iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Some @golang.org programmers must be nearby.

Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 27/09/2026

I built a system to send handwritten notes and diagrams to my @pi.dev agent from my @supernote.com epaper tablet. It is simple but surprisingly ergonomic way to build. ifup.org/blog/handwri...

ifup.org

Handwritten Notes for Friends and Machines

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 25/07/2026

I guess now orthopedics AND immunology can share a hatred of trampoline parks. @glaucomflecken.bsky.social (vaccinate your kids!)

Oregon Health Authority warning about measles exposure at Sky Zone Beaverton trampoline park.

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Reposted by Brandon Philips

VotingWorks @voting.works · 10/06/2026

A few days ago, due to the threat of a chemical explosion, 50,000 people in Orange County were under evacuation orders. In the midst of this, there was a primary election with early voting. How did tens of thousands of evacuated voters cast their ballot? how.voting.works/when-you-can...

how.voting.works

When you can't get to your precinct

A few days ago, due to the threat of a chemical explosion, 50,000 people in Orange County were under evacuation orders. In the midst of this, there was an active primary election – election day was…

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 31/05/2026

Been on kagi for close to a year. I can filter out blog spam and prioritize wikipedia and reddit. Heal nature. Plant native plants. Stop using Google search.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 29/05/2026

Vanguard offers different policies you can choose on your proxy vote for mutual funds. corporate.vanguard.com/content/corp... Seems very practical to insist my vote goes towards ensuring the board of directors is at least 2/3 independent. Wish that was enforced by being on a public market 😑

A table defining insider, affiliate, and independent directors.

A definition of conflicts of interest and Board Independence.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 28/05/2026

Repaired my kids headphones after the speaker wire disconnected (more glue than solder). Here is my guide. www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iCl... I love @ifixit.com and their model of selling good tools (used their solder station on this repair!) and providing a hub for people to share guides.

ifixit.com

iClever BTH Teardown

My iClever BTH headphones had a cable to the speaker disconnect. This is a guide to tear down the device to repair the cable.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 27/05/2026

Cool! Using cert transparency logs to stalk the administration. thedreydossier.substack.com/p/i-found-a-... The key finding: the ndstudio.gov has staging domains in the CT logs for sites like usa.gov/passport and vote.gov. The raw data is here: thedreydossier.github.io/NDS_servers_...

ndstudio.gov

National Design Studio

The National Design Studio is leading the America by Design initiative working to improve how Americans experience their government.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 13/05/2026

I love the idea of links that go off to somewhere that doesn't exist yet but might in the future: github.com/BaderBC/halu...

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 04/05/2026

A LLM session reminds me of my teen years getting help on IRC when the manpages failed me. The patient person on the other side walking me through the knowledge gaps that a list of flags have difficulty filling. I don't thank the LLM though. Do you?

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 02/05/2026

It feels gross to hear executive speak like "effective content targeting" in the context of children. Particularly when some of the "content" is gambling (e.g. loot boxes). EU has 16 or older for loot boxes which is still wayyyy too young IMHO. www.cnbc.com/2026/05/01/r...

cnbc.com

Roblox shares plummet 18% as child safety measures weigh on bookings

Roblox is facing over 140 federal lawsuits accusing it of failing to prevent child exploitation, and last month settled with Alabama and West Virginia.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 30/04/2026

This is the XTEINK X4. It runs an ESP32 chip and fits great into a small bag. I like it. There is an open source firmware that makes the device better: github.com/crosspoint-r... Then the company announced they are locking the bootloader. It is not going well. www.reddit.com/r/xteinkerea...

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Kyle McDonald @kcimc.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

the fencing visualization system i worked on with rhizomatiks is coming to los angeles this weekend 🤗

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 22/04/2026

I guess it is nice that privately held companies are just flailing capital around just like public companies?

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 15/04/2026

Someone please explain to me why Anxious Generation is so popular. It is the "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" of pop social psychology. Read this except then the footnote. WHY!

