I wrote a couple of days ago about my early thoughts on Threads. Overall, I was pretty optimistic about how it could turn out. It's an alternative to Twitter, it could be another boost for the ActivityPub protocol, and it could mean people on Mastodon would be able to connect to more people.

However, as much as I wasn't planning on replacing either of my Mastodon or Twitter use with Threads, I'm still left a bit disappointed by the launch. I'm now doubting whether I'll be using it at all.

Sure, it's just a 1.0, but it's still a massively subpar experience.

I was expecting it to be "Twitter, by Instagram", with emphasis on the Twitter. Instead, it's the other way around.

To me, Threads takes one of the most annoying parts of Instagram, the algorithmic timeline, makes it worse, and then provides it as the foundation of a new social network.

Algorithmic feeds can work, and there are certainly benefits to them. But as a primary way of interacting with people on your platform? That seems a little weird. Especially when it's not limited to the people that you choose to follow.

What's the point of "following" someone on a social network, when you're just going to see content from everyone else anyway? Is it just to give the algorithm a little nudge?

Anyway, as you can see, I'm not exactly a fan of Threads at the moment.

Maybe it can get better? Then again, it could also get worse

I think there's still reason to be optimistic about a possible ActivityPub integration. But as for using Threads itself, I don't think I'll be doing that very much.

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Update (16:30): While I am still unsure if Threads will work for me long-term. I wonder if it would be more beneficial to me as a replacement to Instagram, rather than Twitter or Mastodon.

Sometimes when I write long blog posts, I like to run the text through Grammarly as a way to pick up on some spelling or grammar mistakes that I may have missed. But sometimes, it tries to make me "less wordy", remove words that "aren't necessary", or change the whole tone of the post.

In the past, I would blindly accept any suggestion that was made. Because surely Grammarly knew best? Maybe I just can't write properly.

But I'm now becoming of the opinion, that seeing as this is a personal blog, my writing should mirror the way I think and talk. I'm not creating legal documents, marketing material, or a school textbook, this blog is about me, so it should probably sound like me too.

k3tan:

I've often wondered how I would start my digital identity again. This wouldn't be applicable to me but rather for anyone just starting out down the path. Knowing what I know now, I'd definitely do things a little differently.If I was to start over again, here's what I would do. I think I could do it rather cheaply as well.

A fascinating read, and one that seems to me would be effective at the goal of creating a digital identity that was separate from your real one.

I can't say that I'm currently in the market for a new identity, I quite enjoy being myself. But, it does give an interesting perspective into digital life. They go over a possible computer set up, way of getting money, and a few other rules on what to do and not to do.

You may (or may not) have noticed the impending arrival of Facebook Meta Instagram's new social app. Well, it's now officially coming out on the 6th of July, and it's called Threads.

The main rumour was that this new app would support ActivityPub, which is an open protocol that Mastodon is based on. This has led to all sorts of reactions. From people completely opposed to anything from Meta connecting to the Fediverse, and wanting to block it from their instance. To people that are excited about the potential of the new users that it would bring to the degenerated social network world.

I'd say I'm somewhere near the more optimistic end. Because, there is clearly space in the market for a new short-form text-based social network, and if it's backed by Instagram, then it stands a good chance of surviving. Or at least gaining enough attention to make it viable in the short term.

Regarding ActivityPub and the Fediverse, my opinion is that if Threads fully supports the protocol, then that is surely a good thing. Because, apart from major social networks simply not existing, having them work with an open standard is surely a pretty cool thing.

I do not doubt that some people will not want to have their instance to connect to Threads. This is a totally valid opinion, and I'm sure there will still be options for this.

However, I'm guessing a lot of Mastodon instances won't block Threads. Which means, if you know people that didn't make the jump to Mastodon, you may now be able to communicate with them this way.

Either way, it's a curious situation that a major platform like Instagram would even think about integrating with something open and decentralised. And I look forward to seeing what happens as a result of this.

Humane:

The connected and intelligent clothing-based wearable device uses a range of sensors that enable contextual and ambient compute interactions.

