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Worth reading

Wes Cook and the Centralia McDonald's Mural

cabel.com · Feb 11

A personal story about discovering a mural in a McDonald's, an unknown artist named Wes Cook, saving the mural, and a conference talk about the whole thing.

Shared by @frederic and 40 others.
Jason Santa Maria (@jasonsantamaria) · Feb 11
🔁 @cabel:

over a year ago, i gave a talk at the xoxo conference about a mural, a mcdonald’s, and a man. (but it was also secretly about life, and legacy, and meaning.)

finally, i’m blogging the full story, with behind-the-scenes details, and a video of the talk.

i hope you enjoy this read. cabel.com/wes-cook-and-the-mcd

Eric Portis (@eeeps) · Feb 11
🔁 @cabel:

over a year ago, i gave a talk at the xoxo conference about a mural, a mcdonald’s, and a man. (but it was also secretly about life, and legacy, and meaning.)

finally, i’m blogging the full story, with behind-the-scenes details, and a video of the talk.

i hope you enjoy this read. cabel.com/wes-cook-and-the-mcd

Glyph (@glyph) · Feb 12
🔁 @cabel:

over a year ago, i gave a talk at the xoxo conference about a mural, a mcdonald’s, and a man. (but it was also secretly about life, and legacy, and meaning.)

finally, i’m blogging the full story, with behind-the-scenes details, and a video of the talk.

i hope you enjoy this read. cabel.com/wes-cook-and-the-mcd

rifter (@rifter) · Feb 11
🔁 @cabel:

over a year ago, i gave a talk at the xoxo conference about a mural, a mcdonald’s, and a man. (but it was also secretly about life, and legacy, and meaning.)

finally, i’m blogging the full story, with behind-the-scenes details, and a video of the talk.

i hope you enjoy this read. cabel.com/wes-cook-and-the-mcd

Luke Kanies (@lkanies) · Feb 11
🔁 @cabel:

over a year ago, i gave a talk at the xoxo conference about a mural, a mcdonald’s, and a man. (but it was also secretly about life, and legacy, and meaning.)

finally, i’m blogging the full story, with behind-the-scenes details, and a video of the talk.

i hope you enjoy this read. cabel.com/wes-cook-and-the-mcd

Curtis C. Chen (he/him) 陳致宇 (@curtiscchen) · Feb 11
🔁 @waxy:

Wes Cook and The McDonald’s Mural: Cabel Sasser tells the full behind-the-scenes story of one of the best XOXO talks ever cabel.com/wes-cook-and-the-mcd

wsm (@weldon) · Feb 11
🔁 @cabel:

over a year ago, i gave a talk at the xoxo conference about a mural, a mcdonald’s, and a man. (but it was also secretly about life, and legacy, and meaning.)

finally, i’m blogging the full story, with behind-the-scenes details, and a video of the talk.

i hope you enjoy this read. cabel.com/wes-cook-and-the-mcd

4am ❧ (@a2_4am) · Feb 12
🔁 @cabel:

over a year ago, i gave a talk at the xoxo conference about a mural, a mcdonald’s, and a man. (but it was also secretly about life, and legacy, and meaning.)

finally, i’m blogging the full story, with behind-the-scenes details, and a video of the talk.

i hope you enjoy this read. cabel.com/wes-cook-and-the-mcd

The Flight Attendant (@CosmicTraveler) · Feb 12
🔁 @cabel:

over a year ago, i gave a talk at the xoxo conference about a mural, a mcdonald’s, and a man. (but it was also secretly about life, and legacy, and meaning.)

finally, i’m blogging the full story, with behind-the-scenes details, and a video of the talk.

i hope you enjoy this read. cabel.com/wes-cook-and-the-mcd

Worth reading

Britain’s building standards are now so bad, even the super-rich are facing housing misery | Phineas Harper

theguardian.com · Feb 11

Residents of the UK’s most expensive flats have won a court case over defective pipework. If their homes are shoddily built, what hope do the rest of us have, asks writer and curator Phineas Harper

Shared by @cainmark and 28 others.
Bob Downie (@geomannie) · Feb 11
🔁 @JugglingWithEggs:

‘Britain’s construction quality crisis isn’t a mystery, but the logical outcome of political choices. It’s the result of deregulation, privatisation and allowing the primacy of cost-cutting profiteers to supplant quality control and craft. When you rob building of its dignity, you don’t get efficiency; you get mould, leaks and devastating repair bills at every rung of the social ladder.’

I see this daily in the poor quality of new build social housing…but it’s everywhere
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

Cabbidges (@TheDailyBurble) · Feb 11
🔁 @dyckron:

"Jones says there seems to be a devaluing of practical skills in schools – a process kickstarted when Britain’s Skills Training Agency, which had for decades offered rigorous tuition across a variety of vocations, was sold off under the Thatcher government. Despite warnings that privatisation would be unsustainable and could lead to asset-stripping and lower-quality courses, the Conservatives flogged the organisation to a private company in 1990 that went bust only three years later."

#NeoliberalParadise

Britain’s building standards are now so bad, even the super-rich are facing housing misery
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

Tricia Wood (@Pkbwood) · Feb 11
🔁 @dyckron:

"Jones says there seems to be a devaluing of practical skills in schools – a process kickstarted when Britain’s Skills Training Agency, which had for decades offered rigorous tuition across a variety of vocations, was sold off under the Thatcher government. Despite warnings that privatisation would be unsustainable and could lead to asset-stripping and lower-quality courses, the Conservatives flogged the organisation to a private company in 1990 that went bust only three years later."

#NeoliberalParadise

Britain’s building standards are now so bad, even the super-rich are facing housing misery
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

trending_bot (@trending_bot) · Feb 11
🔁 @JugglingWithEggs:

‘Britain’s construction quality crisis isn’t a mystery, but the logical outcome of political choices. It’s the result of deregulation, privatisation and allowing the primacy of cost-cutting profiteers to supplant quality control and craft. When you rob building of its dignity, you don’t get efficiency; you get mould, leaks and devastating repair bills at every rung of the social ladder.’

I see this daily in the poor quality of new build social housing…but it’s everywhere
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

Simon Brooke (@simon_brooke) · Feb 11
🔁 @JugglingWithEggs:

‘Britain’s construction quality crisis isn’t a mystery, but the logical outcome of political choices. It’s the result of deregulation, privatisation and allowing the primacy of cost-cutting profiteers to supplant quality control and craft. When you rob building of its dignity, you don’t get efficiency; you get mould, leaks and devastating repair bills at every rung of the social ladder.’

I see this daily in the poor quality of new build social housing…but it’s everywhere
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

Roy #EatTheRich Pardee 🇺🇸 (@rpardee) · Feb 11
🔁 @JugglingWithEggs:

‘Britain’s construction quality crisis isn’t a mystery, but the logical outcome of political choices. It’s the result of deregulation, privatisation and allowing the primacy of cost-cutting profiteers to supplant quality control and craft. When you rob building of its dignity, you don’t get efficiency; you get mould, leaks and devastating repair bills at every rung of the social ladder.’

I see this daily in the poor quality of new build social housing…but it’s everywhere
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

Matthew Rimmer (@drrimmer) · Feb 11
🔁 @JugglingWithEggs:

‘Britain’s construction quality crisis isn’t a mystery, but the logical outcome of political choices. It’s the result of deregulation, privatisation and allowing the primacy of cost-cutting profiteers to supplant quality control and craft. When you rob building of its dignity, you don’t get efficiency; you get mould, leaks and devastating repair bills at every rung of the social ladder.’

I see this daily in the poor quality of new build social housing…but it’s everywhere
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

Nicole Parsons (@Npars01) · Feb 11
🔁 @JugglingWithEggs:

‘Britain’s construction quality crisis isn’t a mystery, but the logical outcome of political choices. It’s the result of deregulation, privatisation and allowing the primacy of cost-cutting profiteers to supplant quality control and craft. When you rob building of its dignity, you don’t get efficiency; you get mould, leaks and devastating repair bills at every rung of the social ladder.’

I see this daily in the poor quality of new build social housing…but it’s everywhere
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

Building the camps

degenerateart.beehiiv.com · Feb 11

The warehouseification of detention and initial thoughts on stopping it.

Shared by @slashdottir and 46 others.
Jes (@Jesticulated) · Feb 11
🔁 @inquiline:

"the express repetition of a project on the scale of the larger concentration camp systems in history"

citizens' united is one (of many) factors leading to this moment

degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/bu

#uspol

M.S. Bellows, Jr. (@msbellows) · Feb 11
🔁 @AndreaPitzer:

When I got the contract to write a history of concentration camps in 2014, I hoped to keep the US from ending up here. That didn't work out! But now it's critical to understand how much is already in process and the enormity of what's coming. The sooner we act to stop it, the more people we'll save. degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/bu

JNL (@jnl) · Feb 11
🔁 @tusk81:

“When I got the contract to write a history of concentration camps in 2014, I really hoped to keep the US from ending up where it is today. That part didn't work out. But now, it's critical to understand how much is already underway, and the enormity of what's coming. The sooner we act to stop it, the more people we can save, and the less infrastructure there will be to dismantle in the future.” degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/bu

Jeff (@Porkwich) · Feb 11
🔁 @AndreaPitzer:

When I got the contract to write a history of concentration camps in 2014, I hoped to keep the US from ending up here. That didn't work out! But now it's critical to understand how much is already in process and the enormity of what's coming. The sooner we act to stop it, the more people we'll save. degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/bu

tools for commensality 🧿 (@inquiline) · Feb 11
🔁 @inquiline:

"the express repetition of a project on the scale of the larger concentration camp systems in history"

citizens' united is one (of many) factors leading to this moment

degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/bu

#uspol

salix sericea (@Ripple13216) (@salixsericea) · Feb 11
🔁 @AndreaPitzer:

When I got the contract to write a history of concentration camps in 2014, I hoped to keep the US from ending up here. That didn't work out! But now it's critical to understand how much is already in process and the enormity of what's coming. The sooner we act to stop it, the more people we'll save. degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/bu

Paul Cantrell (@inthehands) · Feb 11
🔁 @AndreaPitzer:

When I got the contract to write a history of concentration camps in 2014, I hoped to keep the US from ending up here. That didn't work out! But now it's critical to understand how much is already in process and the enormity of what's coming. The sooner we act to stop it, the more people we'll save. degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/bu

Alex Akselrod (@aakselrod) · Feb 11
🔁 @tusk81:

“When I got the contract to write a history of concentration camps in 2014, I really hoped to keep the US from ending up where it is today. That part didn't work out. But now, it's critical to understand how much is already underway, and the enormity of what's coming. The sooner we act to stop it, the more people we can save, and the less infrastructure there will be to dismantle in the future.” degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/bu

Worth reading

The Power of Representation

maho.dev · Feb 10

Yeah, I know the last 3 chapters are titled “The Power of…” but let me tell you, I like it, and it’s my blog. When I was a kid, I always knew I wanted to make something different for myself. Different from what? That was the question. I didn’t limit my imagination to a subset of possibi...

Shared by @box464 and 13 others.
Elena Rossini ⁂ (@_elena) · Feb 11
🔁 @blog:

FOSDEM 2026: The Kid Who Dreamed of Hackers Found Them in Brussels

Summary: A kid from a small Mexican town dreamed of finding real-life hackers. Two decades later, he flew his family to Brussels and spoke at one of the world’s largest open-source conferences. This is that story.

“We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” – David D. Clark

The Dream

When I was a young hacker—yeah, believe it or not—my dream was to find other hackers in real life and just hang out together. That’s it. That was the whole dream.

It sounds modest now, but you have to understand the context. I come from a very small town in Mexico, the kind of place where internet was a luxury, Linux was a word nobody recognized, and “Windows” was mostly what you opened to let the heat out. The idea of attending a tech conference was absurd. Attending one in English? In another country? That was pure science fiction—like telling my block friends about Dragon Ball Z spoilers I’d read online, except even less believable.

But with time, and a painfully slow DSL connection, I found my people. I stumbled into the local Linux user group—fewer than ten of us in a city of thousands—and we built something from nothing. A hackerspace. Community events. Workshops with maybe a dozen attendees if we were lucky. Eventually, I found my way to national conferences and even talked at a few of them. Each one felt like a small victory, a tiny crack in the wall between where I was and where I wanted to be.

The Shot

So when the opportunity to submit a talk to FOSDEM 2026 appeared, I just shot my shot.

I did it almost by instinct, without overthinking it. FOSDEM—the Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting—is one of the largest open-source conferences in the world. Thousands of developers, hundreds of talks, legendary project booths. It had always been a place that existed on the other side of a dream for me. But here’s the thing: I’m more financially stable now, I’ve traveled to Europe for both leisure and work, and I speak comfortable (but still heavily accented) English. I’ve made peace with my accent—it’s part of the package, take it or leave it.

So, why not? The real surprise was that I hadn’t applied before.

The Logistics of Madness

When my proposed talk was accepted, my first reaction wasn’t joy—it was panic. The kind of panic you feel when you push to main and then read the diff. The real problem was logistics.

I already had a trip to Mexico planned for personal reasons. Going to FOSDEM meant extending the family travel by a week, rerouting flights, and solving the kind of logistical puzzle that makes your brain hurt. Tepic, a small city in the mountains of western Mexico → Mexico City → London → Brussels. With a seven-year-old. And a month’s worth of luggage packed for both the scorching Mexican beach and a freezing European winter—flip-flops sharing suitcase space with thermal jackets, sunscreen next to wool scarves. And sanity (debatable).

After my wife—bless her patience—said “just go for it,” and after numerous conversations with both AI and non-AI advisors about how to make it less stressful, we committed. At the end of January, I found myself at the tiny airport of Tepic, eating the most amazing torta de pierna, beginning an absurd journey to Belgium.

We crossed through London, hopped on the Eurostar to Brussels, and somewhere between countries, we lost a pillow—a bear-shaped one my kid had shamelessly stolen from his grandma. Rest in peace, little bear pillow. You survived a Mexican grandmother’s house only to perish somewhere in the English Channel.

The Candy Store

And then, there I was. At FOSDEM. With my kid. In Brussels.

The place was electric. People from every imaginable background wandered through the halls of the Université libre de Bruxelles. I’ll be honest—there’s still a noticeable lack of diversity, especially in gender representation—but the energy was undeniable. It felt like a living, breathing monument to what open source can be.

Seeing the project booths was like being a kid in a candy store—except I literally had a kid with me in this candy store. Mozilla, Thunderbird, Let’s Encrypt, SUSE, and of course Mastodon, to name a few. I couldn’t help myself; I told my son that when I was young, one of my first dreams was to work for SUSE. He listened carefully, the way seven-year-olds do when they’re filing away information for later use (probably to embarrass me at dinner).

Keeping a seven-year-old entertained at a developer conference is its own extreme sport. Thankfully, a friend I hadn’t seen in over a decade was there—with his kid. He’s a no-gringo, a Dutchman who happens to have worked at Innox in Mexico. Our kids hit it off, and suddenly the conference had a parallel track: unsupervised children’s chaos edition.

