Chris Chinchilla
@chrischinchilla.bsky.social
Independent technical content creator by day. Fiction, games, and music by night. 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇩🇪🇪🇺🗺️
Wrapped up my IFA 2026 coverage this week. Three videos and one summary blog post if you want to see my highlights from the show floor in Berlin. Mini PCs, local AI devices, and AI NAS boxes: youtu.be/GHohnveeItY
IFA 2026 trends: mini PCs, Local AI devices, AI NAS devices
More coverage from #IFA. This video covers the trends I noticed in ...
youtube.com
New episode of Tech Lounge is out. This time I sat down with the team at Enclave, who are building always-on security agents — systems that continuously map your attack surface, find attack paths, patch the weak points they find, and then verify that the fix actually held.
Do I have the heart to tell the drunk English men in Berlin dressed in Oktoberfest costumes that pretty much the only people who wear that in Berlin are drunk English men? Or just let them carry on…
I spent some time with adoc Studio 5, the latest version of the native AsciiDoc editor for Mac and iOS.
Shipped v1.2.1 updates to both my VSCode extensions this week. Vale extension: relative paths in your CLI config work now, plus a glibc detection fix and dependency bumps. Pandoc extension: fixed a bug with unicode file names, and added a setting to skip the overwrite warning if it annoys you.
Ahh, YouTube. You spend hours and hours putting together a long hands on video and get some reasonable views. Spend ten minutes putting together a short about some robots and off it flies…
It's conference season! So if you want to say hello in the next month or so, here's where I'll be: - LF Energy in Berlin, 15-16th September - Human X in Amsterdam, 22nd-25th September - Then I am on vacation in Bordeaux and Rioja the week after, if you happen to be around 🤷♂️
I somewhat solved a mild annoyance… syncing apps between my Mac mini and MacBook Pro without including apps a machine doesn't need. I used Brew bundle, split things into three Brewfiles and used a bit of Ruby to auto-load whichever machine-specific file matches the hostname.
One of the things I like about drum kits is that you can replace and upgrade individual parts. Now I have a new fancy mesh snare and sound unit. Before and after…
The latest tech lounge episode is out! Slightly late as it's been back to back events, which is coincidental as it's with Greg Fawson of Next app dev con, the largest mobile app development conference in the world, right here in Berlin!
Busy couple of weeks in Berlin! If you're here for #ifa2026 let me know, I will be at a few press events and mostly running around booths on Friday!
Another major VSCode extension update. Oddly my Pandoc VSCode extension is way more popular than the Vale one, but I have very little visibility into the community.
Users of the Vale VSCode extension for open source and offline language linting. I have a pre-release version of the extension, 1.1.0, available if you switch to using the pre-release section in the extension interface.
Latest Tech Lounge podcast is with Luca Belli the author of "Hidden Influences", how algorithmic recommenders shape our lives Out soon on Manning Listen or watch below or search "Tech Lounge" wherever you get your podcasts. chrischinchilla.com/podcast/the... www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w9...
The hidden influences behind the algorithms that run our lives with Luca Belli
In this episode, I speak with Luca Belli about his forthcoming Mann...
youtube.com
Many years ago, I was fascinated by a statement about how the downsizing of Nokia back in the late 90s/early 00s was in the end a positive thing for the European tech industry as 100s of ex-Nokia employees spread out across the continent to share their knowledge. Crossposted with @openvibe.social
Despite its recent issues I am a big fan of Apple’s hide my email feature. But this week I discovered there’s a limit to the amount you can create that’s maybe undocumented? 800… which clearly also indicates I have to give out my email address far too much 🥲 Crossposted with @openvibe.social
When will we declare running a cult? It’s got all the hallmarks 🤔 special clothing, strange terminology, group gatherings, obsessive adherents, profit…. 🤨🤨 Crossposted with @openvibe.social
Hey northern hemisphere! It’s basically holiday month, so I’m taking it easy this newsletter. If you want new games, I got one! You want gear recommendations, I got them! If you want strange fiction to read, I got it! Enjoy 🙇 chrischinchilla.com/newsletter/3... Crossposted with @openvibe.social
Games, gear, and gregarious tales — Chris Chinchilla
I haven't been reading much news, so instead I haphazardly promote some of my work.