Even though we've only come across very minimal press releases, and a short TED Talk, this device has already peaked my curiosity in a way that no other product has.

Sure, this product could a total disaster. But it could also be the next step in personal computers. The range of potential is huge.

I have so many questions about it, but for once I'm just allowing myself to be a little excited.

Marc, from atthis.link, writing about digital minimalism in the context of a phone, and the experience of using a budget Android phone (Nokia C2 2E):

A few months on and the C2 is the most fun I’ve had with a smartphone since I got my first one over a decade ago.Using a phone that’s this budget I don’t feel constrained, I feel focused. There’s just enough space that I can install the odd app I only use occasionally but not so much that anything that vaguely takes my interest can be installed. Battery life is better than expected but just short enough to make every unlock mindful of its purpose. In the rare moments where web pages or apps lag, it’s a reminder that this is probably something better done on a desktop. And to top it off, in a strange twist, this will also be a phone with the best chance of longevity given that replacing the battery is as simple as popping the back off.

The whole piece was interesting, because I for one, haven't thought about digital The whole piece was interesting, because I for one, haven't thought about digital minimalism in regards to phones. Except for using fewer apps. But this is more about being constrained physically.

And it sort of resonates with me, because a while ago I decided to use an iPhone 7. And I also found it to constrain me with what I could do. It was a smaller screen, the battery life wasn't that good, and it was running an old OS, so some modern apps wouldn't run on it.

Despite that, I would also say I felt more focused because of the constraints. It slimmed down the list of tasks that I felt the phone would be useful for and made it more of a tool for specific uses.

I eventually went back to using an iPhone 13 Pro, but the idea of using a more lean device still interests me.

Text Shot, the app for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, has never and currently does not collect, use, or interact with at all, any personal and private information stored on the device.

There is absolutely no need for Text Shot to ever interact with anything, apart from any text input that is provided to the application for the purposes of generating images, and for that reason alone, there has never been any intention to use personal or private information.

Date Effective: 1st July 2023

I just came across this great list of command line tools for macOS by Saurabh, and to be honest, I had never heard of quite a few of them.

For example, who knew about textutil that can convert text documents between types like txt, html, docx, etc?

Or also a tool like networkQuality that can measure your internet speed? It even gives you a great readable output like this:

Downlink: capacity 105.573 Mbps, responsiveness 64 RPM - Uplink: capacity 6.886
Downlink: capacity 103.467 Mbps, responsiveness 64 RPM - Uplink: capacity 6.880
Downlink: capacity 100.457 Mbps, responsiveness 64 RPM - Uplink: capacity 6.890
[...]
==== SUMMARY ====
Uplink capacity: 8.511 Mbps
Downlink capacity: 20.053 Mbps
Responsiveness: Low (67 RPM)
Idle Latency: 36.917 milliseconds

If you use the command line at all on your Mac, I recommend at least giving this list a once over.

It hasn't been long since Text Shot was released, but it's already time for the first update.

There is now some basic Markdown support for bold and italic text. Which means you can emphasise certain words and phrases.

You can also now choose different fonts for the highlight and the title/URL.

And there's also a bunch of optimisations that have been made to the text shot generation, so it should be a bit faster, more efficient, and stable.

If you haven't already, you can find Text Shot for iOS and macOS on the App Store.

Ever since I rebuilt Text Case around the concept of user-built flows, I've always been missing one key part of the original version, the list of all of the formats with instant previews. It might have been long, and maybe with big bits of text it took a second or two to transform into every format. But it was really useful to not only transform text quickly, but to also see it in various formats at once.

That's why, I've decided to add back that feature, but in a new slightly new guise.

There's now a new "Scratchpad" tab in Text Case, which allows you to enter text at the top, and then see the results of it being formatted using all of your custom flows, and also every single format available in Text Case!

At the same time, there's also a new button in the Flows section to add a single Format. This is when you want to have your own custom list of formats, but you don't really want to build a full flow.

And I couldn't stop there without also adding a few extra colour options for flows, and also some extra visual tweaks all throughout the app.

You can find Text Case on the App Store and the Mac App Store.