The Talk

When the time came for my talk, I walked in, set up, and delivered something far from perfect—but unmistakably mine. I stumbled on a couple of words, my accent was thick, and I’m sure I made at least one joke that only landed for me. But that’s the style. That’s always been the style.

Just before stepping up, Elena handed me the most fabulous FOSDEM sweater in existence. People noticed. People asked where to get one. But no—only I could have it. Exclusive distribution, zero units available. (Okay fine, I was just lucky, but let me have this moment.)

If I have one regret, it’s not spending more time in other talks. It’s not that I didn’t try—I did—but balancing a seven-year-old’s attention span with a conference schedule is a negotiation no diplomacy course prepares you for. I caught fragments, glimpses, enough to know I was missing incredible stuff. But that’s the thing about FOSDEM: it’s not a one-time event. I’ll be back. And next time, I want to do more than speak—I want to listen, linger, and actually have those hallway conversations that everyone says are the best part of any conference.

The Kid and the Dream

Here’s what got me, though. The part I didn’t expect.

My kid watched me speak at FOSDEM. He didn’t fully understand the content—he’s seven, and ActivityPub isn’t exactly bedtime story material—but he saw his dad on a stage, in front of a room full of people, in another continent, talking about something he built. When the Q&A started, he wanted to raise his hand. He got shy, though, and didn’t. Later, visibly upset about his missed opportunity, he told me what he wanted to ask: “Do you play Minecraft?” In front of an auditorium full of open-source developers discussing federation protocols, my kid’s burning question was about Minecraft. I love this human being more than I can express.

He asked questions the entire trip back: “What does SUSE do?” “Will you talk at another one?” “Can I have my own desk computer?”

He saw the booths, the projects, the people. He kept posing for photos with each open-source mascot like a tiny celebrity on a press tour. His favorite was the PostgreSQL elephant, though we were genuinely concerned about its health. Based on the state of that costume, I think he might be right—PostgreSQL could use your donations, folks. That elephant has seen better days.

And the trip back was no less insane than the trip there. Brussels → Iceland → Seattle. Because apparently, when you’re already doing something absurd, you might as well add a layover near the Arctic Circle. We landed in Reykjavík with our beach-and-winter Frankenstein luggage, stepped outside into wind that felt personally offended by our existence, and my kid asked if the land was actually made of ice. Close enough, kid. Close enough.

A week later, during a conversation with his teacher, my son was asked about the most memorable thing from the trip. He didn’t say the beach in Mexico, or the train through Europe, or the wind in Iceland, or even the lost bear pillow. He said the most memorable thing was seeing his dad talk at a university. That it made him proud (I’m not going to pretend I didn’t need a moment after hearing that).

I thought about my own childhood. About the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his town. About the dusty streets and half-built houses. About how representation works in mysterious ways—how seeing someone like you doing something impossible makes it feel possible. My son doesn’t know what it’s like to not see a path. For him, this is just what dad does. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Full Circle

Twenty years ago, I was a teenager in a small Mexican town, writing code in paper notebooks and dreaming of a world I could barely imagine. Today, I stood in Brussels and spoke to a room full of open-source developers about a project I created.

The path from there to here wasn’t straight. It was messy, full of detours, broken English, lost pillows, and more coffee than any doctor would recommend. But every step—every hackerspace meetup with eight people, every local conference talk, every late night wrestling with code—was a brick in the road that led to that stage.

And yeah, I get it, talking for half an hour at a conference with hundreds of talks may seem like a small feat. One slot among many. But it wasn’t small to me. For the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his hometown, standing in front of that room was enormous.

FOSDEM wasn’t just a conference for me. It was proof that the kid from Tepic who dreamed of finding hackers in real life finally did. They were in Brussels all along, waiting for him to show up.

And he brought his kid.

Also readable in: https://maho.dev/2026/02/fosdem-2026-the-kid-who-dreamed-of-hackers-found-them-in-brussels/ by @mapache:

#fosdem #open-source #conferences #community #travel #personal-growth #europe #public-speaking

SilenceisGolden (@silentLurker) · Feb 11
🔁 @blog:

FOSDEM 2026: The Kid Who Dreamed of Hackers Found Them in Brussels

Summary: A kid from a small Mexican town dreamed of finding real-life hackers. Two decades later, he flew his family to Brussels and spoke at one of the world’s largest open-source conferences. This is that story.

“We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” – David D. Clark

The Dream

When I was a young hacker—yeah, believe it or not—my dream was to find other hackers in real life and just hang out together. That’s it. That was the whole dream.

It sounds modest now, but you have to understand the context. I come from a very small town in Mexico, the kind of place where internet was a luxury, Linux was a word nobody recognized, and “Windows” was mostly what you opened to let the heat out. The idea of attending a tech conference was absurd. Attending one in English? In another country? That was pure science fiction—like telling my block friends about Dragon Ball Z spoilers I’d read online, except even less believable.

But with time, and a painfully slow DSL connection, I found my people. I stumbled into the local Linux user group—fewer than ten of us in a city of thousands—and we built something from nothing. A hackerspace. Community events. Workshops with maybe a dozen attendees if we were lucky. Eventually, I found my way to national conferences and even talked at a few of them. Each one felt like a small victory, a tiny crack in the wall between where I was and where I wanted to be.

The Shot

So when the opportunity to submit a talk to FOSDEM 2026 appeared, I just shot my shot.

I did it almost by instinct, without overthinking it. FOSDEM—the Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting—is one of the largest open-source conferences in the world. Thousands of developers, hundreds of talks, legendary project booths. It had always been a place that existed on the other side of a dream for me. But here’s the thing: I’m more financially stable now, I’ve traveled to Europe for both leisure and work, and I speak comfortable (but still heavily accented) English. I’ve made peace with my accent—it’s part of the package, take it or leave it.

So, why not? The real surprise was that I hadn’t applied before.

The Logistics of Madness

When my proposed talk was accepted, my first reaction wasn’t joy—it was panic. The kind of panic you feel when you push to main and then read the diff. The real problem was logistics.

I already had a trip to Mexico planned for personal reasons. Going to FOSDEM meant extending the family travel by a week, rerouting flights, and solving the kind of logistical puzzle that makes your brain hurt. Tepic, a small city in the mountains of western Mexico → Mexico City → London → Brussels. With a seven-year-old. And a month’s worth of luggage packed for both the scorching Mexican beach and a freezing European winter—flip-flops sharing suitcase space with thermal jackets, sunscreen next to wool scarves. And sanity (debatable).

After my wife—bless her patience—said “just go for it,” and after numerous conversations with both AI and non-AI advisors about how to make it less stressful, we committed. At the end of January, I found myself at the tiny airport of Tepic, eating the most amazing torta de pierna, beginning an absurd journey to Belgium.

We crossed through London, hopped on the Eurostar to Brussels, and somewhere between countries, we lost a pillow—a bear-shaped one my kid had shamelessly stolen from his grandma. Rest in peace, little bear pillow. You survived a Mexican grandmother’s house only to perish somewhere in the English Channel.

The Candy Store

And then, there I was. At FOSDEM. With my kid. In Brussels.

The place was electric. People from every imaginable background wandered through the halls of the Université libre de Bruxelles. I’ll be honest—there’s still a noticeable lack of diversity, especially in gender representation—but the energy was undeniable. It felt like a living, breathing monument to what open source can be.

Seeing the project booths was like being a kid in a candy store—except I literally had a kid with me in this candy store. Mozilla, Thunderbird, Let’s Encrypt, SUSE, and of course Mastodon, to name a few. I couldn’t help myself; I told my son that when I was young, one of my first dreams was to work for SUSE. He listened carefully, the way seven-year-olds do when they’re filing away information for later use (probably to embarrass me at dinner).

Keeping a seven-year-old entertained at a developer conference is its own extreme sport. Thankfully, a friend I hadn’t seen in over a decade was there—with his kid. He’s a no-gringo, a Dutchman who happens to have worked at Innox in Mexico. Our kids hit it off, and suddenly the conference had a parallel track: unsupervised children’s chaos edition.

The Talk

When the time came for my talk, I walked in, set up, and delivered something far from perfect—but unmistakably mine. I stumbled on a couple of words, my accent was thick, and I’m sure I made at least one joke that only landed for me. But that’s the style. That’s always been the style.

Just before stepping up, Elena handed me the most fabulous FOSDEM sweater in existence. People noticed. People asked where to get one. But no—only I could have it. Exclusive distribution, zero units available. (Okay fine, I was just lucky, but let me have this moment.)

If I have one regret, it’s not spending more time in other talks. It’s not that I didn’t try—I did—but balancing a seven-year-old’s attention span with a conference schedule is a negotiation no diplomacy course prepares you for. I caught fragments, glimpses, enough to know I was missing incredible stuff. But that’s the thing about FOSDEM: it’s not a one-time event. I’ll be back. And next time, I want to do more than speak—I want to listen, linger, and actually have those hallway conversations that everyone says are the best part of any conference.

The Kid and the Dream

Here’s what got me, though. The part I didn’t expect.

My kid watched me speak at FOSDEM. He didn’t fully understand the content—he’s seven, and ActivityPub isn’t exactly bedtime story material—but he saw his dad on a stage, in front of a room full of people, in another continent, talking about something he built. When the Q&A started, he wanted to raise his hand. He got shy, though, and didn’t. Later, visibly upset about his missed opportunity, he told me what he wanted to ask: “Do you play Minecraft?” In front of an auditorium full of open-source developers discussing federation protocols, my kid’s burning question was about Minecraft. I love this human being more than I can express.

He asked questions the entire trip back: “What does SUSE do?” “Will you talk at another one?” “Can I have my own desk computer?”

He saw the booths, the projects, the people. He kept posing for photos with each open-source mascot like a tiny celebrity on a press tour. His favorite was the PostgreSQL elephant, though we were genuinely concerned about its health. Based on the state of that costume, I think he might be right—PostgreSQL could use your donations, folks. That elephant has seen better days.

And the trip back was no less insane than the trip there. Brussels → Iceland → Seattle. Because apparently, when you’re already doing something absurd, you might as well add a layover near the Arctic Circle. We landed in Reykjavík with our beach-and-winter Frankenstein luggage, stepped outside into wind that felt personally offended by our existence, and my kid asked if the land was actually made of ice. Close enough, kid. Close enough.

A week later, during a conversation with his teacher, my son was asked about the most memorable thing from the trip. He didn’t say the beach in Mexico, or the train through Europe, or the wind in Iceland, or even the lost bear pillow. He said the most memorable thing was seeing his dad talk at a university. That it made him proud (I’m not going to pretend I didn’t need a moment after hearing that).

I thought about my own childhood. About the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his town. About the dusty streets and half-built houses. About how representation works in mysterious ways—how seeing someone like you doing something impossible makes it feel possible. My son doesn’t know what it’s like to not see a path. For him, this is just what dad does. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Full Circle

Twenty years ago, I was a teenager in a small Mexican town, writing code in paper notebooks and dreaming of a world I could barely imagine. Today, I stood in Brussels and spoke to a room full of open-source developers about a project I created.

The path from there to here wasn’t straight. It was messy, full of detours, broken English, lost pillows, and more coffee than any doctor would recommend. But every step—every hackerspace meetup with eight people, every local conference talk, every late night wrestling with code—was a brick in the road that led to that stage.

And yeah, I get it, talking for half an hour at a conference with hundreds of talks may seem like a small feat. One slot among many. But it wasn’t small to me. For the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his hometown, standing in front of that room was enormous.

FOSDEM wasn’t just a conference for me. It was proof that the kid from Tepic who dreamed of finding hackers in real life finally did. They were in Brussels all along, waiting for him to show up.

And he brought his kid.

Also readable in: https://maho.dev/2026/02/fosdem-2026-the-kid-who-dreamed-of-hackers-found-them-in-brussels/ by @mapache:

#fosdem #open-source #conferences #community #travel #personal-growth #europe #public-speaking

Johnny Than (@johnnythan) · Feb 11
🔁 @blog:

FOSDEM 2026: The Kid Who Dreamed of Hackers Found Them in Brussels

Summary: A kid from a small Mexican town dreamed of finding real-life hackers. Two decades later, he flew his family to Brussels and spoke at one of the world’s largest open-source conferences. This is that story.

“We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” – David D. Clark

The Dream

When I was a young hacker—yeah, believe it or not—my dream was to find other hackers in real life and just hang out together. That’s it. That was the whole dream.

It sounds modest now, but you have to understand the context. I come from a very small town in Mexico, the kind of place where internet was a luxury, Linux was a word nobody recognized, and “Windows” was mostly what you opened to let the heat out. The idea of attending a tech conference was absurd. Attending one in English? In another country? That was pure science fiction—like telling my block friends about Dragon Ball Z spoilers I’d read online, except even less believable.

But with time, and a painfully slow DSL connection, I found my people. I stumbled into the local Linux user group—fewer than ten of us in a city of thousands—and we built something from nothing. A hackerspace. Community events. Workshops with maybe a dozen attendees if we were lucky. Eventually, I found my way to national conferences and even talked at a few of them. Each one felt like a small victory, a tiny crack in the wall between where I was and where I wanted to be.

The Shot

So when the opportunity to submit a talk to FOSDEM 2026 appeared, I just shot my shot.

I did it almost by instinct, without overthinking it. FOSDEM—the Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting—is one of the largest open-source conferences in the world. Thousands of developers, hundreds of talks, legendary project booths. It had always been a place that existed on the other side of a dream for me. But here’s the thing: I’m more financially stable now, I’ve traveled to Europe for both leisure and work, and I speak comfortable (but still heavily accented) English. I’ve made peace with my accent—it’s part of the package, take it or leave it.

So, why not? The real surprise was that I hadn’t applied before.

The Logistics of Madness

When my proposed talk was accepted, my first reaction wasn’t joy—it was panic. The kind of panic you feel when you push to main and then read the diff. The real problem was logistics.

I already had a trip to Mexico planned for personal reasons. Going to FOSDEM meant extending the family travel by a week, rerouting flights, and solving the kind of logistical puzzle that makes your brain hurt. Tepic, a small city in the mountains of western Mexico → Mexico City → London → Brussels. With a seven-year-old. And a month’s worth of luggage packed for both the scorching Mexican beach and a freezing European winter—flip-flops sharing suitcase space with thermal jackets, sunscreen next to wool scarves. And sanity (debatable).

After my wife—bless her patience—said “just go for it,” and after numerous conversations with both AI and non-AI advisors about how to make it less stressful, we committed. At the end of January, I found myself at the tiny airport of Tepic, eating the most amazing torta de pierna, beginning an absurd journey to Belgium.

We crossed through London, hopped on the Eurostar to Brussels, and somewhere between countries, we lost a pillow—a bear-shaped one my kid had shamelessly stolen from his grandma. Rest in peace, little bear pillow. You survived a Mexican grandmother’s house only to perish somewhere in the English Channel.

The Candy Store

And then, there I was. At FOSDEM. With my kid. In Brussels.

