This Mastodon post is getting a lot of looks. #

I'm rewatching the HBO series Silicon Valley and loving it as much the second time as I did the first. They really do capture the insanity of the place. I swear I'm in a bunch of the episodes, or it feels that way.#

The new version of Drummer will be ready for testing soon, maybe even later today. If you want to help, please sign up by replying to this item, or watch my blog. As they say -- still diggin!#

A question for Brent Simmons. If you are off Twitter, where are we supposed to meet? What's our common ground? Serious question. Maybe it's Mastodon for now. Is that the best we can do, feature-wise and from a UI and open formats and protocols standpoint, in 2023? We've been at this for almost 30 years. 💥#

Brent and I both come from UserLand where we had excellent collaborative tools. Far in advance of what we're using on Mastodon. I've been using the instant outlines feature of Drummer lately to organize my work on this complicated corner-turn I have to do because (as Brent points out) Twitter has become unreliable. I'd rather take care of this now than put it off for much longer. I'm asking this question in a lot of places. Why have we let the web stagnate? Why be preoccupied with the machinations of Musk et al. Why don't we take advantage of the new freedom we have in light of their chaos to build new stuff! Taking features out of products seems like giving up to me, or perhaps it's lightening the load. We'll see I guess. #

I changed my Twitter bio, removing the phrase "I'm not trying to get rich or famous." I felt that was a bit holier-than-thou. And at times I most definitely am thinking about that. So it's a matter of integrity. My rule is when what you appear to be is different from what you are, you should change one or the other or both. Here's a screen shot that highlights the part I took out. I am still dedicated to fixing things that are broken, but there's no unawkward way to say that, so I removed it too for now. #

Today's song: Boombastic. #

Juno's dad on the kind of person who's worth sticking with. #

Making good progress converting Drummer to email-based identity. I had all the pieces written, but I wasn't sure at first how they fit together. This morning I started down a path and everything clicked into place. Like a ski boot into a binding. When the pieces fit together like this I call it "clean living" -- we didn't cut any corners when doing this for FeedLand, and the two products share a foundation, the bits were already there for Drummer. I hadn't worked on Drummer in almost a year. It took a while for the cobwebs to shake off. Nice to see you my old friend, who I've been using all this time. Anyway, I think we'll have a test version of this ready in a day or two. To deploy shortly after, with fingers crossed, praise Murphy. #

Update: I have been able to log on to Radio3, so I crossed out the first part of the next post. #

Note to people who read the linkblog tab on Scripting News and in the nightly email. Radio3, the tool I use for linkblogging, relies on Twitter identity. Twitter is not allowing me to log in. I see that's happening for other users too, but I've also heard of users who are able to log on to Radio3 via Twitter. Obviously I'm going to have to fix that app too. Until that happens, the linkblog will not be updating. Can't be helped. I'm not against Twitter btw, I see it as something that stretches back in time, and likely has some kind of future. It's struggling now, that's for sure. Maybe it'll come back together. I am most definitely not rooting against it, and it bothers me to see other people doing it. This isn't a sport, it's a world-level communication system that we use. While Mastodon has taken the Twitter idea for its own, it is not in any way a replacement for Twitter. In the past few days it's become painfully obvious how much we depend on it, and how it's negatively impacting my work when it's in trouble. I don't see any victory really for anyone in this other than people who get a charge from of other people's misery.#

I had to turn off drummer.scripting.com while I work on the new version that uses email for identity and is accessed through HTTPS. It would take too much time to try to keep both versions running at the same time. So I have redirected it to a temporary placeholder site, and when the new site is ready, it will redirect to that site. We will then have to figure out how to have your data meet you on the other side. So this will happen in several steps, of which this is the first. And in doing this I will learn how to do it for other sites such as Radio3, BingeWorthy, etc. If you have questions, see this thread. Please don't ask when will it be ready. This is still seat-of-the-pants unfortunately due to the randomness of the changes at Twitter. Also, your data is safe.#

I was getting "invalid token" errors from Radio3, from Twitter. I tried logging off and logging back on and am not being allowed to. I see in the log that other users are getting that error as well. It could be Twitter's system has failed, or they turned us off.#

Thread: Twitter was sitting on an AWS-size opportunity. I tried to clue Jack into this, but he was always dreaming of really cool shit, and all we want is a simple package of services that work and have no patience for science experiments. Identity and storage that the user pays for and grants access to our apps. We'll do the creative stuff. Storage and identity has to be boring and reliable, and not subject to having the rug pulled out from us. It's something we need to build on, at the very lowest level of the stack.#

