iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Rachel Barker

Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Quoting myself from a day ago - "The problem is thinking that the product of a programmer is code. It isn't, really, the code is just the final stage. The actual valuable thing the programmer produces is the underlying mental model. Without that, the code is just tech debt"

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Space Telescope Science Institute @stsci.edu · 15/09/2026

#NASARoman activated the Wide Field Instrument—a 300-megapixel infrared camera that will allow it to explore wide swaths of the cosmos quickly. This test image captures the very first photons of starlight to reach the instrument—taken as an initial performance assessment: go.nasa.gov/4rg4qEc

$At the top, a grid of 21 panels shows a series of blue images with tiny neon green and yellow circles. A larger image highlights a section of the grid with circular patterns, and an inset presents a detailed star-like diffraction pattern. The colors consist of blue, green, and yellow.$

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

katherine @kayserifserif.place · 04/09/2026

📝💝 but what a privilege it is to read your code kayserifserif.place/posts/2026/h...

kayserifserif.place

Handwritten code | Katherine Yang

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Cat Manning @catacalypto.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

please just read this slide and know it’s the “drawbacks” to “anything can spawn anywhere” feature lol

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Eniko Fox @enikofox.com · 03/09/2026

People talking about shit like dlss5 and here I am going "I made my real mode x86 assembly better so now my 1 layer tile renderer for 160x120 resolutions runs at 60fps on a 33MHz 386 n_n"

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

anoetic 🏳️‍⚧️ @obliqueanoetic.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

lil modular sounds

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus.me.uk · 02/09/2026

I love old-timey book covers (from today's Tasting History: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK8I... )

A very old-looking, yellowed page, printed in many different fonts to show off how many fonts the printer could afford. It reads:

APICIUS REDIVIVUS;
or,
THE COOK'S ORACLE:
Wherein especially
THE ART OF COMPOSING SOUPS, SAUCES, AND FLAVOURING ESSENCES
IS MADE SO CLEAR AND EASY, BY THE QUANTITY OF EACH
ARTICLE BEING ACCURATELY STATED BY WEIGHT AND
MEASURE, THAT EVERY ONE MAY SOON LEARN
TO DRESS A DINNER, AS WELL AS THE
MOST EXPERIENCED COOK ;
Being Six Hundred Receipts,
THE
RESULT OF ACTUAL EXPERIMENTS
INSTITUTED IN
THE KITCHEN OF A PHYSICIAN,
FOR THE PURPOSE OF COMPOSING
A CULINARY CODE FOR THE RATIONAL EPICURE,
AND AUGMENTING
The Alimentary Enjoyments of Private Families ;
COMBINING ECONOMY WITH ELEGANCE;
AND SAVING EXPENSE TO HOUSEKEEPERS,
AND TROUBLE TO SERVANTS.

There are a couple of pencilled-in additions: William Kitchiner (presumably the book's owner) and the number 4825.

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus.me.uk · 02/09/2026

Recently I've been doing a bunch of experiments on how to configure social media previews for my websites, in particular how to sort out preview images. I'll write up the details properly soon, but a quick thread of what I've found:

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Christian Simmers @xuelder.neocities.org · 01/09/2026

Actually a recent Xkcd for that: bsky.app/profile/xkcd...

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mcc @dryad.technology · 01/09/2026

This is the single biggest physics discovery of my entire lifetime. Or something's wrong with one of the cables. One of the two

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kuraine @lena.fyi · 31/08/2026

the problem about having a lot of interests & a lot of projects is that there are only 24 hours in a day and time moves so damn fast

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Servo @servo.org · 31/08/2026

July in Servo… 🦾🐧 binaries for Linux aarch64 🪶📐 web fonts in inline SVG 🚄🎨 multithreaded 2D canvas 🩹🦮 incremental accessibility 📝🤖 selection rendering (DOM only, not yet interactive) servo.org/blog/2026/08...

servoshell 0.5.0 showing several new features: ‘text-decoration-thickness’, ‘box-decoration-break’, web fonts in inline `<svg>`, and DOM selection rendering

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Luna @moonbase.lgbt · 30/08/2026

also if the dipshit who keeps probing for common php vulns on my STATIC FILESERVER website would kindly knock it the fuck off that'd be lovely

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Luna @moonbase.lgbt · 30/08/2026

looking at my webserver logs for the first time in a hot minute and like, i know common decency is a dead concept at this point, but putting "example.com" in your scraper bot's user-agent string is ridiculous

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Freya Holmér @freya.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

this wave of AI has legitimately killed a huge part of what I loved about seeing stuff online, what I loved about being an educator, and what I loved about sharing my own work I just don't feel like doing it anymore

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Matt Henderson @matthen.com · 26/08/2026

To tell if a maze is solvable, just hang it by its corners If it tears into pieces, you’ve found a solution

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Eric Hallahan @erichallahan.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Good Evening, “RISC-V” was a 12-year, 17-day sociological study conducted by University of California, Berkeley. We are now complete with our study. Thank you for your time.

