Shellsharks Blogroll - BlogFlock

Google Calendar "Unable to launch event" - caused by missing DTSTAMP - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-07-28T11:34:15.000Z

For several years, Google's product help forums have been littered with people trying to download a .ics event from their email, only to receive the error "Unable to launch event" when trying to add it to Google Calendar. It doesn't happen with all iCal attachments, only some. Here's how to fix it.

I checked dozens of broken iCalendar invites using this iCal validator and they all had the same problem: "Missing DTSTAMP property".

Here's a typical broken file:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:abcdef-ghij-klmn-opqrs-tuvwxyz
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20260713T093000Z
DTEND:20260713T103000Z
SUMMARY:Your Delivery (Order 123456789)
UID:83c510fa-1be4-48a2-8338-c5a2350ba6e5
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

If you read the specification or follow the flowchart you'll see:

Property Name: DTSTAMP

Conformance: This property MUST be included in the "VEVENT", "VTODO", "VJOURNAL", or "VFREEBUSY" calendar components.

Adding that to the above produces:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:abcdef-ghij-klmn-opqrs-tuvwxyz
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260713T093000Z
DTSTART:20260713T093000Z
DTEND:20260713T103000Z
SUMMARY:Your Delivery (Order 123456789)
UID:83c510fa-1be4-48a2-8338-c5a2350ba6e5
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

You can download them both to see if they work on your Android phone.

That's all it takes! Add the missing DTSTAMP to broken files and Google Calendar is able to import them.

From my (unscientific) testing, the broken file works on all iOS devices and some Android calendars - but always breaks on Google's Calendar.

Post by @Edent@mastodon.social

View on Mastodon

The iCal specification is reasonably old, but it is fairly simple to understand. Annoyingly, Google's documentation about iCal is frustratingly vague. It says:

This is what an iCalendar file looks like. An iCalendar file can also have more information, but these are the parts that are required.

BEGIN:VCALENDAR

VERSION:2.0

PRODID:< [enter ID information here] >

BEGIN:VEVENT

(event details)

END:VEVENT

END:VCALENDAR

But it never actually describes what those "event details" are!

Is the spec needlessly verbose? Perhaps. Should Google Calendar be a bit more forgiving in what it receives? Probably!

There's no meaningful way to report a bug to Google's product teams. Instead, I've taken to emailing the organisations sending out these broken invites and pleading with them to fix their systems.

Computers, eh?

How we use /goal to find bugs in Patch the Planet - Trail of Bits Blog

2026-07-28T11:00:00.000Z

Codex’s <code>/goal</code> feature amplifies bug hunting, but getting good results requires the right prompt, the right scope, and the right number of outcomes per run. For <a href="https://trailofbits.com/patch-the-planet">Patch the Planet</a>, our joint initiative with OpenAI to find and fix bugs in open-source software, we pointed Codex at some of the most widely used, heavily audited codebases in the world, like Rust, curl, and zlib. One tool came up again and again in our internal bug-report channels: <code>/goal</code>, which hands Codex an open-ended objective and lets it work independently toward a success condition. Here are a few highlights: <ul> <li>Found every Rust bug we submitted, including a soundness hole and a miscompilation now patched in Rust 1.98, from a single variant-analysis pipeline.</li> <li>Turned every project’s past CVEs into Semgrep rules that had to fire on the vulnerable version and stay silent on the patched one, then flagged 11 variant hits across multiple projects.</li> <li>Uncovered two potential high-severity privilege-escalation bugs in Keycloak’s SAML component during a discovery run.</li> </ul> Over the first few weeks of Patch the Planet, our engineers independently converged on three techniques for using <code>/goal</code>. We found that getting the most out of <code>/goal</code> means treating the prompt as a set of specific success criteria, not a set of instructions. (Note that this blog post uses <code>/goal</code> to refer to goal-based prompting in general. Codex can also set goals for itself through a tool call, and that’s how we recommend everyone use it; we rarely type the slash command ourselves.) <h2 id="1-let-codex-write-the-goal">1. Let Codex write the goal</h2> The art of using <code>/goal</code> is prompt design, and we found that Codex knows Codex the best. Internally, our single most repeated <code>/goal</code> tip was to use Codex to help write each <code>/goal</code> prompt. We hand Codex threat model files and the context about what we’re looking for, and then tell it to write the goal prompt. As mentioned before, <code>/goal</code> is a tool Codex can invoke on itself, and a few engineers stopped typing goals by hand entirely. <figure> <blockquote> $goal-prompt based on threat model write goal to find single critical issue (RCE) exploitable by remote attacker for kubernetes-client. the kubernetes-client is used in normal config, malicious remote users exploits. </blockquote> <figcaption>Figure 1: A meta-prompt from one of our engineers asking Codex to create a goal prompt. Results are shown in figure 2.</figcaption> </figure> This works because Codex knows the target and its own tendencies better than we can specify up front. It can translate a threat model into concrete, testable success criteria, name the code paths worth prioritizing, and phrase the outcome precisely enough that a run actually converges. A goal written this way tends to be tighter than one we’d write cold, and it takes a fraction of the time. Letting the model draft the goal also closes a gap we’d otherwise miss. Any outcome you define can be satisfied in ways you didn’t intend, and the model is often the first to spot where the easy outs are. Now when we ask Codex to draft a goal, we ask it to red-team its own goal by identifying the ways a future model might be lazy in its approach, and to revise the criteria to remove them before the run starts. We also built tooling that makes it easier for Codex to verify its own work. For example, we noticed Codex has a tendency to skip reading the entire codebase even when explicitly asked. We built <a href="https://github.com/trailofbits/aicov">aicov</a>, a tool that tracks what lines of code Codex has actually read, so it can’t “cheat.” This is an iterative process. As we find more shortcuts a model takes, we exclude them from the next version of the prompt. <h2 id="2-define-the-outcome-not-the-path">2. Define the outcome, not the path</h2> A good goal names the outcome, defines it precisely, and then enforces persistence: <figure> <blockquote> /goal Audit the kubernetes-client repository in this workspace to find exactly one previously unreported critical remote code execution vulnerability reachable in normal/default client configuration by a malicious remote user or server that controls only network/API responses, Kubernetes objects the client legitimately fetches, or other remote data accepted during normal use. First build a concise threat model of realistic remote attacker entry points and trust boundaries, then prioritize code paths involving deserialization, YAML/JSON/protobuf parsing, dynamic imports/eval/template execution, archive/file extraction, auth redirects, generated client hooks, websocket/exec/attach/port-forward streams, and subprocess or filesystem effects. Do not assume attacker control of local kubeconfig, CLI arguments, environment variables, installed plugins, source code, credentials, privileged cluster/admin access, or prior code execution; explicitly reject findings that rely on those preconditions. Before accepting a candidate, search local known-findings files plus current open issues/PRs for duplicates, then produce a minimal safe proof that demonstrates attacker-controlled code execution or a direct RCE primitive under the stated normal configuration. Stop after one valid critical issue. Write finding to ./findings/ folder. </blockquote> <figcaption>Figure 2: The prompt created by Codex from figure 1</figcaption> </figure> We found the best philosophy is to spend as many tokens as you need defining the outcome, and almost none telling the model how to get there. If you want the bug found through fuzzing, “use fuzzing” is as far as you should go. “Build on top of my existing fuzzing harness” or “build a new fuzzing harness” are both worse. There might be an existing harness that’s just as good. A goal that prescribes the path guarantees Codex never takes another one, and you lose the judgment and open-ended problem solving that make <code>/goal</code> unique. The outcome side takes more care because it has to be calibrated. If it’s too specific, Codex doesn’t have enough to search and the value of an autonomous <code>/goal</code> run is unclear. When we fed Codex the exact root cause of a known bug and asked it to find variants, it found nothing. The scope was too narrow. When we cut the input down to a single sentence describing the class of bugs it should look for based on the known bug, it surfaced numerous bugs. We reported 9 of them, with 3 already fixed and merged upstream. If an outcome is too vague, the model provides outputs that don’t match what you were looking for. One of the worst <code>/goal</code> prompts we saw during Patch the Planet was “find bugs in [X].” The model had no way to tell when it was done. It just kept running, surfacing bugs that had no real-world impact, and wasting tokens. A complete outcome definition also says what doesn’t count as done. The open-source projects in Patch the Planet have some of the most audited code in the world, and more than once <code>/goal</code> came back with “no bugs found.” We treat that as an intermediate result, not a completion condition, and write persistence into the goal itself. The most effective resource for <code>/goal</code> bug hunting is a <code>THREAT_MODEL.md</code> file. We ended up referencing a threat model file in almost every goal we ran because it precisely defines what valid bugs look like without explaining how to find them. We recommend every open-source project create one. <h2 id="3-assign-one-outcome-per-agent">3. Assign one outcome per agent</h2> Putting two competing outcomes in one <code>/goal</code> prompt results in uneven optimization. We ran into this repeatedly when a goal asked for both bugs and coverage. When we put “find bugs” and “achieve high coverage” in the same prompt, the run ended up doing one of them far better than the other. This was our experience while using <code>/goal</code> to audit zlib. Codex kept gravitating to the same part of the codebase, fuzzing the areas the model found first without reaching the rest. Our initial instinct was to fix that in the prompt by adding coverage requirements, but Codex then switched its optimization to coverage, and we saw lackluster vulnerability hunting. What worked instead was moving coverage out of the prompt entirely. We asked Codex to first identify the five most promising attack surfaces after scouring through the entire codebase. Then we created a separate <code>/goal</code> session to find bugs in each section. We also added one fully open-ended session alongside them to roam the parts of the codebase the other agents weren’t assigned. This approach worked <a href="https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/07/02/field-reports-from-patch-the-planet/">drastically better</a>. <figure> <img src="https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/07/28/how-we-use-goal-to-find-bugs-in-patch-the-planet/goal_ptp_figure_3_hu_2a14b2f59f76ba60.webp" alt="“Figure 3: Rust maintainers assumed we had a team of engineers working on finding bugs. It was just one engineer with a strong handle on Codex’s /goal.”" width="1200" height="616" loading="lazy" decoding="async" /> <figcaption>Figure 3: Rust maintainers assumed we had a team of engineers working on finding bugs. It was just one engineer with a strong handle on Codex's /goal.</figcaption> </figure> One of our engineers, Kevin Valerio, created an automated variant-analysis system for the Rust compiler leveraging <code>/goal</code>. Every Rust bug we submitted through Patch the Planet came out of it. <ol> <li> P-critical is a label created by Rust maintainers to identify bugs that should be prioritized to patch and merge. The pipeline began by downloading every issue tagged P-critical in the rust-lang/rust repository as JSON. </li> <li> An orchestrator reads the issues and spawns a separate agent for each one. One outcome per agent: instead of a single session told to perform variant-analysis on each bug, the orchestrator creates one Codex session per issue, each running an independent task to find a single outcome. </li> <li> Each session runs in Goal mode with a deliberately small prompt to find a security issue with the same root cause as the original bug in P-critical. It receives a one-sentence description of the risk rather than an exact root cause with a full backtrace, so the model can still have the freedom to explore the codebase more. </li> <li> Before any variant hunt begins, a security gate asks whether the source issue is even a real vulnerability and routes it to skip, no_variant, or bug_found. We are using that to focus on the most impactful P-critical bugs. </li> <li> Every candidate runs a two-pass false-positive gauntlet. The first judge checks that the bug poses a genuine security risk. The second, a different model entirely, runs a PoC-focused pass and demands that the issue can potentially cause security issues relevant to the Rust threat model. A candidate reaches “validated finding” only if both passes agree. </li> <li> Validated findings pass one last human filter. A duplicate check happens before anything is opened. Only bugs that are confirmed upstream and not already found in GitHub’s issue backlog are drafted for submission. </li> </ol> <figure> <img src="https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/07/28/how-we-use-goal-to-find-bugs-in-patch-the-planet/goal_ptp_figure_4_hu_b6101cf6b22bf7cc.webp" alt="“Figure 4: The full workflow Kevin Valerio used to find every bug in Rust”" width="1200" height="675" loading="lazy" decoding="async" /> <figcaption>Figure 4: The full workflow Kevin Valerio used to find every bug in Rust</figcaption> </figure> <h2 id="where-human-judgment-is-needed">Where human judgment is needed</h2> Since its release, <code>/goal</code> has been a powerful tool for amplifying the bug-hunting work that we do. Codex can create custom security infrastructure that takes a security researcher weeks to build in under a day. It can scour thousands of lines of code faster than any human can. <code>/goal</code> will faithfully pursue whatever outcome we give the model, which means the run is mostly decided before the model starts. But its effectiveness still depends on an expert knowing where to look, verifying its results count as a reportable finding, and knowing what the maintainers on the other side actually want to see as a valid vulnerability disclosure. Prompt engineering is a large part of it, but you can only write a good prompt if you know exactly what you’re looking for.

