I’m not sure I need Surf.

I already use and love the app Tapestry to pull my Bluesky, Mastodon, Pixelfed, Tumblr, and Threads feeds into one place. I also have micro.blog for publishing my stuff to one canonical place and sending it out to all those social networks (POSSE: Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere).

If you don’t have something like micro.blog, I can see the benefit of the reverse approach (PESOS: Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate to your Own Site). It means you can publish on the various platforms and Surf will pull it into a destination that you can share with new audiences. Likewise, if you don’t use Tapestry, I can see the benefit of using Surf to aggregate your feeds.

The publisher case is less clear to me, though.

The Surf beta has launched with outlets like 404 Media and The Verge on board. For them, it could make sense as an audience consolidation tool. But if readers stay inside Surf browsing snippets, will it drive traffic back to their sites where the ads/subscriptions are? Publishers have been burned by that trade before on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Flipboard itself. I am not clear how this new approach will be any different.

I was an early supporter this time round, and a couple of weeks after it opened to the public, I closed my account.

Below is the support email I sent about why. To Digg’s credit, I had a lovely interaction with someone called Aleks who explained upcoming filtering features that would help me. I suspect they lost their job now.

Despite Digg shutting because of the overwhelming misbehaviour of bots, the interaction that sent me away again was actually with a human being, as I outline in my email below. So there’s that, at least.

Email sent January 20, 2026 to Digg Support:

“Thanks Aleks.

In the case the feedback is of interest to the team, I deleted my account last night (having been a financial supporter of the early access scheme).

The /Politics Digg is full of rightwing propaganda, misinformation and closeted racism and I had a particularly unpleasant interaction with someone calling asylum seekers in the UK ‘illegals’ and then swearing at me and calling me a ‘fascist’ for pointing out that term was dehumanising (I reported his reply for the personal attack).

Sadly, I do not need another firehose of horrible people in my life, so Digg turns out not to be for me.

I fully understand you want Digg to be a place for free speech and multiple views and that’s totally fine. I just don’t need it in my life, so this is an entirely personal decision, not a comment on the product.

I just thought you might like to know, as these early experiences are so important for people when you want to grow your platform. If they encounter people being horrible, then like me, they are unlikely to give Digg a shot.

I wish you all luck and I hope you can find a way not to become another cesspool like large parts of Reddit have become.

With best wishes,

Sam”

Possibly the most sycophantic article from a podcast news site ever written about corporate interests in podcasting!

TLDR: Apple is introducing video to its Podcasts app, but only if you host with one of four large provider/ad networks: podnews.net/article/v…

From (apparently highly-regarded) Podnews' article:

“Whether it’s truly “open” or not, it follows the ethos of podcasting - that creators should be responsible for distribution and for monetisation."

The word “responsible” is doing serious concealment work here. If Apple had opened this to all podcast providers, it would follow the ethos of podcasting. Instead they’ve launched with four big players, which increases (or even incentivises) lock-in in an industry that is meant to put creators in the driving seat. Podcasting started with RSS precisely so creators controlled distribution. Restricting access to a handful of corporate partners inverts that original promise.

Much of the industry is drifting toward the legacy media model with big corporations extracting value from creators and listeners. Podnews.net seems happy to be along for the ride.

I hope Apple moves quickly to open its API to all podcast providers, especially independent networks like Myke Hurley and Stephen Hackett’s Relay.

More from the Apple fans at Podnews:

“The Apple team are deep thinkers and want the best for the industry. This is a good move for the entire industry; and whatever we might think of the “per-impression” charge, it does mean that Apple also wants this to be a success."

That is a remarkably generous take. Apple wants what is best for Apple. If supporting an industry in specific ways lets Apple monetize it, they’ll do that. If Apple wanted what was best for the industry, they would have built an open solution, not a proprietary one; or at least a solution open to all, not just four big players.

But maybe I’m behind the times on modern podcasting. I don’t even really think that video should be considered a podcast… I’ll go back to shouting at clouds.

Looking forward to hearing what the Upgrade boys think of this: www.relay.fm/upgrade

I think UKIP’s proposed logo is much more like an iron cross variant than a cross pattée variant. And that’s fine: let ‘The New Right’ be honest about who they are through their logo.

A decent party would take the feedback and redesign the cross to avoid this terrible association. The fact that they choose instead the call the criticism ‘Christophobia’ tells you everything you need to know about their populist, authoritarian ambitions.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p…

Superman was excellent! Everything I wanted it to be: hopeful, joyous, thoughtful, entertaining, heartfelt, and expressing a set of values I wholeheartedly subscribe to; just an absolutely wonderful interpretation of this character. I’m so excited for what’s to come from DC and James Gunn over the next years. The whole cast are amazing; David Corenswet is magnificent as Superman; and I absolutely love Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner!

This article is persuasive and powerful about the failure of centrist politicians to counter the far right. Historically, I’m guilty of the same thinking as Starmer and have mostly thought of myself as a centrist, and have mostly focused on trying to identify policy compromises to bring people into the fold. In the last couple of years, though, it has become clear to me that I am really quite far to the left of centre, and especially at the level of core values

I just watched The Last Jedi. I haven’t watched it since it originally came out, and while I didn’t hate it when it came out, it was so different from my expectations that I was a little disappointed.

Watching it now, for the second time, I actually think it’s a very clever way to take the story forward and I really enjoyed it.

Seeing it a second time, I don’t think Luke’s character is mishandled; I actually think it’s very believable and quite a powerful message throughout the film.

I’m looking forward to watching The Rise of Skywalker, which I enjoyed more the first time I saw it, so it’ll be interesting to see how I feel about it now.

Proper consumer protection would force either HP or Humane, I don’t care which, to refund customers the cost of their now-useless hardware. And that should probably come out of the enormous amount that is going to otherwise go to the shareholders/owners in this deal:

daringfireball.net/linked/20…

#tech #consumerprotection #customerrights