iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Matthew Thomas

River 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @riverseeber.net · 02/09/2026

I finally made the switch away from my clanky little Arch Linux installation over to ElementaryOS. I'll be honest, it isn't exactly the most intuitive switch for *my brain*, but I think that the approach is correct. Elementary acts like a *normal desktop*. It's got a suite of built in software […]

defcon.social

Original post on defcon.social

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 13/09/2026

On Wednesday I made an online booking at a hairdresser for Friday. On Friday I turned up, ten minutes early, to discover that the hairdresser … does not exist. Doors locked. Electric doorbell powered off. No signs in the window. Sign outside painted completely black. I guess they went out of […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 08/09/2026

On this morning’s flight, the flight attendant kept forgetting bits of the safety briefing (“There are four emergency exits, two in the front, and, uhh…”) and eventually had to look up the script on a tablet. (To be fair, it was 6:30 AM.) Afterwards she joked to a passenger that forgetting the […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Reposted by Matthew Thomas

[object Object] @zzt.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 19/08/2026

putting on the white makeup and red nose that indicate my position as a thought leader

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Reposted by Matthew Thomas

Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 19/07/2026

Could Excel be conscious? We surveyed more than Jan 1 1900 people to find out.

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Reposted by Matthew Thomas

Space Hobo @spacehobo.teh.entar.net.ap.brid.gy · 29/05/2026

I actually worked at the same place as Andrew Tridgell, over a quarter-century ago. I got to know a few of the OzLabs folks during their immediate post-IBM years, and always had the highest respect for them in that way where you feel acute impostor syndrome when they're in the room. Tridge […]

teh.entar.net

Original post on teh.entar.net

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 30/05/2026

Anyone know where I might be able to buy a remote-controlled ride-on robot unicorn? Asking for a 5-year-old

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Reposted by Matthew Thomas

tojikomori @tojikomori.urusai.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/04/2026

Under-appreciated feature of the macOS menu bar: _Help > Search._ Especially coupled with each search result's hover behavior of showing where that item is in the menu tree and its keyboard shortcut. In other desktop environments I spend time just poking […] [Original post on urusai.social]

Screenshot of macOS with the menu bar's Help tree open

Screenshot of macOS while hovering over a menu tree search result. The menu bar is expanded to show the search result, highlighted by a thick white arrow.

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 09/04/2026

5yo: “Dad, I’ve got an itchy forehead.” Me: “Well, that’s a real head-scratcher.” #dadjoke

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Reposted by Matthew Thomas

Jonathan Hogg @jonathanhogg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/02/2026

I will say one thing for generative AI: since these tools function by remixing/translating existing information, that vibe programming is so popular demonstrates a colossal failure on the part of our industry in not making this stuff easier. If a giant ball of statistics can mostly knock up a […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Miguel Arroz @arroz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/02/2026

Another glorious UI choice: two buttons with a similar icon next to each other that do very different things. I always click the URL to edit it, and then the big X button to delete it and instead I close the panel. Because to delete the field you need to […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 16/02/2026

0030, my wife: “It’s been two weeks now, why aren’t you getting better? You should see a doctor.” 1058, GP’s nurse: “Yeah, it sounds like you need to come in for an appointment.” 1355, GP: “I’m sending you to hospital for a chest x-ray and blood tests.” 1440, radiographer: “Never mind the […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 13/02/2026

“Dad you said there was going to be a funny part! You lied to me!” I guess the 5yo is not yet old enough to appreciate the Muppet Show. #MuppetShow

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 01/02/2026

Some bugs make a system crash or freeze. Most other bugs, to most people, are indistinguishable from bad design — and vice versa. For example, list items shouldn’t both act on a single click/tap AND change position without warning. Doing either is fine. Doing both is bad design. But that […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Reposted by Matthew Thomas

Matthew Haughey @mathowie.xoxo.zone.ap.brid.gy · 12/01/2026

OpenAI's wild growth is because Google fumbled the ball in the endzone since 2015 while everyone said search result pages were turning into hot garbage. Today, Google serves you up some Gemini answer attempt, then hot garbage results. Gemini consistently gives me wrong answers, so I ignore it.

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 19/01/2026

5yo is giving some of her pocket money to 2yo. “Mum, I’m starting her off on pocket money. And the first thing is, if she gives me a turn playing with her ukulele, I give her a coin.” Five minutes later: “Mum, can you help? There’s a coin stuck inside the ukulele.”

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 30/12/2025

Doritos may not be the ideal corn chip for making nachos, but they’re what we had at the beach house, so the whole evening I’ve been thinking about peasants from the 1400s

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 16/12/2025

Teaching our 5-year-old to play chess is a challenge, because I’m pretty bad at chess. Tonight’s first game, she captured my king with her queen, because I hadn’t even realised that I was in check. Tonight’s second game, I had her on the ropes — only her king and one pawn left — when she […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 11/11/2025

@georgepenney Thanks for the hand-delivery today! Sorry I missed the chance to meet a Mastodon celebrity in person.

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Reposted by Matthew Thomas

Dan Fixes Coin-Ops @ifixcoinops.retro.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/11/2025

Linux will take off and go mainstream on the desktop twenty years after the terminal is hidden away under "Advanced System Features" and the last guy replied to a help request with "OK copy paste this into your terminal" I say twenty years because it's been a good ten years since the average […]

retro.social

Original post on retro.social

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 20/10/2025

Good to see Nielsen Norman Group describing the problems of Liquid Glass without any weird deference to Apple. No “they’ll get it right next year”or “everyone needs to suffer to prepare for future hardware”. Just: this is bad, this is why, and here are the screenshots to prove it […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Reposted by Matthew Thomas

Gabriele Svelto @gabrielesvelto.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 31/07/2025

We are modernizing the user interface Pray we do not modernize it further

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2025

Calm down, Apple Music, “Bridge over troubled water” is just a song.

