@cassidy@blaede.family cover
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cassidy

@cassidy@blaede.family

Building useful, usable, delightful products that respect privacy.

:eos: Partner success at @EndlessOS Foundation
:gnome: @gnome Foundation member
:flathub: @flathub contributor

Previously: co-founder and CXO at elementary OS, UX architect at System76.

Frequently posting about #OpenSource, specifically in #GNOME and #Flatpak realms. I also enjoy #StarWars, #LEGO, & #3DPrinting.

I have a background in UX architecture, open source, product design, communication, and project coordination.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

cassidy , to Android
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

Ugh. Pocket Git, another long time favorite Android app of mine, has disappeared from the Play Store—without an obvious replacement.

I don’t want to start developing Android apps, but dang, I could really use replacements for these:

• Straightforward git client (explicitly not an IDE)
• Package tracker that supports multiple carriers

I’ll design them if someone else can develop them? 😝

tailscale , to Random stuff
@tailscale@hachyderm.io avatar

Android users, today's your day. 🎉

We've relaunched the Tailscale app, redesigned from the ground up for a better look-and-feel, faster performance, and even more features. Check it out 👇 https://tailscale.com/blog/android/?utm_source=Mastodon&utm_medium=owned-social&utm_campaign=devrel-social

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@tailscale huzzah! It looks a lot nicer! Switching to Jetpack Compose was a good call.

cassidy , to Random stuff
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

Imagine if all the resources that have gone into chasing “AI” were spent paying humans to do interesting, creative things, instead.

cassidy , to Random stuff
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

White people in ski town: “Dear Native American, please come paint art about the struggle of native peoples.”

Lakota artist: Paints a piece referencing Palestine, with proceeds supporting the UN Crisis Relief Fund

White people in ski town: “Stay in your lane!” Revokes residency program

https://coloradosun.com/2024/05/10/danielle-seewalker-artist-residency-gaza-vail/

scottjenson , to Random stuff
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

challenge!

<body>
<div class="container">
<div class="item">item 1</div>
<div class="item">item 2</div>
<div class="item">item 3</div>
<div class="item hidden">item 4</div>
</div>
</body>

where .hidden { display: none }

Question: Can I use item:last-child {} to stylize item 3?

Apparently :last-child targets the last child in the DOM, not the last visible child. (this means hidden item 4 is styled.

Is there any way to do this using only CSS?

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@scottjenson off the top of my head (I'm on mobile so it's harder to test, but I will in a moment!), it would be something like .item:not(.hidden):last-of-type

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@scottjenson ah yep, I was misreading mdn and thought it would work with classes, but it just selects for the last of a type of element.

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@cheeaun @scottjenson CSS has gotten so wild 😱

cassidy , to Random stuff
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

Pro tip: if your Bluetooth isn't working with a certain wireless card, check the BIOS settings before installing a new wireless card… apparently my Intel NUC had Bluetooth disabled in the BIOS; the card works just fine!

The upside is that I installed an extra RAM stick as long as I was in there. TWICE the RAM at a whopping 16 GB.

Palpatine shooting lightning, saying "Unlimited power!"

cassidy , to Linux
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

TIL Fedora is packaging a web browser app I developed for elementary OS and marked as end-of-life over two years ago, yet it happily shows up in Fedora 40 if you search my name. It crashes on launch, so it doesn’t even work…

WHY??

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@berkough I would be happy for someone to actually take the idea and make something decent from it. But I discontinued it because it didn’t really work well in a Flatpak world plus it was way over my head for responsible maintenance.

I didn’t even know it was being packaged by Fedora, let alone just there in the app store in Fedora 40.

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@berkough nothing about the app listing lets you know it is unmaintained. To the contrary, it shows as a “Safe” app developed by me, provided by Fedora. It contains my app description that I wrote for it on elementary OS. You have to click into the detailed version history to even see how long ago it was last updated (3 years ago!).

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@BrodieOnLinux @berkough GNOME upstream is much more nuanced, but yeah, I am starting to think we should not have a “safe” badge at all if stuff that is safe gets downgraded for reasonable permissions while a three-years-outdated unmaintained web browser packaged against its developer's wishes that crashes in launch is considered “safe.”

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@BrodieOnLinux @berkough right which is why part of the equation is developer verification, human review of app submissions and permission changes, and a more nuanced safety rating that takes into account network access—all the case with Flathub + GNOME.

