Hosting a website on a disposable vape bogdanthegeek.github.io/blog/project...

Did you know your MacBook has a sensor that knows the exact angle of the screen hinge? It’s not exposed as a public API, but I figured out a way to read it and make it sound like an old wooden door.

☁️ Beyond the cloud = local-first software. On today’s #GOTOpodcast, @expede.wtf & @julianwood.com dive into apps that run on your device, sync seamlessly, stay private & empower devs. 🎧 gotopia.tech/podcast

I've long thought there wasn't a good definition of what makes a language "declarative". But then I stumbled across this 12-year-old blog post by my colleague Neel Krishnaswami, who has a surprisingly elegant and useful definition semantic-domain.blogspot.com/2013/07/what...

Returning JSON from SQL queries, by Jamie Brandon. The syntax is bad but I guess it works www.scattered-thoughts.net/writing/sql-...

OK! Today's the day! Kicking off the home for the #PrivateDataWG in the new @atprotocol.dev hosted Discourse forum Thanks to @ngerakines.me for spinning up the infra, including login with ATProto powered by AIP If you're interested in Private Data, login and introduce yourself.

This paper is pretty exciting. Near-zero-carbon steel production costs only 36% more than steel from a blast furnace (under reasonable electricity price assumptions); a carbon tax like the one in the EU is already enough to make it cost-competitive. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I keep getting into conversations with engineers where I talk about how desperately I want my database to support materialized views with incremental updates and too often I get a blank stare in response. so I wrote a new post about why you should care! sophiebits.com/2025/08/22/m...

Post is now translated into English and available without ads and tracking: jhauser.de/once-upon-a-... With digressions into Cold War era spy balloons and the first Soviet photos from the far side of the moon, this is a fun read!

Stumbled across some old photos of the first computer I built myself, circa 1998. I installed it in a metal tool box into which I cut some holes. The handle was very convenient for carrying the computer to LAN parties.

Notion's new offline support is based on our rich text CRDT research x.com/ivanhzhao/st...

I started a substack! I wrote about how batteries are already cost competitive with diesel for data center backup power in many scenarios today, and how the magnitude of AI's demand for energy makes this increasingly true, you can read it here camillefassett.substack.com/p/how-batter...

Sync Conf is a boutique conference on the future of real-time, collaborative, agentic software development. Tickets are on sale now: syncconf.dev

My friend Johannes made a device to transmit a HDMI signal via sound through a garden hose as an art project: video.golem.de/software-ent... Low-res, black/white, and 0.125 fps, but it works! Article explaining the setup (German): www.golem.de/news/hdmi-au...

i have compiled a list of free image resources inspired by our conversation about this last week. livelaugh.blog/posts/non-ai...

The Ink & Switch team is coming through London and we're having a social to share some recent news and research from the lab, and catch up with people in London interested in local first, malleable software, and other similar areas of making better computing. Aug 16th, 6pm in London

When people call for “censorship resistance” in social networks, I’m not sure they realise how unpleasant a social network without filtering and takedowns would be

If you speak two languages well, have you tried counting to 10 in alternating languages? I found it surprisingly mind-bending.

The role of LLMs in academic reviewing, by Vijay Chidambaram www.sigarch.org/the-role-of-...

Our new Philips egg cooker came with no textual instructions, only pictorial ones. How many people without a chemistry degree are likely to figure out what “4% AcOH” means? (Spoiler: it means “vinegar”)

Interesting, but also the funniest bit is the deadpan “the trigger for the CPU spikes both times was our CEO logging in. We re-deployed to get a clean start, permanently banned him from the service, and moved on.”

📄✨ New paper! Emilie Ma (kewbi.sh) and I looked at the problem of users of end-to-end encrypted apps recovering their private keys if their device is lost, broken, or stolen. We found a cryptographic approach that is decentralised and resilient against social engineering arxiv.org/abs/2507.21122

Please don't plug keyboards or other devices into random USB ports, ok?

Nice that the Bluesky firehose is now becoming a live dataset on which to demo streaming databases

Monthly @automerge.org community calls start on 20 August, hosted by @patternist.xyz and @expede.wtf lu.ma/zv6tpuu4

“Just sing out a Te Deum / when you see that ICBM” is one of my favourite rhymes of all time R.I.P. Tom Lehrer

RIP Tom Lehrer: a wonderfully talented lyricist, songwriter and pianist. In 2022 he released all his songs into the public domain. You want to record them, remix them, even sell them? Go ahead. They're on tomlehrersongs.com - audio, lyrics, PDFs of the sheet music. Free, in every sense of the word.

Do you write TypeScript? Enjoy Automerge? Love building both tools and community? You might be a great fit for our ✨new✨ Automerge TypeScript Maintainer role! www.inkandswitch.com/jobs/automer... (Remote role, 🇬🇧 UK-based preferred but not required)

Support @openrightsgroup.bsky.social making a legal intervention at the hearing of the tribunal on the case of Apple's Advanced Data Protection being undermined in the UK action.openrightsgroup.org/make-our-voi...

I first wrote up the idea for this 6 years ago, but it took a huge amount of work to actually turn it into reality. Thank you to Orion for the heavy lifting, and all the other Automerge contributors for making it happen!

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 find it deeply weird seeing “air conditioning will destroy the planet” takes when its usage coincides with high solar generation. Maybe we could focus on not burning gas - a fuel source that will never coincide with cheap, clean generation - in millions of homes?

Surprisingly polite graffiti at the local skate park

I didn't realise our local-first essay (www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-...) has been on Hacker News at least eight times over the years news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4447...

Beautiful essay by @henrikkarlsson.bsky.social on learning to realise that what you want to do is, in fact, possible www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/agency

a sprite captured from the ISS yesterday 🧪

One way in which AI enriches my life is that I can go from “ooh, that’s a funky looking caterpillar” to a fun Wikipedia rabbithole in a few seconds, thanks to iOS’s automatic plant and animal detection in photos. This is a cinnabar moth caterpillar, apparently

Fledgling kestrel in the courtyard of our department building!

For perspective: a recent study suggested that economic savings from just a *single* well-predicted hurricane, thanks to NOAA research advancements, are on order of *$5 billion.* That exceeds NOAA's *entire proposed annual operating budget.* So much for government efficiency.

ATM left in maintenance mode or something? 🤔

Nice idea by @lambda.bsky.social to make mugs for co-authors celebrating our papers 🎉☕️

In 2010–2012 I worked on a startup called Rapportive, which we sold to LinkedIn. After that (2014), Rapportive colleagues @rahulvohra.bsky.social and @conradirwin.bsky.social started Superhuman, a new email client. And now it's been acquired too – congratulations! blog.superhuman.com/superhuman-i...

Summer is here, exam/dissertation marking is done, and we’ve already harvested 2kg of raspberries and turned them into jam ☀️🎉

Very cool that the university bus service has a numberplate UNI4BUS. There’s just one problem… it’s on the U2 bus line, not U4

Worth a watch: Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

Well that happened 💍🎉 @katiewilde.com is my wifey 👰🏼‍♀️👰🏻‍♀️

OCaml @ocaml.org is in The Economist!