iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

With joy and regret, I think of you often.

Staedtler 780 leadholder next to leads, and lead pointer

For my taste, there's no better writing in the Star Wars universe than Luthen's monologue in Season 1, episode 10. Absolutely top tier Star Wars.

Andor's Luthen Rael, played by Stellan Skarsgård, delivering the greatest monologue in all the Star Wars universe. [A still from that scene in Season 1, Episode 10, with the text of his speech overlaid.]

Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love.
I’ve given up all chance at inner peace.
I’ve made my mind a sunless space.
I share my dreams with ghosts.
I wake up every day to an equation
I wrote 15 years ago from which
there’s only one conclusion:
I’m damned for what I do.

My anger, my ego, my unwillingness
to yield, my eagerness to fight,
they’ve set me on a path from which
there is no escape. I yearned to be
a savior against injustice without
contemplating the cost and by the time
I looked down there was no longer
any ground beneath my feet.

What is my sacrifice?

I’m condemned to use the tools
of my enemy to defeat them.
I burn my decency for someone else’s future.
I burn my life to make a sunrise
that I know I’ll never see.

And the ego that started this fight
will never have a mirror or an audience
or the light of gratitude.

So what do I sacrifice?

Everything!

020

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 16h

Bloomberg: tech billionaires account for all of the $845B in wealth gains so far in 2026; those whose fortunes came from outside tech lost $62B total. The rest of the country is getting fucked over by Big Tech.

Dan Lipinski's photo, licensed as CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dnlpnsk/235597944

Half a dozen pitchforks silhouetted against a blue sky with scattered clouds.

011

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 17h

I recently recommended people who don't like the colorful gradients in the new Firefox theme use the old "Proton" theme. I've since reverted that change myself and instead set the new "Ash" theme as my default. The gradient is subtle enough, and without the saturated colors it's pretty nice.

My Firefox (content obscured) with Ash theme, sidebar tabs, and customized toolbar.

Theme selection panel in Firefox Settings. There is an expand control at the bottom of the list I'd not seen before, behind which were hiding a couple low-saturation colors. The theme list is two side and 6 tall, each one featuring a stylized Firefox toolbars demonstrating the color scheme. Above the list is the same sort of panel featuring the Ash theme I've enabled.

011

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 05/10/2026

That's part of it for sure. The behavior is better with the block cursor, though it still gets stuck out of line--and without a cursor so you see only the indicators. Assigned to backlog, no immediate plans to fix :( Awfully casual burying. Fuck disabled people, I guess.

Windows Text Cursor Indicator missing the cursor so it's a (vertical) barbell with two bells and no bar.

010

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 05/10/2026

I entered college smoking Camels and exited on Lucky Strikes--too many friends bumming too many smokes while I was too broke and too generous to say no. So I switched my fix to the cheap stuff no one wanted: Luckies (which actually tasted better). When that later failed, I moved to rolling my own.

photo of side by side of Lucky Strike and Camel cigarettes packs.

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Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 05/10/2026

Don't be put off by the massive size I've set. I maxed out the barbells but you don't have to. You can also choose a better color if you like, and don't miss the few other cursor settings available in the same window.

Windows Settings -> Accessibility -> Text cursor window featuring a preview pane, an on/off toggle, a size slider, and a set of vibrant default colors with a button to choose another color.

010

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 05/10/2026

Blast from the past, Nov 2000, six months after I joined Netscape and staff@mozilla.org. I signed it but the code was certainly not ready. Over the next 18 months, drivers@mozilla.org whipped things into shape enough that we could feel good bestowing Mozilla with the precious "1.0" version number.

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Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 04/10/2026

It's Opt Out October. Over the last few days I've completed my move away from Google's Gmail and Calendar web apps back to Thunderbird. Unfortunately, I also traded in the other direction, moving from Notepad++ for Visual Studio Code :-( www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

Gold, circular EFF badge with a ghost carrying sign that says "I opted out of software by big tech"

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Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 03/10/2026

I wonder how close this is. Any of y'all got pointers to blog posts or other progress report type things I should read?

excerpt from https://www.w3.org/TR/wcag-3.0/#text-contrast-sufficient-minimum

Core requirement

Text contrast sufficient (minimum) DEVELOPING

The default visual presentation of text meets @@[contrast measure to be determined].

