I think @nsrnicek.bsky.social is among the sharpest theorists and writers on the political economy of software and computing today, I’m excited to read his new book tomorrow.

"[Steve Jobs] returned the company to its original vision: the personal computer as a consumer appliance, a black box enforcing a very traditional relationship between the vendor and the purchaser."

from www.loper-os.org?p=568

I appreciated this critique of the "Resonant Computing Manifesto" spacecadets.love/why-i-didnt-...

"trickle-down computing" as pernicious theory-of-change

Very happy to announce I’ve officially joined as a researcher @inkandswitch.com to work on malleable software! I’ve also been doing lots of quiet work on @folkjs.org with @chrisshank.com and look forward to sharing more of that soon too!

Okay. I’m back.

"Live Programming in Hostile Territory", a paper by me and @chrisshank.com, just got accepted to LIVEPROG! folkjs.org/live-2025/

Really enjoyed "Live Programming in Hostile Territory" by @chrisshank.com and @orionreed.com: folkjs.org/live-2025/ They are doing some great stuff with @folkjs.org, y'all should check it out.

please claude don't spoil the em dash, it's the best dash, I want my em dash! — em dash enjoyer

Dave Smith, 2000

Notes from the Lab - May 2025 [Better late than never!] github.com/folk-js/folk... Adversarial malleability was on our mind this month... canvasifying web pages, network indications, peer presence on any web page, and much more.

I enjoyed making the sketches for this post, they're just custom html elements I chucked straight into the markdown. This post was low stakes, just describing a thing I did. Next time will be spicier.

QR data transfer protocols www.orionreed.com/posts/qrtp/

most sane typescript type

anyone know of a good way to subscribe to specific researchers, RSS-style? Something that's not tied to a specific journal...

It occured to me that the web doesn't provide any utility functions for working with the geometry primitives (e.g. DOMRect), so I've proposed adding some: github.com/w3c/fxtf-dra... Seems like an obvious addition to me, but curious if others agree? Any other obvious ones beyond what I've mentioned?

UPDATE: I am going full-time on applied & independent research! After the last year with @websimai.bsky.social and ~5 years at BlockScience, it's time to give my research the attention it deserves. (1/4)

Computing could be a more harmonious and empowering force in our lives if we could mold it to our needs. We wrote a little about this vision of "malleable software" – past, present, and future. www.inkandswitch.com/essay/mallea...

What if browsers shipped with servers? You could open *folders* of html/css/js, open local files with HTTPS, update your ‘software’ via filesystem APIs when online… shifting agency toward users and creating new possibilities for authorship and distribution…

This was a lot of fun! After seeing PVH’s gorgeous slides I really want to make my future talks look that good. As always, after the talk people came up and said “have you heard of X/Y/Z?” and now I have so many better examples I wish I knew about when preparing the talk.

Who’s headed to Local-First conf in Berlin?

@orionreed.bsky.social and I have been working on a custom HTML attribute that binds a language server (LSP) to a input/textarea/contenteditable, which adds functionality like diagnostics, autocomplete, semantic renaming, etc.

Here’s a multimodal protocol that uses QR codes to stream data and audio to “backchannel” acknowledgement of received chunks. About 1-2KB/s Multimodality helps when there’s an asymmetry, like here where you need to aim the phone camera.

Another low-tech and very local-first webRTC signalling approach for folk canvas with @chrisshank.com, this time over sound via ggwave (using MFSK) folk.systems/canvas/netwo... (careful of volume)

A tiny protocol to stream data over QR codes in both directions at once. Each device confirms receipt of the previous chunk, so it handles interruptions smoothly. Made this for webRTC signalling and other things as part of the Folk Canvas project with @chrisshank.com

We can now generate a ZUI like this from a directory of markdown files that uses wiki-style links (e.g. Obsidian, Bear, etc.)!

What if hypertext were zoomable? Then you could zoom forever, in circles... I made this the other day and came up with a data structure that allows the coordinate origin to move through the graph, to keep memory fixed and avoid floating point precision limits. folk.systems/canvas/space...

should I migrate all my past tweets to Bsky?

Had a fantastic and surprising hang out with @wintergatan.bsky.social recently seeing Book of Mormon in NYC. Thanks for the great conversations Martin! Hope we get to hang out again sometime.

Alright. Very extended internet holiday over, for real this time. Hey again! I’ve been away, err, working super hard…

Okay — I've been summoned. I think it's time to end my holiday away from the internet. Hey bsky!

Finishing the sound design for short #1 (Well, 4th short). But now we're releasing a short every two weeks. We hope.