iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Mike Nisbet

404 Media @404media.co · 17/08/2026

SCOOP: 404 Media placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it. What did we find? It ended up at an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books. Yes. This is literally the logo outside the Amazon warehouse door. Read now:

404media.co

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 27/03/2026

Goes without saying that people’s energy bills have been hurting for a long time, and should ultimately be the main focus of any changes.

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 27/03/2026

I’m glad DESNZ is finally considering this, but as always it’s never that simple. The excess the renewables make from the match to gas generation funds more renewable infra build, will this reduce the amount of renewables coming online and therefore longer term bill savings?

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 24/03/2026

Friday night’s aurora!

Personal photo of an aurora (northern lights) occurring in north England. Against a star backdrop, a strong band of green with pillars, and a purple haze typical of a stronger aurora sighting.

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Guy Shrubsole @guyshrubsole.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

VICTORY! Government to open up the Land Registry - bringing to an end a thousand years of secrecy shrouding who owns England. I’ve been campaigning for this for ten years: the new Land Use Framework, published later today, makes it government policy. 1/ www.theguardian.com/environment/...

theguardian.com

Government to lift paywall from large parts of the Land Registry

Exclusive: finding out who owns land will become simpler under plans to make the best use of green spaces and hit net zero targets

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 21/01/2026

Beyond proud to see Heatly as a case study in the Warm Homes Plan, especially our AR Room Scanner which I worked on! 🎉 You can find us on page 141 amongst some other great companies pushing forward the transition 🍃

A property surveyor uses the Heatly room scanner. The applet is running on an iPad, which is pointed at the corner of a room. An AR overlay marks the border of the room.

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Delighted to publish this personal essay by me and John: Getting Britain out of the hole. We wanted to write something quite readable that covers the big picture of the UK’s economic struggles. Hopefully we’ve managed at least one of those! @johnspringford.bsky.social getting-out-of-the-hole.uk

getting-out-of-the-hole.uk

Getting Britain out of the hole

A plan for the UK economy

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

petercracknell.bsky.social @petercracknell.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

The UK’s first National Emergency Briefing on the #Climate & Nature crisis was held on the 27th November. Sign an open letter to Keir Starmer on the climate crisis. www.nebriefing.org/open-letter-...

nebriefing.org

National Emergency Briefing

An unfiltered assessment of the latest threats to UK food supply, health and national security from eight leading experts to an invitation-only audience - also covering positive solutions. Westminster...

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Heat pumps news! DESNZ is expanding the Boiler Upgrade Scheme to cover air to air heat pumps and heat batteries. Both will be eligible for a £2,500 grant if it fully replaces a gas or oil boiler… www.businessgreen.com/news/4521952...

businessgreen.com

Boiler Upgrade Scheme: Government set to expand scheme to include air conditioning heat pumps

Government expands heat pump scheme to include heat batteries and 'air-to-air devices' that can cool homes in summer, despite speculation over budget cuts

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Kenney @kenney.nl · 15/11/2025

I know it's not the coolest thing to bring up and not many people seem to care, but my website is hosted in a local datacenter powered entirely by wind energy and certified under ISO-14001. So my #gameassets are a good choice if you care about the environment 🌲

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Icosa Gallery @icosa.gallery · 14/11/2025

We sneaked out support for Gaussian Splats using the very groovy three.js plugin Spark: icosa.gallery/view/ZTLkNjE...

icosa.gallery

gs_Shelter by andybak on Icosa Gallery

Check out "gs_Shelter" and more work by andybak on Icosa Gallery

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 13/11/2025

@unity.com finally time to get OpenXR Linux support working?

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Valve @valvesoftware.com · 12/11/2025

Announcing: New @steampowered.com Hardware, coming in 2026: Steam Controller Steam Machine Steam Frame. Watch our jazzy announcement video and wishlist now: steampowered.com/hardware

steampowered.com

Steam Hardware

The Steam Hardware family officially expands in early 2026.

