iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I've started to add BeOS to Infinite Mac - you can see the first few versions on infinitemac.org?filter=beos Not having been much of a user back in the day, I'm looking for suggestions of software to include, or pointers to canonical archives (is there a Be version of the Macintosh Garden?)

BeOS R3 running inside Infinite Mac showing GL Teapot, a movie playing, a terminal, a CPU meter and the Tracker desktop.

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 21/09/2026

I've switched over Infinite Mac's classic Mac emulation to recently-released and awesome Snow, which unblocks A/UX emulation: infinitemac.org?filter=aux There's a behind-the-scenes blog post at blog.persistent.info/2026/09/infi... detailing this and other site updates.

A/UX 3.1 running inside Infinite Mac, showing the Finder opened to a Photoshop Window, the xlogo X11 program, and a command shell

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 21/09/2026

Like a built-in version of nailgun/nodegun (github.com/lucidsoftwar...)? Yes - I’ve found that useful when looking to shave off startup time from commonly-used tooling, especially if it runs in pre-commit hooks or other places that break flow.

github.com

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 22/06/2026

The nice thing about making your own weather app is that you can make features just for yourself. I'd always wanted to know every morning if work (nominally 45 miles away, but an entirely different climate) had different weather, and now I can. apps.apple.com/app/weather-...

blog.persistent.info

Weather Text Work Location Mode

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 04/06/2026

Missed this yesterday - adding a "Exclude retweets" option was pretty straightforward, should be live now.

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 03/06/2026

My understanding based on docs.bsky.app/blog/oauth-i... is that Sky Feeder should qualify as a confidential client and thus should end up with 2+ year sessions as long as they're refreshed periodically.

docs.bsky.app

OAuth Improvements | Bluesky

We've been making improvements to the end-user and developer experiences with atproto OAuth, and wanted to share some updates.

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 03/06/2026

And there's a blog post with some behind-the-scenes details (spoiler: agents were involved) and some additional tips (finally found a use for the JSON Feed format): blog.persistent.info/2026/06/how-...

blog.persistent.info

How I consume Bluesky (and Twitter and Mastodon)

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 03/06/2026

Two new tools on www.streamspigot.com: - Sky Feeder generates a feed of your Bluesky timeline - Tweeter Feeder generates per-account feeds for that other site Together with the existing Masto Feeder tool, this lets me continue to pretend to live in 2011, consuming everything in a feed reader.

NetNewsWire showing Bluesky, Mastodon and Twitter posts

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 28/01/2026

I tried my best to keep it alive, it was killed after I left Google (www.theverge.com/23778253/goo... from a few years ago has some more details) But RSS isn’t dead (I say as I’m subscribing to your blog in NetNewsWire)

theverge.com

Who killed Google Reader?

Google Reader was supposed to be much more than a tool for nerds. But it never got the chance.

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 18/09/2025

Classic Mac's OS file system innovations (resource forks, metadata) were often lost in transit on the Internet in 1995, and the same is true 30 years later with Infinite Mac. I found a workaround using modern macOS's built-in .zip archives – a brief writeup: blog.persistent.info/2025/09/infi...

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 13/07/2025

Yes, you can use a disk image URL (if it’s not from an already-allowed domain, let me know and I can add it)

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 12/07/2025

Though most of the software is from the Macintosh Garden, so downloading it directly from there to your 9.2.2 machine may be even easier. You can browse around github.com/mihaip/infin... and see where items are loaded from.

github.com

infinite-mac/Library at main · mihaip/infinite-mac

A classic Mac loaded with everything you'd want. Contribute to mihaip/infinite-mac development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 12/07/2025

Not directly (over the internet). Best option is to copy what you want to Saved HD and export that to a BlueSCSI image. www.youtube.com/watch?v=caHs... explains how.

youtube.com

BlueSCSI Bytes #1 - Infinite Mac

YouTube video by BlueSCSI

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 09/07/2025

And for a behind the scenes look, there's a blog post: blog.persistent.info/2025/07/infi... (spoiler: Marcin was the instigator for all this, conducted over a months-long 100+ message email thread)

blog.persistent.info

Infinite Mac Construction Set

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 09/07/2025

Another demo is my Infinite Monkey: infinitemac.org/monkey/ It lets OpenAI's or Anthropic's computer use models control an emulated Mac, based on your chat instructions. This means that it's possible to run @simonwillison.net's "draw me a pelican riding a bicycle" test in 1984's MacPaint 1.0.

