Matt Cowley
v4.wtf
Matt Cowley
@v4.wtf
Open-source Software Engineer by night at Alveus Sanctuary 🌎 + Node.js 💚 + cdnjs 🛠️ | 24 | he/him | https://mattcowley.co.uk
This is exciting; the team behind the @grafana.bsky.social Cloud portal landed a feature I originally built as my first hackathon project, an instance picker!

Go to grafana.com/launch/explore, pick a Grafana Cloud instance, and you'll land on the explore page. Any route after /launch works.
Grafana Cloud
Welcome to Grafana Cloud
grafana.com
November 6, 2025 at 3:44 AM
Reposted by Matt Cowley
At ~14:00 UTC, @VodafoneUK effectively dropped off the Internet, with traffic dropping to zero. No word from the provider on outage cause, and their network status checker page is currently unavailable.
radar.cloudflare.com/traffic/as53...
radar.cloudflare.com/routing/as53...
x.com/Independent/...
October 13, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Having internet-enabled smart home devices is great until the internet goes out for a prolonged period... then you can't tell Alexa to stop the alarm you set, so the only option is to unplug the thing. Oh, and I can't turn the lights on either.
⚠️ Confirmed: Live network data show that operator Vodafone UK is experiencing a national outage with broadband and mobile data impacted, corroborating widespread user complaints 📉 #VodafoneDown
October 13, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Reposted by Matt Cowley
New Era for React = Stronger JavaScript Ecosystem 💙

React doesn’t live in isolation - It works alongside Node.js, Electron, webpack, and more. A dedicated foundation under the Linux Foundation means more collaboration, security, and sustainability across the ecosystem.

hubs.la/Q03MylxX0
Celebrating the Launch of the React Foundation | OpenJS Foundation
A New Era for React, and a Stronger JavaScript Ecosystem
hubs.la
October 7, 2025 at 6:41 PM
Looks like @imgur.com is completely unavailable in the UK now, with all images showing a message that imgur isn’t available in this region.

Guessing this is because of the Online Safety Act… surely this being unavailable will have no consequences for internet users in the UK…
September 30, 2025 at 8:58 AM
I wonder why @github.com has been having mail delivery issues today... couldn't be because of the continual spam issues being filed, mentioning every user on GitHub, generating masses of spam notification emails. Really surprised their send reputation hasn't already gone to zero.
September 24, 2025 at 10:23 PM
The last week holidaying on a very remote Greek island has been wonderful, but the fact that I've had way faster and more consistent 5G coverage here than I get at home on the outskirts of London is living very rent-free in my mind.
September 15, 2025 at 8:48 PM
Reposted by Matt Cowley
STOMPY HAS A FRIEND!

Meet our new emu ambassador, Nolie 💚

Nolie is a ~5 year old female emu that was a pet to a private owner who moved and couldn’t take her with, so now she will be with us here at Alveus to help teach people about the impacts of owning exotic pets.
September 15, 2025 at 8:22 PM
Sad to see that the folks running @hacktoberfest.com this year decided to abandon the 70,000-strong official Discord server that's been used for the previous five years and switch to the DigitalOcean one... what a waste of an established community.
September 8, 2025 at 4:50 PM
So I decided to clone the cdnjs/cdnjs repository for the first time in a while... turns out it now consumes right around 1TB on disk (with .git removed), which is not really much of a surprise when you realise it now houses 25 million files.
August 13, 2025 at 1:33 AM
Just spent an hour chatting with EE about their broadband. They assured me they'd be able to install fiber even if I don't have it currently, including digging up the road. Agent goes to send the contract, and oh dear, there's an error that our address doesn't have fiber... Sigh
July 18, 2025 at 4:00 PM
GitHub is rate-limiting their own Dependabot runs... leading to Dependabot opening PRs with no change logs in them... this is fun.

I've had a ticket open with them for multiple weeks now, no response at all.
July 15, 2025 at 2:39 AM
I managed to build a UI (with grid + aspect-ratio mess) that works correctly in Firefox and Safari, but doesn't work in Chrome. Can't think I've ever managed that before.
July 6, 2025 at 12:06 PM
I don't talk much about my day job, but if you write clean React/TypeScript, are experienced with open-source and observability, and care about user experience, come work with me: grnh.se/g8fwl10b4us UK or grnh.se/f78w1gd24us US.
Growth Engineer, Grafana Self Serve (Remote, UK)
United Kingdom (Remote)
grnh.se
July 2, 2025 at 11:22 PM
Very happy with how the server rack mockup turned out for the new compute section on the @alveussanctuary.org website. Thought about doing it as an SVG, but it was way more fun to build it with CSS and container query units to make it all scale nicely. alveus.gg/tech#compute
Tech at Alveus | Alveus Sanctuary
Alveus Sanctuary is a virtual education center, and with that comes the need for a lot of technology to make it all work, from livestream broadcast systems to PTZ cameras and microphones in the ambass...
alveus.gg
June 30, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Reposted by Matt Cowley
Happy Pride 🌈

In our latest blog post, @vcarl.com shares a powerful reflection on open source and identity: nodejs.org/en/blog/comm...

We're spotlighting LGBTQ voices in the Node.js community. Got a story to share? Submit a PR: github.com/nodejs/nodej...
June 27, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Reposted by Matt Cowley
It's already that time of year again: we're so excited to announce our #JingleJam2025 charity partners!

We can't wait to go live and support these brilliant causes that make the world a better place for children and young people this December.

Here are your 2025 charities! 🧵
May 28, 2025 at 4:12 PM
You love to see it when you do your self-assessment tax return and HMRC tells you they owe you money because a previous employer taxed you wrong
May 26, 2025 at 5:44 PM
If you're like me and store code locally organised similar to ~/git//, you might be interested in this @vscode.dev extension I shipped today that allows you to have your `window.title` set to `/` (`${parentName}/${folderName}`): marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemNa...
VSCode Window Title Extras - Visual Studio Marketplace
Extension for Visual Studio Code - VSCode extension that provides additional window title variables.
marketplace.visualstudio.com
May 4, 2025 at 6:28 PM
I suppose the advantage of CEOs being so openly political on main is that at least you know who you want to support and be associated with
May 4, 2025 at 1:33 AM
Just spoke to Google Workspace about the ridiculous price increase for AI functionality I didn't ask for... expressed that to the support agent, who responded with "I really understand your concern and as a customer myself, I would feel the same."
May 1, 2025 at 10:37 PM
If you’re using @cloudflare.social Pages, you need to explicitly set your NODE_VERSION to something newer — Cloudflare will not be updating the default Node.js version, even for new projects: developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platfo...
📅 Reminder: Node.js 18 is scheduled to reach End-of-Life on April 30, 2025.

We recommend that you update to Node.js 20 or 22 as Node.js 18 will no longer receive security updates once it reaches End-of-Life.
April 24, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Reposted by Matt Cowley
📅 Reminder: Node.js 18 is scheduled to reach End-of-Life on April 30, 2025.

We recommend that you update to Node.js 20 or 22 as Node.js 18 will no longer receive security updates once it reaches End-of-Life.
April 24, 2025 at 9:14 PM
Well, this feels like some dangerous advice from @github.com Copilot given the recent issues with using tags for Actions.
April 16, 2025 at 2:41 PM
You know you've become an adult when the exciting birthday gifts are chopping boards and a fire extinguisher.
April 15, 2025 at 9:18 PM