Drawing Resources - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

2026-07-28T08:22:00.000Z

I asked for recommendations for courses and books related to learning drawing techniques and I got a bunch of great suggestions. I've not tried any of these yet (except a single video from Alphonso Dunn but I want to collect these in one place I can refer back to.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards via Kerri and Valrus. There's a few editions of this but I'll pick up a second hand copy of whichever one I come across first.
Books by Christopher Hart via Andy and alienlebarge. I have one of these on the way to check it out.
The aforementioned Alphonso Dunn has a book called Pen and Ink Drawing, A Simple Guide. I found a copy of this really cheap on Vinted which is on its way to me. He also has a huge number of videos on his YouTube channel. via Hollie and kalikambo
Maggie Appleton has a great list of courses and books via Eric
Eric also suggested Fun with a Pencil and The Natural Way to Draw
Draw by Jeffrey Camp and Drawing on the Artist Within, another Betty Edwards one came via Gary.

I'm not going to get everything on this list because that would be chaos but there's lots of great stuff in here that I can choose from.

📝 2026-07-28 09:16: Always fun when your bike runs out of electricity on the way to work. Note... - Kev Quirk

2026-07-28T08:16:00.000Z

Always fun when your bike runs out of electricity on the way to work.

Note to self: connect the trickle charger TONIGHT!

(Wife is on the way with my jump box to save me)

Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️

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Wonders of Web Weaving, Episode 12 - James' Coffee Blog

2026-07-28T00:00:00.000Z

The twelfth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:

In Episode 12, I chat with Georgie, the author of Hey Georgie about, among other things, writing about travelling, blogging as a self-reflection tool, why someone should start a personal website today, and more.

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Wonders of Web Weaving also has an RSS feed you can use to follow along from wherever you get your podcasts.

Georgie Hey Georgie The twelfth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out Wonders of Web Weaving also has an RSS feed

RetroAchievements, a football match, and visits - W30 - Joel's Log Files

2026-07-27T21:10:00.000Z

It feels like not a lot happened this week. My workplace has been rather boring, my gym-going is pretty standard, there were a lot of things happening on my gaming side, and such, but well, here’s a summary of things.

Oh right, the weather. This week was rather sunny for once, seems like the rainy days are coming to an end, at least for now. Did I mention my house flooded for like three days? It was only in short periods though but they were quite frantic moments. Basically water rose from the toilet and the shower drain. There was something stuck in the plumbing (I think they were tree roots) which made things a mess. Thankfully the water wasn’t really dirty nor stinky, we just had to do open the door while it rained and lead the water outside. All of that happened in previous weeks though, not this one.