Emulated System 1.0 instance running MacPaint 1.0. It is being controlled by the OpenAI computer-use model, and attempting to draw a pelican riding a bicycle.

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 09/07/2025

Infinite Mac can now be embedded into any website: infinitemac.org/embed For a demonstration of what this can enable, see @aresluna.org's amazing "Frame of preference" article: aresluna.org/frame-of-pre...

Infinite Mac embedding dialog, allowing parameters of a instance to be customized and the resulting HTML to be copied. It uses the Platinum appearance from Mac OS 8.

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Reposted by Mihai Parparita

Marcin Wichary @aresluna.org · 09/07/2025

I wrote something new! It’s a UI design history essay about Mac’s Control Panel, and it uses emulation in some… maybe new and maybe interesting ways? aresluna.org/frame-of-pre...

aresluna.org

Frame of preference

A story of early Mac settings told by 10 emulators.

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 24/03/2025

blog.persistent.info/2025/03/infi... is a blog post with technical details (two separate emulators are involved) and the complete collection is at infinitemac.org?filter=macosx.

blog.persistent.info

Infinite Mac OS X

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 24/03/2025

Mac OS X was released on this day 24 years ago. On this anniversary, here it is on the web: infinitemac.org/2001/Mac%20O... (technically 10.1, but that’s the first release that actually worked acceptably)

Mac OS X 10.1 running under Infinite Mac, showing the Finder, NetNewsWire Lite and Terminal.

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 13/03/2025

More seriously, it's been great to be at Sierra from the start and get to influence the engineering culture in such a fundamental way. I know tech company blog posts can paint overly rosy pictures, but Gardening Week is genuinely one of my favorite parts about working here.

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 13/03/2025

New company, new corporate blog for me to post on. sierra.ai/blog/gardeni... describes an engineering team ritual that we've developed. You can tell that it was not ghost-written because I got to cram in a lot of links to obscure articles.

sierra.ai

Gardening Week: Evergreen Engineering

At Sierra, we value intensity and craftsmanship—Gardening Week is an investment in the long-term quality of our software.

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 20/11/2024

The turducken phase was certainly a mind-bender. I wrote up a few more details at blog.persistent.info/2023/07/slac...

blog.persistent.info

Slack Canvas In The Streets, Quip In The Sheets

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 09/11/2024

.patch also works if you need to email your change to a mailing list like it’s 1994 (more usefully, you can use `git apply` with it if you don’t want to be bothered with syncing remote branches)

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 04/11/2024

Infinite Mac now has a “Macintosh Garden” drawer that allows one-click loading of any of the 20,000 items archived by that site. I wrote up a brief post with some behind-the-scenes details: blog.persistent.info/2024/11/infi...

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 05/05/2024

Thanks for continuing to experiment with this. I just listened to your Flipboard podcast interview -- I hadn't realized the "nerd HOA" contingent of the Fediverse went after you. The episode also reminded me check whether I was opted into Mastodon search (surprise, I was not).

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 01/03/2024

Did @bradfitz.com and Maisem run out of Cyrillic letters for their views codegen shenanigans?

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 17/02/2024

I see the Sneakers Easter eggs have continued.

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 06/07/2023

I’m still team “if you didn’t blog it, it didn’t happen”. So here’s a post about how much Quip technology is in Slack canvas (spoiler: a lot): blog.persistent.info/2023/07/slack-…

blog.persistent.info

Slack Canvas In The Streets, Quip In The Sheets

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Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · 25/04/2023

tailscale.dev/blog/battery-life describes battery life work we're doing at @tailscale.com. It's been a fun few months going beyond just Darwin spelunking to also hack on the Go standard library and explore different aggregation and visualization options.

tailscale.dev

Battery life instrumentation

We’ve added instrumentation and taking a more systematic approach to investigating battery life issues in the Tailscale mobile clients.

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