BTW, yesterday's problem with my Android phone was solved quickly by a number of readers. Thank you all very much. It was right there in the screen shot. Somehow Do Not Disturb mode got turned on. I never would have done that on purpose. This is a phone I use mainly for listening to podcasts and audiobooks and for 2-factor identity. Why does it turn off media? What kind of sense does that make. And from a UI standpoint, there should be some clue somewhere near the slider as to why that it's disabled. I tried to find the answer on Google and ChatGPT before broadcasting the question. Neither had any good advice about this. #

Speaking of audiobooks, Amazon's service, audible.com, which I used to subscribe to, is a huge ripoff. You have to be an active member to listen to the books you bought. So you can't, if you have too many unread books, suspend the service so you can start to catch up. For the most part Amazon is pretty good at not keeping money it isn't entitled to. If something goes wrong and you jump through all the hoops, they give you your money back. They want a long-term relationship, it seems. But this policy of Audible's seems to be the exception. As if they don't give a shit what you think of them. How very un-Amazon. #

The first big project I'm undertaking in the transition away from Twitter is Drummer. In the new world, Drummer will manage identity for itself using email addresses, and thus it will use HTTPS. So the first step in the conversion is getting rid of all the hard-coded http URLs in the app. I'm sure they're not all gone yet, but the app does boot up without errors now both on a test server (which uses HTTPS), and the same code runs on the current Drummer site (which uses HTTP). You can help test it out by using Drummer with the JavaScript console open, and note any errors that have to do with HTTP and HTTPS and report them here. #

This is a screen shot of the Sounds panel of my Android phone. Note that the Media slider is disabled. This means that while the speakers work, I can't listen to any podcasts, audiobooks or music. How do I get the slider to be re-enabled? I've already tried restarting the phone a few times. #

Starting to do small things for the corner-turn away from Twitter. We no longer have RT icons on items on the Scripting News website. And there no longer is a button in the upper left corner that lets you log on and off of Twitter. Watch this space for more updates, and I'm also adding notes to the thread about changes people are making. #

When you build on corporate APIs you have to know there's a fair chance the owner will pull the rug out on you, as twitter is doing now. The only APIs you can trust are open APIs that aren’t owned by anyone -- like the web -- http, html, rss. You have to watch out because the bigco’s will try to own those too. Journos are oblivious. Can’t get their attention. To a large extent Google already owns the web. And they are throwing their weight around in much more consequential ways than twitter. But Google is invisble to the press. That will end some day.#

So journalists, there’s nothing surprising about twitter screwing with their api. But we should be nailing Google for trying to steal the open web.#

Do you have an app that runs on the twitter api? What is your plan for next week? I started a thread on the Scripting repo to gather comments. Let's not use Twitter for this one. 😀#

In 2001 downloading an MP3 song took 328 seconds. #

Introducing the shortest podcast ever. #

I can now settle the age-old debate about what is and isn't a podcast. If at the end of your show, and in promos, you say "Available where ever you get your podcasts," then it's a podcast! If you don't say it, then it ain't a podcast! To illustrate, here's the shortest podcast ever.#

Is this the best moment in Goodfellas?#

End of month archive. Here's the backup for January 2023. #

Eli Pariser: "First thoughts on Artifact, the new news reader from the Instagram guys. Right now it feels like a slick, maybe more personalized rewrite of Apple News. But not much serendipity—it’s all pretty narrowly tailored to what I indicated as my tastes, and I haven’t discovered much that’s surprising or interesting there."#

Artifact is like a new version of OS/2 after the web and Mosaic already existed. Kind of beside the point. We've moved beyond that.#

This week's 500 songs podcast is about the Monkees. I was right in the middle of their demographic when the TV show aired between 1966 and and 1968. I watched every episode. I had all their records. There was kind of a stink around them, perceivable even to an 11-year-old. People would say they weren't musicians, they weren't playing the instruments, and they were the kind of act only teenie boppers (like me!) could like. But Andrew Hickey in this episode dispels all that, explaining how they were a really important good musical group. They were friends will all the musicians of the day who we do respect. All but one of the Monkees is gone now. They were nice people apparently. It gives me a warm feeling to know they were better than who the cynics said they were. #