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Robert Llewellyn @bobbyllew.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

It is with shock and genuine sadness that I learn of the passing of my good friend, long time colleage and just a really kind man, Quentin Willson. He will be sorely missed by many who knew and worked with him.

A picture of Quentin Willson standing in a sunny flied near his home

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 04/11/2025

@ianhamilton.net give this a shot, no promises. It's not a direct APK link, you'll need to unzip first nightly.link/icosa-founda...

nightly.link

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 26/10/2025

For additional context, our Android build is designed to fall back to a viewer mode on generic Android, which is what you’re seeing here. We would have loved to have an Android XR devkit but were ghosted after initial talks and being UK based can’t get one ourselves…

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 26/10/2025

github.com/icosa-founda... I’ll see if I can kick off another build for you as the current ones expired, but I’m about to go on holiday. I’m not working in XR at the moment and honestly Meta’s dark patterns in the dev cycle has really worn me down on wanting to support the medium…

github.com

Exclusively OpenXR for Android/PCVR by mikeskydev · Pull Request #798 · icosa-foundation/open-brush

This PR implements the early stages of https://github.com/mikeskydev/unity-openxr-extensions, moving away from vendor specific XR SDKs towards using OpenXR for as many features as possible. TODO: ...

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 26/10/2025

Hi Ian, our current build has been limited to the Quest OpenXR loader because of the pain of getting Passthrough working on anything else 😅 I have a long-open PR that moves us to the proper cross-platform version of OpenXR, but was held up because of Logitech not helping us port MX Ink.

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Robert Llewellyn @bobbyllew.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

Further exploration of some topics I pondered in the recent Almost Breaking News episode. llewellyn.substack.com/p/two-ideas-...

llewellyn.substack.com

Two Ideas At Once

Can we manage to hold them both?

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Dennis Detwiller @drgonzo123.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Evolution (abridged)

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Birdseed Steam VR Coming 10/8 🐦 Buffalo Buffalo @buffalobuffalo.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

KA-KAWWW! In case you missed out on our booth at PAX West, our company has taken up bird watching... kinda. Peep Birdseed, a cozy nature-focused VR game where your goal is to snap the rarest birds in the most majestic (or wacky) poses. Learn more about Birdseed ➡️ buff.ly/VDJqFxG #gamedev #indiedev

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 19/08/2025

Thank you so much!! This is exactly what I wanted from the main OpenXR package, it will greatly speed up extension impl without needing to define types and functions. Looking forward to converting my package to use this when it reaches main release!

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Andy Biar @andybiar.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Announcement! I've been working on Unity support for the new OpenXR Spatial Entities extensions, and today we shipped a public native API in OpenXR Plug-in 1.16.0-pre.1: docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com... This API is a pure C# port of the OpenXR spec, currently limited to spatial entities.

docs.unity3d.com

OpenXR native API | OpenXR Plugin | 1.16.0-pre.1

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Michel Mohr @michelmohr.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Yes, I finally got all the software I need to be a VR developer!

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Bastiaan Olij @mux213.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

I did a bigger write-up on linked-in but I can finally go public with what I've been working on for the past 3 or so months. OpenXR 1.1.49 adds the much awaited spatial entities extension. Thanks to funding from Khronos, Godot will support this API "today". github.com/godotengine/...

github.com

OpenXR: Add support for spatial entities extension by BastiaanOlij · Pull Request #107391 · godotengine/godot

The OpenXR Spatial entities extension was introduced to standardise obtaining and interacting with information about the users real world environment. It defines a core extension for how to query a...

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Bastiaan Olij @mux213.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

I can finally talk about this in the open, HURRAY! OpenXR 1.1.49 dropped today and one of the two big things I've had a small hand in is Spatial Entities support. Watch this space for more news soon! www.khronos.org/blog/openxr-...

khronos.org

OpenXR Spatial Entities Extensions Released for Developer Feedback

The Khronos® OpenXR™ Working Group has released a groundbreaking set of OpenXR extensions that establish the first open standard for spatial computing, enabling consistent cross-platform support for p...

