iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 15h

Many #git users think --force-with-lease makes a force push safe. It *is* strictly safer than --force, but: - It only guards against one narrow scenario - It's easy to disable that protection without realizing it

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 06/09/2026

Is this "Stream Anytime" wording new? I saw this while trying to find a Blu-ray on Amazon. The button takes you to Prime Video, and the price shown is the "Buy HD" price, but calling it "stream anytime" seems like a weaselly attempt to justify digital purchases being eventually revoked.

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Reposted by Laurence Gonsalves

Technology Connections @techconnectify.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I remember learning in kindergarten that HOMES was a useful acronym for remembering the five great lakes. A bit on the nose to change it to SHAME, isn't it?

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 27/08/2026

The first time I was saddened by the news of Optimus Prime's death was when I watched Transformers: The Movie (1986) in theaters. The second time was today. RIP Peter Cullen

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 23/07/2026

We've been getting some renovation done on our home for the past couple of weeks, and this morning there was a terrible high pitched tone coming from this work. It was loudest in the hallway to our side door, and second loudest in my office, which is almost right above that hallway. 🤕

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 19/07/2026

The new UI layout in Chrome for Android really makes for a cluttered bottom of the screen, especially with button navigation enabled. This is the way the bsky.app looks on my phone in Chrome. Three separate button bars, each with its own "home" button (at least the last is a circle, not a house).

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 27/06/2026

I went down the garden path on this headline when I first read it: I initially read "steps" as a verb. The funny thing is, it almost works that way because stepping up the waterslide requires walking on water.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 27/05/2026

Is it just my imagination, or does the voice in Ubuntu's "Test speakers" tool sound kind of like Frieren's English dub voice?

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Reposted by Laurence Gonsalves

Brandon - Love and Hex @crookedgoat.ca · 26/05/2026

Language Barrier The fantasy trope that every member of a given species speaks the same language is a bit silly. Co-author credit to my daughter, who came up with the concept. For more of my comics, read "Love and Hex" on Webtoon! #comics #webcomic #dnd #ttrpg #dragons #funny #art #bskyart

Feral Comics #21 by Brandon Weigel.
Panel 1: A trio of human adventurers - a short female rogue with a bow, a male fighter in armour with a sword, and a female mage in a robe with a staff, are in a cave. Sets of red and green dragon talons reach toward them from the camera perspective. The fighter looks afraid, but the mage puts a hand out to stop him.

Fighter: "Look out - Dragons!"
Mage: "Don't worry. I studied Draconic!"

Panel 2: Two huge dragons look menacingly at the trio, while the mage attempts to communicate in a script that looks like the dragon language from Skyrim. Translated, it says, "O mighty dragons, we beseech you allow us safe passage through your territory."

Panel 3: The dragons talk to each other while the human mage goes on. The green dragon looks confused, but the red dragon looks smug and confident. They do not understand the mage. Green dragon: "Humans! What do you suppose they want?" Red dragon: "Don't worry. I studied human."

Panel 4: The humans are puzzled as the red dragon addresses them in Chinese. Translated, it is saying, "Welcome, humans! Please take your boots off when you enter the cave. Would you like a biscuit?"

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Reposted by Laurence Gonsalves

Christine Lemmer-Webber @dustyweb.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Canadians, we have limited time to take action on C-22, the disaster surveillance (and much other terrible things) bill: opencivics-labs.github.io/dontsurveil.... Make your voice heard. There's not much time left!

opencivics-labs.github.io

Canada is about to weaken every lock on your private messages — dontsurveil.me

Bill C-22 would force every messaging app in Canada to build a second key, and give the copy to the government. What's changed, what's happening now, what's next.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 14/05/2026

@standard.site A question about site.standard.document: Is bskyPostRef supposed to point to a post owned by the same user (ie: in the same repo), or is it possible for it to reference a Bluesky post from a different user?

