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Una Watch - SDK and Writing Your First App - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-10-06T11:34:25.000Z

I don't know why hardware manufacturers find it so hard to write decent documentation. As I've said before you need to actually test your readme. The Una Watch development instructions are scattered across a bunch of different files.

So here's how to go from zero to your first "Hello, World!" Glance app with the minimum of fuss.

This all assumes a fairly modern Debian / Ubuntu / Pop OS Linux.

Prerequisites

This installs most of the tools you will need:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y git python3 python3-pip cmake build-essential

STM32CubeCLT

Visit https://www.st.com/en/development-tools/stm32cubeclt.html and download the Linux version of the tool. Inexplicably, you need to give your email address. I recommend giving a disposable one from https://10minutemail.com/

After downloading, unzip the file.

On the command line, cd into the directory containing the unzipped file.

chmod +x stm32cubeclt_*.sh
sudo ./stm32cubeclt_*.sh

You will need to agree to their licence. Just hit y.

That installs everything in /opt/st/stm32cubeclt_1.22.0/

You will need to make that available to your PATH.

export PATH="/opt/st/stm32cubeclt_1.22.0/GNU-tools-for-STM32/bin:$PATH"

Clone the repo

You will need to copy the Una SDK. I keep my git repos in ~/git/ - you will need the location of the directory later.

cd ~/git/
git clone git@github.com:UNAWatch/una-sdk.git
cd una-sdk/
git submodule update --init ThirdParty/lvgl

Then update all the Python dependencies.

export UNA_SDK="$PWD"
python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip
python3 -m pip install -r "$UNA_SDK/Utilities/Scripts/app_packer/requirements.txt"

Check it has all worked

Paste this into your terminal. Check for any errors.

which arm-none-eabi-gcc || true
which cmake || true
which make || true
which python3 || true
python3 -m pip --version
arm-none-eabi-gcc --version || true
cmake --version || true
make --version || true

Build the demo app

If all of the above has worked, you should be able to build the demo app with:

cd /tmp
mkdir -p MyAlarm
cp -r "$UNA_SDK/Examples/Apps/Alarm/"* MyAlarm
mkdir -p MyAlarm/build
cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -S MyAlarm/Software/Apps/Alarm-CMake -B MyAlarm/build
cmake --build MyAlarm/build

Make it permanent

Store the paths permanently. If you put cloned the Una SDK to somewhere other than ~/git/ you'll need to edit this next bit of code:

echo 'export UNA_SDK="$HOME/git/una-sdk"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export PATH="/opt/st/stm32cubeclt_1.22.0/GNU-tools-for-STM32/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Build a Glance app

At the moment, the only way to build a GUI app is using the Windows only (Booooo!) TouchGFX⁰. So, instead, we'll make a "Hello World" glance. All it will do is draw some text.

The GlanceFloors demo app is the simplest one to copy.

cd $UNA_SDK/Examples/Apps/
cp -r  GlanceFloors/ GlanceHello

Use an IDE or a text editor to open up the new GlanceHello directory.

Rename the directory GlanceHello/Software/App/GlanceFloors-CMake/ to GlanceHello/Software/App/GlanceHello-CMake/
Edit the file GlanceHello/Software/App/GlanceFloors-CMake/CMakeLists.txt - specifically the # App configuration section.
Change the APP_NAME to GlanceHello
Change the APP_USER_NAME to Hello

For a demo, you can leave the DEV_ID and APP_ID as their default values.

Minimum viable app

You will need to edit two more files.

In GlanceHello/Software/Libs/Header/Service.hpp remove the following lines:

SDK::Sensor::Connection mSensorFloors;
uint32_t                mFloorsValue;
bool                    mDataReceived;

Then save the file.

Edit GlanceHello/Software/Libs/Source/Service.cpp and replace its entire contents with this:

#include "Service.hpp"
#include "SDK/Messages/CommandMessages.hpp"
#include "SDK/Messages/MessageGuard.hpp"

Service::Service(SDK::Kernel &kernel)
    : mKernel(kernel)
    , mGlanceUI()
    , mGlanceTitle()
    , mGlanceValue()
{}

Service::~Service(){}

void Service::run()
{
    while (true) {
        SDK::MessageBase *msg;
        if(!mKernel.comm.getMessage(msg)) {
            continue;
        }

        switch (msg->getType()) {

            case SDK::MessageType::EVENT_GLANCE_START:
                if (configGui()) {
                    createGuiControls();
                } else {
                    mKernel.comm.releaseMessage(msg);
                    mKernel.sys.exit(0);
                }
                break;

            case SDK::MessageType::COMMAND_APP_STOP:
            case SDK::MessageType::EVENT_GLANCE_STOP:
                mKernel.comm.releaseMessage(msg);
                return;
                break;

            case SDK::MessageType::EVENT_GLANCE_TICK:
                onGlanceTick();
                break;