Today's song: Joanne. #

To journalists (and others) who are trying to figure out how podcasting was born, I suggest listening to the podcasts in Morning Coffee Notes starting at 6/11/2004. Work your way up the list. Those were amazing days, lots of firsts and imho lots of fun. I kept the archive because I hoped at some point someone would want to know how it happened. Maybe grad students will do a thesis on this stuff? This is a new medium being born. I tried to keep good records. Also recommend looking at Scripting News archives for 2004 as well. #

2001 was also a big year in podcasting. The first program to download podcasts was MUOTD, in January 2001, in conjunction with the Grateful Dead experiment.#

Still listening to You Don't Have To Cry. Maybe the best song ever.#

To anyone who cares about ActivityPub, Peter Zingg provides a great roadmap for what's needed to get serious adoption.#

My work address once was 117 Easy Street, not in Anytown, USA.#

Poll: Would you get rid of Google or the web?#

BTW, all who think Musk/Twitter is the big problem, you're falling for a smokescreen. A much bigger problem is the brain of Google. It's the nightmare of science fiction. We have no clue what it wants. It has unfathomably immense and unchallenged power. #

Today's song: You don't have to cry. I can't tell you how much I love this song. And it turns out this was the first CSN song. It was first sung in Joni Mitchell's Laurel Canyon living room, or Cass Elliot's kitchen, or John Sebastian's house. Crosby and Stills were tripping out on their harmonies. Cass brought Graham Nash with her to meet them. After hearing the song twice, he joined the harmony. Imagine the discovery that this kind of music was possible, and that it was coming from you! BTW, the song was written by Stills about Judy Collins. #

ChatGPT is a godsend to people with aging minds who sometimes can't find the right word. It's in there, in my brain, but I can't quite get at it. It's amazing how it nailed this question. Bravo! #

RSS is a good thing. It represents something precious, developers working together, just a little, and only for a brief period. We should recognize it for the lucky gift that it is, and do things to help it. #

RSS is a thing like roadways and paths of rivers, they change very slowly. Think about qwerty keyboards. That's what we're talking about here. Agreements between products to interop. RSS is just like the gauge of rails, or always driving on one side of the street. A convention that makes progress possible. #

Also, we have to stop anthropomorphizing tech. Formats and protocols aren't alive. #

I was raised in the aftermath of the Holocaust by survivors. In that sense my whole life is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. #

I'm not using the term antisemitism any longer. Instead calling it "Jew Hate." If you hate Jews, that's what I'm going to say you do. #

The open source release of FeedLand is on the way. 🚀#

Today's song: "Did you know we're riding on the Marrakesh Express? Did you know we're riding on the Marrakesh Express? They're taking me to Marrakesh." #

Democrats are campaigning as part of governing! This works.#

I did a top level demo of FeedLand for a friend all in one Mastodon post. Having 500 chars to work with makes a big difference. #

On 4/13/2005 I did a singing podcast. The music was on an educational site for kids. Why should they have all the fun.#

Just when I thought I'd seen all the good bingeable shows, I started watching Feel Good on Netflix, and wow, it's such a great story, so emotionally involving. Not going to spoil anything, but if you need a good love story, this is it. Gave it the highest rating on Bingeworthy. #

Last night's Knicks game was a real milestone. At the end with the Knicks defending, they stopped the best team in the NBA, without Mitchell Robinson. In previous seasons the Knicks would always lose these games. At the end we'd say well it was a good effort, knowing that's bullshit, it's pathetic. To win one of those games, with such competence, for the second time in two games, both times against the best in the league, wow. Maybe it's time to change how I think about this team. I'll let you know. 🏀#

Just heard an excellent analogy. Defaulting on the debt would be as destructive to the US as Brexit was to the UK. Only I think it would be a lot clearer to the world how we've lost our minds, and also the US is bigger than the UK, economically, so we have further to fall. #

Since David Crosby died I’ve been listening to all the CSNY and Byrds hits. These few days have been an explosion of the past. Forgotten love, long-gone friends, wounds all fresh again. Good? Not known at this time.#

If you're going to tell the story of the growth of podcasting, you can't leave out Morning Coffee Notes. Podcasting was a mission that two people were on, myself and Adam Curry, mostly working in harmony, to find ways to get people to adopt this idea. We kept throwing ideas out there, and it wasn't until MCN in the summer of 2004 that other people got the idea that they could do it. That was the breakthrough. You didn't need a big studio and money to produce good audio programming. That's what MCN did. It was as crucial to the growth of podcasting as Serial or The Daily were many years later. You can't write a truthful history of this without including this series. Luckily the archive is pretty good! 😄 #

