iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Sam Stokes

Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 11/10/2026

Why did nobody tell me you can have tastes at ice cream shops

Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 11/10/2026

@not2b I've given to some of the umbrella strategy funds like Swing Left that allocate to multiple local campaigns, and I think they just pass on my phone number to every one. As well as several texts a day from James Talarico, I'm hearing from candidates personally addressing me by name in […]

hachyderm.io

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 11/10/2026

#til Apparently when donating to a campaign via ActBlue, providing a phone number is optional and not part of the payment process? That would have been good to know. (Insight unlocked after responding "stop" to 30 separate text threads.)

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026

@kangaroo5383 champions of free speech around the world: "everyone stop saying mean things about us"

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 07/10/2026

Coding agents reduce software development to a simple matter of: * specifying requirements * verifying correctness and quality * maintaining and operating software you didn't write As we all know, those have always been the easiest, most well-understood parts of the craft, so everything is fine!

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

@b0rk also if there's an LLM involved, e.g. using Claude to resolve merge conflicts, the merge commits can be useful, since it can follow the graph better than I can and it isn't deterred by guitar hero

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

@b0rk I do use `git merge main`, so long as my branch is short lived (i.e. destined to be merged and deleted). The tools (CLI, GitHub) handle it reasonably in comparisons, e.g. PRs show just my branch's changes, not also the drift from main. Merging back to main works well, even for squash […]

hachyderm.io

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 01/10/2026

What is the best option right now for a "serverless homelab"? I want a machine I can ssh into, with persistent storage, and that can run cron jobs, but I don't want to have to install OS updates or manage a firewall. Seems like this must be a thing in the Year of Our Agent Lord 2026.

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 30/09/2026

Control Resonant is frenetic and fun, visually imaginative, but it seems much harder than its predecessor. I've never seen the reload screen so many times in the opening levels of a game.

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Matt McIrvin @mattmcirvin.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

For my friends and followers in the US: Are you registered to vote? If so, have you checked your voter registration to make sure it's still valid? (Your state government probably has a website where you can do it.) Do you have a plan for how you're going to vote (by mail, early, or on Election […]

mathstodon.xyz

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

@flyingsquirrel I was also screaming this at my screen at that moment. also how the "edge" of the black hole was SIX FEET FROM THE FORWARD HULL OF THE SHIP otherwise the least worst episode of this regrettable season.

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 23/09/2026

Experimentally vibe coding an app to plan out feeding schedules for my cats. So far it is scolding me.

Screenshot of an app showing a feeding schedule for two cats named Rocinante and Persephone. It shows a "daily calories" estimate with warnings for each cat that they are below target, plus some "checks" warning that wet food is left out too long.

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

You know that poem about "the widening gyre" / "things fall apart" that is so evocative of … all this? #til W.B. Yeats, who wrote it, was an enthusiastic (albeit temporary) supporter of fascist movements and disapproved of democracy. Gonna have to think about that next time I quote it.

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Persephone @perci.metapixl.com.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026

So Rude! Sister didn't like me saying she isn't Fluffy.

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Persephone @perci.metapixl.com.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026

My human left this out for me. I am going on a ADVENTURE. I think it will be like going to a Vet but fun instead of bad and pokey. My sister can't come because she is not Fluffy enough.

A brown and white Siamese cat with black face, ears and feet is nestled into an open blue suitcase, looking up at the camera.

A brown and white Siamese cat with black face, ears and feet is nestled into an open blue suitcase, looking out at the camera. Behind her sits a brown tabby cat, watching her.

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 29/08/2026

> We cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk's companies violating contracts. "In case you were wondering whether this was personal: it definitely fucking is" […]

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 19/08/2026

Paraphrasing, what software engineering organisations deliver isn't software, any more than what plumbers deliver is pipes.

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 19/08/2026

This is a pretty good articulation of why "now code is free" isn't ringing true. "Organisations don’t run on code. They run on trust." "everyone has assumed writing software is the same as software engineering" martinfowler.com/rachels-ramb...

martinfowler.com

Citizens Build, Agents Execute, Experts Govern

Why building an app over the weekend isn't the same as building enterprise software

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 19/08/2026

It's 0.5° out of square 😭 Sawing straight is hard. #HandTools #Woodworking

A wedge-shaped walnut fence sits on a flat walnut deck. A hand holds a combination square against the side of the deck, showing the fence is at a slight angle from the square's straight edge.

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 18/08/2026

I've started playing The Message From Deep Space and it's very satisfying. Distills first-contact science fiction (as in Arrival, Bobiverse, Project Hail Mary) into a puzzle game with a retro vibe and office banter to make it less dry […]

hachyderm.io

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 09/08/2026

More importantly this demonstrates the ruler is about 1½ reclining cats long

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 08/08/2026

I've been getting more adventurous with my #pourover #coffee, trying beans from trendy avant garde roasters. I'm taking my own tasting notes as a reference for dialling in the brew parameters for each new bag of beans. Today's tasting note: "intense marshmallow / dryer sheet"

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 28/07/2026

@marco even their core functionality has been shaky for a while. I bought a first generation Beam and it bricked itself - wouldn't connect to the Sonos cluster however many times I rebooted, reset or rediscovered it. Then it stopped working over HDMI too.

