http://scripting.com/2026/05/30.html#a123838 http://scripting.com/2026/05/30.html#a123838
If I ran Bluesky, instead of trying to fork the web, I'd be trying to become the competitor of Twitter's that is 100% web top to bottom.
Review of standard.site http://scripting.com/2026/05/30/123810.html?title=reviewOfStandardsite

I walked through standard.site with ChatGPT. You can do it too if you want to find out what it is. I was interested in knowing how it compares to RSS 2.0 and FeedLand.

  1. I want a quick overview of standard.site with a simple example.
  2. Seems like RSS mostly.
  3. We have a firehouse for feeds on the web emanating from FeedLand, based on rssCloud.
  4. We are the web’s social web.
  5. Why do the proponents of standard.site use AT Proto. What’s the advantage?

Very often links from ChatGPT don't work, but I'm including the link here in case it does. You can have the conversation on your own.

I asked ChatGPT to produce a summary of the results, and asked it not to tilt it in favor of the formats and protocols I've invested in. There is a place to comment after the spec. Interested in hearing from other developers.

This gives me an idea for a tech publication. Write reviews in this format. Make sure you include the prompts so people can reproduce your results. Let readers fact-check. And let the proponents and competitors comment on the review. No one reviews tech products any more so this would not put anyone out of work.

http://scripting.com/2026/05/29.html#a132138 http://scripting.com/2026/05/29.html#a132138
Yesterday I applied to speak at WordCamp US in August and I also posted bits to my account on Twitter. I got a really nice response from the main WordPress account. Thank you. I now have a platform to speak to the community, and I'll do my best to outline what I have in mind in August in Phoenix. How appropriate that the phoenix is the symbol of rebirth.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/29.html#a143508 http://scripting.com/2026/05/29.html#a143508
I have the most followers on Twitter, Bluesky has never come close. I can't get anything to happen on Bluesky, but Twitter is great. Yesterday I had an idea, put it up on twitter and within a few hours I got the connection I was hoping for. It's a network, and it's more defined by who's there than who owns it. I can use it for idea distribution, the ideas find more minds and sometimes that results in benefits for the web. It's all about interop, and weirdly the pwned Twitter is much better for idea distribution than any of the other networks. In a sane world those smaller vendors would be fighting for interop, instead they're fighting against it.
Official recognition from WordPress http://scripting.com/2026/05/29/235642.html?title=officialRecognitionFromWordpress

This is what I really accomplished in the years of work I did on the early web. I created something that could be built into a large successful company with millions of customers, and the web got a writing system, and because the people running it took the responsibility seriously, it has lasting value.

This tweet means a lot to me.

Still to this day, the systems I designed so many years ago work exactly as they did then. That's what the web was supposed to do.

If my mom was still with us, I'd ask her to put this on the fridge. It's as good a review as I've ever gotten.

My guess is that Matt wrote it, btw. He's really the only one in WordPress-land who can say something like this, imho.

ChatGPT images, two years apart http://scripting.com/2026/05/29/145537.html?title=chatgptImagesTwoYearsApart

On May 29, 2024 I asked ChatGPT to: "draw a picture of a baseball game at Citifield in the style of an American master artist." And I asked the same question today, two years later. According to ChatGPT the image is patterned after the art of George Bellows.

