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Ellen Shapiro

@designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
211 followers 5 following 1.2K posts

I never shut up about iOS and Android development. She/Her. Rochester, NY, USA and/or wherever I've convinced someone to let me come talk to people. 🌉 bridged from mastodon.social/@designatednerd on the fediverse by fed.brid.gy

PostsRepliesMedia
Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026
JoJo’s two modes: 1. Sleepy angel 2. Chaos Goblin #Caturday
A black cat on a blanket made out of old tshirts, sleeping peacefully The same cat, eyes wide open, sitting on a laser printer next to a 3D printer, looking like she’s contemplating how to knock it all down
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026
It’s an icky thing for Tim to donate to this out of his personal cash, but for this to be an official business policy is appalling.
hachyderm.io
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026
Oh man if the Brewers win tonight I have a handful of old friends in LA that will be crushed and basically every other baseball fan I know will be fucking delighted. #sportsball
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026
Ah the joy of finding a StackOverflow post explaining a conundrum with comment thread saying “This is still present in iOS 17” and being able to add “Yep, this is still present in iOS 27.” (FB25193674 for anyone at the Fruit Stand)
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026
@nuthatch I am extremely tempted to make this my policy but I cannot stomach the idea of a couple of the idiots running against dems getting elected because Elon gave them $250m+
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026
You should take this. Hell *I* should take this but I always manage to have my schedule be in maximum crazy-pants mode whenever there’s a session going.
mastodon.social
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026
US folks: What is the best way to donate to campaigns without unleashing an entirely new deluge of SMS and email begging? Unfortunately due to US election law, donating anonymously is not an option.
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/10/2026
I have repeatedly compared Twitter’s disintegration to the fall of the tower of Babel: We have all been confined to our own communities and languages instead of a single one everyone understands. It’s okay to miss the old Twitter. But it turns out rebuilding the tower of Babel might not be the […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/10/2026
Remember, designers: Think about ALL the contexts your logos will be displayed in. Unlike the person who designed this and didn’t think it’d be backlit in a very bright room so the “Salted Caramel” part is basically illegible.
A backlit bottle of bird dog salted caramel flavored whiskey. The bit that says salted caramel is in a light orange that is basically not visible due to the light behind it. This makes it look like the label is advertising dog-flavored whiskey.
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/10/2026
Back stateside after a really fun trip to Berlin. Thanks to the #NextApp folks for having me, and it was great to see so many Euro-friends. I’ll be back sooooooooon for @swiftconnection !
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026
Love the Berlin city website’s translation of a 429 (too many requests) error
Website: Berlin dot DE 
Error message: 429 Calm Down
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026
[waits 30 seconds for the bald eagle equivalent to be made the logo for the US Dept of health]
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026
LOL at the logo for the German health ministry
A sign that says ministry for health in German with a black eagle flexing arms like a human
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026
There’s something very funny to me about being prompted by my watch to record an outdoor walk while cutting though a decidedly indoor mall.
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026
Maybe the extension of this analogy is that using an LLM to write the code can feel like putting IKEA furniture together: You do a lot less work to wind up with something ranging from serviceable to pretty good, actually. But you have no attachment to the thing you built. If it breaks, well […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026
Great analogy: “Some woodworkers might still use hand tools for a variety of reasons….But having a table saw doesn’t make you feel like you’ve asked somebody else to make the shelf, or table, or chair. The nature of automation with Large Language Model tools feels substantially different from […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026
I gotta remember to transfer Signal and WhatsApp stuff from my old phone to my new one *before* I leave the US next year. 🤦‍♀️
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026
They’re having some technical difficulties getting set up, but this session is packed to the gills. Can’t imagine why. #NextApp
Screenshot of Session details
We are all Fucked: An Android Developer's
Guide to the Post-Al Apocalypse
By Ashley Davis

The illusion of Artificial Intelligence is dominating Android development, driven by hype over reality. As companies rush to embrace Al to save hypothetical
costs, we are left cleaning up a dumpster fire of unscalable slop.

Real engineering relies on the pains and learnings that we as engineers have accumulated over the years, it takes experience of failure and learnings not
to figure out what to build, but what not to build. I'm not going to tell you how to use Al for your advantage, I'm not going to tell you how best to use Al tools.

