Multipurpose Web Developer • In 🇧🇪 • Running the tech at https://welcometomygarden.org; we’re making slow travel more accessible! • Concentratedly distracted by https://readup.org
I'm usually enjoying reading Open Source stories from @bagder but this time, it's up to me to tell you a story. Double check you are seated before reading it.
@grooovinger I was attending virtually 🙂 Hopefully I'll have the chance to travel out next time!
I feel a little bit of FOMO for not being on Bluesky, but at the same time, I think one microblogging platform is enough for the moment.
@grooovinger I was caught off guard by how many references there were to Bluesky during #sveltesummit25 last week. It was the default. There were very few X or Mastodon references.
I've seen lots of Bluesky scepticism on the fediverse, but for now, it seems to have quickly won over a majority of this community, at least.
@johnonolan congrats on the milestones! People watching #FediHire may be interested.
Incidentally, if indie publishing, open source, and JavaScript are your thing – we're hiring!
Our team is fully remote, distributed globally, and passionate about building a healthy future for the open web.
Life has finally calmed down for me again, and I'm back to working on Write.as...
Just discovered an amazing search feature in #mastodon !
Use the field "in:library" to search only in the toots you have interacted with some day.
Using this, I just dug out a toot from an exchange I had in mid-2023 in 1 second, and which was lost among a gazillion of other bookmarks.
@stairjoke How do you know the selection of unavailable songs is growing?
I keep a list of instances when I can't find something on Spotify. So far it has two entries: a very specific Dutch children's folk song (in 2020), and an album from a band that was missing last summer (it looks like it's back now). There are just a few more I didn't write down.
It doesn't seem easy to find stats on how much (new) music is *not* available on streaming, or how much music is disappearing from it.
@mudkip Congrats! Recently I also set up Immich for family photos. Because the UX is so similar to Google Photos, it's the first photo system family members have been able to use satisfactorily without asking for help. That's after 15y of trying other systems. The semantic AI search is simply awesome!
I also haven't enabled backup yet on Immich client apps. Personally I use the 50GB iCloud tier + full iCloud Photos sync, and "archive" synced media from macOS Photos into Immich using exports.
I’ve been listening to https://www.noiser.com/titanic-ship-of-dreams, once again, a great #podcast from Noiser.
Interviewees mention several times it was a freak disaster that could only have happened as dramatically as it did due to the compounding of many problems. I start seeing that too now.
It’s actually impressive to learn in just how many ways the horrible loss of life could have been averted.
The EU is introducing an energy label for phones, together with mandatory requirements for phones sold in the EU;
- 5 years of software updates (AFTER they stop selling the device in the EU)
- providing important hardware parts (during sale and for 7 years after), including free software (if needed), to every repair shop, within 5-10 business days
- batteries have to make 800 charging cycles and still be above 80% original capacity
And on top of that, phones and tablets need this energy label (which also includes a fall damage durability and repairability score), and abide by the above requirements, from 20 June 2025.
(https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/smartphones-and-tablets_en)
Finally, the Browser Choice prompt after the iOS 18.3.2 update made me pick Firefox as my default browser. I had chosen Safari there 3-4 times before... so this EU-mandated question works if repeated enough?
I guess my desktop browser switch to FF last summer helped. I've learned to appreciate Tab Containers since, and I don't experience dealbreaking issues.
It looks like #Mozilla aims to compete with Gmail, Outlook, and smaller alternatives too. The pitch sounds good! -> https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/planning/T437cd854afcb1395 - the world's over-reliance on the big data-harvesting players is not a good thing.
The revenue model also looks straightforward. Despite my slight hesitancy stemming from https://killedbymozilla.com/ this sounds encouraging. I for one would gladly claim thor@thundermail.com ⛈️🔨 #Thundermail
@solomkinmv I think your front most glove transformed into an umbrella 😄
Now on my blog: Updated 🇧🇪 Belgium 🚂 Railway Map 2025. As usual, there is a weekday version and a weekend version!
👉 https://larstransportmaps.com/2025/03/29/rail-services-in-belgium-2025/
However, if there is any merit to the theory that you must open the Home Screen app regularly to keep its token alive (or get a new one), we have reasons for concern. I work on a hospitality platform where about 1000 users (hosts) enabled Web Push on iOS. Many of those will not get frequent requests, and may not even use the platform frequently. And yet, when they get a request, even 270 days after enabling Web Push, it is important that they receive a notification.
For regular iOS apps, I read it's a good practice to call registerForRemoteNotifications() on every app startup (see https://stackoverflow.com/a/73902817/4973029) to keep the registration alive, or to automatically get a new token in situations like after iOS version updates.
725 of those 1000 haven't refreshed their FCM token/push registration in 60 days. And yet, 442 of those have used our platform elsewhere since their last Home Screen app open. Possibly in iOS Safari, possibly on desktop. They are active users, they just forget to open the Home Screen app.
There are some places where iOS Home Screen apps are de-emphasized, which makes us lose opportunities to direct people to them, to refresh their push registrations.
There are more apocryphal sources that claim that that push registrations for apps that aren’t used for “weeks” or “months” may just get deactivated anyway.
The only official Apple position I’ve found on this is that a token is only marked as “not in use” when an app is deleted (https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/682939)