With tensions rising between the USA and Europe over Greenland, the EU has decided that it needs its own European alternative to X. Sticking with the single character naming it is going to be called W.
From what I can gather from the web, W is going to be based on ATProto and is likely just to be a clone of Bluesky to start with. This does mean that users should be able to interactive with other users on Bluesky which is a plus.
W will also have mandatory identity verification in an attempt to add some accountability and fight misinformation. If you have read some of my previous posts you will know I am not a fan.
If you look at the W Social website they show this big black hole where there is a lack of European based social networks.
Seems logical, except we already have a decentralised alternative to all these other social networks in the Fediverse.
If you look at the Fediverse map you can see we have a lot of instances based in Europe:
It is not as if the EU is unaware of the Fediverse given the European Commission has its own Mastodon server. Instead of creating yet another silo which will undoubtedly succumb to the same enshitification as the rest of the internet, they could embrace what we currently have.
I set up my own Fediverse server using GotoSocial last week so I could have everything on my own domain. The good thing with the Fediverse is you can move around and take your followers with you.
I was originally on Fosstodon, then moved to Hachyderm, then to my own domain but hosted through Masto.host, then back to Hachyderm, and finally I am back to my own server.
If you want to follow me on Mastodon you can by searching for @alex@alexhyett.com on whatever instance you are on.
Last week I also deleted my other social media accounts. I haven't posted to Instagram for a long time, but I kept my account, so my wife could send me stuff. I found myself spending an unhealthy amount of time scrolling through reels, so I have now deleted my account completely. Same for Facebook. On Bluesky I have put one last post and will delete my account next week.
Coming from algorithmic social media, that constantly shows you a stream of the most viral posts to keep your attention to a chronological feed is refreshing. If you are still on X or Bluesky, I would recommend find a Mastodon instance to join (or host your own).
❤️ Picks of the Week #
🧩 Extension — StreetPass for Mastodon — This great extension picks up on peoples Mastodon accounts as you browse the web.
🧩 Extension — blog-quest: Collect RSS feeds as you browse — In similar vein this extension collects RSS feeds as you browse so you can add them later.
📝 Article — Reflections on Returning to the Personal Web — If you are trying to escape from the AI generated slop that is everywhere on the siloed social media platforms then the personal web is for you. It is definitely refreshing reading content written by humans than AI.
📝 Article — Personal thoughts/notes from working on Zootopia 2 — It is amazing the amount of detail that goes into these movies and the cutting edge tech that gets used.
📝 Article — Is Rust faster than C? — I used to program in C back in the day. When it comes to actual computational speed there is negligible difference. I haven't tried Rust yet, but I don't think I can bring myself to code in C again.
📝 Article — Anthropic made a mistake in cutting off third-party clients — I have been using Claude Code, but I really want to get away from paid monthly AI and only use local models instead.
📝 Article — Apple picks Gemini to power Siri — It looks like Siri is going to get an intelligence boost soon. After switching all my Amazon Echos for Apple HomePods I have missed being able to ask random questions and getting an answer. Siri often responds with, “I can show you results on your phone” which just annoys me to no end.
📝 Article — Postal Arbitrage — I am not sure if this works in the UK or other countries, but it is hilarious. A first class stamp now costs £1.70 in the UK, so there is a good chance you could find something cheaper on Amazon.
🛠️ Tool — Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work — I don't think I will ever let AI anywhere near the files on my computer and if I did, it would be a local AI not one that sends data to the cloud.
📝 Article — The death of software engineering — If it is not AI ruining software it is backwards incompatible releases in downstream packages that force your software not to work any more.
☁️ Clouds — ASCII Clouds — This is really cool. It is fun playing around with the settings to get different effects.
📝 Article — I hate GitHub Actions with passion — CI/CD pipelines are definitely frustrating. One thing that helps is pulling down a docker image and doing the build in that. At least then you can reproduce any issues locally.
