iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

I didn't think it was possible to feel nostalgic about something I've just heard for the first time today, but here I am! Now excuse me while I dig out my baggy jeans and head to the pit...

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Jen Gentleman @jenmsft.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Explaining legacy code to new employees

This man looks absolutely crazy. Also there appears to be some sort of crime scene map behind him as he gestures wildly

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Ah, I thought I recognised Lenzie station. I grew up there, so spent many a rainy morning waiting for the train into Queen Street there!

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 11/10/2026

Elon just blasted his home address to his 240 million followers along with his order number and last 4 of his Amex charge card while shilling grok bot. Someone else canceled his order.

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Alina Pereverzieva 🇺🇦 @perevaa.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

And now the best part: Bot traffic from the #Yandex network has plunged to near zero following the strike on its Vladimir data center. Bot traffic includes automated requests from search crawlers, scrapers and other online services. Twitter must be a ghost town by now.

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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The backstory: Ukrainian drones struck a Yandex supercomputer facility in Vladimir, taking it out. Suddenly, bot activity in US social media fell by 49%, confirming suspicions that this was the site of a massive Russian influence operation targeting US social media—mostly targeting MAGA.

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Tall Story Games 🔜 AdventureX @tallstorygames.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Wait a second? You like British comedy AND old-school #pointandclick #adventuregames? Better stick this on your wishlist then 👉 heirofthedog.co.uk/steam #IndieDev #IndieGame #PixelArt

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I remember finding mod4win on a magazine cover-disc and thinking it looked so futuristic in its design. Those 7 segment LEDs and the octagonal button designs were peak UI design in my opinion!

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I'm sure I've seen this episode of Brassic...

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Proper software engineering! Did you roll your own compression standard, or did you implement some standard that already existed?

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I wish modern games had original soundtracks like this!

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Engineer Brains @hhackenbecker.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Got one or more Macs suffering inexplicable kernel panics? Look for a Windows 10 or 11 machine on the same network. #macOS #Windows11

Following up on my post about editing Macs kernel panicking on 10 GbE SMB: we think we've found the cause. It reads like a murder mystery, so here's the story.

The crime scene. Since late June, our editors' Macs had been kernel panicking several times a day, often several at once. It hit Mac Studios and 2019 Mac Pros on three different macOS 26 builds. Every panic report had the same assertion deep in the kernel's network buffer code (m->m_flags & M_PKTHDR, in dlil_input). They only happened on machines mounting our NAS over 10 GbE with jumbo frames.

The obvious suspect. An EDR system extension had installed on those Macs the same evening the panics started. It was the only system change common to every machine that was crashing, so it looked guilty, and we (and the vendor) went after it hard. We turned off its network filter and the Macs still panicked. We uninstalled it completely and they still panicked. The timing was a coincidence. It was simply the one change we could see, because we were only looking at the Macs.

Ruling people out. Server-side packet captures showed the Macs dying mid-SMB-read, which pointed at the SMB client. Changing a macOS networking setting didn't help. macOS 26.7 didn't help. The switch log gave us the key clue: in each event, only the Macs' ports went down, often within seconds of each other, across different hardware and OS builds. Something was hitting all of them at the same moment, and it wasn't coming from inside any one of them.

The stakeout. Server-side captures only show traffic to and from the server. What we needed was everything a Mac receives from anyone on the network. So we set up port mirroring on the switch: the port for one of the most-affected Macs was copied to a spare Mac running tcpdump (headers only, in a rolling set of files). Then we waited. The panics are bursty, so of course it went quiet as soon as we started watching.

The reveal. Friday evening it finally panicked while being recorded. The Mac was idle, with no SMB traffic for ten minutes. The last thing it received, about one second before its link dropped, was a burst of about 60 mDNS packets in 25 milliseconds from a Windows 11 PC on the same network, many of them over 4 KB (jumbo frames). The PC was running Windows Delivery Optimization's local peer discovery (_dosvc._tcp), apparently stuck in a name-conflict loop. Looking back across the whole capture, every panic lined up with that PC's mDNS traffic, including a routine every-5-minutes announcement that took out Macs as fast as they reconnected. When the PC went quiet for five hours, nothing crashed.

That's the twist. We had spent weeks examining the victims, and nothing on the Macs was the culprit. The killer was a machine that had nothing to do with editing: a Windows PC on the same network, sending poison packets to every Mac at once. You'd never find it by looking at the Macs, only by watching the wire.

Our working theory: large multicast packets arriving at a Mac with an active SMB session hit a macOS kernel bug. The SMB session is the precondition, and the Windows PC's mDNS traffic is the trigger.

The fix (for now). On the PC we set Delivery Optimization to Simple mode (DODownloadMode = 99), and the announcements stopped. We're watching to confirm the panics stop too, and it's all been reported to Apple.

If you're seeing something similar: Macs panicking together on a jumbo-frame network with Windows 10/11 PCs on it? Check for _dosvc mDNS traffic. More broadly, if your crashing machines don't share an obvious cause, look at what else is on the network. A managed switch's port mirroring to a spare machine running tcpdump is an underrated way to see what really reaches a client before it dies.

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 21/09/2026

LMFAO -- Trump is holding an event at the White House right now but there's no audio because the press pool isn't there. The Newsmax host notes that this is an example of Trump's attacks on the press "backfiring just a little bit"

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I was always gutted I never saw my birth year on clothing like this - there were lots one year earlier and later, but it seems my year was just not cool enough!