Applies when text is presented, including text embedded in an image format.

011

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 03/10/2026

Jean Leon on recent AI fearmongering: "a convenient cover story that works for .... established tech companies using regulation to block competitors, and politicians using a sci-fi panic to look busy while skipping out on their real work." It's all theater. www.androidheadlines.com/2026/10/ai-d...

B&W photo by Flickr user timogan, titled "Soliloquy" featuring a Taiwanese opera singer, in luxurious bright silk garb and headpiece, arms outstretched and fingers splayed, seeming to command the viewer with magical powers, set under harsh lighting against an inky black background.

Original: https://flic.kr/p/5659dC

I've made no modifications and published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license that timogin was kind enough to use. Thank, timogin, for making the world a better place.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/timogan/

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Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 03/10/2026

I'm doing a course of high-dose prednisone for a pulmonary sarcoidosis flare. This time around, the prednisone's lifted my blood sugar baseline by about 100 points. So I don't get to eat carbs until the prednisone tapers. This sucks more than anything that's ever sucked in the history of sucking.

Photo "Suck" by Mario Klingemann ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/quasimondo/ on Flickr) and used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/deed.en )

I have cropped Mario's photo significantly. To see his original work, visit https://www.flickr.com/photos/quasimondo/4932067027/in/photolist-8vQ8Gp

Thank you, Mario, for cool photo and for the generous licensing.

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Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 02/10/2026

Lode Runner's level editor probably did more to get me where I am today than most of my elementary school education from the same era. It was the reason I needed a disk drive and not just cartridges, and that was the beginning :D

Lode Runner level editor showing a typical floors and ladders view on the left with editing toolbars above and selectable level numbers on the right.

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Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 02/10/2026

uBlock Origin can hide those sleezy "upgrade to our AI" buttons and banners. All you have to do is click the uBO icon, click the eyedropper, and then select the element you want to hide. You'll get a chance to "Preview" the change, then press the "Pick" button to hide that element. Easy peasy :D

four screenshots in one image.

Top left is the uBO main pop-up with a mouse pointer over the eyedropper icon at the bottom of the panel. Bottom left is a shot of the Google Gemini icon highlighted with red indicating focus. The right stacked images are the uBO filters panels that let you adjust the boundaries of the element you want to hide. The top image has the mouse pointer on "Preview" and the bottom has the pointer on "Pick." The panels are numbered 1-4 in the order described.

021

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 28/09/2026

I am concerned about this limb. Most of these are redwoods, but this one's a Doug fir. In the 1990s, for reasons unknown, the previous owners topped this sturdy tree at 150', and this branch swelled. It *might* reach our house with enough wind ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The neighborhood lumberjack has retired :-(

typical tourist-y skyward shot up through tall though not mighty redwoods, where you have a nice sort of circle of blue sky with wisps of white clouds in the middle of the picture and that's encircled by green feather adorn black spears jabbing and pointing inward and upward, stabbing at the blue oculus if in defiance, "You have no power here, mighty golden disk. Your fire will not avail you. We have authority over these lands. You are forth with banished from this kingdom!"

LOL

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Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 28/09/2026

I gave ChatGPT a simple construction project: mount a brace and a face plate across three rafters to secure a telescoping mast for a small radio. I provided goals, materials, and dimensions, and asked it for some drawings. The drawings are the most cursed thing I've ever seen. Here's one example.

Hard to describe. It's a detailed illustration with labels and arrows but every single piece of lumber and every bracket and fastener are just wrong--misshapen, wrong dimensions, wrong type, wrong in every way.

000

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 27/09/2026

I'm generally a pretty laid back dude. There are exceptions.

CVS.com's cart icon always features a red indicator, even for "0" items as is the case in this screen shot excerpt.

020

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 20/09/2026

Apple is apparently about to launch an Amazon Echo Show smart display competitor. It'll come in table-top and wall-hung models, just like the Echo Show. It will have an iPad-like OS and its major features are facial recognition and Siri AI. Here's my take on a fake picture of it. I will not buy.

