This is just such a nice detailed explanation of why something isn't really feasible: www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/...

Ink & Switch is hosting another Social in London on Nov. 11th at the Alan Turing Institute. I'll share some early scientific work in Patchwork, & Marcel will give a peek at the Playbook programmable ink system. Also, lightning talks about "surprises in software". RSVP here: luma.com/71g0lhgo

At last! We've missed you, @martin.kleppmann.com.

"Who wrote this!?" he angrily declaimed, knowing, in his heart, it was him.

Katy Perry Releases New Single About Superiority Of Canadian Manufacturing

I hear AWS has an outage today. My heart goes out to those of you still writing software hosted there.

A good friend once told me this was his approach to open source software maintenance:

We have a shiny new website courtesy of @spiralganglion.com and @seaofclouds.com 🙌 🚀 Check it out: automerge.org

New Automerge website at automerge.org. Kudos to @spiralganglion.com and @seaofclouds.com for their work building it. The level of craft and detail in the landing page is very satisfying.

I miss Strangeloop, especially this time of year.

We were discussing yesterday how our goal is that if anyone asks to try out patchwork the immediate response is not to wince and apologize.

You can bookmark any of the labels or settings page. e.g. mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#sn...

tape a piece of paper on the screen

I wonder if there's a way to open my gmail to find something without seeing the inbox.

I have often needed something like this, and frequently without realizing it until it was way too late.

In his playful collection "Forty-Four Esolangs," Daniel Temkin (@dtemkin.bsky.social) challenges conventional definitions of language, code, and computer, showing the potential of esolangs—or esoteric programming languages—as pure idea art: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255308...

It's pretty cool that Ink & Switch is contributing to this big ARIA programme now. We get two big things out of it: funding (obviously) but also a community of fascinating creators and problems to connect with. I'm learning all about the UK power grid this week. www.inkandswitch.com/newsletter/d...

The brain drain from Canada to the US appears to be reversing. Early in my career, I moved to San Francisco in search of the best opportunities. Now we're seeing folks go the other direction. Hard to see this as anything other than the end of American hegemony. Maybe it's time.

I'm so excited that this Firefox bug might get fixed and allow us to run our local-first stuff in service workers. Thanks to Harveer Singh for working on it! bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi...

I need some help! I’m working on a YouTube video that explores what it would take to build a web app that, if built today, could last 100 years. It covers tech stack, dev strategies, DX, etc but I need help coming up with a demo. Any fun ideas for a full stack app meant to live for a century??

automerge is not a dabase and patchwork is not an operating system

We're in the UK! Come hang out with us in London.

Automerge 3 is here: the heart transplant is complete! Huge improvements in memory usage and (in most cases) correspondingly big performance improvements too. Backwards compatible on disk and the network so there's no reason not to upgrade today: automerge.org/blog/automer...

I've been hacking away in the evenings on a little piece of JS you can drop into any page and let someone add comments. State is stored in the URL, and the plan is for me to use this to get feedback on my posts. I give them a URL, they send it back. No server, no fuss.

We're so used to our data living in vertical silos we don't control that we can't even imagine what it would be like if our data could safely flow to wherever we needed it. In an era of infinite software, code and data should flow like water.

I revealed the @inkandswitch.com secret plan behind our work on local-first software this year at @localfirstconf.com. Now you can learn it too: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s8O...

📝 new blog post! i spent a while looking into homomorphically encrypted CRDTs. spoiler alert: they don’t work super well! (but you should still check it out — i break down what homomorphic encryption is and how it works, and there are lots of explorable explanations along the way!)

It's quite charming when folks who have diminished eyesight send me emails with larger fonts. It's an interesting example of a folk adaptation: if you know how to size up your browser zoom / adjust screen resolution you wouldn't need to. I wonder sometimes if I should reply at the same size...

User Agency ... in Other People's Websites www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOAg... by @orionreed.bsky.social at J on the Beach 25.

We're getting the lab together as we do a few times a year but not everyone can make it. I'm trying to improve our A/V systems to allow remote participation in our in-person meeting. What are y'all bringing with you? A Logitech Brio 4k and a Jabra 510? A combo video/audio thing? Something else?

I suspect the dynamism of a city is closely related to the cost of real-estate there. Low rents (residential and commercial) make so many more ventures possible -- niche shops, small restaurants, and so on. When the cost of living, everyone is wealthier.

@play.date it would be so cool if there were a meta narrative of easter eggs tying all the games in the season together with Blippo.

Do you want to write your own implementation of Tiny Boxer? Check out my demo from PLISS'25 & follow the step-by-step tutorial here: github.com/tpetricek/ti...

Shout out to @anselm.io for running a wild and barely-held-together live demo right before lunch.

i might be looking for a new role, staff developer, remote uk/us tef.computer i am pretty good at the whole "fixing distributed systems" stuff but i'm also pretty good at the "levelling up a team" stuff too

The first games in Playdate Season 2 should arrive in time for my flight home after Local-First Conf...

Local-First Conf is almost here! Excited for next week… see you there!

Wish I could be there…

At Heroku, we basically destroyed a generation of folks personal projects when we deprecated various free plans. (My own software died too.) Now Glitch is making the hard decision to do the same: blog.glitch.com/post/changes... The lesson is simple: don't build in the cloud if you want it to last.

I spoke at Nemertes [next] about how Ink & Switch thinks about doing research as an independent organization. This talk isn't about our work but about the way we work -- if that interests you, check it out. youtu.be/w7DVlI_Ztq8?...

If you’re in NYC and curious about checking out Folk Computer we’re having another open house event Saturday, May 31! lu.ma/ydi03zax

Browser Greasemonkey. Excel macros. Apple shortcuts. IFTTT.

What are the different ways software is modified or extended by its users? I’ll go first but please feel free to suggest your own ideas.

Really fun bit of citizen science around sourdough! 🥖 brainbaking.com/post/2025/04...

Announcing the Local-First Landscape A comprehensive guide to help developers choose the right tools for building local-first applications. localfirst.fm/landscape

@bnewbold.net any advice for a cafe near lunch?

started working on a sidebar extension to view bluesky posts as you browse the web!

A few days ago I gave a keynote at the PaPoC workshop on Byzantine Eventual Consistency and Local-first Access Control. It wasn't recorded, but slides are here speakerdeck.com/ept/byzantin...

Our new research track is called Universal Version Control and it's about exploring how to bring the power of version control to every person, on every kind of document and every kind of collaboration. www.inkandswitch.com/universal-ve...

This is the logo for a new Ink & Switch research track. What are your guesses for the name of this research area?