Beyond the shouting match: what is a blockchain, really?

Do you feel the allure of becoming a cyborg? Are you one of those people who loves computing, but hates what computing has become? Do you wish to become one with your computing environment, without having to give into an immersively curated dystopian corporate version of computing we experience today? Throw off the shiny shackles of Apple,...

A few weeks ago I wrote How decentralized is Bluesky really?, a blogpost which received far more attention than I expected on the fediverse and Bluesky both. Thankfully, the blogpost was received well generally, including by Bluesky's team. Bryan Newbold, core Bluesky engineer, wrote a thoughtful response article: Reply on Bluesky and...

Recently due to various events (namely a lot of people getting off of X-Twitter), Bluesky has become a lot more popular, and excitement for its underlying protocol, ATProto, is growing. Since I worked on ActivityPub which connects together Mastodon, Sharkey, Peertube, GotoSocial, etc, etc, etc in the present-day fediverse, I often get asked...

I got my MNT Pocket Reform. In short, it's an absolutely gorgeous device and lovely for doing some light hacking or chiptune tracking or etc. It's incredibly built and also feels like it has a lot of potential. It's very clearly upgradeable which is a refreshing change of pace from modern electronics. On the downside, if you get an MNT reform...

Recently I've been making some music in Milkytracker, a decidedly oldschool piece of music tracking software. I've made two songs which I am proud of, one of which is original, the other is a cover.Here's the original piece, titled "A Fairy Leaves Home" (released as CC BY-SA 4.0, source file):I'm fairly proud of this one. It's the first ever...