  • Drawing from 2024.
  • Drawing from 2026.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a130835 http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a130835
I've hesitated at calling FeedLand a feed reader. I'm concerned people would stop listening right there. They know what a feed reader is. But FeedLand is not like most feed readers. Your subscription list is public, as it is in Twitter. This is my subscription list. When you're looking at someone else's list, there's a checkbox next to each feed. If you're subscribed to the feed the checkbox is checked. If you see one that looks interesting that you're not following, click to subscribe. Nothing else, no dialogs, confirmations -- one click. It has other features that are amazing that no other feed reader has, like a very powerful connection between categories and OPML subscription lists. And whole new way to use OPML lists -- in FeedLand you can subscribe to OPML lists. Think about that for a minute. It's also quite stable, and I took some time to make it a bit faster in certain important areas (coming soon). And it goes the other way too. When you're looking at a Feed Info page, you can see who else is subscribed to it. Click their name and you can see what they're following. As far as I know no other feed reader does any of this. The design mode was the social web. But unlike the others our web is based on broadly supported web standards, not someday -- now.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a182122 http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a182122
I applied to speak at WordCamp US in Phoenix in August. I want to give a rip-roaring talk about how WordPress is at the center of the universe and it doesn't even know. Let's get busy filling in the blanks. Writers are ready. If we build it they (developers) will come. To much sulking, let's get out there and kick some butt. I excerpted elements of my application on Twitter.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a181242 http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a181242
Really Open this time vs Really Simple last?? Hmm.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a172523 http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a172523
Dries Buytaert says you have to grow the ecosystem, not just yourself.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a155324 http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a155324
If you want to know who’s responsible for the good karma the Knicks are experiencing look to Kevin Durant. While while he was trying to build some weird rivalry between the Knicks and the Nets, the Knicks were building a contender.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a150533 http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a150533
Another great thing about building software with Claude Code, I can implement something the simple way knowing that later on I can change it to work in the more complex way without having to relearn all the code. Claude doesn't have any trouble with piled up complexity. This is a fundamental change in the way I develop. There was a very real limit to the complexity my mind could handle, but now with a sort of infinite size disk for my brain whatever I want to do as long as it can be described in almost mathematical terms, we can do it. It's another layer in the stack. We haven't had one of those in a my lifetime, they were all invented before 1955. Seriously big deal.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a145454 http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a145454
The big wait betw Knicks series isn't just hard on the team, it's confusing for the fans/addicts like me. It's about the time of year that the Knicks are no longer in, and two teams I don't care about enough to watch are in the Finals. Maybe one or two games. It's like jury duty, at some point you realize you're so confused because you're in a courtroom, but where is the jury. Oh no the jury is inside me. Who's in the finals this year? We are. Geez I guess I've finally succumbed, I never think of myself as part of a team, but now I actually feel like I'm part of it. Will have to think about that.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a135323 http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a135323
Scott Hanson is working on the Baseline theme for WordLand.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a130632 http://scripting.com/2026/05/28.html#a130632
Writing a lot of test posts. And thus have coined some (mostly) rhyming pairs of words. Greek sneakers. Geek peekers. Feast of yeast. Villa in Manila.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/27.html#a110137 http://scripting.com/2026/05/27.html#a110137
Now I have to write about the Knicks. It just hasn't fully sunk in yet that they won the East. You get to put a banner up for that. And next week we'll be watching them in the NBA finals. But it's the team that matters, not the trophies. Brunson is great, despite what I wrote after they went down 2-1 vs the Hawks in the first round. But the other players are great too in different ways. And there are so many of them, not just the starters. Every one with a distinct personality and all of them super smart and committed to the team and each other. What makes it work? You can see it in how they play -- trust. They trust each other. Their fates are intertwined. And they knew it before they had this amazing streak of wins in the post-season. I love the Knicks even when they lose. I'm not sure how you love them when they are champions. We'll figure it out.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/27.html#a135414 http://scripting.com/2026/05/27.html#a135414