The place was electric. People from every imaginable background wandered through the halls of the Université libre de Bruxelles. I’ll be honest—there’s still a noticeable lack of diversity, especially in gender representation—but the energy was undeniable. It felt like a living, breathing monument to what open source can be.

Seeing the project booths was like being a kid in a candy store—except I literally had a kid with me in this candy store. Mozilla, Thunderbird, Let’s Encrypt, SUSE, and of course Mastodon, to name a few. I couldn’t help myself; I told my son that when I was young, one of my first dreams was to work for SUSE. He listened carefully, the way seven-year-olds do when they’re filing away information for later use (probably to embarrass me at dinner).

Keeping a seven-year-old entertained at a developer conference is its own extreme sport. Thankfully, a friend I hadn’t seen in over a decade was there—with his kid. He’s a no-gringo, a Dutchman who happens to have worked at Innox in Mexico. Our kids hit it off, and suddenly the conference had a parallel track: unsupervised children’s chaos edition.

The Talk

When the time came for my talk, I walked in, set up, and delivered something far from perfect—but unmistakably mine. I stumbled on a couple of words, my accent was thick, and I’m sure I made at least one joke that only landed for me. But that’s the style. That’s always been the style.

Just before stepping up, Elena handed me the most fabulous FOSDEM sweater in existence. People noticed. People asked where to get one. But no—only I could have it. Exclusive distribution, zero units available. (Okay fine, I was just lucky, but let me have this moment.)

If I have one regret, it’s not spending more time in other talks. It’s not that I didn’t try—I did—but balancing a seven-year-old’s attention span with a conference schedule is a negotiation no diplomacy course prepares you for. I caught fragments, glimpses, enough to know I was missing incredible stuff. But that’s the thing about FOSDEM: it’s not a one-time event. I’ll be back. And next time, I want to do more than speak—I want to listen, linger, and actually have those hallway conversations that everyone says are the best part of any conference.

The Kid and the Dream

Here’s what got me, though. The part I didn’t expect.

My kid watched me speak at FOSDEM. He didn’t fully understand the content—he’s seven, and ActivityPub isn’t exactly bedtime story material—but he saw his dad on a stage, in front of a room full of people, in another continent, talking about something he built. When the Q&A started, he wanted to raise his hand. He got shy, though, and didn’t. Later, visibly upset about his missed opportunity, he told me what he wanted to ask: “Do you play Minecraft?” In front of an auditorium full of open-source developers discussing federation protocols, my kid’s burning question was about Minecraft. I love this human being more than I can express.

He asked questions the entire trip back: “What does SUSE do?” “Will you talk at another one?” “Can I have my own desk computer?”

He saw the booths, the projects, the people. He kept posing for photos with each open-source mascot like a tiny celebrity on a press tour. His favorite was the PostgreSQL elephant, though we were genuinely concerned about its health. Based on the state of that costume, I think he might be right—PostgreSQL could use your donations, folks. That elephant has seen better days.

And the trip back was no less insane than the trip there. Brussels → Iceland → Seattle. Because apparently, when you’re already doing something absurd, you might as well add a layover near the Arctic Circle. We landed in Reykjavík with our beach-and-winter Frankenstein luggage, stepped outside into wind that felt personally offended by our existence, and my kid asked if the land was actually made of ice. Close enough, kid. Close enough.

A week later, during a conversation with his teacher, my son was asked about the most memorable thing from the trip. He didn’t say the beach in Mexico, or the train through Europe, or the wind in Iceland, or even the lost bear pillow. He said the most memorable thing was seeing his dad talk at a university. That it made him proud (I’m not going to pretend I didn’t need a moment after hearing that).

I thought about my own childhood. About the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his town. About the dusty streets and half-built houses. About how representation works in mysterious ways—how seeing someone like you doing something impossible makes it feel possible. My son doesn’t know what it’s like to not see a path. For him, this is just what dad does. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Full Circle

Twenty years ago, I was a teenager in a small Mexican town, writing code in paper notebooks and dreaming of a world I could barely imagine. Today, I stood in Brussels and spoke to a room full of open-source developers about a project I created.

The path from there to here wasn’t straight. It was messy, full of detours, broken English, lost pillows, and more coffee than any doctor would recommend. But every step—every hackerspace meetup with eight people, every local conference talk, every late night wrestling with code—was a brick in the road that led to that stage.

And yeah, I get it, talking for half an hour at a conference with hundreds of talks may seem like a small feat. One slot among many. But it wasn’t small to me. For the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his hometown, standing in front of that room was enormous.

FOSDEM wasn’t just a conference for me. It was proof that the kid from Tepic who dreamed of finding hackers in real life finally did. They were in Brussels all along, waiting for him to show up.

And he brought his kid.

Also readable in: https://maho.dev/2026/02/fosdem-2026-the-kid-who-dreamed-of-hackers-found-them-in-brussels/ by @mapache:

#fosdem #open-source #conferences #community #travel #personal-growth #europe #public-speaking

Tanguy ⧓ Herrmann (@dolanor) · Feb 11
🔁 @blog:

FOSDEM 2026: The Kid Who Dreamed of Hackers Found Them in Brussels

Summary: A kid from a small Mexican town dreamed of finding real-life hackers. Two decades later, he flew his family to Brussels and spoke at one of the world’s largest open-source conferences. This is that story.

“We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” – David D. Clark

The Dream

When I was a young hacker—yeah, believe it or not—my dream was to find other hackers in real life and just hang out together. That’s it. That was the whole dream.

It sounds modest now, but you have to understand the context. I come from a very small town in Mexico, the kind of place where internet was a luxury, Linux was a word nobody recognized, and “Windows” was mostly what you opened to let the heat out. The idea of attending a tech conference was absurd. Attending one in English? In another country? That was pure science fiction—like telling my block friends about Dragon Ball Z spoilers I’d read online, except even less believable.

But with time, and a painfully slow DSL connection, I found my people. I stumbled into the local Linux user group—fewer than ten of us in a city of thousands—and we built something from nothing. A hackerspace. Community events. Workshops with maybe a dozen attendees if we were lucky. Eventually, I found my way to national conferences and even talked at a few of them. Each one felt like a small victory, a tiny crack in the wall between where I was and where I wanted to be.

The Shot

So when the opportunity to submit a talk to FOSDEM 2026 appeared, I just shot my shot.

I did it almost by instinct, without overthinking it. FOSDEM—the Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting—is one of the largest open-source conferences in the world. Thousands of developers, hundreds of talks, legendary project booths. It had always been a place that existed on the other side of a dream for me. But here’s the thing: I’m more financially stable now, I’ve traveled to Europe for both leisure and work, and I speak comfortable (but still heavily accented) English. I’ve made peace with my accent—it’s part of the package, take it or leave it.

So, why not? The real surprise was that I hadn’t applied before.

The Logistics of Madness

When my proposed talk was accepted, my first reaction wasn’t joy—it was panic. The kind of panic you feel when you push to main and then read the diff. The real problem was logistics.

I already had a trip to Mexico planned for personal reasons. Going to FOSDEM meant extending the family travel by a week, rerouting flights, and solving the kind of logistical puzzle that makes your brain hurt. Tepic, a small city in the mountains of western Mexico → Mexico City → London → Brussels. With a seven-year-old. And a month’s worth of luggage packed for both the scorching Mexican beach and a freezing European winter—flip-flops sharing suitcase space with thermal jackets, sunscreen next to wool scarves. And sanity (debatable).

After my wife—bless her patience—said “just go for it,” and after numerous conversations with both AI and non-AI advisors about how to make it less stressful, we committed. At the end of January, I found myself at the tiny airport of Tepic, eating the most amazing torta de pierna, beginning an absurd journey to Belgium.

We crossed through London, hopped on the Eurostar to Brussels, and somewhere between countries, we lost a pillow—a bear-shaped one my kid had shamelessly stolen from his grandma. Rest in peace, little bear pillow. You survived a Mexican grandmother’s house only to perish somewhere in the English Channel.

The Candy Store

And then, there I was. At FOSDEM. With my kid. In Brussels.

The place was electric. People from every imaginable background wandered through the halls of the Université libre de Bruxelles. I’ll be honest—there’s still a noticeable lack of diversity, especially in gender representation—but the energy was undeniable. It felt like a living, breathing monument to what open source can be.

Seeing the project booths was like being a kid in a candy store—except I literally had a kid with me in this candy store. Mozilla, Thunderbird, Let’s Encrypt, SUSE, and of course Mastodon, to name a few. I couldn’t help myself; I told my son that when I was young, one of my first dreams was to work for SUSE. He listened carefully, the way seven-year-olds do when they’re filing away information for later use (probably to embarrass me at dinner).

Keeping a seven-year-old entertained at a developer conference is its own extreme sport. Thankfully, a friend I hadn’t seen in over a decade was there—with his kid. He’s a no-gringo, a Dutchman who happens to have worked at Innox in Mexico. Our kids hit it off, and suddenly the conference had a parallel track: unsupervised children’s chaos edition.

The Talk

When the time came for my talk, I walked in, set up, and delivered something far from perfect—but unmistakably mine. I stumbled on a couple of words, my accent was thick, and I’m sure I made at least one joke that only landed for me. But that’s the style. That’s always been the style.

Just before stepping up, Elena handed me the most fabulous FOSDEM sweater in existence. People noticed. People asked where to get one. But no—only I could have it. Exclusive distribution, zero units available. (Okay fine, I was just lucky, but let me have this moment.)

If I have one regret, it’s not spending more time in other talks. It’s not that I didn’t try—I did—but balancing a seven-year-old’s attention span with a conference schedule is a negotiation no diplomacy course prepares you for. I caught fragments, glimpses, enough to know I was missing incredible stuff. But that’s the thing about FOSDEM: it’s not a one-time event. I’ll be back. And next time, I want to do more than speak—I want to listen, linger, and actually have those hallway conversations that everyone says are the best part of any conference.

The Kid and the Dream

Here’s what got me, though. The part I didn’t expect.

My kid watched me speak at FOSDEM. He didn’t fully understand the content—he’s seven, and ActivityPub isn’t exactly bedtime story material—but he saw his dad on a stage, in front of a room full of people, in another continent, talking about something he built. When the Q&A started, he wanted to raise his hand. He got shy, though, and didn’t. Later, visibly upset about his missed opportunity, he told me what he wanted to ask: “Do you play Minecraft?” In front of an auditorium full of open-source developers discussing federation protocols, my kid’s burning question was about Minecraft. I love this human being more than I can express.

He asked questions the entire trip back: “What does SUSE do?” “Will you talk at another one?” “Can I have my own desk computer?”

He saw the booths, the projects, the people. He kept posing for photos with each open-source mascot like a tiny celebrity on a press tour. His favorite was the PostgreSQL elephant, though we were genuinely concerned about its health. Based on the state of that costume, I think he might be right—PostgreSQL could use your donations, folks. That elephant has seen better days.

And the trip back was no less insane than the trip there. Brussels → Iceland → Seattle. Because apparently, when you’re already doing something absurd, you might as well add a layover near the Arctic Circle. We landed in Reykjavík with our beach-and-winter Frankenstein luggage, stepped outside into wind that felt personally offended by our existence, and my kid asked if the land was actually made of ice. Close enough, kid. Close enough.

A week later, during a conversation with his teacher, my son was asked about the most memorable thing from the trip. He didn’t say the beach in Mexico, or the train through Europe, or the wind in Iceland, or even the lost bear pillow. He said the most memorable thing was seeing his dad talk at a university. That it made him proud (I’m not going to pretend I didn’t need a moment after hearing that).

I thought about my own childhood. About the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his town. About the dusty streets and half-built houses. About how representation works in mysterious ways—how seeing someone like you doing something impossible makes it feel possible. My son doesn’t know what it’s like to not see a path. For him, this is just what dad does. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Full Circle

Twenty years ago, I was a teenager in a small Mexican town, writing code in paper notebooks and dreaming of a world I could barely imagine. Today, I stood in Brussels and spoke to a room full of open-source developers about a project I created.

The path from there to here wasn’t straight. It was messy, full of detours, broken English, lost pillows, and more coffee than any doctor would recommend. But every step—every hackerspace meetup with eight people, every local conference talk, every late night wrestling with code—was a brick in the road that led to that stage.

And yeah, I get it, talking for half an hour at a conference with hundreds of talks may seem like a small feat. One slot among many. But it wasn’t small to me. For the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his hometown, standing in front of that room was enormous.

FOSDEM wasn’t just a conference for me. It was proof that the kid from Tepic who dreamed of finding hackers in real life finally did. They were in Brussels all along, waiting for him to show up.

And he brought his kid.

Also readable in: https://maho.dev/2026/02/fosdem-2026-the-kid-who-dreamed-of-hackers-found-them-in-brussels/ by @mapache:

#fosdem #open-source #conferences #community #travel #personal-growth #europe #public-speaking

Daniel Appelquist (@torgo) · Feb 11
🔁 @blog:

FOSDEM 2026: The Kid Who Dreamed of Hackers Found Them in Brussels

Summary: A kid from a small Mexican town dreamed of finding real-life hackers. Two decades later, he flew his family to Brussels and spoke at one of the world’s largest open-source conferences. This is that story.

“We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” – David D. Clark

The Dream

When I was a young hacker—yeah, believe it or not—my dream was to find other hackers in real life and just hang out together. That’s it. That was the whole dream.

It sounds modest now, but you have to understand the context. I come from a very small town in Mexico, the kind of place where internet was a luxury, Linux was a word nobody recognized, and “Windows” was mostly what you opened to let the heat out. The idea of attending a tech conference was absurd. Attending one in English? In another country? That was pure science fiction—like telling my block friends about Dragon Ball Z spoilers I’d read online, except even less believable.

But with time, and a painfully slow DSL connection, I found my people. I stumbled into the local Linux user group—fewer than ten of us in a city of thousands—and we built something from nothing. A hackerspace. Community events. Workshops with maybe a dozen attendees if we were lucky. Eventually, I found my way to national conferences and even talked at a few of them. Each one felt like a small victory, a tiny crack in the wall between where I was and where I wanted to be.

The Shot

So when the opportunity to submit a talk to FOSDEM 2026 appeared, I just shot my shot.

I did it almost by instinct, without overthinking it. FOSDEM—the Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting—is one of the largest open-source conferences in the world. Thousands of developers, hundreds of talks, legendary project booths. It had always been a place that existed on the other side of a dream for me. But here’s the thing: I’m more financially stable now, I’ve traveled to Europe for both leisure and work, and I speak comfortable (but still heavily accented) English. I’ve made peace with my accent—it’s part of the package, take it or leave it.

So, why not? The real surprise was that I hadn’t applied before.

The Logistics of Madness

When my proposed talk was accepted, my first reaction wasn’t joy—it was panic. The kind of panic you feel when you push to main and then read the diff. The real problem was logistics.

