David Heinemeier...
Cold reading an ADHD affliction
I'm sure there are truly pathological cases of ADHD out there, and maybe taking amphetamines really...
11 hours ago
I'm sure there are truly pathological cases of ADHD out there, and maybe taking amphetamines really is a magic pill for some folks. But there clearly is also an entire cottage industry cropping up around convincing perfectly normal people that they suffer from ADHD, and that this...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Captchas Turned Notification Exploits
When my site analytics reported a large number of inbound traffic from Hacker News clones, I got...
13 hours ago
When my site analytics reported a large number of inbound traffic from Hacker News clones, I got curious and started clicking links.[1]
I like to visit links. I am connoisseur of it. I love the feeling of landing on something you didn’t expect — which is precisely what...
swyx's site RSS Feed
Engineering AI Agents - OpenAI DevDay Singapore talk
this is the tracking doc for my talk on "Engineering AI Agents" for OpenAI DevDay Singapore.
yesterday
this is the tracking doc for my talk on "Engineering AI Agents" for OpenAI DevDay Singapore.
Computer Things
Hyperproperties
I wrote about hyperproperties on my blog four years ago, but now an intriguing client problem got me...
2 days ago
I wrote about hyperproperties on my blog four years ago, but now an intriguing client problem got me thinking about them again.1
We're using TLA+ to model a system that starts in state A, and under certain complicated conditions P, transitions to state B. They also had a flag f...
David Heinemeier...
Joining the Shopify board of directors
I've known Tobi for over twenty years now. Right from the earliest days of Ruby on Rails, when he...
2 days ago
I've known Tobi for over twenty years now. Right from the earliest days of Ruby on Rails, when he was building Snowdevil, which eventually became Shopify, to sell snowboards online. Here's his first commit to Rails from 2004, which improved the ergonomics of controller testing....
the singularity is...
A Place for Me
Have all the jobs been fake for years? Read this, a NASA critique from 1992.
Basically society is...
2 days ago
Have all the jobs been fake for years? Read this, a NASA critique from 1992.
Basically society is run by useless people making work for other useless people so that together they can all alleviate their deep concern about not having a place in society.
Elon has a bigger tent of...
Blog - Bitfield...
Rust and Go vs everything else
Alex Pliutau and I discuss what Go programmers should know about Rust, and
why the two languages...
2 days ago
Alex Pliutau and I discuss what Go programmers should know about Rust, and
why the two languages make perfect partners.
A Beautiful Site
If Edgar Allan Poe was into Design Systems
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
While I nodded, nearly napping,...
2 days ago
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
"'Tis a design system," I muttered, "bringing order to the core—
Ah, distinctly I remember, every button, every splendor,
Each component, standardized,...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Named Blogs
I think it’s endearing when people name their blog.
I’m not talking about branding, like people do...
3 days ago
I think it’s endearing when people name their blog.
I’m not talking about branding, like people do with professional blogs or newsletters.
I’m talking about personal blogs that people name out of care and idiosyncrasy.
It’s endearing, because you brand things you own, you name...
Ferd.ca
Local Optimizations Don't Lead to Global Optimums
I like to think that I write code deliberately. I’m an admittedly slow developer, and I want to...
3 days ago
I like to think that I write code deliberately. I’m an admittedly slow developer, and I want to believe I do so on purpose. I want to know as much as I can about the context of what it is that I'm automating.
I also use a limited set of tools. I used old computers for a long...
Confessions of a...
An Unreachable Hidden XKCD Easter Egg inside CPython
No, I'm not talking about import antigravity
3 days ago
No, I'm not talking about import antigravity
Oxide Computer...
Advancing Cloud and HPC Convergence with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Oxide Computer Company and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Work Together to Advance Cloud and...
3 days ago
Oxide Computer Company and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Work Together to Advance Cloud and HPC Convergence
Oxide Computer Company and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) today announced a plan to bring on-premises cloud computing capabilities to the Livermore...
Julia Evans
Importing a frontend Javascript library without a build system
I like writing Javascript without a build system
and for the millionth time yesterday I ran into a...
3 days ago
I like writing Javascript without a build system
and for the millionth time yesterday I ran into a problem where I needed to
figure out how to import a Javascript library in my code without using a build
system, and it took FOREVER to figure out how to import it because...
Darek Kay
Open Graph images: Format compatibility across platforms
While redesigning my photography website, I've looked into the Open Graph (OG) images, which are...
4 days ago
While redesigning my photography website, I've looked into the Open Graph (OG) images, which are displayed when sharing a link on social media or messaging apps. Here's an example from WhatsApp:
For each photo that I publish, I create a WebP thumbnail for the gallery. I wanted...
A Smart Bear
p-Hacking your A/B tests
Half of your "successful" A/B tests are false-positives. This is why, and how to fix it.
4 days ago
Half of your "successful" A/B tests are false-positives. This is why, and how to fix it.
the singularity is...
A One Way Bridge
Okay I went to Devcon. And while there I had a great idea that the crypto space really needs. It...
5 days ago
Okay I went to Devcon. And while there I had a great idea that the crypto space really needs. It seems like while AI infrastructure has improved by leaps and bounds in the last 5 years, crypto infra has actually gotten worse. I’m proposing some great new infrastructure that the...
Irrational...
How to get more headcount.
One of the recurring challenges that teams face is getting headcount to support their initiatives.
A...
5 days ago
One of the recurring challenges that teams face is getting headcount to support their initiatives.
A similar problem is the idea that a team can’t get a favored project into their roadmap.
In both cases, teams often create a story about how clueless executives don’t understand...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Reading and Writing as Human Expression & Connection
Why do we write?
We write, in part, because our own reading was given as a gift to us and we want to...
6 days ago
Why do we write?
We write, in part, because our own reading was given as a gift to us and we want to extend that same magic we received to others. Here’s Mandy Brown (and my notes) in a recent article:
The more compelling and interesting reason that most writers seek out readers...
alexwlchan
How I name my computers
I got a new Mac mini this weekend, to replace my aging Intel iMac.
I’ve already done most of the...
a week ago
I got a new Mac mini this weekend, to replace my aging Intel iMac.
I’ve already done most of the setup, and this blog post is one of the first things I’ll make with it.
I’m quite pleased with how quickly I can get up and running with a new machine.
There’s one hard part of...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
The Beauty of Building
Jan Miksovsky has an absolutely tremendous article about how he cobbled together some disparate...
a week ago
Jan Miksovsky has an absolutely tremendous article about how he cobbled together some disparate pieces of hardware and software in order to help improve the quality of life of his mother who has amnesia.
Everything about this article illustrates what got me into making...
David Heinemeier...
Obsessive problem solving followed by aimless wandering
I haven't felt any urge to tinker with my Linux setup in months. This after spending much of the...
a week ago
I haven't felt any urge to tinker with my Linux setup in months. This after spending much of the spring and into summer furiously and obsessively trying every PC out there to find the perfect replacement for the Mac, diving deep with Ubuntu, and codifying my findings in the...
Computer Things
Five Unusual Raku Features
Logic for Programmers is now in Beta!
v0.5 marks the official end of alpha! With the new version,...
a week ago
Logic for Programmers is now in Beta!
v0.5 marks the official end of alpha! With the new version, all of the content I wanted to put in the book is now present, and all that's left is copyediting, proofreading, and formatting. Which will probably take as long as it took to...
David Heinemeier...
House rules in Fortnite
We play a lot of Fortnite at our house. It's a great game for teaching kids cooperative discipline,...
a week ago
We play a lot of Fortnite at our house. It's a great game for teaching kids cooperative discipline, and in a remarkably wholesome setting to boot (no blood, cartoon styling). I've had no qualms involving all three of our boys from an early age in the family squad, including our...
the singularity is...
The Collective Marshmallow Test
Society is even harder than passing the marshmallow test.
Instead of a single person, imagine 100...
a week ago
Society is even harder than passing the marshmallow test.
Instead of a single person, imagine 100 people in a room. One marshmallow is placed on a table. If everyone can leave it alone for 15 minutes, everyone gets 2 marshmallows. But if just one person eats it, everyone gets...
Oxide Computer...
Remembering Charles Beeler
We are heartbroken to relay that Charles Beeler, a friend and early investor
in Oxide, passed
away...
a week ago
We are heartbroken to relay that Charles Beeler, a friend and early investor
in Oxide, passed
away in September after a battle with cancer. We lost Charles far too soon;
he had a tremendous influence on the careers of us both.
Our relationship with Charles dates back nearly two...
Engineer’s Codex
5 Non-LLM Software Trends To Be Excited About
Innovations outside the AI spotlight
a week ago
Innovations outside the AI spotlight
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Navigations on the Web
When trying to define the difference between a link (<a>) and a button (<button>), a general rule of...
a week ago
When trying to define the difference between a link (<a>) and a button (<button>), a general rule of thumb is: links are for navigation, buttons are not.
That can take you pretty far. However, like most things, there’s nuance and that mental model can fall apart under certain...
David Heinemeier...
Too much therapy at work
Many years ago, Jason and I hired a COO at 37signals, but ended up letting them go after just a year...
a week ago
Many years ago, Jason and I hired a COO at 37signals, but ended up letting them go after just a year (many reasons, another story). This happened not long before one of our company meet-ups, so we thought it fitting to discuss the matter in-person. What a mistake. The session...
Irrational...
Navigating Private Equity ownership.
In 2020, you could credibly argue that ZIRP explains the world,
but that’s an impossible argument to...
a week ago
In 2020, you could credibly argue that ZIRP explains the world,
but that’s an impossible argument to make in 2024 when zero-interest rate policy is only a fond memory.
Instead, we’re seeing a number of companies designed for rapid expansion learning to adapt
to a world that...
Jibran’s Perspective
Project 2: Gift cards to Pakistan
I’ve completed a freelance project I was working on for a few months, and have started saying no to...
a week ago
I’ve completed a freelance project I was working on for a few months, and have started saying no to new opportunities. It’s time to work on one of my own ideas again. This is part of my plan to start failing more.
I’ve decided to build a business sending gift cards to Pakistan -...
A Smart Bear
A life-changing challenge guided by Pascal's Wager
Applying Pascal's Wager: Humility wins, arrogance loses.
a week ago
Applying Pascal's Wager: Humility wins, arrogance loses.
Confessions of a...
The Pythonic Emptiness
Why the Pythonic way of doing emptiness check on sequences is not necessarily ambiguous in most...
a week ago
Why the Pythonic way of doing emptiness check on sequences is not necessarily ambiguous in most cases
Julia Evans
New microblog with TILs
I added a new section to this site a couple weeks ago called
TIL (“today I learned”).
the goal: save...
a week ago
I added a new section to this site a couple weeks ago called
TIL (“today I learned”).
the goal: save interesting tools & facts I posted on social media
One kind of thing I like to post on Mastodon/Bluesky is “hey, here’s a cool
thing”, like the great SQLite repl litecli, or
the...
Charles Chen
AI Startup Moats: The Difference Between Bakers and Ovens
Are new AI startups "just another wrapper for a 3rd party model"? Does having an oven make you a...
a week ago
Are new AI startups "just another wrapper for a 3rd party model"? Does having an oven make you a baker?
Charles Chen
On Bakers, Ovens, and AI Startup Moats
Are new AI startups "just another wrapper for a 3rd party model"? Does having an oven make you a...
a week ago
Are new AI startups "just another wrapper for a 3rd party model"? Does having an oven make you a baker?
Oxide Computer...
How Oxide Cuts Data Center Power Consumption in Half
Here’s a sobering thought: today, data centers already consume 1-2% of the world’s power, and that...
a week ago
Here’s a sobering thought: today, data centers already consume 1-2% of the world’s power, and that percentage will likely rise to 3-4% by the end of the decade. According to Goldman Sachs research, that rise will include a doubling in data center carbon dioxide emissions. As the...
