🔗 Apple AI paper details how its multi-modal ‘Ferret-UI’ LLM can interpret phone UIs. — theverge.com // Wes Davis

The company has been steadily releasing research papers on its AI work for years. With Ferret-UI, the company seems to be looking at how AI can help with smartphone navigation

This isn’t the same thing, but it sounds quite similar to the Rabbit R1-style of teaching computers how to use human interfaces. I think it’s super smart.

Anyone else participating in CSS Naked Day? Let’s see those bare blogs!

A tablet displays a webpage with a stylized circular rainbow logo above a blog post titled “CSS Naked Day,” with additional text and links below.

The Solar Eclipse totality had BIG bouncing-DVD-Video-screensaver-finally-hitting-the-corner energy. 🤣 There’s just something about things lining up that humans simply go wild for!

A bouncing DVD logo hits the edges of a black screen, changing its trajectory with each collision.

📷 #mbApr Day 08

Equal parts prevention and welcome.

A wooden sign reads “STATE LAND BOUNDARY ENTERING HIGH PEAKS WILDERNESS” in a snowy forest setting under a clear blue sky. Additional signs request help preserving the wilderness and leash dogs.

📷 #mbApr Day 07

The mountains fuel my well-being. (Gah! Can’t believe I missed yesterday. The 30-day photoblogging pin will remain out-of-reach.)

A person equipped for snow trekking is smiling, holding trekking poles, on a snowy mountain slope under a clear blue sky.

🆕📝 CSS Naked Day

My website is streaking for the next day. Care to join? 😉

🔗 Apple’s Presto system is even more sophisticated than it appeared // 9to5mac.com

When a customer buys a particular SKU (one example of a particular iPhone model, storage tier, and color), then the system prompts staff to update another one. This ensures that no matter what a customer wants to buy, there is always at least one up-to-date model in stock at any given time.

I was very curious about how stores would handle keeping the whole stock updated. One at at time for each SKU certainly seems more managable.

🆕📝 7 Things This Week [#139]

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

I just heard the idea of being an “internal processor” versus and “external processor”, which I hadn’t thought about in those terms before. I’m for sure an internal processor. How about you?

📷 #mbApr Day 06

Windy? Couldn’t tell.

Two hikers on a rocky summit, one in foreground posing triumphantly, the other standing behind, with mountainous landscape and clear blue sky in the background.

Taxes: filed ✅

Left it a bit late this year, but looks like we’re actually getting a refund, which is nice.

🆕📝 PenPal with Ratika: What does the sky look like where you are?

I'm going to have to work a little harder to keep up with Ratika's poetic prose this month.

📷 #mbApr Day 05

A SERENE anchor, 700 feet above the canyon floor, connects me to the mountain.

Climber ascending a steep rock face secured by ropes and anchor points; perspective from below looking up at the route.

🆕📝 RE: ‘Goodbye Micro.blog’

I didn’t plan on getting hung up on a particular blockquote and end up writing 1100 words on my phone in bed this morning, but here we are. 😅

🆕📝 Digital Toolmaker

In which I wax poetic about what's probably my favorite app of all time.

I just updated my ‘🔗 Get URL to Run Shortcuts’ shortcut to version 1.3.

Suppose you’re building a shortcut and just want to quickly get its run-shortcut URL without having to filter through your library for it. Now you can:

  • Added a new option to share a shortcut’s title to this shortcut to generate its run-shortcut URL on the spot
  • As part of that new functionality, it presents a menu of formats from which you can select to copy to the clipboard

Get it from the HeyDingus Shortcuts Library.

I just released my ‘% URL Encode Text’ shortcut version 1.0:

This shortcut simply transforms text shared to it into its URL-encoded version.

For the 30th(!) entry to my Shortcuts Library, I kind of expected to release something rather more grand. But sometimes simple and utilitarian does the trick. I’ve been using it all evening to add run-shortcut URLs to all my shortcuts. I even added a little surprise for PopClip users to this one. 😉

Get it from the HeyDingus Shortcuts Library.

📷 #mbApr Day 04

A dense, spiky cactus dominates the foreground with a rocky mountain background under a clear blue sky with contrails.

This foliage is more prickly than pretty. Which speaks to its excessive prickliness because it is still quite pretty.

A Very Good Tweet™:

Trying to celebrate 404 day but I keep getting redirected.

🔗 Apple notifies winners who will attend WWDC 2024 in-person event — 9to5mac.com // Filipe Espósito

As we previously reported, Apple announced WWDC 2024 on June 10-14. Although the event will be streamed online with pre-recorded sessions, developers had the chance to sign up to attend an in-person event at Apple Park. Now Apple is notifying the winners of the WWDC 2024 lottery who will have the chance to watch the opening event right from Apple Park.

I didn’t get an invite. 😔 Of course, I didn’t apply, but that’s a minor detail. 😝

I just updated my ‘📢 Publish Quote’ shortcut to version 2.0:

Now you copy the quote before sharing its URL, meaning the shortcut is far more flexible and can be run from anywhere (like RSS reader apps!), not just Safari

This is a massive update with a bunch of new niceties, like options to include author attribution, saving copies of each post to Drafts, and much more.

Get it from the HeyDingus Shortcuts Library.

I’m kinda bummed that @macstories@macstories.net isn’t doing the Shortcuts competition for Automation April this year. 🙁 I missed the deadline last year, and vowed to get them in on time this round. I had some pretty cool stuff saved up for it too!

So far, my attempt to use my ‘Publish Quote’ shortcut on the Mac has resulted in:

  • Two updated shortcuts
  • A brand-new shortcut
  • A started-then-scraped shortcut
  • A purchased domain name
  • One published quote

And now I’m inching toward releasing a huge update to ‘Publish Quote’. Stay tuned.

I’m getting sassier in my Shortcuts' comments. 😅

A screenshot of a software comment complains about a Mac feature’s poor performance regarding article retrieval, expressing frustration with an emoji.

I just released my ‘ℹ️ Get YouTube Video Info (HeyDingus' Version)’ shortcut version 1.0:

This shortcut gets the Channel, Video Title, and URL from a YouTube video and packages them up in a Dictionary action to be used in other shortcuts.

I simplified it from the version shared in MacStories Weekly Issue 304.

Get it from the HeyDingus Shortcuts Library.