I already had a trip to Mexico planned for personal reasons. Going to FOSDEM meant extending the family travel by a week, rerouting flights, and solving the kind of logistical puzzle that makes your brain hurt. Tepic, a small city in the mountains of western Mexico → Mexico City → London → Brussels. With a seven-year-old. And a month’s worth of luggage packed for both the scorching Mexican beach and a freezing European winter—flip-flops sharing suitcase space with thermal jackets, sunscreen next to wool scarves. And sanity (debatable).

After my wife—bless her patience—said “just go for it,” and after numerous conversations with both AI and non-AI advisors about how to make it less stressful, we committed. At the end of January, I found myself at the tiny airport of Tepic, eating the most amazing torta de pierna, beginning an absurd journey to Belgium.

We crossed through London, hopped on the Eurostar to Brussels, and somewhere between countries, we lost a pillow—a bear-shaped one my kid had shamelessly stolen from his grandma. Rest in peace, little bear pillow. You survived a Mexican grandmother’s house only to perish somewhere in the English Channel.

The Candy Store

And then, there I was. At FOSDEM. With my kid. In Brussels.

The place was electric. People from every imaginable background wandered through the halls of the Université libre de Bruxelles. I’ll be honest—there’s still a noticeable lack of diversity, especially in gender representation—but the energy was undeniable. It felt like a living, breathing monument to what open source can be.

Seeing the project booths was like being a kid in a candy store—except I literally had a kid with me in this candy store. Mozilla, Thunderbird, Let’s Encrypt, SUSE, and of course Mastodon, to name a few. I couldn’t help myself; I told my son that when I was young, one of my first dreams was to work for SUSE. He listened carefully, the way seven-year-olds do when they’re filing away information for later use (probably to embarrass me at dinner).

Keeping a seven-year-old entertained at a developer conference is its own extreme sport. Thankfully, a friend I hadn’t seen in over a decade was there—with his kid. He’s a no-gringo, a Dutchman who happens to have worked at Innox in Mexico. Our kids hit it off, and suddenly the conference had a parallel track: unsupervised children’s chaos edition.

The Talk

When the time came for my talk, I walked in, set up, and delivered something far from perfect—but unmistakably mine. I stumbled on a couple of words, my accent was thick, and I’m sure I made at least one joke that only landed for me. But that’s the style. That’s always been the style.

Just before stepping up, Elena handed me the most fabulous FOSDEM sweater in existence. People noticed. People asked where to get one. But no—only I could have it. Exclusive distribution, zero units available. (Okay fine, I was just lucky, but let me have this moment.)

If I have one regret, it’s not spending more time in other talks. It’s not that I didn’t try—I did—but balancing a seven-year-old’s attention span with a conference schedule is a negotiation no diplomacy course prepares you for. I caught fragments, glimpses, enough to know I was missing incredible stuff. But that’s the thing about FOSDEM: it’s not a one-time event. I’ll be back. And next time, I want to do more than speak—I want to listen, linger, and actually have those hallway conversations that everyone says are the best part of any conference.

The Kid and the Dream

Here’s what got me, though. The part I didn’t expect.

My kid watched me speak at FOSDEM. He didn’t fully understand the content—he’s seven, and ActivityPub isn’t exactly bedtime story material—but he saw his dad on a stage, in front of a room full of people, in another continent, talking about something he built. When the Q&A started, he wanted to raise his hand. He got shy, though, and didn’t. Later, visibly upset about his missed opportunity, he told me what he wanted to ask: “Do you play Minecraft?” In front of an auditorium full of open-source developers discussing federation protocols, my kid’s burning question was about Minecraft. I love this human being more than I can express.

He asked questions the entire trip back: “What does SUSE do?” “Will you talk at another one?” “Can I have my own desk computer?”

He saw the booths, the projects, the people. He kept posing for photos with each open-source mascot like a tiny celebrity on a press tour. His favorite was the PostgreSQL elephant, though we were genuinely concerned about its health. Based on the state of that costume, I think he might be right—PostgreSQL could use your donations, folks. That elephant has seen better days.

And the trip back was no less insane than the trip there. Brussels → Iceland → Seattle. Because apparently, when you’re already doing something absurd, you might as well add a layover near the Arctic Circle. We landed in Reykjavík with our beach-and-winter Frankenstein luggage, stepped outside into wind that felt personally offended by our existence, and my kid asked if the land was actually made of ice. Close enough, kid. Close enough.

A week later, during a conversation with his teacher, my son was asked about the most memorable thing from the trip. He didn’t say the beach in Mexico, or the train through Europe, or the wind in Iceland, or even the lost bear pillow. He said the most memorable thing was seeing his dad talk at a university. That it made him proud (I’m not going to pretend I didn’t need a moment after hearing that).

I thought about my own childhood. About the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his town. About the dusty streets and half-built houses. About how representation works in mysterious ways—how seeing someone like you doing something impossible makes it feel possible. My son doesn’t know what it’s like to not see a path. For him, this is just what dad does. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Full Circle

Twenty years ago, I was a teenager in a small Mexican town, writing code in paper notebooks and dreaming of a world I could barely imagine. Today, I stood in Brussels and spoke to a room full of open-source developers about a project I created.

The path from there to here wasn’t straight. It was messy, full of detours, broken English, lost pillows, and more coffee than any doctor would recommend. But every step—every hackerspace meetup with eight people, every local conference talk, every late night wrestling with code—was a brick in the road that led to that stage.

And yeah, I get it, talking for half an hour at a conference with hundreds of talks may seem like a small feat. One slot among many. But it wasn’t small to me. For the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his hometown, standing in front of that room was enormous.

FOSDEM wasn’t just a conference for me. It was proof that the kid from Tepic who dreamed of finding hackers in real life finally did. They were in Brussels all along, waiting for him to show up.

And he brought his kid.

Also readable in: https://maho.dev/2026/02/fosdem-2026-the-kid-who-dreamed-of-hackers-found-them-in-brussels/ by @mapache:

#fosdem #open-source #conferences #community #travel #personal-growth #europe #public-speaking

veroandi (@veroandi) · Feb 11
🔁 @blog:

FOSDEM 2026: The Kid Who Dreamed of Hackers Found Them in Brussels

Summary: A kid from a small Mexican town dreamed of finding real-life hackers. Two decades later, he flew his family to Brussels and spoke at one of the world’s largest open-source conferences. This is that story.

“We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” – David D. Clark

The Dream

When I was a young hacker—yeah, believe it or not—my dream was to find other hackers in real life and just hang out together. That’s it. That was the whole dream.

It sounds modest now, but you have to understand the context. I come from a very small town in Mexico, the kind of place where internet was a luxury, Linux was a word nobody recognized, and “Windows” was mostly what you opened to let the heat out. The idea of attending a tech conference was absurd. Attending one in English? In another country? That was pure science fiction—like telling my block friends about Dragon Ball Z spoilers I’d read online, except even less believable.

But with time, and a painfully slow DSL connection, I found my people. I stumbled into the local Linux user group—fewer than ten of us in a city of thousands—and we built something from nothing. A hackerspace. Community events. Workshops with maybe a dozen attendees if we were lucky. Eventually, I found my way to national conferences and even talked at a few of them. Each one felt like a small victory, a tiny crack in the wall between where I was and where I wanted to be.

The Shot

So when the opportunity to submit a talk to FOSDEM 2026 appeared, I just shot my shot.

I did it almost by instinct, without overthinking it. FOSDEM—the Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting—is one of the largest open-source conferences in the world. Thousands of developers, hundreds of talks, legendary project booths. It had always been a place that existed on the other side of a dream for me. But here’s the thing: I’m more financially stable now, I’ve traveled to Europe for both leisure and work, and I speak comfortable (but still heavily accented) English. I’ve made peace with my accent—it’s part of the package, take it or leave it.

So, why not? The real surprise was that I hadn’t applied before.

The Logistics of Madness

When my proposed talk was accepted, my first reaction wasn’t joy—it was panic. The kind of panic you feel when you push to main and then read the diff. The real problem was logistics.

I already had a trip to Mexico planned for personal reasons. Going to FOSDEM meant extending the family travel by a week, rerouting flights, and solving the kind of logistical puzzle that makes your brain hurt. Tepic, a small city in the mountains of western Mexico → Mexico City → London → Brussels. With a seven-year-old. And a month’s worth of luggage packed for both the scorching Mexican beach and a freezing European winter—flip-flops sharing suitcase space with thermal jackets, sunscreen next to wool scarves. And sanity (debatable).

After my wife—bless her patience—said “just go for it,” and after numerous conversations with both AI and non-AI advisors about how to make it less stressful, we committed. At the end of January, I found myself at the tiny airport of Tepic, eating the most amazing torta de pierna, beginning an absurd journey to Belgium.

We crossed through London, hopped on the Eurostar to Brussels, and somewhere between countries, we lost a pillow—a bear-shaped one my kid had shamelessly stolen from his grandma. Rest in peace, little bear pillow. You survived a Mexican grandmother’s house only to perish somewhere in the English Channel.

The Candy Store

And then, there I was. At FOSDEM. With my kid. In Brussels.

The place was electric. People from every imaginable background wandered through the halls of the Université libre de Bruxelles. I’ll be honest—there’s still a noticeable lack of diversity, especially in gender representation—but the energy was undeniable. It felt like a living, breathing monument to what open source can be.

Seeing the project booths was like being a kid in a candy store—except I literally had a kid with me in this candy store. Mozilla, Thunderbird, Let’s Encrypt, SUSE, and of course Mastodon, to name a few. I couldn’t help myself; I told my son that when I was young, one of my first dreams was to work for SUSE. He listened carefully, the way seven-year-olds do when they’re filing away information for later use (probably to embarrass me at dinner).

Keeping a seven-year-old entertained at a developer conference is its own extreme sport. Thankfully, a friend I hadn’t seen in over a decade was there—with his kid. He’s a no-gringo, a Dutchman who happens to have worked at Innox in Mexico. Our kids hit it off, and suddenly the conference had a parallel track: unsupervised children’s chaos edition.

The Talk

When the time came for my talk, I walked in, set up, and delivered something far from perfect—but unmistakably mine. I stumbled on a couple of words, my accent was thick, and I’m sure I made at least one joke that only landed for me. But that’s the style. That’s always been the style.

Just before stepping up, Elena handed me the most fabulous FOSDEM sweater in existence. People noticed. People asked where to get one. But no—only I could have it. Exclusive distribution, zero units available. (Okay fine, I was just lucky, but let me have this moment.)

If I have one regret, it’s not spending more time in other talks. It’s not that I didn’t try—I did—but balancing a seven-year-old’s attention span with a conference schedule is a negotiation no diplomacy course prepares you for. I caught fragments, glimpses, enough to know I was missing incredible stuff. But that’s the thing about FOSDEM: it’s not a one-time event. I’ll be back. And next time, I want to do more than speak—I want to listen, linger, and actually have those hallway conversations that everyone says are the best part of any conference.

The Kid and the Dream

Here’s what got me, though. The part I didn’t expect.

My kid watched me speak at FOSDEM. He didn’t fully understand the content—he’s seven, and ActivityPub isn’t exactly bedtime story material—but he saw his dad on a stage, in front of a room full of people, in another continent, talking about something he built. When the Q&A started, he wanted to raise his hand. He got shy, though, and didn’t. Later, visibly upset about his missed opportunity, he told me what he wanted to ask: “Do you play Minecraft?” In front of an auditorium full of open-source developers discussing federation protocols, my kid’s burning question was about Minecraft. I love this human being more than I can express.

He asked questions the entire trip back: “What does SUSE do?” “Will you talk at another one?” “Can I have my own desk computer?”

He saw the booths, the projects, the people. He kept posing for photos with each open-source mascot like a tiny celebrity on a press tour. His favorite was the PostgreSQL elephant, though we were genuinely concerned about its health. Based on the state of that costume, I think he might be right—PostgreSQL could use your donations, folks. That elephant has seen better days.

And the trip back was no less insane than the trip there. Brussels → Iceland → Seattle. Because apparently, when you’re already doing something absurd, you might as well add a layover near the Arctic Circle. We landed in Reykjavík with our beach-and-winter Frankenstein luggage, stepped outside into wind that felt personally offended by our existence, and my kid asked if the land was actually made of ice. Close enough, kid. Close enough.

A week later, during a conversation with his teacher, my son was asked about the most memorable thing from the trip. He didn’t say the beach in Mexico, or the train through Europe, or the wind in Iceland, or even the lost bear pillow. He said the most memorable thing was seeing his dad talk at a university. That it made him proud (I’m not going to pretend I didn’t need a moment after hearing that).

I thought about my own childhood. About the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his town. About the dusty streets and half-built houses. About how representation works in mysterious ways—how seeing someone like you doing something impossible makes it feel possible. My son doesn’t know what it’s like to not see a path. For him, this is just what dad does. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Full Circle

Twenty years ago, I was a teenager in a small Mexican town, writing code in paper notebooks and dreaming of a world I could barely imagine. Today, I stood in Brussels and spoke to a room full of open-source developers about a project I created.

The path from there to here wasn’t straight. It was messy, full of detours, broken English, lost pillows, and more coffee than any doctor would recommend. But every step—every hackerspace meetup with eight people, every local conference talk, every late night wrestling with code—was a brick in the road that led to that stage.

And yeah, I get it, talking for half an hour at a conference with hundreds of talks may seem like a small feat. One slot among many. But it wasn’t small to me. For the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his hometown, standing in front of that room was enormous.

FOSDEM wasn’t just a conference for me. It was proof that the kid from Tepic who dreamed of finding hackers in real life finally did. They were in Brussels all along, waiting for him to show up.

And he brought his kid.

Also readable in: https://maho.dev/2026/02/fosdem-2026-the-kid-who-dreamed-of-hackers-found-them-in-brussels/ by @mapache:

#fosdem #open-source #conferences #community #travel #personal-growth #europe #public-speaking

Lars Chr. (@jazz) · Feb 11
🔁 @blog:

FOSDEM 2026: The Kid Who Dreamed of Hackers Found Them in Brussels

Summary: A kid from a small Mexican town dreamed of finding real-life hackers. Two decades later, he flew his family to Brussels and spoke at one of the world’s largest open-source conferences. This is that story.

“We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” – David D. Clark

The Dream

When I was a young hacker—yeah, believe it or not—my dream was to find other hackers in real life and just hang out together. That’s it. That was the whole dream.

It sounds modest now, but you have to understand the context. I come from a very small town in Mexico, the kind of place where internet was a luxury, Linux was a word nobody recognized, and “Windows” was mostly what you opened to let the heat out. The idea of attending a tech conference was absurd. Attending one in English? In another country? That was pure science fiction—like telling my block friends about Dragon Ball Z spoilers I’d read online, except even less believable.

But with time, and a painfully slow DSL connection, I found my people. I stumbled into the local Linux user group—fewer than ten of us in a city of thousands—and we built something from nothing. A hackerspace. Community events. Workshops with maybe a dozen attendees if we were lucky. Eventually, I found my way to national conferences and even talked at a few of them. Each one felt like a small victory, a tiny crack in the wall between where I was and where I wanted to be.

The Shot

So when the opportunity to submit a talk to FOSDEM 2026 appeared, I just shot my shot.

