Laurence Gonsalves
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laurence.gonsalv.es
Laurence Gonsalves
@laurence.gonsalv.es
540 followers 1.6K following 300 posts
I like old computers, making things, science, math, and science fiction.

Currently making something new at @Nipht.io. Helped create Google Reader.

@xenomachina@oldbytes.space on the fediverse. Formerly @laurence on the birdsite.

IDIC 🖖
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Laurence Gonsalves
jonnywrites.bsky.social
left is the network engineer's system at home, right is at work.
September 26, 2025 at 5:10 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
I've been programming in Python for over 25 years, and only just learned that comparison chaining is not just for relational operators, but for all comparison operators including == and is.
“Gru’s plan” meme: 1. Gru smiles: “Complex comparisons 3 > 2 > 1 False.” 2. Gru looks pleased: “Add chaining! >> 3 > 2 > 1 True.” 3. Gru smugly gestures: “is operator chains >> 1 != 1 is False False.” 4. Gru is disappointed: “False.”
September 23, 2025 at 9:42 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
I wish I had screenshots of the way the clock and phone apps used to look on Android for comparison, because these Material 3 Expressive updates look terrible. The spacing and sizing of everything is so inconsistent, and where did they get this ugly font from?
Screenshot of Material 3 Expressive clock app in the "World Clock" view. The font used for the times looks like it's made out of chopped up noodles.
September 17, 2025 at 6:29 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
Mildly interesting for fellow #Amiga fans: TikTok's 404 page has a "guru meditation" message.
Screenshot of 404 page reading: 404 Not FOund Guru Meditation: [long hex number] Goofy Deploy Page Server
August 16, 2025 at 1:23 AM
laurence.gonsalv.es
Lemon dressing
A doodle of an anthropomorphic lemon putting on a grey jacket.
August 7, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Reposted by Laurence Gonsalves
mobiusdigitalgames.com
There's a LEGO ideas campaign for the Hearthian Lander! If it can get 10,000 votes of support, then LEGO will consider making it a real set. This one's even got a ship interior!

beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

(Wait, have we done this before? 🤔)
Outer Wilds Ventures | LEGO® Ideas
Outer Wilds is an amazing game created by Mobius Digital. It is a space exploration game where you take control of an astronaut who has to explore their tiny so…
beta.ideas.lego.com
July 24, 2025 at 5:39 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
Setting timers on other speakers with Google Home has become completely broken in the past few weeks.

When I tell our kitchen speaker to set a timer on our upstairs speaker, it tells me that the timer has been started. However, if then I check what timers are running, there are none. It just lies!
July 23, 2025 at 5:15 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
At a panel at Open Sauce, and @vsauce.bsky.social concisely summed up how many of us feel about AI generated content:

"why would I want to watch something that someone couldn't even be bothered to make"
Michael Stevens (aka vsauce aka corndogwilly) on stage at Open Sauce 2025.
July 19, 2025 at 10:24 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
I only just now realized that the Omega class from Babylon 5 looks very similar to the Leonov spacecraft from the movie 2010 (1984).
An image of the Leonov spacecraft from the movie 2010. It is gray and covered in greebling. It consists of a longitudinal structure with a few "towers" that protrude from it (including one with a large antenna dish), and a massive rotating piece in the middle.
July 10, 2025 at 9:44 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
I recently found an Odo rubber stamp I've had for probably 30 years buried in a drawer.

As a rubber stamp, maybe not so useful. However, because it looks like Odo's head and shoulders on a (mostly) flat base, you can rest it on a random object to make it look like it's Odo mid-transformation.
Screen grab from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine depicting Odo and another changeling mid-transformation. Their bodies look like translucent orange goo, with a humanoid (partial) neck and head sticking out the top. Odo stamp resting on a red rotary telepone. Or is it a telephone turning back into Odo? Odo stamp resting on a tin robot. Or is it a tin robot turning back into Odo? Odo stamp resting on a cat. Or is it a cat turning back into Odo?
July 10, 2025 at 4:01 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
The box for the Lego Chrysanthemum set has a banana for scale!
The box for the Lego Chrysanthemum set sitting on a beige carpet in front of a white wall. There's a picture of the completed set on the front of the box, but on the top edge is a square with one of the "petal" pieces from the set in the square. A close-up of that square. The "petal" piece is actually a Lego banana piece, but reddish orange. "1:1" is printed next to it, as the picture is printed "actual size". It's a banana for scale.
July 10, 2025 at 5:41 AM
laurence.gonsalv.es
In recent years I've seen people online use "weary" in place of "wary" *so* many times. I feel like it's becoming more common than the "their/there/they're" mixup.

weary: feeling or showing tiredness

wary: feeling or showing caution

Mnemonic: it's "beWARE", not "beWEAR".
May 10, 2025 at 11:58 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
One feature of @nipht.io's browser extension I really like is that you can save a set of tabs all at once. It's handy for when you get to that state where you've got a dozen tabs open on some subject you were researching, but don't have time to deal with them "now".
paris.nyc paris martineau @paris.nyc · May 9
no. never. i will accumulate an increasingly unbearable amount of tabs until i die
lpp.bsky.social Luis Paez-Pumar @lpp.bsky.social · May 9
I have blogged my sage advice: restart your damn computer. defector.com/restart-your...
May 9, 2025 at 6:28 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
The "you probably don't know about" part here is killing me.