            default:
                break;
        }

        mKernel.comm.releaseMessage(msg);
    }
}

void Service::onGlanceTick()
{
    if (mGlanceUI.isInvalid()) {
        if (auto upd = SDK::make_msg(mKernel)) {
            upd->name           = APP_NAME;
            upd->controls       = mGlanceUI.data();
            upd->controlsNumber = static_cast(mGlanceUI.size());
            upd.send(100);
        }

        mGlanceUI.setValid();
}
}

bool Service::configGui()
{
    bool status = false;
    if (auto gc = SDK::make_msg(mKernel)) {
        if (gc.send(100) && gc.ok()) {
            if (gc->maxControls >= 3) {
                mGlanceUI.setWidth(gc->width);
                mGlanceUI.setHeight(gc->height);
                status = true;
            }
        }
    }
    return status;
}

void Service::createGuiControls()
{
    mGlanceTitle = mGlanceUI.createText();
    mGlanceTitle.pos({ kTitleX, kTitleY }, { kTitleW, kTitleH })
        .font(GlanceFont_t::GLANCE_FONT_POPPINS_SEMIBOLD_20)
        .color(GlanceColor_t::GLANCE_COLOR_TEAL)
        .setText("Hello, World!")
        .alignment(GlanceAlignH_t::GLANCE_ALIGN_H_CENTER);
    mGlanceValue = mGlanceUI.createText();
    mGlanceValue.pos({ 0, kValueY }, { 200, kValueH })
        .font(GlanceFont_t::GLANCE_FONT_POPPINS_SEMIBOLD_20)
        .color(GlanceColor_t::GLANCE_COLOR_WHITE)
        .setText("I know C++")
        .alignment(GlanceAlignH_t::GLANCE_ALIGN_H_CENTER);
}

Save the file.

Compile it

On the command line

cd $UNA_SDK/Examples/Apps/GlanceHello/Software/App/GlanceHello-CMake
cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -S . -B build
cmake --build build

It should finish with a success message of [100%] Built target GlanceHelloApp

Copying it to your watch

Plug your watch into your computer with a USB-C cable.
On your computer, open the watch's filesystem.
Open the Apps directory.
Create a new directory.
Name the new directory with the string of characters from the APP_ID which is set in CMakeLists.txt
The app is stored in GlanceHello/Output/ and will be called Hello_1.5.0-rc5.uapp or similar.
Copy the .uapp file from your computer to the directory you just created on the watch.
Eject the watch.
Unplug the cable.
Restart the watch by pressing the "Up" button until you get to "Power Off", then press "Select", then press "Select" again.
Turn the watch on by holding down "Select".
Once the watch has fully restarted, press the "Down" button until you see the "Hello" glance.

If it has worked, you should see this:

Hurrah! Treat yourself to a beer 🍻

Just after I wrote this, the SDK was updated to allow LVGL which should work on Linux. There's no documentation for it yet that I could find. ↩︎

2026-10-06 09:47: Been trying a new email client, Hylki, after reading about it on OMG! Ubuntu! Really... - Kev Quirk

2026-10-06T08:47:00.000Z

Been trying a new email client, Hylki, after reading about it on OMG! Ubuntu! Really enjoying it. It's modern and has a tonne of features.

https://hylki.app/

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.

Christmas movie, Fool Us rabbit hole, UNO - W40 - Joel's Log Files

2026-10-06T04:34:33.000Z

This was a very crazy week I have to say, full of unexpected surprises and the like, as such, the things that happened kind of have to be more than listicles this time around, we will resume the usual style for future weeknotes, probably, or not!

In any case, here are some events of note that happened from September 29 to October 5, 2026.

🎩 I fell on a Fool Us rabbit hole. It’s a show where magicians all over the world try to fool Penn & Teller—one of the best magicians with a long history and experience in the art. If you’ve never been exposed to it, I have some recommendations with some top performers! Grab a snack and a drink, and have a blast! These are not ranked, but DaOrtiz is my favorite.

🚌 The bus route for work has finally altered the time of departure on my stop, and I have good news! I now have ten whole minutes more to stay at home in the early morning, less pressure to wake up early and the like, which I actually appreciate. Less time for hobbies during the commute, but whatever.

🦐 For the first time in years, I went out to get some seafood with my parents! My mom found this place nearby and she wanted to check it out, so I decided to invite her and dad to have some for ourselves. I got some shrimp! I forgot what they got, I just ate stuff and enjoyed myself!

🎲 We were so close to playing Land of Eem out of nowhere, but my friends chose simpler card games instead, I even brought my books and all—though I forgot my GM screen too.

We did a few rounds of Phase 10, but we also did UNO K-Pop Demon Hunters edition (while letting the soundtrack of that movie play the whole time) which was fun enough—though I didn’t understand the extra rule it adds at all.

Speaking of UNO, I did buy myself the edition themed after The Legend of Zelda series…

🙈 In an absolutely wild moment, my mom ~~decided to play cupid~~ invited the girl I kinda like (the one I invited to the movies, twice) to visit us. I was not told about this critical information at any point in time, until she literally messaged me asking for my address. So I ended up going outwith her—impromptu and against my will (not really)—downtown, we had an ice cream looked at cool old buildings and the like.

