Since my bookmarking app now features links to Bluesky, I’ve observed that my Bluesky timeline is heavily political, which I dislike. I’m unsure how to unfollow people or lists. I wish there was a way to simply reset the timeline and start fresh for a better experience.
About my curiosity for FreshRSS
I saw people mention FreshRSS on my timeline today and I was curious about it. Why? Because self-hosting an RSS reader service might mean that I could drop Inoreader… so, I started reading the documentation. If there was a single-click install droplet on DigitalOcean, that would be enticing, provided that FreshRSS offers a great set of APIs. The UI is meh, though, but using the engine with a nice client like NNW might be a possibility. I didn’t go further in my exploration so far… but now I want to look at other self-hosting solutions, too. Suggestions?
Apple’s iCloud File Sharing Left Ex-Employees With Access to Secret Documents:
The former employees said many Apple files they had been shared on over their careers at the company—including planning documents for product launch events—continued to sync to their personal devices through the iCloud storage service after they left Apple. In some cases, they even received notifications about fresh updates to the documents. Some former employees said they were petrified to delete the files for fear that doing so would attract Apple’s attention.
Wow! I work in the banking system and such document life cycle management would be considered lousy at best. I think it’s time for Apple to make iCloud a little bit more business-friendly. The story on the iPhone is better as corporate-controlled apps are using their own partition which can be wiped independantly from the personal partition. But on iCloud? It doesn’t seem to be the case.
Too many products?
Today, while preparing the next edition of my newsletter, I wondered whether managing numerous product lines, with a multitude of variants and configurations, might be harming Apple, especially in the current context of supply chain difficulties. I feel that Apple’s strategy is no longer in tune with the times.
Are we in a world war yet?
In “The War That Could Swallow the World”, David French writes:
“I’ve often wondered what it was like to be alive in the summer of 1914, much less in 1938 and 1939. When did people start to realize that the world was on the brink of catastrophe? Speak up too soon or too frequently, and you look ridiculous — like the Chicken Little of World War. Speak up too late, and you live (if you live) with bitter regret.”
I often ask myself similar questions. When does it feel like it? Are we calling a world war after-the-fact? Does it matter in the end? This blog used to have a blog post category named “UkraineWar”. It will be renamed “Conflicts” which I think feels closer to what I perceive from today’s world.
In the TV series “Silo” there is a woman who seems to be responsible for retrieving and refurbishing old computer equipment or various devices. It makes me think that with the current situation, where electronic device prices are soaring, the periods of price drops for a computer or smartphone are over. One day, society might see the latest-generation devices become inaccessible to the general public, who will then have to settle for rebuilt or refurbished devices.
If my non-scientific calculations are to be believed, this week marks the weekly release of Apple’s OS 27 betas. In my case, Beta 4 was a bit of a step back compared to Beta 2 and Beta 3.
What's up with Anthropic?
I’m not sure what is going on at Anthropic these days, but updates to Claude Desktop have stopped. Normally, I would get an update every few days; the last update was July 24th. Something might be going on. I wouldn’t mind if AI companies took a pause and started thinking about the consequences of putting their products in the hands of millions, you know, being conscious about what you do? Alas, that’s not going to happen.
Keep dreaming
This morning, I received a renewal notice for a domain I registered during my transition from my previous job to my current one. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I would start my own consulting firm, so I registered the domain but then changed jobs. Despite that, I decided to renew the domain just in case. I like to think that one day I’ll be my own boss. It cost me about ten bucks a year, which is really cheap for dreaming.
Should You Use AI for a Task? Here’s a Simple Way to Decide - Schneier on Security
But it’s precisely because I have spent years developing my own writing skills that I’m able to identify prose that sounds great but doesn’t actually make sense. My students don’t have that skill; they mistakenly view a confident, well-written essay as evidence of the quality of their ideas. They see the AI as cleaning those ideas up, getting them through that uncomfortable stretch of having to turn those ideas into prose. What the students miss is that their initial discomfort is a normal and healthy stage of writing, and not something to quickly get beyond. The very act of struggling with how to express what they think is an important part of the process. It’s how they test out their ideas, examine their hypotheses, and actually figure out what they think. Homework is not work; it’s the gym.
Learning can be hard, for many people at least. I like the feeling of being outside my comfort zone when working on something because I know that at some point, the journey is going to be the reward. We forget that in the age of AI.