iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 23/09/2026

This is awesome: a terminal font in the style used by computers in WarGames (1983). mw.rat.bz/wgterm/ Mainframes deserve mainframe fonts!

The clipboard lady walking around the War Operation Plan Response mainframe computer in the movie WarGames (1983).

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 19/09/2026

This is a candidate for best sign of the year. In an era of demagogues, false profits, and mafia dons running countries, clear messaging and simple truths are priceless.

A prominent sign on the side of a Transport for NSW bus in Sydney, written in a clear, large font saying "I am a new bus"

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 18/05/2026

In today's episode of cool-things-I-have-hallucinated-that-should-exist-but don't, we have "cryptobiological" links used to secure transfer of information. I'm trying to figure out what the biology part is. DNA coding? Pheromone sampling? Or maybe it's just "human enters passphrase". #cryptography

Gemini hallucinating how to enable one AWS account to read an encrypted AMI created in another account. Not only was the AI completely wrong, but it invented the term "cryptobiological" to explain the transfer of secret key material between the two sides.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 06/05/2026

ROU A Lightly Militarized Misunderstanding Involving Explosives. @cultureshipnames.bsky.social

Screenshot from source article with text "Until then, it’s just a lightly militarized misunderstanding involving explosives."

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 10/04/2026

Feedback from an Authentic Mac User™ who used to be happy with Tailscale. My suggestion that he fix the problem by installing Linux was of course warmly appreciated.

"I really liked Tailscale being lowkey in menu and not showing up as an application but they had to go and ruin it."

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 07/04/2026

Look at the reaction when they realize the image they got www.youtube.com/live/z-j1uxB...

Artemis II astronauts looking at photos of earthrise they had just taken aboard Integrity from the far side of the moon.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 01/03/2026

This error is from your father's printer. It was an elegant message, for a more civilized age. #known

A pointless error message printed out by a Hewlett Packard laser printer saying "ERROR: typecheck OFFENDING COMMAND: known", whose only purpose was to waste a sheet of paper.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 23/02/2026

So apparently rolling the orange rocket out to Pad 39B is bad for it. I guess 31.6 billion USD wasn't enough money to be able to afford vibration testing. Good thing the vehicle won't experience any vibrations when doing its actual job. #WeAreGoing arstechnica.com/space/2026/0...

"transporting the rocket to and from the pad [on the iconic purpose-built crawler transporter] could damage the seals."

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 22/02/2026

Another entry for the International Deranged Signs archive.

A door with a friendly sign saying "Please Enter" with a second sign saying "Danger: Construction Site, Do Not Enter, Drop Behind Door"

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 17/02/2026

My immutable infrastructure at work: it starts in the off state and it's so immutable that it stays in the off state. #linux #bootc

The American Chopper meme with two large men in an office violently disagreeing. The boss wants the computer, made using immutable infrastructure, to boot. The punchline is that the immutable infrastructure is so immutable that it starts in the off state and stays that way. It ends with the boss threatening to make the other guy work on wifi drivers if he doesn't fix the problem.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 08/02/2026

Ultramarines getting ready to cheer on their athletes at the 2026 Winter Olympics #warhammer40k

Store window of a ski shop showing five mannequins dressed in blue winter clothing with snowboards and packs and other wargear.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 05/02/2026

Masterful summary by @sciguyspace.bsky.social of the extraordinary state of the SLS. For a long time I was supportive of flying the rockets already built, but if you're not iteratively improving because each vehicle is bespoke, then you're not learning and it can't become safe. #space #launch #moon

"So there you have it. Every SLS rocket is a work of art, every launch campaign an adventure, every mission subject to excessive delays. It’s definitely not ideal."

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 03/02/2026

I have a program which takes GitHub Actions events in via a webhook, turns them into traces, and sends them to Honeycomb. Looks like they had a Bad Day™ for a few hours today. Every workflow timed out at 15 minutes! Cool that I was able to catch it. #opentelemetry

A heatmap generated from a Honeycomb dataset of GitHub Actions workflow times showing an approximately two hour period where everything took 15 minutes and then apparently timed-out and failed.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 23/01/2026

Last talk before I had to get on the road, Andrew Bolin speaking about lessons learned programming FPGAs for the SKA-Low at #everythingopen #eo2026. Nice to finally see some technical detail about a fascinating topic.

A slide about the outcomes of the project.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 23/01/2026

The "Pride" trap: assuming your code is readable by other people. No never been guilty of that.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 23/01/2026

And here's "Gluttony" which seems to boil down to not believing your own propaganda about how productive you're gonna be.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 23/01/2026

Oh it really is the seven deadly sins, what fun. Managing "Envy" by keeping focus on what is essential vs what can be added later.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 23/01/2026

Experienced web dev @doubleedesign.bsky.social talking about pitfalls when you decide to build your own code. Not that you shouldn't! but there are many ... sins ... that you can be trapped by. #everythingopen #eo2026

Leesa Ward presenting with a title slide saying "The 7 deadly sins of building your own software components ... and how to avoid (or remedy) them"

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 22/01/2026

Rachel making an excellent point that contributing to your community isn't just emergency services, but also many organisations and causes.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 21/01/2026

This will be a treat: an update on the Square Kilometre Array from JC Guzman #everythingopen #eo2026

Title slide for a talk about the SKA Low Observatory by JC Guzman.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 21/01/2026

This talk is brilliant. Jacinta has linked Chaos Theory to Observability. #everythingopen #eo2026

A slide saying "Observability - revealing the shape of the attractor" which then relates metrics, tracing, logging, and high-cardinality to Chaos Theory mathematics.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 21/01/2026

Apparently we will need definitions.

