NCE.DFOS Week 14: Codename Hacienda
MAY 5TH, 2026
Hello NCE and DFOS friends, a day later than usual. A busy schedule combined with travel made it difficult to sit down for our usual single-take hang. Thank you for your patience. I promise the wait was worth it.
DFOS 1: Hacienda
The wait, for those following along, has been for what was previously called Desktop2. Now it has a new name: DFOS 1: Hacienda. We’re treating this iteration of DFOS as its first fully embodied version — the release where the tool we imagined and the world it practically makes real are intertwined and alive.
The Hacienda name comes from an essay we think about constantly: Ivan Chtcheglov's “Formulary for New Urbanism,” one of the founding documents of the Situationist movement in the 1950s. The essay begins, “We are bored in the city, there is no longer any temple of the sun," before describing the frivolous distractions that surround the writer, which they reject.
Instead, they are searching for something more real. There are people they wish to meet but can’t. There are conversations they want to have, but no one else is interested in them. Except, the author notes, in one place: the Hacienda. Where all the people you want to talk to are. Where all the right conversations happen. Except, Chtcheglov writes:
"You'll never see the Hacienda. It doesn't exist. It must be built."
This is exactly what the new DFOS is about.
DFOS is the Hacienda. The hidden world within the world. The place where people gather to have the conversation they wish they were having. And, with this new version, a world that does not exist, but you can build.
DFOS 1: Hacienda marks the beginning of a new universe of universes. Unlike our earlier alpha expressions of DFOS, with Hacienda, no two spaces will be alike. Each space begins virtually blank — just a single groupchat — with the simple, intuitive capability to build out, design, and add to your world however you see fit.
Spaces start with an empty desktop:
Clicking the + sign or “edit theme” invites you to add new components to your DFOS:
Each app, folder, and link can be customized with name and image:
Producing a whole universe of information, purpose, and capabilities specific to that group.
Including folders and content held within them:
Hacienda introduces other new features, including an updated chat app that does away with the million channel-like UI of Discord and Slack, replacing it with a new chat design — each chat its own contained space, with a handy room switcher that helps you bounce around.
There are still more pieces to come before Hacienda is complete, including money, treasury, paywalling parts of spaces, and a new post experience. Those will be rolling out over the next few weeks, with a public release coming at the end of the month.
This version of DFOS has been built hand-in-hand with all of you, the sickos already sharing this space with us. We want that to continue, so we’re also adding a persistent dialogue box where you can message us to share feedback, bugs, feature requests, and whatever else comes up.
The plan is for Hacienda to begin rolling out to all existing spaces later tonight into tomorrow. We still have some work on our side to ensure existing spaces transition cleanly.
By next week we’ll have new spaces defaulting into Hacienda, and the next phase of DFOS will really begin.
This is a formulary for a new internet, and we’re all doing it.
Peace and love y’all,
<3 <3 <3
DFOS
*Header image by the one and only Edgar. TY Edgar!