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 22/05/2025

It feels like this is the 5th overhaul or so? I just want a stable OS for our users 😭

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Vivarium XR Game @vivariumxr.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Guess who is now live in the Meta Horizon Store? 👉😂🌱👈 www.meta.com/en-gb/experi... #VR #Vivarium #MetaQuest #VRgames #VirtualReality

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 18/05/2025

I’ve oddly experienced the same when demoing VR, players pulling the opposite trigger/grip to the one I said to

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Open Brush @openbrush.app · 29/04/2025

Multiplayer painting is now live! Collaborate, chat, draw with friends, show off or just allow others to explore your worlds. Cross platform, free and open source forever. Get it on Steam, Meta, Itch and other stores. #vr #vrart #tiltbrush #openbrush

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 26/03/2025

I think OpenXR suffered from design by committee; heavily based on Vulkan conventions which a lot of developers never need to think about. Only very recently I’ve seen working group outreach to ask what developers actually *want* from the API, and it’s mostly OpenVR features!

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Reposted by Mike Nisbet

Open Brush @openbrush.app · 21/03/2025

Teaser... Coming soon: docs.openbrush.app/alternate-an... It's very cool and expands the features of Open Brush in a lot of interesting ways. We just want to get multiplayer officially released before we hit you all with this :-)

docs.openbrush.app

Feature: Plugin Scripting | Open Brush Docs

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 18/03/2025

“XR” was right there, Boz.

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 17/03/2025

Doesn’t even need to be Thread to fall over, my WiFi Matter plugs continuously dropped from Google Home. Home Assistant saved the day as usual, but I’ve got time and patience to tinker with that, it’s hopeless for the average user.

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 13/03/2025

I can understand keeping it for the other options the feature offers, but there must be a huge benefit if Quest could use the cross platform loader? Otherwise, you’re still stuck with at least 2 Android builds for popular platforms…

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 13/03/2025

Thanks for the info! I’ll certainly post in discussions, but essentially my main wish is to have the entire spec autogenerated into C# like the official OpenXR SDK has for C++. It would certainly speed up building my plugin!

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 13/03/2025

In light of this, I’m happy to announce I’ve received funding from my old employer, SideQuest, to expand my OpenXR Unity extension plugin further! Let’s all move away from vendor SDKs and make OpenXR truly cross platform. github.com/mikeskydev/u...

github.com

GitHub - mikeskydev/unity-openxr-extensions: Cross-platform OpenXR extensions for Unity. No vendor bloat.

Cross-platform OpenXR extensions for Unity. No vendor bloat. - mikeskydev/unity-openxr-extensions

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 13/03/2025

By the way, is there any chance of joining the team from the UK, or making it possible to contribute my extensions? I’d love to expand Unity’s OpenXR support across the entire API’s capabilities and get everyone off those vendor SDKs!

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 13/03/2025

Will the dependency on the Meta Quest Support feature be deprecated soon? hard to deploy cross platform on a single APK currently, I ended up making my own feature to alter the manifest in my plugin: github.com/mikeskydev/u...

github.com

unity-openxr-extensions/Editor/FeatureBuildHooks/OpenXRAndroidSettingsBuildHook.cs at main · mikeskydev/unity-openxr-extensions

Cross-platform OpenXR extensions for Unity. No vendor bloat. - mikeskydev/unity-openxr-extensions

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 07/03/2025

Promising, but I’ll reserve judgement until I see the changes they’ve made. In the meantime, I’m still working on my plugin to deploy a single binary for all VR headsets. H/T to @uploadvr.com, @kentbye.com, Guy and Matthieu for their work bringing this to light developers.meta.com/horizon/blog...

developers.meta.com

Meta and OpenXR

Learn how Meta is supporting OpenXR and developers through its game engine integrations and contributions to OpenXR standards.

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 07/03/2025

I can’t wait for a lovely tutorial showcasing how to build for Meta Quest with OpenXR… :) bsky.app/profile/uplo...

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Mike Nisbet @mikesky.dev · 06/03/2025

Overclockers is having a fun time

Empty page showing "We will be back shortly."

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