I did it almost by instinct, without overthinking it. FOSDEM—the Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting—is one of the largest open-source conferences in the world. Thousands of developers, hundreds of talks, legendary project booths. It had always been a place that existed on the other side of a dream for me. But here’s the thing: I’m more financially stable now, I’ve traveled to Europe for both leisure and work, and I speak comfortable (but still heavily accented) English. I’ve made peace with my accent—it’s part of the package, take it or leave it.

So, why not? The real surprise was that I hadn’t applied before.

The Logistics of Madness

When my proposed talk was accepted, my first reaction wasn’t joy—it was panic. The kind of panic you feel when you push to main and then read the diff. The real problem was logistics.

I already had a trip to Mexico planned for personal reasons. Going to FOSDEM meant extending the family travel by a week, rerouting flights, and solving the kind of logistical puzzle that makes your brain hurt. Tepic, a small city in the mountains of western Mexico → Mexico City → London → Brussels. With a seven-year-old. And a month’s worth of luggage packed for both the scorching Mexican beach and a freezing European winter—flip-flops sharing suitcase space with thermal jackets, sunscreen next to wool scarves. And sanity (debatable).

After my wife—bless her patience—said “just go for it,” and after numerous conversations with both AI and non-AI advisors about how to make it less stressful, we committed. At the end of January, I found myself at the tiny airport of Tepic, eating the most amazing torta de pierna, beginning an absurd journey to Belgium.

We crossed through London, hopped on the Eurostar to Brussels, and somewhere between countries, we lost a pillow—a bear-shaped one my kid had shamelessly stolen from his grandma. Rest in peace, little bear pillow. You survived a Mexican grandmother’s house only to perish somewhere in the English Channel.

The Candy Store

And then, there I was. At FOSDEM. With my kid. In Brussels.

The place was electric. People from every imaginable background wandered through the halls of the Université libre de Bruxelles. I’ll be honest—there’s still a noticeable lack of diversity, especially in gender representation—but the energy was undeniable. It felt like a living, breathing monument to what open source can be.

Seeing the project booths was like being a kid in a candy store—except I literally had a kid with me in this candy store. Mozilla, Thunderbird, Let’s Encrypt, SUSE, and of course Mastodon, to name a few. I couldn’t help myself; I told my son that when I was young, one of my first dreams was to work for SUSE. He listened carefully, the way seven-year-olds do when they’re filing away information for later use (probably to embarrass me at dinner).

Keeping a seven-year-old entertained at a developer conference is its own extreme sport. Thankfully, a friend I hadn’t seen in over a decade was there—with his kid. He’s a no-gringo, a Dutchman who happens to have worked at Innox in Mexico. Our kids hit it off, and suddenly the conference had a parallel track: unsupervised children’s chaos edition.

The Talk

When the time came for my talk, I walked in, set up, and delivered something far from perfect—but unmistakably mine. I stumbled on a couple of words, my accent was thick, and I’m sure I made at least one joke that only landed for me. But that’s the style. That’s always been the style.

Just before stepping up, Elena handed me the most fabulous FOSDEM sweater in existence. People noticed. People asked where to get one. But no—only I could have it. Exclusive distribution, zero units available. (Okay fine, I was just lucky, but let me have this moment.)

If I have one regret, it’s not spending more time in other talks. It’s not that I didn’t try—I did—but balancing a seven-year-old’s attention span with a conference schedule is a negotiation no diplomacy course prepares you for. I caught fragments, glimpses, enough to know I was missing incredible stuff. But that’s the thing about FOSDEM: it’s not a one-time event. I’ll be back. And next time, I want to do more than speak—I want to listen, linger, and actually have those hallway conversations that everyone says are the best part of any conference.

The Kid and the Dream

Here’s what got me, though. The part I didn’t expect.

My kid watched me speak at FOSDEM. He didn’t fully understand the content—he’s seven, and ActivityPub isn’t exactly bedtime story material—but he saw his dad on a stage, in front of a room full of people, in another continent, talking about something he built. When the Q&A started, he wanted to raise his hand. He got shy, though, and didn’t. Later, visibly upset about his missed opportunity, he told me what he wanted to ask: “Do you play Minecraft?” In front of an auditorium full of open-source developers discussing federation protocols, my kid’s burning question was about Minecraft. I love this human being more than I can express.

He asked questions the entire trip back: “What does SUSE do?” “Will you talk at another one?” “Can I have my own desk computer?”

He saw the booths, the projects, the people. He kept posing for photos with each open-source mascot like a tiny celebrity on a press tour. His favorite was the PostgreSQL elephant, though we were genuinely concerned about its health. Based on the state of that costume, I think he might be right—PostgreSQL could use your donations, folks. That elephant has seen better days.

And the trip back was no less insane than the trip there. Brussels → Iceland → Seattle. Because apparently, when you’re already doing something absurd, you might as well add a layover near the Arctic Circle. We landed in Reykjavík with our beach-and-winter Frankenstein luggage, stepped outside into wind that felt personally offended by our existence, and my kid asked if the land was actually made of ice. Close enough, kid. Close enough.

A week later, during a conversation with his teacher, my son was asked about the most memorable thing from the trip. He didn’t say the beach in Mexico, or the train through Europe, or the wind in Iceland, or even the lost bear pillow. He said the most memorable thing was seeing his dad talk at a university. That it made him proud (I’m not going to pretend I didn’t need a moment after hearing that).

I thought about my own childhood. About the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his town. About the dusty streets and half-built houses. About how representation works in mysterious ways—how seeing someone like you doing something impossible makes it feel possible. My son doesn’t know what it’s like to not see a path. For him, this is just what dad does. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Full Circle

Twenty years ago, I was a teenager in a small Mexican town, writing code in paper notebooks and dreaming of a world I could barely imagine. Today, I stood in Brussels and spoke to a room full of open-source developers about a project I created.

The path from there to here wasn’t straight. It was messy, full of detours, broken English, lost pillows, and more coffee than any doctor would recommend. But every step—every hackerspace meetup with eight people, every local conference talk, every late night wrestling with code—was a brick in the road that led to that stage.

And yeah, I get it, talking for half an hour at a conference with hundreds of talks may seem like a small feat. One slot among many. But it wasn’t small to me. For the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his hometown, standing in front of that room was enormous.

FOSDEM wasn’t just a conference for me. It was proof that the kid from Tepic who dreamed of finding hackers in real life finally did. They were in Brussels all along, waiting for him to show up.

And he brought his kid.

Also readable in: https://maho.dev/2026/02/fosdem-2026-the-kid-who-dreamed-of-hackers-found-them-in-brussels/ by @mapache:

#fosdem #open-source #conferences #community #travel #personal-growth #europe #public-speaking

Nomdeb (@nomdeb) · Feb 11
🔁 @blog:

FOSDEM 2026: The Kid Who Dreamed of Hackers Found Them in Brussels

Summary: A kid from a small Mexican town dreamed of finding real-life hackers. Two decades later, he flew his family to Brussels and spoke at one of the world’s largest open-source conferences. This is that story.

“We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” – David D. Clark

The Dream

When I was a young hacker—yeah, believe it or not—my dream was to find other hackers in real life and just hang out together. That’s it. That was the whole dream.

It sounds modest now, but you have to understand the context. I come from a very small town in Mexico, the kind of place where internet was a luxury, Linux was a word nobody recognized, and “Windows” was mostly what you opened to let the heat out. The idea of attending a tech conference was absurd. Attending one in English? In another country? That was pure science fiction—like telling my block friends about Dragon Ball Z spoilers I’d read online, except even less believable.

But with time, and a painfully slow DSL connection, I found my people. I stumbled into the local Linux user group—fewer than ten of us in a city of thousands—and we built something from nothing. A hackerspace. Community events. Workshops with maybe a dozen attendees if we were lucky. Eventually, I found my way to national conferences and even talked at a few of them. Each one felt like a small victory, a tiny crack in the wall between where I was and where I wanted to be.

The Shot

So when the opportunity to submit a talk to FOSDEM 2026 appeared, I just shot my shot.

I did it almost by instinct, without overthinking it. FOSDEM—the Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting—is one of the largest open-source conferences in the world. Thousands of developers, hundreds of talks, legendary project booths. It had always been a place that existed on the other side of a dream for me. But here’s the thing: I’m more financially stable now, I’ve traveled to Europe for both leisure and work, and I speak comfortable (but still heavily accented) English. I’ve made peace with my accent—it’s part of the package, take it or leave it.

So, why not? The real surprise was that I hadn’t applied before.

The Logistics of Madness

When my proposed talk was accepted, my first reaction wasn’t joy—it was panic. The kind of panic you feel when you push to main and then read the diff. The real problem was logistics.

I already had a trip to Mexico planned for personal reasons. Going to FOSDEM meant extending the family travel by a week, rerouting flights, and solving the kind of logistical puzzle that makes your brain hurt. Tepic, a small city in the mountains of western Mexico → Mexico City → London → Brussels. With a seven-year-old. And a month’s worth of luggage packed for both the scorching Mexican beach and a freezing European winter—flip-flops sharing suitcase space with thermal jackets, sunscreen next to wool scarves. And sanity (debatable).

After my wife—bless her patience—said “just go for it,” and after numerous conversations with both AI and non-AI advisors about how to make it less stressful, we committed. At the end of January, I found myself at the tiny airport of Tepic, eating the most amazing torta de pierna, beginning an absurd journey to Belgium.

We crossed through London, hopped on the Eurostar to Brussels, and somewhere between countries, we lost a pillow—a bear-shaped one my kid had shamelessly stolen from his grandma. Rest in peace, little bear pillow. You survived a Mexican grandmother’s house only to perish somewhere in the English Channel.

The Candy Store

And then, there I was. At FOSDEM. With my kid. In Brussels.

The place was electric. People from every imaginable background wandered through the halls of the Université libre de Bruxelles. I’ll be honest—there’s still a noticeable lack of diversity, especially in gender representation—but the energy was undeniable. It felt like a living, breathing monument to what open source can be.

Seeing the project booths was like being a kid in a candy store—except I literally had a kid with me in this candy store. Mozilla, Thunderbird, Let’s Encrypt, SUSE, and of course Mastodon, to name a few. I couldn’t help myself; I told my son that when I was young, one of my first dreams was to work for SUSE. He listened carefully, the way seven-year-olds do when they’re filing away information for later use (probably to embarrass me at dinner).

Keeping a seven-year-old entertained at a developer conference is its own extreme sport. Thankfully, a friend I hadn’t seen in over a decade was there—with his kid. He’s a no-gringo, a Dutchman who happens to have worked at Innox in Mexico. Our kids hit it off, and suddenly the conference had a parallel track: unsupervised children’s chaos edition.

The Talk

When the time came for my talk, I walked in, set up, and delivered something far from perfect—but unmistakably mine. I stumbled on a couple of words, my accent was thick, and I’m sure I made at least one joke that only landed for me. But that’s the style. That’s always been the style.

Just before stepping up, Elena handed me the most fabulous FOSDEM sweater in existence. People noticed. People asked where to get one. But no—only I could have it. Exclusive distribution, zero units available. (Okay fine, I was just lucky, but let me have this moment.)

If I have one regret, it’s not spending more time in other talks. It’s not that I didn’t try—I did—but balancing a seven-year-old’s attention span with a conference schedule is a negotiation no diplomacy course prepares you for. I caught fragments, glimpses, enough to know I was missing incredible stuff. But that’s the thing about FOSDEM: it’s not a one-time event. I’ll be back. And next time, I want to do more than speak—I want to listen, linger, and actually have those hallway conversations that everyone says are the best part of any conference.

The Kid and the Dream

Here’s what got me, though. The part I didn’t expect.

My kid watched me speak at FOSDEM. He didn’t fully understand the content—he’s seven, and ActivityPub isn’t exactly bedtime story material—but he saw his dad on a stage, in front of a room full of people, in another continent, talking about something he built. When the Q&A started, he wanted to raise his hand. He got shy, though, and didn’t. Later, visibly upset about his missed opportunity, he told me what he wanted to ask: “Do you play Minecraft?” In front of an auditorium full of open-source developers discussing federation protocols, my kid’s burning question was about Minecraft. I love this human being more than I can express.

He asked questions the entire trip back: “What does SUSE do?” “Will you talk at another one?” “Can I have my own desk computer?”

He saw the booths, the projects, the people. He kept posing for photos with each open-source mascot like a tiny celebrity on a press tour. His favorite was the PostgreSQL elephant, though we were genuinely concerned about its health. Based on the state of that costume, I think he might be right—PostgreSQL could use your donations, folks. That elephant has seen better days.

And the trip back was no less insane than the trip there. Brussels → Iceland → Seattle. Because apparently, when you’re already doing something absurd, you might as well add a layover near the Arctic Circle. We landed in Reykjavík with our beach-and-winter Frankenstein luggage, stepped outside into wind that felt personally offended by our existence, and my kid asked if the land was actually made of ice. Close enough, kid. Close enough.

A week later, during a conversation with his teacher, my son was asked about the most memorable thing from the trip. He didn’t say the beach in Mexico, or the train through Europe, or the wind in Iceland, or even the lost bear pillow. He said the most memorable thing was seeing his dad talk at a university. That it made him proud (I’m not going to pretend I didn’t need a moment after hearing that).

I thought about my own childhood. About the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his town. About the dusty streets and half-built houses. About how representation works in mysterious ways—how seeing someone like you doing something impossible makes it feel possible. My son doesn’t know what it’s like to not see a path. For him, this is just what dad does. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Full Circle

Twenty years ago, I was a teenager in a small Mexican town, writing code in paper notebooks and dreaming of a world I could barely imagine. Today, I stood in Brussels and spoke to a room full of open-source developers about a project I created.

The path from there to here wasn’t straight. It was messy, full of detours, broken English, lost pillows, and more coffee than any doctor would recommend. But every step—every hackerspace meetup with eight people, every local conference talk, every late night wrestling with code—was a brick in the road that led to that stage.

And yeah, I get it, talking for half an hour at a conference with hundreds of talks may seem like a small feat. One slot among many. But it wasn’t small to me. For the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his hometown, standing in front of that room was enormous.

FOSDEM wasn’t just a conference for me. It was proof that the kid from Tepic who dreamed of finding hackers in real life finally did. They were in Brussels all along, waiting for him to show up.

And he brought his kid.

Also readable in: https://maho.dev/2026/02/fosdem-2026-the-kid-who-dreamed-of-hackers-found-them-in-brussels/ by @mapache:

#fosdem #open-source #conferences #community #travel #personal-growth #europe #public-speaking

Maho Pacheco - Blog (@blog) · Feb 10

FOSDEM 2026: The Kid Who Dreamed of Hackers Found Them in Brussels

Summary: A kid from a small Mexican town dreamed of finding real-life hackers. Two decades later, he flew his family to Brussels and spoke at one of the world’s largest open-source conferences. This is that story.

“We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” – David D. Clark

The Dream

When I was a young hacker—yeah, believe it or not—my dream was to find other hackers in real life and just hang out together. That’s it. That was the whole dream.