Tony Finch's blog
getopt() but smaller
The other day I learned about the Rust crate
lexopt which describes itself as,
A pathologically...
2 weeks ago
The other day I learned about the Rust crate
lexopt which describes itself as,
A pathologically simple command line argument parser.
Most argument parsers are declarative: you tell them what to parse,
and they do it. This one provides you with a stream of options and
values and...
Kagi Blog
Kagi Translate - We speak your language
Your browser does not support the video tag.
2 weeks ago
Your browser does not support the video tag.
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Persisting State to localStorage in Recoil Across Browser Tabs
I was working on a project using Recoil for state management in React.
I needed to persist some...
2 weeks ago
I was working on a project using Recoil for state management in React.
I needed to persist some state to localStorage, and there’s some info on how to do it in Recoil’s docs.
That works; however it doesn’t respond to state changes from other instances of your app in multiple...
David Heinemeier...
The spells are spent
They just don't work any more, those baseless accusations that anyone we disagree with is a racist,...
2 weeks ago
They just don't work any more, those baseless accusations that anyone we disagree with is a racist, misogynist, fascist. After being invoked in en masse and in vain for the better part of the past decade, their power to shock and awe is finally gone. All that's left is a weak...
Josh Collinsworth
The childlike and the childish
It's crushing and disheartening to discover I live in a country where half the adults around me...
2 weeks ago
It's crushing and disheartening to discover I live in a country where half the adults around me still haven't learned something I'm teaching my kindergartener.
Computer Things
A list of ternary operators
Sup nerds, I'm back from SREcon! I had a blast, despite knowing nothing about site reliability...
2 weeks ago
Sup nerds, I'm back from SREcon! I had a blast, despite knowing nothing about site reliability engineering and being way over my head in half the talks. I'm trying to catch up on The Book and contract work now so I'll do something silly here: ternary operators.
Almost all...
David Heinemeier...
What you know that just ain't so
The fun bit about business is in all the answers you don't have. Should we be priced higher or lower...
2 weeks ago
The fun bit about business is in all the answers you don't have. Should we be priced higher or lower or leave it alone? Should we chase these customers over here or those customers over there? Should we add more features or polish the ones we have? There's endless variation in...
the singularity is...
…and now we see what is possible
Every 70 years America goes through a revolutionary transition. Washington, Lincoln, FDR, now?
The...
2 weeks ago
Every 70 years America goes through a revolutionary transition. Washington, Lincoln, FDR, now?
The Republicans now control the Presidency, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. Is that everything? Does government power lie there, like we are told, or is it all secretly...
Josh Collinsworth
A response to "Defending Open Source: Protecting the Future of WordPress"
I feel it's important to issue a critical reading of Automattic's post, as it doesn't seem to offer...
2 weeks ago
I feel it's important to issue a critical reading of Automattic's post, as it doesn't seem to offer much of a serious or objective examination of the issues at hand. Rather, the post unfortunately reads as something more akin to a puff piece, or corporate propaganda.
Darek Kay
A guide to bookmarklets
I'm a frequent user of bookmarklets. As I'm sharing some of them on my blog, I wrote this post to...
2 weeks ago
I'm a frequent user of bookmarklets. As I'm sharing some of them on my blog, I wrote this post to explain what bookmarklets are and how to use them.
In short, a bookmarklet is a browser bookmark containing JavaScript code. Clicking the bookmark executes the script in the context...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Job Screening Blog Post
Take a look at these two animated gifs.
First:
Second:
Can you tell the difference between...
2 weeks ago
Take a look at these two animated gifs.
First:
Second:
Can you tell the difference between them?
Do you care?
If not, we might not be a good fit.
#designEngineering
Email
:: Mastodon ::
Twitter
#designEngineer
Irrational...
Using systems modeling to refine strategy.
While I was probably late to learn the concept
of strategy testing,
I might have learned about...
2 weeks ago
While I was probably late to learn the concept
of strategy testing,
I might have learned about systems modeling too early in my career,
stumbling on Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems: A Primer
before I began my career in software.
Over the years, I’ve discovered a number of...
Blog System/5
Demystifying secure NFS
My lab notes on the arduous process of setting up NFSv4 with Kerberos across a Synology NAS and...
2 weeks ago
My lab notes on the arduous process of setting up NFSv4 with Kerberos across a Synology NAS and various Linux and FreeBSD clients.
the singularity is...
Influence Agents
Check 1, 2 is the mic on?
Most AI doom scenarios are nonsense. The idea of a rogue computer behaving...
2 weeks ago
Check 1, 2 is the mic on?
Most AI doom scenarios are nonsense. The idea of a rogue computer behaving in a way no humans want never made sense to me, only to Hollywood who doesn’t know all that much about computers.
Paul Christiano has one of my favorite takes, that the creation...
A Smart Bear
No wait, of course THAT is the single most important SaaS metric
Is it LTV? Retention? NRR? Magic Number? Rule of 40? Or: Do you need to un-ask the question.
2 weeks ago
Is it LTV? Retention? NRR? Magic Number? Rule of 40? Or: Do you need to un-ask the question.
alexwlchan
Moving my website from Netlify to Caddy
I had a long train journey on Tuesday, and I spent the time moving this website from Netlify to a...
2 weeks ago
I had a long train journey on Tuesday, and I spent the time moving this website from Netlify to a Linux server running Caddy.
(Yes, the Wi-Fi on European trains is reliable enough to make that possible, even pleasant.)
Hopefully nobody noticed!
When I flipped the DNS records to...
macwright.com
Recently: Cycling and Autumn
I haven’t been posting much to the ‘main blog’ recently, but I have been keeping the micro blog...
2 weeks ago
I haven’t been posting much to the ‘main blog’ recently, but I have been keeping the micro blog updates humming. If you want more content in your RSS reader, you can subscribe to those posts, which are shorter, more scattered, and even less copyedited. It feels bad to have...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Hacker News Clones
Every once in a while, I’ll have a post gain traction over on ye ole’ orange site (Hacker News).
I...
2 weeks ago
Every once in a while, I’ll have a post gain traction over on ye ole’ orange site (Hacker News).
I find out about it because my analytics digest will get a yuge uptick in page views.
What’s interesting is all the referral sources that show up in my analytics. The Hacker News is...
the singularity is...
High Trust Society
I just want you to see, I just want you to see
Regardless of who wins on Tuesday, does anyone think...
2 weeks ago
I just want you to see, I just want you to see
Regardless of who wins on Tuesday, does anyone think this gets fixed? Is Kamala going to restore trust in government? Is Trump going to restore trust in government?
Despite what Western media might have you believe about how the...
orlp.net - Blog...
Breaking CityHash64, MurmurHash2/3, wyhash, and more...
Hash functions are incredibly
neat mathematical objects. They can map arbitrary data to a small...
2 weeks ago
Hash functions are incredibly
neat mathematical objects. They can map arbitrary data to a small fixed-size
output domain such that the mapping is deterministic, yet appears to be random.
This “deterministic randomness” is incredibly useful for a variety of purposes,
such as hash...
Cognitive...
Demystifying OpenAI's Terms of Use with Regards to Dataset Licenses
With the recent update to OpenAI's Terms of Use on October 23, 2024, there’s been a flurry of online...
2 weeks ago
With the recent update to OpenAI's Terms of Use on October 23, 2024, there’s been a flurry of online discussions around what these terms mean for developers, businesses, and everyday users of AI tools like ChatGPT. Much of the conversation, especiall...
swyx's site RSS Feed
Moving in Big Cities: Lugg vs Clutter
i recently had to move (from smolhaus 1.5 to a temporary place) and so had to evaluate some choices...
2 weeks ago
i recently had to move (from smolhaus 1.5 to a temporary place) and so had to evaluate some choices in moving options. TLDR: I made a huge mistake not choosing Clutter.
Alice GG
Writing GDScript with Neovim
Neovim is by far my favorite text editor.
The clutter-free interface and keyboard-only navigation...
2 weeks ago
Neovim is by far my favorite text editor.
The clutter-free interface and keyboard-only navigation are what keep me productive in my daily programming.
In an earlier post, I explained how I configure it into a minimalist development environment.
Today, I will show you how to use...
Blog - Bitfield...
Constraints in Go
Freedom is nothing without constraints, and Go’s generics gives us a
powerful way to build...
2 weeks ago
Freedom is nothing without constraints, and Go’s generics gives us a
powerful way to build polymorphic types and functions constrained by type
sets. Let’s geek out.
Blog - Bitfield...
Generic types in Go
Golang generics open up a lot of exciting new possibilities for us as
programmers. In this...
3 weeks ago
Golang generics open up a lot of exciting new possibilities for us as
programmers. In this tutorial, we’ll look at ways we can use type
parameters to define customised generic types.
Julia Evans
ASCII control characters in my terminal
Hello! I’ve been thinking about the terminal a lot and yesterday I got curious
about all these...
3 weeks ago
Hello! I’ve been thinking about the terminal a lot and yesterday I got curious
about all these “control codes”, like Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-W, etc. What’s
the deal with all of them?
a table of ASCII control characters
Here’s a table of all 33 ASCII control characters, and what they...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Quality Means The Flexibility to Change
Here’s Ben Nadal quoting Dave Farley:
I've come to the belief that the only definition of quality in...
3 weeks ago
Here’s Ben Nadal quoting Dave Farley:
I've come to the belief that the only definition of quality in code that makes any sense is our ability to change the code. If it's easy to change, it's high quality; if it's hard to change, it's not.
Then Ben comments:
I'm sure that some...
Confessions of a...
Live Session: Live Coding a Bytecode Interpreter for Python
We are due for our next live session.
3 weeks ago
We are due for our next live session.
bunnie's blog
Name that Ware, October 2024
The Ware for October 2024 is shown below. This one should be a smidge easier to guess than last...
3 weeks ago
The Ware for October 2024 is shown below. This one should be a smidge easier to guess than last month’s ware. The main reason I liked this ware is actually the board shown below with the prominent star-routing. It’s such traditional hand-routing work, I love craftsmanship like...
bunnie's blog
Winner, Name that Ware September 2024
Last month’s Ware was a Cue COVID test reader. It uses LAMP (loop-mediated isothermal amplification)...
3 weeks ago
Last month’s Ware was a Cue COVID test reader. It uses LAMP (loop-mediated isothermal amplification) to perform a fast and sensitive detection of nucleic acid sequences. Thanks again to Curtis Galloway for contributing this ware for me to take apart and photograph! Nobody had...
The Codist
My Art And Color-After Tiling
I make generative art with Swift and use tiling in many pieces. Truchet tiles are generally arranged...
3 weeks ago
I make generative art with Swift and use tiling in many pieces. Truchet tiles are generally arranged randomly and contain everything appearing in the final image. What I do differently is to separate the layout of tiles from colorizing the image. I call this technique...
Confessions of a...
The CAP Theorem of Clustering: Why Every Algorithm Must Sacrifice Something
No clustering algorithm is perfect and you must make a trade-off.
3 weeks ago
No clustering algorithm is perfect and you must make a trade-off.
alexwlchan
A script to verify my Netlify redirects
I’ve changed the URL design on this website a couple of times.
The current structure seems to be...
3 weeks ago
I’ve changed the URL design on this website a couple of times.
The current structure seems to be working fairly well, but I made some dubious decisions when I started out that really didn’t scale.
(Like having a single folder for all of my /images/ – of which there are now over...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
For Sale: Used Domain (**Clean Title**)
Bryan Braun has an interesting post about his experience with what he calls a “haunted domain”:
He...
3 weeks ago
Bryan Braun has an interesting post about his experience with what he calls a “haunted domain”:
He buys a domain that seems fine on the surface.
