The Ephemeral Scrapbook — Edition 2025-34

👤 Personal

#supportukraine #ukrainewar #war
1️⃣ I don’t often discuss non-technical topics in this newsletter, but now feels like the right time. Since the war in Ukraine began, I have been closely following the news. Almost every day, I check various news platforms, mostly European ones, to understand the current situation. I feel personally affected by this conflict, just as I do by the war in Gaza. I tend to side with the vulnerable. The events in Ukraine, along with the recent meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska, are disheartening and frankly appalling. We have the worst U.S. president in history, and he is the least capable leader to address this crisis. It’s frustrating, and I am not optimistic about the outcome.
Conflicts like this may be thousands of kilometres away, but their ripples cross borders easily. War has a way of collapsing the illusion of distance. Economic instability, energy crises, mass displacement of people, and geopolitical shifts are not contained by geography. Global news makes every tragedy visible and immediate, and empathy doesn’t stop at a country’s edge. Seeing lives torn apart—even if I don’t know these people personally—reminds me that our shared humanity means their suffering is not isolated from my own sense of safety and justice. Wars shape the world we all have to live in, and ignoring them is just another way of letting them shape it for the worse.

🗺️ Discoveries

#apple #macintosh
1️⃣ Is MacSurfer Headline News back? It certainly seems so. Does that ring a few bells? It does for me. Bookmarked because it used to be my home page in Netscape on my Power Macintosh 6100. I would pay visit a few times a day to get all the latest news about Apple. Good memories, indeed.

“Just as people can visit your Ghost website in any browser, subscribe with any feed reader, or receive newsletters in any email client, they can now follow your Ghost publication from any social web client.” — Ghost 6.0 Announcement

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

#substack
1️⃣ This stuff about using AI coming from Tiago Forte is pure non sense. I mean, this guy built a career around writing, among other things. Now, he suggests that he doesn’t have to write all his stuff, but AI could do it for him. Really. 2️⃣ Substack again made the news with bad actors. Someone put together a website explaining why and how to leave Substack. I left a while ago, but my account is still active. I do pay a visit to Substack once in a while. But I never publish anything. I’m following one guy: Scott Knaster. He is cool. He wrote many books about Macintosh computer programming back in the day. He is a great writer. As Om Malik writes, you can dislike Substack, but we must acknowledge the positive impact such a platform can have on attracting readers. This is something that, as a writer and blogger, I must consider at some point. Ghost is making some positive and bold moves with Ghost 6, and I’ve seen readership improvements since then. 3️⃣ It's been a while since I wrote and published a lengthy article about Apple. Although there is always something to discuss regarding Apple, I believe others provide more valuable insights than I could offer.

“Beginners believe that fancy, wordy language impresses readers. Professionals know that writing is a form of communication, and communication should be as straightforward as possible.” — Maria Cassano

🌄 Photography

#glass/discovery #glass/series #glass/search
1️⃣ I continue to collect incredible sunset photos from my rented chalet. I brought my Nikon camera with me recently and spent the night on the lake shore to take pictures of the descending sun. Sadly, I forgot my SD card reader, so I can't share anything yet. 2️⃣ Some great photos in this series from Kali Alcuns on Glass. 3️⃣ The last full moon was on August 9th. I found many photos of the full moon by doing this search on Glass. 4️⃣ Eric mörschel's website is so singular and fantastic. So many great things about this photography-focused website. Don't miss his galleries. I made this discovery via his profile page on Glass.

🍎 Apple & Tech

#macostahoe #beta5 #beta6 #liquidglass
1️⃣ Beta5 of macOS Tahoe brings a new hard drive icon, which is more in line with modern SSDs. I like it. It's far from perfect, but it is significantly better than the previous spinning drive device. Compare the two with this Basic Apple Guy post. 2️⃣ Another disgusting move by Apple's Tim Cook. Come on. 3️⃣ Did Parker Ortolani find the right answer to Liquid Glass woes? I have some doubts. Yet, I like his idea. 4️⃣ Beta 6 of Apple's operating systems was released and improves some of Liquid Glass, but doesn’t fix everything. I think Apple painted itself in a corner with Liquid Glass. 5️⃣ Apple is working on an entirely new operating system, according to a report — something to go along with the new HomePod with a screen. Joining the already crowded product lines, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, visionOS, and macOS, this would become the seventh operating system for Apple to support (excluding HomePod here, it's probably a faceless tvOS). That's a lot, even if the core is iOS.