🕹️ I set-up RetroAchievements on my Anbernic handheld, I tried plenty of games because of it which I’ll mention later. In case you are curious, I simply installed the RAOfflineProxy and followed the instructions from the repo, after logging in to my account in the device, I had no issues whatsoever. Great stuff!
📷 I figured out how to take screenshots with my modded Nintendo 3DS, you just hold L + Down + SELECT, and that opens up the Luma menu, from where you can take a screenshot! I then used SFTP to transfer those files to my phone. I do admit I still prefer taking pictures of my 3DS, The screen looks better, as the screenshots are rather low res.
🌮 There have been be a lot of family and friend visits this week. These are friends I had not seen for five or so years, it was nice to catch up a bit. We went out to a few restaurants and had some of the local snacks and the like, you know, touristy stuff for people visiting our city. Had a lot of fun!
🚲 Because of all the visits, this is the first time where I did not go cycling at all. This was a bit sad but I don’t feel bad about it that much, because I replaced it with another exercise, which I’ll mention below…
⚽ For the first time in ages, I played football with some kids in the block. I rarely do this but they were just two kids (like 15 or so years old) and they seemed to be looking for a cascarita—that’s how Mexicans refer to street football games, another term would be “retas”—we played for almost two hours and it was really awesome! I was terrible though, it was just a quick 3 vs 3 and although I scored half a dozen goals, they’d score like, 20+, I was teaming up with the oldest kid and the younger ones were ruining us. I had fun nonetheless.
🎧 Gotta say I have finally started to listen to some more episodes of the Wolf 359 podcast drama and I got to some of my favorites of the whole show! I am really looking forward to completing it again.
🎵 Also I’m still working on my review of Transistor but I purchased the soundtrack on Bandcamp!

Collage of the week!

</figure> ## Gaming My gaming has been a mess this week, in the best way possible. Right when I thought I would have plenty to play with on my 3DS, I decided it would be a good idea to set-up offline RetroAchievements on my Anbernic handheld. Once I had the proxy working, I went on a quest to try out some games! The first one was **Astro Boy: Omega Factor**, one of those Game Boy Advance games that have a lot going on. I have already played it for hours before, and reached its final stage, however, this game has multiple endings and some tricks up its sleeve, don't sleep on it! Not your regular beat'em up at all. In any case, RetroAchievements worked! After that I tried some other shorter titles, such as **Donkey Kong (1994)**, which I had never tried---when I did I lost all my lives in the first stage---so I started over and have had way too much fun! The pixelart and the music, the mechanics are all there! Truly lovely game for coffee breaks and quick two-minute sessions. Another title Game Boy game I tried out of nowhere was a homebrew game called [**Jabberwocky**](), you can get this one from itch and it's just a short little story that takes about 20 minutes to complete. There is like one or two puzzles and it's mostly all about the character and writing. It was very fun and got me to laugh a bit, and it had achievements! The last of my geek time was spent installing [Dusklight](), a reverse-engineered port of **The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess** that works on Linux like a charm. I only saw the starting menu and the first dialogue box, I closed the game soon after, ready to go whenever I'm up for it. The one game that caught my eye the most this week was **The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time**. There's a reason I ended up writing a whole post [about the beginning hours of the game](/blog/return-to-oot/) sharing my experience and comparing it to when I played it as a youngling. I've made so much progress and I truly love the experience so far. After the post I have already completed the Dodongo Cavern dungeon, obtained all the Great Fairy powers a truly timeless game already, for real! That isn't to say that my interest for **Fire Emblem Awakening** has diminished in any way! Since I'm playing Ocarina along with Syl, I wait for her to catch up while I return to this one. I have made a few more battles and leveled up a lot of characters that haven't seen enough attention from me. I have been focusing on Sumia and Stahl, two characters that weren't even level 10 for a while. I pair them up with high level characters and play on Auto mode in some of the low level battles in the map. Of course, I also progressed through the main story, unlocked one more paralogue (I have like three pending) and reached chapter 19 of the main plot. It's been an entertaining journey! ## Watching It's finally out, the one and only **Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender** on *Paramount+*! I decided to wait and pay to check this one out, and I must say, it was absolutely incredible! The animation team did their absolute best in every frame of this film, it was a joy to see the gaang together saving the world once more. Don't get me wrong, the film has some issues and it is carried by nostalgia in some of those, but that doesn't make it any less epic for me, I love the Avatarverse (not the James Cameron one, though it has earned its place by now I think) and I want more works based on this franchise. Epic stuff, it healed me, removing the bad taste the Live Action show has left in me so far. I really wish they eventually give it a proper release on theaters, it really deserves a watch on the big screen. ## Reading - ✨ **Centuria** by Tori Kuramori - Up to chapter 2. It's about a young man sold to slavery, who experiences kindness for the first time while sailing across the sea, with another hundred slaves. However, a storm wreaks havoc, a cruel deal with a god is made, and he is given extraordinary power, at the cost of an innocent life. He will use this strength obtained through to fight for a better life and protect a baby, the only other survivor left in his care. So far I enjoy the art and the plot, and we'll see how the story evolves over time.... - **Blue Lock** - Up to chapter 354. The match against England is finally going to start, so I am looking forward to that. The pacing has been quite slow as the set-up was being done, but I'm looking forward to see what happens! - **Uncle from Another World** - Up to chapter 25. I forget how this manga has chapters above 30+ pages long, only three were read but it continues to be very funny to me. ## Around the Web ### Blog posts - [I Don’t Think I Can Accept Roblox](https://discardpile.pika.page/posts/i-dont-think-i-can-accept-roblox) - A pretty nuanced article on one of the most popular videogames of modern years. It's a long one! - [Postliterate America](https://janerationx.me/posts/postliterate-america) - Once again, *The Machine Stops* by E.M. Forster continues to predict how things would end up for us. Great post. - [January 8th, 2020](https://brandons-journal.com/post/january-8th-2020) - An incredible trip to the past, when Brandon started his blog and when he tried to keep his blog positive and fun. This has been challenging to keep up for him lately, but he still wants to. - [Not Logging, Just Blogging](https://syls.blog/not-logging-just-blogging/) - Syl has had a difficult time keeping up with tracking absolutely everything and has decided to step away from trying to do something she doesn't enjoy as much, totally valid! Especially if it means the few games and media mentioned are those that she truly loves! - [I Guess I'm Playing The Long Game Now](https://brainbaking.com/post/2026/07/i-guess-im-playing-the-long-game-now/) - Wouter has been having some parenting issues, dealing with the pressure of it all. I am no father and I'm not close to being one, but I appreciate his outlook on this post. ### YouTube Once again, too many videos to really explain here, just a short one liner once again. - [Games That Are Beyond Comparison](https://youtu.be/w3vdfjMFII4) - Featuring 13 Sentinels and some others. - [The Last Honest Movie Star](https://youtu.be/1leVuo5M6w4) - Surprisingly awesome documentary on Matt Damon. - [I Made “Elden Ring” on the N64 (And you can play it)](https://youtu.be/wgg7pXWg3h4) - This looks incredible though it's a single boss. - [Should you buy a $1 PS3?](https://youtu.be/rvjhRmXramc) - The answer is yes and now I'm in danger. - [Why the Ice Arrows Accidentally Became Useless](https://youtu.be/vusoGpkndDo) - On some hints at early plans for Ocarina of Time that were scrapped. - [Perfect Coffee Break Games](https://youtu.be/_RPiYvEvesE) - Short retro games to play. - [Zelda But it's a Modern Game (FULL MOVIE)](https://youtu.be/rIssjB5S6mM) - This is a trainwreck I couldn't stop watching. - [I Tried to Beat the First Zelda Completely Blind](https://youtu.be/93zjLkJmT5k) - A very entertaining playthrough. This is day 4 of [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com)

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📝 2026-07-27 17:54: The poor buzzard was still there when I was walking the dogs this morning, so... - Kev Quirk

2026-07-27T16:54:00.000Z

The poor buzzard was still there when I was walking the dogs this morning, so clearly something was wrong. Luckily my wife was able to get hold of a local falconer who was able to catch him and hopefully nurse him back to health. 🦅

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Published on Citation Needed: "Mapping Trump’s crypto empire on Last Week Tonight" - Molly White's activity feed

2026-07-27T14:22:04.000Z

Published an issue of Citation Needed:

Mapping Trump’s crypto empire on Last Week Tonight

A new Citation Needed data project maps the Trump family’s web of cryptocurrency ventures, which have been generating billions in income for the president.