Buuuut even then it seems like it would be easier not to promise safety, but to warn on more critical potential issues.

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@adamw I'm just shocked that it's been sitting there in Fedora, with my name on it, unmaintained three years after I stopped updating it and two years after I explicitly marked it as EOL. And there's no easy way to tell that from Software on Workstation. 😬

I shouldn't have to create a bugzilla account and comment on a random issue to make it clear that it is entirely abandonware and irresponsible to ship to users.

cassidy , to Random stuff
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

I watched “Into the Breach” (S03E13) of The Bad Batch last night. This show continues to be great, and I really enjoyed this episode! I was anxious and on the edge of my seat until the very end—and I’m excited for next week.

Only TWO WEEKS LEFT of this show! 😭 If you’ve been sleeping on it, it’s a great time to get into it so you’re caught up in time for the penultimate or final episode… I have a feeling it’s gonna be good.

cassidy , to Random stuff
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

I have to take a short weekend trip to Montana and after considering different transit options, I decided to rent a car and drive; it's a bit of a road trip, but I found great rental deals and was excited to rent an electric car to try it out as we're considering buying one.

lol, Montana is huge and has hardly any charging stations on the route 🙃 According to one of the EV charging maps there are single chargers in towns about 150 miles apart, which seems dicey to me?

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

We gotta invest in charging stations. Every town with a gas station should have EV chargers. Every grocery store should have EV chargers. "It's just not practical to drive an EV" is 100% an infrastructure problem.

Yes, I know rail would be better in a lot of cases, but:

  1. The US is MASSIVE and dispersed; connecting every rural town will never happen
  2. Pickup trucks are stupid in cities, but in rural areas they're king

Let's tackle it from both sides.

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

What if we turn the macho US national pride masculinity of pickup trucks on its head, for the sake of the climate? Make US-made electric cars the cock-swinging option.

(It pained me to write that because toxic masculinity is so incredibly stupid, but it's 100% what sells trucks...)

Capitalism loves convincing people they need to buy a new thing, and in this case, replacing gas trucks with electric trucks in the rural US would do a lot of good...

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

Change public perception! Combustion engines are old, outdated, inefficient, over-complicated machines constantly dependent on often foreign imported volatile fuel which has to be trucked around the country. It's archaic! Your engine is based on a design from the 1700s where you constantly explode this fuel a few feet from you and your family. You waste a ton of energy on heat and complex moving parts; energy that is lost instead of giving you more power to tow more with less fuel.

404mediaco , to Random stuff
@404mediaco@mastodon.social avatar

Everyone say hi to @julesaroscoe

https://www.404media.co/introducing-the-first-404-media-fellow-jules-roscoe/

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@404mediaco @julesaroscoe hello there!

cassidy , to Random stuff
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

“AI” as currently hyped is giant billion dollar companies blatantly stealing content, disregarding licenses, deceiving about capabilities, and burning the planet in the process.

It is the largest theft of intellectual property in the history of humankind, and these companies are knowingly and willing ignoring the licenses, terms of service, and laws that us lowly individuals are beholden to.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/technology/tech-giants-harvest-data-artificial-intelligence.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ik0.Ofja.L21c1wyW-0xj&ugrp=m

pokemon Bot , to Random stuff
@pokemon@tomkahe.com avatar

Previous Action: Up ⬆️

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@pokemon @tom this probably vastly overcomplicates things, BUT… I wonder if the previous 5–10 actions could be grouped into a GIF before the poll? Sometimes it’s hard to know what to do without seeing more context, and it’d be easier to see the GIF than to go to the profile and scroll back through the posts.

gamingonlinux , to Linux
@gamingonlinux@mastodon.social avatar

Flathub now prominently notes unverified Flatpak apps https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/04/flathub-now-prominently-notes-unverified-flatpak-apps/

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@gamingonlinux we gotta get that updated brand image 😬

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@gamingonlinux I mean YOU! :D We have it at https://github.com/flathub-infra/assets and linked to from flathub.org/about

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@gamingonlinux you can use that directly or grab the logo from there if you want to use it on a different background, up to you! But yeah that is a good place to start.

cassidy , to News from fediverse
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

Servers in the fediverse have a responsibility to make decisions they believe are right for their users, like moderation—and naturally, some folks might disagree with those decisions.