Amazon Echo Show and Apple HomePod Mini mashup, a square screen with big black bezels and cameras visible along the top bezel. The base is a white HomePod Mini. The desktop features the Siri color waves in greens, blues, reds, purples, and white.

000

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 19/09/2026

Big Tech Bros think they make good spokes-models for their mostly useless Big Tech Bro toys.

Photo of Snap's CEO wearing is Specs pervert glasses. The combination is cringe and the aesthetic certainly cost Snap far more sales than it earned. What losers. They really do think that highly of themselves.

030

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 17/09/2026

This fella didn't have nearly as good a caption, "That bar in the middle is the privacy indicator light," but he does look about as ridiculous.

head shot of another nerdy bald whited dude wearing big chunky dork spectacles.

120

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 17/09/2026

[Upleveled from an earlier thread] This is my hugging tree. It lives about 10 paces from our front door. When I need to clear my head or fill it with something better, communing with this magnificent coast redwood always seems to do the trick. Also, how about that amazing bark?

Close up of the base of a large redwood tree with light cutting through the tall canopy splashing across thick, spongy, and furrowed bark that's a warm reddish-brown to cinnamon color. Some redwood sapling foliage can be seen behind it.

030

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 17/09/2026

This big fella's a Douglas fir (we live in a redwood-dominant, mixed-conifer forest). It carries large black scars from a fire in the 1950s. Redwoods, with their thick, fibrous bark, are the ones known for fire resistance, but for this tree, size alone seems to have been enough. 5' DBH, 220' tall

the base of a large Douglas fir tree with a black lab passing in front of it while carrying a big stick.

010

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 17/09/2026

Another one that's a challenge to capture above about person height. This beast of a tree is right outside our front door. It's got really exciting bark. This is my hugging tree, and it's just under 6 feet in diameter, and "only" about 190 feet tall.

Close up of the base of a large redwood tree with light cutting through the tall canopy and splashing across thick, spongy, and furrowed bark that's a warm reddish-brown to cinnamon color. Some redwood sapling foliage can be seen behind it.

110

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 17/09/2026

Love the caption: "Can you tell I'm wearing smart glasses?"

man with shaved head and mustache wearing dorky looking oversize glasses with chunky palstic frames and oddly reflective lenses.

221

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 17/09/2026

Remember when Tim Cook spent billions trying to make an autonomous EV, all because he wanted a product of his own so he wouldn't be seen as just riding SJ's coattails with yet another iPhone accessory or services? Good times.

Black Lexus with a mattress sized sensor kit on the roof.

000

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 17/09/2026

Without buying a tilt-shift or ultra-wide for my D70, most of our trees are just too big and tall to photograph up close. I measured this one a few years ago at seven feet diameter, and my latest drone measurement says it's 260 feet tall. Maybe I'll buy that lens. Anyone got recommendations?

A close up color photograph of a large redwood tree taken from a short distance, shot face on, so the trunk is cropped right above the base and about 20feet up. The tree has great big "stripes" of bark ridges running down with deep darker crevasses between them. It sits in front of a smaller, 2-ish foot diameter young tree behind it. There's light and dark green redwood foliage in the background.

251

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 16/09/2026

I play WoW and GW2. Across both games, I have 11 characters, 4 of them female. I like female characters for variety, and because of how they move, stand and look. Also, I probably spend 15% of my game time as if I was playing paper dolls, so there's that. My first alt in GW2:

010

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 16/09/2026

Our home was built by a family of Finnish immigrants, Leander Erickson and his two sons, Rugner and Rupert. They did it all by hand in the traditional Finnish log cabin building style, about a hundred years ago.

Grainy black and white photo from almost 100 years ago of our log cabin under construction. The walls are up, but no roof. There are big cut outs in the logs for windows and there's a man on the ground with a rope and beam lever thing that I presume helped hoist logs for the wall building. There are two other men helping, one standing on the front wall, and another on the ground near him.

050

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 15/09/2026

Tuesday is wash and detail day.

