Hiking on the Curonian Spit in Lithuania near the Russian border. Apparently the Russians jam GPS and my hiking log appears to prove that!

I'll be speaking at the KDE Akademy 2026 conference this September in Graz on the "future of destkop UX". I'm so happy this worked out as the KDE community has always been so supportive of my ideas. conf.kde.org/event/11/con...

I've been in UX for 40+ years (I started at Apple). Recently, I've been working on bringing UX to FOSS projects, and I see this attitude far too often (but not always!). It's terribly exciting to see this thread get so much support and love. There is hope yet.

I'm leaving the #localfirst conference intellectually stuffed. Such a great conference with excellent conversations. I have so many things I want to try when I get home. Thank you @bmann.ca and the entire team for putting on such a great event.

Image from a talk at #localfirst conference. We've all seen cartoons like this. It's clearly AI generated but WHY is it so obvious? You'd think the models could produce something with a little variation so they aren't so stylistically identical?

Look, I’m an open source maintainer, and if you want people to use that FOSS software as an alternative to that proprietary software it’s good to understand why people wanted to use that proprietary software in the first place and why they might be hesitant to switch It’s not because users are dumb

Arrived at 08:30 Saturday in Berlin for the local first conference (starting tomorrow) I've got the speakers lunch in 3 hours but otherwise my day is wide open. Any suggestions on what I should be checking out here in sunny Berlin?

Excited to be flying into Berlin tomorrow morning to speak at the LocalFirst conference. I'll be doing part 2 of my "Future of desktop UX" talk.

I just composed a two part reply to a post, wording things VERY carefully only to realize that after posting, I needed to edit the second post. Argh, I need to delete and retype, OK... I go to the second post and delete it but there is a bug and the FIRST post is deleted instead!!

It's always amazing when someone reaches out and says how much one of my blog posts meant to them. It's just about #UX, it's nothing emotionally heavy but that personal connection means so much. It's even fun to revisit what I wrote 5 years ago! Thank you kind stranger. jenson.org/instincts/

I have to say, using the 'free period" of Claude's Fable model over the weekend and it really is nailing nearly everything I'm asking it to do, even on the first try. I'm NOT a fan of the ethical/environmental issues surrounding LLMs but you *can't* say they are useless.

"Oh no! We forgot Timmy!" I know I'm on a tear right now with Automobile #UX but messages like this just have me scratching my head? Yes, I know, baby's have been left in cars but two extremely obvious points: 1. It is a statistically insignificant number 2. This message wouldn't help anyway.

Yet another Auto UX video. This time with my Škoda Auto rental. It's a great little car but I had an unsafe #UX experience which could have easily been avoided.

This is 10:36 at night in Estonia! It's just so..... surreal to have it be this bright at night.

Now THIS is a museum! The Lennusadam maritime museum in Tallinn. This was fun....

Metsakalmistu cemetery near Tallinn Estonia. It's in the middle of a forest and the most beautiful cemetery I've ever been in. Just gorgeous. These photos don't capture it

This is what happens when you don't prototype ;-) #UX

Unexpected find #2 in Estonia: In the Dominican Convent 1246 Museum has a kickass collection of old typewriters!!! (I was NOT expecting to see a lovingly restored set of old typewriters in a convent!)

Unexpected find #1 in Estonia: Coats of Arms in St Mary's Cathedral, a 13th Century church. They are intense!

A surprising downside to the "mobile app revolution": 1) Many local communities have parking/bike/transit apps 2) no cash, all bank card 3) Local communities can't use big multinational credit card clearing systems 4) So non-EU cards are rejected I can't park or ride a bike

I'm leaving the astounding Helsinki today and heading over to Tallinn Estonia

Doorways of Helsinki (most of these are near the Uspenski Cathedral)

I visited the Helsinki Library and it has a frigg'n makerspace in the middle of it! Laster cutters, 3D printers, Vinyl cutters, all for nearly free. It also has "video game rooms", general meeting rooms, 2 cafes and a restaurant! It's astounding what you can have if you fund public works.

I'm in Helsinki and I visited the Architecture and Design museum which had an excellent exhibit of Aino Aalto and Alvar Aalto, deeply influential designers from the 30s-50s.

I am always surprised by how intelligent people can make such confident statements about LLMs (pro or con). To be clear, I'm very skeptical but nothing is black and white: there can be clear wins for this tech and it still will never reach genAI Most reasonable people understand it takes time...

