There’s never been a better time to learn a little about nearly everything in web technology. 2026 will be a year for generalists and new tools that span platforms. And yet I see folks on the fediverse who have strong opinions about Bluesky without really understanding why it exists or how it works.

We officially have a new W3C working group to advance ActivityPub and related specifications (including IndieWeb standards). There has been a lot of work in the years since the last specs were updated, so it’ll be good to see conventions formalized.

I’ve been watching some of the CNN live coverage from Minneapolis. Looks precarious. Sad and worried for a city that has already gone through so much.

Stay safe everyone.

Two co-founders of Thinking Machines are going back to OpenAI. Last July, a co-founder of Safe Superintelligence left for Meta.

Building a business is hard, even with funding. The near implosion of OpenAI and the board shakeup that led to these companies’ founding now feels like ancient history.

Reading this post on Daring Fireball today about the explosive growth of the iPhone made me curious what I had blogged about the launch. We tend to slightly reframe history when looking back, so older posts are a snapshot of how things really felt. My post in 2007 also collected some tweets.

Really unique design for Honda’s prototype camper trailer. I like it. There’s some video and commentary here on YouTube.

David Pierce writes that all the AI pieces are falling into place for Google:

Three years after being caught off guard by ChatGPT, Gemini appears to have everything it needs to take down OpenAI and everyone else.

And:

It announced an opt-in feature called “Personal Intelligence,” which connects Gemini to the vast ocean of information Google has about you in order to give you better responses.

I don’t think Gemini will ever reach the level of market share that Google search had. There’s still a lot of room for a few successful companies.

There’s a major Verizon outage, still impacting us here in Austin. My phone is currently on SOS. I don’t think I’ve ever seen something on this scale before… Despite how much we gripe about cellular service, it’s actually very reliable.

The Information report on Gemini + Siri answers most of my questions, including deployment:

To maintain Apple’s privacy pledge, the Gemini-based AI will run directly on Apple devices or its private cloud system, which is powered by Apple’s own server chips, rather than running on Google’s servers. Google put significant engineering effort into getting a version of Gemini working on Apple’s servers, according to a person familiar with the partnership talks.

No small thing for Apple to scale this up on their own. We’ll see small improvements in iOS 26.4, with the biggest changes in the fall.

John Gruber commenting on Meta’s plans to sell more glasses:

20 million units is a real number. But building the capacity for 20 million units isn’t the same as selling 20 million units, and, to my knowledge, actual sales of Meta Glasses are only Bezos Numbers.

In NYC last week, I walked by the Meta Lab store. There was a 30-minute wait to try Ray-Ban Display glasses. I don’t want to actually buy them, so I didn’t waste everyone’s time by taking up a slot. The store had real people in it, though. (Not Apple Store level crowdedness, of course.)

Caught myself writing a blog post to complain about someone else’s blog platform and API. Deleted the draft. There is plenty of complaining to go around already. “Everything is amazing and nobody is happy.”

Running database migrations! 🤞 Deploying a bunch of new things this week.

It has been forever, but we’ve finally released a new version of Sunlit for iOS! It’s simpler, faster. It’s the app for when you just want to browse and reply to photo posts. Still more we want to do with it. Needed to get this update out first as a reset.

Continuing to experiment with video. Here’s a short one from this morning, working at Lazarus while it was raining.

When I switched to the iPhone Pro Max, I gave up my iPad Mini, thinking the larger iPhone is good enough most of the time, and I’ve got the Kindle for reading. With AI-assisted coding, maybe the iPad has a new role… Jotting down ideas or firing off coding tasks to run from anywhere without a Mac.

Another Micro.blog tool from @timapple, this one is for blogging from the command line. The year of micro apps.

Pretty significant bundle of apps in Apple Creator Studio. I’ve been using an old license of Final Cut Pro to edit my short videos recently, even though it’s overkill. Probably will keep doing that for now, don’t really need a new subscription.

OpenAI acquires health startup Torch:

We started Torch to build a medical memory for AI, unifying scattered records into a context engine that helps you see the full picture, connect the dots, and make sure nothing important gets lost in the noise again.

This is pretty much exactly what I was blogging about last week.

Also just announced: Claude for Healthcare.

Southwest is still my preferred airline but the new changes do hurt the experience. Paying for checked bags encourages people to stuff more bags overhead where they don’t fit. Paying for assigned seats ruins the checkout flow with upsells.