Notices by Richard MacManus (ricmac@mastodon.social), page 2

1/ OpenAI’s new Operator agent is a “research preview of an agent that can use its own browser to perform tasks for you.” This was the logical next step in “AI agents” technology, and it prob will be useful for tasks like shopping, or researching something. Initially, I was concerned about AI becoming “the primary user of the web now,” as one AI newsletter posited. But on reflection it seems more suited to task-oriented web browsing, & there are many other aspects of the web that are not that.

It’s pretty incredible to see Pixelfed take off, after a very long period of Daniel valiently promoting the service on Mastodon every day. Just goes to show that an app or website can “pop” at any time, and get that magical tipping point moment. It’s something all of us indies dream of for our little projects, but it’s quite rare to achieve. So enjoy it @dansup and all the best for continued growth! https://mastodon.social/@dansup/113873246090418740

@Gargron Happy birthday! I can’t believe you’re only 32, that makes me feel very old. Maybe you’re a GenX in spirit :)

3/3 Of course, there are risks for users and sometimes trade-offs with a commercial company building on open tech. And sometimes those companies go too far or you simply don’t trust them (e.g. Meta and why I’ve always been suspicious of their entry into the fediverse). But there’s nothing wrong with trying to build a business on the open web — heck, even @timbl is doing that now. I’m fine with people posting their marxist or capitalist opinions, but remember there is a middle ground here.

2/3 Personally, I consider myself a “liberal”, but I’m closer to the capitalist side of the spectrum than marxist. In tech terms, that means I am a fan of startups and entrepreneurs. It’s OK to try and build a successful company with open technologies — e.g. I admire what @mike and @marci are doing with Flipboard. I actually wish @Gargron could earn more income from Mastodon. I’m ok with Bluesy trying to be a successful company with decentralised technologies.

1/3 The discourse about the #OpenWeb has become too black and white for my liking in this new political reality we’re all in now. Just because you support the open web doesn’t necessarily mean you are “left-wing” or a “marxist” — just as continuing to be on X or Meta products doesn’t necessarily make you “right-wing” or a “capitalist”. It’s not that simple, there are many shades of grey.

Forget URL shorteners, how about URL emojis! Here's my internet history website: https://emojied.net/⏳

Via https://emojied.net/

@evan Yes I just realized that and re-worded :)

Tired: Blogging on WordPress
Wired: Running an indie website like it’s the 1990s
Expired: Opining on billionaire-owned social media

Was thinking about web rings tonight and came across this post. I don’t know for sure if Google actively penalises web rings (or links pages), but we have lost something by not having them anymore. Curation of indie websites / blogs was an important part of the early web, including early Web 2.0. https://mastodon.social/@HumanServitor/113573150261668389

My final post for the year on @TheNewStack is a wrapup of the leading #webdev trends of 2024:

“The year in web development was characterized by a return to simpler ways of building a website or web application. Partly this was a reaction against the increasing complexity of JavaScript frameworks — especially React-based frameworks. Simpler options like Astro and Eleventy became more popular over 2024 […]” https://thenewstack.io/web-development-trends-in-2024-a-shift-back-to-simplicity/

@_elena Congrats! Looking forward to your writeup of the process.

@_elena It is neat :) I only just joined Surf, and I hate to talk about something that is still closed beta, but I am looking forward to everyone getting access to this.

Test: Hi this is a post from Surf, Flipboard’s cool new app.

What does the Open Web mean to me as we head into 2025? The ability to follow (and see posts from!) the people I want to connect with, no matter if they’re on Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, whatever. Conversely, the ability to TUNE OUT the people I no longer want to hear from (Musk, Mullenweg, people who just post political stuff, etc). That’s the dream, for me at least. Build bridges to connect with your tribe, ignore the self-important people who think they can control you or “the discourse.”

“We build bridges, not walls” 🌁 ❤️ I spoke to @quillmatiq and @snarfed.org about the launch of the 'A New Social' org, and how it can help the #OpenWeb grow in 2025. We also discuss goals for Bridgy Fed as we head into the new year. https://thenewstack.io/bridge-building-the-state-of-the-open-web-heading-into-2025/ #Fediverse

Thought for the night: is it possible to have a successful indie website/newsletter that’s FOR something and not anti-something. Many of the successful indie tech sites/newsletters I can think of are anti-blockchain, anti-AI, anti-bigtech, etc. U may hate Web 2.0, but at least we were FOR something.

Ev Williams ( @ev ) is back with a new startup. As someone of the same vintage as him, I can relate to this:

“Mr. Williams said he decided Mozi was worth building after reflecting on the importance of relationships. Looking back, he said, “everything that had gone really well, even in work, was about relationships, and everything that went poorly was mismanaging relationships.””

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/technology/ev-williams-twitter-medium-mozi.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hU4.vPLI.Fif9lmrZOIZi&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare (gift link)

@ev Slideshare founders have also launched a new thing. Rashmi Sinha:

“Twitter launched in early 2006, SlideShare in late 2006.

These are what I would call nostalgia builds. An effort to capture the social web that was, for a brief ephemeral moment. And then it became successful, so successful that we lost what we built with the social web.

We are afraid of failure and losing the things we care about. Sometimes, success makes you lose the thing you care about.” https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rashmisinha_ev-williams-twitter-and-medium-founder-activity-7273409486915039235-mE_e?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

If you all think JavaScript frameworks spit out horrendous code, try editing an epub file in Calibra (it’s XHTML). As well as dealing with mountains of span tags, it took me hours to track down the cause of a bug where numbers in my ebook were formatted differently from the text…the reason, it turned out: one of the meta files had an Arabic language setting! I only discovered this when I looked closer at the settings on my kindle. All part of the fun of being a self-published author :)