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Sophie

@sophie@floss.social

Unapologetically lesbian, trans, ace, autistic, disabled.

Struggling with society, ME/CFS, and my inner demons.

Open Source: Currently maintaining Pika Backup, Loupe, Key Rack, Glycin, and apps.gnome.org. Part of the GNOME Circle Committee, and the Release Team. 

Please don't send DMs for software support. Use the issue tracker of discourse.

I'm sharing my personal opinions here and not those of any organization I work for.

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16 Posts

Joined May 11, 2023

Pronouns:

she/her

GitLab:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/sophie-h

Personal:

@sophie@weirder.earth

Projects:

https://blogs.gnome.org/sophieh/projects/

Posts

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · Jul 07, 2026

It is #DisabilityPrideMonth! I used this occasion to write a bit about accessibility in GNOME, ableism, and share some ideas about what we can use this pride month for. I'm looking forward to learning about the perspectives of other disabled people #AccessibilityInFreeSoftware https://blogs.gnome.org/sophieh/2026/07/07/accessibility-in-gnome/

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · May 21, 2026

Stock buybacks are just dividends in disguise and hence a tax evasion scheme.

Sure, you would have to pay taxes when selling the stock eventually. But the ultra-rich are just not selling and instead use stocks as collateral for massive loans.

We have to tax wealth.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/nvidia-approves-50-billion-stock-buyback-time-buy

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · May 09, 2026

Replying to @LucasWerkmeister@wikis.world

@LucasWerkmeister@wikis.world sadly the Shell Extensions got absolutely spammed with slop. There is a policy against LLM generated code for shell extensions, but I guess TWIG needs one too now. However, from my own projects, I can report that people will knowingly ignore anti AI policies.

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · May 05, 2026

Finally got a subscription to https://www.andererseits.org/abo/

Having an independent newspaper run by disabled people is so important! I hope they can survive!

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @ondrejkolin@mastodon.social

@ondrejkolin@mastodon.social @gnome@floss.social Thanks a lot for your continuing support. It makes a difference!

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · Mar 31, 2026

Replying to @hbons@mastodon.social

@hbons@mastodon.social @fina@weirder.earth The best resource is @ju@chaos.social's book on gtk-rs https://gtk-rs.org/gtk4-rs/stable/latest/book/

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · Mar 31, 2026

Replying to @sophie@floss.social

Another shoutout goes to @borgbackup@fosstodon.org which has powered Pika since the beginning and with which we always had a great relationship. You can support them here https://opencollective.com/borgbackup Huge thanks to all the people that support other parts of the stack, that have support Pika Backup financially, with encouraging feedback, translations, or issue reports!

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · Mar 31, 2026

Replying to @sophie@floss.social

For Pika Backup 0.8 @fina@weirder.earth converted all code to what is now the common GNOME Rust style. In 2018, gtk-rs was still in its infancy, compared to today. Subclassing and template widgets weren't a thing in practice. But even Rust was quite different with not supporting async as language feature and therefore not being available in gtk-rs. It's amazing how far gtk-rs has come. You can also support them here https://opencollective.com/gtk-rs

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · Mar 31, 2026

It's not only Trans Day of Visibility 🏳️‍⚧️ but also World Backup Day! Therefore, Pika Backup 0.8 is available as of today. After two years of work, this release not only brings many small improvements, but also a rework of the code base that dates back to 2018. This will greatly help to keep Pika Backup stable and maintainable for another eight years.

Learn more on https://apps.gnome.org/PikaBackup/ and help Pika Backup via a donation on https://opencollective.com/pika-backup or to me directly https://blogs.gnome.org/sophieh/projects/

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · Mar 27, 2026

As you may already have learned from the @gnome@floss.social 50 release notes, Sessions has been accepted into #GnomeCircle ✨

Sessions is a simple visual timer application designed specifically for the pomodoro technique and maintained by @pojntfx@mastodon.social.

https://apps.gnome.org/Sessions/

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · Mar 14, 2026

Replying to @will@www.librepunk.club

@will@www.librepunk.club @gloriouscow@oldbytes.space @volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip That still has the potential for you getting a model that is trained with heavy biases, manifesting existing oppressive structures. It could still lead to AI psychosis. Just two name two potential issues. Running something locally doesn't fix who trained it and many other problems.

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · Mar 14, 2026

Replying to @will@www.librepunk.club

@will@www.librepunk.club @gloriouscow@oldbytes.space @volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip WRT to medical technology: We are mostly talking about generative AI like chatbots here. I don't think they should be used in the medical field if avoidable. Machine learning has been used for a long time in the field of medicine and research. That's something that can be properly trained for certain things. We don't need large language models for that.

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · Mar 14, 2026

Replying to @sophie@floss.social

Don’t get me wrong, I have quite radical positions about many of these topics. Including the use of AI. But I’m also part of disability communities where people rely on AI for medical help and even emotional support, knowing very well that these are symptoms of a broken medical system and society. I have seen too often, that purity test are hitting the most marginalized, which are literally fighting for their survival.

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · Mar 14, 2026

So, condemning everyone who uses AI is the new purity test for some bubbles now. And it this binary approach makes me sad and scared.

I have seen so many of these rules to define in-groups. You are eating animal products? How can you, killing the climate. You are not using the exact expected set of content warnings? How can you be so ignorant. You are shaving your legs as a woman? How antifeminist of you. You are using a car? How can you justify all the bad impact of this.

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · Feb 27, 2026

The first beta version for Pika Backup 0.8 is available on Flathub Beta. If you want to help with testing, take a look at our tracking issue.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/pika-backup/-/issues/660

Sophie @sophie@floss.social · Jan 04, 2026

Replying to @matt@toot.cafe

@matt@toot.cafe I'm sure anything in that direction existing, would also help contributors. We had a11y criteria for GNOME Circle apps since its inception. We also have it as a requirement for Core apps. Reviewers are checking for the most obvious things with Orca. But knowing more about how Orca is used in practice and what keyboard navigation features are used in apps etc. would help reviewers, designers, and developers a lot. I would also suggest posting the idea in https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/-/issues/984

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