I came across this photo of the Knicks celebrating, with OG Anunoby in the center. The thing about OG is that he's a deep thinker and he never smiles, under any circumstances. Except right here. This is such a great photo I made it the header graphic on my blog for the day, week and maybe month, unless we get another one to replace it should they by some weird event they win the next series. And there isn't another series after that one. At that point this Knicks team goes down as one of two legendary Knicks teams over the decades, comparable to the 1973 Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Earl Monroe, Dave DeBusschere and Bill Bradley championship team, the last time the Knicks won it all.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/27.html#a140133 http://scripting.com/2026/05/27.html#a140133
OG was playing so well one night he was invited on Inside the NBA, which is a big moment in an upcoming NBA legend's career. He sounded kind of irritated, in the OG way. At the end Charles Barkley asked what OG stood for, kind of a smirky question (probably to see if he could get him to smile), but his irritation level went wayyy up, and then Chuck didn't pronounce it right and OG told him. No smile. But that's who he is and it makes the great photo of him ecstatic with happiness that much more of a big deal and a huge un-OG smile. Loook everyone even OG is impressed! :-)
http://scripting.com/2026/05/27.html#a135823 http://scripting.com/2026/05/27.html#a135823
If you love the Knicks, or even if you're just fascinated with this year's team, listen to today's Bill Simmons podcast, it's all about the phenomenon of the 2026 Knicks, and Simmons is a Celtics fan, definitely not a Knicks lover. I can't believe all these smart sports guys didn't know Brunson was a catch, if I recall correctly, just before the Knicks signed him, due to injury he had to lead the Dallas team in the first three games of the playoffs in 2022, and there you could totally see what no one had seen yet in the pros, he's a leader and rises to the occasion, which we all know very well now, you could see it then if you watched the games (which apparently I did). And btw he grew up in the NBA, his father was on the Knicks in 1999 the last time the team went to the finals.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/26.html#a211107 http://scripting.com/2026/05/26.html#a211107
Have you noticed that sometimes Claude is great and other times an idiot. Maybe it's me. I have to remember that Claude is not a computer. It's something else.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/26.html#a145326 http://scripting.com/2026/05/26.html#a145326
Claude just asked if I was breaking for the day. At 10:53AM. Why did it ask me that? Now I can't stop thinking about that. The answer is no. I have a few more hours before I stop.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/26.html#a132601 http://scripting.com/2026/05/26.html#a132601
I need an easy way to do a mini-podcast. An idea that should be said verbally, but it's short and self-contained, about the length of an untitled blog post, like the one you're reading now. Example.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/26.html#a130817 http://scripting.com/2026/05/26.html#a130817
Ultimately your job as a developer is to turn your creation over to users to figure out. Listen to see if patterns emerge. Even better give the users the tools they need to build apps out of our apps, together. This is how humans build layers of tech.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/26.html#a130727 http://scripting.com/2026/05/26.html#a130727
On Mastodon: "twitter-like systems are much simpler than you would think looking at this space, bluesky etc. and there doesn't need to be any lock-in, you can do a fair job with just RSS, rssCloud, OPML, web sockets, and a web browser UI. all parts replaceable."
http://scripting.com/2026/05/25.html#a131000 http://scripting.com/2026/05/25.html#a131000
Good morning. Today is Memorial Day in the United States. We remember all the men and women who gave their lives to keep our country safe and a bastion of liberty for the world. Don't give up on us yet. We are still willing to sacrifice for a good cause.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/25.html#a131226 http://scripting.com/2026/05/25.html#a131226
Speaking of memorials, do you remember UserLand Frontier and all the cool stuff we developed with it? Like Manila, Radio, XML-RPC, RSS, OPML, adding so many cool open features to the web. When people asked how we did all that, I said great tools. That was Frontier. Jake Savin, one of the 1990s UserLanders, is continuing the project to get it running on today's hardware and for today's web. He's documenting it on his blog. I can't wait to use it. Watching him go through the process has been eye-opening. He's basically retracing all the steps it took to create it as done by four or five people over quite a few years, a long time ago. But when it's running and I don't doubt that he will get it running, it'll be fascinating to see if I remembered it correctly. If you remember Frontier fondly, I suggest you subscribe to his feed in your favorite RSS feed reader.
Hanging out with JY and Don Park http://scripting.com/2026/05/25/153519.html?title=hangingOutWithJyAndDonPark

