iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

One reason we are more productive is that the software is more stable. Who else remembers when the most prominent feature of the Microsoft UI was the Blue Screen of Death? It is different now. I haven’t seen a software crash in days.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The macOS 27 redesign improves the color contrast of controls. There won’t be so many camouflage situations where you have to spot the menu or guess which item is selected.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I wonder if expelling all the reporters from the White House is Trump’s Jackson Square moment.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I have just seen it demonstrated that Apple CarPlay prevents your phone from connecting to wifi while you’re in the car. I struggle to imagine how anyone thought this feature was a good idea.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I just discovered the news that song-length videos are now allowed. Hmm…

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

It looks like the economics of AI are heading toward a steady state in which AI is a commodity sold as a value-added form of electric power. The likely winner would be a data center — with efficiencies, potentially just one — in a place that has lower power costs. Iceland?

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

The blog era was not so long ago in historical terms, but our collective reasoning has advanced by leaps and bounds. I was just remembering some of the crazy theories I read in blog posts. These ideas have not disappeared, but people automatically notice the discrepancies. / Examples

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

The heart of the YouTube viewer experience is blocking the more toxic ads. For me currently, that means going through the ad-blocking dialogs about 2 times per hour of viewing, one time for a sexual performance drug ad, one more time for a weight loss drug ad.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The reported word-frequency watermark for AI output couldn’t possibly work very well. Word frequencies don’t mean anything until you have at least a page of words, but people who are using AI correctly are using the output on the scale of a paragraph — too few words to watermark.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

New change at YouTube to count more views. Starting today, views count no matter how short they are. My channel’s view count might double. We’re in the depths of the summer doldrums at YouTube, so the counting change won’t stick out on the graphs.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Streaming revenue was up 4% 2024–2025 and guesses are 3–4% in 2026, with video growing faster than audio. These numbers might look eerily like cable TV before its peak, but streaming is different. Streaming viewers, squeezed for time, are often subscribing for 1 month at a time, then dropping off.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

U-turns in today’s headlines: The world’s biggest booster of AI music concedes that AI music is no fun to listen to. A political party built on oil money tells Americans they are burning too much gasoline.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

My new goal is to collect all my bookmarks in Notes. Mobile browser bookmarks are just too complicated, and keeping dozens of tabs open doesn’t feel like my kind of thing anymore.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I am seeing a social media trend of idealistic AI songs from spiritual content creators. The songs can be simple lists of affirmations delivered with pop melodies and sunny scenery. I think the broader trend is that music can find more specific places in people’s lives.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

I think YouTube is contriving server capacity issues that cause playback to pause only on mobile. The plan must be to subtly push viewers away from the mobile apps in the hope of getting more viewers on TV services.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

I wonder if OpenAI has overplayed its hand by replacing ChatGPT with ChatGPT Work. Not every AI user wants to get buried in the entrenched inefficiencies of the corporate way of working. It seems like it creates a big opening for more forward-looking AI tools.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

If anyone wants to gripe about the way a band like Foreigner, Yes, or Chicago no longer has its founding saxophone player or whatever, I first want you to list all the jobs that you’ve ever held for 50 years or longer.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Having given up on the mobile app and its perpetual trail of bugs and abuses, I am discovering the wonders of the TikTok desktop browser interface. I can easily bookmark profile pages and go directly there, bypassing the feeds entirely. Kind of like what Twitter turned into toward the end.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

How automated the online world is: TikTok noticed that I stopped viewing videos. It is now targeting me with advertising across the Internet to try to get me to come back. But it has not yet corrected the rogue promotional popup that prevents me from viewing videos.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

TikTok’s self-sabotaging ways are back. This time it’s a rogue pop-up promotion that appears at random times and prevents further viewing. And this time I’m taking it personally. TikTok, why you tryna get rid of me?

