iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Great moments in Scottish engineering history: James Watt tries to work out how his phone attaches to his selfie stick.

Statue of James Watt. In his right hand he holds a telescopic stick with a frame at the top; in his left he holds a flat object about the size of a large smartphone. He is scowling at the possibly-not-a-smartphone as if he is tempted to yeet it into the sea. On that basis, it probably _is_ a phone.

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

We (civil engineers) take this shit *extremely* seriously. My grumpiest, most disciplinary take is that I've always been deeply uncomfortable with CS calling itself "engineering" because -- individuals as exceptions, of course -- it does /not/ have a safety and ethics culture.

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Daniel D. Beck @ddbeck.com · 21/09/2026

"Release notes" for week 38, 2026: measuring the "coverage gap," grouping web platform features, and tidying up descriptions.

ddbeck.com

“Release notes” for week 38

A summary of my client work for week 38, the work week of September 14–18, 2026.

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Ingrid Burrington @lifewinning.com · 15/09/2026

a lot of my frustration with the LLM onslaught has in fact been disappointment at realizing how many people do just want to pretend (at work, creatively, interpersonally)

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Daniel D. Beck @ddbeck.com · 31/08/2026

My "Release notes" for week 35, 2026, featuring HTML processing instructions, XSLT's formal discouragement, and fortnightly browser releases

ddbeck.com

“Release notes” for week 35, 2026

A summary of my client work for week 35, the work week of August 24–28, 2026.

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Philippe Auclair @philippeauclair.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

To anyone who does not live in Paris but visits the city at regular intervals (as I do), the transformation has been staggering: Paris has been reclaimed from cars. It can be done, and could be done in London too. It is all about political will and taking the risk of being unpopular - for a while.

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Daniel D. Beck @ddbeck.com · 26/08/2026

"Release notes" for week 34, 2026. This is the first entry in an experiment I’m running for a few weeks, to write a summary of the things I completed as part of my work for clients. Perhaps it’s interesting!

ddbeck.com

“Release notes” for week 34, 2026

A summary of my client work for week 34, 2026 (August 17–21).

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 20/08/2026

i swear to god, asking: “what is the problem you are trying to solve? followed by: “what information or data do you need to solve this problem?” are like, some of the single most important questions you need to ask a stakeholder on all kinds of projects, and so many people skip it

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dietrich @burrito.space · 30/07/2026

blont manc

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Daniel D. Beck @ddbeck.com · 23/07/2026

The syntaxes jq uses for extracting an object’s keys, values, and entries are confusingly dissimilar. One of them is not like the others. A brief note with examples.

ddbeck.com

jq object entries, keys, and values

The syntaxes jq uses for extracting an object’s keys, values, and entries are confusingly dissimilar. One of them is not like the others.

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 14/07/2026

google's "why don't you want to use our documentation chatbot" survey offers a pretty good list of reasons not to use their documentation chatbot

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Daniel D. Beck @ddbeck.com · 25/06/2026

I finally added video of my talk "Stop chopping onions and extend Markdown without tears" to my site. It's my guided tour of a few little-used extension points in Markdown.

ddbeck.com

Stop chopping onions and extend Markdown without tears at FOSDEM 2026

A tour of Markdown's hidden extension points.

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Daniel D. Beck @ddbeck.com · 22/06/2026

With Git, I sometimes check out a single file, such as a shell script, from another branch. I didn't know how to do this with Jujutsu, so I took notes on how, plus why jj's equivalent confuses me.

ddbeck.com

Copy a file from another revision with jj

With Git, I sometimes check out a single file, such as a shell script, from another branch. I was not familiar with how to do this with jj (J…

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Simon and Gargamel @kellylink.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

The most mysterious thing about writing to me is paragraphs. I produce them fairly reliably, but without thinking about them. When I do think about them, when not writing, I feel as if I'm on the edge of a terrible chasm full of secret knowledge.

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julie muncy @julie.radiantarray.io · 17/06/2026

the struggle of having ever moderated any online community is you now cannot go through any community without being like, oh, they should ban this person. this person hasn't done anything wrong yet but the vibes are off and you should ban the shit out of them.

