Baldur Bjarnason

Writer, web developer and consultant based in Hveragerði, Iceland. Lapsed Interactive Media Academic. Webby Tech Stuff and webby book stuff.

Blog: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/
AI Book: https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/
Pronouns: he/him
Book: https://softwarecrisis.baldurbjarnason.com/

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npub1hr7087sk4yxl25nmx9c42p0zgk5kyfyvar5xeklezs23hjuenr7qr3jxyc

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baldur_at_toot.cafe@momostr.pink

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nprofile1qqst3l8nlgt2jr042fanzu24qh3yt2tzyjxw36rvm0u3g9gmewve3lqpqqxpvrvz

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npub1hr7087sk4yxl25nmx9c42p0zgk5kyfyvar5xeklezs23hjuenr7qr3jxyc

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Last Notes

2026-09-15 13:53:14 UTC

Why it's often harder to get started when you know what you want to make?
#video #creative #writing #practice
See the full video at https://youtu.be/GV4x17Ygh4s
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/117/275/377/083/023/709/original/082109a7ad2e224f.mp4

2026-07-22 09:37:33 UTC

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The other issue is more personal: you can’t have conversations about code with people any more. Ask them for their personal opinion on a piece of code and you’ll just get a chatbot text extrusion back
Makes the job a whole lot less fun and personable.
This kinda bothers me more than the bug misrepresentation

2026-07-14 17:08:51 UTC

It's worrying how often online banking apps here in Iceland just plain don't work:
Notification of an unpaid bill pops up.
You click it and pay the bill.
Then, since you're in the app, you check your balance and you notice the bill payment hasn't gone out.
Go check the unpaid bills section: no bill there
Check the balance again: no payment
Check the unpaid bills section: the bill now appears as if it were unpaid
Now you have to decide whether to try to pay the bill again and risk paying double

2026-07-11 10:59:18 UTC

Why is Apple so bad at anything that syncs data? I don’t think there’s a single device of theirs that doesn’t regularly just give up on syncing for a while. Why are they so bad at this?

2026-07-08 09:25:12 UTC

Bluesky’s standard.site has got to be a bit, right? How bad of a case of programmer brain do you need to have to think all that custom work is needed to accomplish a social media attribution button?
It’s like a recipe going “to bake a baguette first you must build the Eiffel Tower, 1/5 scale will do, which should be easy for personal use.”

2026-07-07 13:57:32 UTC

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Já. Ég man að það gengu sögur um hann þegar ég var unglingur og maðurinn margoft opinberaði sjálfan sig bæði í lögum og viðtölum. Fólk hefur alltaf verið duglegt við það að horfa framhjá því sem hann gerði og sú "hefð" á greinilega að halda áfram núna

2026-07-07 12:25:26 UTC

Ég sé að RÚV ætlar greinilega að hvítþvo Megas

2026-06-16 12:54:41 UTC

So this used to be the power station for a wool mill back before there was even a town here in Hveragerði. #photos #iceland
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/759/884/990/061/181/original/5d75dec7bcc88697.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/759/885/368/080/096/original/5b814d03738d7349.jpg

2026-06-05 14:22:42 UTC

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Yeah, as I'm continuing to test this I'm guessing that might be an issue with variable fonts specifically
Google fonts might be feature detecting support for variable fonts and loading those when supported?
Or, if it's not specifically variable fonts, then it's a font format feature that is common to the variable fonts I've been testing.
In any case, basically means that I can only use that specific design idea for an upcoming project if I change the font I had planned. Oh, well 🤷‍♂️

2026-06-05 11:28:06 UTC

So, is -webkit-text-stroke broken everywhere it's implemented or is this something that just affects browsers on Linux? (Tested in Firefox and Chromium. Tried to test in WebKit/Gnome Web but just discovered that the webkit rendering process crashes whenever I try to open the dev tools, which is disconcerting.)
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/697/237/626/727/555/original/95b1c47641a35f92.png

2026-06-03 15:30:30 UTC

An aspect to the “go pro might go under because of AI memory price hikes” news is that it entirely ignores that go pro has been heading that way for a long time
They’re crunched between cheap no-name action cams on the low end and superior Chinese action cams, actual cameras and phones on the high end. They’ve largely got a worse product and nowhere to go. Their line of 1 inch sensor cams is an attempt to retake the high ground but the price puts it in direct competition with actual cameras

2026-06-02 09:18:34 UTC

“Prompt-inject ChatGPT with any web page – Pivot to AI”
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/06/01/prompt-inject-chatgpt-with-any-web-page/
People keep defending this tech in my replies, meanwhile it's basically an ongoing open exploit on computing in general

2026-06-01 21:44:12 UTC

The fact that here on mastodon you can’t change the interaction settings to control the conversation to any meaningful degree honestly does make discussions here much more anxiety-inducing, even when you aren’t much of a target.

2026-05-17 12:52:12 UTC

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Yeah, Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn was very Nazi-adjacent in the 30s, 40s, and 50s and have returned to their anti-immigrant, racist dog whistle roots, coupled with crony capitalism. Miðflokkurinn is our version of the Reform party. Flokkur fólksins are isolationist reactionaries with left-wing economic policies. Framsókn began as Jónas from Hriflu’s pastoral fascism project, was historically mostly defined by opportunism, but always couched in nationalistic flag waving.

2026-05-17 10:33:21 UTC

So, the nationalist parties won a substantial victory in the municipal elections here in Iceland yesterday, which is honestly a bit discouraging.

2026-05-15 10:46:38 UTC

The old world of tech is dying and the new cannot be born: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/the-old-world-of-tech-is-dying/

2025-12-03 15:39:18 UTC

I did not know that the official Icelandic word for 'emoji' is 'tjámerki' (basically 'expression symbol')

2025-11-18 12:09:40 UTC

“Commission imposes definitive safeguard measures on certain ferroalloys”
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_2698
The EU's unusual move of putting tariffs on countries that are ostensibly a part of the single market—Iceland and Norway—has very effectively killed off their own campaign to get us to join the EU
Support for EU membership in Iceland rarely polls for more than just over 50%. Now a simple "EU treats small countries in the single market like garbage" means the upcoming referendum has no chance

2024-12-17 11:41:51 UTC

Did another pass over yesterday's photos with black and white in mind. This improved some images but not others. For example, the photo of the mountain through the trees doesn’t really change that much and which is preferable is subjective. Whereas in the photo of the geothermally active field, the fence becomes a more distinctive visual feature in the B&W version
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/667/974/317/659/830/original/077e31a57e252129.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/667/974/781/313/280/original/7925ffcdbdfa40fe.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/667/975/274/630/795/original/bbd4527104cd5247.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/667/975/650/435/946/original/04aa82d253d88e5d.jpeg

2024-08-28 11:28:57 UTC

I wrote a bit about I've noticed my own behaviour on social media changing
"Bad Faith Burnout"
> So, apologies in advance if I don’t reply to your reply. It’s not you
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/bad-faith-burnout/

2024-08-24 12:36:45 UTC

Self-indulgent rant:
One reason why IMO, the case against "AI" is as cut and dried as the case against cryptocoins is that shutting those two sectors down through government action would immediately solve the household energy transition for Iceland, for example
The maths is fairly straightforward: switching personal transportation over to electricity here would roughly double household power consumption (give or take, with the assumption that current plans to improve public transport pan out)