Mostly, we can try to temper our relationship with Al, sometimes we can use it to our advantage, sometimes we can even manage upwards (though rarely). sometimes, we can even distract our
managers by giving them safe arenas to play with, like a child with an adult colouring book. But perhaps, we can just laugh and make a joke about the collective hell we've found ourselves in.
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Reposted by Ellen Shapiro
bryan newbold @bnewbold.net · 07/10/2026
ah damn, RIP Margaret Hamilton. she took safety-critical software engineering seriously, and got people to the moon and back. news.mit.edu/2026/margare...
old photos of a woman (Margaret Hamilton) standing next to a tall stack of books (printouts of Apollo space mission software source code)
103144334732 14.4K
Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026
Which of you jokers set Berlin’s weather for the rest of my trip to Ireland mode?
Forecast: today high of 74F/23.3C. Rain the rest of the week and getting down as low as 45F/7.2C on Sunday.
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026
I mean, I mentioned Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” in my talk so when I saw the band had it on their list, I was legally required to do it.
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026
Also I think I have finally discovered the secret to giving a reasonably-paced talk as someone who is naturally a very fast talker: Be really, really, really jetlagged #swiftCon
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026
Thanks so much to everyone who came to my talk today at #swiftCon! Slides, as promised, are available now: speakerdeck.com/designatednerd/arts…
speakerdeck.com
Arts And Crafts - swiftCon @ next.app, Berlin, Germany, October 2026
What is Craft? What has the evolution of three of my hobbies taught me about its meaning? What does craft even mean in the age of AI?
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026
Yo dawg I heard you like conferences, so I put a bunch of conferences in your conference #NextApp #SwiftCon
A sign pointing to rooms for eight different conferences going on at the same time
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026
You’d think after 21 years of coming to Germany I’d stop giggling like a middle schooler at the word for “journey”. Not when it’s rendered like this, I can’t.
A bike share bike with an ad that says “Erste Fahrt Gratis”, but the words are blown up like balloons. I am absolutely not mature enough not to read this and snicker, because farts.
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026
My dad was in Berlin just over 65 years ago- weeks after the wall went up - and made his way though Checkpoint Charlie when it was guarded by armed soldiers and barbed wire instead of a phalanx of tourists. What is out there that seems impossibly dangerous […] [Original post on mastodon.social]
Checkpoint Charlie today, a shack with an American flag sitting in the middle of a street for tourists to use as a photo backdrop.
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026
Fun launch from my former colleague @scottysy and @pixiteapps: A site that lets you generate 3D printable parts from natural language www.partforge.ai
partforge.ai
PartForge — CAD you can talk to
Describe the part you need and PartForge designs it with you — real parametric CAD, ready for your 3D printer.
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026
I used to be the kind of person who insisted on just staying up all day to fight the jet lag. Now my body is like “Bitch you are taking a nap whether you are in an appropriate place to do so or not”
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026
I did not realize it was possible to get a sleep score this low. At least I was able to get into my hotel early so I can get a bit of a nap to make up for it. 🙃
Apple health screenshot: 
Sleep Score: 6
Very Low
• Duration: 0/50
• Bedtime: 0/30
• Interruptions: 6/20