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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

my brilliant colleague @robertshrimsley.bsky.social on the threat from Elon Musk’s X platform www.ft.com/content/f270...

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

My only recent experience comes from watching @adriansdigitalbasement.com videos on YouTube

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DiscussingFilm @discussingfilm.net · 08/09/2026

Trey Parker & Matt Stone announce that ‘SOUTH PARK’ will be renamed to ‘SOUTH AMERICA’. “Inspired by the bravery & patriotism of Apple & Google, we are changing the name of South Park to SOUTH AMERICA. We especially want to thank our parent company Paramount -- a Skydance Capitulation.”

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I had totally forgotten about EDOS! John Menzies used to have a section at the back where I lived, that either had the normal mini boxed games for 7.99, or a million budget games from EDOS for 2.99. I wonder if anyone has one of the EDOS PCs in their collection?

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I did benchmark this afterwards and found that assigning some decimal values to a variable is quicker than others. 205.9 being quicker to assign than 205.1 for example. I wrote a test basic program that graphs this - I'll try to upload it somewhere sensible

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Wish I had tried to sneak a photo of it now, but they had 'no photography allowed' posters everywhere! My rebellious days are behind me, clearly! 😂

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

It was a small building, or cathedral possibly? Maybe 25cm tall or thereabouts. I didn't get too close too it - there were lots of people in the room at the same time, so it was a bit crowded. I've wanted to visit the house for years, but it's so rarely open that I jumped at the chance this weekend!

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I visited Elton House today, and saw some intricate bone carvings in the gorgeous octagonal room near the entrance. The guide said that they were potentially carved by the POWs at Normal Cross, which I thought was interesting!

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I had assumed a DOS mouse driver would have only sent relative coordinates since they were last sent, rather than absolute values. But then again, touchscreens from ELO did exist for DOS, so I suppose apps must have supported absolute positioning as well? Intrigued to know how this all works now!

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Best news I've read all week! Those seats are awful!

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REwadent Evil @ewacat.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Incredible automated YouTube subtitles have the director of the FBI in the 1930s as a man named Jed Garoover

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Russell Parker @pussellrarker.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Amazing Here’s Talking Pictures TV having a go at spelling Beelzebub

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Amrk @amrk.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

I googled her name and she’s a health policy researcher who writes think tank reports about gambling harms, we have found the patron saint of UK Bluesky

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tinymattresses @tinymattresses.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

UK councils get funding based on how many people are registered to vote in their area. That's why they're so precious about it. If you want your council to have money for you, REGISTER TO VOTE!

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Anyone else worried that we are about to experience the Helvetica Scenario whenever the severe alerts go out? No? Just me?

youtu.be

The Helvetica Scenario

YouTube video by Verumex

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James Felton @jimmfelton.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

It’s going to take a few more of these emergency alerts before I remember not to shit myself and close it instantly

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Scott Bryan @scottygb.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

FYI if you are a radio station eagerly trying to find a guest to talk about a star’s recent terminal cancer diagnosis. Do keep in mind in case the person you are asking has been personally affected by cancer in the last year.

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WerewolfbarmitzvAlex @skippingjack.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

On the bike back from work I remembered the Radio Edit of Still DRE swapped "Motherfuckering" with "One and Only". Pleased to report it works in reverse with Chesney Hawkes.

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

You've now given me ideas about making my smart light switches play the Doom 'wall move' sound effect from another rooms smart speaker when pressed... 😂

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Bethany Black @bethanyblack.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Solar eclipse coming up so here’s one of my favourite maps

Top is a map of the US with “Google search volume for “eyes hurt” April 3 to April 10 2024” with a hot line running from Texas north east through to Maine. The bottom map shows the path of the total solar eclipse which runs in a lone from Texas through to Maine

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Changing to 205.1 adds 800ms at 16s. 205.9 seems to add 650ms at 15.85s. 205.0 shaves 200ms at 15s. 205 with no decimal place is quickest at 10.9s, which makes sense. Any idea why the values change the speed? It could be an emulation quirk, but I thought if anyone would know, it would be you. 2/2

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

@8bitshowandtell.bsky.social I have a 10-print question for you. I was messing around and found (via unscientific means) that the speed changes depending on the exact value used in place of 205.5. I used a for loop, and loop 1000 times. My baseline value using 205.5 is 15.2s. 1/2

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Ugh, that really sucks 😞

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London & Southeast🔅 @thesnowdreamer.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Today experienced the 24th day of year hitting 30C in London. For perspective in whole of 1980s we had 21 days.

static.klipy.com

The Office: Woman Holding 'HOT' Sign

ALT: The Office: Woman Holding 'HOT' Sign

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Russ Jones @russincheshire.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

In the meantime, take your kids here. They have a FANTASTIC tour, absolutely stunning. It's worth every penny. Exiting live "lectures" for kids, play with space toys, look at astronaut stuff. Bliss. And it's a lovely area too - go to Old Hall in Sandbach for dinner afterwards. You'll thank me.

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I had wondered this as well...

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Ah, that's unlocked a memory from when my primary school upgraded from BBC Masters to Macs, and I wondered what the little buttons on the CD-ROM did... 😂

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Alan Fleming @radioal.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Does this have the mechanical SCSI ID selector dial with the up/down buttons at the back?

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James McLeod @jamespmcleod.ca · 22/07/2026

It's safe to assume that all major LLMs are scraping Bluesky data to train future models. As an open protocol, Bluesky is one of the few sources of fresh human-generated content that anybody can gobble up. So all this is probably going in the models. There are submarines in the Great Lakes.

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