AI tends to over-engineer more than I would. It's kind of nice, because the code is often robust today, but it's a lot to maintain tomorrow. I usually have to walk it back after a first pass, streamlining things, simplifying database changes. There's a cost to doing too little and doing too much.
Thoughts by Daniel Lombraña
Reviewing the latest draft of the LOLA portability spec for ActivityPub. Micro.blog supports a bunch of import and export formats, as well as the "move" activity. Planning to add LOLA too.
OpenAI blogs about a new advisory group for math and AI. On their new internal model:
In addition to resolving the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize problem, this model has now resolved more than 100 long-standing open problems across most areas of mathematics. The pace of its progress in mathematics has surprised the mathematicians within OpenAI.
I think OpenAI realized they rushed out Navier–Stokes, creating controversy that overshadowed the achievement. This post sounds like a good reset.
Caleb Hailey responded to my comment about a MacBook Neo-class Mac:
When the redesigned Mac Mini was announced I had hoped for it to be USB-C powered. But a Mac Nano (or Mac Neo) would be an even better fit for a USB-C powered Mac that could be used in all the ways you can use a Raspberry Pi. I bet they could beat the old Mac Mini pricing for a device like this, and ship it at $299-399.
I wouldn't expect Apple to go that low, but even $499 would be great. It could literally be the same components as the Neo except no screen, no keyboard, and no battery.
Monday session in Madrid.
Yesterday when I was clicking around checking the social web — Micro.blog, Bluesky, Threads, and X — it was only on Threads that I saw the news about ICE in Austin. I don't want to read too much into one example, but Meta often does seem the most likely to show divisive, outrage-amplifying topics.
From Jason Snell's review of the new Mac mini:
… at $599, the Mac mini was about as close to an impulse buy as a Mac desktop could get. At $899, it’s crossed an invisible threshold. I can understand it, but I don’t have to like it.
Maybe there's a missing product in Apple's lineup: a Mac with the guts of the $699 MacBook Neo. Call it a Mac nano.
The release notes page for Micro.blog for Mac is now so long, going back 9 years, that I hit Discourse's default 32k character limit today. Had to bump the setting.
"Your feedback is important to us…" [delete]
Federico Viticci has an exhaustive review of the new Mac Studio with M5 and 256 GB of RAM. Lots of cool charts on performance. It sounds like a great Mac. The problem is that config will set you back $9k! For me, a $100/month subscription for frontier AI over many years is still better.
A man is in the hospital after being shot by ICE in Austin today. I watched some of the press conference… APD and the Texas Rangers are going to investigate.
If and when Democrats take the House, there is a long list of things to do. Oversight of ICE and pressure for reform has gotta be in the mix.
Religion is the perfect psychological parasite. Organized terror management. The human animal realized it was going to die, and the mind couldn't handle the sheer panic of its own expiration date. So it invented a cosmic daddy to promise a sequel.
Religion relies on the biological terror of death, which never goes away. Mind demands permanence in a world that is constantly dying. Religion provides the illusion of the eternal. It includes all spiritual crap out there.
Hope is the actual drug. People don't want the truth, just some pacifier. They will kneel in the dirt for thousands of years talking to the ceiling because the alternative, facing the absolute, cold indifference of the universe alone, is too terrifying for the fragile ego to process.
Universe doesn't know shit. Atoms don't have a philosphy or religion. They just obey thermodynamics. A rotting corpse, a shattered mountain, and a blooming flower are the exact same mechanical process. Atoms shifting states.
"Save the planet" is pure human narcissism. The rock doesn't need saving. Humans are just altering the biosphere to make it toxic for themselves. The Earth will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, wait a few millennia, and grow a new skin.
The organism wants to live, so the brain invents a story where the organism is the hero of the cosmos. Savior complex. The mind cannot handle the fact that humanity is just a temporary mold on a wet rock, so it manufactures a grand purpose to avoid the terror of its own insignificance.
Nuclear toys and carbon footprints are irrelevant to a system that has survived asteroid impacts and magma oceans.
A lot of digital technology is not infrastructure for living. Endless feeds, notifications, commentary, product cycles, arguments, and updates. Remove it, and your life might become less convenient or less "connected", but it doesn't necessarily collapse. It may improve. Habit to send minute updates to someone, banking and other nonsense? 100 EUR smartphone and you can do all of that without friction like you can do it on 1000 EUR machine.