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 09/04/2026

Google Photos product managers please listen: ensuring a basic level of offsite backup for your most important photos has turned into drudgery. Please help. support.google.com/photos/threa...

support.google.com

Takeout: Export Favorite Photos - Google Photos Community

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 20/03/2026

I can't believe @sanders.senate.gov is making a distillation attack on Claude like this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3At...

youtube.com

I spoke to AI agent Claude

YouTube video by Senator Bernie Sanders

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 10/03/2026

Trying to pay US corporate taxes. EFTPS won't let me log in. Spent 1.5 hours on hold. Finally get a IRS rep on the phone: the entire backend system is offline and the rep can't assist with anything. No ETA.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 12/01/2026

A kid walking near my home was ran off the road into a ditch by a reckless driver (sidewalk-less road). The driver didn't stay at the scene to check on the kid. When called the Sheriff's office told me that unless the vehicle made contact there was nothing they could charge the driver with anyways.

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Federal Reserve @federalreserve.gov · 12/01/2026

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckG... www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...

youtube.com

Statement by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell

YouTube video by Federal Reserve

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 05/01/2026

There needs to be some secrete handshake for software engineers to file detailed bug reports to site owners. I currently can't pay a bill because of some AngularJS app missing a dependency. I debugged it and threw some code into my console to fix: window._satellite.kpCustomEvent = function() { };

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 03/12/2025

Wow! OrbStack is a great VM/container manager for macOS. Every few months I have tried to use Podman Desktop or Docker Desktop and always hit some work stopping bug. But, OrbStack has been great. Nice work @kdrag0n.dev and team. Wish y'all success. orbstack.dev

orbstack.dev

OrbStack · Fast, light, simple Docker & Linux

Say goodbye to slow, clunky containers and VMs. The fast, light, and easy way to run containers and Linux. Develop at lightspeed with our Docker Desktop alternative.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 06/11/2025

Quick Hack: Fix epub's for early reader books. github.com/philips/kids... The HTML/CSS of kids early reader books is atrocious and impossible for koreader to render correctly. So, just throw it all out and repack the epub.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 21/10/2025

I posted an article on HN and people are super passionate about voting systems and also very under informed on the scale and complexity (particularly in the USA). news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4565...

news.ycombinator.com

Public trust demands open-source voting systems | Hacker News

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VotingWorks @voting.works · 10/10/2025

Yesterday, news broke that Dominion Voting Systems was sold to a new company, Liberty Vote. Dominion, the second-largest voting systems vendor in the US that currently tabulates 1 in 5 American votes, is no more. www.voting.works/news/public-...

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 21/10/2025

With how bad robot detection has become across the internet and AI crawling everything in sight it makes me wonder if the future is more like @tailscale.com ACLs and less like the wide default routed internet. Off I go emailing support and asking for an IP whitelist like it is 1999.

Cloudflare's sorry you have been blocked.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 20/10/2025

It is remarkable a software and brand we (CoreOS team) created 12 years ago (!!!) is still relevant enough for people to debate on Hacker News.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 12/10/2025

I love this. A bike designed for long term maintenance with limited supply chain: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV88...

youtube.com

How The Amazingly Burly ‘Buffalo Bicycle’ is Changing The World

YouTube video by Berm Peak

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 25/08/2025

An actually useful GMail AI integration: forcing users to Reply All unless the body contains sensitive documents or shit talk.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 07/08/2025

In 2025 and you can't buy a light switch without brand advertising on it. Lutron, Leviton and Legrand are not high fashion brands- they are light switches. Product manager from Leviton saying "Well everyone else is doing it" www.reddit.com/r/homeautoma...

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 16/07/2025

I am in the market for smoke alarms. When I think smoke alarms I think of @bradfitz.com ❤️ But, does anyone else have recommendations? I like Nest Protect but would consider other options. Must be battery powered. Must have push notifications. Ideally no subscriptions.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 10/06/2025

Excellent overview video of Apple Containerization by Michael Crosby (who played a critical role in getting opencontainers.org to v1.0) Amazing to see these standards used in such a well integrated way 8 years later. developer.apple.com/videos/play/...