There's a 20-minute podcast linked to from this piece about how podcasting came to be. If you're going to write about this stuff, please listen to it. #

On 4/13/2005 I did a singing podcast. #

There's a lot to be said for no paywalls and no intrusive ads. Transmits a message. No fuss no muss. Sending out a link to them won't cause trouble for anyone. Over time that builds a brand. We should give out awards for that. #1 is Axios for sure.#

Nothing is more galling than people who never cared what you thought of them claiming credit for your accomplishments. Soon we'll all be dead and it won't matter. But in the meantime it means people aren't interested in my new work. So there is a cost.#

Would someone please make a ChatGPT product that can be pointed at specific websites, and allow intelligent queries against the contents. I’d love to explore the site I’ve been writing for 28.5 years, scripting.com. Let me know. It’s worth $ to me.#

I realized today in a Mastodon thread that my source code is my zettelkasten. I take copious notes in my outliner, but I don't worry about gardening them, it's the code I focus on. And because I write code in an outliner, I can create notes that are tucked away at the top of each function, for some long-lived functions, the notes at the top are basically a blog. Yet it in no way interferes with the readability of the code. I've been doing it this way for 20+ years, so it's a pretty smooth process. And I'm sharing all this publicly, in my GitHub repos, most of which have a source.opml file that contains the outline with the source code for the whole project. Here's an example. Read the comment at the top of the OPML file. #

I finished bingeing His Dark Materials. Utterly tedious. 99 percent speeches by people saying nothing and the music rising and sounding ominious as if something very profound was happening. The last episode was good for about 15 minutes then it got tedious too. Somehow I was snookered into watching one of those superhero shows that are so popular now. It's all special effects. I'm sure they're impressive, and they made a big deal about how important stories are, too bad the show didn't have much of a fecking story. I give it a rating of 💩 and I'm rating myself a fool for sitting through it all the way to the end. Oy boy what a mess.#

We've started testing the open source release of the FeedLand server. Looking for people with experience running a WordPress server, or equivalent. It should be that level of complexity. I want to smooth out the experience, before releasing it publicly. If you're interested, please send me an email. Include your GitHub username.#

Clearly what will drive the microblogging market outside Twitter is Mastodon not ActivityPub. Here's a short thread that explains. #

If you think losing the Twitter clients was a big deal, wait until they start screwing with the archive. #

New version of davemail package. Since this is part of FeedLand it means that we can send confirmation emails via SMTP, not just SES.#

Braintrust query: Something weird is going on with NPM and how package.json files work. Suppose I have a package called package1 which is required by a package called package2, which in turn is required by package3 which is required by an app called helloworld, which only requires package3. I know that's complicated to say but it's really simple. Okay, so I make a change to package1, and go to the directory that contains helloworld and npm update it. You'd think that we'd get the new version of package1 but we don't. The only way to get it to update that I've discovered is to make a change to package3, publish it, and then npm update. But nothing changed in package3, why should I have to rebuild it just to get the change reflected in the app. I have a feeling that this is because NPM modifies the package.json that NPM passes up the chain of require's? I swear this used to work, and what a pain in the ass if this is the only way to get changes deep in the stack reflected at the top. A place to comment.#

I went to ChatGPT and entered "Simple instructions about how to send email from a Node.js app?" What came back was absolutely perfect, none of the confusing crap and business models you see in online instructions in Google. I see why Google is worried. ;-)#

There’s no comparison between Twitter and Mastodon for idea distribution. I routinely get hundreds of RTs on Masto. The Twitter system thinks the same ideas are worthless. I’m guessing virtually no one sees my tweets. For an idea why that is, see the next item. #

Twitter made a change so that you have to click a link to see the recent posts from people you follow. Hard to remember to do that, and you end up seeing a lot of disgusting crap. The stuff an algorithm chose for you, including posts from people you blocked. But you can work around this. If you have a bookmark for accessing Twitter, change it to this. Now you'll only see items from people you follow. None of the bullshit their algorithm chose "for you" which is really "for their advertisers" or "for whoever." #

There's much more to feeds than reading them! 😄#

I unfollow people who use "white male" as code for "evil asshole." Say what you have to say without the bullshit. #

I hate when people explain in detail something they thought I needed to know because I said something that reminded them of it. #

I moved the FeedLand roadmap to its own place. #

Arguing with people is usually not productive and it wears you out.#

David Frum: "I'm doing an experiment. On my computer, I am checking the latest tweets by people I follow. On my phone, I'm checking whether their most recent tweets are showing up in the 'Following' column. I'm just getting started, but even in the first dozen cases, Twitter failed."#