We also had dinnner, played some card games, watched a christmas movie (in October?) and had a relatively good time. I genuinely felt like I was put into a rom-com manga all of a sudden against my will. I feel that I did everything wrong and fumbled many things badly—yes I’m not going into why here—but it turned out ok and she had fun which is good enough for me and she said I owe her another one.

UNO K-Pop Demon Hunters, some sea food, a UNO Zelda edition, my PSP with FFIV on it, and some pretty lights in some street downtown

Watching

Klaus is an incredible work on animation that works as a retelling of the origin of Santa Claus! It features a mailman who meets an old toy maker, who help bring a very toxic and divided city together for the first time, with the power of acts of kindness! It was a genuinely lovely film with excellent art design and story. A bit weird for October, but it doesn’t matter.

Reading

The Left Hand of Darkness. Chapters 6-7. I got a bit slow on this one as I decided to focus on my gaming and was carried away by some manga too! Still, the chapters were also very long and focused on some pretty interesting themes this time around.

Alita Battle Angel. Chapters 45-46. After probably more than a year without reading this classic manga of the cyberpunk genre, I finally decided to return to this, with only ten or so chapters, it took me a while to get back into the gist of it. I am having fun nonetheless!

Blue Lock. Chapters 360-361. I remember saying I’d stop reading this until the England match was over, but I decided to read some more anyway and ended up getting to a perspective switch outside the match, welp.

Centuria. Chapter 80. Not a lot of reading this one this time around! Just some intersting villain backstory stuff.

Gaming

Completed

Final Fantasy IV has been ongoing for me, for about four years, I have finally completed one of the quintessential entires of the JRPG genre! One of the first with an actual plotline, accompanied by a wonderful soundtrack and turn based combat implementing the ATB system. The PSP version was a joy to go through, I played around 14 hours total since I last touched it last year, just doing endgame dungeons, unlocking ultimate weapons, grinding for levels, and finally beating the last boss, to reach credits and end this story once and for all!

Ongoing

Nintendo Switch Sports was played during the weekent. It was an excellent source of multiplayer fun that I tried with multiple people this week. Both 2-player and 4-player modes! The favorite was volleyball and tennis, as usual.

Guncho is a roguelike that I think I’ve mentioned before. It’s a game where you deal with many enemies in a hex grid, with only six bullets and the environment to help you. You can unlock abilities to swap positions, position yourself, or ricochet bullets, and it’s awesome!

Around the Web

Not a lot of posts this time around, and no descriptions. It’s late!

Fire Emblem is Timeless by Kyle Labriola
[Music over podcasts] by Rubenerd
October Is Spooky Video Game Month by Wouter Groeneveld
Your Phone Is Not Your Computer by Simon Safar

This is day 47 of #100DaysToOffload

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AI companies are parasites - Posts feed

2026-10-05T19:29:00.000Z

Merriam-Webster:

An organism living in, on, or with another organism in order to obtain nutrients, grow, or multiply often in a state that directly or indirectly harms the host.

That's it, right? The whole thing, their entire business model.

Scrape the whole of the internet, destroy books, siphon everything they can from whoever they can without compensation, and call it fair use.
Train models on said stolen data.
Sell metered access to the models.
Repeat until you've killed the host.
Hope you can head off the effects of AI inbreeding.

The old bargain of traffic for indexing is gone. Scrapers overload infrastructure. Clickthroughs collapse. Communities collapse.¹

Yes, licensing deals exist. Reddit is selling access to its data, but that data is human-generated and depends on a flagging community the company seems, at best, indifferent to.

They'll even show up in your community and set up a data center that nobody (well, except for the people profiting from it) wants. Maybe they'll spin up gas generators and send pollution your way. Or they'll drive up your electricity and water rates. But what about jobs? Most of those only exist during construction and, who knows, they might just hire folks from outside your area for that.

They never should've attached themselves to society, and it may be too late to dislodge them. At least we get stilted prose, images that look like Pixar rehashes, and code nobody understands.

How's Stack Overflow doing lately? ↩︎

[RSS Club] Changes to the RSS and Atom feeds - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-10-05T11:34:03.000Z

This content is exclusive to RSS and Atom subscribers. It is not on the web. Shhhhh!

A few weeks ago I accidentally broke some of your feed readers. I was using blocks in the feed. That allows me to put in raw HTML without the need for escaping. Unfortunately, some feed readers unescaped text which should have remained escaped. Confusing, innit?

Anyway, if you've a mind to, I'd be grateful if you let me know if this post does anything "weird" with your reader⁰.

This text should be bold but this text should not.

