pvh
@pvh.ca
3.2K followers 250 following 260 posts
just this guy, you know? (director of research @ ink & switch, coined "local-first", contributor to automerge, former postgres guy, heroku staff, ex-game developer, arctic oceanographer.)
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pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · 22h
We were discussing yesterday how our goal is that if anyone asks to try out patchwork the immediate response is not to wince and apologize.
Reposted by pvh
daiyi.co
tape a piece of paper on the screen
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · 9d
I wonder if there's a way to open my gmail to find something without seeing the inbox.
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · 13d
Ah, cool! Is that data available as some kind of data structure, or do you literally just have to call their API for each grid point?
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · 13d
Love to see this work. Have you documented your process anywhere? I'm interested in the tools and infrastructure to support this work.
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · 15d
This particular project is not really local-first work at all. Ironically, it's the underlying collaboration and version control primitives that Automerge provides that we think are very applicable here regardless, and improvements to that technology will be -- shall we say -- dual-use.
Reposted by pvh
mitpress.bsky.social
In his playful collection "Forty-Four Esolangs," Daniel Temkin (@dtemkin.bsky.social) challenges conventional definitions of language, code, and computer, showing the potential of esolangs—or esoteric programming languages—as pure idea art: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255308...
A copy of "Forty-Four Esolangs: The Art of Esoteric Code" by Daniel Temkin. The cover features an image of a blue sky with clouds with various vertical colorful stripes overlaid across it.
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · 16d
The feeling is mutual!
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · 16d
It's pretty cool that Ink & Switch is contributing to this big ARIA programme now. We get two big things out of it: funding (obviously) but also a community of fascinating creators and problems to connect with. I'm learning all about the UK power grid this week.
www.inkandswitch.com/newsletter/d...
ARIA Safeguarded AI Programme, new faces, and a splattering of ink lab notes
Peter, our lab director, will announce a major new initiative. You’ll hear about two researchers who have recently joined our staff. Finally, we’ve got a collection of lab notes about Programmable Ink...
www.inkandswitch.com
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · 18d
Oh, Canadians haven’t figured out how to fund startups as far as I have seen. There’s adverse selection pressure as well from an investment perspective. That said, this is the kind of thing that is true until it isn’t, and there are exogenous factors driving the system into new domains.
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · 18d
"Select places" is a bit unfair. I think at this point it's literally just service workers in Firefox across the big browsers & platforms. There are still other limitations: there's no obvious way to provide importMaps to ServiceWorkers, for example.
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · 18d
The brain drain from Canada to the US appears to be reversing. Early in my career, I moved to San Francisco in search of the best opportunities. Now we're seeing folks go the other direction. Hard to see this as anything other than the end of American hegemony. Maybe it's time.
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · 26d
I haven’t run into problems there but maybe I just haven’t tried the right things.
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · 27d
I'm so excited that this Firefox bug might get fixed and allow us to run our local-first stuff in service workers. Thanks to Harveer Singh for working on it! bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi...
1360870 - Implement "module" service workers
NEW (hsingh) in Core - DOM: Service Workers. Last updated 2025-09-11.
bugzilla.mozilla.org
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · Aug 19
I guess one solution is to be famous or historically relevant: info.cern.ch
http://info.cern.ch
info.cern.ch
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · Aug 19
I wonder what the oldest running web page is? Could we learn from that?
Reposted by pvh
hawkticehurst.com
I need some help!

I’m working on a YouTube video that explores what it would take to build a web app that, if built today, could last 100 years.

It covers tech stack, dev strategies, DX, etc but I need help coming up with a demo.

Any fun ideas for a full stack app meant to live for a century??
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · Aug 16
automerge is not a dabase and patchwork is not an operating system
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · Aug 12
Interesting. Is there a conceived approach to sandboxing DOM access? I can't really imagine how that might work.
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · Aug 12
We're in the UK! Come hang out with us in London.
inkandswitch.com
The Ink & Switch team is coming through London and we're having a social to share some recent news and research from the lab, and catch up with people in London interested in local first, malleable software, and other similar areas of making better computing.

Aug 16th, 6pm in London
Ink & Switch London Social · Luma
The Ink & Switch team is coming through London and we're having a social to share some recent news and research from the lab, and catch up with people in…
lu.ma
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · Aug 12
they're not confined at all. currently, anyone you load a tool from can do literally anything they want to your entire system. internal sandboxing of a website is a hard problem. some folks have suggested iframes which is credible but expensive.
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · Jul 16
right right right right right
pvh.ca
pvh @pvh.ca · Jul 15
Automerge 3 is here: the heart transplant is complete! Huge improvements in memory usage and (in most cases) correspondingly big performance improvements too. Backwards compatible on disk and the network so there's no reason not to upgrade today: automerge.org/blog/automer...
Automerge 3.0 | Automerge CRDT
Automerge is a local-first data sync engine that makes it easy to build collaborative apps. Today we're excited to announce version 3.0 of Automerge!
automerge.org