Good discussion about the future of AI in this interview from Davos with Demis Hassabis and Dario Amodei. Although they ended on a sort of cliffhanger right as Demis started talking about the likelihood of extraterrestrial life, which now I’m curious about.

Watched: The House. An anthology in three parts about the same house, directed and animated by different teams. The style and tone from first to second part was jarring. At times beautiful, at times bonkers and creepy. 🍿

Travis Knight in the press release for Laika’s next stop-motion feature, Wildwood:

Our movie is a celebration of artistry over algorithms, and of the belief that films made by hand, with enormous care, can still feel bold, surprising, dangerous, and alive.

I’m really looking forward to this.

Powerful email shared by Brent Simmons from family members in Minnesota.

This is a great extended ad for the new Volvo EX60. You can acknowledge the old hassle when you think you’ve solved it. 500-mile range.

Kagi has a blog post about the Google antitrust ruling and the need for a more open search index, including perhaps a government-backed service:

This layer would replace the role public libraries played for centuries - a role that effectively disappeared when commercial web search took over in the late 1990s. Our ancestors understood well the benefits that non-discriminatory, direct access to information brings to citizens, and ultimately society itself.

Manu Moreale, as usual being thoughtful on his blog:

Assuming something about someone else, based on your own worldview and without asking questions, is intellectually lazy. And it also prevents people who might have different views from engaging in conversation and exploring differences.

The upcoming Europe-based W social network seems well intentioned, but there has gotta be a better name than W. Why draw attention to Twitter / X? And W has the most syllables of any letter. Admittedly “Micro.blog” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue either. 🤪

This blog post from OpenAI about their data center buildout — called Stargate — sounds a little like a response to the mistakes xAI made in Memphis:

Stargate is a partnership with communities, and we can only achieve our mission by being good neighbors.

There’s also more on their approach to the electrical grid and water. All this new infrastructure seems to be moving along quickly.

Spurs lose a close one in Houston, but this team has been on a roll otherwise. Looking really good and fun to watch. I want to get down to San Antonio again soon. 🏀

Exactly one year since Trump was sworn in for his second term. Some things have been predictably bad and some things (Greenland?) have been nutty even for him.

I re-listened to the podcast episode I recorded two days after the 2024 election. I should listen to this every year to recenter myself.

I hinted a few times that I was adding WordPress and Ghost sync to Micro.blog. It was a big change, and I deployed it just for myself last week to test in production. It’s sort of amazing, unlike anything out there… but also it’s not good enough. Putting it aside for a couple weeks.

The best way I can explain how I work: every day, I fix a bug, I work on a new feature, I reply to a customer. The balance isn’t perfect but it’s always all of these things. Keeps things moving forward.

After Google Reader, folks asked me about building an open API for feed syncing, given my history with Tweet Marker. I didn’t work on it because I wanted to focus on indie microblogging. But it was inevitable that eventually Micro.blog would have something. Like Apple having both Pages and Numbers.

The Iconfactory is out with a new Kickstarter campaign! Nice pitch:

We all need a way to unplug from time to time - the world’s gone off the rails and no amount of doomscrolling is fixing it. That’s one of the reasons we created Ollie’s Arcade - to be a pixelated place to take refuge from the real world and enjoy some simple, fun old-school arcade games on your iPhone or iPad.

Over the last year I’ve become hyper-sensitive to extremism. The lesson from Trumpism should be to do the opposite of whatever he does. Less hate, less judgement, less bullying. More empathy. I’m hopeful that whoever picks up leadership of the Democratic party will understand this. 🇺🇸

Matt Mullenweg blogged about Scott Adams, trying to reconcile good memories of Dilbert with later racist comments:

When I was younger, I used to have a more binary view of people, but as I’ve grown, read a ton of biographies, seen the press cycles, and been lucky enough to meet some idols and villains, I’ve become much more comfortable taking everyone as a flawed human being.

Nuance here is difficult because we shouldn’t downplay hurtful comments with a “both sides”-style argument. Sometimes we must draw a line. Still, I agree we should avoid reducing people to a single moment.

My short posts tend to cut corners so they flow a little more like informal thoughts. I wonder if I’ll one day regret all the intentional comma splices. The semicolon is sitting right there yet I reserve it for only the rare sentence, like it’s sacred punctuation that will draw attention to itself.

Nice new micro app from @mattbirchler: Quick Stuff, for making App Store screenshots. If you look at any of my apps, the screenshots are always way out of date. I’d rather improve the apps than fiddle with screenshot sizes.