If you wouldn’t take someone’s guide cane to show off how well you can twirl it about, you absolutely shouldn’t be misusing alt text for the sake of a joke.

— Becky Brynolf, the head of social media at the Royal Institute of Blind People

Registering a domain through your phone’s Settings app is the ultimate competitor to domain sellers.

I wonder if you can do anything with it other than managing the Apple Mail integration. I mean, I doubt it but it would be cool if you could register it this way and then hook it up to a website.

testing auto-complete on the web, @vincent 👀

Quote tweets are happening but you can’t block anyone and muting doesn’t work.

(emphasis mine)

— Elizabeth Lopatto, They’re ‘skeets’ now

Is this post a joke or serious? Still trying to work out why Micro.blog is connected to this thing.

Can self-reporting make Micro.blog seem less muddled?

The following is mostly in response to John Philpin’s comment in a Micro.blog conversation, specifically the third paragraph:

To be clear - likely all very theoretical since micro blog is well below the radar, but it highlights how ‘clarity’ on MicroBlog, takes work and iterations - and you can even break the rules and not know 😬.

(emphasis mine)

If we could find some lost treasure — and thus fund an expansions to the Micro.blog team — then it would be possible to produce regular mini-versions of the “State of Micro.blog” session from Micro Camp, focused on how these issues are being tackled on the platform.

I say that because social issues — ethics, people, incidents, etc — are a moving target that require regular updates and can’t be properly accounted for with the “just trust us” model that has been in use on social platforms for the past twenty years.

For example: rahaeli’s minimum expectations when signing up for a new service could be the type of checklist against which the team’s efforts could be regularly self-reported as part of the aforementioned mini-session.

I mean, maybe this kind of thing is already being discussed — I know there was an invitation for people to get involved via email last year and I failed to do so — and it’s all still private at the moment. Either way there doesn’t appear to be much going on, in an overtly public manner. Otherwise I don’t think there would be a need to ask such questions for the concerns raised in the original thread.

Still catching up on ATP. I forgot how much I enjoy listening to @siracusa@mastodon.social talk about tech. It’s always good to hear a rounded point-of-view that goes beyond the usual, knee-jerk reactions that fill up the various timelines.

Super jealous of the folks going to the maique-cro meetup. Have fun everyone! ⭐️☀️🕶🎉

Want to read: Bullingdon Club Britain: The Ransacking of a Nation by Sam Bright 📚

Listening to No Cars Go, by Maxence Cyrin 🎶

That is two and a half times as much as Covent Garden and English National Opera put together.

Meanwhile, in London, Arts Council England is sticking to its opera cuts.

— Norman Lebrecht, Paris pays its Opéra’s energy bills

Strong and stable; prosperity for miles. All going well. 👍

If you use an iPhone and care about these things for your music:

  • A local library.
  • Album playlists (& shuffle).
  • Flexible options for syncing.
  • Supporting an indie developer.

… then Doppler 3 is for you. I have been so happy with Doppler everywhere that I bought the upgrade sight unseen. 🎵

Listening to Dreaming by Mr. Heiwa, via BLNDR. 🎶

Apple Music Classical and Poor Standards

I am no expert on Classical Music - but I don’t see it as ‘junk’ and as novice, I have found it interesting enough to explore. @gdp references the meta data problem - which is very valid and should be fixed - but the Music app has that problem aswell - as does Spotify. I don’t know anything about the app they bought, do we know if it is worse than that?

— John Philpin, in a conversation about Apple’s newest app

“interesting enough to explore” is valid in the existing Music app. This is specifically aimed at Classical music for which, as an expert has already told us, metadata is a core feature.

A bad experience with metadata in this app is the definition of junk, since the app is no longer useful. Apple often refuses indie third-party apps for being non-functional (“you can’t use it without an account”, and all that other bullshit) and so it’s only fair to hold them to the same standard.

The aforementioned Spotify, along with other companies such as Meta and Uber would be rightfully criticised by you for such a thing. I don’t know why you’re defending such a sloppy release by the so-called premium brand.

As for Primephonic, I was aware it had a good reputation, and if this What Hi-Fi? review is anything to go by it seems like it was well earned. Certainly its customers were upset at being bought by Apple and I don’t imagine that’s purely based on them being too lazy to try an alternative.

Even so, again, I don’t care if it’s better than Primephonic. This is Apple; the whole point of this company is to be the best no matter what they do. It should be better than Primephonic from the start and get better from there. When it does get better — which I hope it does though I don’t feel as confident in that as I should — I don’t think they’ll deserve praise until it is much better, and even then it should not be forgotten that they should have done a much better job from the start.

… the data is badly entered and there’s no way for listeners to edit it, even locally. You can do that in Apple Music, but not in Apple Classical Music. So you’re stuck with whatever the label gives you and sometimes that’s just not the way it needs to be.

— Gregory Pittman, on Apple’s Classical Music app.

This sounds awful and yet more reason to focus on locally owned and managed music for anybody who cares even a little bit about having a good experience.

Music is too important to me that l would continue to allow Apple’s terrible efforts to dictate the role it plays in my life.

A pun made in latin about latin concerning cats, in a reply is probably one of the ways I’d define Micro.blog tbh.

Posting to @TIL without posting to TIL is a strange feeling.

Years later and I’m still in love with Bear McCreary’s theme for Black Sails. 🎶

When you upload a picture, it will remain hidden until you add a description (this ensures that every picture has accessible alt text). With a description in place, the picture will appear on the some.pics landing page and on your personal page (which you can access by clicking your omg.lol address wherever it shows up on the site).

— Adam Newbold, Picture Sharing and Discourse

Not only another cool feature for omg.lol but a great way to actually support accessibility. It would be great if other platforms, including Micro.blog, used a similar system.

Pixelmator Pro now includes device mockups… The value added in this version alone is ridiculous. That’s literally a thing I’m going to use for @TIL!

I found about the updates to Bike thanks to an email Jesse publishes, which he offers as part of the product. It’s simple, honest, and maintains a human touch for a product announcement.

It’s a great example of how independent developers can get something so very right.