iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

lmao ... it's so easy. llm english is the second-most "how do you do, fellow kids" thing in existence right after canadian politicians

WhatsApp conversation screenshot from a Mac:

s> "This post has three jobs." how much ai was used to write this post?

b> 99% AI on the prose, I gave the structure and the rough outline, and ask it to fill it based on a discussion thread. Title was mine as well. Thanks for the reaction though, if the first comment is that if it's AI generated, well that means the thing I wanted to convey didn't go across.

s> yeah, sorry. if i detect an ai generated piece of text, i don't read it.

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 02/07/2026

spent all day ripping apart the rotten ramp behind our new house. found an even more rotten deck joist hidden behind it. whether a real-world construction project or a software project, it's always yaks all the way down. 🐂 maybe i'll get to build stairs next week.

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 01/06/2026

will ask p tomorrow if we're allowed to print this out and hang it up in the new kitchen

mario being a scientist with the text "science!"

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 18/05/2026

this talk by @jorge is all gold and if you care about #cloudnative or the linux desktop, you should watch it: www.youtube.com/live/1AXBfsiaQNk?si… here are my notes, scribbled on some junk paper about drywall quotes. the whole way i was like "yes, YES. YES EXACTLY."

UPSTREAM FIRST, cloud native desktop — align with allies!, own your metrics, gamers will save linux, succession planning, build an app ecosystem, can we get app devs to care about Flatpak Next? — maybe if we treat them better ... and the goal is contributors, Digital Sovereignty = Build Over Buy (sometimes), understanding the supply chain means reproducible builds, KDE and GNOME are **products**,

Choice Quotes:

"how do we make Ops people love the Linux desktop?"
"every project has to have its AI conversation."
"how do we make the linux desktop a billion-dollar industry?" (implied)

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 12/05/2026

ah yes my favourite plant unrefrigerated fish

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 11/04/2026

p bought me a book from the farmer's market today. "i bought this for you because you like technology" i definitely like this cover, i'll tell you that much. i'm 100% here for mind-meld floppy disk

the cover of "the real world of technology": a head with eyes closed and a floppy disk

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 09/04/2026

the boozle has always been a bad license template (the busl itself isn't a license). there are many things wrong with it, but this is one of the worst. github.com/captn3m0/finally-foss/is… "source available" is always a scam. #opensource #busl #osi

busl license change timing is impossible to predict -- see link

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 08/04/2026

4am on the nose. time to sleep. commit messages have already degraded to their minimum. once again, i'm in awe that anyone does this for a living.

screencap of 6 different GTK builds ... why does macos require like 73 secrets

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 19/03/2026

in case you need an example of "gets worse every day" ... what the actual heck, vercel? "by using our services, you give us the right to open your source ... to ourselves." i mean, sure, vercel was already a garbage company. but this is impressive, even for them. it's so over-the-top i'm giggling

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 14/03/2026

p is insisting we drink every old bean in the house before buying “fancy new ones”. including these, which are well over a year old. i’d tell you it’s undrinkable but, somehow, i am drinking it (while i wait for chai to boil)

presidents choice beans and a coffee mug

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 08/03/2026

yum 2.3 litres of the best chai you’ve never tasted

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 08/03/2026

the correct amount of ginger for 2:30am ugh-why-cant-i-sleep chai is “more than that”

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 06/03/2026

but mac gets gtk. shout out the #gtk and #adwaita devs. ❤️ gtk on macos isn't just pretty... it's *prettier and more consistent* than native macos tooling, whatever "native" macos means in 2026. the gtk app looks more native than 7/9 mac apps i had running when i took that screenshot. here's why.

5 macos apps with differently rounded corners

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 06/03/2026

this past week has been a weird experiment of seeing how far i can take a tiny xplat gtk app written in typescript. here's how it looks. i must say, gtk on mac and windows is *damn* pretty. untweaked. kudos, gtk devs. ❤️ but ultimately, i ported to c# and wpf on windows, even though it's hideous.

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 03/03/2026

good GOD. and here i thought my mac was doing a good job of making me thankful for my linux machines. 3pm. still in my pyjamas. windows 10 finally installed. (i had it on a boxes vm. briefly. then i installed wsl and it stopped booting.)

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 28/02/2026

look a this beautiful crap! i don't even like this stuff!

a beautiful build matrix... beautiful when it's all green, anyway.

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 28/02/2026

"please let this be the one... they took away all my sres, devops nerds, AND sysadmins. i just want to go to bed." he whispers into the cold, unloving void

build 1.2.15 of a long list of builds... please may it pass.

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 28/02/2026

i'm not sure *how* but i guess all the hubbub about the new ceo didn't seem "real"? this caught me off guard thankfully the other box is debian stable and by the time forky is released the industry will be over this garbage ✨

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 22/02/2026

i have a question for people who actually use safari for some reason: is this normal? do you expect safari to tint your icons, and would you understand that this blue save button icon is actually "greyed out"?

a "greyed out" save button icon that's actually blue tinted because apple is horrible at GUIs

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 21/02/2026

i didn't really use github much in 2025. i see they unleashed the microsoft product managers on it? so that's fun. if a disgruntled ms employee wanted to release the 2023 github projects source to anna's archive, there'd be gratitude. 🫠 it was for the briefest of moments, the best kanban software

github projects ui with subheaders like "this item is in review" for a column named "in review"

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 20/02/2026

this "delete" button (required to delete a build and upload a new one, if your app is rejected on review) only shows up on-hover. why. WHY. the only way to know it's there is to already know it's there. apple, if i wanted to solve hidden blocks puzzles, i'd play zelda.

app store connect review screen where deleting an old build so you can upload a new one is a fun mystery in user interfaces.