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 14/04/2026

Ever since Google search and Google assistant on my phone started using different voices I've noticed that search's voice has begun using some pretty weird pronunciation in some cases. Like today I asked it to add a series of numbers, and discovered that it has a lot of trouble with small numbers.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 10/04/2026

I've been using Python for over 25 years now, but only got around to really learning how its type annotations work recently. It got me thinking again about something that seems like a bit of a "truism", but I think has some interesting implications...

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 16/03/2026

Even their outage map doesn't work.

A screenshot of xfinity.com/support/ showing nothing but the text "Loading..." and 3 orange dots.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 08/03/2026

App passwords can be used to sign into bsky.app, not just third party apps. You can't create an app password while signed in with one. The UI doesn't do a great job of explaining *why* you can't, though. It highlights the name field as if that's the problem, and doesn't show any error messages.

Screenshot of the bsky.app "Add App Password" dialog.

The unique name field is filled in with the name "CreatedFromAnAppPaswordSignIn", which is highlighted in red as if it was the source of a from validation error.

The allow DMs checkbox is unchecked.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 08/03/2026

Most apps that let you authorize other apps with OAuth also have a page somewhere in their UI to revoke these authorizations. I would have expected something like this to be in Bluesky under Setting → Privacy and Security (which is where App Passwords are managed), but it isn't there.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 06/03/2026

Google's "people also ask" answering the important questions. (Yes, those of us who observe daylight saving time *will* be losing an hour of sleep on Sunday. 😑)

Screenshot of Google search for the query "when does daylight saving time start". The results show that it starts March 8th. Below that is a section called "people also ask", which lists a few questions including. "Do I lose an hour of sleep on Sunday?" (The screenshot has been annotated with a red circle around this question.)

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 06/03/2026

Caramel, one of my kids' cats, sometimes likes to leave a "gift" outside of people's doors: one of her cat toys. Today she left not one, but *three* toys outside of my office door. (The precision placement is all hers.) #cathursday

A carpeted room with a coffee table to one side. A cat is in the foreground, meowing at the camera. Three burrito-shaped cat toys are evenly spaced on the ground, leading up to a closed door. They all have the same orientation: parallel to the door.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 05/03/2026

We forgot to take the wreath off of our front door, and last week we discovered that a bird had made a nest on it. We have since been avoiding the use of our front door so we don't risk scaring it off or damaging the nest. Today we discovered that one of the eggs has hatched.

A bird's nest wedged between the top of a wreath and a door. Three tiny eggs are visible inside the nest.

The same nest, but one of the eggs has been replaced with a baby bird. It looks like a fuzzy dinosaur.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 04/03/2026

PSA: remove snow from your car before driving, or it could blow off and temporarily blind the drivers behind you, or worse. Every time I go to Tahoe in winter I see many Californians driving with snow still on their vehicles, but this is the craziest example I've ever seen.

A van with a a car-sized block of snow on the roof. The van is on a roadway (actually a hotel's drop-off loop) with cars in front of and behind it. The roadway is mostly clear, except some bits of snow around the van. The areas visible off the road are covered in snow, including several coniferous trees trees in the background.

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Reposted by Laurence Gonsalves

Sifted @sifted.app · 25/02/2026

We're using #atproto to build a #decentralized social media app that lets you control your own algorithm. Here’s why...

Three separate mockups of a mobile app that shows: A video feed playing a random video; a settings screen where a user can toggle what kinds of content is included in their algorithm, such as trending content or activity from people you follow; a settings screen with sliders where the user can adjust how much content they want to see of each topic. The heading reads “How we designed our algorithm customizer”.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 24/02/2026

I saw this sign (below the informational billboard) on a recent trip to Costa Rica, and thought it was interesting that the original Spanish ("no drones") is a better English translation than their posted "translation" ("don't drones").

A sign (underneath a much larger informational billboard) that says "No drones / Don't drones" and has a drawing of a drone with a "circle slash" over it.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 08/02/2026

Posting this as a PSA for anyone else (or possibly my future self) who runs into this issue, as Googling was not helping me out...

