What could go wrong with an AI trained on Twitter’s posts and interactions…

Not really looking forward to an extremely aggressive, fascist-leaning AI. I wonder when big lenders will stop funding Musk’s ideas. Or is this exactly what they’re looking for when they give him unlimited amounts of money?

Today I just found Peglin. Such a great and addictive game! I praised Slay the Spire as one of the best deck builders and roguelike. Peglin is as if Slay the Spire and pinball had a child and it’s oh, so, good! Build a set of pinballs with unique abilities and fight by throwing them to a board. 🎮

@danielpunkass I agree. It doesn’t matter if it’s the right option. When the focus is now into whether he will step down or not, instead of policies and his past successes, it is time for him to step down. It is only going to get worse until November. Every rally now is “I’m not stepping down!” Terrible message

@manton that’s great, thank you! Do you know if it’ll be enough to stop perplexity.ai? According to MacStories and Wired, it seems Perplexity uses sneaky tactics to evade the usual server-side rules against robots.

@samjc It sounds like the current trend of people turning their content creation over to a machine to… be free to do manual annoying labor that machines can’t do.

@samjc that one is next on my list! I loved Guards! Guards!, and Carrot is one of my favorite characters in the series. I’m sure children will pick up from you that books are great and can bring so many different feelings.

Finished Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett. He was a genius with amazing books, and this one is no different. As every Discworld novel, kept me entertained until the end and had a lot of funny moments. Totally recommended, even if you know nothing about Discworld!

Can’t believe OmniFocus 4 is finally out! I’ve been using the beta for what it feels like forever and I’m glad the good people at the Omni Group managed to get it out before Christmas. They deserve a nice holidays break!

@iPabloSB a little more info, for those interested: the microscope uses what’s called structured illumination. It uses a mix of physics and computation to break the limit of light and show about 2 times more resolution than a regular microscope. And the machine is so big that it takes a whole room

I took some images using a microscope that uses a technique that breaks the light limit, called super-resolution. It allows to show structures smaller than the light we see coming from them. Here the cell’s skeleton (actin filaments, that help cells move and keep everything in place inside it).

@danielpunkass the hands… they always give me the creeps.

The water heater broke today; the warranty expired a few months ago. Something similar happened with the fridge a few months ago. Is there a secret code in appliances that makes them malfunction as soon as the warranty expires? Maybe we can start a new conspiracy theory…

Finished today the Audiobook Red Team Blues, from @pluralistic@mamot.fr A fantastic novel, perfectly narrated by Wil Wheaton. I don’t know how Cory will continue the saga, as the story is very well round up, but I’m looking forward to the second part next year!

@joshuapsteele even with this year’s price increase, Bluey is still worth it 😄

@starrwulfe what I really liked is that Aang kind of had his destiny already decided for him, but Korra had to carve her own and find herself in a new world where an Avatar seems to be more dispensable (and even hated), and she has to mature and prove herself in a different way that Aang had to.

@renevanbelzen that was my main gripe. It was a story on a well established universe that seemed to try too hard to differ enough from the original. But the creators in my opinion succeeded in making it exciting enough and after the first 5 episodes they managed to get me to like the team and plot

Finished Avatar: Legend of Korra today. I know I’m late to the game, but I really liked it and was a good closing to the Avatar series. It started a bit meh and took me a while to get hooked, but they really stepped up and got a very well rounded story. I’m glad I got into the series this year!

@aa makes sense. The curious me kind of wants to know what resonates better with readers, but I guess reads don’t necessarily mean they like content, but more like it “attracted” views. As I don’t really care for views and more about “did they like it?”, comments probably are a better readout.

Today I had a Teams remote meeting where the browser window only showed an error message, but somehow my image and audio worked. I’ve been talking to a bunch of URLs and numbers for about 20 min while the other party could see me without any problem. It’s been… weird.

Bloggers, mini-bloggers and micro-bloggers: what’s your take on blog analytics? I know micro.blog doesn’t give you, but do you use tools like tinylytics or do you prefer not to know how many people visit your posts?

I started educating myself to use Salesforce’s CRM to manage part of our nonprofit. It’s insane the amount of things one can do with that! I know most of the stuff I could do it with a custom database (MySQL, FileMaker or Panorama), but it’s great to have all the tools ready to be used already.

@danielpunkass Probably the fact that Apple TV+ offers the soccer season with no blackouts has an influence in even Apple Music advertising Messi’s arrival to Miami. I don’t care and I don’t need this info in my Apple News, music, and I guess every single Apple service.

@nathanrhale you’re welcome! I found libro.fm thanks to @pluralistic after his last Kickstarter. The books have no DRM and they have lists curated by local librarians, so if you have a favorite spot you can support them and check the audiobooks they recommend.

I spent about 100 hours playing Slay the Spire on Steam two years ago and unlocked everything. Apple Arcade releases Slay the spire+.