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 12/05/2025

There are many reasons I limit Disney in my house. And here is another one. Disney adds Newsmax to Hulu. www.msn.com/en-us/entert...

msn.com

MSN

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Reposted by Brandon Philips

60 Minutes @60minutes.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

And now, a note on Bill Owens who, until this past week, was the executive producer of 60 Minutes. We’ll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 18/04/2025

@bsky.app next up, tshirts that say: Facilitate is an active verb

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 17/04/2025

had this thought today.

In this house we believe there are 3 coequal branches, only congress can levy taxes, due process is a human right, electeds shouldn’t trade stocks, country above party, j6 participants are criminals.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 04/04/2025

Photo apps need the UX equivalent for "sifting through the shoe box". I want to collect the photos worth backing up forever. Google Photos "favorites" doesn't work: you can't bulk favorite items. Adding the photos to an "album" doesn't give indication if they are in or not in "the box".

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Reposted by Brandon Philips

Judd Legum @juddlegum.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

This is nonsense. A district court decision holds just as much legal weight as a Supreme Court decision. The only difference is the district court’s ruling is appealable. But until you WIN an appeal a district court’s decision binds all parties, including the executive branch.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 15/03/2025

Google is playing the same "you don't get your own incremental backups" with Google Drive too. news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4178... What are people using instead of Google Photos and Drive?

news.ycombinator.com

End of the road for Google Drive in Transmit | Hacker News

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 07/03/2025

Gah! Google! I use photoslibrary.readonly to backup my family photos to an external disk via rclone. Google Takeout is a joke. Where do I go now @ente.io? Last I tried it was way too slow on migrating my photo library. I really don't want to self host photos. Gah. What a mess.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 07/03/2025

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential... The President aims to ban an entire law firm from Federal buildings. I worked with professionals at Perkins Coie through my time at CoreOS. I hope our judicial system can hold.

Sec. 5. Personnel. (a) The heads of all agencies shall, to the extent permitted by law, provide guidance limiting official access from Federal Government buildings to employees of Perkins Coie when such access would threaten the national security of or otherwise be inconsistent with the interests of the United States. In addition, the heads of all agencies shall provide guidance limiting Government employees acting in their official capacity from engaging with Perkins Coie employees to ensure consistency with the national security and other interests of the United States.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles.blue · 01/03/2025

I got laid off today, with the rest of 18F. 18F was an elite federal software shop. We made gov't websites work better, more efficiently for the American people. We saved taxpayers from getting screwed over by contractors. And were fired for it. We made this website to tell our story: 18f.org

18f.org

We're not done yet | 18F

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 28/02/2025

I love @kagi.com because I can block garbage from Amazon from coming into my search results permanently.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 16/02/2025

How will judicial systems survive generative AI? Will they need to charge for judiciary attention on some sort of exponential scale? With indIvidual citizens getting a guaranteed level of free tokens. The amount of garbage b.s. generated by disingenuous assholes is going to be crazy.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 29/01/2025

VotingWorks is making American voting machines right: open source, built for accessibility, and paper based. Excited for their continued success. www.voting.works/machines

voting.works

Voting Machines

The only open-source voting machines used in United States elections. Designed to VVSG 2.0.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 24/01/2025

Tailscale + Nextdns is great! Access to my home network and filter 90% of the terrible ads from anywhere. @tailscale.com tailscale.com/kb/1218/next...

tailscale.com

Use NextDNS · Tailscale Docs

Use NextDNS with devices in your tailnet.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 04/01/2025

Unfortunately SANE doesn’t seem to enable the very 2008 features like the “email button” on the front panel. gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/1/030000...

Email button instructions for a Canoscan.

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Brandon Philips @ifup.org · 04/01/2025

I bought a Canoscan Lide 100 flatbed scanner in 2008. I haven’t needed it for years. But, today it came to my rescue! And amazingly it still worked thanks to SANE. www.sane-project.org Thanks for keeping my 17 year old scanner alive SANE devs.

Canoscan Lide 100 user manual showing CD driver.

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