John’s Blog

John Gruber with a very thoughtful piece regarding Substack over at Daring Fireball:

What I object to isn’t their laissez faire approach to who they allow to publish on their platform, but rather how they present all publications. People do call the publications on Substack “Substacks”. And Substack publications do all look the same, most of them right down to that telltale serif typeface, Spectral which is kerned so loosely it looks like teeth in need of orthodontia. It’s not an ugly font, per se, but it is very distinctive, which contributes, I think significantly, to the blurring of the branding line between Substack publications as discrete standalone independent entities or as mere sections under “Substack” as an umbrella publication.

Substack, very deliberately, has from the get-go tried to have it both ways. They say that publications on their platform are independent voices and brands. But they present them all as parts of Substack. They all look alike, and they all look like “Substack”. I really don’t get why any writer trying to establish themselves independently would farm out their own brand this way. It’s the illusion of independence.

One of the first questions I get asked by investors or others about Air Mail is: why didn’t you just use Substack. The above is one of the main reasons why I made that choice. Creating an independent site that looks like every other publication is a really poor way to create your voice and brand online.

Laurence Edmondson, writing for ESPN:

It was somehow fitting that Max Verstappen clinched this season’s title with a fifth-place finish in Las Vegas. A podium appearance may have been a more satisfying way to crown Formula 1’s latest four-time world champion, but this was a title campaign characterised by guts as much as it was by glory.

It was also a title campaign with a very different feeling to his previous three.

For the second year in a row the Las Vegas GP was a lot of fun. This is turning out to be the best street course on the calendar.

The previous race in Brazil really sealed this championship, but the Vegas result made it official. Congrats to Max, he earned it this year without having the fastest car on the grid.

Alex Kalinauckas has a great breakdown of 10 moments that led to Verstappen’s title this year.

“Bryce P. Tetraedwer, Global Tetrahedron CEO” writing for The Onion:

Founded in 1999 on the heels of the Satanic “panic” and growing steadily ever since, InfoWars has distinguished itself as an invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses. With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal. They are a true unicorn, capable of simultaneously inspiring public support for billionaires and stoking outrage at an inept federal state that can assassinate JFK but can’t even put a man on the Moon.

Through it all, InfoWars has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society—values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron.

A fake announcement and CEO, but this news is actually real. And they did the whole thing with help and support from the families of Sandy Hook victims, bravo!

The real CEO, Ben Collins, is doing great things since he took over earlier this year.

Side note: I didn’t realize that The Onion was back in print. Shame on me for not subscribing earlier, but that’s fixed now.

Without a doubt the biggest pop culture event of the weekend was the Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul fight night, streamed by Netflix.

Leading up to the event I had expected to write about how interesting it was that everyone had been talking about this event. Kids around our neighborhood from elementary to high school age were all talking about it.   All of the parents too. What a coup for Netflix.

It turned out to be more complicated with Netflix struggling under the load of over 60 million households tuning in to the stream! Wow. That’s an incredible hit. Regardless of the streaming woes, this seems to be a pretty big success for Netflix’s first live boxing event.

For context, this was more viewers than the final of the World Series, NBA Finals, or Wimbledon this year. Incredible.

Samantha Cole, reporting for 404 Media:

Just before dawn on a Friday morning last month, millions of Texans woke up to emergency alerts blaring from their phones at around 4 a.m. […]

Predictably, people were pissed. In the days after the alert, the Federal Communications Commission said it received more than 4,500 complaints about it. AMBER and Blue Alerts managed by the Department of Public Safety are only supposed to be sent between the hours of 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. […]

The FCC said in its reply to our request that there were so many complaints, sending them all would be “an undue burden on the agency.” The request produced more than 4,500 complaints, it said; instead of sending them all, it sent a “sampling” of 504 complaints.

This one woke up our entire household too, for an incident that happened hundreds of miles away.

Arc has become my favorite browser for daily use. At the urging of a friend I switched about 6 months ago, and I love it so much.

Founder Josh Miller posted a video update about what’s next for the Arc browser, and why they are going to create something new instead of a version 2.0 of Arc itself.

I sure hope this doesn’t mean the sunsetting of Arc itself, or too much divided focus in the company… but I’m very excited to see what they’re coming up with. Even if it’s not totally for me.

Interesting news from Pixelmator last week:

Pixelmator has signed an agreement to be acquired by Apple, subject to regulatory approval. There will be no material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time. Stay tuned for exciting updates to come.

Good news, I think? Pixelmator has been one of the shining examples of how to properly build software for the Mac and iOS platforms. Congratulations to this team. I do hope this means longer term viability and wider adoption of the Pixelmator core products.

Election season is over, and it’s back to my regularly scheduled pace over here. Back to periodic tech news, personal updates, and other things worth sharing. Onward, friends.

