Steve Troughton-Smith on Mastodon:
If Apple isn't stopped, there will come a point where Apple slaps a 30% tax on all VISA transactions made on iOS (unless you use Apple Pay, of course!)
It could happen. Related, I'd love the option to use Apple Pay in iOS apps instead of in-app purchase. Apple would still skim off their small fee as part of the card transaction, but it wouldn't hit developer revenue.
My son is tinkering with Raspberry Pi and Arduino and it's incredible what is possible now. So many little widgets you can buy and program. Servers that fit in the palm of your hand.
"I’m learning, and I’m worried for the opponents in a couple of years." — Victor Wembanyama, after winning silver at the Olympics 🏀
Ben Thompson's daily update reviews the App Store vs. Patreon mess:
In short, Apple is taking a percentage of individual creator subscriptions, but it is treating every individual creator as if they are a subsidiary of Patreon. It’s as if Apple can’t even conceive of the possibility of there being any sort of platform other than themselves; they may still market themselves as the company for creators, but their actions suggest they truly don’t care.
He also suggests a solution: Apple could charge 30% of Patreon's own 8% fee, because Patreon is passing almost all of the money on to creators.
Random rail crossing in Denton. 🚂
Sounds like we may be in for a substantial remedy in Epic vs. Google, potentially going even further than the EU's DMA. From The Verge:
Judge Donato made it clear he plans to ban any nondiscriminatory behavior when it comes to how Google treats rival app stores, up to and including human review.
Must-read blog post by Cory Doctorow, connecting enshittification to Apple and the legal agreements that give corporations power:
Apple doesn't oppose regulation; Apple loves regulation, so long as they're the ones doing the regulating. They want to be able to shape and define the digital market, backed by the power of the state, but without any input from the state. In modern corporate orthodoxy, the state is an enforcer for corporate will.
Wow, this post diving into Micro.blog bookmarks and highlights is amazing. Thanks Loura! I've bookmarked it in Micro.blog (of course) so I can sift through it later to see what we can improve in Micro.blog's API.
Happy NBA schedule release day! It drops this afternoon and I'm excited enough that I will probably watch it live on ESPN2. @cheesemaker and I are still trying to visit all the arenas in the country and it's taking forever, need to hit a couple more this season.
This new Rivian travel kitchen looks so good. I’d be tempted to get it if I hadn’t already spent a small fortune on my Snow Peak camping things.
Now that I’ve cancelled my NYT subscription, going to wind down my daily use of Wordle too. So many ads now, and the fun has run its course. Planning to stop playing after puzzle 1200.
For the first joint event with Joe and Kamala together, really smart to focus on healthcare and prescription drug costs. There has been real progress on this that Joe can talk about. It lets the crowd show their appreciation for the president, the press will cover it, and it highlights policy. 🇺🇸
There are a lot of misses in the current Amtrak map. Las Vegas, which Brightline is making progress on. But one of the biggest has gotta be the station in Maricopa instead of Phoenix. Ridiculous that this route has been broken for decades. (Biden's infrastructure deal will eventually fix it.)
Having one of those mornings where I sort of can't believe how well this coding is going. Sometimes everything just works.
It was four years ago this week that Epic Games launched so-called Project Liberty, their attempt to force Apple's hand on external purchases. Lawsuits, DMA... And now we have third-party marketplaces and Fortnite back in the EU. It's no longer crazy to imagine we'll get this worldwide in 2-3 years.
Annoyed by yesterday's server problem. Essentially one of our servers was accepting incoming connections, but it couldn't connect to another server to verify domain names for SSL certs. The whole point of having Hugo-based static blogs is to minimize dependencies, but there's always something.
Nice blog post on Writing Slowly about using notes in Micro.blog and getting set up with Strata for iOS.
Posted a new Core Intuition, this week covering the latest App Store news with new linking entitlement rules and in-app purchase in Patreon. We also talk about my upcoming Markdown text editor change in Micro.blog.
Pretty happy with how the new editor for Micro.blog is coming along. I'm going to ship it Monday. It'll be enabled when starting a new post, editing a post, and for replies. Not yet for CSS or theme editing. Screenshot here for a quick reply... Notice better highlighting, preview toggle, toolbar.
Cool walls at Spokesman Coffee. ☕️
Just registered for FediForum, a 3-day event for the fediverse coming up in September. I've attended the last two events and got a lot out of it. Good for both developers and anyone interested in learning more beyond Mastodon.
Micro.blog servers for 2024
Micro.blog users who check the logs page will notice that the platform routes publishing requests to one of our servers and includes the server name in the log. The names were originally added to help me debug, but as an easter egg I also linked to the Disneyland Railroad wiki page.
I like having a theme for naming computers. For the last dozen years, all of my personal computers and hard drives have been named for characters in Hayao Miyazaki films. For servers, I've used Disney train-related names.
Here's the current list of our servers. I'm going to start linking to this blog post from the logs page so it makes a little more sense. Eventually, the easter egg will probably be a distraction and I'll remove it.
- Carolwood: MySQL server. Carolwood Pacific Railroad was Disney's backyard railroad.
- Marsh: MySQL server. One of the locomotives at Disneyland, named after Ernest Marsh.
- Santa Rosa: Static web server. For the Santa Rosa Valley Railroad, the private railroad of Bill Dundas with connections to Disney.
- Sotto: Static web server. For Eddie Sotto of Walt Disney Imagineering.
- Shanghai. Redis server. Just named for one of the Disney park locations in China.
- Thunder. Redis server. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
- Broggie. App web server. Named for Roger Broggie, who worked at Disney's machine shop.
- Holliday. App web server. Another one of the locomotives at Disneyland.
- Retlaw. App web server. Another train car from Disneyland and the history of Retlaw Enterprises.
Also a few decommissioned servers:
- Fort Wilderness. Named for the railroad at Disney World that was long ago shut down.
- Kimball. For Ward Kimball.
- Lilly. For Disney's Lilly Belle.
Happy railroading! 🚂
Still some selection quirks in the new editor, but overall it's so much better, don't see a reason to hold on the release tomorrow. For longer blog posts with HTML, sometimes the cursor can jump annoyingly, but it's easy enough to work around.
This line from Leon Mika's post about naming computers rings true. It's pragmatic but also a little sad:
…when AWS came onto the scene, the prevailing train of thought was to treat your servers like cattle rather than pets.
His blog post also uses the audio narration feature in Micro.blog so you can listen to it in his own voice. Love it.
