David Llewellyn-Jones

Research Data Scientist, Hut 23 of The Alan Turing Institute. Software developer and Sailfish OS evangelist. Occasionally craves adventure and a good thunderstorm.

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npub1wr2fljevqswwpa850jhy8jc2ujcw5j3dftykwx05d4adkzqwtrrsxwvzsz

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flypig@mastodon-social.mostr.pub

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nprofile1qqs8p4ylevkqg88q7n68etjrev9wfv82fgk54jt8r86x67kmpq8933cpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsjycjwe

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relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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npub1wr2fljevqswwpa850jhy8jc2ujcw5j3dftykwx05d4adkzqwtrrsxwvzsz

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Last Notes

2025-04-07 21:12:51 UTC

#NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 29. Building out the interface and drilling down into the metadata of an individual search result.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1258&list=newpipe

2025-04-02 20:47:49 UTC

#NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 24. Adding a menu to switch between the services: Bandcamp, MediaCCC, PeerTube, SoundCloud and YouTube.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1253&list=newpipe

2025-03-24 23:46:23 UTC

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@nprofile…jlej @nprofile…54u6 Thank you for sharing the videos, I really enjoyed both talks. The Linux on Mobile ecosystem is so broad and varied and it's always nice to learn new things about it.
And thank you also for the shout-out @nprofile…jlej, that made me smile!
Sadly I didn't succeed with the bingo though.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/220/054/110/771/232/original/3538b07c5b68f414.png

2025-03-19 21:26:34 UTC

#NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary Day 10. Measuring the memory usage of the build on my phone (with suitably impressive graphs courtesy of psrecord! 📈 ).
https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1239&list=newpipe

2025-03-18 23:26:49 UTC

#NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary Day 9. Moving the build from my laptop to a Sailfish OS phone 💻 → 📱
https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1238&list=newpipe

2025-03-10 21:29:54 UTC

Day 2 of my #SailfishOS #NewPipe dev diary.
Taking a look at the NewPipe user interface on Android to see what will transfer over to a #SailfishOS app.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1229&list=newpipe

2025-02-08 14:29:49 UTC

The video from my #FOSDEM talk "Mobile Browsers: the Best of Times, the Worst of Times" is now up online.
It was a real privilege to present in the FOSS on Mobile devroom 📱 Thanks to the organisers, everyone who attended and also to everyone who was so gracious about it afterwards.
I can get quite anxious in the weeks running up to a talk, but speaking at FOSDEM always feels worth it.
https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-6411-mobile-browsers-the-best-of-times-the-worst-of-times/
#FOSDEM #FOSDEM25 #LinuxOnMobile #Browser #Embedded
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/968/734/222/224/601/original/f6c8b3f906cbca02.jpg

2024-08-24 22:43:10 UTC

#SailfishOS #Gecko dev diary Day 329. Returning to the app cover hang, which has become a crash. And a crash is better than a hang!
https://www.flypig.co.uk/gecko?&list_id=1187&list=gecko

2024-05-25 23:00:08 UTC

#SailfishOS #Gecko dev diary Day 243. Patchy patches lead to an investigation of the code as prep for manual patching.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/gecko?&list_id=1100&list=gecko

2024-03-03 19:59:37 UTC

#SailfishOS #Gecko dev diary Day 174.

2024-02-08 23:03:07 UTC

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@npub1mzl…6qxv That's good to hear 😃 @npub1m4a…8hr8 has put a huge amount of effort into the PinePhone port so it's great that that's recognised.