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Reposted by Laurence Gonsalves

Bridgit Connell @bridgitconnell.com · 28/01/2026

"This is a Spoon." I animated prose from voice talent @gideonemery.bsky.social that I found particularly helpful in our America.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 27/12/2025

Android's setRotateEulerM function (which is supposed to create a rotation matrix for 3D vectors) has a bug that makes it pretty useless. This bug was reported 15 years ago. A fix has even been provided in the comments, and yet the issue is still open to this day.

issuetracker.google.com

Google Issue Tracker

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 23/12/2025

A recent Android update somehow broke all of my launcher shortcuts so they forgot what their main icon was supposed to look like, and they just started showing the app's icon twice like Dr. Evil and mini-me. If you ran into this problem too, recreating the shortcuts seems to fix the problem.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 03/12/2025

There was a funny glitch in the subtitles of the most recent episode of #Pluribus. When Carol says "this white powdery stuff", the word "white" is replaced by "#D1AD2C", which is the color code for the yellow used in the subtitles. A "search and replace" error, or a weird Easter egg?

A screenshot from Pluribus, with the yellow subtitle, "this #D1AD2C powdery stuff".

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Reposted by Laurence Gonsalves

Jonny Writes @jonnywrites.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

left is the network engineer's system at home, right is at work.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 23/09/2025

I've been programming in Python for over 25 years, and only just learned that comparison chaining is not just for relational operators, but for all comparison operators including == and is.

“Gru’s plan” meme:

1. Gru smiles: “Complex comparisons 3 > 2 > 1 False.”
2. Gru looks pleased: “Add chaining! >> 3 > 2 > 1 True.”
3. Gru smugly gestures: “is operator chains >> 1 != 1 is False False.”
4. Gru is disappointed: “False.”

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 17/09/2025

I wish I had screenshots of the way the clock and phone apps used to look on Android for comparison, because these Material 3 Expressive updates look terrible. The spacing and sizing of everything is so inconsistent, and where did they get this ugly font from?

Screenshot of Material 3 Expressive clock app in the "World Clock" view. The font used for the times looks like it's made out of chopped up noodles.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 16/08/2025

Mildly interesting for fellow #Amiga fans: TikTok's 404 page has a "guru meditation" message.

Screenshot of 404 page reading:

404 Not FOund
Guru Meditation: [long hex number]
Goofy Deploy Page Server

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Reposted by Laurence Gonsalves

Mobius Digital Games @mobiusdigitalgames.com · 24/07/2025

There's a LEGO ideas campaign for the Hearthian Lander! If it can get 10,000 votes of support, then LEGO will consider making it a real set. This one's even got a ship interior! beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea... (Wait, have we done this before? 🤔)

beta.ideas.lego.com

Outer Wilds Ventures | LEGO® Ideas

Outer Wilds is an amazing game created by Mobius Digital. It is a space exploration game where you take control of an astronaut who has to explore their tiny so…

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 23/07/2025

Setting timers on other speakers with Google Home has become completely broken in the past few weeks. When I tell our kitchen speaker to set a timer on our upstairs speaker, it tells me that the timer has been started. However, if then I check what timers are running, there are none. It just lies!

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 19/07/2025

At a panel at Open Sauce, and @vsauce.bsky.social concisely summed up how many of us feel about AI generated content: "why would I want to watch something that someone couldn't even be bothered to make"

Michael Stevens (aka vsauce aka corndogwilly) on stage at Open Sauce 2025.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 10/07/2025

I only just now realized that the Omega class from Babylon 5 looks very similar to the Leonov spacecraft from the movie 2010 (1984).

An image of the Leonov spacecraft from the movie 2010. It is gray and covered in greebling. It consists of a longitudinal structure with a few "towers" that protrude from it (including one with a large antenna dish), and a massive rotating piece in the middle.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 10/07/2025

I recently found an Odo rubber stamp I've had for probably 30 years buried in a drawer. As a rubber stamp, maybe not so useful. However, because it looks like Odo's head and shoulders on a (mostly) flat base, you can rest it on a random object to make it look like it's Odo mid-transformation.