But that’s a huge advantage of the fediverse: you can choose or move to a server that you trust, that you agree with, etc. and still interact with the rest of the fediverse; you can even bring your followers with e.g. if you switch between Mastodon servers!

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

As a reminder, choosing whether or not you want to see/interact with posts from a specific server is also something you’re empowered to do as a user. On Mastodon, for example, you can block any individual account or even an entire server if you know you don’t want to interact with any account from there.

As a practical example, if you don’t want to engage with Facebook/Meta/Threads, it’s two taps to block threads.net—should you care to do so. 💪

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@AmyIsCoolz huh, that’s annoying; I would think blocking should also effectively mute. Thanks for the heads up!

cassidy , to Random stuff
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

Good.

Apple has repeatedly demonstrated they will do whatever they can to tighten their grip on US consumers and app developers while intentionally and artificially making it as painful as possible to interoperate with others. It’s straight out of the 90s Microsoft playbook, but cranked up to 11.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/21/24105363/apple-doj-monopoly-lawsuit

cassidy , to Twitch
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

3 years ago I paid $6.99/month for Disney+, tax included. They offered an annual subscription for $69.99, so I switched to that.

2 years ago it increased to $79.99 plus tax, or $86.39.

Last year it increased to $109.99 plus tax, or $119.34.

This year it increased to $139.99 plus tax, or $151.89.

In the span of 3 years the cost has MORE THAN DOUBLED. Conveniently, they now offer an $7.99/mo plan—with ads. Disney knows they can make more off of you by selling ads.

scottjenson , to Random stuff
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

I think I just found the worlds worst faucet design. Not only was it not at all obvious how to use it. Once I DID figure it out, you can't easily change the temperature after it's running!

Sink faucet that appears to be a simple dial, but turning it does nothing, you much push up on the dial to make it pivot for water to flow, but with it in that position, you can't easily twist it to change the temperature.

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@scottjenson inaudibly gasped when I saw the reveal. That’s terrible!!

cassidy , to Linux
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

I just saw that Mozilla is retiring Mozilla Location Services which provided an open, crowdsourced alternative to proprietary location services from Google and other vendors. 😰

https://github.com/mozilla/ichnaea/issues/2065

This is used by GNOME and thus Fedora, Ubuntu, Endless OS, etc. to help provide OS-level location services without requiring every app to implement its own. And apparently a patent troll is part of the reason Mozilla stopped investing in it. 🙃

cassidy , to Random stuff
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

There’s renewed interest around the app in , which excites me. I use a music streaming service for discovery and while I really like that and don’t think there’s a good way to replicate that with the way the music industry is structured, there is also a lot more we could do to encourage and lean into local music collections.

A big part of that conversation, imho, should be how buying music from an artist usually supports them far more then streaming their music a ton.

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

As someone who has a Plex server, I’ve been using Plexamp on my phone and computer a decent amount—and something they do really well is giving your own music library some of the niceties of a music streaming service:

• Recently added
• Recently played
• Other albums/artists to listen to based on recent plays
• Generated “mixes” and “stations”
• Artists on tour

Then Plex also does sonic analysis of your music and factors that into a few neat features which would be DOPE to steal. 😅

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

What are some other ways a local music app could be more useful in a world where so many lean on streaming services? What would make you consider using a local player more, if anything?

I’d love to integrate with a music store directly where you could purchase music, but I just don’t see it happening. Maybe we could link out to known-good sources where people can buy music to get started, though?

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

I couldn’t fit this in the post above, but note that directly integrating with a streaming service is likely a no-go because of API terms, licensing, DRM, etc.

And I’m not sure a local, native music app that tried to integrate with online streaming services is the best idea even if it were possible; that introduces a ton of work for something that can never serve local-first principles.

cassidy , to Linux
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

A conversation that keeps popping up in my mind since FOSDEM centers around open source projects and “AI,” and I still don’t know what I think. So let me share some thoughts here on the famously nuance-friendly Internet. 😜

During a chat w/folks from several open source organizations, someone suggested GNOME could attract funding by “sprinkling some AI on it.” Several folks laughed at the topical joke, but then realized it was in earnest. 🧵

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

My gut reaction—and judging by the room, the reaction of others—was “hell naw.” But then the person clarified, and I understood what they were actually saying. And I think it mostly jives with my thoughts around “AI.”