It’s over. Donald Trump and the Republicans have taken the White House, the Senate, and perhaps still the House. It’s a turning point in our American history. The people have spoken and we’ll now get what we deserve, for better or for worse.

I thought the Harris team ran a great campaign. It had energy, positivity, and good vibes until the end. But it wasn’t enough to beat out the Trump movement.

Time to move forward and keep working.

Quincy Jones was an absolute legend. What a life. What a contribution to music history. I was sad to see this news today. Rest in peace, Mr. Jones.

Nilay Patel isn’t afraid to make an endorsement, writing at The Verge:

In many ways, the ecstatic reaction to Harris is simply a reflection of the fact that she is so clearly trying. She is trying to govern America the way it’s designed to be governed, with consensus and conversation and effort. With data and accountability, ideas and persuasion. Legislatures and courts are not deterministic systems with predictable outputs based on a set of inputs — you have to guide the process of lawmaking all the way to the outcomes, over and over again, each time, and Harris seems not only aware of that reality but energized by it. More than anything, that is the change a Harris administration will bring to a country exhausted by decades of fights about whether government can or should do anything at all.

It is time to stop denying the essential nature of the problems America faces. It is time to insist that we use the power of our democracy the way it’s intended to be used. And it is far past time to move beyond Donald Trump.

A vote for Harris is a vote for the future. It is a vote for solving collective action problems. It is a vote for working together, instead of tearing our world to shreds.

David Folkenflik, for NPR:

The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper grapples with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of roughly 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.

This whole situation is a complete mess.

I have no problem with a newspaper declining to endorse a candidate. It’s an outdated practice that makes little sense in today’s media landscape. But the timing is just plain awful. If you’re not going to make an endorsement then announce that a year in advance. Not days before the general election. Just sloppy all around. I feel for the editorial staff and the integrity of the great people at the Post that had nothing to do with this decision.

The backlash has been so fierce that Jeff Bezos has written an op-ed in response:

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.

Again, no disagreement here. But this should have been announced a year ago, at least.

The first few Apple Intelligence features are rolling out this week with iOS 18.1.¹ I’ve been using the betas of this for a few months now, and it’s a good upgrade overall.

The marketing blitz for Apple Intelligence has been very aggressive. If you’ve watched any live TV over the past month you’ve likely seen dozens of Apple Intelligence ads.

I can’t help but think most casual phone users will be very confused by what Apple Intelligence actually does. Is it useful? Sure! Especially the notification summaries feature, it’s very handy. But is it worth buying a new phone just for this? I’d say no. Handy features, not life changing.

This is the first of a few batches, and things will certainly get better and more robust over time.

And also on macOS Sequoia, but I’m not even close to upgrading my primary work machine for another few months, or when XCode requires me to. ↩

Gareth Edwards, writing for Every:

On October 3, the British government announced that it was giving up sovereignty over a small tropical atoll in the Indian Ocean known as the Chagos Islands. The islands would be handed over to the neighboring island country of Mauritius, about 1,100 miles off the southeastern coast of Africa.

The story did not make the tech press, but perhaps it should have. The decision to transfer the islands to their new owner will result in the loss of one of the tech and gaming industry’s preferred top-level domains: .io.

The .io domain is still wildly popular. Let’s hope a good actor takes over the oversight of the tld.

For those of us observing from the sidelines, the great Wordpress fight of 2024 is getting ugly. It’s feeling more like giant companies battling about money.

Last week, DHH chimed in on one of the issues at hand:

And yet, I can see where this is coming from. Ruby on Rails, the open-source web framework I created, has been used to create businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars combined. Some of those businesses express their gratitude and self-interest by supporting the framework with dedicated developers, membership of The Rails Foundation, or conference sponsorships. But many also do not! And that is absolutely their right, even if it occasionally irks a little.

For any successful open source project there are bound to be many more users of the project than contributors. I’m guilty of this for sure. I don’t have the drive like many others to contribute freely to open source. I would like to spend more time here, but it’s low on my long list of priorities. And that’s okay!

That’s the deal. That’s open source. I give you a gift of code, you accept the terms of the license. There cannot be a second set of shadow obligations that might suddenly apply, if you strike it rich using the software. Then the license is meaningless, the clarity all muddled, and certainty lost.

Bingo. I saw a lot of feedback this past week basically saying “gosh I don’t usually don’t agree with DHH, but he’s exactly right this time.”

Matt Mullenweg had originally published a rather nasty post in response, but it was taken down. I’m glad Mullenweg reconsidered. There’s no need for personal attacks in any of this. He did leave a few responses which are reasonable arguments.

I can’t shake the feeling that I wouldn’t want to be building a business on Wordpress right now. It used to be the safe, stable, easy choice. Things change.