Mapping Trump’s crypto empire on Last Week Tonight - Molly White's activity feed

2026-07-27T14:01:32.000Z

Mapping Trump’s crypto empire on Last Week Tonight

My newest Citation Needed project made an appearance on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver! It’s a work in progress, but you can see the new interactive version of my map of the Trump family’s crypto ventures at map.citationneeded.news.

The map contains hundreds of business entities and links to the Trump family (with more being added!), augmented with data from the president’s most recent financial filings to estimate how much money is flowing in. It will be queryable by other researchers and journalists.

Click any node or connection in the Trump crypto empire map to open its panel and view explanatory annotations and citations. Toggle the income overlay to see financial-disclosure figures from the most recent filings. Search for entities, or filter by category.

Subscriber support is what makes data projects like the Trump empire map and Tech Influence Watch possible — work that goes beyond the newsletter itself. You can join them!

Don't bring sensitive data to a border crossing - Werd I/O

2026-07-27T14:00:14.000Z

Link: US government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system, by Timothy Pratt in The Guardian

This is worth knowing about and is concerning — but not necessarily for the main reason that’s being reported.

The Department of Justice is trying to prosecute Sam Tunick, an Atlanta-based activist, for allegedly using a duress password on his GrapheneOS phone when he crossed the border in January 2025.

“Agent Findley and several others repeatedly asked Tunick to open his phone during the interrogation, telling him they would seize it if he did not. When he finally provided a passcode, “the screen went blank, flashed several times and the phone appeared to restart”, according to the motion.”

The phone was wiped. According to the Department of Justice, rather than the usual unlock password, the one Tunick had provided was a signal that GrapheneOS should reset the device to factory settings. That’s the core issue: it’s not that he was using GrapheneOS or had set up a duress password, but he was accused of using it to reset his device rather than give his data to law enforcement when asked.

At the point where law enforcement or border protection are asking you for data, it’s your right to refuse a search, but you typically can’t actively destroy it. I’ve always understood that the police can’t compel you to unlock your phone without a warrant, although, unfortunately, Customs and Border Protection has an exemption around the border. If there is a warrant, or if CBP asks you in a border zone, you may still refuse to unlock it, but the device may be seized and held. The trick here, which Tunick’s lawyers are arguing, is that the request was unlawful to begin with.

Because Tunick was a part of Atlanta’s Stop Cop City protests, he had been put on a terrorist watchlist; that fact was circulated just three hours prior. That flagged him for the secondary inspection that led to him being asked to unlock his phone. Protest is protected by the first amendment and a core component of democratic speech; putting protesters on a watchlist designed to protect the public against violent extremism is undemocratic. That’s even more affronting when you consider that the protest was against a police training center: the message it sends is nakedly authoritarian. Finally, and most egregiously, the questioning was about child exploitation imagery, which they had no reason to suspect him of holding. As a result, the search may not have been legal.

While a duress password is a deliberate act of destruction, the better path when crossing the border is to not have data to seize to begin with. Anyone who deals with sensitive information should consider that their phone might be taken at the border. Customs and Border Protection policy even allows agents to clone it, giving them permanent access to your data even after they hand your device back to you. They’re only supposed to do this when there’s a national security concern or reasonable suspicion of a crime — but if activists are being targeted as terrorists, that policy threshold doesn’t feel like a solid protection.

So: log out of your email, calendar, and file sharing before you embark upon your travels. Delete Signal entirely (but back it up). Consider which photos you want to travel with. Don’t travel with a stock phone — that can lead to more questions — but intentionally cut down your information footprint. That way, even if you are stopped, you won’t compromise sources (if you’re a journalist) or your compatriots (if you’re an activist). And you’re not forced to delete data in the moment in a way that could leave you vulnerable.

RFC W0192: Use of +, ~, @; clarifying extend-the-end - Johnny.Decimal

2026-07-27T06:12:45.000Z

This post is a request for comments. I am actively seeking your feedback. This feedback will influence the development of Johnny.Decimal. Feedback closes at the end of 2026-07-30. Details are at the end.

I put this post together quickly as a result of this time constraint. (Its decisions are holding up the recording of additional Task & Project Management (T&PM) episodes.) So it's a bit rough around the edges: I'll write up something more formal when feedback is in.

One of my goals has always been for the Johnny.Decimal system to be semi-formal. By which I mean that there are clear – almost mathematical – rules that define it.

This has many benefits. Clarity, obviously. Consistency. It also enables the creation of software tools to support the system: you can't write a script to validate your system if you don't have a list of rules against which to validate.

These rules need to survive the real world. Let's be honest: they need to survive Obsidian. Obsidian is just a nice way to view Markdown files, so really what we're saying is that these rules need to survive arbitrary text files on disk. We need to imagine those text files as a database, even though they're not one.

Defining an ID

One such rule seems simple enough: an ID – which I'll refer to generically as an 'entry' in your system – is defined as AC.ID Title,¹ e.g. 11.11 I am ID eleven-eleven.²

From here, we already know that we need 2 more definitions:

The definition of category 11, which we store as 11.00 Title of category 11.
The definition of area 10-19, which we store as 10.00 Title of area 10-19.³

Folder structure

You might optionally choose to store these text files in a nested folder structure.⁴

10-19 Area ten through nineteen/
   └── 11 Category eleven/
      └── 11.11 I am ID eleven-eleven.md

In which case, ID 11.11 must be a child of folder 11, which must in turn be a child of 10-19.

But if you want to leave all your files flat in a folder, that's a style choice. It breaks no rules.

So far, nothing new. Just setting the scene.

What about additional notes?

If you've used your system for any amount of time you know that notes can get full. It can be nice to create a new file so the main file doesn't get unmanageable.

Let's start using a real example, Life Admin's 11.11 Birth certificate & proof of name (which I'll shorten for convenience).

We just said that 11.11 Birth certificate defines the ID. So I can't just create another note called 11.11 Notes from applying for copy of UK birth certificate, because now I have 2 notes with ID 11.11. Which one defines the ID, and which is just a note? There's no way to tell.

Proposal 1: `~` is used to indicate a freeform sub-note

Any file containing notes, that is not the definition of the ID, and is not an EtE note (see below), must be named:

AC.ID~ Arbitrary title of sub-note

AC.ID Title must exist, in order to define the ID.

Freeform sub-notes MAY NOT contain Johnny.Decimal system metadata.⁵ All metadata is inherited from the parent ID. (You may do as you please with your own metadata/frontmatter.)

You may think of a sub-note as functionally identical to text inside a heading of the main note.

Valid: notes inside the ID note

# 11.11 Birth certificate

## Notes from applying for UK copy

I called the service centre and spoke to Dave and he said…

Equivalent: sub-note extracted to its own file

# 11.11 Birth certificate

// is now an empty note

# 11.11~ Notes from applying for UK copy

I called the service centre and spoke to Dave and he said…

Proposal 2: `+` means 'extend-the-end'; defining 'extend-the-end'

The system has had the concept of extend-the-end (EtE) for a few years. It's useful, but I've never been totally comfortable with its definition until now.

The canonical EtE example has always been your kids, in the context of the Life Admin System (LAS). There we have 11.11 Birth certificate. You have a kid, and at 6 months it's a touch young to be managing its own Johnny.Decimal system – one day! – so you do it. How do you store the kid's birth certificate?

The answer is 11.11+ Belinda.⁶ Because she'll also need her jabs, which you'll store at 11.25+ Belinda. Maybe you open her a savings account and you track it at 13.42+ Belinda.

You can think of these extended IDs as sitting on top of your primary system; like a shadow system. You've got your system, and overlaid with these + entries you have Belinda's system. And this is why it's called extend-the-end. You're just giving yourself a little more room.

Now, to find all entries in your system that relate to Belinda, just search for + Belinda.

Formalising how you extend-the-end

So when should you EtE with +, and when should you create a sub-note with ~? The answer is: when you'll have multiple instances of the thing through your system, use +, and always name them identically. Otherwise, use ~ and you are free to name them arbitrarily.

