Misty

I had always wondered about HAL’s Commodore 64 games, and had never considered Commodore platforms had a history in Japan! https://gdri.blogspot.com/2026/10/commodore-development-in-japan.html

I talk to people about web archiving a lot, and it feels like so many people think it’s not something they can do - they just have to wait and hope someone else saves a site for them. But you can save web history too! Here’s how! https://blog.mistys-internet.website/post/2026/10/29/if-you-love-a-website-back-it-up/

#digipres

Reposting from Bluesky for anyone who might know: https://bsky.app/profile/worldofcrap.bsky.social/post/3myxvqhohks2j

I keep seeing people describe the character.ai bankruptcy as the first AI bubble domino, so I’m glad to see some reporting on what’s actually going on here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/disney-found-a-way-to-buy-character-ai-without-buying-its-lawsuits/

This is a way for Disney to buy the company without really buying the company, so they can avoid antitrust. It also gets them out of inheriting the active lawsuits. Character.ai has been through this once already - what’s left of the company is kind of a shell after Google hired key employees & licensed their tech.

Really appreciating this from the end of Kotaku’s article about Dog Online. It’s the kind of energy I’m trying to keep, too. https://kotaku.com/delightful-virtual-pet-sim-rpg-dog-online-is-bringing-back-2000s-internet-culture-2000741895

As always, this Yandex datacentre thing is reminding me of my core principle: if something seems like it's confirming your views, but all the evidence you can find is a crusty JPEG and not anything authoritative, maybe the information is less actual than you thought it was and maybe don't spread it.

RE: https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:cyyd366g3hrxp5rynixm2mm3/post/3mxl5mahatc22

RIP hairy heart emoji (2013-2013)

I feel like it’s hard to express to people who got online after a certain era that culture wasn’t this conservative and censorious once upon a time. I mean, modern social media platforms are harsher on a lot of content than broadcast TV and magazines used to be. Good thing we replaced all that stuff with Online I guess.

Seen a bunch of people sharing that "RemoveMacAI" tool, so feel like I should point out it's largely built on top of someone else's tool that isn't getting anywhere near the same love: https://github.com/4evy/pared

I’m not anti-passkey, but I got caught really off guard by a site automatically creating a passkey for me with zero user input. Imagine if I’d logged in on a shared device and now the device owner gets passwordless access to my eBay account!

Oh this is smart, mixi2 has a built-in feature to let you import your old tweets from twitter. Keeps original post dates and everything. https://mixi.social/@mixi2/posts/a15dd847-5adb-45f7-be8f-0721c5a8df2a

Whenever I write about old software, it still strikes me how absurd it is that it’s easier to run software from the 90s and 2000s on a modern computer than it is to run an iOS app from 15 years ago.

I’ve been a defender of native Mac UI in apps for a long time, but I can’t really argue that this seems right: https://inessential.com/2026/09/22/that-about-wraps-it-up-for.html

I’ll be honest the fediverse chick was more fun when she wasn’t going out there registering automated protocol deliverability probe accounts

sed is the standard text seditor

Highly recommend blocking registrations from this email domain. Context: https://tedium.co/2026/09/11/ilands-agents-email-spam-kaixin-tang/

#MastoAdmin

I have... 1119 accounts pending registration. Every single one is a "Automated protocol deliverability probe”. I so badly need the ability to just reject everything with the same request reason...

#MastoAdmin

Very interesting statement here in a blog post about a developer adopting the EUPL. I don't disagree, but this certainly hasn't been a popular opinion in OSS circles for a bit. The vibe may well be changing. (Emphasis mine.)

https://bergie.iki.fi/blog/eupl/

Excellent news! Nuked-SC55, the open source emulator for Roland’s classic SC-55 synthesizer, is now GPL 2. This should make it much more accessible for a wider variety of uses than before. https://github.com/nukeykt/Nuked-SC55/commit/f6e50220d5de4241080e1811a30d29f7113a0929

Encountered one of the best emails I've ever seen

Any Canadian business that uses embedded Google Maps maps had better reconsider that right now. https://globalnews.ca/news/12041171/google-maps-lake-america-ontario-government-websites/

#canpoli

On the one hand Time Machine is definitely the most user-friendly backup system I've ever used. On the other hand, I don't think I've ever had a backup system lose disk space between the couch cushions like this.