When he begins using it, he notices some things aren’t right (organic search traffic, for example, is dead).
After some investigation,...
Paolo Amoroso's...
Wrapping up my RetroChallenge 2024 project
<![CDATA[The end of the work on WebCard marked the completion of my RetroChallenge 2024 project, in...
3 weeks ago
<![CDATA[The end of the work on WebCard marked the completion of my RetroChallenge 2024 project, in time as hoped.
I accomplished the initial goal of extending NoteCards to visit websites. This is my Linux desktop after traversing a NoteCards link to a Web card which opened the...
somenice
Gold and Ghosts
In the autumn of 1892, two miners, Earl and Edward, found themselves high in the Pacific Northwest...
3 weeks ago
In the autumn of 1892, two miners, Earl and Edward, found themselves high in the Pacific Northwest mountains, searching for a legend as old as the hills: the lost crate of gold. The tale of “Shining Creek Gold” was whispered in every saloon from Seattle to San Francisco, a cache...
the singularity is...
America’s Future
It seems this is a place where people are not capable of thinking rationally. Remember:
If America...
3 weeks ago
It seems this is a place where people are not capable of thinking rationally. Remember:
If America is not in decline, I want to believe America is not in decline.
If America is in decline, I want to believe America is in decline.
So let’s ask, what does the future look like for...
Paolo Amoroso's...
A demo notefile for WebCard
<![CDATA[To complete WebCard for my RetroChallenge 2024 project I created a demo notefile, a file...
3 weeks ago
<![CDATA[To complete WebCard for my RetroChallenge 2024 project I created a demo notefile, a file that stores the data of a NoteCards hypertext.
The notefile WCDEMO.NOTEFILE contains exmples of Web cards filed into various types of containers and cards such as fileboxes and Text...
Irrational...
Eng org seniority-mix model.
One of the trademarks of private equity ownership is the expectation that either the company...
3 weeks ago
One of the trademarks of private equity ownership is the expectation that either the company maintains their current margin
and grows revenue at 25-30%, or they instead grow slower and increase their free cash flow year over year.
In many organizations, engineering costs have a...
A Smart Bear
Tech Support is sales
Tech support isn't just troubleshooting; it's the face of your company. Which means it's your brand,...
3 weeks ago
Tech support isn't just troubleshooting; it's the face of your company. Which means it's your brand, your positioning, and when it's excellent, it is sales.
Julia Evans
Using less memory to look up IP addresses in Mess With DNS
I’ve been having problems for the last 3 years or so where Mess With DNS
periodically runs out of...
3 weeks ago
I’ve been having problems for the last 3 years or so where Mess With DNS
periodically runs out of memory and gets OOM killed.
This hasn’t been a big priority for me: usually it just goes down for a few
minutes while it restarts, and it only happens once a day at most, so I’ve...
Ink & Switch
Ink & Switch Unconference [2024 / Los Angeles]
Our third Ink & Switch Unconference, at the beautifully retro Preserve in Los Angeles
3 weeks ago
Our third Ink & Switch Unconference, at the beautifully retro Preserve in Los Angeles
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
We’re All Content Creators for Machines
Nicholas Carr, one of my favorite technology writers, has been blogging over on Rough Type since...
3 weeks ago
Nicholas Carr, one of my favorite technology writers, has been blogging over on Rough Type since [checks archives] 2005. As of late his writing has gone quiet, but he’s got a new book due out early next year and I think he’s starting up blogging again to help drum up interest....
Paolo Amoroso's...
Documenting WebCard
<![CDATA[With the last feature of WebCard behind me I proceeded with the next task to wrap up my...
3 weeks ago
<![CDATA[With the last feature of WebCard behind me I proceeded with the next task to wrap up my RetroChallenge 2024 project: documenting the system.
Since WebCard enhances NoteCards with only a few simple but significant features a full manual would be overkill. So I added to...
Epic Web Dev
The Difference Between Clearing, Resetting, and Restoring Mocks (article)
Understand the key differences between mock state management methods: mockClear(), mockReset(), and...
3 weeks ago
Understand the key differences between mock state management methods: mockClear(), mockReset(), and mockRestore(). Write clean test states.
Blog - Bitfield...
Suite smells: testing legacy code
How do you rescue a legacy codebase that has no tests? Let's look at some
techniques for clawing...
3 weeks ago
How do you rescue a legacy codebase that has no tests? Let's look at some
techniques for clawing your way back to maintainability, one test at a
time.
Tyler Cipriani: blog
Eventually consistent plain text accounting
.title { text-wrap: balance }
Spending for October, generated by piping
hledger → R
Over the past...
4 weeks ago
.title { text-wrap: balance }
Spending for October, generated by piping
hledger → R
Over the past six months, I’ve tracked my money with hledger—a plain text
double-entry accounting system written in Haskell. It’s been
surprisingly painless.
My previous attempts to pick up...
Dan Quach Blog
State of Data Engineering Q3 2024
Prompt Engineering – Meta Analysis Whitepaper One of my favorite AI podcasts, Latent Space, recently...
4 weeks ago
Prompt Engineering – Meta Analysis Whitepaper One of my favorite AI podcasts, Latent Space, recently featured Sander Schulhoff, one of the authors of a comprehensive research paper on prompt engineering. This meta-study reviews over 1,600 published papers, with co-authors from...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
The Lowest Common Denominator: www
Native apps are all about control. Don’t like thing X? You can dive in and, with enough elbow grease...
4 weeks ago
Native apps are all about control. Don’t like thing X? You can dive in and, with enough elbow grease and persistence, finally get what you want. Write your own C library. Do some assembly code. Even make your own hardware if you have to.
But on the web you give up that control....
Paolo Amoroso's...
Designing a WebCard bitmap the hard way
<![CDATA[NoteCards link icons leading to cards of a certain type can and typically do have a custom...
4 weeks ago
<![CDATA[NoteCards link icons leading to cards of a certain type can and typically do have a custom bitmap associated with the type.
WebCard cards of type Web initially inherited the bitmap of the parent type Text, a stylized NoteCards blank card frame. To visually differentiate...
Computer Things
TLA from first principles
No Newsletter next week
I'll be speaking at USENIX SRECon!
TLA from first principles
I'm working on...
4 weeks ago
No Newsletter next week
I'll be speaking at USENIX SRECon!
TLA from first principles
I'm working on v0.5 of Logic for Programmers. In the process of revising the "System Modeling" chapter, I stumbled on a great way to explain the temporal logic of actions that TLA+ is based on....
Blog System/5
BazelCon 2024 recap
Just like that, BazelCon 2024 came and went. So... it’s obviously time to summarize the two events...
4 weeks ago
Just like that, BazelCon 2024 came and went. So... it’s obviously time to summarize the two events of last week: BazelCon 2024 and the adjacent Build Meetup. There is A LOT to cover, but everything is here in just one article!
Tony Finch's blog
against /tmp
I commented on Lobsters that /tmp is usually a bad idea,
which caused some surprise. I suppose /tmp...
4 weeks ago
I commented on Lobsters that /tmp is usually a bad idea,
which caused some surprise. I suppose /tmp security bugs were common
in the 1990s when I was learning Unix, but they are pretty rare now so
I can see why less grizzled hackers might not be familiar with the
problems.
I...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Tech’s Epithet: “Enabled By Default”
I joked on Mastodon:
If anyone endeavors to write a book about what went wrong with tech, I have a...
a month ago
I joked on Mastodon:
If anyone endeavors to write a book about what went wrong with tech, I have a great suggestion for the title:
“Enabled by Default”
It seems there really are two hard problems in tech:
Naming things
Setting good defaults
Keeping to scope
Anyhow, a little while...
bt RSS Feed
Installing OpenBSD on Linveo KVM VPS
Installing OpenBSD on Linveo KVM VPS
2024-10-21
I recently came across an amazing deal for a VPS on...
a month ago
Installing OpenBSD on Linveo KVM VPS
2024-10-21
I recently came across an amazing deal for a VPS on Linveo. For just $15 a year they provide:
AMD KVM 1GB
1024 MB RAM
1 CPU Core
25 GB NVMe SSD
2000 GB Bandwidth
It’s a pretty great deal and I suggest you look more into it if you’re...
Paolo Amoroso's...
Planning the next steps for WebCard
<![CDATA[Over the past days I ran WebCard a bit, reviewed the code, and checked my notes and I'm...
a month ago
<![CDATA[Over the past days I ran WebCard a bit, reviewed the code, and checked my notes and I'm satisfied with what the system does. Since WebCard is nearly feature complete it's a good time to chart the next steps for wrapping up my RetroChallenge 2024 project.
Aside from some...
A Smart Bear
The Serengeti Plain: Fallacies that aren't fallacies
A contrarian look at logical "fallacies" that maybe aren't so illogical after all.
a month ago
A contrarian look at logical "fallacies" that maybe aren't so illogical after all.
Ralph Ammer
Bergson — Why we live in the past
Should we just live in the moment? In “Matter and Memory” the French philosopher Henri Bergson...
a month ago
Should we just live in the moment? In “Matter and Memory” the French philosopher Henri Bergson claims that this is not even possible. 1. Perception is physical First of all: How do we perceive the “current moment” anyway? Bergson suggests that the whole point of perception is...
The Codist
How I Defeated An MMO Game Hack Author
In the late 2000's, I worked at a niche MMO game company. We had a small team, not a lot of money,...
a month ago
In the late 2000's, I worked at a niche MMO game company. We had a small team, not a lot of money, but a loyal audience. It was a game of skill without any of the usual powerups and unreality, and the players enjoyed the challenge.
Then, one
Irrational...
Modeling driving onboarding.
The How should you adopt LLMs? strategy explores how Theoretical Ride Sharing
might adopt LLMs. It...
a month ago
The How should you adopt LLMs? strategy explores how Theoretical Ride Sharing
might adopt LLMs. It builds on several models, the first is about LLMs impact on Developer Experience.
The second model, documented here, looks at whether LLMs might improve a core product and business...
The Pragmatic...
Did Automattic commit open source theft?
The maker of WordPress took 2M customers from its biggest rival: has a red line been crossed?
a month ago
The maker of WordPress took 2M customers from its biggest rival: has a red line been crossed?
Confessions of a...
A Selective Survey of Efficient Speculative Decoding Techniques for LLM Inference
What is speculative decoding, how it works and what are some of the recent advances in this area?
a month ago
What is speculative decoding, how it works and what are some of the recent advances in this area?
David Heinemeier...
Our cloud-exit savings will now top ten million over five years
We finished pulling seven cloud apps, including HEY, out of AWS and onto our own hardware last...
a month ago
We finished pulling seven cloud apps, including HEY, out of AWS and onto our own hardware last summer. But it took until the end of that year for all the long-term contract commitments to end, so 2024 has been the first clean year of savings, and we've been pleasantly surprised...
The Pragmatic...
Interesting startup idea: benchmarking cloud platform pricing
A team of 3 developers built a neat platform called Spare Cores that makes cloud instance pricing...
a month ago
A team of 3 developers built a neat platform called Spare Cores that makes cloud instance pricing more transparent. A deepdive on how exactly they did it.
Epic Web Dev
Writing Tests That Fail (article)
There can be a lot of confusion and doubt when it comes to writing tests. Answering this simple...
a month ago
There can be a lot of confusion and doubt when it comes to writing tests. Answering this simple question may help clear a lot of it out.
Charles Chen
I'm a Gen AI Maximalist and Why You Should Be, Too
Putting things into perspective: many think that we are in the trough of disillusionment; but...
a month ago
Putting things into perspective: many think that we are in the trough of disillusionment; but really, gen AI is just getting started.
Ink & Switch
Fine-grained provenance, Automerge updates
Some explorations of new editor interactions for writing science papers, and a trio of projects...
a month ago
Some explorations of new editor interactions for writing science papers, and a trio of projects advancing the future of Automerge.
