-
In today’s world, with LLM, Claude Code, etc., is Apple’s Swift Playground still relevant, even for younger aspiring coders? A few years ago, it seems we were hearing much more about it than today.
-
Apparently, people are barely using Stack Overflow to ask questions, thanks to LLMs and AI. I expect a similar trend among people in a community like this one on Micro.blog. Some questions would be super easy to answer by asking ChatGPT or the like. I do understand that many people still want this human touch, though.
-
On Tahoe Icons
Just finished reading “It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons”, which many UI design pundits and non-UI experts, as well as simple, passionate Mac users, have been referring to a lot recently. I appreciate the documentation effort. It’s really well done. Very convincing. But… Designers age and are gradually replaced by a younger generation. Whether you like it or not, they bring new beliefs (justified or not), design principles (better or not), and values (questionable or not). Continue reading →
-
“Start a blog. Start one because the practice of writing at length, for an audience you respect, about things that matter to you, is itself valuable. Start one because owning your own platform is a form of independence that becomes more important as centralized platforms become less trustworthy. Start one because the format shapes the thought, and this format is good for thinking.” - JA Westenberg in The Case for Blogging in the Ruins
Beyond feeling independent, having a blog helps active thinking.
-
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”
There you go. That’s the real reason for the invasion, just like Iraq. WMD? Drugs? These are just excuses to get the oil. Only a month ago, the POTUS pardoned the former President of Honduras for trafficking cocaine into the US. As usual, the lies are blatant.
The more it changes…
-
I got a lot of positive reactions about my Micro.blog front end for writing and publishing posts in a simplified user experience. I wasn’t expecting that. To me, it might mean that it’s filling a small void in Micro.blog offerings. Thankfully, Micro.blog is an open “platform” which allows such experiments like mine.
Some people asked me to make my app open source. I’m hesitant. I don’t want to feel the pressure of having to support others in using my work but who would like to add their own touches. I think, for now, I’ll respectfully decline. I would rather encourage anyone to follow the same route that I did and experiment with the tooling. 👾
-
Consuming AI Can Be Expensive
While experimenting with n8n and LLM services, I realize that using artificial intelligence can become a very costly hobby. The fact that the consumption of these services relies on two separate offerings — the subscription to the interactive service and on-demand billing for APIs — requires careful management and wise choices of providers. Currently, I use ChatGPT and Claude AI in interactive mode, but I also need a provider to access AI via APIs. Continue reading →
-
The year 2025 according to ChatGPT newest image generation tool — a concise snapshot of where AI actually stands in 2025. That is all. 🤣
-
Learning in the Age of AI
-
Saved 50 Minutes
Realmac Software shared their latest dev talk video. The video title mentions conversations about future plans for Elements. I was curious because I want to know where they are going with the CMS and RSS. I headed to YouTube and asked AI the following question: did they mention CMS? In a few seconds, I got my answer: yes, and they also talked about better support for RSS, which is something I’ve been waiting for. Continue reading →
-
Rant on. I’m judging on facts and acts, not with what someone says. Some people might defend web openness et al, but sharing on x.com in 2025 because it’s the place most people go is not an act of openness. It’s an act of contribution toward fascism. Stop pretending, people, don’t be lazy, stop taking shortcuts and leave x.com once and for all. Rant off.
-
Think Different
I understand the enthusiasm for AI among certain groups of workers, especially in the field of information technology and more specifically software development. However, I believe that caution is necessary for most other categories of employment. Enthusiasm cannot simply be transferred systematically and literally to every domain, whether technological or not. Contexts differ greatly, professions are highly diverse, and even small variations in requirements can reduce the applicability of AI to nearly zero. Continue reading →
-
I don’t like the idea that a service like ChatGPT tries to present itself as a friend, an agent, or a human. With instructions, I can ask it to avoid this type of behavior. But I like the service’s appearance to be warm. Perhaps that’s why I prefer Anthropic’s Claude. Claude, even though it’s a proper name, presents itself better; its visual style seems friendlier to me. I feel like this is a contradiction.
I asked Claude about this possible contradiction. Here’s what he responded:
“I don’t think it’s actually a contradiction. You’re distinguishing between two different things: false intimacy (an AI pretending to be your friend or a person) versus pleasant design (a warm, welcoming aesthetic and tone). Wanting the latter without the former is perfectly coherent—it’s the difference between a tool that’s agreeable to use and a tool that’s trying to deceive you about its nature.”
Thanks, Claude.
-
Algorithms, Platforms, and the Personal Web Space
The piece) from Disassociated about being “freed from personal websites” thanks to algorithms and timelines really resonated with me. I’ve long believed that platforms are killing the web; they are not the web. I recently asked my son if he had ever considered having his own personal website—a blog, having a place outside the usual platforms. His immediate response was, “But what about discoverability?” Why I think that everything comes down to that: It’s always about beating the algorithms (hello SEO) so that we are “discovered”. Continue reading →
-
Three Years Already
Three years of ChatGPT. Time flies. A few thoughts on that are mandatory it seems. ChatGPT certainly turned things upside down not only for me as a writer but for many creators. The entire software industry also was turned things even more upside down. It’s hard to imagine what would have been software roadmaps or new features pipelines without generative AI. See? We almost forgot about what it was like before ChatGPT. Continue reading →
-
The problem is that I have too many ideas, there is too many things that I’d like to work on, there is not enough time.
-
I’m so proud of us Canadians 🇨🇦 who avoided the US for vacations creating a four billion dollar deficit in tourism this year. I hope this will continue as long as the US is acting like an enemy. Power to the people who dare to defy stupidity and autocracy.
-
Building a 'Relationship' With Corporations
I tend to be super loyal. I’ve been an Apple fan forever (read “The Roots of my Passion for Apple”), even though there are things that put me off (too many to list here). The same is slowly happening with OpenAI. I’ve tested alternative services but always come back to OpenAI’s offerings. They’re far from perfect—just like Apple—both from a corporate point of view and in terms of products and services. Continue reading →
-
John Gruber is asking:
But even if Apple is correct about that, at some point, after being handed loss after loss in rulings from courts and regulatory bodies around the globe, shouldn’t they change their strategy and start trying to offer their own concessions, rather than wait for bureaucrat-designed concessions to be forced upon them?
I’m glad he is asking this question. If Gruber is fed up with this attitude, I guess it’s time to think differently, Apple.
-
I’m reading some pushback against ChatGPT Atlas — or, more generally, against browsers that aren’t really web browsers but skins on top of Chromium that enable user behaviour and data collection in novel ways. I’m not sure how I feel about these opinions. For now, the way I’m using ChatGPT Atlas is like ChatGPT client. I don’t use agents. I never will. It’s mostly about content summarization and analysis.
