Checking out the Kagi search engine, via Daring Fireball. I remember hearing about this but never tried it. Looks clean, fast. I don't think I'm at the point of wanting to pay for web search quite yet. So tired of ads, though.
2023-05-23
Great game and series. Didn’t really feel like a sweep with the Lakers in each game until late. Congrats to the Nuggets. 🏀
2023-05-23
About blocking in Micro.blog
When we added muting to Micro.blog, there was a discussion about whether user blocking should be added at the same time. My feeling was that Micro.blog is built around public blog posts on the web, so blocking didn't seem particularly useful, and might even give someone a false sense of confidence that a specific user wouldn't see their posts. After all, the posts are available to RSS readers and just reading on your blog for anyone.
This is the kind of opinion a programmer would have, though. "Well actually, the post is available anyway if you just drop down to the command-line and type curl and…" I was thinking about this again watching Bluesky scramble to add blocking a few weeks ago. We try to be thoughtful and not reactionary, so this was really something we should have taken care of earlier.
This is all a long way of saying that our initial support for blocking is rolling out this week on the web and the API, and in other apps to follow. Blocking someone will prevent your posts from showing up in their timeline. There may be tweaks and other options added to this later.
2023-05-23
The more I tinker with Nostr, the more I understand the appeal for developers. It is fun. But there are so many usability challenges. User search and discovery are difficult.
2023-05-23
Some questions we missed at Micro Camp
At last weekend's Micro Camp, we had a panel session with me, Jean, and Vincent where we answered questions from the live chat. We didn't have time for all the questions, so I wanted to try to answer a few more that we missed. Here we go...
Re: long posts and how they get truncated in the timeline. Are there thoughts or plans for letting us control where that truncation happens? Using a tag in the feed or something. The way truncation works now seems rough.
No current plans, but it's something that comes up from time to time and has been discussed on the Help Center. We use Hugo under the hood and it supports marking an intro paragraph summary by using the <!‐‐more‐‐> HTML comment. It's possible that some form of summaries could be used in the timeline. In my experience, though, the more exceptions we add to the timeline, the more confusing it is. That's why we've mostly stuck to a few very simple rules.
Is it likely that the success of updating the iOS and Android apps will influence development of the Mac app?
It will influence it only in that there will be more time for native Mac development using App Kit, because there will be less time trying to port features back and forth on iOS and Android. There are no plans to use the React Native code base on the Mac. The mobile UI doesn't generally fit on the Mac, although there may be a few features we can borrow from Micro.blog 3.0 on iOS such as easier bookmark saving and the quick bar to switch between blogs.
Who is the best rock guitarist?
I just bought tickets to U2 in Vegas, so I'm inclined to say that The Edge has always been a favorite. Actually picking a single top guitarists is outside the scope of my skillset as the founder of Micro.blog. 😛
What are some of the features you can say "no" to?
One point I tried to make in the panel is that while we move quickly and often change priorities internally without much warning, the long-term vision for Micro.blog hasn't changed. We want to make it easier for more people to use blogs, encouraging domain names and content ownership, and wrap that together with a safe, welcoming community. Every feature has some connection to one of those fundamental goals. So anything that goes against that is an easy "no", like making posting more complicated with extra fields, adding ads, or turning the platform into more of a closed silo.
2023-05-24
I'm continuing to use ChatGPT all the time. On a whim today I asked it what the philosophy of Micro.blog is and it nailed it. You can read the transcript here.
2023-05-24
Been thinking a lot about Nostr this week. Finally realized that it resonates in a "worse is better" way. This is a good thing and will help me grok how it fits alongside ActivityPub and Bluesky.
2023-05-24
The new episode of Core Intuition covers last week's Micro Camp and looking ahead to WWDC. Thanks for listening!
2023-05-24
Upgraded Ruby last night and thought everything was stable. But no. Putting my sysadmin hat on for a bit this morning while everything gets back to normal.
2023-05-25
Adding a new query to Micro.blog's server status check to throw an error if the queue backlog is unusually high. Will be able to better track this error as platform downtime.