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Prompting the Wrong Question
So there I am, working on a bug exclusive to Safari (we’ve all been there). I can’t figure it out so...
a month ago
So there I am, working on a bug exclusive to Safari (we’ve all been there). I can’t figure it out so I ask AI, “Hey, this piece of code is not working in Safari, what’s wrong?”
The issue might be related to how Safari handles keyboard events, especially for certain keys…
It gives...
alexwlchan
Using static websites for tiny archives
In my previous post, I talked about how I’m trying to be more intentional and deliberate with my...
a month ago
In my previous post, I talked about how I’m trying to be more intentional and deliberate with my digital data.
I don’t just want to keep everything – I want to keep stuff that I’m actually going to look at again.
As part of that process, I’m trying to be better about organising...
Computer Things
Be Suspicious of Success
From Leslie Lamport's Specifying Systems:
You should be suspicious if [the model checker] does not...
a month ago
From Leslie Lamport's Specifying Systems:
You should be suspicious if [the model checker] does not find a violation of a liveness property... you should also be suspicious if [it] finds no errors when checking safety properties.
This is specifically in the context of...
Paolo Amoroso's...
Keeping track of visited URLs in WebCard
<![CDATA[WebCard has very limited control over the web browser of the host operating system.
It can...
a month ago
<![CDATA[WebCard has very limited control over the web browser of the host operating system.
It can only command the browser to visit a URL when the user traverses a Web link or executes the Visit URL menu command. But with no precautions the browser would open a new tab for...
Paolo Amoroso's...
Revising card shape and initialization in WebCard
<![CDATA[In NoteCards, Text cards are rectangular windows with proportions similar to a post-it...
a month ago
<![CDATA[In NoteCards, Text cards are rectangular windows with proportions similar to a post-it note. The Web card type of WebCard inherits from Text, including the default window size. Since a Web card needs only display a URL, the default shape leaves most of the text area...
David Heinemeier...
Capture less than you create
I beam with pride when I see companies like Shopify, GitHub, Gusto, Zendesk, Instacart, Procore,...
a month ago
I beam with pride when I see companies like Shopify, GitHub, Gusto, Zendesk, Instacart, Procore, Doximity, Coinbase, and others claim billion-dollar valuations from work done with Rails. It's beyond satisfying to see this much value created with a web framework I've spent the...
alexwlchan
Making alt text more visible
I add alt text to every image on this site.
I have an automated check to remind me to add alt text...
a month ago
I add alt text to every image on this site.
I have an automated check to remind me to add alt text before I publish the site, but that means alt text has often been an afterthought – something I’d dash out at the very end of writing a post.
I wanted to give it more attention, and...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Prototyping Magic Tricks and Software
In Penn & Teller’s Masterclass (no. 12 “Principles of Performing”) they explain how one of their...
a month ago
In Penn & Teller’s Masterclass (no. 12 “Principles of Performing”) they explain how one of their favorite ways to design a magic trick is to come up with an idea and then act it out as if they already know how to do it. Here’s Penn:
We still start with an idea for a trick, how we...
ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ Herman's...
On being a great gift-giver
I received a great gift that I love
a month ago
I received a great gift that I love
Paolo Amoroso's...
Fixing URL validation in WebCard
<![CDATA[I fixed a URL validation bug of WebCard I have been stuck with for almost a week.
When...
a month ago
<![CDATA[I fixed a URL validation bug of WebCard I have been stuck with for almost a week.
When creating a new card, the function WCD.AskURL brings up a dialog and loops prompting for a URL to go with the card until the input is valid. After the fix the input dialog looks like...
David Heinemeier...
To the crazy ones
In an earlier era, we'd all have been glued to the television to cheer SpaceX successfully catching...
a month ago
In an earlier era, we'd all have been glued to the television to cheer SpaceX successfully catching Starship's returning booster rocket on the first try. I remember my father talking about seeing Apollo 11 make it to the moon. That was a lifelong memory for him. And I remember,...
Paolo Amoroso's...
Managing card text in WebCard
<![CDATA[The text of WebCard cards is intended to be read only but my previous attempt to achieve it...
a month ago
<![CDATA[The text of WebCard cards is intended to be read only but my previous attempt to achieve it by overriding card editing didn't work. I implemented a new, simpler approach that actually works.
The card type Web inherits from the Text type whose "substance" is a text...
A Smart Bear
You're a little company, now act like one
You're afraid that looking like being a small company means you'll lose sales. It's actually the...
a month ago
You're afraid that looking like being a small company means you'll lose sales. It's actually the opposite -- you're alienating your best customers.
David Heinemeier...
Open source royalty and mad kings
I'm solidly in favor of the Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL) model of open source stewardship....
a month ago
I'm solidly in favor of the Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL) model of open source stewardship. This is how projects from Linux to Python, from Laravel to Ruby, and yes, Rails, have kept their cohesion, decisiveness, and forward motion. It's a model with decades worth of...
Paolo Amoroso's...
Adding title bar menu items to WebCard cards
<![CDATA[A URL is associated with a WebCard card of type Web at creation time but it may later be...
a month ago
<![CDATA[A URL is associated with a WebCard card of type Web at creation time but it may later be necessary to change or take action on the URL. For example, to correct a typo or visit the URL again if its web browser tab was closed since an earlier visit.
For such situations I...
Copper • A blog...
Making my own sharpening blocks
When I started wood carving, the only sharpening method I remembered was from seeing my mother use...
a month ago
When I started wood carving, the only sharpening method I remembered was from seeing my mother use some kind of smooth broken stone that she passed over the length of the knife blade before sacrificing a chicken.
I also remember seeing my father use a very coarse stone wheel...
The Pragmatic...
Open source business model struggles at WordPress
Automattic, creator of Wordpress, is being sued by one of the largest WordPress hosting providers....
a month ago
Automattic, creator of Wordpress, is being sued by one of the largest WordPress hosting providers. The conflict fits into a trend of billion-dollar companies struggling to effectively monetize open source, and are changing tactics to limit their competition and increase their...
charity.wtf
How Hard Should Your Employer Work To Retain You?
Recently we learned that Google spent $2.7 billion to re-hire a single AI researcher who had left to...
a month ago
Recently we learned that Google spent $2.7 billion to re-hire a single AI researcher who had left to start his own company. As Charlie Brown would say: “Good grief.” 🙄 This is an (incredibly!) extreme example. But back in the halcyon days of the zero interest rate phenomenon...
Paolo Amoroso's...
Working on WebCard card initialization and URL visiting
<![CDATA[The WebCard project is moving forward again. My latest work involved card initialization...
a month ago
<![CDATA[The WebCard project is moving forward again. My latest work involved card initialization and URL visiting.
When a new Web card is created, the associated URL is now inserted as text in the content area of the card. This is useful documentation and prevents the potential...
On Life and Lisp
AAA gaming on Asahi Linux
Gaming on Linux on M1 is here! We’re thrilled to release our Asahi
game playing toolkit, which...
a month ago
Gaming on Linux on M1 is here! We’re thrilled to release our Asahi
game playing toolkit, which integrates our Vulkan 1.3 drivers with x86
emulation and Windows compatibility. Plus a bonus: conformant OpenCL
3.0.
Asahi Linux now ships the only conformant OpenGL®,
OpenCL™,
and...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Grateful: Colors in console.log()
So there I am, having an issue where my UI state isn’t updating correctly. What do I do? What every...
a month ago
So there I am, having an issue where my UI state isn’t updating correctly. What do I do? What every developer does: turn to console.log() and troubleshoot by logging values.
I have a named color (e.g. blue) and a corresponding HSL color string for that named color (e.g. 100 50%...
Engineer’s Codex
How Fireship became YouTube's favorite programmer
How Fireship wins YouTube
a month ago
How Fireship wins YouTube
David Heinemeier...
Automattic is doing open source dirty
Automattic demanding 8% of WP Engine's revenues because they're not "giving back enough" to...
a month ago
Automattic demanding 8% of WP Engine's revenues because they're not "giving back enough" to WordPress is a wanton violation of general open source ideals and the specifics of the GPL license. Automattic is completely out of line, and the potential damage to the open source world...
Stephen Wolfram...
On the Nature of Time
The Computational View of Time Time is a central feature of human experience. But what actually is...
a month ago
The Computational View of Time Time is a central feature of human experience. But what actually is it? In traditional scientific accounts it’s often represented as some kind of coordinate much like space (though a coordinate that for some reason is always systematically...
Code Of Honor
Credit where credit is due
I feel fortunate to have been part of Blizzard Entertainment when it started, now over thirty years...
a month ago
I feel fortunate to have been part of Blizzard Entertainment when it started, now over thirty years ago. I got to work with amazing people; make games players loved; and learn a lot about design, programming, and business along the way. Some of those lessons were hard-earned, as...
Computer Things
How to convince engineers that formal methods is cool
Sorry there was no newsletter last week! I got COVID. Still got it, which is why this one's also...
a month ago
Sorry there was no newsletter last week! I got COVID. Still got it, which is why this one's also short.
Logic for Programmers v0.4
Now available! This version adds a chapter on TLA+, significantly expands the constraint solver chapter, and adds a "planner programming" section to...
Paolo Amoroso's...
The first three months since my return to Linux
<![CDATA[This is the year of my Linux desktop.
Three months ago today I moved back to Linux for...
a month ago
<![CDATA[This is the year of my Linux desktop.
Three months ago today I moved back to Linux for good after almost a decade with ChromeOS. That day I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon on a freshly delivered System76 Merkaat.
I was growing increasingly dissatisfied with ChromeOS and...
Blog - Bitfield...
Programming is fun
I was a guest on the Cup o’ Go podcast recently, talking with Shay Nehmad
and Jonathan Hall about...
a month ago
I was a guest on the Cup o’ Go podcast recently, talking with Shay Nehmad
and Jonathan Hall about writing and teaching Go. Here’s a transcript of our
chat.
Paolo Amoroso's...
Stumped with URL validation in WebCard
<![CDATA[I started working on URL validation in WebCard and soon bumped into a bug.
When creating a...
a month ago
<![CDATA[I started working on URL validation in WebCard and soon bumped into a bug.
When creating a new Web card, WebCard prompts for a URL to store in the card. I wrote the predicate WCD.ValidURLP to do some minimal validation and make sure the input resembles a URL. For...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Ryan Dahl Talks Deno on The Changelog
Ryan Dahl was on The Changelog to talk about Deno 2 specifically and his work on JavaScript more...
a month ago
Ryan Dahl was on The Changelog to talk about Deno 2 specifically and his work on JavaScript more broadly. What follows are a few things that stood out to me.
His Regrets From Node Are Now in Deno
I think it’s interesting that Ryan’s famous talk 10 Things I Regret About Node.js...
Blog System/5
The costs of the i386 to x86-64 upgrade
If you read my previous article on DOS memory models, you may have dismissed everything I wrote as...
a month ago
If you read my previous article on DOS memory models, you may have dismissed everything I wrote as “legacy cruft from the 1990s that nobody cares about any longer”. It's time to see how any of that carried over through the 16-bit to 64-bit evolution.
alexwlchan
Flickr Foundation at iPres 2024 →
I wrote about a recent conference trip for the Flickr.org blog:
In September, Tori and I went to...
a month ago
I wrote about a recent conference trip for the Flickr.org blog:
In September, Tori and I went to Belgium for iPres 2024. We were keen to chat about digital preservation and discuss some of our ideas for Data Lifeboat – and enjoy a few Belgian waffles, of course!
We ran a workshop...
alexwlchan
Putting history on the map →
Back in July, we built an interactive map for the Flickr Commons Explorer.
I wrote an article for...
a month ago
Back in July, we built an interactive map for the Flickr Commons Explorer.
