justin․searls․co

I joined Twitter in 2007 and my brain slowly morphed over the next 15 years from hopelessly verbose to nihilistically pithy. I've kicked the Twitter habit, but the takes keep flowing. That's why I post them here and format them as a social network of one. You're welcome to bookmark any of these takes, though I'm not sure why you would.

By the way, the hearts and like counts are fake. They're just there to make you feel safe.

Just verified this: macOS Tahoe 26 is the first release that accepts inbound SSH connections on FileVault-protected Macs before first unlock ("BFU", i.e. after a cold boot).

Process:

  1. Just SSH in as you always would
  2. Be disconnected as macOS finishes booting
  3. SSH back in
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It just dawned on me that I can write an iCloud Shortcut that taps into multiple cloud-based GPUs to perform any number of complex tasks for FREE, but I still can't define an "if-else" block. Welcome to the future, chumps.

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Burned-in, AI-generated captions have become so ubiquitous on social platforms that it feels like iOS 27 should just include the feature for videos in the Photos app.

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Forget five 9's of reliability—when it comes to LLMs, I'd gladly settle for just one 9. Just be correct 90% of the time. That'd be a dream.

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GPT 5.2's improved visual analysis is no joke. I took 20 PDFs pertaining to our condo purchase and asked for transcriptions/translations with Codex CLI set to 5.2 (xhigh). What's been produced so far is professional-level quality and 10.5 hours in, it's still cranking on them!

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The fundamental misunderstanding behind the question, "why isn't AI eliminating more jobs?" is that the clock on adoption of agents with human-replacement-level capabilities started in April 2025, not Nov 2022. And it started with coders, not paralegals or junior accountants.

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I don't know who needs to hear this, but: AirPods work fine in the shower. You won't break them. It's simpler than dealing with some kind of shower speaker and sounds better than blaring your phone from across the room.

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How to see the ML-derived keywords for a photo or video in iCloud Photos:

  1. Run: brew install RhetTbull/osxphotos/osxphotos
  2. In the Photos app, select the image
  3. Run: osxphotos query --mute --quiet

    --uuid "$(osxphotos uuid)"

    --print '{label}'

Cool!

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Thanks to having been bullied for being fat and out of shape as a child, I'm still intimidated working out in a busy gym full of others.

That goes double for days when I walk into my gym and half the Miami Heat are training there.

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