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  Question for other professionals: How do you *genuinely* identify your own learning and development needs? Not in a box-ticking sort of a way - actual, genuine, "this would be useful", development. Stuff that it is worth spending your time on. (I have no colleagues. I've asked clients for feedback, specifically what I can do better, or things they'd like me to do differently, or things that they have valued in other professional advisors, and I have turned up nothing.)

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  If you walked into a room (which is not a room for storing elephants) and there was an elephant in that room, would you mention that there was an elephant in the room?

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  Self-hosting is a dreadful choice for many people, for anything that they actually care about. Annoyingly, *not* self-hosting stuff is also not a panacea, and generally entails picking the least worst option (which can be challenging in itself), and then understanding what one *still* needs to do to mitigate the risks of that choice. There is no single good choice and - sadly - do I see that changing any time soon. I'd love to be wrong here.

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  New blogpost: "On Free software project boards and governance" My reflections on what it takes for a board of a FOSS project to be effective. They probably apply equally to other, non-FOSS, volunteer boards too. https://neilzone.co.uk/2026/09/on-free-software-project-boards-and-governance/ #Linux #tech #FOSS #blog

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  I am off to play Airsoft today! First mission: get out of the bedroom and get ready for Airsoft without waking my sleeping wife. *stealth mode on*

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  We have had solar panels for a few months now, and I still get joy from the idea that we are making use of energy which would otherwise just being going to waste. As the price and complexity of PV systems (e.g. via balcony solar) decreases, hopefully this will be available to more and more people. It is quite wonderful to me that, so far today, everything I have done has been powered by sunlight, with enough spare to pop some into our battery.

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  Happy Friday, especially to those of who you haven't been around so much recently because life has been challenging. 💚

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  Let's say that a distro comes with a package management / software installation tool, with default repositories (sources of software which can be installed). Anyone can run their own repo to distribute whatever software they want. Any user can add whatever repo they wish. Some people involved in the distro do not wish to support software created with (any) genAI in its default repos, and other people involved in the distro feel that some users might want to install such software. Does th...

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  > KDE and AI, and you, and me Am I misreading this? Someone involved in KDE *banned someone* for pointing out another user's "odious Twitter posts", and has not unbanned them and apologised to them? https://pointieststick.com/2026/09/23/kde-and-ai-and-you-and-me/

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  My first impression of a £135 colour eInk Android tablet (well, eReader) is pretty impressive. It can run Tor Browser (installed via F-Droid) just fine, and browsing the web is more than tolerable! More fiddling to do, but so far, so good.

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  > Many law firms set to fail without interest income Honestly, this baffles me. I am not a conveyancer, and I do not have a client account, but I struggle, ethically, with the idea of law firms pocketing the interest earned on their clients' money. https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/many-law-firms-set-to-fail-without-interest-income-benchmarking-survey/5127964.article

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  Genuine question: what are people seeing in an "agentic operating system", that I am obviously missing?

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  I would be interested to hear specific recommendations, from your own personal experience, for a computer to act as a low-powered server: * relatively small form factor * low power consumption * amd64 * runs Linux nicely (i.e. all hardware supported) * available to buy new in the UK, but without needing an account manager / any sort of nonsense like that * has ongoing firmware updates from the manufacturer, via fwupd It doesn't need more than 16GB of RAM, nor a beefy processor. Thank you!

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  One thing I heard a lot about, and hear nothing about now: VR headsets. I thought that they were the future - of gaming, especially - but, unless I have completely missed something, they seem to have fizzled out. High price and limited, novelty value, perhaps?

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  Do you procrastinate?

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  When I see statements like "teenagers are spending 4-6 hours online, instead of going outside and meeting people" as a justification for further web regulation, I wonder to myself: - if it had been 4-6 hours reading books, practising musical instruments, creating art, or similar, would they be demanding that books, instruments etc. have a watershed? If not, why not? - what is the "acceptable" amount of time for a teenager to spend online each day? What makes it so? - &quot...