This text should be escaped and should not cause your reader to scroll. This is an image of a mushroom cloud: This is the escaped version This should just be an ampersand: & And this should be ampersand, amp, and semicolon: & Here's a video embed that I like: I'm sure there's all sorts of other odd stuff I could add, but this'll be a good start. With thanks to Suren Enfiajyan's article for the guidance. I mean weirder than my usual stuff! ↩︎ MCP server 'move in' is live - Johnny.Decimal 2026-10-05T05:39:54.000Z Speaking of MCP servers, our server now has a 'move in' service. Just ask it to help you move in to the Life Admin or Small Business systems and it'll do that. You need at least a Pro account. It's hard to test this sort of thing without having a bunch of mess to organise. As you might imagine, my laptop's pretty neat. But testing on a realistic sample data set is kinda mind-blowing. It's really good. Here's a rough-cut video showing the process. This is all in active development, so there's lots more to come. Life Admin MCP access now requires a Pro account - Johnny.Decimal 2026-10-05T04:18:25.000Z I launched the MCP server in August, and it's proved very popular. So popular, it's a problem – because it costs me money to run. It isn't a fortune, but the impact of the extra compute on my hosting bill isn't zero, nor is my time to keep it all working. Previously a Personal account meant you could use the MCP server with your agent to ask it questions about the Life Admin System, and have it download and install your system. Those things now require a Pro account. With a Personal account, you get the Life Admin System and the same free open-source utilities available to anyone. So your AI agent can still read your local files and JDex (augmented by my skills) and help you manage your system. It can still read the site documentation via the MCP server or by appending .md to any URL. With a Pro account, you get this plus full MCP server access, API access, 20+ hours of video at Johnny.Decimal University, and soon the Mac app I'm developing. This is much simpler and easier to explain. JDHQ now means 'software and server features that cost money'. Johnny.Decimal University means 'all our video training'. You get them both with Pro. Clean. A Pro account is how you support us. It's how two people are able to work on this full time. We keep adding value to it: it started out as the Workshop. Then we added the 5-hour Task and Project Management course. Then the MCP server, and soon an app. All provided to existing members, all for no additional cost. I hope that's okay. Thanks for understanding. – j. Song - James' Coffee Blog 2026-10-05T00:00:00.000Z I want to give all my breath to the song, listening to every transcendent, liminal, spooky note, accompanied by intertwined tracks of coded and pure voice. I want to sing out the words I know loudly, and read all those I don’t know so that I may sing as much as I can with all the ardour in my heart and my soul, each vestige of passion entering the air being a sign of life, a sign of feeling, a sign of all that I have learned and all that I do not know. I listen to songs that I have heard dozens of times before, hearing in my partial recall of the lyrics my limits. I cannot sing everything, but I can sing parts of the song, and keep singing until I have learned as much as I can – every word a signal of a feeling that I have transversed and held in my hands or the wells of my eyes. As I sing I know where to pause and when the music will come back again; there are always moments to listen, each a chapter in the story, a story in which I know so few words but with which I feel so much. Therein again, limits. How can a song feel so right even when you do not know what all the words mean? How can such a song invite you to harmonise, in which you become part of a chorus of three voices – two, the artist, one, you? The pauses in the tracks invite a moment to take a breath; to feel your eyes and face lighten with the instrumental before you feel compelled to sing once again to an interplay of sounds and solo transformed only days ago when your reading of the background brought tears. You sing, and then shake your head with closed eyes to the mountain sounds of the conclusion – layers of meaning yet to appreciate; the fade-out before the fade-in gives you pause, and then distance, as a new song plays that holds your heart unlike those that came before. Kodak Charmera Review - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed 2026-10-04T19:43:52.000Z Over a year ago I bought a Kodak Charmera keyring mini camera; it's a tiny little camera that takes photos at 1440x1080 and I was lucky enough to get the best design. It's taken me until now to actually try it out at Alice Holt forest today — we went because they have Gruffalo sculptures and the Knightlings are obsessed. Here it is compared to a Renault 5 and a Sharpie The photos are about as good as I expected which is not good at all but it is a fun camera to use. I think I'll stick with the Camp Snap. A mouse took a stroll though the deep dark wood, The mouse took photos with his Kodak Charmera and they were not good. Would You Like to Write to Me? - Kev Quirk 2026-10-04T15:17:00.000Z I really enjoy writing. Not typing - writing. With a fountain pen on good quality paper. I find the whole process cathartic; putting pen to paper demands far more use of my grey matter than hammering away at a keyboard. I mentioned in a recent post that when I finished an English course many years ago, I was hunting for creative reasons to type. Similarly, over the last 6 months or so I've gotten into fountain pens, and now I'm looking for ways to write creatively. I thought about handwriting some text then scanning/photographing it to publish it here, but that feels too convoluted. Plus, I feel like writing with a pen is more of a personal endeavour. Then it struck me - why not get a few pen pals! So I'm throwing this out into the wild - does anyone fancy exchanging letters with me? The only real requirement is that you can read and write in English (sadly, it's the only language I speak). I'm looking for perhaps 3–5 people to swap letters