Okay so, in all sincerity - I know a number of organizations have basically depended on stuff like Nitter/XCancel as an excuse to continue posting important information on X. Now that people without accounts are really locked out I hope we can actually put serious pressure on organizations to post information publicly.

RIP geocities: https://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/post/824742777363496960/original-url

What do people think the good Linux laptops these days? I've got my eye on the MNT Reform Next, but curious about other options.

Good battery life and screen would be nice. Would prefer something not from a US company.

Spotted a very cool artwork over at Slice of Life awhile back - a Minitel terminal displaying their upcoming event calendar

What on earth is the difference between “got it" and "dismiss" meant to be in this popup

Feels like data breaches are the primary feature of lastpass as a product https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/23/lastpass-notifies-users-of-yet-another-data-breach/

Spotted nonbinary poutine at the donair shop

I feel like this whole Anthropic export ban thing should be a wakeup call to anyone outside the US that if you've been newly developing a dependency on a proprietary US cloud service the government could decide to restrict export access to at any moment, you've made a strategic error and should probably reconsider that.

I've been seeing a huge uptick of registration requests lately, a bunch of which look like spam. Anyone else seeing this on their servers?

#MastoAdmin

New blog post! I came across a fully-interactive offline archive(!!) of a BBS from 1994 and wanted to share an interactive walkthrough of it. Let's explore 90s Kansai online and see what people were chatting about.

https://cdrom.ca/games/2026/05/30/xd.html

Logo from Interex conference in Las Vegas, 1987, scan via

https://bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/Interex/

Just had Google Calendar tell me it "looks like I've moved" and ask me if I want to switch to Pacific Daylight Time, which... sure makes me wonder exactly how much of the software I use is going to have my time zone by the time it becomes relevant in November.

With new gaming hardware getting more expensive by the day, it's finally time to start making games again for the hardware everyone already owns. That's right, the sun rises once more for the Nintendo DS

Long shot, but anyone out there with a copy of the floppy お楽しみディスク vol. 22? It's got a file I'm interested in seeing https://cba.sakura.ne.jp/soft01/sfa9412.htm

Dragon Quest III coffee wizard… please heal my migraine…..

Hit the point where Safari has started autofilling "github" in the URL bar to "githubstatus.com" instead of "github.com”

Well, hope you didn't need any certs anytime soon...? https://letsencrypt.status.io

Oh wow, Nethack 5.0! https://nethack.org/v500/release.html

Longshot, but: are you in Canada and have a copy of a CD called "Great Northern" by the fusion jazz band Skywalk? I've been on the hunt for a physical copy, would love to buy it off you.

#music

.

and Reinier van Vliet have kindly released the Xcode project and assets for the recent ports of Moon Child! https://bitbucket.org/rhinoid/moonchild/src/main/

It feels like a bad sign of where web design is at these days that I can't read entire articles from some sites like PC Gamer on my phone anymore; they use up so much RAM the mobile browser forcibly kills the tab.

iOS 18 holdouts: 18.7.7 is out now for devices that were eligible for the 26 upgrade. You should upgrade immediately. The security updates are significant. https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/01/apple-ios-18-darksword-security-update/

I try not to wade into discourse, but I feel like every time I see potentially urgent need for people to migrate instances on short notice, I wish Mastodon had true account portability with post migration. I think it’s beyond time to get it done.

Every new thing that happens to the "Napster" brand feels like it's weirder than the last https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2026/01/02/napster-music-streaming-shut-down-ai-pivot/

Incidentally I do think that Windows 12 situation is interesting as an example of how this stuff gets laundered into social media bait. It was a multi-step process!

The original article in German on PC Welt wouldn't have trended since it was in German. Then it got roughly translated into English for PC World, and that version gave it the veneer of respectability despite being conjecture with absolutely no sourcing.

Came across a weird new-to-me kind of object at the thrift store. 45 RPM single with a handwritten label, "take 5" after the song title. I looked it up and it seems this is from a studio that did direct-to-vinyl lathe cut recordings - they got a band into the studio and had them perform the same song a bunch of times, with each take being cut to a vinyl exactly once during the recording process itself.

Sound quality is pretty bad, but it's a cute concept.

OK, this is a longshot, but: have you ever run the 90s version of the FirstClass BBS server or did you use it back in the day? I'm trying to figure out if something is a standard feature and could use feedback from someone who might know.

Edit: Got my answer. Thanks everyone!