Twitter should have been an operating system. #

I just had ChatGPT write some docs for me -- how to set up Node.js and Amazon SES.#

The best feature of Mastodon is that you can edit your posts.#

Another problem with people getting upset when something they depend on on the internet goes away, for whatever reason, is that it's all going to go away, probably sooner than you expect. If you want things to be long-lived, then we need to make some major changes. And no one, absolutely no one, is working on making a long-lived net. #

Sometime next week we'll start testing the open source release of the FeedLand server. Looking for people with experience running a WordPress server, or equivalent. It should be that level of complexity. I want to smooth out the experience, before releasing it publicly. If you're interested in participating, please send me an email. #

The Twitter API still works. If that changes I'll let you know. Yes, they shut down the clients, but the people who make the clients should have known that was coming. It happened before. Every corporate platform vendor will defend their cash flow. If you bet otherwise, you're probably going to lose. If you don't like it, develop for an open platform or stay out of the platform vendor's path.#

Why aren't we marching over the Dobbs decision?#

Having trouble focusing on work today I posted a load of bullshit to Mastodon. #

I went to Davos in January 2000, just once, with a white badge (access to everything). Not as a journalist. I was a representative of the web, which was the hot thing at the time. Not sure what other people were doing but I was a celebrity and enjoyed all the attention. #

After Davos, I went to Amsterdam, to write and enjoy the local herb. Back then it was the only place in the west where you could buy and consume the weed openly and semi-legally. Scroll to the end of the February archive page for pictures from Davos and Amsterdam, as well as a few pieces with closing thoughts about my experience at Davos. This is one of the advantages of blogging and keeping relatively decent archives. You get to relive experiences like this.#

The only question I was asked was How To Make Money on the Internet. The Davos Man was skeptical. I did pretty well, in hindsight. 😄 #

Today's song: Wooden Ships.#

NYT: David Crosby dies. #nopaywall#

So much made up bullshit about Twitter's API. I've never seen anything like it. Some of them actually think of themselves as journalists.#

I'm watching His Dark Materials on HBO. About to reach the end of the first season. So far -- so-so. Not sure if I want to finish. #

I just got a 16TB disk. Remarkable. #

I let a domain, nodestorage.io, lapse. That's why we're seeing problems on scripting.com. One of the files we include is from api.nodestorage.io. I renewed the domain, so the outage should hopefully clear soon.#

We're following WordPress's lead in releasing FeedLand's server as an open source project using GPL2. #

We (Adam Curry and myself) approached the Zune people at Microsoft in 2004 to ask to work with us to make a perfect podcast listening and recording device. Basically the PC of podcasting. I wanted to work with them, lived in Seattle at the time, was only working on podcasting at the time. Still to this day such a product does not exist. #

My apps still work with the Twitter API. I don't think any developer should try to make hay out of the pain of another developer. I wouldn't do that to you, even if I had questions about the foundation of your product. You see this in sports, no one puts down a competitive team just because one of their star players is injured. For good reason -- it can happen to you too and you don't want to see people do that to you. Remember this isn't just about Twitter, it's about developers too.#

Kevin Williams: "Every time Dave Chappelle comes up, Black folks cape for him, and it's weird. Learning when to let people go when they have done harm to a community, even if it isn't the Black community, is a muscle that has to be trained. Hell, folks haven't let R. Kelly go."#

I am pleased to report that news.scripting.com works again.#

I work for the betterment of the network we all share. I'm not trying to get rich or famous, just fix the stuff that's broken. I hope you are doing that too. Keep on truckin.#

When Twitter shuts down client apps everyone says Twitter is bad. But Google deliberately breaks their browser and blames my blog, people don't seem to care, probably because it sounds like Google is being benevolent when they're actually engaging in a huge act of piracy. #

Twitter is getting better folks. You may not like "hard core" but we used to call that "management by shipping" at Living Videotext (my first company). What mattered was delivering features to users. Everything else, bullshit.#

Following up on my GMail problem, a suggestion that I delete all Google-related cookies turned out to be the cure. I once again have access to GMail from my main desktop computer. #

One timeline for each user. Lots of choice, but one timeline. And there has to be a basic agreement on what goes in that timeline. What are the elements of a message. A way to define more types, without going to a standards body, which always crush the individual in favor of the bigco's. Something minimal, orderly, easy to document, lots of example code. Once I get finished with the new FeedLand release, I want to work on this. #

