The Ephemeral Scrapbook — 2026.01.18

👤 Personal {#blogging}

1️⃣ I've been quite busy during the Holidays with my digital hobby. This year started with a bang! I'm ecstatic, actually. It's been less than a couple of weeks, and the amount of "work" accomplished is simply astonishing. I couldn't have done it without my determination, with a bunch of wild ideas and ... Claude AI. I'll take a two-week vacation in early February, which will help me consolidate my learning and experience. 2️⃣ I started a new website (digests.numericcitizen.me) and talked about it here. I'm excited about that one because of the way it is built and because I have more plans for it, too. 3️⃣ For creators like me, people can be weird. Thankfully, I rarely get these type of comments on anything that I create and share. This was a parody blog post from Matt Birchler. I'm guessing he gets those bad comments way too often, leaving him without a word.

🗺️ Discoveries {#accessories}

1️⃣ Clicks introduced the Click Power Keyboard, a MagSafe battery pack and a physical keyboard all-in-one device for the iPhone. I'm not sure I'm the target customer for this, but I applaud the company’s imaginative but off-track accessory. I was a fan of Blackberries back in the day, and I do see some use and edge cases where a physical keyboard would be helpful. But those edge cases are... edgy, and I don't think they warrant a new device in my pocket. 2️⃣ There is a new Apple Store in downtown Montreal. The store was previously about 100m west of today's new location, on same street. I paid a visit and took some photos, see next section.

🌄 Photography {#traveling, #applestore}

1️⃣ I had the chance to visit the relocated Apple Store on Ste-Catherine Street, downtown Montreal and shared my observations as well as my best images of the place. I couldn't take my Nikon camera with me because the battery was depleted, and I couldn't wait to recharge it. I managed to take a few good pictures with my phone, though. 2️⃣ My next photographic experience is getting closer, when I visit Egypt at the end of January, early February. Until then, I'm utterly quiet on that front.

🍎 Apple & Tech {#ai,#design, #macostahoe, #appstore}

1️⃣ Apple's macOS Tahoe might be the most poorly received release in terms of design. Some believe Liquid Glass isn't suitable for a desktop operating system. I agree: the glass metaphor works well for a device like the iPhone, which is essentially a slab of glass, but a desktop computer isn't the same. Critics also criticize the inappropriate use of icons in menus, which is the latest point of contention. Although many seem to share this concern, I personally like seeing icons in menu items. You should decide for yourself. This detailed blog post presents a strong argument against their use. I shared a more detailed take on this. 2️⃣ Like if it was possible, X / Grok are in the news again for allowing people create and post all sorts of very questionable content on the network. Many people are asking for Apple and Google to remove those apps from their respective App Stores. Despite what appears to be a patent violation of their store's rules, they still don't budge. Why? Probably a good idea to look at mounting fear of ... Trump. Gruber’s words are worth a read. 3️⃣ I rated each Apple product from 1 to 9. Here are the results.

“Claude Code has the potential to transform all of tech. I also think we’re going to see a real split in the tech industry (and everywhere code is written) between people who are outcome-driven and are excited to get to the part where they can test their work with users faster, and people who are process-driven and get their meaning from the engineering itself and are upset about having that taken away.” — Ben Werdmuller

📱 Apps & Services {#dataprotection, #bookmarking,#ios26}

1️⃣ Are you one of those who think that data in the cloud is a backup, or even being backed up? Well, think again. The cloud is not a backup solution if this is the primary storage of your data. That's the case with iCloud Photo Library or iCloud Drive. Because your data is on the device and in the cloud doesn’t mean they are backups of each other. There is a small Mac utility you can buy that enables real backups, called Parachute Backup. It's cheap and apparently effective at backing up your data to a destination of your choice. Disclaimer: I don't use such a solution. But I should. 2️⃣ If you happen to save a lot of bookmarks for later reference, consider reading The Newsprint review of MyMind. It's a good overview of what makes MyMind so lovable. I tried it myself and like its design, but I prefer AnyBox, which is a better fit for my needs. 3️⃣ Early reports indicate that iOS 26 adoption is low at around 18%, but data from a specific app suggests that about 70% of its active users have already upgraded, highlighting a potential discrepancy in the overall adoption figures. Maybe power users are upgrading, but normal people with lighter usage aren’t?

🚧 Special projects {#automation,#vibecoding}

1️⃣ A lot happened since the previous edition of this newsletter. I was essentially focused on building automation workflows in n8n, most of my hobby time. You can read all about it right here. Besides that, I also worked on building small, focused web apps with Next.js and hosting them on Vercel using Claude Code. It's a fascinating process: writing down prompts that describe the final product and watching Claude code, spitting out code and strategies to build a successful app, doing what I described in the first place, no programming required on my part. I call this my modern Lego set.

📺 YouTube {#tech, #design, #ai}

1️⃣ When Apple brags about putting billions of transistors on a chip like the M5, what doesn't it represent in reality? How big or small does this fact represent? Well, Marqus Brownly made a video to show how small things are these days. It's really well done. 2️⃣ The flat edge dilemma: A good video about explaining major design constraints and how they affect product shapes and sizes. 3️⃣ Paris timelapse from -300 to 2025. Quite impressive. 3️⃣ We are hearing a lot about sycophancy when we refer to LLM. What is this? Sycophancy is the tendency to excessively flatter or agree with someone in order to gain favor or approval. More details and explanation in this video.

🔮 Looking forward {#digg, #openai, #chatgpt}

1️⃣ Digg is officially in public beta, after a rather long private beta period, which I took part in. People want Digg to become a new Reddit, but I'm not sure this is what I want. I'm not sure where it's going, I'm not even sure we need another social network. From what I'm seeing, many Digg posts are already available elsewhere and have very limited user engagement. Just to kick the tires, I wanted to create a user community about Apple, but someone beat me to it, and the name was no longer available. Instead, I created Apple Design, which can be found here. There are twelve members at the time of this writing. You can find my Digg profile here. 2️⃣ Well put, Matt, well put: ChatGPT enshittification has officially begun. Now, for 8 US$ a month, you get ads within your chat sessions. I expect ads to come to other pricing tiers, too, eventually. When we see ads, we become the product. Sad.

🌟 Miscellaneous {#space,#software}

1️⃣ SpaceX gets the green light to launch 7500 more Starlink satellites in space, contributing not only to increasing coverage and bandwidth but also to the Kessler Syndrome. The Kessler Syndrome, also called the orbital debris cascade, is a theoretical scenario in orbital mechanics describing a self-sustaining chain reaction of collisions among space debris. Proposed by Donald J. Kessler in 1978, it predicts that as the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) increases, collisions could generate debris that, in turn, causes further impacts, making certain orbital regions unusable for satellites or spacecraft. 2️⃣ Now that we are destroying space, are we also destroying software? Antirez says yes. 3️⃣ Also from the same author, building software is hard, especially open-source software. Hard enough to move on. 4️⃣ Have you heard about the enchittification phenomenon? This article from Mitch Wagner explains how dominant tech platforms follow a predictable trajectory: they begin by serving users well, then progressively degrade the experience as monopoly power takes hold. This process—called “enshittification”—extends beyond bad products to include labor exploitation and broader economic harm. The author argues that reversing this trend requires meaningful antitrust enforcement and renewed competition, not better design or goodwill. OpenAI might be on the trajectory of enchittification with ChatGPT Go. 5️⃣ Is software dead? It might. Thanks to AI. Again.

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