"One of the main issues with liquid glass is legibility, there’s a sense that despite liquid glass supposedly being designed to promote your content that it actually occludes it.” — Parker Ortolani

🚧 Special projects

#webdesign
1️⃣ I always have many special projects on my plate, but I'm not alone. Basic Apple Guy recently made a significant and nice website redesign. I love it. I love everything this guy is doing. I'm a fan and should probably pick a few of his ideas for my personal landing page. 2️⃣ Speaking of my projects, I started wondering if I could create a custom theme plugin for Micro.blog using Vibe coding. I recently asked the question and received a few encouraging answers, prompting me to try it. Out of curiosity, I tried the following prompt with ChatGPT (paid version): “I'm wondering about creating a theme plugin for Micro.blog, a web hosting service based on Hugo. Do you think it would be difficult to do with your help?” The answer blew me away. I then continued the conversation for a while, and I can see that it wouldn't be that difficult. I would need to feed ChatGPT with a few websites I like to create a mood board, and then it would handle the necessary steps to get a plugin from GitHub that I can install. It’s incredible what we can do these days. I'll keep thinking about it.

📱 Apps & Services

#grammarly #languagetool #subscription
1️⃣ I thought that I could cancel Grammarly and replace it with LanguageTools, but I must admit that I'm doing the wrong thing here. LanguageTools doesn't support as many apps as Grammarly does, Craft being one of them. Grammarly is so expensive, though. 2️⃣ Ghost v6 is out, and numericcitizen.me is now running on it. Just like Chris Enns, I'm rather happy with this release. Most of the improvements are for people like me, the blogger, for the readers, it's unnoticeable, primarily, except for the addition of fediverse support. You can follow me through your favourite Mastodon-compatible client or from Micro.blog. 3️⃣ Mindnote with on-device Apple model responding to queries and automatically drawing the answer? That looks cool.

“And the thing I love the most about sticking with tools for the long run is that you get to know the people behind them, and you learn to appreciate those individuals and what they do. That is especially true in my case because most of the tools I use are built by either small teams or single developers" — Manuel Moreale

📺 YouTube

carplay #science #applerumor
1️⃣ Maques Brownlee reviews CarPlay Ultra. I'm even more skeptical about CarPlay Ultra after watching this video. I'll probably get my first full EV in the next 2-3 years. My next car will likely not support CarPlay Ultra. Modern car companies (Rivian, Tesla) are seeing the car as a software story, and they won't let Apple take over the car experience. The time for Apple to get an easy pass on the car dashboard is over, sadly. 2️⃣ Could Apple be right with Liquid Glass? 3️⃣ No, Apple is wrong, Liquid Glass does compete with our attention. 4️⃣ A touching video about... the scale of time. 5️⃣ Apparently, we got the wrong iPhone 17 Pro rumours wrong, and this guy knows what is really coming to the iPhone Pro line.

🌟 Miscellaneous

#foodforthoughts
1️⃣ I like the following chain of thoughts about the space we make for technologies in our lives.

"We’ve normalized overconsumption ( and it’s killing your creativity). We can’t even eat without watching YouTube. We can’t go for a walk without listening to music. We can’t go to the toilet without without scrolling reels. There’s no breathing room for your mind, instead it’s a never ending stream of dopamine. How do you expect to create something great when all you ever do is consume? Give yourself a little space." Source.

LLMs lack mental modeling skills:

• Key Limitation: LLMs can't maintain clear mental models.
• Software Engineering Loop: Effective engineers iterate through requirements and code.
• Current Usefulness: LLMs assist with code generation and documentation.
• Future Potential: Improvements needed for complex tasks.

Source.

🔮 Looking forward

#vibecoding #ai
1️⃣ Building software through vibe coding and generative AI can be mind-blowing, like in this example from Parker. Stephen Robles did some vibe coding too and will soon ship his app (or is it his app, really?) to the App Store! 2️⃣ Why is 2027 pivotal for AI? Some people think that we will enter an era of dystopia because of AI, which is acting as an amplifier of humans’ worst sides. 3️⃣ What are we losing to AI? That's a good question from Jose M. on his blog. We are so busy experimenting with AI that we don't spend the required time to think about this question. I have the feeling that we’re giving away too much in return. And this could be our downfall. 4️⃣ Since GPT-5 came out, it had a somewhat controversial launch, in part because of the marginal improvements perceived by its users. As mentioned by Tidbits in this article, the good thing is that now we don’t have to decide which model to use for each prompt. It's now done automatically. I call this an improvement. 5️⃣ Realistic, realtime, 3D worlds. All done with AI. Mind blown. Again. The game industry should be afraid. 6️⃣ Yes, I'm tired of talking about AI, too.

I’m Tired of Talking About AI

I don’t want to talk about LLMs anymore.

Paddy Carver

I wish you a great week! ✌️ 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇪🇺 💪🏻