Our examples already demonstrate this. Will any other IDs require a note whose title is, or is even remotely like, Notes from appling for UK copy of birth certificate? Obviously not: use ~.

Will we use + Belinda over and over? We will.

You should be able to list all of your extend-the-ends

Your system must necessarily contain a finite number of EtEs, and you should be able to list them all. This is what makes them useful: you're defining a type of sub-note that you can easily filter on.

At home:

+ Belinda, + Marie, + Wendy for each of the kids.

At work:

+ Work log is a note where we record the fact that we did some work on a thing; typically with a date/timestamp.
- E.g. 21.35 JDHQ has 21.35+ Work log
+ P5 ideas is a note where we record ideas that aren't solid enough to make it into our task system.⁷
- E.g. 21.35 JDHQ has 21.35+ P5 ideas
+ Meeting minutes is a note where we record minutes of meetings that relate to the ID.
- E.g. if we have a meeting specifically about JDHQ we might store the minutes at 21.35+ Meeting minutes.

Standards-in-waiting

Note that these work EtEs are likely to become recommendations of the system, i.e. if you have a need for a work-log-like note, don't call yours + My work-log. Call it + Work log and now we're all talking the same language.

In this way they become a bit template-like. We'll develop this into the Small Business System (SBS) over time.

Be consistent

Don't use + Belinda sometimes and + Bel elsewhere. Pick one.

A counter-example

As a counter-example, the SBS has ID 11.31 Internal policies. Our business has a sub-note 11.31~ Purpose, mission, values: this is the only ID that will require a note with that title, so it doesn't earn a +.

Below it our 11.32 External policies has 11.32~ Code of conduct, 11.32~ Privacy policy for the same reason.

Whereas if we had a meeting about these policies, we would store its minutes at 11.32+ Meeting minutes.

You own everything after the `+`

Parsing software will detect the + and consider it and anything that follows until the end-of-line to be the EtE pattern.

This means you are free to use a space, or to omit one. I have found that it feels natural to use a space when what follows is a sentence/word, and to omit one when what follows is a code. But this is guidance, not a rule.

An example of a code

The EtE concept was born at a job where I was dealing with 13 physical facilities. Each of those facilities had a well established shortcode e.g. E32, K07.

The Johnny.Decimal system as designed contained IDs like 53.07 Hardware delivery and 72.02 Cabling. To handle these things at each location, I extended the end:

53.07+E32 was hardware delivery to E32.
72.02+K07 was cabling at K07.

This worked beautifully. I used the IDs everywhere, across my notes, filesystem, email, and the project schedule. I could filter this schedule for +K07 to reveal all line items related to that facility.

In this case it feels natural to omit the space after the +. But if you prefer to include it, do so.

Keeping notes

Regarding notes, this works in the same way as the ~ sub-note.

Difference between `~` and `+`

To recap:

Both symbols provide a way to expand an ID that already exists.
~ is for arbitrary, unpatterned expansion.
+ is for systematic, patterned expansion.

In your filesystem

If you name your filesystem folders with the +, they sort in a group above any unstructured folders. This will probably be optional. I prefer it.

Proposal 3: `@` links Work Packages to their ID

The updates to T&PM that we're recording include the concept of 'work packages' (WPs) as introduced in this video.

What's important here is a new nomenclature. Each WP has a number like W0000 but MUST also belong to a parent ID, 12.34. You MUST indicate this in the title, which ends up looking like:

W0011@12.34 Name of work package

Previously, we had used ~ as this divider. It works really nicely – it reads like 'work package 11 relates to ID 12.34' – but this is confusing if we also use it as the arbitrary sub-note symbol.

Instead, I propose using @ for this purpose. It also reads well: 'work package 11 at ID 12.34'.

In this context it will ALWAYS be nested between the range of characters defined by the regular expression /^W[0-9]{4}@[0-9]{2}\.[0-9]{2} \S.*$/, so you're still free to use it in your own titles, including EtEs.

How to feedback

Much appreciated. ✌🏼

See AC.ID notation. ↩
You can imagine these as .md files, but I won't write out the file extension. ↩
If we want to name category 10 we need to use frontmatter inside this note. Unless specified, A0 categories are named Management of area $number. ↩
System-management zeros not shown. 11.00 is a child of 11/; 10.00 is a child of 10/. ↩
For example, a YAML block at the top of a Markdown file. ↩
You're also free to duplicate area 10-19 Life admin for Belinda, giving her her own system. The reason many prefer EtE is that this new system of hers is going to be mostly empty. EtE is simpler and requires less management. ↩
A P5 being one priority level below a P4, the lowest priority task. Ref. T&PM episode 'The P1-P4 system'. ↩

Blogs, websites, and identity - James' Coffee Blog

2026-07-27T00:00:00.000Z

In Camera, one of the songs on her latest album, CharliXCX sings:

When the camera's on
I can be anything that I wanna be
And I can feel the things I don't normally feel

When I heard these words, I couldn’t help but think about them from an art history perspective. Portraits create an image. Portraits can and have been used to express power, identity, occasion, the significance of a moment. So too can we create images with cameras: we get to decide how we pose for a selfie, how we frame the image of the flower we see that we want to capture in our minds.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

One of the biggest transformations in my thinking with regard to images this year is that when I see someone take a photo I increasingly ask “why?” I was in the National Gallery of Scotland on Saturday looking at a Monet painting, Poplars on the Epte. I sat down and spent several minutes studying the painting. In that time, a few people came to have their photo taken with the painting. I exchanged a smile with one person posing for their friend in front of the camera and the Monet.

Lying here a day later, I still wonder what that smile meant. Was it an acknowledgement of the awkwardness of posing for a photo in front of art? Was it a smile of politeness because I was so entranced by the painting, and the lady was standing in front of part of it? Or was it because I looked so interested? A mix of all of the above? Something else? I’ll never know, but I am curious.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

I love that I can go to a gallery to spend time with a landscape. The meditative state that comes from enjoying art and watching others enjoy art — Poplars on the Epte.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

All of this leads up to a broader question: why do we take photos? CharliXCX advances an interesting proposition: that cameras can, in some way, invite us to be anything we want to be.

Doing as I do, I want to cross modalities from film to words and ask two different questions: Can blogs help us be who we want to be? Do blogs help us become who we want to be?

I am writing this explicitly with the intent to publish what I write on my blog, in order to participate in a collaborative writing challenge. The challenge, however, is secondary to my main goal of exploring the ideas that followed me after listening to CharliXCX’s Camera which, on my most recent listen, with consultation to annotations on the Genius lyrics website, likely has many more layers for me to look at (so too, by extension, does my thought process on why we take photos merit much more exploration). I am also writing this to explore a related interest of my own: the intersection of blogs and identity.

Here, I am connecting the dots I see.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

I have a million questions but today I can only scratch the surface of one: Can blogs help us be who we want to be? I can do this through my own experience. My blog has been a place for me to explore my identity as a writer. I share ideas here which, by extension, I share with friends, and a wider audience, too. I sometimes – and increasingly, as I try to build my skills in new types of writing – write privately. But often I write publicly. Why? (Ah, another question!) I think it’s because when I write publicly I can share little stories from my world. I like doing that. In this way, this website helps me be who I want to be: the kind of person who shares stories.

I want to be the kind of person that brings positivity into people’s lives, or, at least, shines a light on the big impact of a little moment of joy. I also want to be the kind of person who acknowledges that there are weightier moments. I want to be the kind of person who experiments with words and shares some of those experiments. I want to be a writer. In essence, then, a blog is a manifestation of who I want to be: a person who writes and shares words with the world. Perhaps all along this has been with me, for the mantra of this website is “with words, wonder.”

On this website I have the pleasure of sharing the impression of bagpipes being played in the heart of Edinburgh (can writing be Impressionist? What would that mean?), stories of my times spent in bookshops, and the myriad ways in which I feel space (as I link, I know there are likely many more ways to explore the theme of space; therein, the joy of blogging: every post can be a new beginning). Would I write these stories even if I didn’t have a website? That is an impossible question to answer, for I would be a different person. But I do know I enjoy writing on the web (and I also like writing things just for me).

