Food for thought

Thought of the day for me: Apple Intelligence will take off with ChatGPT integration at the operating system level, in iOS 18.2 or later. Why? Become most people won’t see the difference and associate ChatGPT answers to Apple Intelligence / Siri¹. Of course, it will depend on the way this integration is presented to the user.

WTF? 😳 A “social” network with AI-based-only followers? Really? Are we that desperate?

I have a love & hate relationship with the US as a country. Going to Las Vegas today for a four-day business trip falls in the “hate” part because I think we cannot have those Las Vegas cities any longer. This city is everything but real. I hate to see our resources spoiled like that.

This is the default option for user profiles on... **LinkedIn**. Did you know that? Thoughts?

Back in May, 2023, Gruber on Bluesky. ​

John Gruber @gruber@mastodon.social

Bluesky is going to skyrocket to mainstream popularity and actually replace Twitter, and Mastodon cannot, because Bluesky is being designed to be simple, fun, and — most importantly — easy to understand.

5:18 AM • May 5, 2023 (UTC)

Are we there, yet?​

When things go wrong at work, when numbers don’t add up to meet high sales expectations, only then people starts to question things. It’s only in these harder days that we can really start to find new ways, reimagine how we do business. Those hard times are sometimes necessary for a company to evolve.

Looking at you Apple¹.

Forbidden Fruit

Apple was a better company when they were an underdog.

Me too, but are we being a bit nostalic here?

@mcelhearn @davemark Related:

"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” - Ursula K. LeGuin

I still believe in this. We can (and should) make Apple change course.

Thought of the day: Watch out democrats, Trump and Vance aren’t just weirdos. They are disfigured fascists.

Is today’s world (AI models training, security, etc.), I wonder if site owners are well equipped with robots.txt as the only way to control who’s in and who’s out when it comes to deciding free and massive content consumption on their site.

Today I made a template. Who knows, it might be useful to some big company.

“We will release {insert product or service name here} over the coming months, but not in the EU due to the unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment,” {insert company name here} said in a statement to {Insert news agency name here}.

You are welcome.

Today’s CrowdStrike update is probably the most expensive update of all time in IT history. Will we really learn from it? Some big players probably will but in general, I doubt it. #crowdstrike

Apparently, a social network like X does not promote posts containing links to external websites. While this policy may be frustrating¹, there are possible responses to this practice to consider. If someone shares a post with a link to X, you could choose not to open the link². Encouraging others to adopt a similar stance can be an effective way to voice your opinion and influence the platform’s practices through your engagement, or lack thereof.³

You can’t make that shit up, right? WTF is wrong with them? 🫣🤮 sorry about this negative post right after a positive one. 🙃

Taboola + Apple News? No thanks

Apple’s decision to strike a deal with Taboola is shocking and off-brand — so much so that I have started to question the company’s long-term commitment to good customer experience, including its commitment to privacy. As it chases more and more revenue to appease Wall Street, it’s clear Apple will become one of those companies that prioritize shareholders over paying customers and their experience.

I hate ads. I hate ads. This is a sad day. That is not cool at all. How can Apple brags about protecting user privacy (see that ad on YouTube?) and al while serving ads through an external ads network? More than ever, Apple is becoming like everyone else and IS profiling its users, for money. I’m starting to hate Tim Cook’s Apple. As soon as I see a change in News, I’ll cancel my subscription to Apple One.

There is something incomplete in how Apple is portraying Safari as a way to stay private when surfing the web. The ad is certainly visually striking, with surveillance cameras flying over people as they browse the web on their non-iPhone devices. It’s a compelling analogy. It reminds me of another Apple ad where a person is in a similar situation, being watched and followed by a group of people who want to know their online whereabouts.

But you know, Apple is mum about its deal with Google as being the default search engine in Safari. The last time I checked, Google isn’t the type of privacy-protection company you might think they are.

Manuel Moreale reflecting on one hundred people who took the time to sign his guestbook (I did):

It’s the number of people who have taken a few minutes out of their busy lives to write something on my guestbook. One hundred doesn’t seem a lot in the grand scheme of things, especially on the web. If you have one hundred followers you might as well have zero. One hundred views on a YouTube video? That’s nothing. You need at least one hundred thousand to be part of the conversation. And yet, I find one hundred signatures in a guestbook to be a lot. Can you imagine having one hundred people in front of you, all saying something to you, one after the other? It would feel overwhelming.

I often think about this. Just like Manuel, I have a blog, a YouTube channel, a podcast (sort of). Globally, my follower counts are very low (even lower than Manuel’s) when looked through the Internet scale lens, but if those people were in front of me, in the same room, that would be quite something else. I find this thought to be comforting.

Great take by Gruber on this week sad but highly predictable events. The US is a sick country. Sidenote: on my last few trips, all Americans that I met told me after presenting themselves as Americans: “I know, we’re one of those stupid Americans…”. I reserve this thought mostly to Trump supporters which I never met personally, thanks god.

People are so quick to say “I don’t want him to win but I also don’t want him to die” as if there’s some prize for not wishing death on someone who does more than wish us dead. If someone in power actively attempts to do unthinkable damage to the world and people around you, just a reminder: you get absolutely nothing in exchange for kindness toward them.

Some food for thoughts.

Observation of the day: because of the trees, we can hear the wind. Travelling has great influence on my spirit.