2024-01-28 23:58:48 UTC

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@npub1ry8…fytf @npub1ug4…d762 Thanks! I somehow missed that 😟

2024-01-28 18:03:40 UTC

Less than a week to go! Come visit us at #FOSDEM on the #LinuxOnMobile stand where you'll be able to try out all sorts of Linux on all sorts of mobile!
https://linuxonmobile.net
#mobian, @npub173m…zw5u, #SailfishOS, @npub12nq…a3hq, @npub15la…2tud, @npub1xxh…fdq9, #NemoMobile, @npub1xzp…x4fk
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/834/857/017/168/497/original/63d6782b028174e1.png

2024-01-11 19:19:19 UTC

#SailfishOS #Gecko dev diary Day 135. New attempts to extract a verbatim copy of the DuckDuckGo client-side files.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/gecko?&list_id=986&list=gecko

2023-11-07 19:43:18 UTC

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@npub16mt…pnwy Thanks! Appreciate it 😃

2023-11-07 19:17:32 UTC

Finally #Gecko ESR 91 is rendering websites on #SailfishOS. I was getting worried it might never get there. All the gory details to follow. 🦎 🐟
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/370/857/332/979/244/original/5336bfa9ffc152bf.jpg

2023-11-07 19:01:36 UTC

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@npub173h…gmq5 @npub100e…zsc2 I second this, of course. I think ultimately there's a compromise though: you either have a great touch interface, or all the same desktop apps, but not both.

2023-11-07 18:58:07 UTC

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@npub16mt…pnwy Do you mean something like zenodo.org or osf.io ?

2023-10-03 08:31:54 UTC

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@npub13tm…suxp Oh my, that looks quite troubling! Should I take this as a good sign?

2023-09-30 22:03:46 UTC

#SailfishOS #Gecko dev diary Day 45. Finally some RPMs!
https://www.flypig.co.uk/gecko?&list_id=884&list=gecko

2023-09-05 11:13:07 UTC

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@npub1lhr…pd56 understood that it's all about priorities. My conclusion is that open source isn't as valued (as a principle) as it could be within the #RSE community. If it was @us_rse would be choosing open source alternatives for pragmatic reasons too, because the community would be asking for them.

2023-09-05 09:37:35 UTC

Interesting talk from Daniel S. Katz about @npub1knf…ayfq. It looks like a lot of great grassroots activity. But it's a shame that organisations promoting openness use Zoom, YouTube, Slack, Google Drive rather then open source alternatives. Not a criticism of the US-RSE specifically; this seems to be commonplace. #USRSE #RSECon23 #OpenSource #RSE
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/011/865/084/647/994/original/d63bf5020155b1d4.jpg

2023-09-05 08:12:50 UTC

#RSECon23 begins! My first non-FOSDEM conference for a while, I'm looking forward to hearing and learning about interesting and new software dev perspectives.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/011/526/303/654/296/original/8dd746ed3afd1464.jpg

2023-09-05 06:43:52 UTC

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@npub1w2v…lqef Like these: https://gadgets-reviews.com/review/2856-best-magnetic-charging-cables.html
I will read it, thank you! I did love Douglas Adams's writing, but for tech-stuff found it hard to relate to his Mac devotion.

2023-09-04 18:42:03 UTC

#SailfishOS #Gecko dev diary Day 19. In which we look at this whole rendering thing again.
Lots of work, but only a short post.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/gecko?&list_id=858&list=gecko

2023-09-04 13:44:45 UTC

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@npub180c…5gzx Re-reading your comment, maybe you were asking if I need different power-output chargers for different devices? As I understand it the device negotiates the power output so this 65W charger works for everything I have.

2023-09-04 13:41:13 UTC

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@npub180c…5gzx Yes, it really is a game-changer when travelling.
I'll double check this evening, but I'm pretty sure multiple from the same charger is okay as long as the power output is sufficient (a single laptop hogs all the juice though).

2023-09-04 13:21:26 UTC

All my devices are now charged with USB-C.
2 × laptops, 2 × phones, Gemini, headphones, earphones, Bluetooth speaker.
It means carrying just a single adapter. I spend so much of my time with this stuff, it's a distinct quality of life improvement.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/007/019/371/885/386/original/f05dd7463500a07d.jpg

2023-09-03 20:34:10 UTC

Tomorrow I'll be travelling to #RSECon23. This will be my first attendance; I'm looking forward to learning more about this new (for me) perspective on software engineering.
https://rsecon23.society-rse.org/

2023-08-31 07:03:51 UTC

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@npub1083…xrym Haha! I fear you may be disappointed, but not long to wait now!