I've worked with both these guys, JY Stervinou and Don Park, for a long time, and now we're in the same sphere again, and it's very useful to be able to tell them about what I'm doing. They understand. It's not over their heads. Refreshing.

This is happening on Elon Musk's X, but that won't be forever. I want to move the conversation into a new piece of software I'm doing with Claude Code. Which is coming along nicely.

Anyway I just posted this, and thought it should be here too.

  • my philosophy is that i'll only use the absolutely necessary formats and protocols.
  • i'll leave experiments with other stuff to other people.
  • the purpose of my project is to show what can be done with just a few bits of tech. that the whole thing is really simple.
  • RSS 2.0 with rssCloud, OPML, WebSockets, basic web UI stuff. That's about it.
  • same as FeedLand btw.
  • i want minimum complexity. a baseline for what can be done with very little.

The web can do a lot more than people think without getting too complex. And because it's the web, you can connect anything to anything, you don't need to AT Protoize your code, or ActivityPublish it. Just plain old RSS 2.0 with rssCloud, thank you very much.

"I envision a network of twitter-like systems built out of components of the web and nothing more. Every part replaceable."

http://scripting.com/2026/05/24.html#a172425 http://scripting.com/2026/05/24.html#a172425
I asked ChatGPT for a list of FeedLand features that are new or distinctive. "FeedLand combines RSS, OPML, public curation, subscribable reading lists, rivers, categories, and realtime WebSocket updates in a way that is unusual among feed readers and points toward a web-native social network."
http://scripting.com/2026/05/24.html#a152219 http://scripting.com/2026/05/24.html#a152219
People who believe in the web, stop dissing RSS, it’s an important part of our future.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/24.html#a152232 http://scripting.com/2026/05/24.html#a152232
Alexa has a terrible habit, when I ask for a song from the Echo on my desktop, it ends each song with a helpful message. There's a live version of this song, do you want to hear it. You have a message waiting, can I play it for you. I can't get it to stop. I have a bunch of them scattered around the house, and this is the only one that does it. I'm writing here, I asked for a song that fit in with my writing. Stop making me thinkg about your marketing messages. Where did you get the idea you can do this. A paying customer.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/24.html#a142837 http://scripting.com/2026/05/24.html#a142837
Love: I ask Claude for a list of names and values, it responds quickly with exactly what I asked for. Nothing more. Unconsciously I say "perfect" -- out loud.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/24.html#a141304 http://scripting.com/2026/05/24.html#a141304
I have a Mac laptop that I keep updated with the latest versions of Mac OS. I got a warning today saying that Electric Drummer won't run on the next release of the OS. Now I don't use it very much if at all on that machine, but I wonder. ED is an Electron app, otherwise it's wholly JavaScript. It does include some Node packages of course, but not that many IIRC. This was a thing I wasn't expecting.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/23.html#a145235 http://scripting.com/2026/05/23.html#a145235
I archived prior art as a design method from 2003 on this.how.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/23.html#a170620 http://scripting.com/2026/05/23.html#a170620
I just tried the latest version of the X editor. It's got all the features of textcasting. I wrote a test post entitled "X has nuked the limits, time for Bluesky to follow suit." I think you can tell I had fun writing it. They don't think anyone hears me, but I think they're wrong about that. The idea that they are part of the web is ludicrous. They're going to get called on it eventually. They should fix it so they are part of the web. Then we can all create. Or if you're not going to be part of the web, for crying out loud stop saying that you do.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/23.html#a161732 http://scripting.com/2026/05/23.html#a161732
One of the benefits of using Claude for all my coding is I'm now finding out what various things I do as standard practice are called in the outside world. Today I learned what agile is. I of course have heard it used, and even got to know the guy who coined the term.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/23.html#a133339 http://scripting.com/2026/05/23.html#a133339
There probably is a name for this development practice. Only works on a team with more two developers. At some point in a project after you've been working on Level N in the stack, you may decide you've done all you can there, and it's time for someone else to work at that level. The new person, Smith, is a maintainer, develops in small increments, fixes bugs and most important takes feature requests from the other developer, Jones, who is now creating Level N + 1. Jones is a good person to do this because they know everything about the capabilities of the lower level. But now they're going to pretend they've forgotten all that, and is looking at a whole new machine, created out of the new capabilities of Level N. That's how you build any complex layered piece of software. And because this is the method used in boostraps, you can build level N+1 using tools written in N.
It's really simple http://scripting.com/2026/05/23/135604.html?title=itsReallySimple

My recommendation for Automattic and Bluesky.

  • Bluesky supports RSS 2.0 inbound and outbound.
  • Bluesky eliminates its character limit, allows bold, italic styles. Links. Optional titles. Users can edit their posts. More here.

Automattic already fully supports RSS 2.0 in both directions, in all their products.

This gives us the most interop with the most respect for prior art. No need to reinvent. There's nothing special about Bluesky, they can use what we've all been using for 20+ years.

It's really very simple, let's hook everything together and let the users and developers create.

http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a160029 http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a160029
Another way to look at Claude Code. It's a way to talk to your code, to ask it questions, and tell it how you want it to change.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a153242 http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a153242
I think maybe it's time to consider a reboot of WordPress. I can't seem to seed them with any ideas about building on it from the point of view of the web. It's a product unto itself, it has plugins, but I'm not a plug-in sort of guy. I write operating systems. That's what drives me. I see a great place to put an OS with WordPress as the storage and publishing component, and everything else grows up around it. It's one of those famous coral reefs but it hasn't been born yet. The idea would not be to compete with WordPress, it's to make something that fits into our view of the world, that just happens to be the same codebase. And when on the other side they think they have to do it themselves we reach out and say here, just take this over, it's yours. It's so hard to penetrate the awareness inside old organizations with new ideas. I think it's the manifest destiny of WordPress, that what they have now is a nice revenue generating machine, but it's not serving as the web's writing base, which is what imho it was supposed to be. (And I have a bit of standing there, btw.)
http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a152841 http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a152841
I have news for you -- Claude forgets important stuff. I catch it forgetting to do things it was "programmed" to do. It's not a computer, it's not garbage in garbage out. It could be good stuff in garbage out. As I've said before there's a big chunk of the app I'm working on where I don't read code. User interface stuff only. No control of what comes in our out. Trying to not take any chances here.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a145147 http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a145147
This is a multi-billion dollar idea. I want to link to "report-up" concept in something I'm writing. There is no Wikipedia page for that but there is a brief explainer in Google, via their AI. Here's the feature: add a permalink to that response. I'm lazy and will link to it in my writing.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a164304 http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a164304
BTW, I don't think the web was created to make people rich.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a141705 http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a141705
Does it ever cross anyone's mind that according to the rules of war, Iran would be totally justified in attacking the United States?
http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a132615 http://scripting.com/2026/05/22.html#a132615
Vibe-coded software will have a place where users can communicate what they want to developers who can help make it real. The same way you might get medical info from an AI, but would still get your colonoscopy from an actual doctor. Part of the origin story of podcasting is that Adam hacked up a version of Frontier to illustrate what he had in mind for the "last yard" protocol. When I looked at the code it was horrible, hard to believe someone thought of doing it that way. But it got the point across, and that's the moment the podcasting boostrap began. I love using the AIs to tell a visual story, a skill I never had or developed. No reason it can't work the same way for software.
Finding the Microsoft video http://scripting.com/2026/05/22/130714.html?title=findingTheMicrosoftVideo