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 09/02/2026

gee willickers बाप रे ஐயோ கடவுளே it sure is fun to release software in 2026! wooooooo

google is verifying my identity... may take a few days

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 20/01/2026

configuring cloud stuff so indicative of big tech personalities google: it does *technically* work but it's really slow and we're stealing all your data with ajax requests apple: it doesn't work. at all. give us $100. microsoft: you know what? fuck it. just edit the json config yourself.

a microsoft azure suggestion that the user modify config with a "manifest editor", which is just editing the json directly. a warning saying that it "may cause errors"

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 20/01/2026

not wanting to miss out on the #indieweb bandwagon, microsoft chooses to bring back that classic embossed graphics look corel photopaint gave us in 1996. 3 decades later, they've added a shiny enhancement i think we can all agree looks like slime. peak design. mmmm, slime

a slimy graphic or a circle with dots surrounding a clip art of a human bust

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 16/01/2026

i'm not big on black t-shirts but i sort of wish i could have one of these.

pali: dukkha, tanha, nibbana, & maggo
sanskrit: duhkha, trshna, nirvana, & marg

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 12/01/2026

backpack with 4 laptops and 4 incompatible chargers... ready for our first sample #endof10 repair cafe in #halifax

a black and orange backpack with 4 laptops in it and a notebook and some pens

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 11/01/2026

been thinking about "simple" software a lot lately: why can't you just use jquery? or web components? or just write something native? this talk hits some of those notes: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmrBpxAtPrI i don't come to the same conclusions, but i am coming from a similar premise.

a flow chart starting at low-level (cpu, os, etc.) and branching up to browser, toolkits, html, react, vue, jquery, etc. at each level, some examples are given ("old reddit" for jquery, "figma" for canvas, "gtk/adwaita" for native toolkits)

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 10/01/2026

if you're just getting back online from a long winter holiday, this week's linux drama is about these. yup. cool. also, there are no more laws in the usa i guess. but i think we can all agree the real lawlessness was the middles we clicked along the way […] [Original post on fantastic.earth]

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 01/01/2026

happy dumpling, gyoza, potsticker, momo, and bun day!

a dinner table full of dumplings and hands

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 28/12/2025

there's a lot more #reflection experimentation happening than story-telling, but it's very cool to see 18 people on the doc even if most of the entries are "hello world" types :) thank you to the one person who added to the story! #39c3 #gnome #lofi this […] [Original post on fantastic.earth]

a screenshot of the "reflection" app (comments below) with 18 contributors listed:

# Random Comments Go Here 8
Offline
# To run Reflection with debug logs:
Bl ... © Orange Crab
1 . Last seen at 05:16
] BURT L0G=PZpanda_net._next=DEBLG, 1roh~wARN flatpak run b
# Random Comments Go Here Pink Mammooth
Hlo from Cade! If you saw my Modal-flavoured talk abot Last seen at 06:08
research, you can see the full work here: https://newc
the-digital-identity-event-horizon Violet Rabbit
Last seen at 05:21
Helol! I miss a function to preview the.. markdown, I ¢
very promising! How many people can join at a time? Ce Green Monkey
also some notification when others starts typing, if y Last seen at 05:37
visible, might be nice?
This is my test random comment yeehaw [on J
Last seen at 06:24
Hello from a Linux phone! pr,
fA Cyan Panda a
# 39c3 section
testing 123
Hello from Congress!
: Also hello from congress!
# Another hello from Congress!
Are 9 people online? Seems to work fine :)
Let me type something.
Mokaaar hello
Yet another hello from a smaller [computer (actually a phone running postmarket0S)]!
This is definitely working.
This seems to work quite good :)
jt well well Micah
Here I shill r.e. relational identity: i
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ClLkuaoE-o "Prevent phishing and impersonation" 3
- i i h ram/ nal /
4g h |

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 05/12/2025

this week's conversations. unintentionally topical #cve202555182

text message: "i thought for sure they were gonna hack up some shitty nextjs dashboard"

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2025

the new shower setup at the cabin is obnoxiously loud but it's a small price to pay to actually shower once or twice a week. de-luxe. or... it would be. if this drought wasn't keeping the well completely dry. :/

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2025

"we don't like your fake plastic money or your free healthcare, so we're going to pay you less as punishment." cute that the numbers are lower _in canadian dollars_ like they're going to sneak the 32% paycut in there unnoticed 😂

usa salary = $250k USD
cad salary = $237 CAD

fuck you, maybe

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2025

that michael dell, thoughtfully doing @Endof10 marketing for them. what a guy. *tip-toes back into the forest to hide*

an email from dell announcing the end of windows 10 support

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2025

@jorge it runs perfectly on the debian stable wine flatpak, mind you, but i'm sure this bazzite thing is also cool. gonna make "i run debian stable, btw" happen

a "dark ages" screenshot running on debian 13 with vanilla gnome

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Steven Deobald @deobald.fantastic.earth.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2025

sometimes i feel like conversations in this household might as well be between a puppy and a crow. i am the crow

p: there is an egg out there?
c: egg?
p: egg for you no question mark

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