unless you want them to.

A Eulogy for Dark Sky, a Data Visualization Masterpiece

Apple-1 Ad Handwritten by Steve Jobs Sells for Over $175,000 https://www.macrumors.com/2023/08/25/apple-ad-steve-jobs-175k/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Apple iPhone Invite & Event Calendar 📱 — ✉️ Invites: - 83% of the time, invites go out on Tuesday or Thursday - Invites shared 7-14 days b/f event (Avg: 10 days, Mo: 7 days (33%)) 📱 Event: - 58% (7/12) of the time, event is held on a Tuesday

If you cheered when government overstepped and mandated third-party app store or USB-C chargers, you don’t get to be upset that they’re doing it again. This is what you wanted: a world where the government designs tech products and tells the tech companies how they’ll operate. Enjoy! …

Some blogging myths

Meteorologist Is Naming Heatwaves After Big Polluting Oil Companies

Security News This Week: US Energy Firm Targeted With Malicious QR Codes in Mass Phishing Attack wired.com

@gruber For today's thinkpiece, let's compare and contrast today's HP with that of its past… https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/the-printers-that-require-ink-to-scan-and-fax/

Lots of profit either means you didn’t pay your employees and contractors enough or that you charged customers way too much. I think about this every time a company announces record profits.

@numericcitizen Sounds interesting, count me in! By the way, for your highlighted text… I do think a lot about how Micro.blog can outlive me. Plans are underway.

Mastodon's Mastodon'ts jwz.org

@numericcitizen It is already possible, but you'll have to use the custom option. In fact, @heyloura already put together a version that adds the date/tags and cleans up the output a bit. You can see my adaptation as well (for now mine has in-line styles as I play with it, but that'll be removed). …

Added tags to bookmarks JSON Feed. Updated front matter with new parameter location with url, name, latitude, and longitude fields. The old location_latitude is still available but will be removed eventually.

Before Twitter, most social websites required either membership or mutual friendship to reply. Then Twitter popularized this idea that anyone should be able to speak directly to anyone. Here we are, 15 years later… and now almost every social site operates that way.

Seeing a few conversations about enabling the Replies page on Micro.blog made me want to dive in and optimize it a bit more for Tiny Theme. I added a link back to the full conversation (thanks to @jarrod for making that easy) in the replies feed view (example) and single post view (example). …

Why We Make Photographs davidenzel.com

Niemeyer. Asturias, July 2023 #aowsimages #photography #blackandwhitephotography #fineartphotography

Creating a Custom Branded File Sharing Service for Free

Here’s a small project I just completed. I’m using a free file sharing app with a free file sharing service with a free URL shortening service that has free custom domain support to enable simple file sharing with a custom branded interface. That’s a long sentence. Here’s an example. Update: I …

While seeking revenge, dig two graves - one for yourself. - *Douglas Horton

Apps promise to boost our “Second Brain” with AI, smart links, and tricks, but I think our “First Brain” should rely less on external tools, except for practical reasons. The “Second Brain” is better suited for storing information we don’t need to remember. Apps should assist us, not lead us. …

There has been some welcome talk here on micro.blog about practical actions people can take to reduce their contribution to climate change and our ongoing ecological disasters. There’s also, inevitably, been a lot of discussion about what “works,” whether it is wise to make demands on individuals …

Look at this photo of a solar flare from our sun that #NASA released last August. “Equal to millions of hydrogen bombs.” LOOK AT IT 😳 https://flic.kr/p/d5UHiu

If Facebook really loved the open web they’d hook Facebook itself up to it. Support RSS feeds in and out. Let users have rich text and links. I’ve been asking them to do that for over ten years, and sometimes it gets somewhere, there are people inside the company who believe in the open web, but …

I expect I'll wait to get active on Threads until micro.blog supports Threads cross-posting. Either that, or wait until Threads supports ActivityPub, and then I'll merge my Mastodon, Micro.blog and Threads activity, as I do now with Mastodon and Micro.blog.

Midnight Mac. 🌚 An AI-image inspired by the work of the American realist painter Edward Hopper.

“Everything moves slowly because it has to be compatible with the past, which means if the past was kind of clunky, part of the present is kind of clunky too.”

Apple on iPad, 2010: If you see a stylus, they blew it. Vision Pro, 2023: If you see a controller, they blew it.

I often wonder if the App Store had allowed paid upgrades from day one, whether we would still find ourselves in the same subscription-everything hellscape that we do now.

Seems unlikely that we’ll end up with a single unified social web platform. I like Mastodon’s focus on communities. I like Bluesky’s thinking on distributed moderation. I like the IndieWeb’s principles of ownership. I like Nostr’s private messaging. How will we tie all of this together? Blogs. …

The Difference Between Photomator and Pixelmator Pro

The Verge’s Lisa documentary premieres on May 30th! Check out the teaser… https://youtu.be/OFJxFAyT7p8 youtu.be

Wait what? Even millennials don’t like algorithms 

How Amazon put Ukraine's 'government in a box' — and saved its economy from Russia latimes.com

What's New in Photomator pixelmator.com

Apple announces the day they will introduce their unready, undesired, unappealing, unfocused, uneconomical product copiously discussed around the internet for days now. Finally.

"Cloud is the convenience store of enterprise computing. It makes its money by having lots of pre-packaged goods available at any time to whoever has a credit card..... Convenience always costs extra." https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/20/column/

Junk food, alcoholism, sedentary lifestyles, cars, drugs and guns: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/25/1164819944/live-free-and-die-the-sad-state-of-u-s-life-expectancy

🏳️‍🌈 Pride up in my fathers house. #iphoneography

Apparently unpopular opinion: I still love my iPad and my MacBook air. Both work great for their purposes, I can use them together with sidecar and universal control. They are individually and collectively better than when I first got them.