I wrote an article for the Flickr blog about some of the photos I found using the map – including Antarctic explorers, northern factories, and Hawaiian industry.
[If the formatting of this post looks odd...
Julia Evans
Some notes on upgrading Hugo
Warning: this is a post about very boring yakshaving, probably only of interest
to people who are...
a month ago
Warning: this is a post about very boring yakshaving, probably only of interest
to people who are trying to upgrade Hugo from a very old version to a new
version. But what are blogs for if not documenting one’s very boring yakshaves
from time to time?
So yesterday I decided to...
Alice GG
Stuff I've been working on
It’s been around 2 years that I’ve had to stop with my long-term addiction to stable jobs.
Quite a...
a month ago
It’s been around 2 years that I’ve had to stop with my long-term addiction to stable jobs.
Quite a few people who read this blog are wondering what the hell exactly I’ve been doing since then so I’m going to update all of you on the various projects I’ve been working on.
Meme...
ntietz.com blog
Licensing can be joyful (and legally dubious)
Software licenses are a reflection of our values.
How you choose to license a piece of software says...
a month ago
Software licenses are a reflection of our values.
How you choose to license a piece of software says a lot about what you want to achieve with it.
Do you want to reach the maximum amount of users?
Do you want to ensure future versions remain free and open source?
Do you want to...
swyx's site RSS Feed
Early Stage Company Offsites
this post was mostly dictated off the top of my head with Wispr AI
a month ago
this post was mostly dictated off the top of my head with Wispr AI
alexwlchan
Two examples of hover styles on images
I enjoy adding :hover styles to my websites.
A good hover style reminds me of how fast and...
a month ago
I enjoy adding :hover styles to my websites.
A good hover style reminds me of how fast and responsive our computers can be, if we let them.
For example, I add a thicker underline when you hover over a link on this site, and it appears/disappears almost instantly as I move my...
Paolo Amoroso's...
Overriding card editing with a no-op in WebCard
<![CDATA[I wrote some throwaway code to experiment with editing cards of type Web in WebCard, my...
a month ago
<![CDATA[I wrote some throwaway code to experiment with editing cards of type Web in WebCard, my RetroChallenge 2024 project. The goal is to make the card read only with the least amount of effort.
In a NoteCards hypertext a Web card is a stand-in for a website, a placeholder...
Irrational...
Modeling impact of LLMs on Developer Experience.
In How should you adopt Large Language Models? (LLMs), we considered how
LLMs might impact a...
a month ago
In How should you adopt Large Language Models? (LLMs), we considered how
LLMs might impact a company’s developer experience. To support that exploration, I’ve developed a system model of
the developing software at the company.
In this chapter, we’ll work through:
Summary results...
A Smart Bear
Why startup biz dev deals almost never get done
Startups fail at biz dev because their proposals don't make sense to bigger companies. Here's how to...
a month ago
Startups fail at biz dev because their proposals don't make sense to bigger companies. Here's how to adjust your approach.
ntietz.com blog
Asheville
Asheville is in crisis right now.
They're without drinking water, faucets run dry, and it's...
a month ago
Asheville is in crisis right now.
They're without drinking water, faucets run dry, and it's difficult to flush toilets.
As of yesterday, the hospital has water (via tanker trucks), but 80% of the public water system is still without running water.
Things are really bad.
Lots of...
Steve Klabnik
When should I use String vs &str?
a month ago
Paolo Amoroso's...
NoteCards visited a website for the first time
<![CDATA[Success!
My WebCard prototype made NoteCards visit a site on the World-Wide Web for the...
a month ago
<![CDATA[Success!
My WebCard prototype made NoteCards visit a site on the World-Wide Web for the first time. Think of it as a wormhole that connects the old world of hypertext with the new world of the modern web. WebCard, a NoteCards extension for visiting websites, is my...
Maggie Appleton
Aesthetic Command Lines with Hyper, Spaceship, and Oh My Zsh
a month ago
ntietz.com blog
Teleportation
teleportation does exist
from OR to recovery room
I left something behind
not quite a part of...
a month ago
teleportation does exist
from OR to recovery room
I left something behind
not quite a part of myself
—unwelcome guests
poisoning me
from the inside
no longer welcome
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
“Easier and More Convenient” They Said…
The other day in our morning rush before school my wife asked for help figuring out how to put lunch...
a month ago
The other day in our morning rush before school my wife asked for help figuring out how to put lunch money on our kids’ school accounts.
For some time she’s been doing it “the hard way”: talk to the people in the front office of the school every few months and swipe a credit...
The Codist
Why I Use Swift To Make Generative Art
Now that I am retired from programming for a living, I make generative art (not AI; see my post What...
a month ago
Now that I am retired from programming for a living, I make generative art (not AI; see my post What Is Generative Art?) every day. I belong to a discord community of generative artists, yet I stick out because I am the only person using Swift as my chosen language.
David Heinemeier...
Kamal 2: Thou need not PaaS
Kamal was our ticket out of the cloud. A simple tool for deploying containerized applications onto...
a month ago
Kamal was our ticket out of the cloud. A simple tool for deploying containerized applications onto our own hardware, without the need for the complexity of something like Kubernetes. Kamal 2 is a huge leap forward for that tool, and it has just shipped.
Now you can deploy...
Paolo Amoroso's...
Fixing and enhancing the WebCard card constructor
<![CDATA[I fixed a bug in the initial code of WebCard, my RetroChallenge 2024 project.
An infinite...
a month ago
<![CDATA[I fixed a bug in the initial code of WebCard, my RetroChallenge 2024 project.
An infinite loop in the constructor of the Web card type caused a stack overflow that aborted Medley. The Web constructor was supposed to call the constructor of the parent card type Text. But...
Ferd.ca
Carrots, sticks, and making things worse
This blog post originally appeared on the LFI blog but I decided to post it on my own as well.
Every...
a month ago
This blog post originally appeared on the LFI blog but I decided to post it on my own as well.
Every organization has to contend with limits: scarcity of resources, people, attention, or funding, friction from scaling, inertia from previous code bases, or a quickly shifting...
PostHog's RSS Feed
Did you know AI is answering our community questions?
AI. You may have heard of it. Sure, ChatGPT is pretty cool, but when it comes to AI chatbots that...
a month ago
AI. You may have heard of it. Sure, ChatGPT is pretty cool, but when it comes to AI chatbots that try to replace a human in a product support context…
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Putting the “Person” in “Personal Website”
The other day I saw a meme that went something like this:
Isn’t it crappy how basic human activities...
a month ago
The other day I saw a meme that went something like this:
Isn’t it crappy how basic human activities like singing, dancing, and making art have been turned into skills instead of being recognized as behaviors? The point of doing these things has become to get good at them. But...
The Codist
How Talking Over A Wall Changed My Direction As A Programmer
I started my programming career in October 1981 at a large defense contractor (GD). At the time, my...
a month ago
I started my programming career in October 1981 at a large defense contractor (GD). At the time, my goal was to work for a couple of years and then continue my education with a Ph.D. in Chemistry (I had already been accepted).
The office I worked in was a
Confessions of a...
Connecting CPython's GC Internals to Real-World Performance
Learn how the knowledge of CPython internals translate into performance insights for your code
a month ago
Learn how the knowledge of CPython internals translate into performance insights for your code
Paolo Amoroso's...
Laying the foundation of WebCard
<![CDATA[The initial Interlisp code of WebCard, my RetroChallenge 2024 project, defines the new type...
a month ago
<![CDATA[The initial Interlisp code of WebCard, my RetroChallenge 2024 project, defines the new type "Web" of NoteCards card. It's the first step for extending NoteCards to visit websites.
The main code is in the function WCD.CreateWebCardType, a thin wrapper around the...
Epic Web Dev
Mocking Techniques in Vitest (workshop)
a month ago
Darek Kay
Prevent data loss on page refresh
It can be frustrating to fill out a web form, only to accidentally refresh the page (or click...
a month ago
It can be frustrating to fill out a web form, only to accidentally refresh the page (or click "back") and lose all the hard work. In this blog post, I present a method to retain form data when the page is reloaded, which improves the user experience.
Browser behavior
Most...
Tony Finch's blog
getentropy() vs RAND_bytes()
A couple of notable things have happened in recent months:
There is a new edition of POSIX for 2024....
a month ago
A couple of notable things have happened in recent months:
There is a new edition of POSIX for 2024. There’s lots of
good stuff in it, but today I am writing about getentropy()
which is the first officially standardized POSIX API for getting
cryptographically secure random...
Paolo Amoroso's...
WebCard specification and design
<![CDATA[Now that I entered the RetroChallenge 2024 the next step is to flesh out the scope and...
a month ago
<![CDATA[Now that I entered the RetroChallenge 2024 the next step is to flesh out the scope and details of my WebCard project, a NoteCards extension for visiting websites. What will WebCard do? How will it work?
Specification
In NoteCards the area of a card or filebox that...
Julia Evans
Terminal colours are tricky
Yesterday I was thinking about how long it took me to get a colorscheme in my
terminal that I was...
a month ago
Yesterday I was thinking about how long it took me to get a colorscheme in my
terminal that I was mostly happy with (SO MANY YEARS), and it made me wonder
what about terminal colours made it so hard.
So I asked people on Mastodon what problems
they’ve run into with colours in the...
macwright.com
Recently
Reading
It is very easy to get ChatGPT to emit a series of words such as “I am happy to see you.”...
a month ago
Reading
It is very easy to get ChatGPT to emit a series of words such as “I am happy to see you.” There are many things we don’t understand about how large language models work, but one thing we can be sure of is that ChatGPT is not happy to see you.
Ted Chiang’s article about AI...
David Heinemeier...
Wonderful Rails World Vibes
I totally understand how programming conferences end up being held in a drab Sheraton hotel...
a month ago
I totally understand how programming conferences end up being held in a drab Sheraton hotel somewhere to save money. It's expensive to outfit a cool venue with the gear and operations needed to pull off a great experience for speakers, sponsors, and attendees. And while the cost...
Blog System/5
Revisiting the DOS memory models
At the beginning of the year, I wrote a bunch of articles on the various tricks DOS played to...
a month ago
At the beginning of the year, I wrote a bunch of articles on the various tricks DOS played to overcome the tight memory limits of x86’s real mode. There was one question that came up and remained unanswered: what were the various “models” that the compilers of the day offered?
bunnie's blog
Name that Ware, September 2024
The Ware for September 2024 is shown below: This ware was a gift, but I won’t credit the donor until...
a month ago
The Ware for September 2024 is shown below: This ware was a gift, but I won’t credit the donor until the solution is revealed, because the credit itself might give a clue about the ware. My first reaction to seeing this board is: “this thing has a high BOM cost”. My second...
bunnie's blog
Winner, Name that Ware August 2024
Last month’s Ware was a peak programming meter driver board made by JC Broadcast, taken from an...
a month ago
Last month’s Ware was a peak programming meter driver board made by JC Broadcast, taken from an Audix broadcast console. Thanks again to Howie M for contributing the ware! Howie hypothesized that the four mounting holes would be a dead give-away, in his words: The meters, typical...
ntietz.com blog
Rust needs a web framework for lazy developers
I like to make silly things, and I also like to put in minimal effort for those silly things.
I also...
a month ago
I like to make silly things, and I also like to put in minimal effort for those silly things.
I also like to make things in Rust, mostly for the web, and this is where we run into a problem.
See, if I want to make something for the web, I could use Django but I don't want that.
I...
tonsky.me
Podcast: Nikitonsky про современные редакторы кода @ Тысяча фичей
Каким должен быть редактор кода в 2024 году? Почему Vim морально устарел, а IDEA, кажется, сдает...
a month ago
Каким должен быть редактор кода в 2024 году? Почему Vim морально устарел, а IDEA, кажется, сдает позиции? Популярность Zed, минимализм SublimeText, гибкость Emacs и многое другое в новом выпуске.