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

I don’t necessarily consider myself to be a “blogger,” for I feel that word carries a certain connotation that doesn’t fit me. But I have a place I call a blog. I write on my blog. I call my writing “Recent essays” on my home page. Even though that doesn’t feel like the most appropriate descriptor, it conveys something about how I feel: that my writing lies outwith being a blog. I also link to a page called “Writing” that lists all of my blog posts.

Amid all the confusion, some clarity: I write; this website is where I share stories with the world. Should “Recent essays” read “My stories”? But this blog contains only my capture of a story. I observe the world and write. “My writings” would be closer, for here I share the world through my own lenses – my own rose-tinted, fearful, excited, optimistic, lenses.

Lately, I have had one question come back again and again: Am I growing out of the name “James’ Coffee Blog”? What if I elevated the phrase that already sits with all of my writings here – “with words, wonder” – to be the title? I am not yet convinced, but I feel I am getting closer – herein, the messiness – and the joy – of exploring identity as it relates to this space, my website.

Like CharliXCX, I can be anything I want to be here: I can be my self who asks questions under the cover of near-midnight about identity, just as I can be my self who writes about the newspaper clipping that helped me get through the morning. Although, now I think about it, I was already being myself when I lived the moments that became stories. Indeed, my blog posts grow from my everyday thoughts. Are my writings snapshots? Or are they the story? Both? How would I know?

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

I am writing this blog post in bed where the loudest thing I can hear is my keyboard; the brightest thing in the room is my computer. Yet from here I see where I was yesterday when I heard those bagpipes being played. I see the piper repositioning themselves. I see the people recording the music. I feel my mind asking why it was important to them. Who will see the song the piper played after they played it? Am I part of sharing that story?

This post is me through and through – every word, a dip in the stream of my ever-changing and ever-growing thoughts. But I can’t help but wonder whether there are moments when writing creates a little bit of distance. I feel those moments: in how much of my inspiration comes from observing the world. Where, however, is the boundary between observation and being part of the story? An observer is still part of the story.

CharliXCX’s feeling of being “inspired and alive (Yeah, I'm ready)” when the camera is on is intriguing. I don’t write because there is a camera – a blog. But I can’t shake my question: what does it mean to write on the web? Here, I am doing more than writing: I am writing knowing that someone may read it. I am writing knowing that several people may read what I write. I am writing knowing that my words will live on a space called the World Wide Web. What does that mean?

But then again, on most days, I don’t think about who will read my writing: I think “I want to write,” and publishing comes second. I don't find energy in audience, but I do find joy in knowing a story I write might make someone smile. The web exists somewhere in the background of my mind, until it is in the foreground: until I see the white canvas of the publishing software and I know, soon, these words will sit with all of my stories here.

Just as experiences take me time to process, so, too, do I think my thoughts on CharlXCXi’s song will evolve. In particular, there is one part I cannot quite decipher yet, the last line: “'Cause it's the only way to feel like I'm not actually me”. I think I deviate here, for writing does help me feel like myself. But certainly, there are limits: some days, I just want to live in the stream of life with the only record of details being my memory.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

I see a little bit of myself in [portrait] — of looking out into the distance to think; of needing the space that you can only get from looking at nothing in particular. But I see our differences too. – how art makes us connect; how art makes us look and look again, and want to go back to look again – to see what is new to us in old paintings.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

I found my lost self at near-midnight, writing until my eyes grew heavy, and with the knowledge that my thoughts will carry forward into a new day. With fresh eyes, I wonder what I might see.

This is my contribution to the IndieWeb Carnival on the topic of “Masks, Identity & Cosplay” hosted by Joe.

Masks, Identity & Cosplay blogger things just for me there are weightier moments myriad ways in which I feel space stories of my times spent in bookshops impression of bagpipes being played in the heart of Edinburgh shines a light on the big impact of a little moment of joy

Every Day Carry 2026 - Joel's Log Files

2026-07-26T21:50:00.000Z

Had it been just a couple of months ago, this every day carry would have been very different! But things change, and I decided it was finally time to write an update on my Every Day Carry!

This post was originally inspired by Bojidar’s EDC post, but I remembered I had this draft pending completion after Rubenerd’s did one too. So, kudos to them for making me want to catch up at last.

In case you are wondering, I already did a post like this a while back. Check it out if you want! it’s very bare bones though.

Wallet and keys. There’s nothing special about either of these. I do carry cash very often compared to my European friends.
The Casio AQ-S820W has took a hold of my wrist lately, replacing my Casio Royale since the moment I bought it. It is a little big, kind of like my CasiOak, but I don’t mind at all, I love wearing it and it’s been niced to get used to the analog style again. No complaints.
My Kobo Clara 2E continues to reign as my main reading device. Since I am currently reading the last book of The Expanse, I simply bring this everywhere. I still bring my XTEINK X4, I always leave it in my backpack, though neither is seeing a lot of use because of the next thing.
A gaming handheld. Right now it’s the New Nintendo 3DS XL, which truly earned a place in pocket, due to my ongoing playthrough of both Fire Emblem Awakening and Ocarina of Time. Any handheld could easily be swapped here. It would have been the PSP, the Anbernic RG35XX SP, the smaller Miyoo Mini Flip, or even the Nintendo Switch, depending on what I feel like.
A pair of nameless wired earphones. They are the ones that came with my Innioasis Y1—though I haven’t used that music player a lot lately—since they are perfectly serviceable with whatever handheld console I’m using at the moment. The Switch does work with Bluetooth but it’s just more practical to go wird.
The Nothing Ear (a) are incredible wireless earphones though. I’ve had them for almost two years and they work great! However, my constant use of the left earphone at night has made battery life uneven, and unusable with ANC, they still work very well without it though. My Nothing Ear (open) have worked wonders in quiet environments, but they are not as ideal when I’m in crowded places. Excellent during cycling though.
A Nothing (3a) is my phone of choice! There’s not a lot to say about a phone these days, it has a great back design and the cleanest non-Pixel firmware there is in the form of NothingOS. A very serviceable device I’m happy to have despite it’s annoying AI button.
An iPhone SE 3 which was given to me by my workplace, I get phone calls from work so it happens. Hate it, but it’s alright.
A Tupperware Eco Twist has been my water bottle since my high school days. I know that everyone recommends stainless steel nowadays, and I do have an Owala, but after I left it at the gym, I’d rather not risk it. Not a good idea to get expensive stuff if you are as forgetful as me…

I guess I could mention a few more things, such as my 3DS case, or a bunch of loose coins. Keep in mind these are things I carry with me during my work days, I rarely go out during a weekend but when that happens I only bring my phone, wallet, and possibly a handheld.

To end this post, here’s an of out of date Knolling I made inspired by Bojidar’s. I should have made a new one with my 3DS but the dark/gray/white color aesthetic seemed better anyway, so I couldn’t be bothered. Besides, I do continue to use my PSP to play some titles like Black Rock Shooter and Ys Chronicles I.

An organized set of devices, notable difference from the list is the PSP 3000, Anbernic RG35XX SP, and the Pilot Metropolitan, a fountain pen

This is day 3 of #100DaysToOffload

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Book Review: Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman ★★⯪☆☆ - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-07-26T11:34:33.000Z

To call this derivative is an understatement. But that's what this genre demands; rehash all your favourite media properties into something new. It's the literary equivalent of having your Transformers™ fight your He-Man© toys.

The plot, such as it is, features the Vogon Constructor Fleet destroying Earth due to a late beurecratic appeal, forcing people to play The Hunger Games, while a Twitch streamer narrates the action.

The protagonists in Andy Weir's books are boys who know enough science to save the day. The ones in Scalzi's books have enough pop-culture knowledge to save the day. Dinniman's has played enough loot-box gatcha RPGs to save the day.