Screen grab from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine depicting Odo and another changeling mid-transformation. Their bodies look like translucent orange goo, with a humanoid (partial) neck and head sticking out the top.

Odo stamp resting on a red rotary telepone.

Or is it a telephone turning back into Odo?

Odo stamp resting on a tin robot.

Or is it a tin robot turning back into Odo?

Odo stamp resting on a cat.

Or is it a cat turning back into Odo?

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 10/07/2025

The box for the Lego Chrysanthemum set has a banana for scale!

The box for the Lego Chrysanthemum set sitting on a beige carpet in front of a white wall. There's a picture of the completed set on the front of the box, but on the top edge is a square with one of the "petal" pieces from the set in the square.

A close-up of that square. The "petal" piece is actually a Lego banana piece, but reddish orange. "1:1" is printed next to it, as the picture is printed "actual size". It's a banana for scale.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 11/05/2025

In recent years I've seen people online use "weary" in place of "wary" *so* many times. I feel like it's becoming more common than the "their/there/they're" mixup. weary: feeling or showing tiredness wary: feeling or showing caution Mnemonic: it's "beWARE", not "beWEAR".

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 09/05/2025

One feature of @nipht.io's browser extension I really like is that you can save a set of tabs all at once. It's handy for when you get to that state where you've got a dozen tabs open on some subject you were researching, but don't have time to deal with them "now".

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 06/05/2025

The "you probably don't know about" part here is killing me. The last version of Windows that I used regularly, required that you press Ctrl+Alt+Del just to log on. This was supposedly a security measure, to make it harder for someone to create a password harvester.

Screenshot of the Windows NT Workstation splash screen with a "Begin Logon" dialog that reads "Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to log on". There's a little icon of a hand reaching for three (keyboard) keys.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 05/05/2025

Does anyone know the original source of this image? It's usually described as a 1970s or '80s vision of what a PDA or smartphone would look like, but the book it came from is never named. It resembles the style of some Usborne books (and the spelling of "colour" suggests that it isn't American).

Illustration showing a "Pocket computer". The text reads "In the very near future you will probably be able to buy, quite cheaply, a pocket computer with all the features shown below. See if you can think of things you would do with a pocket computer if you had one."

The computer itself is a yellow rectangle with labeled areas:

"colour display screen" (a black CRT with orange pixels)

"touch sensitive controls" (a red square and a blue square)

"sound synthesizer for music and speech" (a 3x3 grid of dots)

"microphone for voice input" (three differently colored squares)

"keyboard" (a green grid and a blue grid of keys)

"sockets for tape cassette, TV, other computers, printer, etc." (small protrusions on right side)

There's a hand holding the device, just like one would hold a smartphone. There is a border around the illustration, with some bits of other illustrations visible, including the back of a person's head, and the side of a house with stairs and a corner of what might be a car.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 23/04/2025

I enjoyed this post about pipelining in programming languages. It doesn't mention Kotlin at all, but the way Kotlin's extension functions and lambda syntax support pipelining is probably one of its most underrated features. herecomesthemoon.net/2025/04/pipe...

herecomesthemoon.net

Pipelining might be my favorite programming language feature

Free-standing function call syntax considered kind of suboptimal.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 17/04/2025

Tired of manually moving bookmarks from your browser to Niphtio? Now you can import directly from Chrome (and Chromium browsers)! 🤯Save time, effort, and more easily organize all your links in one place. Give it a try today! #Niphtio #Chrome #BookmarkImport #TechTips

New! Import bookmarks from Chrome to Niphtio.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 11/04/2025

Weird but interesting sculpture (?) at SJC.

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Laurence Gonsalves @laurence.gonsalv.es · 09/04/2025

It looks like if you block enough of your recent followers (my guess is the last "page" worth), then the UI doesn't display your list of followers.

A screenshot of my Bluesky "followers" list, showing "499 followers" but then "No results found; You do not have any followers".

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