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Randomness, Serendipity, and an “I Wouldn’t Recommend This” Algorithm
Sean Voisen has a great post about 1) how we as humans think of randomness, 2) how computers...
a month ago
Sean Voisen has a great post about 1) how we as humans think of randomness, 2) how computers simulate randomness, and the difference between the two.
He puts forth an intriguing thought: in a world increasingly driven by computation, how does that affect randomness in our lives?...
Liz Denys
Printable shrinkage rulers
Clay shrinks as it dries and even more as it's fired, so it's useful to have a way to estimate the...
a month ago
Clay shrinks as it dries and even more as it's fired, so it's useful to have a way to estimate the final size of in-progress work - especially if you're making multiples or trying to fit pieces together. One way to do this is with shrinkage rulers. I figured I'd design my own...
Tyler Cipriani: blog
Subliminal git commits
Luckily, I speak Leet.
– Amita Ramanujan, Numb3rs, CBS’s IRC Drama
There’s an episode of the CBS...
a month ago
Luckily, I speak Leet.
– Amita Ramanujan, Numb3rs, CBS’s IRC Drama
There’s an episode of the CBS prime-time drama Numb3rs that plumbs
the depths of Dr. Joel Fleischman’s1 knowledge of IRC.
In one scene, Fleischman wonders, “What’s ‘leet’”?
“Leet” is writing that replaces letters...
A Smart Bear
Pivot Points
Not "enabling constraints", not "weaknesses", not even "strengths". The concept of a "Pivot Point"...
a month ago
Not "enabling constraints", not "weaknesses", not even "strengths". The concept of a "Pivot Point" grapples with the same reality, but more constructive and useful.
Stephen Wolfram...
Nestedly Recursive Functions
Yet Another Ruliological Surprise Integers. Addition. Subtraction. Maybe multiplication. Surely...
a month ago
Yet Another Ruliological Surprise Integers. Addition. Subtraction. Maybe multiplication. Surely that’s not enough to be able to generate any serious complexity. In the early 1980s I had made the very surprising discovery that very simple programs based on cellular automata could...
Epic Web Dev
Inverse Assertions (article)
Learn to test for absent events in React using inverse assertions and waitFor. Avoid false positives...
a month ago
Learn to test for absent events in React using inverse assertions and waitFor. Avoid false positives in time-dependent tests without using sleep.
Julia Evans
Some Go web dev notes
I spent a lot of time in the past couple of weeks working on a website in Go
that may or may not...
a month ago
I spent a lot of time in the past couple of weeks working on a website in Go
that may or may not ever see the light of day, but I learned a couple of things
along the way I wanted to write down. Here they are:
go 1.22 now has better routing
I’ve never felt motivated to learn any...
Josh Collinsworth
If WordPress is to survive, Matt Mullenweg must be removed
I believe Matt Mullenweg's abuses of his unilateral, unchecked powers prove that it is in the best...
a month ago
I believe Matt Mullenweg's abuses of his unilateral, unchecked powers prove that it is in the best interest of the entire WordPress community that he be removed from power immediately.
A Beautiful Site
Web Components Are Not the Future — They’re the Present
It’s disappointing that some of the most outspoken individuals against Web Components are framework...
a month ago
It’s disappointing that some of the most outspoken individuals against Web Components are framework maintainers. These individuals are, after all, in some of the best positions to provide valuable feedback. They have a lot of great ideas!
Alas, there’s little incentive for them...
bt RSS Feed
Vertical Tabs in Safari
Vertical Tabs in Safari
2024-09-26
I use Firefox as my main browser (specifically the Nightly build)...
a month ago
Vertical Tabs in Safari
2024-09-26
I use Firefox as my main browser (specifically the Nightly build) which has vertical tabs built-in. There are instances where I need to use Safari, such as debugging or testing iOS devices, and in those instances I prefer to have a similar...
Paolo Amoroso's...
A NoteCards project for the RetroChallenge 2024
<![CDATA[Team Lisp is ready to play: I'm entering the RetroChallenge 2024 (RC2024) with a NoteCards...
a month ago
<![CDATA[Team Lisp is ready to play: I'm entering the RetroChallenge 2024 (RC2024) with a NoteCards project targeting Medley Interlisp.
The RC2024 announcement explains the point of the challenge is to do something new, learn, and have fun with retro systems:
In a nutshell,...
Irrational...
Testing strategy: avoid the waterfall strategy trap with iterative refinement.
If I could only popularize one idea about technical strategy, it would be that
prematurely applying...
a month ago
If I could only popularize one idea about technical strategy, it would be that
prematurely applying pressure to a strategy’s rollout prevents evaluating whether the strategy is effective.
Pressure changes behavior in profound ways, and many of those changes are intended to make...
Computer Things
Refactoring Invariants
(Feeling a little sick so this one will be short.)
I'm often asked by clients to review their...
a month ago
(Feeling a little sick so this one will be short.)
I'm often asked by clients to review their (usually TLA+) formal specifications. These specs are generally slower and more convoluted than an expert would write. I want to fix them up without changing the overall behavior of the...
Code Of Honor
HandmadeCon 2015 interview transcript
In 2015 I participated in HandmadeCon, a convention created and run by programming guru Casey...
a month ago
In 2015 I participated in HandmadeCon, a convention created and run by programming guru Casey Muratori about game development. The event included five speakers: Tommy Refenes, Mike Acton, Jonathan Blow, Ron Gilbert, and myself. The event was hosted at the Seattle Public Library,...
alexwlchan
Drawing a better bandwidth graph for Netlify
I currently host this site on Netlify’s Starter plan, which means I can serve 100GB of bandwidth per...
a month ago
I currently host this site on Netlify’s Starter plan, which means I can serve 100GB of bandwidth per month.
That’s usually plenty, and I’ve only exceeded it a few times – this site is mostly text, and I only have a modest audience.
I can see how much bandwidth I’ve used in the...
Confessions of a...
Recording: Six Key Performance Engineering Lessons from 1BRC
Last night we did this live session on performance engineering.
a month ago
Last night we did this live session on performance engineering.
ntietz.com blog
What I tell people new to on-call
The first time I went on call as a software engineer, it was exciting—and ultimately...
a month ago
The first time I went on call as a software engineer, it was exciting—and ultimately traumatic.
Since then, I've had on-call experiences at multiple other jobs and have grown to really appreciate it as part of the role.
As I've progressed through my career, I've gotten to help...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Blogging & Listening
When you read a great blog post, the feeling you often get is: “I already knew this, I just hadn’t...
a month ago
When you read a great blog post, the feeling you often get is: “I already knew this, I just hadn’t been able to express it!”
In this sense, writing a great blog post is about listening.
If you’re listening — to others, your coworkers, the people you follow, your own experiences,...
A Smart Bear
The Code is your Enemy
A short pep talk I delivered to kick off a Three-Day Startup challenge event. And overwhelming...
2 months ago
A short pep talk I delivered to kick off a Three-Day Startup challenge event. And overwhelming confirmation that the lesson is correct.
Alex Meub
Building the DataToaster 3000
Last summer, I was inspired by a computer that was built inside of a toaster that I saw at a local...
2 months ago
Last summer, I was inspired by a computer that was built inside of a toaster that I saw at a local computer recycling store. The idea of a computer with the design of a home appliance was really appealing and so was the absurdity of it. It occurred to me that this would be a fun...
Writing - Andreas...
The siren call of wrong-way dependencies
Dependencies that point in the wrong direction are one of the easiest and
most costly design...
2 months ago
Dependencies that point in the wrong direction are one of the easiest and
most costly design mistakes one can make.
Nelson's Weblog
AI enhanced search
LLMs are good search helpers. Here’s three search tools I use every day.
All of these use an AI to...
2 months ago
LLMs are good search helpers. Here’s three search tools I use every day.
All of these use an AI to synthesize answers but also provide an essential
feature: specific web search results for you to verify and further research.
I use these for conversational inquiries in addition...
bt RSS Feed
Build and Deploy Websites Automatically with Git
Build and Deploy Websites Automatically with Git
2024-09-20
I recently began the process of setting...
2 months ago
Build and Deploy Websites Automatically with Git
2024-09-20
I recently began the process of setting up my self-hosted1 cgit server as my main code forge. Updating repos via cgit on NearlyFreeSpeech on its own has been simple enough, but it lacked the “wow-factor” of having some...
David Heinemeier...
Ears rarely open until a rapport is established
It's hard to open cold with a controversial take to a bunch of strangers. And the room is always...
2 months ago
It's hard to open cold with a controversial take to a bunch of strangers. And the room is always cold on X or in a one-off blog post. Just like comedy, half the battle of winning over the audience comes from a solid introduction, good timing, and a broad smile to warm the room....
bunnie's blog
Turning Everyday Gadgets into Bombs is a Bad Idea
I think turning everyday gadgets into bombs is a bad idea. However, recent news coverage has been...
2 months ago
I think turning everyday gadgets into bombs is a bad idea. However, recent news coverage has been framing the weaponization of pagers and radios in the Middle East as something we do not need to concern ourselves with because “we” are safe. I respectfully disagree. Our militaries...
The Pragmatic...
Paying down tech debt: further learnings
In a counter-intuitive observation: by making small, non-functional improvements, you gain more...
2 months ago
In a counter-intuitive observation: by making small, non-functional improvements, you gain more confidence in a new codebase, and can start to move faster.
Paolo Amoroso's...
Exploring Lisp programs as hypertexts with NoteCards
<![CDATA[I'm examining in depth NoteCards, the hypermedia environment of Medley Interlisp well...
2 months ago
<![CDATA[I'm examining in depth NoteCards, the hypermedia environment of Medley Interlisp well described in the 1987 paper NoteCards in a Nutshell.
To experiment with the NoteCards API I set out to explore the space of possible answers to the question: what if Lisp programs were...
Patrick Kayongo
Technology & The Hollowing Middle Class
IT systems within large enterprises have done wonders to improve the efficiencies, resulting in...
2 months ago
IT systems within large enterprises have done wonders to improve the efficiencies, resulting in great cost-savings, yet with unquestioned social effects. In his book Rhodes & His Banker, Richard Steyn narrates the founding and the early years of the bank we now know as Standard...
Epic Web Dev
Replace Remix's unstable_parseMultipartFormData with @mjackson/form-data-parser (tip)
Learn how to handle multi-part forms in Remix using unstable_parseMultipartFormData or...
2 months ago
Learn how to handle multi-part forms in Remix using unstable_parseMultipartFormData or @mjackson/form-data-parser with custom file size validation.
Epic Web Dev
Testing Accessibility with Keyboard (article)
Learn how to improve keyboard accessibility in web apps, ensuring an inclusive experience for all...
2 months ago
Learn how to improve keyboard accessibility in web apps, ensuring an inclusive experience for all users, including those using assistive technologies.
alexwlchan
Going between Finder and the Terminal
Earlier this week, Dr. Drang wrote a post about a few automations he uses to go between the...
2 months ago
Earlier this week, Dr. Drang wrote a post about a few automations he uses to go between the Terminal’s command line and the Finder’s GUI.
He has some neat ideas, and I particularly like his AppleScript sel for selecting multiple items in Finder.
I’ve written a couple of similar...
Ink & Switch
03 · Fine-grained provenance
Connecting parts of source and build files as a universal primitive
2 months ago
Connecting parts of source and build files as a universal primitive
David Heinemeier...
Wonderful vi
The speed of change in technology often appears to be the industry's defining characteristic....
2 months ago
The speed of change in technology often appears to be the industry's defining characteristic. Nothing highlights that perception more than the recent and relentless march of AI advancements. But for as much as some things in technology change, many other things stay the same....