It is mostly pretty good fun. The tropes are goofy, the gore is splattertastic and only rarely ventures into torture porn, the villains are suitably campy, and the wisecracking sidekick doesn't become too annoying.

But the prose…

Here's a classic scene from Red Dwarf which exemplifies the major problem I had with this book.

There's only so many times you can read "Then I severed a +3 damage with poison debuff while he raised a +1 shield and used his armour of holding to neutralise the attack". I find opening endless lootboxen a chore when I'm playing a game - reading 150 instances of "I got a bronze box with a cauldron of Mafeking, then a gold box with an enchanted ring, then…" just becomes tiresome.

I tried listening to the audiobook of the sequel and I just couldn't get past the endless recitation of lists about +5 to elbows and -6 to arseholes. Just unbearably tedious.

Look, I've never written a novel and doubt I could do any better. This has obviously found its fanbase but, regrettably, I'm not one. It was a fun enough read, but I'm not sure I can be bothered with a dozen more sequels of recycled plots and repetitive squishing of cackling enemies.

📝 2026-07-26 10:44: Taking the dogs for a walk with our oldest and we came across this beautiful... - Kev Quirk

2026-07-26T09:44:00.000Z

Taking the dogs for a walk with our oldest and we came across this beautiful buzzard just sat there. Wasn't bothered by us really. I just hope it doesn't have a bust wing or anything.

Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️

You can reply to this post by email, or leave a comment.

I Came Second in the Hemispheric Views June-Boree and Got This Neat Trophy - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

2026-07-26T09:13:44.000Z

I posted about my June-Boree entries a couple of weeks ago and the winners were announced on episode 167. Turns out I came second, beaten narrowly by Arcadia king Eric, which means I get one of Jason's famous trophies.

After some shenanigans with trying to send it to a pickup location which UPS couldn't do three days in a row, I finally got my hands on it and it's glorious.

Streams - James' Coffee Blog

2026-07-26T00:00:00.000Z

I wrote this post on Thursday, July 23rd, and reviewed and slightly refined it today. I have left the post as a stream of consciousness – a snippet of my mind as it was on the morning I walked around and saw the world.

Walking among the stream of people; of stories of life — moving forward and watching other people move forward, of the pace being set by those around you, of feeling comfort being surrounded by others; of living in the contrast of silence and activity — of the journey being the moment between those points; when more stories enter the fore and I realise how much energy I get from watching the world, both at a distance and up close. Can you be distant and present at the same time?

The barista wears a golden badge that reads Director of Happiness, written in a decorative font. Yes, I am now the sort of person who recognises the typography and notes it down — how learning helps us notice what is in front of us; how we learn to recognise; how seeing and recognising are discrete. The barista wore colourful sparkly glasses, and asked how I was to which I shared my perspective on the weather — not too warm. Sometimes we need neutral moments in our conversations; when we can take a moment to think and breathe without needing to go further. I feel the energy of all the people walking in and queuing up, like I did. There is a cycle to the coffee shop — of people, patrons and staff, coming and going, on horizons from the daily to the weekly to the eventual day when new horizons happen.

Someone carries a bouquet of the largest sunflowers I have ever seen. Sir Walter Scott holds an upside down traffic cone between his writers’ arms. People sit on the park benches; one woman takes a corner and reads a book under the shade afforded by a row of trees. Friends ready blankets.

I look down and see an engraving in the pavement. I think immediately back to a deeper engraving on a pavement in a city I love far away — the engraving in my memory and the street is so deep it must have been moulded when the stone was being paved. The moments when we see the passage of time — in the traffic lights and the built up traffic, in the stonework and the glass, in the height and girth of the trees; in the grain of the world.

The moment I walked into the bookshop I smelled the books — stacks of stories waiting for everyone who wants to spend a moment in a new world. I carry dried tears on my right hand from the dust in the air from outside. The tears nonetheless show that I can cry.

I see a book cover showing a building in Central Park, New York, a building that has fascinated me as I have walked around on past trips. Standing taller than the other buildings in its avenue, in the centre of the left side of the garden, the building is a landmark that, when seen, helps you see where you are and how far you have come.

Behind me, a person in the bookstore sings “Do you want a house tour? I’ll take you to the second third floor” to a friend – both are perusing books at the entranceway to the fiction floor. Today I learned I am not the only person who makes music in bookshops — the woman who was singing had a much more melodic voice than I, however. I like humming tunes rather than singing, though: bringing music where there is little. (I wish I could sing well.)

As I walk around I notice that even though I stick to the same track there is always a degree of serendipity — of a particular table standing out that I want to peruse, of a book that mentions the concept of the Anti-Hero in its title that makes me think of Taylor Swift. One day I will understand what a friend was trying to communicate by saying things familiar to us stand out more. Which leads me to wonder: how, in a sea of words, do some things stand out to our minds more than others?

I hear the clinks of cups in the distance. A bookmark reads “be kind to your mind” in a bold pink font with a pink flower and golden sparkles.

Bookshelves - James' Coffee Blog

2026-07-26T00:00:00.000Z

I woke early — it has been warm lately. It is strange how you can find a burst of energy at 5am, but today it came, for I decided to organise my bookshelves, sorting what books I am ready to donate to the local charity shop.

I picked up books — stories — and thought about the good memories I had with them. I also thought honestly about some books that have been on my shelf for a while. Did I read this? Will I read this? Do I still want to hold onto this? In some cases the answer is yes. There are books I have that I know I am going to be ready to read one day. In other cases the answer is no — to let the dream go means to make room for new dreams.

Having sorted out my books, a dozen or so ready to be donated, I went to the magazines and clippings — the miscellanea. I found the newspaper extracts I have saved: stories I read that were so meaningful I knew I wanted to keep them.

I don’t know whether I found the story that helped me think about something that means a lot to me this morning or it found me. The piece spoke to me and said “it’s okay” in just the way I needed. That must have been why I saved it. Was past James doing future James a favour? Did he know there was more to read in the article — more to see?

Here, now, I am sitting on an uncomfortable metal chair in a bus stop, waiting for my journey of the day — one to which I have been looking forward all week. I hold a warm coffee — with caffeine, for I am tired — between my legs, there being no other place to hold it for I need my two hands to type. Maybe one day I’ll find this clipping from my stream of idle thoughts on the first rainy Sunday in weeks on my bookshelf, ready for me when I need it.

Can data collectives help strengthen vulnerable cultures in the face of AI? - Werd I/O

2026-07-25T14:23:05.000Z

Link: Fed up with Big Tech, communities turn to data collectives for control, by Rina Chandran at Rest of World

It’s interesting to contrast the current moment to the “information wants to be free” era of Web 2.0, twenty or so years ago. Back then, everyone was talking about open APIs and open data. Now, it’s become clearer that communities need to control the terms of their data if they’re going to avoid being strip-mined for somebody else’s profit.

“Workers, producers, consumers, and others have been establishing cooperatives and other community-led associations to pool resources, share benefits, and address socioeconomic challenges for centuries. The United Nations marked 2025 as the year of cooperatives, positioning them as “essential solutions to today’s global problems,” kindling renewed interest in data collectives and cooperatives.”

While there’s certainly an argument to be made that communities tend to over-estimate the value of their own data (looking at you, news), some of these datasets may be truly unique in ways that would add value to an AI service or model. As this article points out, collectively-owned data includes creative works in more than 20 African languages that aren’t recognized in mainstream linguistic frameworks.

The danger, of course, is that putting these kinds of gates in front of underrepresented cultures just works to further marginalize them: in that potential future, if everyone’s using a model where those languages are missing, they become irrelevant. But there’s another one where data collectives can pull the levers they have to bring about the world they want to see. That’s exactly what the Nwulite Obodo Open Data License aims to do: data rights holders can negotiate to share their work and cultural heritage without losing their right to benefit from it. (Nwulite Obodo is Igbo for raising, reviving, and building the community.)