1hr 47 min

Last night was a bad night's sleep. That's
ok. If you can, try to get to bed on time
tonight.
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026
Also, holy shit, the Berlin Brandenburg airport is actually operational! I remember coming to Europe in 2005 and hearing it was a couple years away, if by a couple they meant 20.
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026
Plane from Japan and plane from US landing at the same time at 7am = Non-EU Passport line hell
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026
ROC ✈️ EWR ✈️ BER. First time flying into the elusive Berlin Brandenburg airport, which I think has been under construction since the reunification of Germany.
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026
Reminder: bsky.app/profile/hannahvardit.bsky.…
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026
This is outstanding both as a piece of parody and as a more digestible explanation of what happened with the Hugging Face hack. www.frogandtoad.ai
frogandtoad.ai
Frog and Toad and the Increasingly Capable Machines
Comments
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026
I can take approximately 0️⃣ credit for it but my kick-ass mobile teammates just shipped a really huge update that allows much, much easier interaction with design files in Figma: apps.apple.com/us/app/figma/id11527…
apps.apple.com
Figma App - App Store
Download Figma by Figma Inc. on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips, and more apps like Figma.
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026
New iPhone season in a nutshell
A sign taped to a door with “UPS: I assure you I am home” written in huge bold letters
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026
Recursion
Me wearing a tiny foam hand with its index finger extended on my extended index finger
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026
Which horseman of the apocalypse is a robot White Castle dispenser?
A vending machine with the White Castle logo advertising White Castle burgers served hot. I cannot even imagine how terrible these taste, given how bad White Castle is to begin with.
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026
Well this is concerning but it’s also pretty hilarious that for a company prepping for an imminent IPO, one of the accidental targets was the Securities and Exchange Commission. [gift link] […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026
Update: Oh of course, they’re only bringing it back for gas-powered vehicles, not EVs 🙄 www.macrumors.com/2026/09/21/gm-sta…
macrumors.com
GM Wants You to Know It Still Plans to Ditch Apple CarPlay in Future EVs
Recent reports claiming that General Motors is reversing course on its controversial plans to ditch CarPlay in its future EVs appear to be incorrect. As noted by Joanna Stern, host of the YouTube channel New Things, a GM spokesperson has confirmed that its new software interface that shows CarPlay or Android Auto alongside its own native system in 2027 models of its Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra is specific to the gas-powered versions of those pickup trucks. GM previously stated that CarPlay and Android Auto would continue to be offered in its new gas-powered vehicles for the "foreseeable future," so the 2027 models of those trucks still supporting those platforms is not a change of course. There is one more wrinkle in that GM's all-electric 2027 Cadillac LYRIQ supports CarPlay and Android Auto still — it is unclear if the Lyriq will always be an exception or if it will simply be one of GM's final EVs to ever support phone mirroring systems. Overall, though, GM continues to insist that its future EVs will not offer CarPlay. All in all, GM really wants you to know that it is committed to ditching the extremely popular feature that you probably want in your next EV. Related Roundup: CarPlay Tag: General Motors Related Forum: HomePod, HomeKit, CarPlay, Home & Auto Technology This article, "GM Wants You to Know It Still Plans to Ditch Apple CarPlay in Future EVs" first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026
RE: mas.to/@carnage4life/11730690160243… ¿Porque no los dos?
mas.to
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026
RE: tenforward.social/@ashfurrow/117310… This was a *great* talk.
tenforward.social
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026
Thank fuck GM is reversing course on yeeting CarPlay and Android Auto after seeing how many people were like “Yeah not buying an X if it doesn’t have CarPlay”. Maybe my next car will be another Bolt after all. Whomsoever could have predicted… […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026
My credit union’s services provider had a catastrophic failure at their data center Tuesday. It *still* isn’t back up. How on earth in 2026 is there a SaaS company that deals in finance that doesn’t have a disaster recovery plan that can be executed in less than three days?
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2026
Work phone: Your warranty is about to expire, do you want to extend it? Me: No, and don't ask me again. *am never asked again on any device* Personal phone: Your warranty is about to expire, do you want to extend it? Me: No, and don't ask me again. Every Apple device I have: Hey your phone's […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Ellen Shapiro @designatednerd.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026
It’s difficult to explain just how much people in Buffalo love Josh Allen, the Bills’ quarterback. But this dinosaur sculpture wearing a Zubaz Josh Allen jersey is a start.
A statue of a dinosaur (I think a diplodocus?) wearing an enormous shirt with 90s zubaz stripes in Bills colors and with Josh Allen’s number 17 on it.
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Reposted by Ellen Shapiro
elle mundy @ap.exch.gr · 10/09/2026
apple promotes an unrealistic body image (via a friend of a friend)
iPhone duo removed to reveal an unrealistic hand with long, disproportionate fingers
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Reposted by Ellen Shapiro
Sarah Perez 💙 @sarahp.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026
Apple Watch’s new AI features are normalizing the idea that technology is always listening techcrunch.com/2026/09/09/apple-wat…
techcrunch.com
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Reposted by Ellen Shapiro
2 Spoopy 4 You @jcrabapple.dmv.community.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026
If you see ads pointing you to votesafe.org to check your voter registration, read this first. VoteSafe is run by America PAC, Elon Musk's super PAC. It is not a government site. Its own footer says "Paid for by America PAC." It also doesn't register anyone. The flow ends by telling you to […]
dmv.community
Original post on dmv.community
015 5
Reposted by Ellen Shapiro
Brian Webster @bwebster.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026
RE: mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/1172… Not to pick on this particular post, but this is one of my biggest “What would Steve Jobs think?" pet peeves. When he was talking about a stylus, he was talking about REQUIRING A STYLUS JUST TO USE THE DAMN PHONE!! The Apple Pencil […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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