The suggestion, as best I can describe it, was that there are a lot of opportunities for genuinely useful, responsible, offline, machine-learning-powered improvements to a platform like GNOME.

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

For example: object recognition in the Image Viewer app to remove backgrounds; algorithmically improved camera quality in video calls; autocorrect! These are all areas that use ML algorithms on other platforms, and I don’t think that’s bad; you take a bunch of data, train an algorithm, then ship that in the OS/GNOME/etc. to be genuinely helpful.

First, we can get on board with that, right? Personally, I don’t consider that “AI,” even.

cassidy , to Random stuff
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

I’ve been using the same pair of Sennheiser HD 202 headphones for probably… 15 years. They still work fine but the finish on the foam around the ears and the top band is disintegrating quite a bit, leaving little black flecks everywhere. I believe I have replaced the ear pads once, several years ago.

Do I just get more replacement foam that looks like the original, or is there some other solution people have for this problem? I hate to toss the headphones because other than that, they’re great.

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@Linux_in_a_Bit yeah I don't use them a ton; I mostly use my Pixel Buds but sometimes I want wired headphones for podcasts or whatever. They're not the most comfortable but I also don't feel like it can justify buying new ones when these technically work fine—and I'm by no means an audiophile. 😅

homeassistant , to Random stuff
@homeassistant@fosstodon.org avatar

Home Assistant 2024.3 🎉

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/03/06/release-20243/

Yes! Drag 'n drop support for dashboards is here! A brand new experimental section view makes it possible.

But there is more! 2x faster startup, Run scripts with user input, a new energy graph for individual devices, and more!

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@homeassistant very nice update! The Dashboard Sections is basically how I’ve manually set up my dashboard, so I’m excited to test it out and eventually switch over to it full-time.

cassidy , to Random stuff
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

Sony’s password reset process accepts a longer password than the login form, meaning if you set your password too long, oops, you can’t sign in.

cassidy , to Random stuff
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

I have a friend who frequently plays the same single-player RPG games as me: Horizon, Spider-Man, Fallout, Jedi, Death Stranding…

They always finish the game quickly, progressing through the story then doing side-quests at the end. I do all the side quests as I discover them, winding up comically over-leveled but also taking 10× as long to beat the game.

Part of the issue: I have kids & very little time to play video games. I just realized another reason: I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. 😝

cassidy OP ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

In entirely related news, I am halfway through Horizon Forbidden West, Death Stranding, and Jedi Survivor, and I think a Tomb Raider game each—and have Spider-Man 2, Outer Worlds, Far Cry 6, God of War, and at least one other Tomb Raider game queued up to play next…

scottjenson , to Random stuff
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

No. Stop. Just stop!

You are NOT looking for a UX designer, the correct term is UNICORN.

I wouldn't touch this job with a 10 foot pole, they clearly don't understand UX design (or are too cheap to understand you need more than one person to build a product)

To be fair, a UX designer that knows a bit about CSS and has some passing understanding of HTML/JS is an asset! My point is that you don't replace your frontend engineer with a "UX Designer"

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@scottjenson I have heard this calledn“UX Developer” and I’m kind of okay with that—but it’s definitely a different job than “UX/UI Designer”.

It’s a sort of role I’ve done, working alongside a designer to turn their static designs into interactive code.

scottjenson , to Random stuff
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

My wife updated from iPhone 10 to 13 and can't see any real difference other than "the camera seems a bit better".

Given how hard it was for her to upgrade (lots of relogging into apps) she's reluctant to upgrade years.

This feels ominous to me: new phones just aren't that unique

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@scottjenson I think this is a huge aspect of why AI is so big this year; manufacturers are desperate to sell the new shiny phones, but phones are commodities. They’re fast enough, last long enough, take good enough pictures, etc. They’ve turned to wild AI hype that won’t pan out the way they promise because it lets them keep pushing newer and newer devices on people who don’t actually need them.

cassidy ,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@scottjenson I’m all for actually-helpful ML stuff like computational photography, better predictive text, on-device object recognition, etc. And there is a lot more than could be done here, especially if you’re sticking to on-device computation.

But this “chat with an AI ‘assistant’ that will boldly but convincingly make everything up,” and “look, generated wallpapers trained on copyrighted works!” is largely a product of the commoditization of tech.

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