Our 2019 Mazda3 hatchback, reflective dark gray paint, black wheels, sleek lines, coolest most bestest car ever in the history of cars. Parked on the side of the road in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains with the fog obscured Pacific Ocean and ominous gray clouds backdropping it's sexy as fuck fenders. Splashed with mid-day sun and framed against various tints and shades of green, of the grasses, Douglas firs and coast redwoods, a car, this car, stands alone.

laminated typing paper sign against a painted orange cinder block wall that reads:

NOTICE
The price per minute in the
wash bays has been
increased by 5%.

WAS-$3.00 for 4 minutes
(20 Seconds per Quarter)

NOW-$4.00 for 5 minutes
(19 Seconds per Quarter)

Increase is needed to cover
escalating utility costs.

120

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 14/09/2026

A basket of goods costs a 1/3rd more today than 10 years ago. My take: The '70s saw a doubling of prices. The 80s was a 3/4ths increase. The low rate in the '10s was anomalous. We've returned to '90s levels, still far from '70s and '80s increases. It doesn't feel good, but it's a fact of life.

U.S. Inflation Rate by Year

Annual % Change
2026 3.37%
2025 2.68%
2024 2.89%
2023 3.35%
2022 6.45%
2021 7.04%
2020 1.36%
2019 2.29%
2018 1.91%
2017 2.11%
2016 2.07%
2015 0.73%
2014 0.76%
2013 1.50%
2012 1.74%
2011 2.96%
2010 1.50%
2009 2.72%
2008 0.09%
2007 4.08%
2006 2.54%
2005 3.42%
2004 3.26%
2003 1.88%
2002 2.38%
2001 1.55%
2000 3.39%
1999 2.68%
1998 1.61%
1997 1.70%
1996 3.32%
1995 2.54%
1994 2.67%
1993 2.75%
1992 2.90%
1991 3.06%
1990 6.11%
1989 4.65%
1988 4.42%
1987 4.43%
1986 1.10%
1985 3.80%
1984 3.95%
1983 3.79%
1982 3.83%
1981 8.92%
1980 12.52%
1979 13.29%
1978 9.02%
1977 6.70%
1976 4.86%

021

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 14/09/2026

Have you cursed the name of a Big Tech CEO today?

Still of The Punisher / Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) standing in some suburban loooking home, next to a stainless refrigerator and giving two thumbs-up to the audience/camera. He's wearing a dark hoodie--hood up, and his face wears a stern expression, and quite a bit of blood.

031

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 14/09/2026

Brazenly stolen from a social media post I won't link to.

Sticker applied to a sidewalk trash bin with big text "[white] Smart Glasses [red] Amnesty Bin" and below that in smaller text "Wearing hidden camera glasses [underline] massively increases the liklihiood of people thinking you're a nonce." Below that are instructions "Drop them in and walk away with what's left of your dignity" and a graphically simple person shape dropping glasses into a waste basket.

033

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 12/09/2026

I wonder if I can do better

Bank statement excerpt showing $0.02 interest earned in the month of August

010

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 12/09/2026

For the mainstream, head worn computers will sink or swim on comfort. Quest and Vision Pro both over 1 lb.? LOL DOA. Meta "Phoenix" or "Orion at ~4 oz: Nope Rokid at 1.5-1.75 oz.: In the neighborhood?

a pair of ultralight eyeglasses with metal and plastic frames that, with lenses, weighs 0.4 oz. A Meta Phoenix device, 4.0 ounces, that's a cross between VR goggles form factor and smart glasses form factor. Their weights are labeled.

000

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 11/09/2026

The last bonus category won't arrive until the 2030s, true AR glasses. Take the smart glasses, add stereoscopic displays and a rich sensing suite, and now you've got see-through glasses that can overlay digital content on the real world.

Meta's Orion AR glasses prototype on a white table. A pair of chunky black glasses, a wrist band and a rectangular puck.

010

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 11/09/2026

Smart glasses have fashion form factors and fully see-through lenses. With cameras, microphones, speakers, and heads up displays, this category wants to become a smart watch for your face, or maybe CarPlay or Android Auto. Use cases included creeping, navigation, notifications, media control, etc.

Black man in a blue shirt, wearing Ray-Ban Display glasses and looking off into the distance just like the Meta marketing photographer told him to.

