Manton Reece

Mon, 11 May 2026 13:26:17 -0500

Brian Schrader mentions the A Very Short Introduction books in a blog post about learning:

The books are, as expected, very short (~100 pages) and cover a quick survey of the topic at hand and its various sub-disciplines. They’re approachable, quick to read, and the chapters are organized by discipline.

I’ve seen these little books many times and sometimes flip through them in a bookstore. I think I will pick up a couple of them. Great idea to have approachable books that are longer than a blog post or AI prompt, but not as long or dry as a textbook.

Features / mission alignment

Mon, 11 May 2026 10:50:57 -0500

I settled on once a week backups for the new Mac app because it seems the best balance of usefulness and manageable strain on our servers. Downloading a large blog with tens of thousands of photos introduces a little extra load and bandwidth use.

It’s enabled by default because good backups are a perfect fit for our emphasis on domain names and content portability. When you use Micro.blog, you should never have to opt in or pay extra for something that is a core part of our mission.

Mon, 11 May 2026 10:07:57 -0500

Added a new backup feature to Micro.blog for Mac. I think it’ll help folks who don’t routinely backup their blog. Once a week it automatically downloads all posts, photos, and other uploads to a .bar file. On by default and keeps the last 5 backups.

Sun, 10 May 2026 22:08:55 -0500

Gonna have to get a good night of sleep before I can properly articulate how I feel about this Spurs loss to the Timberwolves tonight. But just to say Wemby is being fouled all the time and no calls. 🏀

Sun, 10 May 2026 13:21:30 -0500

I keep up with AI by clicking around on X sometimes — sigh 🙁 — and it’s wild how many people still gripe in replies that OpenAI discontinued 4o. OpenAI is never bringing that model back. The overly empathetic, sycophantic tuning was the problem, especially for users struggling with mental health.

Sat, 09 May 2026 21:53:57 -0500

Watched: Remarkably Bright Creatures. Beautiful. 📺

Sat, 09 May 2026 16:35:26 -0500

Watched: The Sheep Detectives. Actually really nice. 🍿

Sat, 09 May 2026 09:50:35 -0500

Got lost in videos and research for a backyard garden model railroad. This short video on YouTube provides a glimpse. We had an N scale but gave it away in the move last year. Would be fun to explore something larger and build a garden around it.

Fri, 08 May 2026 23:42:30 -0500

Spurs win a hard-fought game 3 in Minneapolis. Refs seem largely okay with ignoring many fouls, so who knows what’s going to happen. Almost thought that overturned out of bounds with 2 minutes left was going to sink the game… Whew. Everyone played really well. 🏀

Fri, 08 May 2026 19:09:39 -0500

I’m not going to worry about Hantavirus until Trump says that the cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” 😷

Fri, 08 May 2026 16:14:32 -0500

Having trouble squaring the Cloudflare layoffs today (because of AI) with how aggressive they were last year going after AI bots. It’s like the company has gotten so big they aren’t internally consistent anymore.

Fri, 08 May 2026 15:50:17 -0500

WWDC is only a month away. How’d that happen? I booked travel a while ago, will be there for a few days. Sadly just flying in, no elaborate train or car camping plans this time.

Fri, 08 May 2026 13:22:11 -0500

Apple called me back about Inkwell rejections. Still rejected, but we were able to talk through the issues and resolve one of them. Progress. It’s fascinating to me how they handle these calls… In all my years of shipping apps, I’ve never had to actually talk to app review outside of a web form.

Fri, 08 May 2026 10:39:55 -0500

Mark Gurman with an update this week on the AirPods with cameras:

The cameras essentially act as eyes for the Siri digital assistant and aren’t designed to take photos or video. These components — located in both the right and left earbuds — allow the device to capture visual information in low resolution.

Despite the privacy problems with cameras in any product, glasses at least feel like a more natural place than AirPods. Very curious about this product.

Fri, 08 May 2026 09:12:53 -0500

Working on security this morning. Just realized I’ve been scammed out of hundreds of dollars because someone used a stolen credit card to register a bunch of domain names. For a very small business, this hurts a lot.

Fri, 08 May 2026 09:00:00 -0500

On the Canvas hack, Alan Jacobs blogs that universities have become dependent on big platforms which are then appealing targets for hackers:

But universities that deploy these big platforms should realize that our data — that of professors and students — as only as safe as the companies’ security practices are sound. And companies like Instructure are so deeply embedded in American university life now that they think they can’t be rejected — no matter how gross their failure to maintain security. An exploit like this is therefore easily predictable.

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:29:21 -0500

Yesterday I said there should be courtroom sketches from the Elon Musk vs. OpenAI trail. I did find a few, by artist Vicki Behringer. They’re not all in one place — and I wish I could legally just post them on my blog — but you can find them on Reuters pages like this one, this one, and this one.

