Published
Weekend Reading — I. Kant.
Terry Matz “Seems like a good time to share this free knitting pattern for the This Is Fine Sweater by Yu Jie 玉杰”
Tech Stuff
Databases are still using tables? Don't they know we've switched to
<div>years ago?
Rethinking Find-in-Page Accessibility: Making Hidden Text Work for Everyone
The reality of long-term software maintenance from the maintainer's perspective Maintenance is the gift that never stops giving:
That's when you become wise to the risks of outside contributions. You realise: they built the first structure, but they left me with the long-term responsibility of managing it - a responsibility ultimately involving more work than the initial construction, and that ultimately caused so much trouble and expense that I'd rather they never did it in the first place, or alternatively I wish I just built it myself.
Mastra A TypeScript friendly framework for writing AI agents.
Sometimes folks notice I typically refrain from picking a side in software methodology wars. This is because I feel very uncertain about what an evidence-based stance is, here: for instance many conversations about Agile seem to me to be debating incredibly different organizational contexts and implementations, devolving quickly to no true Scotsman fallacies on the one hand, and "all things are corrupted" nihilism on the other. I find both things really irritating.
Rocket My favorite macOS app for adding emoji — type a colon and then complete the emoji name and :thumbsup: (👍)
nanoid A tiny (118 bytes) URL-friendly unique string ID generator.
AI agents will outmaneuver salespeople by optimizing persuasion From which I learned a thing or two about good old PacMan:
Most people don’t realize this, but each of the four ghosts was programmed with a different “personality.” Good players can observe their actions and learn to predict their behaviors. For example, the red ghost (Blinky) was designed with a “pursuer” personality that charges directly towards you. The pink ghost (Pinky), on the other hand, was given an “ambusher” personality that predicts where you’re going and tries to get there first. As a result, if you rush directly at Pinky, you can use her personality against her, causing her to actually turn away from you.
open A dang useful npm package - opens anything in the relevant app.
import open, {apps} from 'open';
await open('https://google.com', {
app: { name: apps.chrome }
});
I'm glad AI didn't exist when I learned to code Actually AI existed when I learned to code, but it was the early days of neural networks and it was quite fun to try and teach a computer how to recognize a letter or number from 8×8 pixels. But I sure am glad GenAI didn’t exist when I learned to code.
Developer philosophy Some words of wisdom.
BritCSS Fixes CSS to use non-American English.
European alternatives for popular services When you get tired of paying taxes to the billionaire overlords.
CalcVerse A comprehensive suite of free online calculators and unit converters.
Obscura The graphics on this website are just so delightful!
For the record, I don't think you need a VPN. VPNs don't add anything when all your web traffic is already over HTTPS, they’re just a way to sell ads on podcasts. And I absolutely don't think you need a VPN that accepts payments via Bitcoin — Bitcoin is for funding North Korea. Still I do know some people are looking for a VPN …
Running Pong in 240 Browser Tabs
Eye for Design
Citywide A sans serif typeface inspired by mid-1900s bus roll signs.
Defense Against Dishonest Charts This excellent interactive tutorial on misleading data visualizations explores the idea of a "counter chart" — the graph you draw in response to refute a misleading claim.
katherine Kna… is the perfect design system!
Peoples
People mimic what they see when there’s a perceived danger. I was just at the pharmacy picking up my wife’s meds, and every pharmacist was wearing a surgical mask (wish they were n95, but I’ll take it). There were about 10 of us in the lobby and only three folks did not have a mask. As the moments ticked by, 2 of them walked over and picked up one of the free masks and put them on. The next three people who walked in, upon seeing a room of masked people, also put masks on from the free box. You may not think you’re setting an example, but you are. Show yourself. Be the light.
I'm starting to suspect that on my more "productive" days, I should take long breaks. I don't naturally pace myself, and I become exhausted.
A lot of learning to work with ADHD is ignoring other people's expectations of what productivity looks like. Why shouldn't I take a couple hour-long breaks in the day, if my work-product is better that way? When I focus, I focus intensely and accomplish a lot—my work style doesn't look the same as other people's.