The last version of Windows that I used regularly, required that you press Ctrl+Alt+Del just to log on. This was supposedly a security measure, to make it harder for someone to create a password harvester.
Screenshot of the Windows NT Workstation splash screen with a "Begin Logon" dialog that reads "Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to log on". There's a little icon of a hand reaching for three (keyboard) keys.
May 6, 2025 at 4:05 AM
laurence.gonsalv.es
Does anyone know the original source of this image? It's usually described as a 1970s or '80s vision of what a PDA or smartphone would look like, but the book it came from is never named. It resembles the style of some Usborne books (and the spelling of "colour" suggests that it isn't American).
Illustration showing a "Pocket computer". The text reads "In the very near future you will probably be able to buy, quite cheaply, a pocket computer with all the features shown below. See if you can think of things you would do with a pocket computer if you had one." The computer itself is a yellow rectangle with labeled areas: "colour display screen" (a black CRT with orange pixels) "touch sensitive controls" (a red square and a blue square) "sound synthesizer for music and speech" (a 3x3 grid of dots) "microphone for voice input" (three differently colored squares) "keyboard" (a green grid and a blue grid of keys) "sockets for tape cassette, TV, other computers, printer, etc." (small protrusions on right side) There's a hand holding the device, just like one would hold a smartphone. There is a border around the illustration, with some bits of other illustrations visible, including the back of a person's head, and the side of a house with stairs and a corner of what might be a car.
May 5, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Reposted by Laurence Gonsalves
bobcesca.bsky.social
My friend Tim Russ is very funny. #MaytheFourthBeWithYou
www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_ZR...
Star Trek's Tim Russ Explains Star Wars Day | by Pocketwatch
YouTube video by Upright Citizens Brigade
www.youtube.com
May 4, 2025 at 4:28 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
Movie you’ve watched more than six times using gifs.

(“Hard mode” no Star Wars, Star Trek, or LOTR)
April 26, 2025 at 7:12 AM
laurence.gonsalv.es
I enjoyed this post about pipelining in programming languages. It doesn't mention Kotlin at all, but the way Kotlin's extension functions and lambda syntax support pipelining is probably one of its most underrated features.

herecomesthemoon.net/2025/04/pipe...
Pipelining might be my favorite programming language feature
Free-standing function call syntax considered kind of suboptimal.
herecomesthemoon.net
April 23, 2025 at 6:34 AM
laurence.gonsalv.es
Tired of manually moving bookmarks from your browser to Niphtio? Now you can import directly from Chrome (and Chromium browsers)! 🤯Save time, effort, and more easily organize all your links in one place. Give it a try today!
#Niphtio #Chrome #BookmarkImport #TechTips
New! Import bookmarks from Chrome to Niphtio.
April 17, 2025 at 7:53 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
Weird but interesting sculpture (?) at SJC.
April 11, 2025 at 10:50 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
It looks like if you block enough of your recent followers (my guess is the last "page" worth), then the UI doesn't display your list of followers.
A screenshot of my Bluesky "followers" list, showing "499 followers" but then "No results found; You do not have any followers".
April 9, 2025 at 6:23 AM
laurence.gonsalv.es
Oof. Sold out as I was checking out.
emilyliu.me Emily Liu @emilyliu.me · Mar 13
limited run of @jay.bsky.team's SXSW shirt — get one before it sells out!
March 13, 2025 at 7:11 PM
laurence.gonsalv.es
There are -17 hard problems in computer science...
March 13, 2025 at 7:46 AM
Reposted by Laurence Gonsalves
vcfederation.bsky.social
SAVE THE DATE!
VCF West is back on August 1 & 2, 2025 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Please fill out this survey to help us with planning: forms.gle/R1kSCsVqEyZf... This survey is for everyone!
March 12, 2025 at 2:21 AM
laurence.gonsalv.es
I saw this mural in a restaurant the other day. To drink is human, but to eat salad is divine?
A mural depicting two hands reaching towards one another, the hand on the left holding a glass of liquid, and the one on the right holding some leafy greens. The hands have the exact posture as the hands in Michaelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" in the Sistine Chapel.
March 6, 2025 at 10:39 PM