Do PWAs have an image problem? I was talking with someone today about using a PWA instead of two native apps and there was some resistance. As you can put PWAs in app stores (either directly or through a wrapper), I'm not seeing the reason to avoid them. Please let me know what I'm missing...

Missed first two days of localfirstconf in person so now videos are out I’ve been catching up. This talk by @jenson.org resonates the most with me. Now is the time we should be building new and novel system interfaces www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IOL...

Scott Jenson — How the Desktop UX needs to evolve to keep up with Local-first

YouTube video by Local-First Conf

youtube.com

My LocalFirst talk is up! How the Desktop UX needs to evolve This is a "part 2" of my #ubuntu talk last year. This time with more demos! www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IOL...

Scott Jenson — How the Desktop UX needs to evolve to keep up with Local-first

YouTube video by Local-First Conf

youtube.com

I've now sorted my cables: 1. Legacy 2.0 cables 2. 3.1 cables with higher data and modest power 3. 3.2/4.0 cables that did more data, power and video 4. Thunderbolt cables. (there are even variations within each camp! What I'd like to see is some color coding on the plugs...

Scott Jenson@jenson.org · 7d ago

I have a drawer with a ziplock bag for each type of USB cable. And for years I've had one bag for USB-C to C. I'm finally just giving in, buying a cable tester, and breaking them up into USB-C power only, USB-C power+data, and USB-C video, because this is just getting out of control.

I'm watching the first season* of the British tv show The Avengers. It is shockingly good! I'm only two shows in and I'm hooked. The writing, the characters, and the overall vibe are so much more than I expected * Season 1 was lost, I'm actually starting with season 2

I have a drawer with a ziplock bag for each type of USB cable. And for years I've had one bag for USB-C to C. I'm finally just giving in, buying a cable tester, and breaking them up into USB-C power only, USB-C power+data, and USB-C video, because this is just getting out of control.

Anyone else trying to use pi.dev? I'm not sure I've ever used a product that has repeatedly punched me in the face so many times. I love the idea but even if I try to use it out of the box, it still falls over and breaks. I'm 2 weeks into it and I'm FAR from parity with claude code.

Pi Coding Agent

A terminal-based coding agent

pi.dev

Is anybody using DFOS? I learned about it a LocalFirst a few weeks ago and I wanted to check it out. It appears to be opaque by design, you need to know a bit about the group you want to join first. Are there any DFOS public spaces that anyone would recommend? (Assuming they are open of course)

I've found LLM tech to be useful in limited, controlled conditions. Its current models are hard to support for ethical/ environmental reasons. However, I want to keep exploring how best to use it, and of course, when NOT to use it. I'm not a freaking fanboi here. This tech has serious limits!

Nothing makes you less of an expert than "believing it's possible" because that clearly tells me you don't know how AI works or how consciousness works or how philosophy works or how ethics works.

Aram Zucker-Scharff@chronotope.aramzs.xyz · 2w ago

No. Very clearly no. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

As this is getting some traction, I want to be clear that I still believe in PMs, programmers, and most importantly, the UX process. I'm not trying to erase the lines between roles or avoid UX research. I'm just pleasantly shocked by this ability to iterate so quickly,

Scott Jenson@jenson.org · 3w ago

There are LOTS of reasons to be cautious about using foundational AI models to code. But for a UX designer, having the ability to generate frontend code is mind-blowing. I get to explore EXACTLY what I want in seconds, not days. No debating feasibility, just pure, instant iteration.

There are LOTS of reasons to be cautious about using foundational AI models to code. But for a UX designer, having the ability to generate frontend code is mind-blowing. I get to explore EXACTLY what I want in seconds, not days. No debating feasibility, just pure, instant iteration.

I've been using Fable this past week on the "promo tier" at just $20/month. It's very powerful, with clear value. I just used ccusage to get my token count this past week and at standard rates, my little side project would have cost roughly $100/day! Powerful but a BIT too expensive

I'm REALLY trying to move off of foundational LLM models for coding. I've heard that Qwen2.5-Coder or CodeGemma are SLMs that are targeted on just coding so are much smaller, and in theory anyone can run on a 16GB Mac. Has anyone tried this? Are there better alternatives?

Hiking on the Curonian Spit in Lithuania near the Russian border. Apparently the Russians jam GPS and my hiking log appears to prove that!

I'll be speaking at the KDE Akademy 2026 conference this September in Graz on the "future of destkop UX". I'm so happy this worked out as the KDE community has always been so supportive of my ideas. conf.kde.org/event/11/con...

Akademy 2026

conf.kde.org

I've been in UX for 40+ years (I started at Apple). Recently, I've been working on bringing UX to FOSS projects, and I see this attitude far too often (but not always!). It's terribly exciting to see this thread get so much support and love. There is hope yet.

Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫@lookitup.baby · 3w ago

if your response to “users aren’t dumb, they have their own motivations and incentives and it’s good to try to understand those when you make software you want people to use” is “well actually, users are dumb” I’m sorry, but you are part of the problem

I'm leaving the #localfirst conference intellectually stuffed. Such a great conference with excellent conversations. I have so many things I want to try when I get home. Thank you @bmann.ca and the entire team for putting on such a great event.

Image from a talk at #localfirst conference. We've all seen cartoons like this. It's clearly AI generated but WHY is it so obvious? You'd think the models could produce something with a little variation so they aren't so stylistically identical?

Look, I’m an open source maintainer, and if you want people to use that FOSS software as an alternative to that proprietary software it’s good to understand why people wanted to use that proprietary software in the first place and why they might be hesitant to switch It’s not because users are dumb

Arrived at 08:30 Saturday in Berlin for the local first conference (starting tomorrow) I've got the speakers lunch in 3 hours but otherwise my day is wide open. Any suggestions on what I should be checking out here in sunny Berlin?

Excited to be flying into Berlin tomorrow morning to speak at the LocalFirst conference. I'll be doing part 2 of my "Future of desktop UX" talk.

I just composed a two part reply to a post, wording things VERY carefully only to realize that after posting, I needed to edit the second post. Argh, I need to delete and retype, OK... I go to the second post and delete it but there is a bug and the FIRST post is deleted instead!!

It's always amazing when someone reaches out and says how much one of my blog posts meant to them. It's just about #UX, it's nothing emotionally heavy but that personal connection means so much. It's even fun to revisit what I wrote 5 years ago! Thank you kind stranger. jenson.org/instincts/

I have to say, using the 'free period" of Claude's Fable model over the weekend and it really is nailing nearly everything I'm asking it to do, even on the first try. I'm NOT a fan of the ethical/environmental issues surrounding LLMs but you *can't* say they are useless.

"Oh no! We forgot Timmy!" I know I'm on a tear right now with Automobile #UX but messages like this just have me scratching my head? Yes, I know, baby's have been left in cars but two extremely obvious points: 1. It is a statistically insignificant number 2. This message wouldn't help anyway.

Yet another Auto UX video. This time with my Škoda Auto rental. It's a great little car but I had an unsafe #UX experience which could have easily been avoided.

This is 10:36 at night in Estonia! It's just so..... surreal to have it be this bright at night.

Now THIS is a museum! The Lennusadam maritime museum in Tallinn. This was fun....

Metsakalmistu cemetery near Tallinn Estonia. It's in the middle of a forest and the most beautiful cemetery I've ever been in. Just gorgeous. These photos don't capture it