Business Side
It's a fire sale for a company that has been under duress for months after their product, the Ai Pin, failed to catch fire in the market. Actually, that's not technically true. There was a literal risk of fire when charging the device, which led to a recall. And so you'll forgive me for sort of re-using a headline here – but this situation is much more akin to the Hindenburg disaster from which the phrase originates.
Just a reminder that the buyer — HP — has a long track record of weird acquisitions: Apollo Computer, Compaq, EDS, Palm, 3Com, Autonomy, and many more, while Humane founder Imran is a master of putting his name on numerous patents.
Related, HP adds 15 minutes waiting time for telephone support calls.
Best Countries for UX Designers in 2025: Salaries, Jobs, and Cost of Living
Machine Intelligence
Damning new AI study shows that chatbots make errors summarizing the news over 50% of the time — and this is the worst offender PS: this headline was not summarized by AI.
josef “what a cover”
Insecurity
Apple Removes Cloud Encryption Feature From UK After Backdoor Order Sometimes Apple makes the right decision:
Apple Inc. is removing its most advanced encrypted security feature for cloud data in the UK, a stunning development that follows the government ordering the company to build a backdoor for accessing user data.
How bad is this law? It allows the UK to spy on anyone that’s using iOS, not just UK residents. And the law doesn’t permit Apple to tell you about it:
The mandate orders Apple to provide access under the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act, a law that granted officials the authority to compel companies to remove encryption under what’s known as a “technical capability notice.” The law also makes it illegal for companies to reveal when the government has made such an order.
Android has not been affected, which means one of two things: the UK already cracked your Android password (even if you don’t live in the UK), or Google complied with UK policy.
Lou Plummer Which is all the reason you need an ad blocker in your browser:
Google is making a big deal about allowing users to opt out of cookies like never before to give the illusion of privacy. At the same time, the company has reversed its stance and now allows digital fingerprinting, which makes tracking impossible to evade.
North Korea's Lazarus Group responsible for Bybit hack resulting in losses of over $1.5 billion: Arkham The brilliance of crypto is that it funds North Korea:
Lazarus Group, a notorious unit of crypto protocol hackers, was thought to also be behind the hack DMM Bitcoin hack. "It is suspected that Lazarus Group is behind the hack due to similarities in laundering techniques and off-chain indicators," ZachXBT said at the time.
The Cryptocurrency Scam That Turned a Small Town Against Itself This sounds weird: why would a business person transfer $47.1 million that he doesn’t even own to “a woman named Bella with family in Australia”? But that’s how these scams work, and I know one or two people who fell for this trick (I always warn them):
The scams typically begin with messages on LinkedIn, Facebook or WhatsApp from an unknown phone number or someone posing as a romantic prospect. Sometimes the conversations lead to business introductions, a connection to a banker or asset manager, with a slick headshot and a fictional résumé. The target is offered an investment opportunity, often backed up by a fraudulent website masquerading as an actual crypto business or an app that displays fake profits on fake account statements. Eventually, the scams all end the same way: The money disappears.
Related, Online scams may already be as big a scourge as illegal drugs And they are growing fast. Be careful out there!
OpenAI Uncovers Evidence of A.I.-Powered Chinese Surveillance Tool Let’s see if I got this correct. OpenAI is very unhappy that DeepSeek is a thing that exists. Since DeepSeek is Chinese, OpenAI needs some way to cast blame on China. And they get just the story by spying on their very own customers, which they hope you won’t mind (or soon forget):
The company’s researchers said they had identified this new campaign, which they called Peer Review, because someone working on the tool used OpenAI’s technologies to debug some of the computer code that underpins it.
Quantum Insanity
Why Quantum Cryptanalysis is Bollocks Here’s the thing about all this quantum bollocks. It’s absolutely bollocks. And I’m not a skeptic, I absolutely love new technologies and things that seem like magic. But this is not it:
A Lesson from History (ctd)
Everyone who was anyone wanted to be associated with it
BTW this is a wonderful slide deck which shows you how to make a valuable presentation that both informs and entertains your audience. 60 slides but it takes only a few minutes to read through!