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

News reporting on inflation has gotten better. In 2023 most stories were fabrications that described the price of everything going up. Journalists now generally get that most prices are stable, some rise, and some fall.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

The Fender boycott is not very big, but guitar is not the major product category that it once was. I don’t see how the Fender brand survives. The truth is, the world has enough guitars and doesn’t really need more as long as the number of players keeps declining.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

The stock market is looking like an old-time #sellofffriday after softness in chip demand and inflationary indicators.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

A guitarist on YouTube told of a prototype stomp box, planned for release this year, that replaces the guitar solo you play with an AI-generated solo in real time. It seems like that could be the death of guitar solos and the whole lead guitar position if the pedal becomes popular.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

I am seeing crazy theories blaming the decline in views at YouTube on algorithm changes. It seems that some creators are disproportionately affected as viewers drop off at ad breaks or abandon videos that fail to load.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

My former client QVC is on its way to bankruptcy according to major news outlets. The company pinned its hopes on a resurgence in U.S. TV viewership that never came.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

I see a hidden message in the Yes album title Aurora, which begins and ends with A like an Asia album title. Yes is no longer avoiding its musical connections to Asia. 4 of 5 Yes members have been members of Asia.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Now that I’ve submitted tax forms and payments on 7 web sites and put forms in the mail to 3 different IRS offices (I predict IRS 2031 will have a web site too), what else is there in life? #taxseason

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Shout out to anyone else using the relative quiet of the upcoming weekend to do tax filings.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Honestly, it’s just embarrassing to be YouTube right now.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

If it’s true that SpaceX now owns the former Twitter, maybe the company should be renamed MySpaceX.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

My TikTok feed rn shows 9 live streams at once, including 2 originating in other countries. In the end it took TT US only a week to get through its chaotic tech transition and get creators back on board.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

TikTok U.S. appears to be offline. I assume installations, migrations, and purges are underway, as is typical for a Sunday morning, but connections between servers might also be hindered by the storm currently affecting half of the United States.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Good news on the YouTube front: engineers have worked out how to go to commercial (it sometimes works) when the video temporarily can’t be found in the database. (At least this gets rid of the blank screen!)

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

The TikTok sale apparently closed within the last hour, with new TOS that warns that TikTok U.S. viewers will now see an increased advertising load on unspecified other platforms. That would seem to confirm past reports of a data-sharing deal between TikTok and Meta.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

The current sunny freeze weather pattern across much of North America can create an icicle hazard. These icicles formed just this morning. Imagine how much they might weigh after 3 days.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

When you try to load YouTube Studio and the database is offline

YouTube Studio dashboard when the YouTube database is offline

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

I’ve been using iOS’s OCR all along, and it is getting more accurate year by year in distinguishing similar glyphs, separating from background, and reading my handwriting.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

A bug in iOS 26.2 and macOS 26.2 disabled #AirDrop when I updated. The workaround was to turn AirDrop off in Finder and Control Center, then turn it on again.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

If you think you’re seeing a new look at YouTube today, it’s not your imagination. YouTube appears to have rolled out a new advertising regime overnight.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

A dream reminded me to log in to X so my account doesn’t get deleted for inactivity. So I did. The bottom line: X almost doesn’t exist anymore.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

The latest TikTok update promises to have corrected the random browsing crashes that have crippled the For You Page for months, but I am skeptical enough that I am not going to be the one to test it.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Be the presence that you were searching for online.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

I am told that the TikTok algorithm is currently being rebuilt entirely within the U.S. to comply with the TikTok ban. U.S. users have reason to be suspicious — suddenly Big Brother is watching. I find that I am already limiting my interactions.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

Live streaming on TikTok is broken at the moment. The app plays repeating audio segments from hours ago but can’t find video and can’t open new live streams. Coming on a Sunday on the heels of other rumors about TikTok’s future, could this be the first stage of the shutdown?

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

Problems with content retrieval at YouTube are getting worse. The worst database problems are with day-of-release videos and ones more than a month old. Errors can prevent start of playback or return from midroll ad break.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

With budget cuts, hurricane prediction will feel wildly inaccurate compared to recent years. One meteorologist said hurricane forecasting in 2025 will be on a level with 1980.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

Problems at YouTube are getting worse, with the platform now streaming black when it can’t retrieve a video. I am assuming they would do this so they can count the attempted view for advertising purposes.

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Rick Aster @rickaster.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

I broke the habit of swiping on the For You Page on TikTok. It took only 6 days of random unrecoverable app freezes on video loads to get me to think twice before swiping.

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