Searching for “jacob collier bridge over troubled water”, the search results begin with a banner: “If you or someone you know needs help, support is available. Find Resources”.

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Reposted by Matthew Thomas

Henri Sivonen @hsivonen.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/08/2025

Support for Windows 10 is about to end. Apple prepares for the situation by putting the macOS UI quality level at its lowest for years. (There’s no chance that all Liquid Glass bugs will be fixed by Tahoe launch even if you are OK with the design concept.) The Linux community tells you to […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 01/09/2025

Seventy years ago yesterday, the term “artificial intelligence” was coined in a research grant application. “The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely […] [Original post on mastodon.nz]

From the cover page: “A proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. J. McCarthy, Dartmouth College. M. L. Minsky, Harvard University. N. Rochester, I.B. M. Corporation. C.E, Shannon, Bell Telephone Laboratories. August 31, 1955.”

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2025

Twelve years ago today, I was on Tinder (yep) and stumbled on a bug in the app. I’m married now, deleted my account long ago, but for the past 12 years I’ve been waiting to post this screenshot.

Back then, you see, Tinder had confidently told me: “You matched with Irina — 12 years from now”.

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Reposted by Matthew Thomas

Sven A. Schmidt @finestructure.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/07/2025

I often assist my parents remotely trying to figure out how to do things on their iPhone or iPad. We frequently get stuck at “press the button X” and they can’t find it. They’re not trained to “see” interface elements. The best way to experience this for us, experienced users, is trying to use […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 26/07/2025

Is there a word for the cursor swoop people do in collaborative canvas apps (Figma, Miro, Mural, Penpot, Sketch…) that means “Hello, I notice you’re looking at the same canvas as me at the same time”? #ui #figma #penpot #SketchApp

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Reposted by Matthew Thomas

Niki @nikitonsky.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy · 19/06/2025

2005: Dictionary is a thick book 2014: Dictionary is just a book 2020: Dictionary is a notepad 2020 (again?): Dictionary is a sticker 2025: Dictionary is a glass panel with its bookmark outside Image by @thebasicappleguy

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 16/06/2025

In Microsoft Office 97–2003, if a menu item had an icon, it meant “it’s possible to have a toolbar button for this, but I’m not going to tell you whether that button is in any of your toolbars right now”. Most items didn’t have an icon, and many of the icons were barely guessable unless you read […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Reposted by Matthew Thomas

Richard MacManus @ricmac.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/06/2025

I’m sure we will hear a lot about Bill Atkinson (RIP) over the next few days, but I want to point out the huge influence of #HyperCard on the Web. @timbl himself mentioned it in his original WWW proposal (cybercultural.com/p/1990-programmin…), early web browsers like […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Glyph @glyph.im · 05/06/2025

I kinda hated writing this but I needed to do it. Maybe now, finally, I can stop writing it in little fragments here and there, and just let it go and do something else. blog.glyph.im/2025/06/i-think-im-do…

blog.glyph.im

Deciphering Glyph :: I Think I’m Done Thinking About genAI For Now

Deciphering Glyph, the blog of Glyph Lefkowitz.

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 01/06/2025

“Dad, can you show me how to draw a dragon?” Years of watching Homestar Runner have prepared me for this moment.

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Henri Sivonen @hsivonen.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/04/2025

Sad that after three decades of robots.txt mostly resulting in OK outcomes, the operators of LLM scrapers just don’t care and there’s now a need for software like Anubis. xeiaso.net/notes/2025/anubis-works

Reposted by Matthew Thomas

Mastodon Engineering @mastodonengineering.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/03/2025

We’re looking for a Senior Product Designer to work alongside our frontend and mobile devs. Ideally: 1. You’re highly skilled in UX design, having led product strategy & design process 2. Proficient in Figma/Penpot, with interaction & usability design skills 3. Experienced in accessibility & […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 28/02/2025

In 2005, I made a Skype call for the first time. I was stunned at how clear the sound was. In 2010–2011, I was the designer on a project to integrate Skype into instant messaging on Ubuntu. It was canned once Microsoft bought Skype. And in 2011–2014, a former colleague worked on the design of […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 22/02/2025

People/tools that call image alt text “descriptions” are basically kicking blind people in the shins. Because then people like @bruces quite reasonably say “why should I describe an image, when a computer can do that?” But a computer doesn’t know WHY you included the image: which aspects are […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 11/02/2025

I wrote about the thing I am looking for to make sense of the moment so that I can stop posting about it. (First post on my personal site in some time.) erinkissane.com/against-entropy This is part of a series of backstage conversations with friends and between people I respect, about […]

mas.to

Original post on mas.to

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Matthew Thomas @mpt.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 24/01/2025

4yo: “Mum, when are we getting a new car? This car is already ten weeks…” (pause) “This car is already FIFTY-FOUR MONTHS old.” Her mother: “We don’t need a new car, darling. Maybe if you decided you wanted to learn the harp, then we’d need a bigger car.” (5 seconds pass) 4yo: “Mum, I want […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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