2023-05-25
I'm testing cross-posting to Nostr. I'm still not really sure how to link to Nostr accounts... If you've ventured out into the wild west of Nostr country you might be able to find me with @manton.org or npub1ae42p0d24pmccr47unf2a3hv2trmk9lrmr65ges4v3x5pscs4yrquu7ul9. 🤪
2023-05-25
Good morning! Took an early walk. Coffee now at Summer Moon and I have some server changes to deploy. Also way behind in email and hope to catch up over the next couple days. ☕️
2023-05-26
Folks, Nostr is really easy to understand. Your username is 64 random letters and you just enable NIP-5, NIP-39, and put your private key in a hardware wallet. Simple! Mainstream adoption for non-technical users will not be a problem. 🙄
2023-05-26
Joking aside, I really like Nostr. Something about it is very elegant. You just have to ignore 80% of it, especially anything around cryptocurrency. It's a wild west platform with a few nuggets of gold. 🌵
2023-05-26
Next steps for the community
Jean and I have been talking this week about what's next to prioritize around the Micro.blog community. I often focus on technical improvements to blogs, but we've had some good momentum recently with community features too, such as rolling out profile pronouns, user blocking, and encouraging alt text in Discover. Starting today, Jean is also hosting monthly office hours to talk to folks on Zoom.
Halsted's post about creating a safe and inclusive community is also on our minds, and there are a few points in particular that I think we can run with.
- Expanding community guidelines to demonstrate what we want to see, not just what we don't want to see. The first step with the guidelines was to set a foundation for behavior that we would need to address with blocking posts or banning users. The next step could be to also summarize what kind of posts work well to keep the timeline safe and welcoming for new folks.
- Elevating voices in Discover. Jean is planning to write a post about how we approach curating Discover. There aren't strict rules for this, and our own guidelines should and do evolve, but sharing our thinking will help the conversation. We are fully aware that Micro.blog is not as diverse as it can be. Improving this will touch many parts of the platform, including marketing.
- Maintaining a new community roadmap. We know the larger vision, but we don't usually track every little feature request because it can be overwhelming and inevitably become out of date with current priorities. What we want to add, though, is making sure there is a public list of community features so important tasks aren't lost.
Thanks as always to everyone who uses Micro.blog and has given us a chance to build something unique on the web. I know everyone has high expectations, and we do too.
2023-05-26
This week Bluesky rolled out their custom timeline feeds. Pretty interesting approach. However, I'm going to disable automatic cross-posting from my blog to Bluesky for a while... Bluesky feels so much like Twitter that it has been too distracting for me. Will check back in later.
2023-05-27
Seems unlikely that we'll end up with a single unified social web platform. I like Mastodon's focus on communities. I like Bluesky's thinking on distributed moderation. I like the IndieWeb's principles of ownership. I like Nostr's private messaging. How will we tie all of this together? Blogs.
2023-05-27
Listened to a couple hours of the Texas house debating impeachment against our corrupt attorney general. Kind of shocked to hear the final vote, overwhelmingly for the articles. Paxton is removed from office pending the trial. Wow. 🇺🇸
2023-05-27
Just watched way too many replays and commentary on the final seconds of Celtics/Heat. Another memorable game 6 in Miami. Bring on game 7! 🏀
2023-05-28
Where have I been
A random conversation today made me curious about what countries I've visited in Europe. I got lost looking at maps and thought I might as well try to make a list.
Apparently 9 countries in the world:
- United States
- Canada
- Mexico
- England
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- Greece
- Switzerland
And 28 states:
- Texas
- Louisiana
- Oklahoma
- New Mexico
- Arizona
- California
- Oregon
- Washington
- Idaho
- Utah
- Wyoming
- Colorado
- Mississippi
- Alabama
- Arkansas
- Georgia
- Florida
- North Carolina
- Virginia
- Maryland
- New Jersey
- New York
- Massachusetts
- Vermont
- Tennessee
- Indiana
- Illinois
- Missouri
Not counting cities I've just flown through without leaving the airport. Might've missed some, but still feels kind of low. As anyone who has followed my 30 days lists knows, I like collecting visits to places. Now a little inspired to finish seeing all 50 states.
2023-05-28
Tinkering with something in Go this morning. Always felt like it would be a good language to know more about, and now finally have a real need.
2023-05-28
Love seeing all the “Where have I been?” posts. I blogged it on a whim and it’s so much more interesting to see the places other folks have gone. I also just realized I left Alaska off! Will edit.
2023-05-28
Went to pay our respects to my uncle, for Memorial Day. Tomorrow would’ve been his birthday too. 🇺🇸
