< Notes...

Something really must had happened at SendGrid, but can’t find any bona fide source to be certain. In the last four days I have gotten at least two emails per day impersonating them, trying to trick me into entering my credentials on a fake SendGrid page.

As I foresee that my Postcrossing notes, at some point, might inundate the front page (see how hopeful I am? 😅), I decided that it was best to hide them from it. They will still be under their tag and, of course, searchable.

Emails sent from iCloud+ (custom domain) to various Microsoft domains (outlook.com, hotmail.com, msn.com) keep bouncing with “please contact your internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list”. Of course, the “internet service provider” is a red-herring. It’s email service provider; it’s Apple.

You would think the giants have their relationships figured out, eh? Apparently not. This only happens with Microsoft, though, no one else.

Came across the UniFi Travel Router on George’s very well written post. What an amazing little device! I know I don’t need one because, sadly, I don’t travel often enough to take full advantage of it, but as I commented on his post, I am going to ask Horsie to budget for one, as a want (yeah, I am setting my expectations low 😜).

I feel morally obligated to say I did not write the code in this repository myself. This project is an exploration of using LLMs to carry out tasks based on my direction. The majority of prompts I used to get here were derived using the socratic method, genuine curiosity, and a hunch that NVMe supporting inference is underutilized despite being a (slow but) perfectly valid form of memory.

Translation: I slopcoded this sh*t. Not that it is super bad, I just found funny the way it was written.

➝ Via Hacker News.

These release notes are painstakingly and lovingly hand-crafted by human Ghostty maintainers, including the full changelog. They take a combined 16+ hours to write, so please enjoy. 🥰

Just upgraded to the very shiny Ghostty version 1.3.0. In a world where almost any application update boringly reads “bugs fixes and improvements”, Ghostty 1.3.0 release notes are something to appreciate, and admire.

Fitness, with its time to stand up nagging truly needs to back off. I mean, I am sitting on the toilet, trying to do what we all do, you know, and not even there it gives up. Next I know, “Time to stand up” comes up, like, really?! Bugger off!

While I still prefer using the OS default applications, I have decided, for the time being, to use Ghostty as my default terminal application on macOS (maybe on Linux too, we’ll see). I find it fast, highly configurable—but not as cumbersome to configure as iTerm2—, and simple. Having used iTerm2 in the past, it was relatively easy for me to break my vanillist vow on this one.

Another MacBook tomorrow? That wouldn’t make much sense, would it? Unless Apple is going for the unexpected. I am still hoping to see a new Apple TV. Let’s go!

Update: 04 Mar 2026 @ 10:33:02

Well, what do you know? The rumours were true. Allow me to present you the new MacBook Neo. Wow!

Hacker News user std_move succinctly lists a few points that they believe make the MacBook Air “the best laptop for the general consumer around $1k”. They mention that “it has no fan, thus completely silent, high resolution display without flickering, and with reasonable response times, best-in-class hardware, very very efficient, amazing single thread performance, good multi thread, very good GPU, no Microsoft Windows annoyances […] amazing battery life”, and they go on.

I am an Apple fan and, thus, perhaps my opinion bears no weight, but I happen to fully agree.

Apple is on a roll this week! Six new/upgraded products, so far: iPad, iPhone, Studio Display, M5, Pro, and Max processors, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air. Woah! And still there is one more thing, or more!

Redirect links from Twitter (now known as a bloody hellhole) to Xcancel, you know, for “the rest of us”.

javascript:void(location.href='https://www.xcancel.com'+location.pathname);

Create a bookmarklet with the above, and use it while on the tweet you are wanting to share, then share the new link.

With work, life, and other news taking precedence, I completely missed that Apple plans to unveil, allegedly, up to five different products next week, starting tomorrow. I will take this small distraction, for sure!