2023-08-30 19:58:19 UTC

#SailfishOS #Gecko dev diary Day 14. In which it looks like we finally hit an error in the code rather than the build process.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/gecko?&list_id=853&list=gecko

2023-08-28 21:38:00 UTC

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@npub1xjq…4rgh Okay, that's interesting to know; thanks for info. I'll definitely look into it. I did try bootstrap and immediately hit errors, so I think it'll have to wait until stage 2 (i.e. after I have a working build) unless it becomes a blocker.

2023-08-28 20:36:46 UTC

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@npub1xjq…4rgh for the src/gl.cc file causing the segfault it's gcc. Does this look like clang behaviour to you?

2023-08-28 20:08:58 UTC

#SailfishOS #Gecko dev diary Day 12. In which we hit a compiler segmentation fault (yes, you read that right).
https://www.flypig.co.uk/gecko?&list_id=851&list=gecko

2023-08-27 22:47:22 UTC

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@npub16cd…4rxr Thanks Christian, I really appreciate you saying so!

2023-08-27 22:23:16 UTC

A quick shout-out to everyone who's been reading, boosting and favoriting my gecko dev diary posts 🦎 ⌨️ 📔. It's not exactly light reading and I admire your stamina if you even managed to get through one of them!

2023-08-25 23:11:27 UTC

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@npub1xjq…4rgh @npub1ed7…p4uc Thanks for sharing; very interesting to read about the project (as I see, based on B2G).

2023-08-25 21:42:48 UTC

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@npub1xjq…4rgh Excellent archaeological digging Fabrice ⛏️ I will fix it tomorrow!

2023-08-25 16:16:37 UTC

#SailfishOS #Gecko dev diary Day 9. In which we go in search of missing header files.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/gecko?&list_id=848&list=gecko

2023-08-25 07:01:12 UTC

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@npub1r8k…5wdw I think it depends what you mean. In previous years we discussed renaming and streamlining the defines. MOZ_WIDGET_QT doesn't really represent what it's for. But if you mean, how easy to get rid of the conditional code; I'm not sure, but probably harder (because a lot, but not all, is aligned with the MOZ_WDIGET_GTK conditioned code). It'd definitely be a good idea for someone to thoroughly check though.

2023-08-24 20:56:37 UTC

#SailfishOS #Gecko dev diary Day 8. In which we (eventually) discuss the topic of Software Archaeology.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/gecko?&list_id=847&list=gecko

2023-08-21 20:48:44 UTC

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@npub16ur…mx4u One person's tedious is another person's escape, I guess 😃

2023-08-21 19:46:40 UTC

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@npub1r8k…5wdw It's a good question, not sure if it's one I can answer though I'm afraid. I'm not familiar with kmozillahelper; it looks like a much thinner wrapper than EmbedLite, but then I guess that's your point.

2023-08-21 19:41:34 UTC

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@npub16ur…mx4u Thanks for the mention!

2023-08-21 07:35:17 UTC

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@npub1r8k…5wdw You make a very valid point about metadata; I'll make sure that's all intact before anything leaves my personal repo.
In the past we had some discussions about changing the name of the "QT" defines, as many of them aren't Qt-specific (e.g. a lot of the changes are Embedlite-specific). It's a real shame they're not included upstream.

2023-08-20 17:53:49 UTC

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@npub1r8k…5wdw It's a nice idea, but that's not the route I'm going down right now for a couple of reasons. First the upstream code has changed too much, so the patches won't apply directly. Second I only want to apply the patches that are absolutely necessary to get the build to complete. Until the code is building it's really hard to parallelise the work, so getting it to build with as few changes as possible is the priority right now.