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  For anyone thinking about age verification, identification, privacy, safety, and such like online, please may I *highly* recommend this wonderful book, "Queer Privacy", edited by @sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social: https://leanpub.com/queerprivacy I cannot speak highly enough of it. It is pay what you like, and is DRM-free. #EUKIDSAct

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  > EU KIDS Act to restrict social media platforms’ access to children in the EU Another fine mess... https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/eu-kids-act-restrict-social-media-platforms-access-children-eu

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  Due to new legislation prohibiting addictive social media features, my admin had told me to be less fun and interesting online.

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  I have combined my initial thoughts on the EU KIDS Act proposal into one blogpost: https://neilzone.co.uk/2026/09/initial-thoughts-on-the-eu-kids-act/ What a mess. I imagine that some fedi service providers will want to track this carefully or, better still, lobby to see what can be done about it... #lawfedi #blog #EUKIDSAct

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  I like @postmarketOS@social.treehouse.systems's "AI" policy. tl;dr: "We forbid the use of generative AI tools in postmarketOS." https://docs.postmarketos.org/policies-and-processes/development/ai-policy.html

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  Well, I am baffled. We have (another) mouse. Since we live in the countryside, this is not a surprise. I will put out our humane trap and, once I have obtained Mouse, I will move it to another home in some bushes, far away. But the thing which is baffling me is this: the mouse has got into our freezer, and into the ice maker unit. I have removed everything from the freezer, and I can see no hole at all. Not even a pen-sized hole. But there are mice faeces in the ice maker so, somehow, it is...

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  I have spent some time today pondering about genAI policies and Free software projects. My position is "no genAI, thanks". I have examined my own thinking, and my conclusion remains the same. I like @IzzyOnDroid@floss.social's policy: https://izzyondroid.org/docs/general/AppInclusionPolicy/#ai-policy If I am wrong, and in the future, all the ethical and other issues are resolved, then, *at that point*, one can always change one's mind. But if one hold one's nose out of...

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  New blogpost: "Initial thoughts on the Social Media Platforms (Ofcom Licensing) Bill" I try to think the best of people and their intentions, so this might be just one big mistake, but honestly, wow... I cannot imagine someone attempting, with a straight face, to impose strict criminal liability on cafe and pub owners, for what their customers say. https://neilzone.co.uk/2026/09/initial-thoughts-on-the-social-media-platforms-ofcom-licensing-bill/ #OnlineSafetyAct #lawfedi #blog

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  Standard eBooks rightly gets a lot of love here, but I see fewer mentions of the superb Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ and here as @gutenberg_org@mastodon.social I have downloaded many fine ebooks from both. And what a lovely experience: - no need for an account - no payment needed (but donations are welcomed) - no DRM - no need to hunt for a download button

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  There is a new toolkit > to help law schools, law firms and other organisations design and develop effective partnerships and initiatives that widen access to the solicitors' profession for people from underrepresented backgrounds. I don't know how many, if any, people who'd like to be a solicitor in England and Wales are in the fediverse, but if you are one of them, I'm always happy to find time to have a chat (audio or video, as you wish) about my experience, talk about &...

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  It is raining, and the garden is starting to look green again. There are two squirrels digging holes, playing with their nuts.

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  > You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by your CFO who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the...

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  > NHS AI tools could be repurposed to support jurors, committee told Your honour, we don't know if they are guilty or not guilty, but they probably have lupus and a sore knee. https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/nhs-ai-tools-could-be-repurposed-to-support-jurors-committee-told/5127871.article

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  # Jellyfin 12.0 This looks like a significant upgrade to this excellent self-hosted media server. I still buy DVDs and CDs, and Jellyfin is a key part of my approach. Thank you @jellyfin@mastodon.online! https://jellyfin.org/posts/jellyfin-release-12.0/