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 26/07/2026

This is a great, sober analysis of the actual practical effect of coding agents on software delivery. "The slowest part of verification was never the checking but accountability. [Agents don't speed this up because] it is not information processing. It is risk acceptance, and legal and trust […]

hachyderm.io

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 25/07/2026

You know you're #adulting when you're impatiently waiting for the dishwasher installers like they're fucking Santa Claus

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 24/07/2026

Successfully made the world's worst rhythm game

Screenshot of white text on black saying:
doof?
doof!true
doof?
doof!false

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 21/07/2026

@kangaroo5383 oh man I keep having to resist the urge to short it. Main thing stopping me is the emotional hedge - if I short it I will be annoyed if it goes up, but that is already the case, so I shouldn't double down

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Matt Blaze @mattblaze.federate.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/07/2026

In any case, my first suggestion for anyone interested in election security is to become a poll worker in your local jurisdiction. They need the help, you perform an important service to your neighbors, and you'll learn a TON about how elections actually work on the ground.

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 15/07/2026

I thought this long post was a good example of what real "employee ethical resistance" could actually look like, and reads differently from the usual "Why I quit (besides being fully vested)" post. This guy wasn't content with signing a petition, he conducted a pressure campaign against key […]

hachyderm.io

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 15/07/2026

#til bubbles.town it's a Fediverse-flavoured link aggregator (like Hacker News or Lobsters) focusing on non-tech independent blogs. Nice idea for #SmallWeb discovery.

bubbles.town

Bubbles

Independent blog posts, ranked by the community. Good stuff bubbles up. The rest pops.

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 03/06/2026

@b0rk with similar experiences, I've worried about b) too. I'd *like* to think that "how to carefully use LLMs to boost learning" is so different from "how to gleefully subcontract your job to a robot with minimal supervision" that it would actually moderate the hype rather than supporting it […]

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Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 03/06/2026

something I'm finding frustrating recently is a) I feel like LLMs have helped me learn some programming things that were hard for me to learn previously b) I'm tired of LLMs being relentlessly pushed on us and do not want to participate in that by talking about my positive experiences c) there […]

social.jvns.ca

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 26/05/2026

I've been writing a toy neural network library as a hobby project, and I've got to the point where it can recognise handwritten digits pretty accurately. Because this is a learning exercise, I'm visualising the training process and network weights, and it's […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

A visualisation of a neural network recognising handwritten digits. It shows an example zero, a (highly inaccurate) prediction, and the network weights, rendered as an image for each node in the hidden layer. The nodes resemble blotchy but clearly identifiable digits like 9, 2 and 0.

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 27/05/2026

This was a good reminder that sometimes reason and empathy can win against the stupid, cruel and expedient: > I see the cynicism. I understand it too. If we can move beyond cynicism and talk about the merit of open source, we can make a difference for the open source community. Not the biggest […]

hachyderm.io

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 26/05/2026

What's meta-interesting is both how spooky and unfamiliar that is - I don't actually know *how* it recognises digits, which is not how I'm used to thinking about software I wrote - but also how mundane it is. It's just pushing numbers around until they give the right answer. The spookiness comes […]

hachyderm.io

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 26/05/2026

It's also helping build intuition for how modern LLMs work. Although they're a lot more sophisticated in every way, they still have a lot in common with my toy implementation. For example, there's evidence that they can regurgitate large parts of their training […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

A visualisation of a neural network recognising handwritten digits. On the left are several example images. In the middle are the network weights, which look like greyscale mountain ranges on a map. If you squint some of them look a bit like parts of digits...?

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 26/05/2026

Partly I wanted to do this to understand backpropagation. It's fairly magical in practice - you write a program that's wrong, and if you don't like the output it gives you, backprop tells you how to adjust the program to get a better output. Do that enough times and your wrong program becomes […]

hachyderm.io

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 26/05/2026

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 12/05/2026

Does anyone have background on the shift from tech companies having "values" to instead having "operating principles"? I assume it came from some VC group text. Today's GitLab announcement follows that playbook - retiring a written list of values without replacement, instead offering operating […]

hachyderm.io

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 12/05/2026

@riffraff yeah, but I actually think some of the abstract "why" is necessary, both ethically (e.g. do you sell computers to the military?) and pragmatically (if you employ both humans who object to selling to the military, and humans who object to refusing to sell to the military, they might […]

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 12/05/2026

hachyderm.io

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 27/04/2026

Switched my laptop over to Niri (scrolling window manager) + DankMaterialShell and it's quite delightful. I've been a tiling WM diehard for over a decade, but I like how the scrolling model means you can have two windows that together take up *slightly more than the width of your screen* and […]

hachyderm.io

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Jesse Karmani @jesseplusplus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/01/2025

Hey everyone! I wanted to share a little bit about why I’m building @frequency and what we’re working on. First, we’re a very small team of two—me as a full-time developer and a part-time designer moving toward full-time. We strongly oppose the use of addictive, manipulative algorithms & […]

mastodon.social

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Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 02/12/2025

It's over, Anakin, I have the high ground

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