2023-08-20 17:20:23 UTC

#SailfishOS #Gecko dev diary Day 4. In which we add more build flags and meet the Netscape Portable Runtime for the first time.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/gecko?&list_id=843&list=gecko

2023-08-19 20:37:48 UTC

#SailfishOS #Gecko developer diary Day 3. In which I spend the entire five hour train journey from London to Glasgow manually applying a single patch.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/gecko?&list_id=841&list=gecko

2023-08-19 11:23:43 UTC

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@npub189e…l4rf Looking glorious in the sun there.

2023-08-18 19:26:12 UTC

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@npub12df…y3nq Yes, I totally agree. I can appreciate Mozilla has priorities (which appear to be topped out by Firefox desktop and Android), but I'm not convinced it would even have to be a big commitment from them for it to be maintained in their tree from community contributions. The optimist in me thinks this may yet happen again 😃

2023-08-18 19:11:52 UTC

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@npub12df…y3nq "just doing it anyway" is a good way to put it I think 😃 Gecko on Sailfish OS dates back to at least Maemo/2009 (i.e. before Sailfish existed). The EmbedLite API used by Sailfish was once officially supported by Mozilla, but dropped in (I think) 2015. Since then Jolla continued with Gecko anyway. It still amazes me how Jolla pulls this stuff off (but the company really values independence and has the dev chops to do it, in my opinion).

2023-08-18 15:51:17 UTC

#SailfishOS #Gecko development diary Day 2. In which the first real fixes are made, albeit some really simple ones to start with.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/gecko?list_id=839

2023-08-18 15:44:18 UTC

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@npub1dhk…v6q5 Thanks, I appreciate you saying. It's a valid question about Jolla's involvement. It's not as simple as saying no-one from Jolla is working on it because it's something I've been discussing with them. But I can only share my work: Jolla makes its own decisions about what to share and when!

2023-08-17 22:29:58 UTC

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@npub180c…5gzx Thanks 😃 Hopefully there will be some interesting things to tackle, but let's see.

2023-08-17 10:36:28 UTC

Over the coming months (not sure how long it'll take!) I'll be upgrading the #SailfishOS #browser from #gecko ESR78 to ESR91.
Feel free to follow my progress on my developer diary if you're interested, or would like to help.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/gecko

2023-08-06 12:10:49 UTC

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@npub122l…38gt I've been there myself: with any live demo you (rightly) ought to be focussed on the audience rather than any unexpected problem solving. But your demo was very effective: it showed it worked, but also that it's proper bleeding-edge stuff.

2023-08-05 17:53:36 UTC

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@npub122l…38gt Great talk; loved it! A pretty comprehensive tour and snapshot of Linux on Mobile. Despite the camera glitch, I particularly liked the demo. Wish I could have been there in person; thanks for sharing.

2023-08-01 09:51:12 UTC

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@npub1hvm…ejp4 I think there are very valid reasons to stay on Twitter and that sounds like one. I'm still expecting dumping Twitter to have many negative consequences.

2023-08-01 09:46:15 UTC

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@npub1hvm…ejp4 I did it in weekly stages: 1) stop posting; 2) stop reading; 3) blog about it; 4) download data; 5) deactivate account. That helped confirm I don't miss it. Plus at each stage Twitter did something increasingly absurd to vindicate my decision. That helped a lot 😆

2023-08-01 08:01:35 UTC

July is over; it's now August.
As promised I've deactivated my #twitter account.
Feels liberating. Wonder how long that will last 😁
https://www.flypig.co.uk/blog?&list_id=834&list=blog

2023-07-20 21:31:47 UTC

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@npub1tha…0vtq Nice that you recognise it 😃 #RISCOS was my main OS for a long time, but I admit I spend more time on #Linux (and #SailfishOS) now. How do you know it?