📑 Personal websites — Ask HN: Share your personal website — I always like finding personal websites and blogs to follow. There are some good ones on this thread. Dustin's is particularly impressive.
📝 Article — Claude Cowork exfiltrates files — Maybe don't give AI access to all your confidential documents.
📚 Book — LLM Structured Outputs Handbook — There are good ethical uses for AI such as converting unstructured information into structured output you can use in programs. AI isn't always predictable, but this should help.
📝 Article — Why DuckDB is my first choice for data processing — I have heard a lot of good things about DuckDB. Something to try out for the next project.
🛠️ Tool — STFU — This is genius, people listening to things loudly in public places annoys me.
📝 Article — Slop is everywhere for those with eyes to see — AI slop was the last straw that finally got me to delete my Instagram account. I was fed of trying to work out if what I was seeing was real or not.
📝 Article — Our Algorithmic Grey-Beige World — We are being spoon-fed what to watch and what opinions to have.
🗺️ Map — Map To Poster – Create Art of your favourite city — I love this. I have always liked the look of maps, especially old ones. I generated one of my local town and looks really cool.
📝 Article — The recurring dream of replacing developers — Things are definitely going to change. I can see senior developers being called in more to fix broken AI code. I would much rather be coding from scratch than fixing code that wasn't written by a human.
💬 Toot — If you put Apple icons in reverse it looks like someone getting good at design — I think the middle one looks the best out of these. I am not a fan of the complete minimisation of icon design.
📝 Article — The Computational Web and the Old AI Switcharoo — I really hope we don't see an attack on local computing but with RAM prices soaring and Nvidia no longer making graphics cards for consumers it doesn't look promising.
📝 Article — Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy — “The A in AGI stands for Ads! It's all ads!!”, this quote sums it up nicely. Eventually the answers that AI will be providing will be based on the highest bidder not the best answer.
📝 Article — Your app subscription is now my weekend project — You can't vibe code your way into building a profitable SaaS, but you can definitely build small projects that have the subset of features you actually use.
📝 Article — Amazon is ending all inventory commingling as of March 31, 2026 — I didn't realise this was a thing, but it explains the reviews on some products saying they are fakes.
📝 Article — US Americans pay 96% of tariff burden — Trump's tariffs just seem like another way to extract money from his own people.
📝 Article — The challenges of soft delete — This is an interesting approach to the soft delete method.
📝 Article — RSS.Social – the latest and best from small sites across the web — I am trying to fill my RSS feeds with interesting blogs from real people. This is a good place to find them.
📝 Article — Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant — It shouldn't be that much of a surprise that relying on AI to answer all your questions is making us dumb.
🛠️ Tool — Sweep, Open-weights 1.5B model for next-edit autocomplete — Code completes in VS Code seem to now rely on Copilot and keeps prompting me to subscribe. Any local alternative are definitely a blessing.
🛠️ Tool — kitten/app: A web development kit that’s small, purrs, and loves you — Aral did a demo of this last week with a fun real-time chat application. It looks impressive and easy to use.
🗺️ Map — isometric.nyc – giant isometric pixel art map of NYC — This is really cool and reminds me of SimCity. Obviously the “pixel art” is AI generated, but it looks really cool. There is an article here on how he did it using Qwen Image Edit.
📝 Article — Bugs Apple Loves — It is ridiculously that there are so many bugs like this that don't get fixed. Obviously as they state “According to our completely made-up estimates” the numbers are really just to prove a point but they do have a point.
👨💻 Latest from me #
🎬 YouTube Just Demonetized My Channel...
While moving my AdSense over to a business account YouTube decided to hit my account with an Invalid Traffic ban. So I no longer make any money from YouTube directly and will have to rely on Patreon subscribers and other means.
I am planning on opening up my PeerTube server to non Patreon subscribers and see if I can grow my channel on the Fediverse as well. Paid subscribers will still get early access to my videos and this newsletter and I will try to think of a few more benefits for my subscribers too.
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