Dave Winer posted notes from his recent recording about why blogging lost to social networks. I’m smiling at the Radio WordLand name. My blog started on Radio Userland! (Then Movable Type → WordPress → Micro.blog.)

Scripting News

Bullet points from yesterday

Dave Winer, OG blogger, podcaster, developed first apps in many categories. Old enough to know better. It

iPhone announcement day. I do not need a new phone, but I am curious about the iPhone Air. Years ago, I switched to the iPhone 5C just for a change, and actually liked the color and plastic. But I can’t see giving up the best cameras now. 📱

I’ve never been a Snapchat user and can’t relate to most of what’s in Evan Spiegel’s note to employees, but the part about AI use actually sounds true. It’s not wildly inflated like some quotes we’ve seen from other CEOs: "Engineering is already seeing momentum, with AI now generating about a quarter of all code and new agentic infrastructure underway to further boost developer productivity."

14 Years at Snap Inc.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel sent the following note to team members on September 8, 2025.

I’m on beta 9 of iOS 26 and there’s still a voicemail tab caching bug. Maybe I notice more than folks at Apple because I have almost no notification badges enabled, so it really stands out? Have to force quit the Phone app about once a day. I don’t usually complain… Surprised this hasn’t been fixed.

It’s so hard to get people to take a second look at a product. Rabbit has continued to work on improvements for over a year, and now they’ve wrapped it up in a rabbitOS 2 update. Overview video on Twitter / X.

X (formerly Twitter)

rabbit inc. (@rabbit_hmi) on X

the old r1 is dead. introducing a totally new experience with rabbitOS 2 + creations. we realized there was a gap between our early vision and the...

Yikes, noticed especially high load on one of our servers. Think we might’ve had a few runaway Hugo processes chewing CPU. I’m monitoring it, shouldn’t be much visible lag. "load average: 42.60, 33.20, 22.64"

Spotify’s daily mix is pulling in all sorts of songs I haven’t heard in years. Currently listening to Guns N’ Roses. 🎶 "So never mind the darkness We still can find a way ‘Cause nothin’ lasts forever Even cold November rain"

Really respect Anil Dash trying to have a nuanced conversation about AI on Bluesky, surrounded by many AI skeptics. This thread is one place to start, but there are many other posts: "At what point are folks going to try literally any other tactic than condescending rants?" Sadly, AI is so divisive, debate is counter-productive right now. Meanwhile, all the AI researchers are still on Twitter / X, and they’re not going to move to more open platforms where they would just be criticized. So we’re back to information bubbles.

Bluesky Social

Anil Dash (@anildash.com)

this is the really ineffective head-in-the-sand reaction a lot of folks on Bluesky tend to have if you talk about any harm reduction-based approach...

Got a lot done over the weekend and today, heading into the distractions of iPhone event day tomorrow. Lots of little improvements in Micro.blog, plus a new Mac app update which I recorded a quick walk-through for.

Love this post Irrational Dedication, via Duncan Davidson: "Every single thing we see, someone had to will it into existence against the entropy of the universe and the indifference of everyone else. That’s what the entire built world is."

Farnam Street

Irrational Dedication

You can just build things, sure, but things don't magically exist. The world progresses from a collection of irrational dedication. People who...

Irrational dedication

Steve Troughton-Smith on Mastodon: "I know Apple has got used to making its share of Microsoft-scale screwups lately, but taking the two best UI frameworks ever made, UIKit and AppKit, and throwing them under the bus for something designed to build watch apps really does take the cake." These frameworks were so good. Still are! I’ll never fully understand why there couldn’t have been a universal layer for iOS and macOS plus some existing AppKit and UIKit pieces for platform-specific features. Oh well, that ship sailed years ago now.

Mastodon

Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social)

I know Apple has got used to making its share of Microsoft-scale screwups lately, but taking the two best UI frameworks ever made, UIKit and AppKit...

Stumbled on Freaky Tales while browsing HBO and it’s wild. 1980s Oakland, basketball, punk rock, animation… It is surprisingly violent but also amazing. 🍿

Freaky Tales (2024)

In 1987 Oakland, a mysterious force guides The Town's underdogs in four interconnected tales: teen punks defend their turf against Nazi skinhe...

Marco Arment on Mastodon: "As we head into iPhone-event week, let’s celebrate the hard work by all of the people who made these products happen. And let’s not forget the shameless Trump-suckass CEO at the top, who constantly gives the middle finger to everyone in his own company…" 🇺🇸

Mastodon

Marco Arment (@marcoarment@mastodon.social)

As we head into iPhone-event week, let's celebrate the hard work by all of the people who made these products happen. And let's not forget the sha...

Micro.blog 3.7 for Mac is out, and I recorded a quick 2-minute YouTube video to show a few things in the interface around books and notes.

With the acquisition by Atlassian, there’s a lot of talk about whether this is bad for Dia and Arc. But one thing I’m sure about: this is good for Atlassian. The Browser Company has a great attention to detail and thoughtful design that could benefit Atlassian’s culture.

Of course I only notice the UI glitches while I’m recording a screencast demo. Will have to tweak a couple things for the next bug fix update.

Working on Mac code continues to be a kind of escape from closed mobile platforms. Still fun after all these years. I wrapped up a Micro.blog update today, will release it tomorrow.

In AppKit, for some reason I always forget about content hugging priority. I usually fiddle with the constraint’s priority first, scratching my head why it’s not working. (Nope, never heard of SwiftUI…) 🤪

From the statement on better discourse between the ActivityPub and AT Protocol communities: "We do not build a better open social web for everyone by fighting and arguing about protocol superiority. That is not how we achieve a better open social web. Instead, we must work together, cross-pollinate and share ideas, and participate within each other’s communities with respect and mutual understanding." Co-signing. This came out of the Social Web Community Group meeting yesterday, which I wish I was participating in more often.

GitHub

general/statements/2025-09-05-activitypub-and-atproto-discourse.md at master · swicg/general

General issue tracker for the group. Contribute to swicg/general development by creating an account on GitHub.

I think everyone is floored by this $1.5 billion settlement. Anthropic essentially won on fair use, so I just assumed the pirated books settlement was going to be a little more low-key than this. Hope the authors see most of the money. Never a dull moment in AI land!

The Verge

Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion to authors in landmark AI settlement

Lawyers said it’s believed to be the largest-ever settlement in a US copyright case, paying about $3,000 per book.