with. Naturally, we'll need to share postal addresses so we can send our prose back and forth. There’s zero pressure when it comes to frequency, either. Just write back whenever life allows. If a month or so passes without hearing from you, no hard feelings. I'll just assume our correspondence has naturally run its course. If you're interested, please fill out the short form linked below. Since I can only manage 3–5 pen pals, submitting the form doesn't guarantee we'll write, but if we seem like a good match and share common ground, I'll reach out by email to swap details and get things going. I won't be publishing these letters online - these are purely offline, private conversations. I'd ask that you keep them private, too. If you prefer not to use Google Forms, feel free to email me with the following: Your name Preferred email address Which country/city you live in A little bit about yourself and why you want to write to me Some topics you'd like to discuss Sign up to become a Pen Pal 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. My Pitch for the New Season of Doctor Who - Terence Eden’s Blog 2026-10-04T11:34:50.000Z With the news that the BBC are tendering for a new series of Doctor Who, I thought I'd write down what I want from the show. This is, to be fair, pure fan-service wankery with zero chance of being made. I've based it on the oft-made observation that Hollywood is obsessed with remaking successful films rather than trying to remake unsuccessful ones. Do we really need another Spider-Man origin story? No. Do we need the umpteenth remake of "The Italian Job"? Boring! Why don't producers take a film which was nearly a hit and see if a better director, crew, and cast can make it into something magical? Let's apply the same thinking to Doctor Who. My pitch is simple - remake some of the original stories which were let down by shoddy effects, naff music, indifferent direction, and hammy acting. There are loads of great stories which are stretched too thin over six episodes with clunky cliffhangers. So let's give them a fresh lick of paint, trim each story down to two episodes, and give them modern direction⁰. One story from each of the original Doctors' run. But here's the twist - there's a different actor playing The Doctor for each story! The Doctor's companion stays the same throughout. As the ~14 episodes play out, The Doctor gradually becomes aware that some malevolent force is compelling them to relive their previous adventures. Very roughly, this is what I'd do: The Web Planet - with Patrick Stewart as The Doctor. Imagine proper CGI ants! Menoptra floating through the air! It's fair to say I disliked the original version, but it is easy to imagine how it could work. Fury From The Deep - with Miranda Hart. A fine story but with so-so delivery. The environmental angle would resonate well today. Invasion of the Dinosaurs - with Sean Pertwee. Look, who else are you going to get to play him? The original story is probably the epitome of shoddy FX work! Everyone loves dinosaurs and having them rampage around the UK (rather than a spaceship) would be thrilling. The Talons of Weng-Chiang - with Benedict Wong. Is it possible to rewrite this to be less racist? There's a great story to be told, but the original suffers from "yellowface". Earthshock - with Riz Ahmed. Time to get in a "classic baddie" with the Cybermen running rampage on a ship. At this point, The Doctor realises who has been driving him through his past lives. Forcing him to confront his sins. Sending him mad through endless regenerations. Adric. Someone, or something, has resurrected Adric. His "noble sacrifice" was little more than a suicide attempt after the relentless bullying by The Doctor and his companions. Driven to vengeance, he is determined to keep The Doctor trapped in a never-ending cycle of death and destruction. The Twin Dilemma - with Michaela Coel. A hugely problematic and violent story. As The Doctor realises her companion is a villain, can she keep her reactions under control? Should she? Survival - with Alex Horne. The Doctor has to face not The Master but a furious Adric hellbent on purging the Universe of the Time Lords. All the strands of the previous stories come together in an epic climax. Get J. Michael Straczynski to run the thing, a bunch of chiptune/electronica/glitch musicians to give each episode a unique sound, and - crucially - show it in autumn/winter. There's no point having scary sci-fi on when it is bright outside and people want to go out and play. This needs to be hug-your-mum-for-warmth-not-because-you're-scared TV. Right, I'm off to the Beeb to deliver the pitch! TTFN. To be 100% clear, I know this is never going to happen. The BBC's tender document specifically says: Iconic, established villains are a mainstay of the series over 60 years and we invite you to use them, but we will want to begin to get an understanding of the original characters, aliens and themes that producers wish to bring to the show and are keen not to be overly reliant on existing Doctor Who lore. We are looking for a new perspective that ensures Doctor Who remains relevant, surprising, brave and inspiring for both long-standing fans and new audiences. ↩︎ Amazon tries to placate data center protesters - Werd I/O 2026-10-03T16:05:43.000Z Link: Amazon pledges $1B to data center communities, warns that local opposition threatens U.S. AI lead, by Todd Bishop in GeekWire This is a sign that protests are working: “Amazon says it will spend more than $1 billion over five years in the U.S. communities where it builds and operates data centers, responding to a growing backlash across the country against the tech industry’s massive AI infrastructure buildout.” But I’d consider this a settlement rather than a win: companies like Amazon need the data centers to be built in order to continue their growth. Communities opposing them should be able to keep pressing and get bigger, ongoing concessions at the very least. The objections here follow a predictable playbook: claims about widespread foreign interference (because surely no real American could oppose data centers in their communities) and a warning that America will lose to China if