Jan 2017, Kellyanne Conway on politics: “alternative facts” Mar 2023, Microsoft on AI: “usefully wrong” https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/16/microsoft-justifies-ais-usefully-wrong-answers.html

"Elegance is not the abundance of simplicity. It is the absence of complexity."

SXSW Interactive started today. Seems an appropriate time to start a weblog, as if there weren’t enough in the world already. Welcome, and enjoy. ✴️ Also on Micro.blog

Billionaires are tumours. Capitalism is cancer.

Like everybody else, I was fascinated by AI art and prose. But I’m bored by it already. Why? Because it’s obviously not human. I like human things. Little quirks that make us laugh and cringe. That’s the beauty of life. AI is amazing, but it’s not human.

@crankreport @jean You can add your Mastodon account's RSS feed (your Mastodon user's URL + ".rss" at the end) under Account → Edit Feeds & Cross-posting in Micro.blog and it will bring your Mastodon posts into the timeline. However, I don't think that includes boosts.

☀️ Beautiful and sunny day over here today.

What's a lesser known blog/website you recommend, visit regularly? Here's one I visit daily: https://mjtsai.com/blog/ #Tech and #Apple coverage, often with updating rollups of hot topics, all maintained by @mjtsai. What's your lesser know site? 🤔

/2023/02/a-few-alternative-things-you-can-do-when-youre-bored-instead-of-scrolling-social-media/

@numericcitizen I'm going to start with CSV because I think Markdown won't be able to capture all the data in a way that would be useful for other apps. We can add more options later. This is live now! You should see an "Export" button on the full highlights page on the web.

/2023/02/27/writing-shouldnt-be-hard/

/technology/apple-pays-121-mln-fine-alleged-app-market-abuse-russia-antimonopoly-service-2023-02-27/ reuters.com

Micro.blog things I like: No ads No likes No brands No metrics No algorithms No influencers No follower count No suggested/sponsored posts Reverse chrono social timeline Bookshelves feature Simple, clean, UI Customizability Photos feature Friendly folks Blog hosting iPhone app …

Picked up a two pack of these Alpine Trail Loop Apple Watch bands on a recommendation from @aleck. Very very nice. Super soft, light and love the colors and styling. Going to try these for a while, especially while I get use to wearing the watch while sleeping. Two pack was only $15 USD on Amazon. …

Top 10 Tips for Developers Like #Google Who Create Their Own Silly Custom Share Sheet on iOS: 1. Don’t 2. Just don’t 3. Stop snooping into these (and most) aspects of user behavior 4. Give us the system share sheet back 5. Re-read steps 1-4 #iOS #ShareSheet #JustDont

Apple Store meets ‘vernacular’ architecture around the world. https://www.instagram.com/shael.ai/

Dingaling Elon Musk made the mistake of assuming that the platform itself was valuable, when it was only as valuable as its user base. The BRAND is valuable, but the platform is worthless.

Surveillance capitalism isn’t a corruption of capitalism. Surveillance capitalism is capitalism working as intended. Surveillance capitalism is capitalism. #surveillance #capitalism #surveillanceCapitalism #peopleFarming

When everything is ephemeral, there’s value in permanence.

Software development is a complete mess. I’m discouraged about the state of the art of my chosen field. Today we have an unimaginable pile of lousy code spread over so many apps and websites with so much duct tape and chicken wire holding things together that I fear we’ll never be free of the …

When I was a kid in the 1970s, there were so few computers, so few things were computerized as compared to today. It’s a great triumph that we now have enough computers for so many people and so many jobs. The problem is that software development has not kept up.

💫Start a Fucking Blog This is a fucking blog, and it’s wonderful. It’s perfect. It allows you to share your words, in your own voice, with no corporate fuckery to fuck it up for you.

Ok. Hello Mastodon. I’m a Qwitter. I guess. I have no clue about how this thing works. That was my first post on a Mastodon instance. Yeah. Picture is from me. Peace. Come say hi! Posted using @ivory. Not an ad.

My Twitter RSS feeds in Reeder just came alive, and I’m like, did Twitter make my account active again? Nope, someone else registered a new account using my old handle (first registered in March 2007). So now, it’s farewell to the bird site for sure.

The decline, reinvention, and further decline of malls represents all the many social and cultural changes that have happened rapidly over my lifetime. Here’s a fun look at where one mall was, is, and might be.

@robby Yes sir! This video walks through the whole process, and links to download everything I’d in the description. https://youtu.be/GqTyyQBi3hA

I’ve been thinking a lot about this reply from @Gte regarding VS Code on the Mac: “It isn’t a Mac-ish Mac app.” https:///@Gte/109547106796343462 I believe in a sad fact. There won’t be very many more truly wonderful Mac apps. By this I mean native apps made from scratch and crafted to …

Mastodon and RSS

@numericcitizen not Jamie, but I would think it does fall into not my domain not my words, yes.

It tooks years to build Twitter but only weeks to destroy it.

IndieWebify.Me - a guide to getting you on the IndieWeb

I dug out my ancient Inside Macintosh reference books from storage. Remember when Apple’s developer documentation came as paper books? Volumes I-III on the original Mac APIs, IV on Mac Plus, V on color Macs, and the truly massive volume VI on System 7. 📚 en.wikipedia.org …