chrischinchilla.com
The daily dice roll! Dice set raided from Frank’s treasure drawer of dice! Dice chosen under the theme of sparkly orange and tiny. Plenty of fancy dice options will be available to purchase at #BIRCON! Tickets available now! #ttrpg #Berlin #events bircon.berlin
Hey #Berlin folks you‘re spoilt for choice in #TTRPG conventions this year! This #event on the 19th September 2026 highlights the excellent work coming out of the Ukraine and Europe. The #OpenCall to get involved in the event is open until 31.07.2026. mrijecon.org/de
Anyone in Berlin who wants to see a reworking of "Antony & Cleopatra"? I am doing sound and lights at this show over the next few days. tfk-berlin.de And if you need a sound or lights person in Berlin, let me know! Crossposted with @openvibe.social
Aktuell im tfk - theaterforum kreuzberg
Antony & Cleopatra: Love Is WarA reimagined stage productioninspired by Shakespeare’s tragedyGastspielShakespeare Reloaded e.V.in englischer Sprache FR – 24.07.2026 – 20.00 Uhr (Premiere)SA – 25.07.2026 – 20.00 UhrSO – 26.07.2026 – 20.00 UhrDO – 30.07.2026 – 20.00 UhrFR – 31.07.2026 – 20.00 UhrSA – 01.08.2026 – 20.00 Uhr Eintritt: 18 €, ermäßigt 12 € Weitere
tfk-berlin.de
Wonderfully timed two years after I started it… I have a new book out on sustainable app and web development! chrischinchilla.com/blog/2026/i-... Crossposted with @openvibe.social
I have a new book out on creating the sustainable web — Chris Chinchilla
Finally, after a lot of work over a long period of time, I have a new non-fiction book out, co-written with Ines Akrap. It’s [“Building the Sustainable Web”, out with Apress now](/books/building-the-sustainable-web).
chrischinchilla.com
The daily dice roll! A table of traits from the Chaosium was used for this roll. Coincidentally this is one of many games that will be available to play at #BIRCON! Tickets available now! #ttrpg #Berlin #events bircon.berlin
If you’re based near Berlin and into RPGs, larps, storytelling games, and everything adjacent, early bird tickets for the 3rd instalment of Berlins international gaming event finish tonight at 23:59. Get in there and please promote and share! bircon.berlin Crossposted with @openvibe.social
Berlin International RPG Convention
The Berlin International Roleplaying Games Convention, for tabletop pen and paper enthusiasts, in the heart of Berlin. For fans of Call of Cthulhu, Mörk Borg, Hypertellurians, Mothership, Troika!, Into the Odd, Dungeons and Dragons, Pirate Borg, Wolden, Knightcore, Daggerheart, Shadowdark, and many more.
bircon.berlin
Late last year I moved back to Instapaper after Mozilla shut down Pocket… I found links from ten years ago that took me on a trip down memory lane to see that some things and changed, and others… Well, they hadn't. chrischinchilla.com/blog/2026/li...
Revisiting 2016 - Links from ten years ago
Revisiting links saved ten years ago, exploring what captured my attention and the world's interests back in 2016.
chrischinchilla.com
Anyone else had feedly just stop working the past few days? Crossposted with @openvibe.social
A few in the #macos world recently mentioned the awesome CoTypist local AI writing assistant from the same developer as Timing. I was lucky enough that the solo indiepreneur was passing through Berlin and dropped by in-person for an interview… Which I don't normally do, so the audio is terrible… 😞
Recorded at @pytorch.org con in Paris, I had Mark Collier from the foundation on the podcast to talk about its role in stewarding the most popular tool for machine learning and training models. Listen here: chrischinchilla.com/podcast/the-... or search "Tech Lounge" wherever you get podcasts.
The PyTorch Foundation with Mark Collier — Chris Chinchilla
<p>In this episode, I speak with Mark Collier, executive director of the PyTorch Foundation, from PyTorch Con in Paris.<br> </p> <p><strong>Try the best git GUI for macOS and Windows</strong><br> Grapple git without the grief and try Tower, the best graphical interface for git on macOS and Windows.</p> <p><a href="https://go.chrischinchilla.com/tower" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">h...
chrischinchilla.com
Folks, still a few weeks left to propose a talk to Write the Docs Berlin, Sep 6-8, 2026. www.writethedocs.org/conf/berlin/... Would love to see all your ideas about documentation and adjacent topics while I'm still buzzing from the Portland conference. #writethedocs
Reminder for Call for Proposals, Tickets, and Opportunity Grants
We hope you are looking forward to our Berlin conference as much as we are! Today is mostly a reminder that we’re accepting talk proposals until June 01, 2026. Opportunity Grants are still open as ...
writethedocs.org
@jameswallis.bsky.social will reach out to y’all soon about Bircon 2026 and hope you can make it this time as it’s two days, but…. Just finished the livestream. I am from south London and went to labyrinth in chislehurst caves for years in the 90s. I was one of the games highest ranking archers 😆😆😆