it doesn’t keep building. It’s a scaremongering technique designed to keep people in line without offering further benefits to communities. America won’t lose; Amazon might. The current concessions over five years represent 0.1% of Amazon’s annual capital spending. It’s less than pocket change — and Amazon isn’t forgoing tax breaks, so it may get it all back anyway. And it seems odd that these benefits are set up as something like an altruistic program through Amazon’s own “Built Together” program. Really it should be money that flows directly into towns and cities, on an ongoing basis, with zero strings attached and no involvement from the company. Those towns can do the same things Amazon is claiming to do, but on their terms, and in a way that doesn’t tie them to Amazon’s infrastructure and isn’t a weird PR win for the company. There’s more to do. This is a sign that the protesters can get much more for their communities. Privacy and Webmentions - Kev Quirk 2026-10-03T13:46:00.000Z Following my recent post about not checking Mastodon, a reader raised an interesting privacy concern regarding Webmentions. They explained that they had stopped using Webmentions altogether because Fediverse users often don't realise - or explicitly consent to - their replies being republished on an external blog. This surprised me, as I'd never considered that Webmentions could be a privacy concern. To my mind, a public post on an open platform like Mastodon is precisely that: public. The Fediverse is decentralised by design. When you reply to someone, your message doesn't remain isolated on your home instance; it federates across countless independent servers. Pulling a public reply onto kevquirk.com via a Webmention bridge is conceptually no different from fosstodon.org relaying a reply originally posted on mastodon.social. Unless the concern is about deletion persistence (e.g. cached mentions remaining if a post is deleted), I struggle to see where the privacy violation lies when republishing content that was broadcast publicly to the open web in the first place. Am I missing a subtlety here? I'd love to hear your thoughts. 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. Weeknote #2020 - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed 2026-10-03T08:08:00.000Z Dave is doing important work here, holding Cadbury Heroes to account. MacOS 27 broke the drivers for my thermal printer but thankfully someone made a new driver. I'm on board with Spymarks, not watermarks. The winners of the street photography awards are fantastic (obviously). Side-eyeing projects like Una to try and get away from my Apple Watch at some point. Hannah Fry's favourite fountain pens. Love this. There's no world in which I can watch this documentary about Elon Musk but I'm glad it exists. A gallery of control rooms on Flickr via SimpleBits. While looking for an example of a Geordie accent, I came across this supercut of a "Geordie" character who has an accent that is so ridiculous I can't even work out what he thinks he's doing. They even brought in translator as a plot point. This whole thing is wild. This monstrosity from Finn for the iPhone Duo. Barstardica mixes different fonts into one for...reasons. I love and hate it. This Tiny5 font is amazing and I need somewhere to use it as soon as possible. Tyler has got me thinking about an old MacBook Pro we have at home with his post about repurposing a 15-Year-Old MacBook Air. Lazygit is very nice but not something I have a need for. littleFedi is a "small ActivityPub server written in Go". It's a single binary, designed to run on basically everything, and supports the Mastodon API. 2026-10-03 09:04: Took the dogs out on the field this morning. All the dewey spider webs were... - Kev Quirk 2026-10-03T08:04:00.000Z Took the dogs out on the field this morning. All the dewey spider webs were beautiful in the morning sun. I'm no Jack Baty, but they're good enough. 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. Two data sovereignties - destructured 2026-10-03T04:00:00.000Z The topic of “data sovereignty” has been making the rounds lately, so it’s worth thinking about what that might mean. Broadly speaking, I see it being used to evoke two not-entirely compatible ideas: That individuals should retain control of the data they generate; and That countries should have authority over the data generated by their citizens. Any conflation of those two notions ultimately serves the goals of data nationalists better than it does those of data individualists. Both historically and linguistically, “sovereignty” is a concept grounded in state authority. It doesn’t map well to the idea of personal autonomy.¹ But convincing people who are concerned about data privacy that it’s in their interest to talk favorably about sovereignty sure does help out those who are interested in reasserting state authority. The ideologies of so-called sovereign citizen movements are mostly incoherent, but often try to square their claims by presenting federal officials as agents of a foreign state. ↩ Finished reading A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Molly White's activity feed 2026-10-03T00:56:13.000Z Finished reading: Monk & Robot series, book 1. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. Published 2021. 