It feels like Personal Information access is the achilles heel of LLMs. They can do amazing things if you feed them all your stuff. (This is why Local LLMs are so promising, your data stays put) The problem? It's nearly impossible to get! It's locked behind proprietary silos.

I've talked to multiple companies where the senior staff is forcing the use LLMs, making employees confused & frustrated. Their lack of success is blamed on them "not doing it right" (instead of on the senior team for not doing the work up front to make these tools work properly in the first place)

Has anyone tried using ScreenPipe to capture their daily activity? While the core is open source (which allows verification) the paid app is closed source which flips it to a trust model. Apparently people are using just the opensource app? github.com/screenpipe/s...

If you find EMPATHY hard to do you probably shouldn't be allowed to lead a consumer facing software project, or order food at a restaurant. It's literally just trying to see your product through other people's lives, you don't even need to be able read.

Using genAI really shows how little we appreciate OTHERs. It allows someone to be average in fields they know very little about. The mistake is thinking this is a good thing. Pure Dunning-Kruger. This is a critique of us, not genAI.

Friendly reminder to submit your website to the second issue of the Internet Phone Book or to build a website and then submit said website to the second issue of the Internet Phone Book. tally.so/r/3EEZzL

This was excellent. Strongly encourage you to read both Bens's and Laurens posts. We've been so focused on decentralizing power (which is important) that we haven't really thought much about how we actually work together. This needs lots more discussion

Mark Rober creates a free science curriculum for grade schools. This is the type of "rich person" we need. They make tons of money but actually DO something with it that helps the world. This makes me hopeful at a time where I really need it: www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/mar...

After spending MANY hours getting my Hermes Agent+Obsidian setup working and can firmly report that it's doing practically nothing useful. Nearly very tutorial I've found starts with "Take your 2 years of notes and..." (which is unhelpful) It's EXTREMELY hard to get started from scratch

These new favicons for Google products are a huge step backwards. I'm always surprised when something like this ships. #UX

Uber's COO says it's getting harder to justify the money spent on AI tokenmaxxing www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-and...

As far as I can recall, the Pope never issued an encyclical letter about NFTs or Crypto... www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

@moleitau.bsky.social My plans are firming up for Helsinki. I should be there around June 17 - 22 if you're free for a coffee. Happy to meet with others.

The reason I ask is that Youtube is FILLED with bros talking about this, but they always start with 300 notes and use LLMs to analyze it. Too convenient. I'm looking for a way to GET STARTED and have a helpful flow "from empty". You'd think someone would have covered this. Links welcome!

Is anyone using an #LLM + #obsidian to help them with their writing? e.g. brainstorming, tracking ideas, creating outlines, etc? I started off w/Gemini, then updated to notebookLM but found the lack of editing limiting. Looking to find others to share learnings. Note: This is NOT coding! ;-)

If you follow me here bc of my occasional lapses into News Posting, I encourage you to instead follow @unbreaking.org, a volunteer collective I help run that turns the administration's flood of bullshit into orderly timelines and weekly briefings for people who dislike drowning their brains.

It's one think to hack on your own, it's ENTIRELY another thing to upload it to GitHub... It feels a bit... exposed I hacked on a simple game for my Pixel watch, based on a mini-game in Starfield. I had fun. github.com/scottjenson/...

And now for something completely nostalgic: a 'landline for kids' concept that is gaining traction: tincan.kids I'm not endorsing this, just pointing out that this "analog trend" is certainly gaining momentum.

Delays can kill your design. This is a reenactment but close to what I experienced. I tried it, got nothing so tried pushing it instead. It wasn't until my 4th try that I realized it was just very very slow (~1000ms delay!!!) <100ms feels nearly instant, >400ms starts to feel broken. #UX #ID

I think I've found the world's most unambiguous salt and pepper shakers (although, still not accessible) #ux

My latest blog post about Ma and how it helps frame LLM's faustian bargain of speed over reflection: The Ma of a New Machine jenson.org/ma #UX #AI #LLM

Good example of the particle-wave aspect of LLMs: These tools can allow you to do amazing things very quickly, but they are often the wrong things. Something is still missing. annaecook.com/writing/2026...

see, this is technically feasible and it can be done

The particle-wave aspect of LLMs: 1. You can be critical of how it's current being executed 2. You're interested in how the tech can be useful

Regulators and the tech press are sleeping on the web's power to unlock mobile computing the way it pried open the desktop. What started as a problem is now a crisis for the legitimacy of both institutions: infrequently.org/2026/04/the-...