It sounds modest now, but you have to understand the context. I come from a very small town in Mexico, the kind of place where internet was a luxury, Linux was a word nobody recognized, and “Windows” was mostly what you opened to let the heat out. The idea of attending a tech conference was absurd. Attending one in English? In another country? That was pure science fiction—like telling my block friends about Dragon Ball Z spoilers I’d read online, except even less believable.

But with time, and a painfully slow DSL connection, I found my people. I stumbled into the local Linux user group—fewer than ten of us in a city of thousands—and we built something from nothing. A hackerspace. Community events. Workshops with maybe a dozen attendees if we were lucky. Eventually, I found my way to national conferences and even talked at a few of them. Each one felt like a small victory, a tiny crack in the wall between where I was and where I wanted to be.

The Shot

So when the opportunity to submit a talk to FOSDEM 2026 appeared, I just shot my shot.

I did it almost by instinct, without overthinking it. FOSDEM—the Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting—is one of the largest open-source conferences in the world. Thousands of developers, hundreds of talks, legendary project booths. It had always been a place that existed on the other side of a dream for me. But here’s the thing: I’m more financially stable now, I’ve traveled to Europe for both leisure and work, and I speak comfortable (but still heavily accented) English. I’ve made peace with my accent—it’s part of the package, take it or leave it.

So, why not? The real surprise was that I hadn’t applied before.

The Logistics of Madness

When my proposed talk was accepted, my first reaction wasn’t joy—it was panic. The kind of panic you feel when you push to main and then read the diff. The real problem was logistics.

I already had a trip to Mexico planned for personal reasons. Going to FOSDEM meant extending the family travel by a week, rerouting flights, and solving the kind of logistical puzzle that makes your brain hurt. Tepic, a small city in the mountains of western Mexico → Mexico City → London → Brussels. With a seven-year-old. And a month’s worth of luggage packed for both the scorching Mexican beach and a freezing European winter—flip-flops sharing suitcase space with thermal jackets, sunscreen next to wool scarves. And sanity (debatable).

After my wife—bless her patience—said “just go for it,” and after numerous conversations with both AI and non-AI advisors about how to make it less stressful, we committed. At the end of January, I found myself at the tiny airport of Tepic, eating the most amazing torta de pierna, beginning an absurd journey to Belgium.

We crossed through London, hopped on the Eurostar to Brussels, and somewhere between countries, we lost a pillow—a bear-shaped one my kid had shamelessly stolen from his grandma. Rest in peace, little bear pillow. You survived a Mexican grandmother’s house only to perish somewhere in the English Channel.

The Candy Store

And then, there I was. At FOSDEM. With my kid. In Brussels.

The place was electric. People from every imaginable background wandered through the halls of the Université libre de Bruxelles. I’ll be honest—there’s still a noticeable lack of diversity, especially in gender representation—but the energy was undeniable. It felt like a living, breathing monument to what open source can be.

Seeing the project booths was like being a kid in a candy store—except I literally had a kid with me in this candy store. Mozilla, Thunderbird, Let’s Encrypt, SUSE, and of course Mastodon, to name a few. I couldn’t help myself; I told my son that when I was young, one of my first dreams was to work for SUSE. He listened carefully, the way seven-year-olds do when they’re filing away information for later use (probably to embarrass me at dinner).

Keeping a seven-year-old entertained at a developer conference is its own extreme sport. Thankfully, a friend I hadn’t seen in over a decade was there—with his kid. He’s a no-gringo, a Dutchman who happens to have worked at Innox in Mexico. Our kids hit it off, and suddenly the conference had a parallel track: unsupervised children’s chaos edition.

The Talk

When the time came for my talk, I walked in, set up, and delivered something far from perfect—but unmistakably mine. I stumbled on a couple of words, my accent was thick, and I’m sure I made at least one joke that only landed for me. But that’s the style. That’s always been the style.

Just before stepping up, Elena handed me the most fabulous FOSDEM sweater in existence. People noticed. People asked where to get one. But no—only I could have it. Exclusive distribution, zero units available. (Okay fine, I was just lucky, but let me have this moment.)

If I have one regret, it’s not spending more time in other talks. It’s not that I didn’t try—I did—but balancing a seven-year-old’s attention span with a conference schedule is a negotiation no diplomacy course prepares you for. I caught fragments, glimpses, enough to know I was missing incredible stuff. But that’s the thing about FOSDEM: it’s not a one-time event. I’ll be back. And next time, I want to do more than speak—I want to listen, linger, and actually have those hallway conversations that everyone says are the best part of any conference.

The Kid and the Dream

Here’s what got me, though. The part I didn’t expect.

My kid watched me speak at FOSDEM. He didn’t fully understand the content—he’s seven, and ActivityPub isn’t exactly bedtime story material—but he saw his dad on a stage, in front of a room full of people, in another continent, talking about something he built. When the Q&A started, he wanted to raise his hand. He got shy, though, and didn’t. Later, visibly upset about his missed opportunity, he told me what he wanted to ask: “Do you play Minecraft?” In front of an auditorium full of open-source developers discussing federation protocols, my kid’s burning question was about Minecraft. I love this human being more than I can express.

He asked questions the entire trip back: “What does SUSE do?” “Will you talk at another one?” “Can I have my own desk computer?”

He saw the booths, the projects, the people. He kept posing for photos with each open-source mascot like a tiny celebrity on a press tour. His favorite was the PostgreSQL elephant, though we were genuinely concerned about its health. Based on the state of that costume, I think he might be right—PostgreSQL could use your donations, folks. That elephant has seen better days.

And the trip back was no less insane than the trip there. Brussels → Iceland → Seattle. Because apparently, when you’re already doing something absurd, you might as well add a layover near the Arctic Circle. We landed in Reykjavík with our beach-and-winter Frankenstein luggage, stepped outside into wind that felt personally offended by our existence, and my kid asked if the land was actually made of ice. Close enough, kid. Close enough.

A week later, during a conversation with his teacher, my son was asked about the most memorable thing from the trip. He didn’t say the beach in Mexico, or the train through Europe, or the wind in Iceland, or even the lost bear pillow. He said the most memorable thing was seeing his dad talk at a university. That it made him proud (I’m not going to pretend I didn’t need a moment after hearing that).

I thought about my own childhood. About the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his town. About the dusty streets and half-built houses. About how representation works in mysterious ways—how seeing someone like you doing something impossible makes it feel possible. My son doesn’t know what it’s like to not see a path. For him, this is just what dad does. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Full Circle

Twenty years ago, I was a teenager in a small Mexican town, writing code in paper notebooks and dreaming of a world I could barely imagine. Today, I stood in Brussels and spoke to a room full of open-source developers about a project I created.

The path from there to here wasn’t straight. It was messy, full of detours, broken English, lost pillows, and more coffee than any doctor would recommend. But every step—every hackerspace meetup with eight people, every local conference talk, every late night wrestling with code—was a brick in the road that led to that stage.

And yeah, I get it, talking for half an hour at a conference with hundreds of talks may seem like a small feat. One slot among many. But it wasn’t small to me. For the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his hometown, standing in front of that room was enormous.

FOSDEM wasn’t just a conference for me. It was proof that the kid from Tepic who dreamed of finding hackers in real life finally did. They were in Brussels all along, waiting for him to show up.

And he brought his kid.

Also readable in: https://maho.dev/2026/02/fosdem-2026-the-kid-who-dreamed-of-hackers-found-them-in-brussels/ by @mapache:

#fosdem #open-source #conferences #community #travel #personal-growth #europe #public-speaking

Box464 (@box464) · Feb 12
🔁 @blog:

FOSDEM 2026: The Kid Who Dreamed of Hackers Found Them in Brussels

Summary: A kid from a small Mexican town dreamed of finding real-life hackers. Two decades later, he flew his family to Brussels and spoke at one of the world’s largest open-source conferences. This is that story.

“We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” – David D. Clark

The Dream

When I was a young hacker—yeah, believe it or not—my dream was to find other hackers in real life and just hang out together. That’s it. That was the whole dream.

It sounds modest now, but you have to understand the context. I come from a very small town in Mexico, the kind of place where internet was a luxury, Linux was a word nobody recognized, and “Windows” was mostly what you opened to let the heat out. The idea of attending a tech conference was absurd. Attending one in English? In another country? That was pure science fiction—like telling my block friends about Dragon Ball Z spoilers I’d read online, except even less believable.

But with time, and a painfully slow DSL connection, I found my people. I stumbled into the local Linux user group—fewer than ten of us in a city of thousands—and we built something from nothing. A hackerspace. Community events. Workshops with maybe a dozen attendees if we were lucky. Eventually, I found my way to national conferences and even talked at a few of them. Each one felt like a small victory, a tiny crack in the wall between where I was and where I wanted to be.

The Shot

So when the opportunity to submit a talk to FOSDEM 2026 appeared, I just shot my shot.

I did it almost by instinct, without overthinking it. FOSDEM—the Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting—is one of the largest open-source conferences in the world. Thousands of developers, hundreds of talks, legendary project booths. It had always been a place that existed on the other side of a dream for me. But here’s the thing: I’m more financially stable now, I’ve traveled to Europe for both leisure and work, and I speak comfortable (but still heavily accented) English. I’ve made peace with my accent—it’s part of the package, take it or leave it.

So, why not? The real surprise was that I hadn’t applied before.

The Logistics of Madness

When my proposed talk was accepted, my first reaction wasn’t joy—it was panic. The kind of panic you feel when you push to main and then read the diff. The real problem was logistics.

I already had a trip to Mexico planned for personal reasons. Going to FOSDEM meant extending the family travel by a week, rerouting flights, and solving the kind of logistical puzzle that makes your brain hurt. Tepic, a small city in the mountains of western Mexico → Mexico City → London → Brussels. With a seven-year-old. And a month’s worth of luggage packed for both the scorching Mexican beach and a freezing European winter—flip-flops sharing suitcase space with thermal jackets, sunscreen next to wool scarves. And sanity (debatable).

After my wife—bless her patience—said “just go for it,” and after numerous conversations with both AI and non-AI advisors about how to make it less stressful, we committed. At the end of January, I found myself at the tiny airport of Tepic, eating the most amazing torta de pierna, beginning an absurd journey to Belgium.

We crossed through London, hopped on the Eurostar to Brussels, and somewhere between countries, we lost a pillow—a bear-shaped one my kid had shamelessly stolen from his grandma. Rest in peace, little bear pillow. You survived a Mexican grandmother’s house only to perish somewhere in the English Channel.

The Candy Store

And then, there I was. At FOSDEM. With my kid. In Brussels.

The place was electric. People from every imaginable background wandered through the halls of the Université libre de Bruxelles. I’ll be honest—there’s still a noticeable lack of diversity, especially in gender representation—but the energy was undeniable. It felt like a living, breathing monument to what open source can be.

Seeing the project booths was like being a kid in a candy store—except I literally had a kid with me in this candy store. Mozilla, Thunderbird, Let’s Encrypt, SUSE, and of course Mastodon, to name a few. I couldn’t help myself; I told my son that when I was young, one of my first dreams was to work for SUSE. He listened carefully, the way seven-year-olds do when they’re filing away information for later use (probably to embarrass me at dinner).

Keeping a seven-year-old entertained at a developer conference is its own extreme sport. Thankfully, a friend I hadn’t seen in over a decade was there—with his kid. He’s a no-gringo, a Dutchman who happens to have worked at Innox in Mexico. Our kids hit it off, and suddenly the conference had a parallel track: unsupervised children’s chaos edition.

The Talk

When the time came for my talk, I walked in, set up, and delivered something far from perfect—but unmistakably mine. I stumbled on a couple of words, my accent was thick, and I’m sure I made at least one joke that only landed for me. But that’s the style. That’s always been the style.

Just before stepping up, Elena handed me the most fabulous FOSDEM sweater in existence. People noticed. People asked where to get one. But no—only I could have it. Exclusive distribution, zero units available. (Okay fine, I was just lucky, but let me have this moment.)

If I have one regret, it’s not spending more time in other talks. It’s not that I didn’t try—I did—but balancing a seven-year-old’s attention span with a conference schedule is a negotiation no diplomacy course prepares you for. I caught fragments, glimpses, enough to know I was missing incredible stuff. But that’s the thing about FOSDEM: it’s not a one-time event. I’ll be back. And next time, I want to do more than speak—I want to listen, linger, and actually have those hallway conversations that everyone says are the best part of any conference.

The Kid and the Dream

Here’s what got me, though. The part I didn’t expect.

My kid watched me speak at FOSDEM. He didn’t fully understand the content—he’s seven, and ActivityPub isn’t exactly bedtime story material—but he saw his dad on a stage, in front of a room full of people, in another continent, talking about something he built. When the Q&A started, he wanted to raise his hand. He got shy, though, and didn’t. Later, visibly upset about his missed opportunity, he told me what he wanted to ask: “Do you play Minecraft?” In front of an auditorium full of open-source developers discussing federation protocols, my kid’s burning question was about Minecraft. I love this human being more than I can express.

He asked questions the entire trip back: “What does SUSE do?” “Will you talk at another one?” “Can I have my own desk computer?”

He saw the booths, the projects, the people. He kept posing for photos with each open-source mascot like a tiny celebrity on a press tour. His favorite was the PostgreSQL elephant, though we were genuinely concerned about its health. Based on the state of that costume, I think he might be right—PostgreSQL could use your donations, folks. That elephant has seen better days.

And the trip back was no less insane than the trip there. Brussels → Iceland → Seattle. Because apparently, when you’re already doing something absurd, you might as well add a layover near the Arctic Circle. We landed in Reykjavík with our beach-and-winter Frankenstein luggage, stepped outside into wind that felt personally offended by our existence, and my kid asked if the land was actually made of ice. Close enough, kid. Close enough.

A week later, during a conversation with his teacher, my son was asked about the most memorable thing from the trip. He didn’t say the beach in Mexico, or the train through Europe, or the wind in Iceland, or even the lost bear pillow. He said the most memorable thing was seeing his dad talk at a university. That it made him proud (I’m not going to pretend I didn’t need a moment after hearing that).

I thought about my own childhood. About the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his town. About the dusty streets and half-built houses. About how representation works in mysterious ways—how seeing someone like you doing something impossible makes it feel possible. My son doesn’t know what it’s like to not see a path. For him, this is just what dad does. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Full Circle

Twenty years ago, I was a teenager in a small Mexican town, writing code in paper notebooks and dreaming of a world I could barely imagine. Today, I stood in Brussels and spoke to a room full of open-source developers about a project I created.

The path from there to here wasn’t straight. It was messy, full of detours, broken English, lost pillows, and more coffee than any doctor would recommend. But every step—every hackerspace meetup with eight people, every local conference talk, every late night wrestling with code—was a brick in the road that led to that stage.

And yeah, I get it, talking for half an hour at a conference with hundreds of talks may seem like a small feat. One slot among many. But it wasn’t small to me. For the kid who couldn’t find a single hacker in his hometown, standing in front of that room was enormous.