This is an extreme longshot, but if there's anyone out there who owns this physical CD (or any other CD in this series), please reach out. I need your help with something. https://www.discogs.com/release/36547942-Various-XD-Submit-Vol-2

I'm open for work again! I'm looking for interesting opportunities; want to work with me?

My experience includes web archiving and digital preservation, devops, and internal developer tooling. I'd love to put that experience to work for you and your team.

Experience includes the Internet Archive, GitHub, Shopify, and others alongside a number of open source projects.

WSL stands for Windows as a second language

I've seen enough people complain about how bad vinyl prices have gotten I feel like it's my duty to warn you: the new thing is CD collecting. We are, today, where vinyl collecting was in 2009.

CDs are still cheap in a lot of music stores and thrift stores, but expect to see thrift stores get more picked over in the coming years and used prices to start climbing as the revival gets in full swing. If you ever thought there's stuff you'd like to collect yourself, no time like the present.

It really is a little absurd that “I’m considering switching to Linux on my laptop for better availability of games” is a real thought in my head. Valve have made strange things happen

Absolutely brutal headline: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/867874/stripe-visa-mastercard-amex-csam-grok

Couldn't get stuff to upload to iTunes Match, wondered if Apple had just quietly killed the feature... I guess there's just an iCloud outage right now. Oops

Highly recommend reading this story about a reporter casually finding out his wife is a world Tetris champion: https://archive.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2007/08/19/bizarro_world/

Game reverse engineering question: has anyone done any work on the Engine Software Pulse Sound System music format? Didn’t see anything but figured I’d ask before potentially spending time on redundant labour.

Stubbornly refusing to put a space in between words and em dashes so people can tell it's not an LLM writing it, just someone who likes em dashes

Canadians: the CECOT 60 Minutes story is streaming on the Global TV website right now. Looks like no one pulled the episode when it was cancelled in the US? https://watch.globaltv.com/series/2893de5a-f2cc-11ea-9089-0242ac110003/episode/GLOB0057515870000000?action=play

Canadians: there's a Parliament petition requesting the government to step in to take action against anti-trans provincial legislation. Being sponsored by Don Davies. Please sign if you're eligible. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7027

#canpoli

From Lake County Public Library last year: https://lakecountylibrary.tumblr.com/post/769064384357089280/library-wrapped

Really nice to see in this day and age: https://www.facebook.com/GirlGuidesofCanada.GuidesduCanada/posts/pfbid034fKm9CuoFR7U13LT6577259iHZHQRGZ7P3V9g6NJ7dhV2eXjMmRFaSC1BcXh3Xsql

That's right, it's time for MP3 player wrapped! In 2025, you listened to:

• Music

Your top album was

• Album

And you listened to music by

• Artists

I get that people are newly concerned about AI training in Gmail, but I hope the people upset about the AI training are aware that Google has been reading and acting on private emails since day one for things like ads. This is just what Gmail is.

Made an incredible discovery for language learning: Chrono Trigger DS lets you access the options menu to change the langauge mid-dialogue box. If you're having trouble with a line you can double-check the official localization without even closing the dialogue box. Feels very rare.

Can you guess what game beat out Quake in the 1999 Linux game popularity contest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBill

I absolutely adore the visual design of early-mid 00s women's personal websites. I'm an awful visual designer, but one of these days I'd love to take a stab at something like this myself.

https://indieweb.social/@classicweb/115339325064245772

A REQUEST: If you own a French CD-ROM computer game called "Pop Anim'", please let me know. I could use it for some research but haven't been able to find a circulating copy yet. (It's at the BnF but I can't get there right now.)

Just a note for those wanting to act in solidarity that Kickstarter United have not asked for a boycott - their demands and ways of how to act in solidarity with them can be found in their messaging. https://union.place/@kickstarterunited/115304520313956505

Python question: I'm looking at a nested exception from requests. It's a requests exception which wraps a urllib3 exception which wraps something else. The specific detail I'm looking for isn't available at the top level, only in the nested exception. Is there a cleaner or less fragile way to get the details I want than this?

Honestly, this makes sense. https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/cities-hiring-family-doctor-1.7638292

#canpoli

The more and more old servers I see close, the more intolerable it is that Mastodon still doesn't offer a way to migrate data like posts to new accounts. A user's post history is valuable, and it's more valuable the older the account is. Users should have the option to migrate those to a new server!