The WordPress user interface must be seen as a platform, a command line, and much higher level writing tools built to run on it. It should be possible to never see the UI of WordPress except for configuration and global settings, much the way you have System Preferences on a Mac. This is why blogging software has languished. The software we use for blogging must fit into the One Timeline paradigm, above.#

When I think of obvious missing tech products, I can’t do most of them, because as soon as the idea gained traction as a product it would be taken over by a big company, partly because users prefer that. So a lot of gaps never get filled. That’s the lesson from twitter shutting down the clients again. It isn’t just twitter, you as an independent developer, can’t step into any platform vendor’s territory, they will eventually take away your business.#

If Google succeeds at burying the open web, we'll create a new open easy to write for web that Google doesn't own. In my piece about this I suggest we should just use the web since it already does what we will ultimately need. There will be too much creativity locked up behind Google's blackmailing, and it has an easy way to escape, we just need to create a new open web. TBL showed us how to do it, we'll just do it again.#

A new this.how doc: Rule 1 means no breakage.#

My local network is incredibly slow at Mac-to-Mac file transfers. #

This debt limit bullshit happens only when a Democrat is president.#

One of the pioneers of an idea called zettelkasten was Arno Schmidt, who also happens to be my great uncle. Quite independently, just before he died, I started working on software that makes it work without the index cards, on a personal computer.#

I want an AI to read my web archive and create an auto-zettle for me. It seems Google should already have this. I bet they do. #

Bingeing report. I watched Band of Brothers all the way through. It's good, but I had forgotten how bloody it is. Since I was in that mode, I watched All Quiet on the Western Front on Netflix. Same idea, with 2020's production, a different war, and from the other side. I think the next thing will be They Shall Not Grow Old on HBO. I think an AI could have plotted this path for me. #

Today's song: Something So Right. #

I don't use WordPress very much, but recently I had a chance to try out the block editor and my reaction was that I can't imagine writing this way. If you're a writer who uses WordPress, do you use the block editor, if so what do you think of it?#

I have the 2015 MacBook Pro running now. It took a lot of iterating to get the right version of the OS running on the machine and to then restore a Time Machine backup on the machine without having one or more extra accounts on the machine. One thing I will never understand is why Macs are so slow at transferring stuff over a local wifi network. All the advice on the net says you need to use faster wifi, but my wifi is very fast. Here are speed test results communicating with a server in NYC, about 100 miles away. Why is it so much faster to communicate with that server than it is to communicate with a laptop that's in the same building? #

I've started listening to Keith Olbermann's podcast again. It's worth another listen because he's explaining why news is like it is, from the point of view of someone who was an insider for years. #

When I first started using Mastodon late last year, like so many others I had questions about what it is, how it works, what is ActivityPub, does it have an API, where is this going, will the BigCo's try to take it over, stuff like that. In the past when new markets appeared, like the personal computer, desktop publishing, the web -- there were always publications that grew up along with the platform, because there's such demand to know about the latest developments. I contacted my friend Jeff Jarvis, who teaches journalism at CUNY to ask if there was interest in one of their students forming a news site to gather news of the Mastodon world. He liked the idea and now they've taken the next step. They're offering a full scholarship to their "100-day, online certificate program that helps creators establish their own enterprises to serve specific communities/markets." Apply by Feb 3 here. #

As many people noticed, the nightly emails didn't go out last night at midnight. The theory they had was that it had something to do with the reported outage at Twitter. Only tangentially. The cause was a linkblog item without a link. The mail-sending software had never encountered such a thing before, and it turns out there was an assumption that all linkblog entries would always have links. So the software lost its mind and went boom. Easy to find, the error message and stack crawl were the last thing in the log. Adding a protection against such a situation was also easy. This is how software gets mature. Sooner or later every weird case shows up and hopefully it will be patched well and documented, so next time it happens the email goes out as it's supposed to. This is all part of the "It's even worse than it appears" philosophy of Scripting News. And, how was this related tangentially to the outage at Twitter? Well that's what the stupid linkblog entry was about. As Maude used to say "God'll get you for that Walter." In this case Walter is me and god is the Software God. #

2000: "Programmers pray to the Software God, Our Lord Murphy, the one who makes sure that anything that can go wrong, does."#

Iconfactory: "Last night at about 7:30pm PST, Twitterrific customers started reporting problems accessing Twitter via the iOS app."#