110

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 11/09/2026

Lightweight, stereoscopic, virtual display glasses with (blacked out in use) see-through lenses. They eschew the rich sensor suite and wide field of view needed for deep immersion, in favor of a lighter device focused on virtual screens. These tethered glasses are used for gaming, movies, and TV.

Man in work-casual attire kicking back on a sofa wearing dark glasses and holding a game controller. He's staring at a (pictured) virtual 2D screen floating in space in front of him.

110

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 11/09/2026

Ultralight tethered VR googles are similar to the standalones, except they drop the standalone part for a wired or wireless PC or smartphone connection. They offer deep immersion like the standalones without the bulk. They're used for gaming, personal computing, and virtual screens.

Man seated in chair, wearing orange translucent fronted Bigscreen Beyond goggles and clutching a driving sim steering wheel.

110

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 11/09/2026

Open periphery standalone VR goggles are very similar to the enclosed goggles, except they don't seal off your peripheral view. The open periphery sacrifices some deep immersion to provide better spatial awareness for the user, sometimes higher resolution, and perhaps improved social acceptance.

110

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 11/09/2026

Enclosed, standalone VR goggles are full PCs, 1-1.5 pounds of camera, display, logic board, etc., pressed to your face with head straps. They offer immersive virtual environments and live "pass through" video of your surroundings. They're used for gaming, personal computing and virtual screens.

Bearded man wearing a white Quest HMD with arms outstretched and hands holding a pair of white controllers.

110

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 11/09/2026

Big Tech is pushing five different categories of face computers: ◦ Enclosed standalone VR goggles ◦ Open periphery standalone VR headsets ◦ Ultralight tethered VR goggles ◦ Virtual display glasses ◦ Smart glasses Here's a rundown on what these are, what they're for, and how they work.

110

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 08/09/2026

Waymo: "The future of transportation is here!! West of 280? Suck lemons."

Map of Waymo coverage that gets the whole inner peninsula all the way down to Campbel, but nothing west of 280. Cities and major highways are labeled.

100

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 08/09/2026

I don't eat out much, but you can bet your last dollar I’ll walk right out of any place with AI slop on the menu. Fake food pictures aren't appetizing. They're gross and show zero respect for the customer.

U-Turn sign, a green circle with a black upside-down U shape with an arrow at the end of the left rail.

"U-turn only" by Tom Magliery
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mag3737/
Used under at Creative Commons license

photo of hand holding a Millestone Tavern menu featuring a couple dozen slop images, one for each menu item. So unappetizing.

132

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 06/09/2026

What an awesome book cover.

"A breakneck chase through a luminous landscape. Witty, heartstopping, and dmoving" -Samuel R. Delaney
ALGORITHM
By
Jean Mark Gawron
and below that text block that takes up the top 40% of the cover is a first person view of a hand holding a smoking ray gun. At this scale the background is a wall of 1960s era computers and the swirls of punched tape they operated on. The tones mostly range from green to gold but there are couple of red lights on the ray gun.

000

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 06/09/2026

What if we passed a law saying social media feed sorting must only use visible content, metadata, or account data? Apps can sort by anything we see on screen, but not behind the scenes user tracking. Of course they can still inject ads anywhere anyhow. Why allow them any more than that?

Excerpt of a book cover photographed by Dr Umm https://www.flickr.com/photos/cdrummbks/ and used under a Creative Commons license.

It's a classic sci-fi paperback cover that I've cropped down to just the title, "ALGORITHM" written in a font that could have been drawn in sand with a rake, superimposed on a over a mottled green background.

131

Asa Dotzler @asadotzler.com · 06/09/2026

Without strong unions, workers in this country got fucked and Wall Street investors got rich. (Union busting Ronald Reagan gave us today's oligarchy. It's right there in the chart.) We'll either have renewed labor solidarity, bargaining to get back what was stolen,,, or we'll have violence.

Dual-axis chart (1947–2025) showing major U.S. work stoppages dropping sharply after 1980 from over 400/year to under 50, alongside after-tax corporate profit rates rising from ~3% to nearly 18%.

151