I finally decided to cut off Substack and Medium posts from Hacker News, as they don’t provide a way to filter the posts I see. I use uBlock, so it all boiled down to a filter.

news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing:has(span.sitestr:has-text(/substack\.com|medium\.com/))
news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing:has(span.sitestr:has-text(/substack\.com|medium\.com/)) + tr
news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing:has(span.sitestr:has-text(/substack\.com|medium\.com/)) + tr + tr.spacer

With those three lines under “My filters” all entries with those two domains in it simply do not show, as if they never existed. Now, there is no escape from those who use them with a custom domain. 😩

I chuckle and, often, laugh out loud, when I see people posting screenshots of their desktop, stating that they “love <insert a Linux distribution here>”. The screen they show is the exact same one as everyone else’s—after all, a lot of people uses Gnome—just with a wallpaper they happen to like. 🤭

Even though I moved away from using 1Password in 2023, Horsie wasn’t able to do so. With their upcoming price increase she now promises, for sure, “cross my heart and hope to die”, to she will stop using it before our next renewal date comes up (November 2026).

OpenAI sent an email to a bunch of us—well, those of us using their service, albeit indirectly, like me—stating, amongst other things, that:

Ads may appear on Free and Go plans. You’ll get relevant and personalized ads using information that stays only on ChatGPT, such as ads you’ve interacted with, or context from your chats. You can manage personalization anytime in settings.

No, thank you. This little nugget was also added:

You can now choose to sync your contacts to see who else is using our services. This is completely optional.

Also no, thank you. Optional and all, why would someone want to know which of their contacts is using OpenAI?

Microsoft 365 services, or whatever they’ve picked to call them this week, have been down, affected, on/off, for a few hours now. If there are services I could care less whether they are up, or down, these are them. Yet, they have made the news, and are the topic of internal work chatter.

Each time I tell the kid he should upgrade his iPhone because critical security fixes were released, he jokes, and complains, and tells me all his friends are using even older iOS and nothing ever happens to them. He tells me I am too paranoid. It annoys and concerns me quite a bit. I don’t want to be the proverbial shoemaker, whose children go barefoot.

Apple’s Fitness needs to chill, really. Not even five minutes after waking up, and not even one sitting on the loo, its “Time to stand up” command is getting a little bit out of control.

The one thing I wanted and planned to do during the holidays that I did not do was migrate to a new VPS. It simply didn’t happen. And that’s fine; it will have to be. In fact, it’s for the best, because I am certain I don’t want to be on the Fediverse anymore—which is a service I would have migrated had I proceeded as planned.

I don’t quite have my bearings in 2026 yet, but I trust I will soon.

“Verify you are human by completing the action below.” No. It was a 50-50 before; I would either verify, or navigate away. Nowadays I just close the tab.

Donut Lab’s all-solid-state battery delivers 400 Wh/kg of energy density, enabling longer range, lighter structures, and unprecedented flexibility in vehicle and product design. It can be charged to full in just five minutes without limiting charging to 80%, and supports full discharge safely, repeatedly, and reliably.

And:

Unlike conventional lithium-ion batteries, the Donut Battery experiences minimal capacity fade over its lifetime, with a design life of up to 100,000 cycles, offering practical longevity that far exceeds existing technologies. Safety is built in at the core: no flammable liquid electrolytes, no thermal runaway chains, and no metallic dendrites. This eliminates the root causes of battery fires, making the Donut Battery extremely safe and truly revolutionary.

And:

Performance has been rigorously tested across extreme conditions. At –30°C, the battery retains over 99% of its capacity, and when heated to temperatures exceeding 100°C, it continues to retain over 99% capacity with no signs of ignition or degradation.

The Donut Lab solid state battery is made entirely from abundant, affordable, and geopolitically safe materials, does not rely on rare or sensitive elements, and demonstrates a lower cost than lithium-ion.

I had to quote all of that because it sounds incredible; it addresses battery issues found in the current leading EVs. I truly want to believe: we need better, affordable, and abundant batteries. Yet, we will have to wait and see.

➝ Via Hacker News.

Halloy has come a long way since I first saw it posted on Hacker News. It does looks really good, and it is quite customisable. Hard to beat a web based one, but still.

“MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (December 4, 1995) – Netscape Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: NSCP) and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW), today announced JavaScript, an open, cross-platform object scripting language for the creation and customization of applications on enterprise networks and the Internet. The JavaScript language complements Java, Sun’s industry-leading object-oriented, cross-platform programming language. The initial version of JavaScript is available now as part of the beta version of Netscape Navigator 2.0, which is currently available for downloading from Netscape’s web site. "

➝ Via Hacker News.