Me: “nah this time I won’t play that much”

50 hours later…

Me: “just one more run with the Defect before going to bed” Damn that game is addictive.

The only Prime Day deal I’ll recommend is to leave Audible and join Libro.fm, which allows you to escape the giant’s (Amazon) grasp, support your local library and, if you subscribe with this offer, you get a free credit for any audiobook, with no strings attached so you can unsubscribe anytime.

@jean it is so good! And versatile. It can be whatever you want it to be. I always start all text in drafts, from meeting notes to M.b posts. Later on, I decide where to send them.

Reading about Threads I’ve seen takes complaining about it not being available in the EU due to its “draconic laws”. Surprisingly, this comes from people that have normally been privacy advocates. I’m happy EU reps have taken privacy seriously, and I hope they don’t budge under Meta’s pressure.

@heyscottyj they use Linux 366

@cleverdevil I had a Nomatic for several years and they’re great. Now I’m using a Waterfield because their style is really amazing and they’re hand-made in San Francisco (hence the high price. No cheap or child labor). I’ve had one for two years and it still looks like new.

@danielpunkass at this point I don’t see how he can save face and keep Reddit afloat. He burned every bridge with his community and is probably the most hated person in Reddit. And redittors are very creative when it comes to trolling.

Opened the first rosé of the season. Starting with a 2022 Ridge Lytton Estate Rosé was a great idea. Zesty, perfect amount of sweetness and just delicious and refreshing. One of the best Rosé around here! 🍷

@news if you don’t pay, they cut you off. If you pay… well, they cut you off too. I wonder how much lower they can go.

@jean I’m starting Korra now, but I’ll miss the original kids. I’m also looking into the novel/comics, it seems they get further into the main characters and the stories are good. And of course, at some point I’ll get into the RPG because the world is great for storytelling.

Finished yesterday Avatar: the last Airbender. I’m very late to the train, as it was finished 15 years ago, but I have to say: it is one of the best animated series that I’ve watched, both in terms of character development and worldbuilding. Can understand how they’ve created such a strong fanbase.

Sad to see it finally happening. Apollo, the best iOS app for Reddit, closes on June 30. They won’t be the only, and it seems Reddit got what they wanted, kill all 3rd party apps.

Another sign that social sites are in self-destruct mode and now, more than ever, it’s critical to own your content.

For those looking to dump Reddit after the new API rules come into play and 3rd party apps are banished… Lemmi is the ActivityPub open alternative to Reddit. Think Mastodon for Reddit. Right now is almost empty, big drawback, but if enough people migrate, it might become a good place to hang out.

And like Twitter, Reddit is going full greedy and committed to kill third-party apps like Apollo and destroy their service. Every day, it’s clearer that open alternatives are the only way for social media. As for me, I’ll slowly walk away from Reddit and increase my focus on Micro.blog and Mastodon.

Happy 20th anniversary, Wordpress!

Today is the 20th anniversary of the first release of WordPress. None of us knew what we were getting into when it started, but we had a shared conviction that the four freedoms of the GPL combined with a mission to democratize publishing was something worth spending our time on. There will be celebrations in cities around the world, please join if there’s one happening near you.

What an awesome feat for one of the greatest projects the W3 has seen and such a great tool for writers. Wishing you another 20!

@manton I really like it. Twitter used to be all my social media. It was bloated and as a completionist I disliked the algorithmic timeline or being unable to read all tweets. There were many useless posts highly ranked and I ended up quitting. This new separation helps me focus and get what I want

Little manuscript submitted! We created a very easy to use script to automatically recognize and count cells that are too close to each other to be easily counted, even by hand. Proud of the hours I poured into this protocol. Now wait for editors to decide whether to publish or not.

@gr36 @news I second the petition. It’d be great to know what changed, because some of these formatting changes might be already in my custom theme.

@danmurrelljr I have to admit that when I first stumbled upon MarsEdit about a decade ago I liked it so much that I felt like I had to have a blog to use such cool software. It’s one of these “I love it so much that I have to find a way to use it”. Now I finally have my blog and found the reason.

@jean I think the latest social media events (specially twitter) has shown how important it is to own what you write and have control over your social media. Many people (myself included) have probably flown to other places that provide more control over one’s content and are less hostile to users.

@manton definitely scam is too strong but the article makes good points. Still, MB shouldn’t be the judge and gatekeeper and I’m ok with MB supporting the protocol for cross-posting and keeping an eye on how it develops. It should be up to the authors to decide where they propagate their content.

@iPabloSB hey, but to be honest it would be pretty cool if all crypto gangs and free speech absolutists end up in their own network and leave the rest of us enjoying our corner of the internet. Happy to not having to interact with them.

@jayeless yeah, reading about the protocol I expected to find something similar to Mastodon, but the feeling is very different. It looks just like advertising a “crypto-like” decentralized protocol of key+pass similar to crypto wallets, but without moderation tools social networks are inhospitable