In yesterday's podcast I mentioned a Microsoft promotional video from the 90s. JY Stervinou on Twitter asked if he had found it, and it was close but it was the video I was talking about. So I checked in with Claude with this prompt.

  • there was a microsoft promotional video in the 90s featuring bill gates and steve ballmer riding up front in a car, it's a ripoff of a volkswagon commercial, the music is catchy song Da Da Da. they drive around and then see a Sun Microsystems computer, they pick it up but it smells bad (apparently) and they drop it off in someone's garbage. i can't find the video on the web, can you?

It found a low rez version of the video on YouTube, with a comment.

  • It's a spoof of the 1997 Volkswagen Golf commercial, with Ballmer and Gates driving a Golf, picking up a Sun workstation and later rejecting it. The "Da Da Da" track is by the German band Trio. One source describes the dropped computer as an old IBM rather than Sun, so accounts differ on that detail, but the Know Your Meme listing specifically says Sun workstation, matching what you remember.

Here's the low-rez video at 1/4 size.

The computer in the video I saw was definitely a Sun workstation. It wouldn't make much sense for it to be an IBM in 1997, Microsoft had already passed over IBM, they were in the middle of the Java Wars with Sun, and there even is a Sun response to the Microsoft video with two actors playing Gates and Ballmer, and in the end Sun CEO Scott McNealy shows up, after (it turns out) Gates smells and the Sun terminal is still in the back seat and users and developers are still nowhere in sight.

I imagine there are a few old time Microsoft people still following this blog, if anyone has a decent resolution version of the Da Da Da video, I'd love to get a good version on the web of 2026.

http://scripting.com/2026/05/21.html#a210820 http://scripting.com/2026/05/21.html#a210820
Podcast: Wrapping AI in the web.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/21.html#a202336 http://scripting.com/2026/05/21.html#a202336
Just finished No Country for Old Men, the book by Cormac McCarthy. I have seen the movie many times, it's one of those movies that if you're looking for something to watch and you come across it, you might as well go for it because every scene in the movie is pretty good on its own. I didn't realize that they used most of McCarthy's dialog, literally -- in the movie. Near the end, Bell, the sheriff tells a story about old age. "There wasnt a whole lot good you could say about old age and he said he knew one thing and I said what is that. And he said it dont last long. I said well, that's pretty cold. And he said it was no colder than what the facts called for." I love truths that hit hard. He's such a great writer. And I love that I can write like all the characters if I get a mind to.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/21.html#a143133 http://scripting.com/2026/05/21.html#a143133
I'm going to release the Claude-generated code that enables it to work with me on projects that are written and managed in outlines.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/21.html#a135204 http://scripting.com/2026/05/21.html#a135204
Just asked Claude to save this in memory. "in general i create local variables with partial results because 1. i can step through the calculations in the debugger. 2. the order guides my mind when im reading this code, 3. it lets me put a name on a partial value. this is helpful when i want to piece together wtf the code is supposed to be doing. and 4. it makes no difference in the efficiency of the code for a variety of reasons. please save that somewhere." i'm getting a lot of these rules down. i have them memorized but have never written them up because i didn't have a system for saving it somewhere relevant. i always thought ai would be good for going back and reading all my blog posts and creating somethjing readable, but as often is the case, the way it works turned out to be quite different, accomplishes the same thing.
http://scripting.com/2026/05/21.html#a160922 http://scripting.com/2026/05/21.html#a160922
Marc Andreessen said programmers aren't disoccupied, we haven't become obsolete, quite the opposite, we're all working around the clock. It's true. Everyone is doing it. We got a new brain that can do all kinds of amazing things. You don't get a new super powerful brain organ every day.