FOSDEM wasn’t just a conference for me. It was proof that the kid from Tepic who dreamed of finding hackers in real life finally did. They were in Brussels all along, waiting for him to show up.

And he brought his kid.

Also readable in: https://maho.dev/2026/02/fosdem-2026-the-kid-who-dreamed-of-hackers-found-them-in-brussels/ by @mapache:

#fosdem #open-source #conferences #community #travel #personal-growth #europe #public-speaking

NetNewsWire - NetNewsWire Turns 23

netnewswire.blog · Feb 11

NetNewsWire 1.0 for Mac shipped 23 years ago today! 🎸🎩🕶️ Here’s where things are on this particular February 11: we just shipped 7.0 for Mac and iOS, and now we’re working on NetNewsWire 7.0.1. After a big release, no matter how careful we are, there are often some regressions to f...

Shared by @twitnews and 23 others.

The first signs of burnout are coming from the people who embrace AI the most | TechCrunch

techcrunch.com · Feb 10

Because employees could do more, work began bleeding into lunch breaks and late evenings. The employees' to-do lists expanded to fill every hour that AI freed up, and then kept going.

Shared by @cote and 20 others.
Michael Halila 🏳️‍⚧️ (@mhalila) · Feb 11
🔁 @nyrath:

The most seductive narrative in American work culture right now isn’t that AI will take your job. It’s that AI will save you from it.

That’s the version the industry has spent the last three years selling to millions of nervous people who are eager to buy it.

But a new study finds there isn’t a productivity revolution. It finds companies are at risk of becoming burnout machines.

techcrunch.com/2026/02/09/the-

Chip Butty (@otfrom) · Feb 11
🔁 @nyrath:

The most seductive narrative in American work culture right now isn’t that AI will take your job. It’s that AI will save you from it.

That’s the version the industry has spent the last three years selling to millions of nervous people who are eager to buy it.

But a new study finds there isn’t a productivity revolution. It finds companies are at risk of becoming burnout machines.

techcrunch.com/2026/02/09/the-

Thanasis Kinias (@tkinias) · Feb 11
🔁 @nyrath:

The most seductive narrative in American work culture right now isn’t that AI will take your job. It’s that AI will save you from it.

That’s the version the industry has spent the last three years selling to millions of nervous people who are eager to buy it.

But a new study finds there isn’t a productivity revolution. It finds companies are at risk of becoming burnout machines.

techcrunch.com/2026/02/09/the-

Marianne (@noodlemaz) · Feb 11
🔁 @nyrath:

The most seductive narrative in American work culture right now isn’t that AI will take your job. It’s that AI will save you from it.

That’s the version the industry has spent the last three years selling to millions of nervous people who are eager to buy it.

But a new study finds there isn’t a productivity revolution. It finds companies are at risk of becoming burnout machines.

techcrunch.com/2026/02/09/the-

Worth reading

Something Big Is Happening

shumer.dev · Feb 11

A personal note for non-tech friends and family on what AI is starting to change.

Shared by @graceghughes and 12 others.
TWiT News Feed (@twitnews) · Feb 11

Something Big Is Happening - shumer.dev/something-big-is-ha

A personal note for non-tech friends and family on what AI is starting to change.

#im

Mike Fraser (@mike) · Feb 12
🔁 @Cliff538:

"I'll tell the AI: "I want to build this app. Here's what it should do, here's roughly what it should look like. Figure out the user flow, the design, all of it." And it does. It writes tens of thousands of lines of code. Then, and this is the part that would have been unthinkable a year ago, it opens the app itself. It clicks through the buttons. It tests the features. If it doesn't like how something looks or feels, it goes back and changes it, on its own.”

shumer.dev/something-big-is-ha (2/2)

v0.21.0-rc1 Sacrilegious Sloth - superseriousbusiness/gotosocial

codeberg.org · Feb 11

Here's version 0.21.0-rc1 of GoToSocial! This is the first release candidate for v0.21.0 aka Sacrilegious Sloth We're really proud of this one, the sloth is starting to feel really useable and good! Please read the migration notes carefully for instructions on how to upgrade to this version...

Shared by @jay and 24 others.
GoToSocial (@gotosocial) · Feb 11
🔁 @gotosocial:

Hello nerds!

We've just created the first release candidate version of #GoToSocial v0.21.0 Sacrilegious Sloth!

https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/releases/tag/v0.21.0-rc1

Adventurous admins can try updating to this release candidate, and let us know if there's any new and interesting bugs to be found.

We're really proud of this one, the sloth is starting to feel really useable and good!

Please read the migration notes carefully for instructions on how to upgrade to this version. Bear in mind there are a few big-ish database migrations in this one, which may take somewhere between a minute or 20+ minutes to run (depending on your hardware). Be patient, backup your database first, and don't interrupt the migrations.

Release highlights

  • Domain Limits: You can now create domain limits in the admin section of the settings panel, in order to do things like limit + mute all accounts on a domain (except ones you follow), add content warnings to posts from limited domains, mark media as sensitive (or don't download it at all).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/admin/domain_limits/
  • Indexable support: You can now mark your account as "indexable" by full-text search, in the settings panel. This will federate your preference to other servers, so that servers with full-text search functionality can include your posts in search results.
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#mark-accounts-posts-as-full-text-indexable
  • Show reblogs on the web view of your profile (opt-in): A new setting in the settings panel allows you to opt-in to showing posts that you've boosted/reblogged on the web view of your profile. The default setting retains existing behavior (don't show boosts on the web view).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#include-boosts-on-the-web-view-of-your-profile
  • Better caching behavior for timelines. The number of database calls when browsing local + public timelines and lists should be significantly reduced.
  • Store + show reason for undownloaded media: When media fails to be downloaded from a remote instance, the reason why will be shown next to the post.
  • Include canQuote property on outgoing posts: Currently, this is always set to author-only, but it paves the way (and signals intent) for GtS to implement quote toots at some point.
  • Much improved OpenGraph previews: Whitespace is now preserved in OpenGraph previews, and media + formatting was rejigged, so linking to GoToSocial posts should result in much better OpenGraph-generated preview cards.
  • Expand/collapse all spoilers button on web view of threads: when viewing threads in the web view, you can now expand/collapse all spoilers at the click of a button.
  • S3 Object Info Caching: you can now configure cache.s3-object-info in order to mitigate expensive S3 info calls when doing nightly media cleanup.
  • Preserve significant whitespaces in incoming + outgoing posts: previously we were squashing a lot of whitespace together, which meant that, for example, indentation could get lost on posts federated into a GoToSocial instance. This is now fixed, so you can post poetry and whatnot without worrying about it looking like hot crap.
  • Millions of fucking bugfixes: we squashed a lot of them!
Aslak Raanes (@aslakr) · Feb 11
🔁 @gotosocial:

Hello nerds!

We've just created the first release candidate version of #GoToSocial v0.21.0 Sacrilegious Sloth!

https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/releases/tag/v0.21.0-rc1

Adventurous admins can try updating to this release candidate, and let us know if there's any new and interesting bugs to be found.

We're really proud of this one, the sloth is starting to feel really useable and good!

Please read the migration notes carefully for instructions on how to upgrade to this version. Bear in mind there are a few big-ish database migrations in this one, which may take somewhere between a minute or 20+ minutes to run (depending on your hardware). Be patient, backup your database first, and don't interrupt the migrations.

Release highlights

  • Domain Limits: You can now create domain limits in the admin section of the settings panel, in order to do things like limit + mute all accounts on a domain (except ones you follow), add content warnings to posts from limited domains, mark media as sensitive (or don't download it at all).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/admin/domain_limits/
  • Indexable support: You can now mark your account as "indexable" by full-text search, in the settings panel. This will federate your preference to other servers, so that servers with full-text search functionality can include your posts in search results.
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#mark-accounts-posts-as-full-text-indexable
  • Show reblogs on the web view of your profile (opt-in): A new setting in the settings panel allows you to opt-in to showing posts that you've boosted/reblogged on the web view of your profile. The default setting retains existing behavior (don't show boosts on the web view).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#include-boosts-on-the-web-view-of-your-profile
  • Better caching behavior for timelines. The number of database calls when browsing local + public timelines and lists should be significantly reduced.
  • Store + show reason for undownloaded media: When media fails to be downloaded from a remote instance, the reason why will be shown next to the post.
  • Include canQuote property on outgoing posts: Currently, this is always set to author-only, but it paves the way (and signals intent) for GtS to implement quote toots at some point.
  • Much improved OpenGraph previews: Whitespace is now preserved in OpenGraph previews, and media + formatting was rejigged, so linking to GoToSocial posts should result in much better OpenGraph-generated preview cards.
  • Expand/collapse all spoilers button on web view of threads: when viewing threads in the web view, you can now expand/collapse all spoilers at the click of a button.
  • S3 Object Info Caching: you can now configure cache.s3-object-info in order to mitigate expensive S3 info calls when doing nightly media cleanup.
  • Preserve significant whitespaces in incoming + outgoing posts: previously we were squashing a lot of whitespace together, which meant that, for example, indentation could get lost on posts federated into a GoToSocial instance. This is now fixed, so you can post poetry and whatnot without worrying about it looking like hot crap.
  • Millions of fucking bugfixes: we squashed a lot of them!
Box464 (@box464) · Feb 12
🔁 @gotosocial:

Hello nerds!

We've just created the first release candidate version of #GoToSocial v0.21.0 Sacrilegious Sloth!

https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/releases/tag/v0.21.0-rc1

Adventurous admins can try updating to this release candidate, and let us know if there's any new and interesting bugs to be found.

We're really proud of this one, the sloth is starting to feel really useable and good!

Please read the migration notes carefully for instructions on how to upgrade to this version. Bear in mind there are a few big-ish database migrations in this one, which may take somewhere between a minute or 20+ minutes to run (depending on your hardware). Be patient, backup your database first, and don't interrupt the migrations.

Release highlights

  • Domain Limits: You can now create domain limits in the admin section of the settings panel, in order to do things like limit + mute all accounts on a domain (except ones you follow), add content warnings to posts from limited domains, mark media as sensitive (or don't download it at all).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/admin/domain_limits/
  • Indexable support: You can now mark your account as "indexable" by full-text search, in the settings panel. This will federate your preference to other servers, so that servers with full-text search functionality can include your posts in search results.
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#mark-accounts-posts-as-full-text-indexable
  • Show reblogs on the web view of your profile (opt-in): A new setting in the settings panel allows you to opt-in to showing posts that you've boosted/reblogged on the web view of your profile. The default setting retains existing behavior (don't show boosts on the web view).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#include-boosts-on-the-web-view-of-your-profile
  • Better caching behavior for timelines. The number of database calls when browsing local + public timelines and lists should be significantly reduced.
  • Store + show reason for undownloaded media: When media fails to be downloaded from a remote instance, the reason why will be shown next to the post.
  • Include canQuote property on outgoing posts: Currently, this is always set to author-only, but it paves the way (and signals intent) for GtS to implement quote toots at some point.
  • Much improved OpenGraph previews: Whitespace is now preserved in OpenGraph previews, and media + formatting was rejigged, so linking to GoToSocial posts should result in much better OpenGraph-generated preview cards.
  • Expand/collapse all spoilers button on web view of threads: when viewing threads in the web view, you can now expand/collapse all spoilers at the click of a button.
  • S3 Object Info Caching: you can now configure cache.s3-object-info in order to mitigate expensive S3 info calls when doing nightly media cleanup.
  • Preserve significant whitespaces in incoming + outgoing posts: previously we were squashing a lot of whitespace together, which meant that, for example, indentation could get lost on posts federated into a GoToSocial instance. This is now fixed, so you can post poetry and whatnot without worrying about it looking like hot crap.
  • Millions of fucking bugfixes: we squashed a lot of them!
Internet Rando (@mousey) · Feb 11
🔁 @gotosocial:

Hello nerds!

We've just created the first release candidate version of #GoToSocial v0.21.0 Sacrilegious Sloth!

https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/releases/tag/v0.21.0-rc1

Adventurous admins can try updating to this release candidate, and let us know if there's any new and interesting bugs to be found.

We're really proud of this one, the sloth is starting to feel really useable and good!

Please read the migration notes carefully for instructions on how to upgrade to this version. Bear in mind there are a few big-ish database migrations in this one, which may take somewhere between a minute or 20+ minutes to run (depending on your hardware). Be patient, backup your database first, and don't interrupt the migrations.

Release highlights

  • Domain Limits: You can now create domain limits in the admin section of the settings panel, in order to do things like limit + mute all accounts on a domain (except ones you follow), add content warnings to posts from limited domains, mark media as sensitive (or don't download it at all).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/admin/domain_limits/
  • Indexable support: You can now mark your account as "indexable" by full-text search, in the settings panel. This will federate your preference to other servers, so that servers with full-text search functionality can include your posts in search results.
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#mark-accounts-posts-as-full-text-indexable
  • Show reblogs on the web view of your profile (opt-in): A new setting in the settings panel allows you to opt-in to showing posts that you've boosted/reblogged on the web view of your profile. The default setting retains existing behavior (don't show boosts on the web view).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#include-boosts-on-the-web-view-of-your-profile
  • Better caching behavior for timelines. The number of database calls when browsing local + public timelines and lists should be significantly reduced.
  • Store + show reason for undownloaded media: When media fails to be downloaded from a remote instance, the reason why will be shown next to the post.
  • Include canQuote property on outgoing posts: Currently, this is always set to author-only, but it paves the way (and signals intent) for GtS to implement quote toots at some point.
  • Much improved OpenGraph previews: Whitespace is now preserved in OpenGraph previews, and media + formatting was rejigged, so linking to GoToSocial posts should result in much better OpenGraph-generated preview cards.
  • Expand/collapse all spoilers button on web view of threads: when viewing threads in the web view, you can now expand/collapse all spoilers at the click of a button.
  • S3 Object Info Caching: you can now configure cache.s3-object-info in order to mitigate expensive S3 info calls when doing nightly media cleanup.
  • Preserve significant whitespaces in incoming + outgoing posts: previously we were squashing a lot of whitespace together, which meant that, for example, indentation could get lost on posts federated into a GoToSocial instance. This is now fixed, so you can post poetry and whatnot without worrying about it looking like hot crap.
  • Millions of fucking bugfixes: we squashed a lot of them!
Chad McCullough (@cmccullough) · Feb 11
🔁 @gotosocial:

Hello nerds!

We've just created the first release candidate version of #GoToSocial v0.21.0 Sacrilegious Sloth!

https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/releases/tag/v0.21.0-rc1

Adventurous admins can try updating to this release candidate, and let us know if there's any new and interesting bugs to be found.

We're really proud of this one, the sloth is starting to feel really useable and good!

Please read the migration notes carefully for instructions on how to upgrade to this version. Bear in mind there are a few big-ish database migrations in this one, which may take somewhere between a minute or 20+ minutes to run (depending on your hardware). Be patient, backup your database first, and don't interrupt the migrations.