AT&T is offering us, for a bargain price of $25 in addition to what we already pay, to upgrade to their “most advanced Wi-Fi package”, which is pretty much a device upgrade to one that supports Wi-Fi 7. The thing is, we don’t use their Wi-Fi, we have our own router, and access point, and almost none of our devices supports Wi-Fi 7 yet. I wonder how many will bite on that offer not knowing any better.

I forgot to note that this issue with the Spotlight was fixed on macOS 26.1. I know we tend to complain, and blame Apple for the obvious gaffes they make, but they will eventually get their act together, and come through.

The problem I have with feeds (not feed readers) is that most will only give us a small summary—if we are lucky! RSS/Atom/JSON feeds with next to no content are simply, and unequivocably, worthless.

“The issue was not caused, directly or indirectly, by a cyber attack or malicious activity of any kind. Instead, it was triggered by a change to one of our database systems’ permissions which caused the database to output multiple entries into a “feature file” used by our Bot Management system. That feature file, in turn, doubled in size. The larger-than-expected feature file was then propagated to all the machines that make up our network.”

Cloudflare’s entire blog post goes on to explain that they made a “boo-boo”, and how they are not going to do it again. At least not the same way.

“Based on replacement costs, Eugen’s time and effort, and the fair market value of the Mastodon brand, its associated properties, and the social network, we settled on a one-time compensation of €1M.”

Eugen Rochko is stepping down as Mastodon’s CEO, staying “in an advisory role” with Mastodon’s team. €1M ain’t much, but I figure he enjoyed what he did.

It is next to impossible to get an account on Hetzner. I have tried twice in the past, and just when I thought I was home free, the account gets locked, and/or extra ridiculous¹ documentation is requested (which I refuse to furnish). Great prices they have, innaccessible they are for the rest of us.

I now have a plan to—finally!—migrate to a new VPS. Well, I have a timeframe, actually. I will be using some of the free time I will have during the holidays to end this saga. I will also add a couple of other services to my selfhosted collection. Running my own IRCd is on the tentative list, as I am not quite sure about it.

On this one, which I use every once in a while to count the amount of notes per year, Lyse came up with a much more streamlined solution. Thanks, mate!

(for file in *.md; do \
    grep --max-count=1 'date:' "$file" | \
    sed 's/date.*\([[:digit:]]\{4\}\).*/\1/'; \
done) | sort | uniq -c

After so much wait for iOS 26.1, and the inclusion of Vietnamese for use in Live Translation, I feel nothing short of dissappointed. Mum says the translation is an abomination, and begged me to, please, not to use it. Sometimes she gets confused with the service being used, but the end result is what matters. She messaged me, using her classical english:

“Stop writing in Vietnamese. Translate from google, totally different from what you think or what you want to say.”

I completely agree with the OP on this need for attention to details. I like it, and I try to adhere to it as much as I can. See the #elders tag, for example. Compare it to the #family tag. See the “1 note”, and the “5 notes”. A small detail, but it shows caring.

➝ Via Hacker News.

If this comes true, that is, front facing camera and Face ID components becoming invisible on a 20th Anniversary iPhone, then it will be my time to upgrade.

“Imagine applying for a job. You know you’re a strong candidate with a standout résumé. But you don’t even get a call back.

You might not know it, but an artificial intelligence algorithm used to screen applicants has decided that you are too risky. Maybe it inferred you wouldn’t fit the company culture or you’re likely to behave in some way later on that might cause friction (such as joining a union or starting a family). Its reasoning is impossible to see and even harder to challenge.”

➝ Via The New York Times .

Today, after an unfriendly IRC exchange, @prologic deleted all mentions of twtxt.net, the Yarn.social repository (or made it hidden), and shutdown Twtxt.net—yes, it is unreachable. I am hoping that this was a decision taken emotionally in haste, and that the site and service will eventually come back online. 🤞🏻

I have rewritten the Hugo shortcode I was using to rate movies and series, adjusting it so that it goes from 1 to 5 stars. No more fractional ones, which means I will need to pay closer attention now when rating.

Having implemented BIMI for my most commonly used email domain (because I saw it on the emails I get from The New York Times), I briefly considered getting a VMC, just to realise it is all, but a racket. A huge racket.