Note: Welcome to a post in my “Ramblings” category. This is category is reserved for the occasional semi-off-topic post. Today’s entry is a look at the “W” social media platform, specifically the narrative and messaging around its announcement. I typically focus on my personal hobbies and interests on the blog and avoid political topics like the plague, but occasionally the two will cross paths in way where it becomes impossible to talk about one without the other. This might be one of those times.
If you’re not interested, that’s fine. I’ll be back to my normal stuff next time!

What is “W”?

Officially known as “W”, wsocial.eu was announced in January of this year (2026). The social media platform was introduced as not just another twitter “X” competitor, but as a “strategic instrument for democracy” and a cornerstone of European “digital sovereignty” ¹.

So, in addition to the new platform, there’s been a bit else going one. I’ve relocated, for example, which meant not only dealing with moving and mortgages, but also completely breaking down my homelab and rebuilding it in a new place…

For the homelab: I've met a lot of my learning goals over the last two years, and I find myself wondering what to do next. For a little background, I don't work in IT. I don't need to learn any of this; it's just been a hobby of mine, mostly in pursuit of fun, knowledge, and control over my personal digital systems...

While trying to write the script mentioned in a prior post, I decided that I would use an XML parsing module of some sort rather than writing my own.  A quick google search turned up a number options, but I wasn't quite sure which would be best for my use-case.  I knew that I wanted to specifically read RSS feeds, so using a general purpose XML parser was probably overkill if there was a more RSS-focused option available. I found several RSS-focused modules to choose from, including XML::RSSLite; which sounded promising as a light-weight RSS-specific module. 

New Keyboard

I picked up a Feker Alice98 in an attempt to get something a little more "ergonomic" than my previous keyboard. It's an "Alice" layout, with the interesting distinction of having two "B" keys.
This keyboard is also compatible with VIA, making keymapping, backlighting, and macros easy to manage. This keyboard isn't listed on VIA's website, though, so it requires manually importing the keyboard definition file. Hopefully VIA will add it officially, eventually.