iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

iiinova is part of the Atmosphere — an open, public network where you own your identity.

Sean Coates

@sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy

34 followers 2 following 827 posts

Tricking software into working since the 1980s. I do all kinds of tech things. Here you'll find: rants, ops/devops, microcontrollers, electronics, food, beer, opinions, and […] 🌉 bridged from ⁂ scoat.es/@sean, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

Posts Replies Media

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

Despite much of this reading as a confirmation of what I’d fear about working for a government organization, and a sad account of why things didn’t work as well as they’d hoped, I’m so glad @sboots wrote about this. I’ve been casually curious about these kinds of mechanics since CDS really […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

Finding myself with a little time to spend in the town where I grew up ( #Moncton , New Brunswick, on the east coast of Canada). Things have changed a lot here in the 25+ years since I moved away (as I would expect). Currently having a coffee at an espresso bar that used to be a laundromat (and […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

Back east for a late family thanksgiving visit. Today I was driving my 94 year old grandmother to dinner and we passed a Cybertruck. There aren’t a lot of Cybertrucks in this part of the world. As we got close to it, she said “what is that thing? It looks like a child’s toy!” Exactly.

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

Sometimes this is just… bleak. - ___ is a next-generation sports betting and gaming platform built for a new wave of players. - "Cracked engineers only" - ___ ’s unified AI platform combines conversational AI agents, real-time human agent augmentation, and comprehensive conversation […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

@ocramius Ah, yeah. I'm talking t3.nano or .micro instances on AWS mostly, from an AMI. Anyway; got burned by that enough times that I thought it was worth mentioning, but you've got it handled.

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

@ocramius FWIW, I also tend to manually mount a swap disk before the first [re]build on low-memory (<~2GB) NixOS [cloud] systems because it SURE does not like running out of RAM.

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 11/10/2026

It can send now. "This is a Nintendo” analyzer.montrealmesh.ca/#/packets/…

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 11/10/2026

Today in fun projects to cope with the state of the world: My #Nintendo (#NES) receives #MeshCore now. (#OneROM powered.)

The partially-assembled NES cart.

The MESHNES cart in the NES

Television display of the NES. These messages came in over the mesh.

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026

@evert I haven't been before, but it looks like a good time. We're planning to have exhibitor tables for @foulab. Definitely say hi if you see me!

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026

Temporarily defeated by this #NeXTcube power supply issue. Running out of time before #VCF #Montreal. It works for about 15 mins, then shuts down. Fails to start a few times. Then starts and runs for ~15 mins. Motherboard battery is good. No caps look bad. No leaks […] [Original post on scoat.es]

The inside of the NeXTcube power supply.

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

@b0rk Yes! Perpetually recurring conversation with the 14-year-old; most recently yesterday in the context of how much something cost: “[mention of something that might make a good Christmas gift]” "Oh, cool. Did you see how much it was?” "Hmm. I think $25.” "You think $25? Or you saw that […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

@evan If you had… say… a million dollars, how much of it would (would) you spend?

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

*youth techno-cult leader voice* > You know who wouldn't make that kind of mistake? LLMs.

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026

Done with talking about Québec politics after this, but: - Minority governments are more representative of the people. It'll be harder for the PQ to suck. 👍 - The CAQ are… as they say… *finding out*. Glad they won't be burning things down anymore. 👍 - Montreal will actually have representation […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

What in the Jobs? (Seems exercising it brought out the power supply gremlins, so now it’s a hardware problem before the networking problem… We didn’t know this was called yak shaving in 1991.)

The inside of the NeXTcube, back cover removed.

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

It appears that this #NeXT Cube I'm working on (at @foulab ) was last set up to connect to `IPBROADCAST=132.206.3.255`, which is a #McGill IP block. Anyone in #Montreal got a greybeard IT connection at McGill that could tell me more about the cube? I'm afraid at least some of the lore has been […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

@GarrickWinter I'm no political scientist, but I think at least part of it is that there are so many people 55-74 years old, and the two blocks in that range have the highest turnout, and that 18-34 (also two blocks) have the lowest turnout. See “Graphique 9" (page 19/20) here […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

@maj I mean… I couldn't fit it into my last reply, but I did consider that the reason it’s easier on Facebook might be a conspiracy with whatever disinformation campaign botnet makes them the most money…

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

@maj I agree that it SHOULD be better; I'd love it if more systems empowered their users instead of their owners. In “ancient" times, this was indeed easier, too. phpBB is probably one server. Today we have highly distributed systems that are optimized for reads and relatively occasional writes […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

On the eve of the #Quebec provincial #election, here are 2 things to remember: 1) First Past the Post is broken. Polling is showing that the PQ will win a majority with ~30% of the vote, and that is completely undemocratic. (Though I'm slightly hopeful that they will win a minority only, as […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

“During the test phase of the WWW project, the port number to which the daemon listens was 2784. W3 has officially allocated port number 80. Servers should use port 80 and advertise their address with the explicit port number (i.e. host:80/etc…).” –1992 This stuff is fascinating.

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

@maj I realize this might be rhetorical, but writing is waaaay less work than removing (and writing again (“editing”)). Architecturally, it makes sense to give it some friction, if that's where they're pinched. Sincerely trying to be helpful and sorry if it’s not. Doubly sorry if you already […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

My geolocation-targetting ads sure are messed up after travelling across Canada by land in the past 3 weeks.