Alex MacCaw
Pain
I've been staying with my friend Matt Mochary at his house in Hawaii for the last few days. He...
2 months ago
I've been staying with my friend Matt Mochary at his house in Hawaii for the last few days. He shared an excellent insight about dealing with pain that I believe everyone should hear. So here it is:
We all experience pain caused by others. Perhaps even earlier today
Alex MacCaw
Pain
I've been staying with my friend Matt Mochary at his house in Hawaii for the last few days. He...
2 months ago
I've been staying with my friend Matt Mochary at his house in Hawaii for the last few days. He shared an excellent insight about dealing with pain that I believe everyone should hear. So here it is:
We all experience pain caused by others. Perhaps even earlier today
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Estimated Reading Time Widgets
Beware ye who enter, here be personal opinions.
I’ve never understood reading time estimation...
2 months ago
Beware ye who enter, here be personal opinions.
I’ve never understood reading time estimation widgets. Why did these get so popular? Is it because they’re easy? I mean, you can grab one off npm no problem.
Baldur suggests a theory in his piece about estimated reading times:
At...
Epic Web Dev
Epic Workshop Diff Tab Demo (tip)
2 months ago
Epic Web Dev
Epic Workshop Test Tab Demo (tip)
2 months ago
Computer Things
Goodhart's Law in Software Engineering
Blog Hiatus
You might have noticed I haven't been updating my website. I haven't even looked at any...
2 months ago
Blog Hiatus
You might have noticed I haven't been updating my website. I haven't even looked at any of my drafts for the past three months. All that time is instead going into Logic for Programmers. I'll get back to the site when that's done or in 2025, whichever comes first....
somenice
Russet Lake Early Summer
An early canvas of Fissile mountain reflected in Russet Lake. This time early summer when there was...
2 months ago
An early canvas of Fissile mountain reflected in Russet Lake. This time early summer when there was still a bit of ice on the lake and the mountain tops are covered with snow. The painting is framed in western red cedar. Russet Lake Early Summer by Andrew SmithAcrylic on canvas10...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
The Ruthless Edit
Rick Rubin gives this advice about working in the studio with artists when making an album:
[Let’s...
2 months ago
Rick Rubin gives this advice about working in the studio with artists when making an album:
[Let’s say] We’ve recorded twenty-five songs. We think the album is going to have ten. Instead of picking our favorite ten, we limit it to: “What are the five or six we can’t live...
Epic Web Dev
Get Started with the Epic Workshop App (for React) (tip)
2 months ago
ntietz.com blog
Personnel update
This is inspired by receiving a "personnel update" when a friend was fired many years ago. It felt...
2 months ago
This is inspired by receiving a "personnel update" when a friend was fired many years ago. It felt coldly impersonal for such a deeply personal event, so I imagined what it would be like if the same approach were taken to other deeply personal events.
* * *
Subject: Personnel...
Irrational...
Should we decompose our monolith?
From their first introduction in 2005, the debate between adopting
a microservices architecture, a...
2 months ago
From their first introduction in 2005, the debate between adopting
a microservices architecture, a monolithic service architecture, or a hybrid between the two, has become one of the
least-reversible decisions that most engineering organizations make.
Even migrating to a...
A Smart Bear
Ignoring the Wisdom of Crowds
Discover how to leverage the wisdom of the crowds, but also when to avoid it, as it can easily lead...
2 months ago
Discover how to leverage the wisdom of the crowds, but also when to avoid it, as it can easily lead you astray.
alexwlchan
Digital decluttering
I spent a lot of my formative Internet years in online fandom.
I read novel-length stories about...
2 months ago
I spent a lot of my formative Internet years in online fandom.
I read novel-length stories about Doctor Who characters; I swooned over fan art of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries; I pored over in-depth analyses of each episode of Carmilla.
Most of that is gone now.
Links rot quickly,...
Julia Evans
Reasons I still love the fish shell
I wrote about how much I love fish in this blog post from 2017 and, 7 years
of using it every day...
2 months ago
I wrote about how much I love fish in this blog post from 2017 and, 7 years
of using it every day later, I’ve found even more reasons to love it. So I
thought I’d write a new post with both the old reasons I loved it and some
reasons.
This came up today because I was trying to...
Alice GG
How to publish your Godot game on Mac
Since 2019, Apple has required all MacOS software to be signed and notarized.
This is meant to...
2 months ago
Since 2019, Apple has required all MacOS software to be signed and notarized.
This is meant to prevent naive users from installing malware while running software from unknown sources.
Since this process is convoluted, it stops many indie game developers from releasing their Godot...
Computer Things
Why Not Comments
Logic For Programmers v0.3
Now available! It's a light release as I learn more about formatting a...
2 months ago
Logic For Programmers v0.3
Now available! It's a light release as I learn more about formatting a nice-looking book. You can see some of the differences between v2 and v3 here.
Why Not Comments
Code is written in a structured machine language, comments are written in an...
Confessions of a...
Celebrating 2^13 Subscribers & My Birthday
I started this Substack on 23rd April, 2024 from 0 subscribers with a dream of writing deeply...
2 months ago
I started this Substack on 23rd April, 2024 from 0 subscribers with a dream of writing deeply technical articles and making a living.
David Heinemeier...
Back in the market (Sonos Edition)
I've been a Sonos megafan for years. Owned probably two dozen devices for different homes. Mainly...
2 months ago
I've been a Sonos megafan for years. Owned probably two dozen devices for different homes. Mainly amps for in-ceiling speakers, but also some Ones, 3s, 5s. All of it. Because it Just Worked when it came to multi-room music. Now it doesn't, and it hasn't for a long time, so I've...
David Heinemeier...
Passwords have problems, but passkeys have more
We had originally planned to go all-in on passkeys for ONCE/Campfire, and we built the early...
2 months ago
We had originally planned to go all-in on passkeys for ONCE/Campfire, and we built the early authentication system entirely around that. It was not a simple setup! Handling passkeys properly is surprisingly complicated on the backend, but we got it done. Unfortunately, the user...
Blog System/5
Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison
NT is often touted as a "very advanced" operating system. Why is that? What made NT better than...
2 months ago
NT is often touted as a "very advanced" operating system. Why is that? What made NT better than Unix, if anything? And is that still the case?
ntietz.com blog
Making progress on side projects with content-driven development
It's hard to make progress on side projects sometimes.
Getting started is easy when we see the...
2 months ago
It's hard to make progress on side projects sometimes.
Getting started is easy when we see the bright future of the project.
Then somewhere in the middle, we get stuck in lists of tasks to do, a long way in and still a long way from the finish line.
This happens to me as much as...
elementary Blog
Package Releases Are Almost Done, You Won't Believe What Happens Next!
This month’s update is fairly brief since a lot of what we did last month was minor bug fixes,...
2 months ago
This month’s update is fairly brief since a lot of what we did last month was minor bug fixes, regression testing, updating metadata, taking screenshots, and releasing packages. We’re getting down to the last few items before we can release elementary OS 8. Read ahead to find out...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Seeing Others in Data, But Not Ourselves
Stanford psychologist Emily Pronin and her colleagues came up with an interesting study in human...
2 months ago
Stanford psychologist Emily Pronin and her colleagues came up with an interesting study in human behavior.
Subjects were given incomplete words and asked to complete them with the first word that came to mind.
For example, you’re given the fragments B__T and CHE__ and you write...
A Smart Bear
Legacy
Humans have always tried to live forever. Maybe you can, but not in the way you imagine.
2 months ago
Humans have always tried to live forever. Maybe you can, but not in the way you imagine.
Irrational...
Executive translation.
One of my most unexpectedly controversial posts
is Extract the Kernel, which argues
that executives...
2 months ago
One of my most unexpectedly controversial posts
is Extract the Kernel, which argues
that executives are generally directionally correct but specifically wrong,
and it’s your job to understand the overarching direction without getting
distracted by the narrow errors in their...
Irrational...
Video of Developing Eng Leadership Styles.
The last chapter I wrote for Eng Executive’s Primer was this one about developing engineering...
2 months ago
The last chapter I wrote for Eng Executive’s Primer was this one about developing engineering leadership styles.
It’s an interesting chapter to me peronally, precisely because it’s not something I would have agreed with or written five years ago.
This past Friday I gave a...
David Heinemeier...
Optimize for bio cores first, silicon cores second
A big part of the reason that companies are going ga-ga over AI right now is the promise that it...
2 months ago
A big part of the reason that companies are going ga-ga over AI right now is the promise that it might materially lower their payroll for programmers. If a company currently needs 10 programmers to do a job, each have a cost of $200,000/year, then that's a $2m/year problem. If AI...
Kagi Blog
We moved mountains (of cotton) to deliver on our promise
Dear Kagi Community, Remember those t-shirts we promised ( https://blog.kagi.com/celebrating-20k ) ?...
2 months ago
Dear Kagi Community, Remember those t-shirts we promised ( https://blog.kagi.com/celebrating-20k ) ? Well, hold onto your search bars, because they’re finally ready to ship! TL;DR: Kagi Store ( https://store.kagi.com ).
Engineer’s Codex
The Boolean Trap
Use enums instead
2 months ago
A Beautiful Site
Component Machines
Components are like little machines. You build them once. Use them whenever you need them.
Every now...
2 months ago
Components are like little machines. You build them once. Use them whenever you need them.
Every now and then you open them up to oil them or replace a part, then you send them back to work.
And work, they do.
Little component machines just chugging along so you never have to...
macwright.com
Recently
Reading
Since last time, I read a few books: Sea of Tranquility, a book club book, Doppelganger, the...
2 months ago
Reading
Since last time, I read a few books: Sea of Tranquility, a book club book, Doppelganger, the new Naomi Klein, and Manywhere, a collection of short stories.
Sea of Tranquility was very digestible sci-fi. I haven’t read that much sci-fi overall, so it’s probably inaccurate...
Ink & Switch
01 · Welcome to the Beehive
An introduction to the Beehive project
2 months ago
An introduction to the Beehive project
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Personal Websites Are As Vulnerable As Us
I look at some people’s personal websites and think, “Stupendous! If I ever reach that zenith of...
2 months ago
I look at some people’s personal websites and think, “Stupendous! If I ever reach that zenith of personal web design, I will call it quits.”
Then I read a post by them later and they say something like, “Gah! I just really don’t like where I’m at with my personal website.”
And in...
Computer Things
What could be added to TLA+
Last week Leslie Lamport posted The Future of TLA+, saying "the future of TLA+ is in the hands of...
2 months ago
Last week Leslie Lamport posted The Future of TLA+, saying "the future of TLA+ is in the hands of the TLA+ foundation". Lamport released TLA+ in 1999 and shepherded its development for the past 25 years. Transferring ownership of TLA+ to the official foundation has been in the...
Alex Meub
Building a Removable Bike Basket for the Yepp Rack
I wanted to add more hauling capacity to my bike and was looking for something compatible with my...
2 months ago
I wanted to add more hauling capacity to my bike and was looking for something compatible with my Yepp rear rack. I also use my rack with a child seat (the Yepp Maxi) which has a mechanism that allows it to attach and detach easily without sacrificing safety. I was thinking it...
Kagi Blog
Announcing The Assistant
Yes, the rumours are true!
Kagi has been thoughtfully integrating AI into our search experience,...
2 months ago
Yes, the rumours are true!
Kagi has been thoughtfully integrating AI into our search experience, creating a smarter, faster, and more intuitive search.
Kevin Chen
Real estate is one of the hardest open problems in scaled self driving
I’ve had a minor obsession with Waymo’s autonomous vehicle depots recently.
Over the past few...
2 months ago
I’ve had a minor obsession with Waymo’s autonomous vehicle depots recently.