Corporations release new products every year. Reviewers are glorified whores for a hardware cartel. The audience eats it up because they need a daddy figure to justify their vanity purchases. You start to believe that these changes meaningfully alter your live. Camera is better. You took pictures and save them to the same cloud storage like photos you took ten years ago. Untouched collection of waste. Better CPU on a phone. Seriously.
First corporations control the web. Then Google destroys the web. Then social media destroys society. Then Microsoft owns everything. Then Cloudflare controls the infrastructure. Now AI is destroying the internet.
Two decades later and magically everything is still not destroyed, but more capable than years ago. Some random nobody with cheap old laptop can run a Linux server, access enormous amounts of knowledge, use open-source software, create websites with AI, publish it globally, and communicate with practically anyone on the planet. A capability that would have required serious money and technical expertise decades ago is now accessible to many.
But! You. Yes. You are special, unique being with specific high-end needs, of course. You need the best tech to match your superb personality. You need a better camera to shot a bird and then upload compressed 50kB image to "evil" social media. To share goodness of your life before you complain about the collapse of the society. From an iPhone, saved in Google drive, emailed from Gmail and published over Cloudflare. You partizan.
Phone off, computer off, life continues. Apps are pacifiers. News paywalls gate useless political theater, curated anxiety and elite-approved propaganda nobody needs. The "doom" isn't about the internet or technology. It's about you having nothing else to care about. Your identity is wrapped in digital tribalism. Take it away and you're empty. You are just bored and want to feel important by declaring collapse.
There is a chance, that you are just dumbass.
On stage in Cáceres.
More street sessions in Cáceres.
Made a nice salad for lunch in Cáceres. 🥗
Last night’s fun.
John Gruber personal PR for Apple is again excited about his ad revenue:
It doesn't matter that Samsung and Google and a bunch of Chinese companies have made foldable Android phones for a decade. Almost nobody cares. The Duo is a fucking iPhone. That makes people care.
Nobody cares about Chinese companies. They just magically filled half the marketplace. That means more than Apple and Samsung together. Probably sold to aliens. If you mean foldables, Apple sold zero of them.
Why is it strange for an iPhone to have a similar price to a MacBook Pro? For many people the phone is their primary computer, the most important and personal device in their life. Not me. Not Oremus. Probably not you. But I bet there are a lot more people out there who would rather have a $2500 iPhone and a $700 MacBook Neo than who would want a $2500 MacBook Pro and a $700 iPhone.
Of course. Not you, not Oremus, not Elon. But plebs? Why not. Correct, everyone wants $2500 smartphone to be reachable by his boss from a factory. Even Hollywood wants it!
Leon Mika another hero of the poor confirms John's research with real life experience from his work:
He's not wrong. Foldables never got mentioned at work before last week, when everyone started talking about the Duo and the new version of iOS. But I feel Apple's got a real winner on it's hands here.
He sees the future bright:
I'm kind of excited to hear that Apple might enter the server space again.
Jason is excited too, but about iOS update:
I'm thankful that Apple put the polishing cloth on every part of the system; it really shines now.
It's refreshing that people starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Max Frequency was more detailed:
iPhone Duo is Already Proving Apple's Dominance
Yes, unreleased smartphone dominates the market. Another guy did not check global marketshare of smartphone makers.
Humans are special pieces. Every human is unique. They express their extraordinary individuality and intelligence in writing. 6 latest articles:
- Apple releases an update.
1. Blogger describes how smooth the animations feel.
2. Blogger discusses the visual changes.
3. Blogger expresses gratitude for Apple's attention to detail.
4. AI-generated moral reflection.
5. A paragraph about online toxicity.
6. Cat photo.
Repeats across 3 000 unique websites.
"Blogger" here is the label for writer. Inherited, popular, domesticated, accepted. Like Apple dominance. No question asked.
Bonus: Beloved Manton Reece is already testing with Duo simulator. Really. He already runs out of tokens. He never disappoints.
Humanity has successfully decentralized the distribution of content while centralized the distribution of thoughts. Supposed "personal" perspective adds almost nothing personal. Individualized press releases for corporate ecosystems, with occasional ethical commentary to demonstrate that the author possesses a soul.
Rooftop apartment.