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Seph De Busser @sephdebusser.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Reverse engineering a binary with partial RTTI really gives a similar high to deduction games like type help, TR-49, roottrees,... "I know you have to exist, but *where are you*" at a base class' constructor/vtable/default-implementation functions. Such a high when you end up finding it!

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X ΘΔ (Giant Tyrant Overlord) @xkeeper.net · 21/08/2026

i think my favorite xml crime was seeing <keyvaluepair><key>burp</key><value>fart</value></keyvaluepair>. like the platonic ideal of the overflowing tupperware cabinet in the "there has to be a better way!" commercial

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus.me.uk · 17/08/2026

I've been working on improving my website a bunch recently, and wrote up a second round of things I did. Featuring: HTTP caching, precompression tweaks, and a teaser of one of my current larger projects! www.rachelplusplus.me.uk/blog/2026/08...

rachelplusplus.me.uk

Tidying up my website, part 2 - Rachel++

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Freya Holmér @freya.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

subfurface scattering

light scattering in salad's (the cat's) fur

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

ESA Earth Observation @esaearth.esa.int · 13/08/2026

Here comes the S̶u̶n̶ Moon 🌑 On 12 August, a total solar eclipse was visible across parts of Europe, while much of the continent experienced a partial eclipse. From space, MTG-I1 recorded the Moon’s shadow moving across Earth: www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... 📹ESA/Eumetsat

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Mara Bos @mara.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Curious how we've been improving Rust at Hexcat? Starting with June, our monthly updates are now publicly available on our website: hexcat.nl/updates/ #rustlang

hexcat.nl

Hexcat

Rust compiler engineering

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus.me.uk · 12/08/2026

Went to water my plants after the eclipse, and look who I caught trying to eat my turnips!

Three caterpillars hanging out on a turnip leaf. The caterpillars are quite long, yellow with black spots, and covered in tiny hairs for defence. They've chewed massive holes in the leaf they're on and the other adjacent turnip leaves.

Intermixed with the turnip leaves are long, narrow leaves from a different species of plant (Salsify) which they have not touched at all.

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

X ΘΔ (Giant Tyrant Overlord) @xkeeper.net · 08/08/2026

new blog post: self-hosting in the era of LLMs and cheap compute in general, about the kind of crap traffic i see day to day, as well as a more modern nuisance: claude code blog.xkeeper.net/the-cutting-...

blog.xkeeper.net

Self-hosting in the era of LLMs and cheap compute – Xkeeper's blog

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus.me.uk · 02/08/2026

Oh hell yeah, some of the Youtube ethnomusicologists I follow made something I've been wondering if they'd do for a while: A rendition of the opening of the Odyssey which is as historically accurate as possible given our current knowledge of ancient Greek music www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY4I...

youtube.com

The Odyssey's Opening - Ancient Greek Music feat. polýMATHY

YouTube video by Farya Faraji & World Musicians

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

DekoNSFW 👀👄👀 @dekonsfw.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

There will always be people who appreciate what YOU make, it just might take them a while to find you.

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus.me.uk · 28/07/2026

I did the thing I've been meaning to do for years, finally got the right push to do it: www.rachelplusplus.me.uk/blog/2026/07...

rachelplusplus.me.uk

Moving off Github - Rachel++

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Cliff Pervocracy @pervocracy.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

today I learned that before steel was invented, the most common way to light a fire was with flint and pyrite, which is why it's called that

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus.me.uk · 13/07/2026

I finally sent off something that has been hanging over my head for literal months. Really, really glad to be done with it, and looking forward to having all of that mental space back

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus.me.uk · 04/07/2026

Today I re-discovered Sudokuvania. It's... pretty much what you'd expect from the name: half a dozen Sudoku variants in a trenchcoat, and they're progressively unlocked as you go so that it isn't overwhelming at the start. sudokupad.app/6u61fsw0di?s... and an FAQ: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

sudokupad.app

Sudokuvania: Digits of Despair by Skeptical Mario (Sven's SudokuPad v0.611.0)

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Luna @moonbase.lgbt · 29/06/2026

playing with video processing again here's some birds leaving trails in the sky, processed from youtu.be/daFe_ygulPY

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Mara Bos @mara.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Someone made the mistake of getting me a UV laser engraving machine. ... (It was me.)

