So with regards to what I said about how Fark won't survive this year without more TF subscribers, I wrote up a longer explanation about what we're all up against. Not just Fark, all of digital media.
I'm kinda bummed out I'm just now finding out about Fark. It's one of the OG link-sharing sites, pre-dating both Digg and Reddit. Digg tried to re-launch recently but apparently it had a big AI slop problem, so Kevin Rose promptly shut it down and went all in on AI with the re-launch, unfortunately.
Fark still has that old school web charm and a solid little community. I like Fediverse stuff like Lemmy and Piefed, but Fark just has so much more character... it feels like one of the last places online you can find truly interesting links instead of the standard viral news and cirklejerks you find somewhere like Reddit.
It's definitely worth checking out if you miss the wonder and exploration of places like Stumbleupon, Reddit when it was still good, and Digg in the 2000s. And definitely consider subscribing to Total Fark or dropping a donation if you end up as obsessed as I am. I've been glued to this website since I saw Drew's post last night.
A Comcast store in Plainville, Connecticut, “had a policy that the highest-ranked Retail Sales Consultant for the prior month was instructed by his or her supervisor—Ms. Peterson, the Comcast Store manager—to tie the lowest-ranked sales consultant for the prior month to a chair in the back office and thereafter assault that person by violently smashing a cream pie in their face,” the complaint alleged.
That's the confidence boost you need when you aren't making ends meet this month at your commission-based job... sounds about right for Comcast.
New Pinterest alternative just dropped on the Atmosphere. It looks really, really good. I played around with it for a minute but I've never been big into Pinterest so I don't fully understand what I'm doing. I feel like I missed the boat on that whole thing. I was already on Tumblr back in the day when Pinterest first launched, so I didn't really have a need for another photo blogging app. Then when Tumblr enshittified I was kinda burned out by then, so I never gave it a chance. Seriously looks like a viable alternative if you're into that kinda thing though, and it's designed to be "enshittification proof."
Terry Godier is rolling out a mysterious new app next week 👀
No idea what it is, but I've been loving his cozy RSS reader Current — not to be confused with the ATProto Pinterest alternative I mentioned above, Currents. It's one of the few that sync natively with Miniflux and it has a peaceful UI that just gets out of the way so you can read. Looking forward to finding out about this new thing next week.
Also worth mentioning, Current just had a pretty big update that fixed a lot of bugs and added Feedly support.
Nowadays, everyone uses the same 3 sites for "content" (mind you, I detest this word) and personally, I feel this leads to homogenization. Everyone is playing under the same "rules", the same algorithm and the same potential user base.
There is much value to being outside the curve. Sometimes, it is good to ignore viral trends and do your own thing in your own pace, even if the former feels more enticing and immediately rewarding.
Authenticity is gold in the age of AI-everything.
iOS 27 public beta 2 feels less like a beta than iOS 26
I installed iOS 27 Public Beta 2 last night. I'm not shy about admitting I'm just an end user, so I never do in-depth analysis or technical reviews on stuff like this. But I've gotta say, as some guy just using my iPhone Air for writing, web browsing and every other typical thing you'd expect from your average user, this is the most stable public beta I've ever tested out since switching from Android to an iPhone 13 about five years ago.
After using it all day, (so far) it feels less like a beta than the latest stable version of iOS 26. Even with all the AI shit indexing and optimizing in the background for the last 20+ hours, it's more responsive and snappy than 26. Noticeably. You can adjust the "liquid glassiness" of the UI from a slider in the settings app. While it doesn't completely shut off Liquid Glass, it looks much less glossy and even the icons feel more flat and less cartoony with it cranked up to the highest opacity setting.
Safari got some minor changes too, like the tab for your favorites, bookmarks, reading list and history at the top of the start page. They tweaked the look of the address bar too; mostly to add a tab button to the right and completely hide the menu. You now have to long-press on the address bar to bring up a hidden menu with all the things you'd expect; add to bookmarks, share, close tab, ask Siri, etc. Tbh it looks like they're trying to mimic the functionality of Quiche Browser a bit, if you're familiar with that.
And the biggest part you'll either love or absolutely despise: the new Siri chatbot. I'm not the biggest fan of AI in general, but I'd be lying if I said it's not something I use sometimes. I have the same gripes as everyone else, but it's so good for researching things you can't find on the handful of good search engines that are still left out there.
Disabling Siri is always the first thing I do when I get a new iPhone. A built in voice assistant sounds good on paper, but Siri has always been notoriously terrible. At least as long as I've had an iPhone. That's no longer the case.
Even in this preview version it's so fucking good. It does use a blend of "private cloud" and local models, so I don't know how private it truly is. But holy shit it's good. I still don't know how I feel about a chatbot indexing everything on my phone; having access to all the personal stuff and whatnot. But if these phones are already shipping with special chips made specifically for AI, I might as well at least try it. I'm just stoked that Siri actually does something now. Aside from being a mostly functionless quirk of the os that usually responds with "sorry, I can't help with that."
I probably won't use it for much other than more involved search queries when I'm researching something. But it's surprisingly good at digging through your photo roll with prompts like "find every picture of me with a black and white cat" or searching text threads like "find the text where Tom mentioned the name of that really good Korean restaurant in Dublin six months ago."
I wouldn't recommend being a dipshit like me and installing it on your daily driver, but so far it feels like an immediate upgrade from iOS 26.