Thu, 07 May 2026 17:30:20 -0500

Fun video on YouTube from Steve Wallis trying to make a huge swamp cooler. Actual portable A/C units are getting a little smaller… I check Amazon every few months for the latest and will eventually get one.

Inkwell app review history

Thu, 07 May 2026 15:41:53 -0500

I was clicking around in App Store Connect as I wait for Inkwell to be approved. The long list of submissions and rejections is unusual for me, so thought I’d capture the table here as a blog post. Hopefully this is just about the end of it. 🤞

Status	Date
Waiting for Review	May 6, 2026 at 5:05 PM
Ready for Review	May 6, 2026 at 5:04 PM
Rejected	May 4, 2026 at 11:13 AM
In Review	May 4, 2026 at 10:54 AM
Waiting for Review	May 4, 2026 at 10:24 AM
Ready for Review	May 4, 2026 at 10:24 AM
Prepare for Submission	May 4, 2026 at 10:24 AM
Developer Rejected	May 4, 2026 at 9:28 AM
Waiting for Review	May 3, 2026 at 11:30 AM
Ready for Review	May 3, 2026 at 11:30 AM
Rejected	May 3, 2026 at 11:00 AM
In Review	May 3, 2026 at 10:45 AM
Waiting for Review	May 1, 2026 at 10:33 AM
Ready for Review	May 1, 2026 at 10:33 AM
Prepare for Submission	May 1, 2026 at 10:33 AM
Rejected	Apr 29, 2026 at 6:19 PM
In Review	Apr 29, 2026 at 5:51 PM
Waiting for Review	Apr 27, 2026 at 5:45 PM
Ready for Review	Apr 27, 2026 at 5:44 PM
Prepare for Submission	Apr 27, 2026 at 5:44 PM
Rejected	Apr 27, 2026 at 4:07 PM
In Review	Apr 27, 2026 at 4:01 PM
Waiting for Review	Apr 27, 2026 at 3:17 PM
Ready for Review	Apr 27, 2026 at 3:17 PM
Prepare for Submission	Apr 27, 2026 at 3:17 PM
Rejected	Apr 22, 2026 at 2:36 PM
In Review	Apr 22, 2026 at 1:38 PM
Waiting for Review	Apr 22, 2026 at 12:38 PM
Ready for Review	Apr 22, 2026 at 12:37 PM
Prepare for Submission	Apr 22, 2026 at 12:30 PM
Rejected	Apr 22, 2026 at 11:12 AM
In Review	Apr 22, 2026 at 10:49 AM
Waiting for Review	Apr 22, 2026 at 10:06 AM
Ready for Review	Apr 22, 2026 at 10:06 AM
Prepare for Submission	Apr 22, 2026 at 10:05 AM
Developer Rejected	Apr 22, 2026 at 9:37 AM
Ready for Review	Apr 22, 2026 at 9:36 AM
Rejected	Apr 22, 2026 at 5:29 AM
In Review	Apr 22, 2026 at 3:08 AM
Waiting for Review	Apr 21, 2026 at 9:44 AM
Ready for Review	Apr 21, 2026 at 9:43 AM
Prepare for Submission	Apr 10, 2026 at 5:03 AM

Thu, 07 May 2026 15:12:27 -0500

I’m still listening to the OpenAI case, off and on as I work. It’s fascinating. I do wish there were courtroom sketches, though! So much money flowing through this trial — we just learned that the expert witness for Elon Musk is making 6 figures for his time — yet no one can hire an artist?

Thu, 07 May 2026 10:28:24 -0500

Had a great meeting with @BonnieRue this week to catch up on a bunch of ideas for the Micro.blog community and long-form blog post discovery. Also learned about The Brautigan Library. I had missed that Dario Amodei’s Machines of Loving Grace essay title was surely inspired by Richard’s 1960s poem.

Thu, 07 May 2026 09:25:00 -0500

Testing the next version of Micro.blog for iOS with Liquid Glass enabled. It’s looking good. Great work @vincent.

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:57:49 -0500

I tried not to overreact to Spurs vs. Timberwolves game 1, so not going to overreact to the game 2 blowout. But this is what I’ll say… This team has played seven playoff games so far. They’ve lost two games: by 3 points and by 2 points. None of the wins were close. 🏀

Wed, 06 May 2026 21:33:50 -0500

Wish I was in San Antonio tonight. Game 2, let’s go. 🏀

Wed, 06 May 2026 15:32:33 -0500

Amazing line from Helen Toner’s testimony while describing the ousting of Sam Altman, about Mira Murati:

She was waiting to see which way the wind would blow, and she didn’t realize that she was the wind.