151 pages. Started September 30, 2026; completed September 1, 2026. Posted: October 3, 2026 at 12:56 AM UTC. Tagged: cozy, hopepunk, science fiction. Noticing - James' Coffee Blog 2026-10-03T00:00:00.000Z Walking through the Royal Mile, I noticed the faint – then increasing – scent of coffee in the air coming from a popular bakery. It is morning. I continued walking for a little while, en route to one of my preferred coffee shops. There, the baristas were laughing, one exchanging stories from Scottish history with a hint of humour, the other listening joyfully. Whereas in past weeks the sound of the espresso machine first piques my interest, today it was the sound of laughter, and the joy of seeing smiles so early in the morning. The cafe was quieter than usual. Tourist season is ending. The weather is cooling. The morning is young. Perhaps it would get busy later. Revelling in the peace, I looked out the window to the world, watching people walk by for longer than usual. I was in no rush to do anything today. At one point, I saw three people – who I expect were friends – walk in exact lockstep. I have seen two people walk in lockstep before – even today – but never three to the best of my recollection. The feeling of friendship echoed through the air. I started thinking about my friends. Back on my walk, I noticed something that, now I think about it, I must have walked past many times before: an electricity box painted by an artist. This stood out because I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday about a public arts programme in Washington, DC. where electricity boxes in the streets are painted. Here I was standing in front of one, but here in Scotland. How many other pieces of art have I walked past and not noticed? Or, alternatively, How many pieces of art are there waiting to be noticed? The box had a painted blue and silver background with many flowers in the foreground. The flowers had red, yellow, white, and blue-green petals. The stalks were red, green, purple, and blue. A bird soared in the sky of the artwork. In the bottom right corner there were white outlines of people on skateboards, a football pitch, and more. I wonder how long this work took to make. I took a picture so that I could appreciate the box later. I’m glad I did, for the picture helped me write this description. Atop the box was another box, a green cage. A posted placed on top of the artwork below contained a QR code to see air quality levels. The station above must have been an air quality monitor. I love how the art not only caught my attention as art itself, but also drew my attention to the science above. Friends help us notice the world around us, I thought. With art in my heart, I went charity shopping, and then continued my walk. Later on, I walked through a park, and sang along to one of my favourite songs. There were not many people around, and so my quiet, impassioned voice did not seem out of place. Indeed, the sound of my voice was no match for that of the birds singing in the background, and, later, the sound of a group of kids loudly playing tennis. I noticed that the adults playing were mostly quiet, save for the sound of the ball hitting the rackets. Further on, people huddled by the yellow neon sign at the wooden hut from which coffees are served. I am sure many of them were looking for a beacon of liquid warmth to accompany their mornings, just as I had been an hour earlier. Here, surrounded by Nature, I could feel the cold in my notes and my eyes. I love how autumn makes me feel. I feel every part of myself. Whether it was from my walk or the cooler air or both, I felt I needed to take deeper breath – appreciating the autumn air. A theme of the day was how places transform with the seasons: trees yellow, we wear more layers, outdoor seating moves indoors, we come closer for warmth. To end my walk, I saw two people laugh uncontrollably, in the way where even when there is a brief pause in the laughter you know that more will come. My morning started and ended with the resonance of laughter: of seeing joy in the air, just as I, too, felt joy sipping on my warm coffee, and then going out to appreciate art and Nature and the world. September 2026 Summary - Joel's Log Files 2026-10-02T22:59:27.000Z At last, another month we say good bye to, and all of a sudden, the year is on its final stretch, the days go by faster and faster, and I am getting old with everyone around me! In any case, there’s plenty of stuff to go through here, media, movies, videogames, podcasts. You Know the usual stuff! I have decided I would highlight the best things on this little intro, in case you are bored or looking to just skim through. Podcasts: The Play Station Episode of Into The Aether, The Wolf 359 podcast as a whole Manga: Blame! is simply awesome and terrifying. Movies: Ad Astra, Artificial Intelligence, Catch Me If You Can, War of the Worlds, Coyote vs. ACME. Videogames: Final Fantasy IV was a definite surprisei to return to. Emio and the Smiling Man was engagn TV Shows: Lanterns was pretty refreshing for a super hero show, if a bit too adult for my taste. Books: The Left Hand of Darkness and The House on the Borderland are still halfway through but I’m committed to both. Some artwork of my favorite media that showed up during the month! Podcasts Into The Aether - With the release of the Play Station episode, my listening time for this podcast skyrocketed to a whooping 19 hours throughout the month! Fantastic set of episodes this time around. The Ten Minute Bible Hour - I listened to a dozen or so episodes of this one again, but they are like ten minutes each so it doesn’t amount to a lot compared to the rest of stuff here. Extremely interesting as always though. Dungeons and Daddies - A Dungeons & Dragons podcast. On a surprising turn of events, I finally returned to this podcast! I was able to pickup on the overall story again, thankfuly, so I plan to resume this crazy season 3, soon enough. The Rest is History - Some good stuff here, still all about the Great War, it was early in the month and I’m not I recall all of it though. Wonders of Web Weaving - I listened to a few episodes of this podcast by James featuring different bloggers and stuff. Including me! Wold 359 - I made progress and went through a couple more episodes, the finale feels closer now! Really looking forward to that. Manga Started Blame! - Chapter 1-9. This a dystopian sci-fi story that happens inside some sort of mega-structure. We met one guy who is looking for a human with a special gene, which should be able to control the mega-structure itself. Each chapter is full of incredible architechture and a very intriguing atmosphere. Lots of questions lack answers right now, but I am kind of hooked by it. The chapters are a little long though, but they don’t have a lot of dialogue so, it’s all good. Ongoing Centuria - Chapter 48-80. A lot of pretty cool action and great moments happened, but I have kind of realized that this manga, while entertaining and still promising, is taking its time to deliver actually interesting plot points. I still enjoy it, because it lets me fill about ten minutes of my time with neat drawings to look at. Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You Chapter 63-64. Now this is still going to some interesting places. A lot of introspection during these couple chapters, after a pretty heavy and difficult situation, a conflict in need of resolution, which I’m looking forward to see. I love these characters! Blue Lock - Chapter 357-359. I was reading this with great interest, but decided to wait at least until I’m sure the England vs Japan match is completed, so I can enjoy it all in one go. Fun stuff! My Wife is from a Thousand Years Ago - Chapters 287-288. This is just a fun rom-com! No complaints, a nice pace and very fun moments, a little spicy but mostly wholesome, which I prefer. Movies I was going to like, write kinda proper reviews for these but, meh, they were all pretty decent except for Mercy, you can skip that one. Avengers Endgame Encore - Fun to rewatch on the big screen at last! The extra scenes aren’t really worth it though. The Day the Earth Stood Still - An alien tells humanity to chill out or else. Seriously impressive for the time. War of the Worlds - Tom Cruise running from aliens from Mars. He also tries to be a good father at the same time. By Any Means - A bunch of racists face the consequences of their actions. A bit of a weird casting choice though. Mercy - Chris Pratt trapped by AI and staring at screens. The murder mystery was fine, the presentation not really. Artificial Intelligence - A robot wants the be a real boy and earn a mother’s love. That ending is wild though. Catch Me If You Can - Leonardo Di Caprio running from Tom Hanks. The movie is based on real events that turned out to be fake! Ad Astra - Brad Pitt running from the world itself, looking for his father. Surprisingly Hard Sci-Fi stuff here. Coyote vs. ACME - This one was funny and nostalgic and I loved it. No notes, it made me cry out laughing. Videogames Started Kirby and the Forgotten Land - A friend came over one time and we decided to start this one in 2-player mode. I decided it would be a pretty fun title to add to the multiplayer pile of games I mostly play with other people! It is extremely fun. The artstyle, the level design, the Switch performance and everything combined make for a very pleasant gaming experience. Ongoing Final Fantasy IV - This is the game that ended up being revisited the most, with about as much time played of it as Emio, but grinding and progressing through the last few challenges this game has to offer, and the final dungeon which is at my grasp at last. Final Fantasy IV may be the first ever Final Fantasy I complete, and I’m looking forward to it. Hollow Knight: Silksong - This game started strong in the month, playing it for about five hours in four days. I got into Act 3 and defeated some new bosses, I upgraded my needle and got more stuff from all that. Fire Emblem Awakening - I made significant progress completing chapters 19 and 20 without a lot of issues, after some grinding throughout many days. Loving the support scenes as well! Waiting for its time to shine some more. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D - I only played this one time, but I made some initial progress as Adult Link, reaching the Forst Temple. I only need to focus and complete the dungeon itself and continue the story some more! Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream - Revisited my island a couple of times, but I haven’t really made a lot more with it. I should try to like, remodel everything or do something more creative, but the spark isn’t quite there for me right now. Super Smash Bros Ultimate - I had some very epic moments playing with friends this time around, it was awesome. Completed Emio: The Smiling Man - I am yet to review this, a detective story with visual novel mechanics that really caught me for three days straight. Pretty much only paused to eat and sleep as soon as I started it! Amazing artwork, great music, intriguing plotline, fun characters, so many suspects! Loved it. TV Shows Lanterns - I watched like four episodes of this in a single day and it was a pretty good detective story kinda thing. I wasn’t expecting to like it as much, although I kinda abandoned it halfway through. Will probably finish the season soon. Books The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. Up to chapter 14. This is a very interesting horror novel, that deals with the existential, multiple dimensions, entities beyond our understanding, and whatever else. In the form of a diary written by an old man from long ago. It has been very gripping so far, but I paused it for the sake of the next book. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Up to chapter 7. This was chosen for the TWGLK Book Club for September and… I didn’t manage to finish it, started too late. Anyway, I am enjoying it as is, and without the time pressure. This is a very interesting book featuring a couple points of view, but mostly focused on an envoy sent by an interplanetary force Finishing thoughts I wonder what the reading retention was on this one giving you a summary of summary of the month at the very beginning. I guess we’ll see over time. It’s not like I should care about this stuff being read, it’s always more of a log for myself so I can lock down when some interesting movie or videogame showed up on my radar with a simple grep command on my terminal. In any case. This year is flying by, and it’s pretty clear that the yearly recaps will require quite a lot of effort! Looking forward to that. This is day 46 of #100DaysToOffload Reply to this post via email | Reply on Fediverse Published on Citation Needed: "Issue 110 – The Clarity Act collapses" - Molly White's activity feed 2026-10-02T20:29:05.000Z Published an issue of Citation Needed: Issue 110 – The Clarity Act collapses Regulators race to reassure the crypto industry as the industry’s flagship legislation collapses, SBF tries his luck with the Supreme Court, and crypto PACs unleash $30 million against Sherrod Brown Posted: October 2, 2026 at 8:29 PM UTC. Also posted to:MastodonBluesky Tagged: Coinbase, crypto, crypto lobby, law, US politics.