[ 2026-07-14 ]

Columba let me down. I had to get a new phone recently and tried to export/import my identity from Columba on the old phone to Columba on the new phone. Welp, that didn't work. Any time I'd try to import the identity Columba would crash. I tried it both as restoring backups and importing the raw identity key. In both cases Columba crashed. All the other messages, contacts, etc., came over, but without the identity key they're all useless. I checked the Github issues and apparently that's an open issue since sometime last year with no resolution.

So, I have a new identity. I shouldn't have to go through this again any time soon since I don't think I'll be getting another phone for a while. But it still frustrated me and made me sad. I've updated the identity on the contact page here, but if you'd sent me messages before and send me one again at the old identity I won't ever receive it. :(

That said, I don't know why this issue is still open. I know this is all FOSS, provided as-is, all that stuff. You'd think this would be a major breaking issue, yet it stays unresolved. I don't know if this is because it's not a priority or the author's use of Claude to do the development means they don't actually know how to fix it. I don't want to assume that's the case, but... it does seem to happen a lot nowadays. I've been bitten recently by a few other not-initially-fully-LLM-but-surprise projects as well, so I'm a bit frustrated with the state of things even ignoring all the ethical concerns about AI.

I guess I just need to get back to working on learning more programming languages to write things for myself. Maybe I'll make progress in the next decade lol