In one model, vendors building non-extractive and responsibly trained models for public interest purposes get to use their data for free, but the closed-model big tech vendors have to pay. That’s what Meesum Alam did with voice data for 39 at-risk languages in Pakistan: the communities he worked with determined that the data was free for research and non-commercial purposes, but for-profit tech companies would need to negotiate terms (which Meta did).

That potentially becomes more interesting: either OpenAI et al negotiate to license the data, or they lose functionality to their public interest competitors. There’s also a world where some communities proactively document their cultures and make them available specifically so that models, whoever they’re built by, won’t omit them. Either the world has more equitable AI or the communities financially benefit from their cultural heritage.

Whatever happens, these communities certainly have the right to control their data however they see fit. What vendors do about it is the open question. But initiatives like Mozilla Data Collective make it more possible to have more substantive conversations about how data is provided and used, and that can only be a good thing.

Some Quick Thoughts on EMF Camp 2026 - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-07-25T11:34:01.000Z

I've performed a talk at the last three EMFs - so this time I decided to go purely as a tourist. It made things much more relaxing. No waking up from a stress dream that my laptop didn't work. No casually dropping my talk into every conversation to build up an audience. No queueing for the loos five minutes before going on. No adrenaline spikes or come downs. It was bliss!

After several volunteer shifts over the years, I also decided to be utterly selfish and do none this year. Again, rather nice being on the customer side of the bar without worrying that I'd cocked up someone's order.

Similarly, I had thought about doing an art "thing" or building something for the badge. In the end all I did was ask my friend Skylar to set up a shortcode so people could ring 26262 (BNANA) for an audio surprise.

To be clear - you should absolutely propose a talk, pitch an installation, and volunteer. It's a great way of experiencing the festival and giving back. But I was exhausted after a 6,379 Km Interrail journey and, frankly, wanted a change of pace.

Everyone has a different EMF. I mostly went to talks and looked at cool art. Some people were focussed on playing all the games. Some gorgeous people were just there to strut about in their amazing costumes. A few people delighted in showing off all their cool toys. It really is about seven festivals in one. I'm still bemused by some of the things - I've no idea what a challenge coin is, I'm hazy about how the various puzzles work, I didn't know about the cool musicians until it was too late.

Still, I came away physically exhausted and mentally refreshed - so a success!

What Worked

We took our Walkie Talkies. So much easier to use Push-To-Talk rather than hoping a text was seen. Worked all the way across the field.
I took lots of Thermal Images - and people seemed to like them!
Handed out a million stickers for OpenBenches - and met several people who'd used and enjoyed the site.
I hired an electric van to lug our stuff. It was quick and easy to charge on the way up and back. Much more relaxing to drive than our enormous camper from last time.

What Almost Worked

We got an inflatable tent so we didn't have to faff too much putting it up. In the end we needed a bit of help (thanks Lucy and Parker). The tent was an excellent size. The blackout stuff kept us reasonably cool and there was good airflow. But, fuck me, sleeping on an airbed in a tent in a heatwave just isn't my scene!
Similarly, dragging our stuff from the car park to our village was a slog. Damien from Hacky Racers gave our kit a lift using his Ghost Rider go-kart which saved my aching back.
The queue for the showers was a bit long - our village members sent back regular queue updates. Once I got in, it was pretty decent. Obviously I felt time pressure to clean up quickly, but the water pressure was decent and there was enough space to hang my pants without getting them soaked. Of course, I dropped my t-shirt into a puddle because I'm incompetent!
It was hard to meet everyone I said I'd see there. I kept getting distracted - sorry if we were due to chat!

What Didn't Work

Some of these are no-one's fault, just circumstances. Others are just not the way I'd have done things.

One of the food stalls served the worst veggie burger I've ever had. No sauce, no veg, no condiments or pickles. Just a bun tasting of sadness. Bleh. Rest of the food was decent for a festival.
Given the heat it was unfortunate that the water pressure was so iffy. There was plenty to drink, but it trickled out slowly at times. Other festivals regularly water the paths to prevent so much dust from being kicked up. That might have helped here.
I'm terrible at remembering people's names - especially if I only met them once a few years ago, or they're dressed as a Furry. As much as I love the EMF badge, I wish it were smaller, lighter, and mandatory for people to wear it in a prominent position. Ideally their forehead.
There's a general lack of signage at EMF. The webmap was useful - but a few wayfinding posts would have helped me and others.
It is loud. Some of the music overwhelmed the people who were speaking on stage. I guess it is hard to put soundproofing in a tent 😆

2028?

I'm still on the fence about going next time. Not because of anything the organisers did or didn't do. I just can't stand camping in an actual tent. Small camper vans are frustrating to live out of - even for a long weekend. A big mobile home is a pain in the arse to drive. Perhaps I need a glamping yurt? Or someone to chauffeur me in a tour bus?

In short, wandering in the dark and tripping over guy ropes when I'm desperate for a piss isn't the way I like to spend my time!

I'm also conscious that events like these rely on a steady stream of new blood. Having attended three in person and one remotely, I'm aware that I'm taking up space which could go to someone who would have their mind blown by the delightful madness contained in that field.

Previous years have allowed people to get a guaranteed ticket in exchange for one volunteer shift. This year you needed two shifts. I think that's a great way to diversify the festival and stop it just becoming the same faces over-and-over again.

I know that if I don't go I'll suffer from intense FOMO and will vicariously follow all the social media posts. But I don't know if that will outweigh smelling like a rancid turnip and getting stressed that the queue for the loo will be unbearable.

Let's see what the next two years brings, eh?

Photos

Anyway, here are a few of my favourite photos. Click through to see some more on Mastodon.

Shellsharks Blogroll - BlogFlock

Google Calendar "Unable to launch event" - caused by missing DTSTAMP - Terence Eden’s Blog

How we use /goal to find bugs in Patch the Planet - Trail of Bits Blog

Drawing Resources - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

📝 2026-07-28 09:16: Always fun when your bike runs out of electricity on the way to work. Note... - Kev Quirk

Wonders of Web Weaving, Episode 12 - James' Coffee Blog

RetroAchievements, a football match, and visits - W30 - Joel's Log Files

📝 2026-07-27 17:54: The poor buzzard was still there when I was walking the dogs this morning, so... - Kev Quirk

Published on Citation Needed: "Mapping Trump’s crypto empire on Last Week Tonight" - Molly White's activity feed

Mapping Trump’s crypto empire on Last Week Tonight - Molly White's activity feed

Don't bring sensitive data to a border crossing - Werd I/O

RFC W0192: Use of +, ~, @; clarifying extend-the-end - Johnny.Decimal

Defining an ID

Folder structure

What about additional notes?

Proposal 1: ~ is used to indicate a freeform sub-note

Valid: notes inside the ID note

Equivalent: sub-note extracted to its own file

Proposal 2: + means 'extend-the-end'; defining 'extend-the-end'

Formalising how you extend-the-end

You should be able to list all of your extend-the-ends

Standards-in-waiting

Be consistent

A counter-example

You own everything after the +

An example of a code

Keeping notes

Difference between ~ and +

In your filesystem

Proposal 3: @ links Work Packages to their ID

How to feedback

Footnotes

Blogs, websites, and identity - James' Coffee Blog

Every Day Carry 2026 - Joel's Log Files

Book Review: Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman ★★⯪☆☆ - Terence Eden’s Blog

📝 2026-07-26 10:44: Taking the dogs for a walk with our oldest and we came across this beautiful... - Kev Quirk

I Came Second in the Hemispheric Views June-Boree and Got This Neat Trophy - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

Streams - James' Coffee Blog

Bookshelves - James' Coffee Blog

Can data collectives help strengthen vulnerable cultures in the face of AI? - Werd I/O

Some Quick Thoughts on EMF Camp 2026 - Terence Eden’s Blog

What Worked

What Almost Worked

What Didn't Work

2028?

Photos

Proposal 1: `~` is used to indicate a freeform sub-note

Proposal 2: `+` means 'extend-the-end'; defining 'extend-the-end'

You own everything after the `+`

Difference between `~` and `+`

Proposal 3: `@` links Work Packages to their ID