An egg with the word "egg" engraved into the shell. The top layer of the shell is gone and the layer below it is visible in those letters. There are no burnmarks or discolorations, somehow.

A goldfish cracker with text engraved/burned on there in a tiny font. The text is: "Do you think this is still safe to eat??"

A green leaf with the letters "hello world" cut out in the middle, held up to the sky.

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus.me.uk · 12/06/2026

I've been improving my image compression project on and off for the last six months or so. Today I got it to basically where I want it feature-wise, so I've put out an alpha release and written a quick little blog post about it: www.rachelplusplus.me.uk/blog/2026/06...

rachelplusplus.me.uk

Tinyavif v2.0 alpha - Rachel++

I've put out a preview of the next version of tinyavif. It's basically feature-complete to what I want v2.0 to be, and I've run some quick correctness tests, so it's ready for experimental use.

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus.me.uk · 05/06/2026

Video compression test files are funny because they're *enormous*. Today I found the good stuff (4K @ 50fps, 12-bit HDR, not chroma subsampled), and even with lossless compression it comes in about 42GB *per minute*

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus.me.uk · 31/05/2026

I'm happy to see that AV2 has been released! Very proud of having played a part in making this happen! av2.aomedia.org

av2.aomedia.org

AV2 Specification

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Rachel Barker @rachelplusplus.me.uk · 30/05/2026

New blog post: I spent a couple of days tidying up my website, and managed to reduce the amount of CSS I serve by a factor of 4, while making things prettier! www.rachelplusplus.me.uk/blog/2026/05...

rachelplusplus.me.uk

Tidying up my website - Rachel++

Rewriting my HTML+CSS to be simpler and prettier

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Gogledd the Otter @gogledd.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Beautiful day to be outside! (🎵 The Sherbourne Waltz, an old Morris dancing tune, on a Framus 7/20E concert zither)

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Keith Smith @drkeithsmith.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

The RAS calls for artificial light at night to be legally recognised as pollution, under the UK's Environment Act. This would provide a policy framework for regulating the increasing problem of light pollution, which harms people, animals and views of the night sky. 🔭🧪

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Reposted by Rachel Barker

Aura @aurahack.ca · 14/05/2026

knocked on my fucking ass browsing Tower Records in Shibuya and SEEING MY DAMN ART ON THE SHELF

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Freya Holmér @freya.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

okay so this whole, solving a linear system thing is, kind of a deep rabbit hole isn't it

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 09/05/2026

Reposted with alt text:

An image styled like a poster with the bold black title "START DOING MATH" at the top. Below is a bulleted list:

- "NUMBERS WERE ALWAYS MEANT TO BE GIVEN NAMES"
- "MILLEANIA OF RESEARCH yet NO REAL-WORLD use needed to justify this AMAZING SUBJECT"
- "Want to try using maths to model reality anyway? We have a tool for that: it's called 'APPLIED MATHEMATICS'"
- "'Can you have ZERO of something? Is there such a thing as INFINITY?' - Deranged statements that nonetheless can be rigorously defined and formalized"

Below the bullets: "LOOK at the Beautiful things mathematicians have created/discovered, using all of the calculators and computers that we have built for them" followed by "(This is REAL Math, done by REAL Mathematicians):"

Three images appear in a row, each captioned in red:
1. A purple and white 3D surface plot with sharp vertical spikes, labeled "3d plot of the gamma function"
2. A jagged multicolored 3D surface with peaks in yellow, orange, and blue, labeled "Numerical oscillations in 2d"
3. A symmetric polyhedron with triangular faces in red, green, blue, and yellow, labeled "Compound of five cubes"

At the bottom: "'Hello here's the Riemann Surface for f(z) = √z:'" next to a small image of a twisted rainbow-colored surface. The final line in bold reads: "They have done a wonderful job"

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