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

[Why did the solderer have a hard time making connections?] He had no flux left to give. (sorry/not sorry)

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

“First import of WWW Library source files. (not in working state)” 1993-Feb-03 github.com/w3c/libwww/commit/edb735… It's truly amazing that this is still out there, and readily available (once I was able to find it).

w3c/libwww@edb7353

First import of WWW Library source files. (not in working state)

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

HTDaemon.c-Tim-development www.w3.org/Daemon/old/HTDaemon.c-Ti…

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

It's a weird thing when: - spinning my wheels on not finding something (WWWDaemon source code for NeXT Cube, in this case) - finally give up and ask [specific] others for help - IMMEDIATELY find the thing I asked about, before anyone could have possibly helped (I deleted the original post […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

Please hit me up if you've got a [paid] project for this! I think this kind of thing is *especially* useful to shops that already have an iOS team with good Swift background, but even without iOS, Swift is a solid server side language that doesn't get enough love […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

I've caught myself looking at job postings the way I look at cocktail bar menus. “Oh, this one sounds good. It's got a whole bunch of things I like, and sounds well-balanced. I could see myself drinking this. Going to ord… ROSEWATER?! Nope.” “Oh, this one sounds good. It's got a whole bunch of […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

There's so much overlap between my “How We Got Here" piece and @pluralistic 's "Technopolitics" essay that I was legitimately a little worried that I accidentally stole some of his for mine. I was very relieved to find that I wrote mine a month earlier. (I *have* been listening to Cory preach […]

Original post on scoat.es

Reposted by Sean Coates

PAIGE! @paige.canadiancivil.com · 29/09/2026

Very solid and concise summary of where we are at. #Quebec www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJT2fcuiLTk

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

@paige Thanks for posting this. I hadn't seen it. Nice to see @fairvote.ca represented, too.

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 25/09/2026

FWIW #HeyRosetta moved the show to Metropolis (which is what it was called before we let the giant rich companies buy everything; MTELUS now) and I got tickets this morning. Haven’t been this excited for a show since going to their last one in St. John’s in 2017!

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 25/09/2026

Yesterday, in the one-block walk through the park between VIA Rail’s VCVR station and the local public transit platform, I saw someone injecting, someone else defecating, and another group of people sharing a pipe. I bet that was a pretty rough introduction to the city for the large number of […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

Arrived at VCVR. What an amazing experience. 🚂 Also, while I was mostly offline for 4+ days, my favourite band, Hey Rosetta, got back together, announced a tour, sold all of the tickets (maybe some still available in the morning), announced more shows, and sold all […] [Original post on scoat.es]

Train #1 clearing a tunnel in Jasper National Park

A view from the dome, with the train bending ahead on the picturesque reflective lake and with the Rockies in the background

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

@sesivany Thanks! It was incredible. I hope to do it again someday. I’ve never done it by car.

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

@sesivany (And I doubt a cross-Canada LoRa network would ever actually be possible, practically speaking. Population density too low and… Canada is really big. I travelled 5000km this week and I missed some on the west and a lot on the east.)

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

@sesivany In Montreal, it was following Ottawa’s lead. Not quite sure why they chose 3 over 2, but I like to think they generally know what they’re doing. (-:

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

@sesivany Yep; definitely not realistic. We’ve been discussing disallowing vanity prefix generation on the #montreal mesh, too. This is interesting data. (We also recommend 3-byte, but the tyranny of the default is real indeed.) I like that closest-match strategy. It’s imperfect but better than […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

Here’s an interesting part of the cross-country #meshcore experiment that I wasn’t expecting: my contacts list has been full since the GTA. I haven’t made time to prune it, and didn’t realize the importance of this. I just received a message from “Claire in PDX” […] [Original post on scoat.es]

Screenshot showing a 9 hop message, but with repeaters from YUL (and other places).

Screenshot of a map showing this message bounced coast to coast (it did not).

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

Nearing the last of the #meshcore reports: - no repeats but direct replies in Jasper (sorry I didn’t see and reply in time @HUTT-6BD) - saw contacts but no messages going through Kelowna (while sleeping) - repeats but no response in Chilliwack; unrelated chatter from 8 hops away! Probably one […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

I was going to post about how great of a place this is for reading, but frankly as far as the reading goes, it’s terrible. Constantly looking up to gasp at the scenery.

iPad with the Rust book, a train window, and the Fraser river. 😍

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 23/09/2026

Slept through Saskatoon but saw some #Meshcore repeats at #Edmonton station. And some friendly Public channel chatter while walking the length of the train on the platform, and getting some fresh air.

Companion radio with Edmonton station sign out the cabin window

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 23/09/2026

There’s an interesting (and unfortunate; I’ve been on some late VIA trains but never this late) cascading/compounding problem when a train misses its schedule and the rest of its required sidings and yields snowball. Delays + engine trouble yesterday even led to […] [Original post on scoat.es]

Screen shot of the VIA tracker:

• Major delay +15h00min
1(09-20) TORONTO → VANCOUVER
Next stop: Watrous

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026

Halfway through the scheduled trip time, we are still in Winnipeg. We’ve been here for 4 hours so far. We had no power or water for an hour or so while they switched out our engines. VIA’s tracker shows 12 1/2 hours late. I don’t actually have any real reason to hate Winnipeg, but this song […]

Original post on scoat.es

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026

First #meshcore contact along the journey, in #Winnipeg.

Meshcore radio from the window of my train cabin, Winnipeg in the background.

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026

Not quite even to Manitoba yet. Ontario is huge. (And running almost 10h late now.)

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026

Home for the next 97+ hours. Toronto to Vancouver. Excited to see the parts of Canada I’ve only ever flown over. #viarail #thecanadian

The exterior of VIA Rail train #1

Cabin for 1

Skyline dome car still inside Union Station

A view from the dome, with the rest of Train #1 curving ahead (behind; we’re reversing).

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026

@olivier Really looking forward to it. First time. So much landscape I’ve never seen.

Sean Coates @sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026

@olivier Yep. Westbound. On Sunday.