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absolute horses @jcoglan.com · 09/06/2026

they published 2,118 RFCs before going "we should define what 'should' means"

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Daniel D. Beck @ddbeck.com · 11/06/2026

Had to reset the clock for "time since hearing a dick joke made on stage at a tech conference" which was standing at years 🙁

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arr @arr.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

english isn't for cowards. if you're not saying 'torpify,' that's a skill issue. there's no Académie Française telling you what to do. if you try to type 'pallific' and freak out when you see a little red underline, maybe you're not ready to roll with the big dogs.

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Andrew Lilley Brinker @alilleybrinker.com · 27/05/2026

Good summary of models of funding in OSS! The article is focused on docs, but these payment options are common across all OSS work. Regarding commissions: if you want commissions, you should consider copying examples like Geomys, which make it easier for corporations to pay you for OSS work.

geomys.org

Geomys

Geomys is an organization of open source maintainers, founded by Filippo Valsorda.

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Daniel D. Beck @ddbeck.com · 27/05/2026

Serious open source docs work has a cost. I wrote down every way that I know of that gets docs authors and maintainers paid.

ddbeck.com

Open source docs: where does the money come from?

Open source docs don’t come for free. So who’s paying for it?

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Daniel D. Beck @ddbeck.com · 20/05/2026

I cleaned up some disused dotfiles (and worse, code to manage to said dotfiles) and ended up taking some notes on some software I really like: Stow.

ddbeck.com

Stow and dotfiles

GNU Stow has a new-to-me --dotfiles option.

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Daniel D. Beck @ddbeck.com · 18/05/2026

The `jj` version control system generates branch names that leave something to be desired. I took notes on an alternative template.

ddbeck.com

Better generated branch names with jj

The jj version control system generates branch names that leave something to be desired. Here’s my alternative.

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Kate Compton @galaxykate.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Computer science is the art of preventing computers from doing things. Big NO notation is used to formally specify how many things you have prevented the computer from doing.

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Sarah Rainsberger @sarah11918.rainsberger.ca · 04/05/2026

Looking forward to working with @yanthomas.dev to devote some love to the @biomejs.dev docs so they better serve the entire community: readers, contributors, reviewers, and maintainers!

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jenn schiffer 😎 @jennschiffer.com · 28/04/2026

I think my call to action here is to pay for no-vc non-public small business made software and cut them a little slack on downtime because it’s where your favorite expensive big guys are headed anyway

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Willow @rockshrimp.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Every time I see someone talk about Claude I think about how they switched from female to male names as soon as they wanted the robots to seem like experts vs personal assistants.

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Daniel D. Beck @ddbeck.com · 20/04/2026

The fish shell's `set_color` command taught me a little lesson about output streams, escape sequences, and things that aren't magic. Plus, I got a tiny change into the fish docs.

ddbeck.com

The fish shell set_color command prints invisible characters

The fish shell set\_color command writes escape sequences to standard output. At least in fish, color text in your terminal isn’t a special trick of…

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Daniel D. Beck @ddbeck.com · 20/04/2026

The fish shell's `set_color` command taught me a little lesson about output streams, escape sequences, and things that aren't magic. Plus, I got a tiny change into the fish docs.

ddbeck.com

The fish shell set_color command prints invisible characters

The fish shell set\_color command writes escape sequences to standard output. At least in fish, color text in your terminal isn’t a special trick of…

001

Reposted by Daniel D. Beck

Erin Kissane @kissane.myatproto.social · 07/04/2026

I will go to my grave hollering IF YOU TEACH PEOPLE WELL WHILE TREATING THEM WELL THEY CAN LEARN

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Erin Kissane @kissane.myatproto.social · 24/03/2026

I think people took this thread to be about not using LLMs to replace user research, and sure. But it's really about talking to people and caring about them and what they need when we make things for them.

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Sarah Rainsberger @sarah11918.rainsberger.ca · 13/03/2026

And with that, so ends my last day w Astro Docs. So proud of the docs our community made, & honoured I had the chance to lead them. Open to new adventures in docs/community. If you liked learning, using, or contributing to Astro...maybe some of that was me! Maybe I can bring that to your project!

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dietrich @burrito.space · 06/03/2026

How do we get to more than just three web engines owned by three US companies? It's a gargantuan question, with no easy or right answer. I've put together a draft report, thinking about it through a very specific approach - please enjoy: Servo Readiness Report webtransitions.org/servo-readin...

screenshot of the one-pager version of the servo readiness report

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Lu wilson @todepond.com · 16/02/2026

writing code should not be the primary way of contributing to free open source software

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