2023-07-20 21:23:48 UTC

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@npub13tm…suxp yes exactly. At least one of the positives is that many #SailfishOS users are now on Mastodon, which (along with the other great stuff here) means I'm enjoying Mastodon more 😃

2023-07-20 18:59:28 UTC

Now that Twitter started locking out anyone without an account, it's time to park up my rig and walk away.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/blog?&list_id=834&list=blog
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/110/747/925/192/604/228/original/8aa04100baca15ec.png

2023-07-17 16:08:11 UTC

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There's a lot of really nice ideas and nice analysis in the story (it's nice to be credited for helping review it, but all the work and ideas came from the authors).

2023-07-17 16:03:41 UTC

From #TuringDataStories on twitter:
We have a new Turing Data Story right out of the oven 🥳! If you interested to learn more about #TfL Santander Cycles and how they are used around London check it out 👇
http://bit.ly/TDSBorisBikes
This story was born at a #turinghut23 hack week in 2022 inspired by the great #open dataset from #TfL on bike journeys.

2023-07-14 15:55:14 UTC

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@npub1k8c…j5ge and with a hard drive for storage, still less than a couple hundred euros (as long as you can get hold of one!).

2023-07-14 15:50:51 UTC

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@npub1k8c…j5ge That's very cool 😀 and 114 days is solid (although I sympathise with your pain having to restart the last one... it makes me sad to think about it too!)
A RPi would be the way I'd go for a small home server now, they've become very capable.

2023-07-14 15:45:31 UTC

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@npub1ymx…cxl8 So true! You don't really need much power to run a webserver, most routers are probably more powerful 😃

2023-07-14 07:37:26 UTC

My tiny, fanless low-power home server just hit a year of uptime 🎉
It runs #LAMP, #NextCloud, #Jitsi and a bunch of other services and has essentially been running my life for the past 15 years.
https://www.flypig.co.uk/?page=blog&list_id=832
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/110/711/280/093/424/262/original/362e96bf037e5b64.jpg

2023-06-23 16:52:49 UTC

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@npub180c…5gzx you recall well 😃 I definitely see the relationship with C++ and in fact it's fascinating to see how Rust has formalised things, just as you say. But equally, having the compiler enforce safety (and being required to annotate things to allow it) inevitably feels restrictive, even if rationally it the benefits are clear. Plus, the syntax is the same... but different!

2023-06-22 10:10:21 UTC

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@npub180c…5gzx Yes! So much ease... but also a bit of pain if, like me, you're still learning! Although, I have to say, I don't know of any language with better compiler feedback.

2023-06-22 08:55:10 UTC

We've been learning about #Rustlang lifetime annotations in our Rust reading group at the #TuringInst. One of my colleagues wrote up this really neat, clear summary for functions. Rust's compile-time checks are fascinating.
https://yongrenjie.github.io/posts/lifetimes/
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/110/587/008/822/599/250/original/f85639c70ae442de.png

2023-06-06 14:35:29 UTC

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@npub14az…m7gz @npub16mt…pnwy Thanks for taking a look! That's very cool, you're collecting a lot of nice resources and I hadn't quite appreciated how broad the #hledger / #plaintextaccounting applications are. It seems I also have some reading to do, and some software to try 😃

2023-05-12 07:55:47 UTC

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@npub10f4…8q8g Fascinating! It would indeed be great to capture that info and compare 👯 see how much of an effect it had. In practice we didn't try to measure anything about the songs or performances themselves. That's a whole interesting area though.

2023-05-12 07:40:03 UTC

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@npub10f4…8q8g That's really interesting. Can I ask what sort of difference it seemed to make? I'll double check on how we handled it, but I know we didn't take the 'Rest of the World' change into account, since there were no prior data to work with on that.

2023-05-11 21:52:03 UTC

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@npub10f4…8q8g Do you mean for the semi-final rounds specifically? My understanding is that there's still a combined tele/jury vote in the final.

2023-05-11 17:14:06 UTC

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@npub1svx…7t03 @npub1ak7…wtf5 Just to add: Liverpool must be buzzing right now! I'm sad to be missing all the excitement.

2023-03-30 13:14:04 UTC

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