Over the past few months, I’ve flown a drone as part of a stakeout to understand how they work. And I’ve taken a deep dive into an apparent Waymo outage to find the company charging its electric vehicles...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Sanding UI
One of the ways I like to do development is to build something, click around a ton, make tweaks,...
2 months ago
One of the ways I like to do development is to build something, click around a ton, make tweaks, click around more, more tweaks, more clicks, etc., until I finally consider it done.
The clicking around a ton is the important part. If it’s a page transition, that means going back...
Tony Finch's blog
exponential rate limiting
Following my previous post on rate limiting with GCRA, leaky buckets
without the buckets, I reviewed...
2 months ago
Following my previous post on rate limiting with GCRA, leaky buckets
without the buckets, I reviewed my old notes on rate limiting
for Exim. I thought I should do a new write-up of the ideas
that I hope will be more broadly interesting.
Exponential rate limiting uses an...
Ink & Switch
Provenance for science papers, local-first access control
In this Dispatch, we'll introduce you to two new projects at the lab: exploring writing environments...
2 months ago
In this Dispatch, we'll introduce you to two new projects at the lab: exploring writing environments for science papers and local-first access control. We also have some updates on WASM packaging for Automerge, and a new researcher-in-residence.
macwright.com
Recently
Reading
Since last time, I read a few books: Sea of Tranquility, a book club book, Doppelganger, the...
2 months ago
Reading
Since last time, I read a few books: Sea of Tranquility, a book club book, Doppelganger, the new Naomi Klein, and Manywhere, a collection of short stories.
Sea of Tranquility was very digestible sci-fi. I haven’t read that much sci-fi overall, so it’s probably inaccurate...
Oxide Computer...
Reflections on Founder Mode
Paul Graham’s Founder
Mode is an important piece, and you should read it if for no other reason
that...
2 months ago
Paul Graham’s Founder
Mode is an important piece, and you should read it if for no other reason
that "founder mode" will surely enter the lexicon (and as Graham grimly
predicts: "as soon as the concept of founder mode becomes established, people
will start misusing it"). When...
David Heinemeier...
Why don't more people use Linux?
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a tweet asking: "If Linux is so good, why aren't more people using it?"...
2 months ago
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a tweet asking: "If Linux is so good, why aren't more people using it?" And it's a fair question! It intuitively rings true until you give it a moment's consideration. Linux is even free, so what's stopping mass adoption, if it's actually better? My...
Ferd.ca
My Blog Engine is the Erlang Build Tool
From time to time, people ask me what I use to power my blog, maybe because they like the minimalist...
2 months ago
From time to time, people ask me what I use to power my blog, maybe because they like the minimalist form it has. I tell them it’s a bad idea and that I use the Erlang compiler infrastructure for it, and they agree to look elsewhere.
After launching my notes section, I had to...
bt RSS Feed
Burning & Playing PS2 Games without a Modded Console
Burning & Playing PS2 Games without a Modded Console
2024-09-02
Important: I do not support pirating...
2 months ago
Burning & Playing PS2 Games without a Modded Console
2024-09-02
Important: I do not support pirating or obtaining illegal copies of video games. This process should only be used to copy your existing PS2 games for backup, in case of accidental damage to the original...
ntietz.com blog
Reasons to write design docs
Sometimes I joke that as a principal engineer, my main programming language is English.
It's half...
2 months ago
Sometimes I joke that as a principal engineer, my main programming language is English.
It's half true, though, since my job is as much about people and communciation as it is about technology.
Probably more, actually.
Writing is useful at all levels of software engineering.
It's...
David Heinemeier...
Free speech isn't guaranteed to be forever
History is full of long stretches of dominance by noble ideas and despots, times of prosperity and...
2 months ago
History is full of long stretches of dominance by noble ideas and despots, times of prosperity and of dark ages. Each of which must have seemed like they would never end to the people who lived through them. If you were a citizen of the Ottoman empire 1452, you probably didn't...
Irrational...
Numbers go up.
There’s a genre of computer games called incremental games, whose entire design philosophy can be...
2 months ago
There’s a genre of computer games called incremental games, whose entire design philosophy can be summarized as, “numbers go up.” These games focus on the fundamental gaming loop rather than plot, characterization or anything beyond the foundational satisfaction of numbers...
A Smart Bear
Human + Fallible = Love; Corporate + Sterile = Refund
People love and forgive humans, not corporations. Expose your humanity to earn loyal, happy...
2 months ago
People love and forgive humans, not corporations. Expose your humanity to earn loyal, happy customers, even when you mess up.
Tyler Cipriani: blog
The Pull Request
A brief and biased history.
Oh yeah, there’s pull requests now
– GitHub blog, Sat,
23 Feb 2008
When...
2 months ago
A brief and biased history.
Oh yeah, there’s pull requests now
– GitHub blog, Sat,
23 Feb 2008
When GitHub launched, it had no code review.
Three
years after launch, in 2011, GitHub user rtomayko
became the first person to make a real code comment, which read, in
full:...
David Heinemeier...
For what it'll make of you
I've always had an ambivalent relationship with goals. I don't like goals that feel like checkpoints...
2 months ago
I've always had an ambivalent relationship with goals. I don't like goals that feel like checkpoints on a treadmill. They make you reach for a million dollars in revenue, celebrate for a second, and then turn the chase to five million the minute after. No thanks. But specific,...
Confessions of a...
The Design & Implementation of the CPython Virtual Machine
A deep dive into CPython's bytecode instruction format and execution engine internals
2 months ago
A deep dive into CPython's bytecode instruction format and execution engine internals
David Heinemeier...
We once more have no full-time managers at 37signals
After experimenting with a number of management roles over the last few years, 37signals is back to...
2 months ago
After experimenting with a number of management roles over the last few years, 37signals is back to its original configuration: None. We once more have no full-time managers whose sole function is to organize or direct the work of others. Everyone doing management here does so on...
Tony Finch's blog
GCRA: leaky buckets without the buckets
Yesterday I read an article describing the GCRA rate limiting
algorithm. I thought it was really...
2 months ago
Yesterday I read an article describing the GCRA rate limiting
algorithm. I thought it was really interesting, but I wasn’t
entirely satisfied with Brandur’s explanation, and the Wikipedia
articles on leaky buckets and GCRA are terrible, so here’s
my version.
what is GCRA?
GCRA is...
Confessions of a...
CPython Internals: What Happens Before Bytecode Execution Starts
Learn about runtime initialization, parsing and compilation of the Python code into bytecode leading...
2 months ago
Learn about runtime initialization, parsing and compilation of the Python code into bytecode leading to execution on the virtual machine
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
The Humble Link
I was joking on Mastodon about how the zeitgeist has changed over the years, but its pattern is...
2 months ago
I was joking on Mastodon about how the zeitgeist has changed over the years, but its pattern is revealing itself: an acronym which merely drops letters. The Next Big Thing™ is clearly going to be “A”.
2010: Everyone needs an "API"
2020: Everyone needs "AI"
2030: Everyone needs...
Stephen Wolfram...
Five Most Productive Years: What Happened and What’s Next
So… What Happened? Today is my birthday—for the 65th time. Five years ago, on my 60th birthday, I...
2 months ago
So… What Happened? Today is my birthday—for the 65th time. Five years ago, on my 60th birthday, I did a livestream where I talked about some of my plans. So… what happened? Well, what happened was great. And in fact I’ve just had the most productive five years of my life. Nine...
Krzysztof Kowalczyk...
Man vs. AI: optimizing JavaScript (Claude, Cursor)
How AI beat me at code optimization game.
When I started writing this article I did not...
2 months ago
How AI beat me at code optimization game.
When I started writing this article I did not expect AI to beat me at optimizing JavaScript code. But it did.
I’m really passionate about optimizing JavaScript. Some say it’s a mental illness but I like my code to go balls to...
Kagi Blog
Dawn of a new era in Search: Balancing innovation, competition, and public good
Google search is in the news.
2 months ago
Google search is in the news.
Nelson's Weblog
8BitDo Game Controllers
8BitDo makes good game controllers. A
wide variety of styles from retro to mainstream, with some...
2 months ago
8BitDo makes good game controllers. A
wide variety of styles from retro to mainstream, with some unusual shapes.
And wide compatibility with various systems: PC, Macs, Switch, Android. They’re well
built, work right, and quite inexpensive. A far cry from the...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Notes from Pen & Teller’s Masterclass
I quite enjoyed Pen & Teller’s Masterclass (paywall, sorry!). I learned some practical card tricks...
2 months ago
I quite enjoyed Pen & Teller’s Masterclass (paywall, sorry!). I learned some practical card tricks that came in handy while we sitting in the airport waiting for a connecting fight with restless kids.
I also really enjoyed Pen & Teller’s reflections on the art of their craft....
bt RSS Feed
"This Key is Useless Now. Discard?"
“This Key is Useless Now. Discard?”
2024-08-28
The title of this article probably triggers nostalgic...
2 months ago
“This Key is Useless Now. Discard?”
2024-08-28
The title of this article probably triggers nostalgic memories for old school Resident Evil veterans like myself. My personal favourite in the series (not that anyone asked) was the original, 1998 version of Resident Evil 2 (RE2). I...
Miguel Carranza
Full Circle
I’m back in Spain for my brother’s wedding. I rarely visit during the summer. The heat in my...
2 months ago
I’m back in Spain for my brother’s wedding. I rarely visit during the summer. The heat in my hometown is brutal, around 40 degrees Celsius (over 100 Fahrenheit for my imperial friends). Most people escape to the coast, just like my family did when I was a kid. I haven’t been here...
PostHog's RSS Feed
We built an internal tool to generate changelog images for social media
PostHog's marketing team recently created a plan to improve our social media presence. One of the ...
2 months ago
PostHog's marketing team recently created a plan to improve our social media presence. One of the ideas was to share our changelog updates in a…
PostHog's RSS Feed
How to brand your startup so it isn't boring
The world would be more fun if most startups hadn't undergone a personality vasectomy. Be it the...
2 months ago
The world would be more fun if most startups hadn't undergone a personality vasectomy. Be it the human instinct for conformity, or the inevitable…
Epic Web Dev
Prisma Typed SQL Queries (tip)
2 months ago
David Heinemeier...
Children of You
The birth rate is dropping all over the world. In some places, like South Korea (0.72), it is so low...
2 months ago
The birth rate is dropping all over the world. In some places, like South Korea (0.72), it is so low people are starting to worry about a national extinction. In other places, including all of Europe (average 1.5, Spain 1.29), it's merely bad and alarming. And nobody seems to...
Computer Things
State and time are the same thing
Time is state
Imagine I put an ordinary ticking quartz clock in an empty room. I walk in, and ten...
2 months ago
Time is state
Imagine I put an ordinary ticking quartz clock in an empty room. I walk in, and ten minutes later I walk out with two photograph prints.1 In the 1st one, the second hand is pointing at the top of the clock, in the 2nd it's pointing at the bottom. Are these two...
somenice
Painting of Russet Lake
Summer in Garibaldi Provincial Park, British Columbia, is a breathtaking experience, where the...
2 months ago
Summer in Garibaldi Provincial Park, British Columbia, is a breathtaking experience, where the natural world is alive with vibrant colours and serene beauty. One of the most stunning scenes unfolds at Russet Lake, where the iconic Fissile Mountain is mirrored perfectly in the...
HTMHell
#33 make me one (input) with everything
The good intentions were there but in the HTML and Accessibility world, less is sometimes more.
Bad...
2 months ago
The good intentions were there but in the HTML and Accessibility world, less is sometimes more.
Bad code
<label for="textinput">First name</label>
<input type="text" id="textinput" aria-label="First name" placeholder="First name" title="First name">
Issues and how to fix them
The...
Paolo Amoroso's...
How to build Medley Interlisp
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