Release highlights

  • Domain Limits: You can now create domain limits in the admin section of the settings panel, in order to do things like limit + mute all accounts on a domain (except ones you follow), add content warnings to posts from limited domains, mark media as sensitive (or don't download it at all).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/admin/domain_limits/
  • Indexable support: You can now mark your account as "indexable" by full-text search, in the settings panel. This will federate your preference to other servers, so that servers with full-text search functionality can include your posts in search results.
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#mark-accounts-posts-as-full-text-indexable
  • Show reblogs on the web view of your profile (opt-in): A new setting in the settings panel allows you to opt-in to showing posts that you've boosted/reblogged on the web view of your profile. The default setting retains existing behavior (don't show boosts on the web view).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#include-boosts-on-the-web-view-of-your-profile
  • Better caching behavior for timelines. The number of database calls when browsing local + public timelines and lists should be significantly reduced.
  • Store + show reason for undownloaded media: When media fails to be downloaded from a remote instance, the reason why will be shown next to the post.
  • Include canQuote property on outgoing posts: Currently, this is always set to author-only, but it paves the way (and signals intent) for GtS to implement quote toots at some point.
  • Much improved OpenGraph previews: Whitespace is now preserved in OpenGraph previews, and media + formatting was rejigged, so linking to GoToSocial posts should result in much better OpenGraph-generated preview cards.
  • Expand/collapse all spoilers button on web view of threads: when viewing threads in the web view, you can now expand/collapse all spoilers at the click of a button.
  • S3 Object Info Caching: you can now configure cache.s3-object-info in order to mitigate expensive S3 info calls when doing nightly media cleanup.
  • Preserve significant whitespaces in incoming + outgoing posts: previously we were squashing a lot of whitespace together, which meant that, for example, indentation could get lost on posts federated into a GoToSocial instance. This is now fixed, so you can post poetry and whatnot without worrying about it looking like hot crap.
  • Millions of fucking bugfixes: we squashed a lot of them!
Shannon Prickett (@Binder) · Feb 11
🔁 @gotosocial:

Hello nerds!

We've just created the first release candidate version of #GoToSocial v0.21.0 Sacrilegious Sloth!

https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/releases/tag/v0.21.0-rc1

Adventurous admins can try updating to this release candidate, and let us know if there's any new and interesting bugs to be found.

We're really proud of this one, the sloth is starting to feel really useable and good!

Please read the migration notes carefully for instructions on how to upgrade to this version. Bear in mind there are a few big-ish database migrations in this one, which may take somewhere between a minute or 20+ minutes to run (depending on your hardware). Be patient, backup your database first, and don't interrupt the migrations.

Release highlights

  • Domain Limits: You can now create domain limits in the admin section of the settings panel, in order to do things like limit + mute all accounts on a domain (except ones you follow), add content warnings to posts from limited domains, mark media as sensitive (or don't download it at all).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/admin/domain_limits/
  • Indexable support: You can now mark your account as "indexable" by full-text search, in the settings panel. This will federate your preference to other servers, so that servers with full-text search functionality can include your posts in search results.
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#mark-accounts-posts-as-full-text-indexable
  • Show reblogs on the web view of your profile (opt-in): A new setting in the settings panel allows you to opt-in to showing posts that you've boosted/reblogged on the web view of your profile. The default setting retains existing behavior (don't show boosts on the web view).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#include-boosts-on-the-web-view-of-your-profile
  • Better caching behavior for timelines. The number of database calls when browsing local + public timelines and lists should be significantly reduced.
  • Store + show reason for undownloaded media: When media fails to be downloaded from a remote instance, the reason why will be shown next to the post.
  • Include canQuote property on outgoing posts: Currently, this is always set to author-only, but it paves the way (and signals intent) for GtS to implement quote toots at some point.
  • Much improved OpenGraph previews: Whitespace is now preserved in OpenGraph previews, and media + formatting was rejigged, so linking to GoToSocial posts should result in much better OpenGraph-generated preview cards.
  • Expand/collapse all spoilers button on web view of threads: when viewing threads in the web view, you can now expand/collapse all spoilers at the click of a button.
  • S3 Object Info Caching: you can now configure cache.s3-object-info in order to mitigate expensive S3 info calls when doing nightly media cleanup.
  • Preserve significant whitespaces in incoming + outgoing posts: previously we were squashing a lot of whitespace together, which meant that, for example, indentation could get lost on posts federated into a GoToSocial instance. This is now fixed, so you can post poetry and whatnot without worrying about it looking like hot crap.
  • Millions of fucking bugfixes: we squashed a lot of them!
@reiver ⊼ (Charles) :batman: (@reiver) · Feb 11
🔁 @gotosocial:

Hello nerds!

We've just created the first release candidate version of #GoToSocial v0.21.0 Sacrilegious Sloth!

https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/releases/tag/v0.21.0-rc1

Adventurous admins can try updating to this release candidate, and let us know if there's any new and interesting bugs to be found.

We're really proud of this one, the sloth is starting to feel really useable and good!

Please read the migration notes carefully for instructions on how to upgrade to this version. Bear in mind there are a few big-ish database migrations in this one, which may take somewhere between a minute or 20+ minutes to run (depending on your hardware). Be patient, backup your database first, and don't interrupt the migrations.

Release highlights

  • Domain Limits: You can now create domain limits in the admin section of the settings panel, in order to do things like limit + mute all accounts on a domain (except ones you follow), add content warnings to posts from limited domains, mark media as sensitive (or don't download it at all).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/admin/domain_limits/
  • Indexable support: You can now mark your account as "indexable" by full-text search, in the settings panel. This will federate your preference to other servers, so that servers with full-text search functionality can include your posts in search results.
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#mark-accounts-posts-as-full-text-indexable
  • Show reblogs on the web view of your profile (opt-in): A new setting in the settings panel allows you to opt-in to showing posts that you've boosted/reblogged on the web view of your profile. The default setting retains existing behavior (don't show boosts on the web view).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#include-boosts-on-the-web-view-of-your-profile
  • Better caching behavior for timelines. The number of database calls when browsing local + public timelines and lists should be significantly reduced.
  • Store + show reason for undownloaded media: When media fails to be downloaded from a remote instance, the reason why will be shown next to the post.
  • Include canQuote property on outgoing posts: Currently, this is always set to author-only, but it paves the way (and signals intent) for GtS to implement quote toots at some point.
  • Much improved OpenGraph previews: Whitespace is now preserved in OpenGraph previews, and media + formatting was rejigged, so linking to GoToSocial posts should result in much better OpenGraph-generated preview cards.
  • Expand/collapse all spoilers button on web view of threads: when viewing threads in the web view, you can now expand/collapse all spoilers at the click of a button.
  • S3 Object Info Caching: you can now configure cache.s3-object-info in order to mitigate expensive S3 info calls when doing nightly media cleanup.
  • Preserve significant whitespaces in incoming + outgoing posts: previously we were squashing a lot of whitespace together, which meant that, for example, indentation could get lost on posts federated into a GoToSocial instance. This is now fixed, so you can post poetry and whatnot without worrying about it looking like hot crap.
  • Millions of fucking bugfixes: we squashed a lot of them!
Stefano Marinelli (@stefano) · Feb 11
🔁 @gotosocial:

Hello nerds!

We've just created the first release candidate version of #GoToSocial v0.21.0 Sacrilegious Sloth!

https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/releases/tag/v0.21.0-rc1

Adventurous admins can try updating to this release candidate, and let us know if there's any new and interesting bugs to be found.

We're really proud of this one, the sloth is starting to feel really useable and good!

Please read the migration notes carefully for instructions on how to upgrade to this version. Bear in mind there are a few big-ish database migrations in this one, which may take somewhere between a minute or 20+ minutes to run (depending on your hardware). Be patient, backup your database first, and don't interrupt the migrations.

Release highlights

  • Domain Limits: You can now create domain limits in the admin section of the settings panel, in order to do things like limit + mute all accounts on a domain (except ones you follow), add content warnings to posts from limited domains, mark media as sensitive (or don't download it at all).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/admin/domain_limits/
  • Indexable support: You can now mark your account as "indexable" by full-text search, in the settings panel. This will federate your preference to other servers, so that servers with full-text search functionality can include your posts in search results.
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#mark-accounts-posts-as-full-text-indexable
  • Show reblogs on the web view of your profile (opt-in): A new setting in the settings panel allows you to opt-in to showing posts that you've boosted/reblogged on the web view of your profile. The default setting retains existing behavior (don't show boosts on the web view).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#include-boosts-on-the-web-view-of-your-profile
  • Better caching behavior for timelines. The number of database calls when browsing local + public timelines and lists should be significantly reduced.
  • Store + show reason for undownloaded media: When media fails to be downloaded from a remote instance, the reason why will be shown next to the post.
  • Include canQuote property on outgoing posts: Currently, this is always set to author-only, but it paves the way (and signals intent) for GtS to implement quote toots at some point.
  • Much improved OpenGraph previews: Whitespace is now preserved in OpenGraph previews, and media + formatting was rejigged, so linking to GoToSocial posts should result in much better OpenGraph-generated preview cards.
  • Expand/collapse all spoilers button on web view of threads: when viewing threads in the web view, you can now expand/collapse all spoilers at the click of a button.
  • S3 Object Info Caching: you can now configure cache.s3-object-info in order to mitigate expensive S3 info calls when doing nightly media cleanup.
  • Preserve significant whitespaces in incoming + outgoing posts: previously we were squashing a lot of whitespace together, which meant that, for example, indentation could get lost on posts federated into a GoToSocial instance. This is now fixed, so you can post poetry and whatnot without worrying about it looking like hot crap.
  • Millions of fucking bugfixes: we squashed a lot of them!
Matthew :bi_flat: (@matty) · Feb 11
🔁 @gotosocial:

Hello nerds!

We've just created the first release candidate version of #GoToSocial v0.21.0 Sacrilegious Sloth!

https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/releases/tag/v0.21.0-rc1

Adventurous admins can try updating to this release candidate, and let us know if there's any new and interesting bugs to be found.

We're really proud of this one, the sloth is starting to feel really useable and good!

Please read the migration notes carefully for instructions on how to upgrade to this version. Bear in mind there are a few big-ish database migrations in this one, which may take somewhere between a minute or 20+ minutes to run (depending on your hardware). Be patient, backup your database first, and don't interrupt the migrations.

Release highlights

  • Domain Limits: You can now create domain limits in the admin section of the settings panel, in order to do things like limit + mute all accounts on a domain (except ones you follow), add content warnings to posts from limited domains, mark media as sensitive (or don't download it at all).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/admin/domain_limits/
  • Indexable support: You can now mark your account as "indexable" by full-text search, in the settings panel. This will federate your preference to other servers, so that servers with full-text search functionality can include your posts in search results.
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#mark-accounts-posts-as-full-text-indexable
  • Show reblogs on the web view of your profile (opt-in): A new setting in the settings panel allows you to opt-in to showing posts that you've boosted/reblogged on the web view of your profile. The default setting retains existing behavior (don't show boosts on the web view).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#include-boosts-on-the-web-view-of-your-profile
  • Better caching behavior for timelines. The number of database calls when browsing local + public timelines and lists should be significantly reduced.
  • Store + show reason for undownloaded media: When media fails to be downloaded from a remote instance, the reason why will be shown next to the post.
  • Include canQuote property on outgoing posts: Currently, this is always set to author-only, but it paves the way (and signals intent) for GtS to implement quote toots at some point.
  • Much improved OpenGraph previews: Whitespace is now preserved in OpenGraph previews, and media + formatting was rejigged, so linking to GoToSocial posts should result in much better OpenGraph-generated preview cards.
  • Expand/collapse all spoilers button on web view of threads: when viewing threads in the web view, you can now expand/collapse all spoilers at the click of a button.
  • S3 Object Info Caching: you can now configure cache.s3-object-info in order to mitigate expensive S3 info calls when doing nightly media cleanup.
  • Preserve significant whitespaces in incoming + outgoing posts: previously we were squashing a lot of whitespace together, which meant that, for example, indentation could get lost on posts federated into a GoToSocial instance. This is now fixed, so you can post poetry and whatnot without worrying about it looking like hot crap.
  • Millions of fucking bugfixes: we squashed a lot of them!
j-r conlin (@jrconlin) · Feb 11
🔁 @gotosocial:

Hello nerds!

We've just created the first release candidate version of #GoToSocial v0.21.0 Sacrilegious Sloth!

https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/releases/tag/v0.21.0-rc1

Adventurous admins can try updating to this release candidate, and let us know if there's any new and interesting bugs to be found.

We're really proud of this one, the sloth is starting to feel really useable and good!

Please read the migration notes carefully for instructions on how to upgrade to this version. Bear in mind there are a few big-ish database migrations in this one, which may take somewhere between a minute or 20+ minutes to run (depending on your hardware). Be patient, backup your database first, and don't interrupt the migrations.

Release highlights

  • Domain Limits: You can now create domain limits in the admin section of the settings panel, in order to do things like limit + mute all accounts on a domain (except ones you follow), add content warnings to posts from limited domains, mark media as sensitive (or don't download it at all).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/admin/domain_limits/
  • Indexable support: You can now mark your account as "indexable" by full-text search, in the settings panel. This will federate your preference to other servers, so that servers with full-text search functionality can include your posts in search results.
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#mark-accounts-posts-as-full-text-indexable
  • Show reblogs on the web view of your profile (opt-in): A new setting in the settings panel allows you to opt-in to showing posts that you've boosted/reblogged on the web view of your profile. The default setting retains existing behavior (don't show boosts on the web view).
    Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#include-boosts-on-the-web-view-of-your-profile
  • Better caching behavior for timelines. The number of database calls when browsing local + public timelines and lists should be significantly reduced.
  • Store + show reason for undownloaded media: When media fails to be downloaded from a remote instance, the reason why will be shown next to the post.
  • Include canQuote property on outgoing posts: Currently, this is always set to author-only, but it paves the way (and signals intent) for GtS to implement quote toots at some point.
  • Much improved OpenGraph previews: Whitespace is now preserved in OpenGraph previews, and media + formatting was rejigged, so linking to GoToSocial posts should result in much better OpenGraph-generated preview cards.
  • Expand/collapse all spoilers button on web view of threads: when viewing threads in the web view, you can now expand/collapse all spoilers at the click of a button.
  • S3 Object Info Caching: you can now configure cache.s3-object-info in order to mitigate expensive S3 info calls when doing nightly media cleanup.
  • Preserve significant whitespaces in incoming + outgoing posts: previously we were squashing a lot of whitespace together, which meant that, for example, indentation could get lost on posts federated into a GoToSocial instance. This is now fixed, so you can post poetry and whatnot without worrying about it looking like hot crap.
  • Millions of fucking bugfixes: we squashed a lot of them!

How Daniel Stenberg, founder of curl, is Navigating the AI Onslop

redmonk.com · Feb 11

In this RedMonk conversation, Kate Holterhoff chats with Daniel Stenberg, founder of the curl project, about the challenges and implications of AI-generated code in open source software, particular…

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