Definitions of various Chaos Theory terms.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 21/01/2026

Looking forward to Jacinta Richardson speaking about Chaos Theory and how it applies to software engineering. #everythingopen #eo2026.

Title slide saying "Chaos Theory and the Limits of Predictability"

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 20/01/2026

Really enjoying opening keynote at #everythingopen from @kyliemcdevitt.bsky.social about experiences determining patterns in device security [weaknesses]. What's interesting is although she's using IoT analysis examples, this explicitly all applies to the compute infrastructure we build, too #eo2026

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 22/12/2025

Strange men lying on the beach distributing presents is no basis for a system of government.

Santa Claus wearing board shorts walking past a beach shower towards parked cars and surfboards somewhere on Sydney's Northern Beaches. Questions include wondering what happened to his pants, whether he is planning an extended stay, and wondering where the reindeer are.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 31/10/2025

And a happy International Dentist Appreciation Day to all who observe the holiday.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 06/06/2025

Fascinating discussion of the near-impossibility of fighting EV fires aboard car-carrying ships. This clip from a tour of such a vessel was a surprise; how is crew going to close off the airflow between these decks if cars parked on the ramp? Ship abandoned safely. Glad all aboard were rescued.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 04/06/2025

Why is Gemini prompting me with this? I don't want to create an AI-powered multiplayer game today. I'm at work. I've already got Git, and it is already multiplayer, and meanwhile the assumption that I have friends is a bit riské.

When attempting to use Gemini, Google's AI product, it popped up a dialog encouraging me to "Just explain your idea and watch Gemini build it for you. Create an AI-powered app or multiplayer game, then share it with friends" which is absurd considering I am in my work account, and we don't make apps. Or games.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 16/05/2025

— Dr. Chandra in Arthur C. Clarke, _2010: Odyssey Two_ (1982) explaining why a poor innocent AI did what it was told and got lobotomized for its trouble.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 14/04/2025

I mean it tracks; Scotty was from Vancouver.

Screenshot of the Wikipedia page for Lt James Doohan, who after the war turned to pretending he was an engineer from the future named Montgomery Scott.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 09/03/2025

The most reassuring thing about this timeline is that Lisa Simpson will be the next president of the formerly united states.

President Lisa Simpson sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Room.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 21/02/2025

Every time someone mentions what's happening on "the other site", I think of this passage from Iain Banks's _Excession_, where the drone Sisela Ytheleus 1/2 had a copy of its twin's corrupted mind state in a secure container. "meaning-free abstract" is a good line, too.

The drone had carried out the equivalent of pressing an ear to the wall of the core with its twin's mind in it, carefully accessing a meaning-free abstract of the activity inside the closed-off core to find out what was happening in there. It was like listening to a furious argument going on in an adjoining room; a chilling, frightening sound; the sort of bawling match that made you expect the sound of screams and things breaking, any moment.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 16/02/2025

The real shame will be when someone accidentally pulls a verglas on the power lines. I mean, sure they can invade. And then the entire northern half of the US can do without electricity.

Long distance power transmission towers crumpled like so many toothpicks in the Verglas, also known as the 1998 North American Ice Storm.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 10/02/2025

I guess we're back to booing the American anthem again. www.bbc.com/news/article...

"Canada and Mexico are two of the US's biggest steel trading partners, and Canada is the biggest supplier of aluminium metal into the US."

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 16/01/2025

Perfect day for going running, then?

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 31/12/2024

I don't know what's more of a crime: that Woolworths had Easter hot cross buns on sale the day after Christmas, or that the locals cleaned them out. Heathens.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 29/11/2024

The existence of this product is in direct violation of the Geneva Convention.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 24/11/2024

Who the hell bakes a smiley face into their bread? There's something dodgy going on at this bakery.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 23/11/2024

I would recommend _Programming in Rust_ 2nd Ed by Blandy, Orendorff, and Tindall. It has a lovely "Tour of Rust" as one of its first chapters, giving a feel for the language REALLY quickly. A lot of other books get stuck not knowing whether their audience knows how to program or not.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 21/11/2024

"Ballistic Tantrum" indeed. Andrew Tanner on point, yet again. open.substack.com/pub/roguesys... If you're interested in a systematic approach to the impact of decaying political institutions on international affairs, you might enjoy his writing about the Ukraine conflict in Rogue Systems Recon.

If his forces were actually winning on the battlefield, as a whole lot of Western media appears determined to claim, Putin would never have to make a demonstration like this. Frankly, he’s visibly compensating for yet another total failure of the ruscist air defense system, which apparently knocked down just two of six or even eight ATACMS missiles fired at a depot in Bryansk. Storm Shadows slipped right through the orc air defense net in Kursk.

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Andrew Cowie @istathar.space · 15/11/2024

I've been trying to get through the _Handbook of Chemistry and Physics_ but the plot just isn't doing it for me. No character development, I still don't know who the villain of the piece is, and all the tables of numbers are more boring than Tolkien's appendices.

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