From reviews, sounds like the MacBook Neo is a great little laptop. It has been a while since I’ve thought an Apple product actually followed that “a thousand no’s for every yes” video from WWDC a decade ago… This laptop makes the right trade-offs.

Beto Dealmeida blogs about a human.json file and browser extension that lets other bloggers vouch for who is writing their own posts, not AI-generated:

This JSON document not only says, “all my content under https://robida.net is human-generated”, but it also indicates other people who I trust are doing the same.

I wonder if we all have the same definition of human-generated now? For me, it’s okay if people use an LLM as an advanced grammar checker. Human drafts a post, AI suggests how to polish it.

Thanks to everyone who has tried our new feed reader Inkwell, and especially folks who have upgraded to Micro.blog Premium for the Reading Recap feature. Now that I’ve had a few days to evaluate how the launch is going, we’re going to need to add more servers, so the upgrades help a lot.

Tim Cook writing on Apple’s 50th anniversary:

From the first Apple computer to the Mac, from iPod to iPhone, iPad to Apple Watch and AirPods, as well as the services we use every day — the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, and Apple TV — we’ve spent five decades rethinking what’s possible and putting powerful tools into people’s hands.

What strikes me about this list is that it’s dominated by products in Apple’s very recent history. All of the products except the Apple and Macintosh were created in the last 25 years. Even the iPod is not quite 25 years old.

The first Rivian R2 off the assembly line will be the higher-priced $60k model. I’m not in the market for a car, still love my old Honda Element that I’ve put way too much money into. But maybe 5-10 years from now when the price is a bit lower, this will probably be my car.

Jon Hays:

I just released a new version of Silverleaf, my new RSS reader that’s built around Inkwell syncing. It’s free, so check it out!

Available in the App Store.

Atlassian lays off 10%, about 1600 people. They employ a lot of folks in Austin, hope friends here are not affected much.

I worked downtown earlier today at Lazarus (☕️) and you can already start to feel the SXSW vibes. I’m going to miss all the events this year, but I wonder how AI will change it? Just checked the ClawCon page and there are 750 RSVPs! 🦞

Lisa Charlotte Muth blogs on bringing everything back to her own website:

Why am I doing all this? Because I got inspired by the concept of POSSE: “Publish on your own, syndicate elsewhere.” For me, ROOTS is the logical first step toward that: “Return Old Online Things to your own Site” (yes, I made this up).

Most bloggers should at least have this approach for tweets or old blogs. That’s why Micro.blog has special support for handling tweets, and import from a bunch of other platforms.

David Smith developed a clever solution for letting the home screen wallpaper show through widgets:

In Widgetsmith 8.2 we added the ability to give your widgets a ‘clear’ background. This isn’t actually clear (since iOS doesn’t allow that without private API use), but instead just crops part of your home screen wallpaper and uses that as the background.

Very cool.

The AI divide: manton.org

Brent Simmons:

Code is a liquid now.

Movable, shapable, flowing. It’s the first time I haven’t felt trapped by the weight of old code.

I have a draft pull request for Inkwell sync in NetNewsWire. Not totally sure yet what more will be needed or any kind of timeline for merging it. I’ll test over the next few days, but at least the code is out there.

At my mom’s house taking care of things. All the furniture is gone except the piano, so it’s now a sort of standing desk when I need to work.

Kagi’s Small Web has added categories:

Finding great Small Web content that scratches your browsing itch can feel overwhelming, especially when the feed is a single stream that tumbles through over 30,000 featured sites. That’s why we’ve introduced categories, curated groups of topics that let you dive into the corners of the Small Web that interest you most.

The site list is available as a simple text file, but I haven’t seen if the categories are published anywhere yet.

Tetragrammaton: manton.org

Patrick Rhone interviewed for the People and Blogs series:

…that’s exactly what a blog should be — a reflection of one’s interest and attention over time. A reflection of who one is right now and where they’ve been. Blogs are living things that should grow at the same rate we do.

Writing the app is easy. Configuring Sparkle to verify updated app signatures… Impossible! 🤪

Parker Ortolani blogs about the Neo:

The MacBook Neo is the first Mac that is truly, in every sense of the word, a bicycle for the mind. It’s the first Mac that almost anyone can buy and it’s going to unleash a whole new era of creativity because of it.

Cracking up watching the emoji bit on SNL tonight. I lost it at orange square. 🚡