Microsoft’s Majorana 1 chip carves new path for quantum computing This is super impressive!
topoconductors and the new type of chip they enable offer a path to developing quantum systems that can scale to a million qubits and are capable of tackling the most complex industrial and societal problems, Microsoft said.
They invented a new state of matter so they can house one million qubits on a chip the size of your palm!
Oh wait … a few more details emerge if you follow the links and read the actual source:
And we’ve already placed eight topological qubits on a chip designed to house one million.
So not a million qubits quite yet. It took them 17 years to get to 8! And I'm pretty sure 8 is just a million short of one million. But surely in a century or so they’ll get enough capacity to finally calculate 2+2 using quantum computing!
Everything Else
This LEGO Blockbuster Set Is The Ultimate Throwback To ’90s Movie Night Nostalgia Popcorn and a movie.
I'm not "going to bed late", I'm syncing up with different timezones
I was promised bread and circuses, but the circus is behind a paywall and bread is getting expensive
Post by cms “Y'know, the world seems barely cursed at all right now, we should _definitely _ crack open a new Pharoah's tomb.”
My life had a bit less anxiety in it before I've learned that the plane can end up upside down while landing
I saw a post just once of someone who jokingly said they pronounce the word testosterone like it’s Italian pasta and my brain latched onto that for dear life.
I can’t un-hear it in my head.It doesn’t matter if the post is a serious one, I hear the word in my head like it’s fettuccini and I giggle.
Whoever you were, congrats on ruining me. If I ever use the word in person I will lose my shit 😅
Scottish Highland bull on the loose in Connecticut's rural hill country Mooooooooo
Fictional villains: my motivation involves a complex backstory around lost love and a deep yearning to be understood
Real life villains: being cruel makes me feel like a big strong man
instead of doomscrolling, i try to spend my time doing healthier things like doomcleaning the house, going for doomwalks, doomgardening, doomcatching up with friends and family, etc
TL;DW Too Long; Didn't Watch basically summarizes a YouTube video so you can scan the text instead of watching the full thing.
It’s so adorkable when science articles mention temperatures like “100 million ℃” and them helpfully add “(180 million ℉)” so that Americans who have been to the core of the sun (or Melbourne) can correlate that figure with their lived experience.
Name a German philosopher:
👎🏻 I can’t
👍🏻 I. Kant
Chilly ATC Blends live Air Traffic Control with ambient music for the perfect focus.
Yesterday my son lost his wallet on a London bus
This morning the wallet was pushed through his letterbox, intact, with a note attached which just said. 'Mate, you left this on the bus, good luck'.It's great to be reminded that there are good folk .
Have doctors been wrong about how to treat Alzheimer’s disease?
The finding fuelled a wave of research into the idea of Alzheimer’s being a “diabetes of the brain” that could be managed with drugs. There was just one problem—both studies were based on falsified data.
Gus 2.0 Uses a pair of adorable eyes to indicate when the air quality in your room is subpar.
My daughter is publishing another academic paper and has to run a filter to ensure there are no "controversial" words. It is an applied physics paper dealing with novel quantum matter. This timeline is so stupid and evil.
‘Reading is part of my identity’: the woman taking on Goodreads owner Amazon
After building a demo for a few friends, she quickly realised it was more likely to be a competitor, offering readers’ tracking tools and trends – using AI – that could help recommend their next book. And as of this week, The StoryGraph has 3.8 million active users, many of whom have ditched Goodreads.
'Expensive cargo': Semi-truck hauling boxes of eggs crashes on Oklahoma interstate 🥚💵💵💵🥚
In today’s “terminology matters”:
❌ Return To Office policy: middle-management language that assumes “office” is a neutral position, we’re somehow “returning to”. This term has been carefully crafted by corporate strategists to sound as palatable as possible.
✅ Mandatory Commute policy: centers the outcome for workers - spending hours each day on an unpaid commute to and from the office just so we can be on video calls all day.
We don’t just have to accept hostile framing.
GeriAQuin “🇩🇰 SUV shopping, Copenhagen style.”
