Published
Weekend Reading — Distributed CEO
Ben Royce "Why do I feel like I'm in an art museum for some odd reason?"
Tech Stuff
Managing Developer Experience Debt When I was leading a tech team at a previous startup, I would love Mondays because they were the start of another fun week full of solving real problems. And I told my team, if you dread Monday, let's figure out what we can do to streamline your experience getting from idea to production. Because leading a tech team is primarily about reducing the Developer Experience Debt. Anyway, here’s a good article for you to pursue.
Today my rust compiler told me "expected future, found a different future".
And I'm like: me too buddy, me too
WebTUI A CSS library that brings the beauty of Terminal UIs to the browser.
wanasit/chrono When you need to parse any string as a date:
import * as chrono from 'chrono-node';
chrono.parseDate('An appointment on Sep 12-13');
That last point is particularly frustrating. Companies are not hiring the developers they need because they’re convinced that AGI? is right around the corner, and when that egg hatches, we won’t need human developers at all anymore. “It’ll be any week now”, they’ve been saying for years. 😅”
Some things never change, for example, "It’ll be any week now” has been with us for many years and will stick around for a very very long time.
ArkType TypeScript's 1:1 validator.
Introducing Zod 4 beta Apropos TypeScript validators, I prefer the Zod style, so happy to see that v4 is around the corner.
if you ever stumble across a folder called 'temp' on a file share on any corporate network, nine times out of ten it's 24 years old and contains everything you need to assume ownership over both the network and the company
VERT.sh This looks like the ultimate file conversion website — it can convert images, audio, video, and documents in tons of commonly used formats. Most file types convert on your device, quickly and for free.
I used to work at a factory and one of the maintenance people had a sticker on his toolbox that said:
“We have been doing so much with so little for so long that we are now qualified to do anything with nothing”. I think about that a lot.
NextDNS Just a reminder that NextDNS is a thing that exists, it handles your DNS needs quite nicely, it’s super fast, very affordable (free plan applies to most people), and you can easily add domains to the denylist and pretend like these sites don't exist. Two tricks I recommend:
- Turn off iCloud Private Relay, it does not work well with NextDNS denylist
- Add the NextDNS Root CA to your browser to see that Blue Blocked Page when you hit a blocked domain
I have found that reviewing code is harder than writing code. Increasingly, I am trying to write code that is easier to review -- that when someone looks at it, it is easier for them to tell if it does what it ought.
One of my objections to widespread LLM use for code generation is that we replace the easier task of code writing with the harder task of code reviewing.
(I include ensemble/mob programming here as a type of code review -- continuous code review)
good to print off a few copies in case your ISP has an outage and you need to send some packets in an emergency
Eye for Design
Do Ugly Websites Sell Better? A Contrarian Look at Web Design and Conversion Rates
For designers, the challenge lies in understanding context—the psychology of your audience, their expectations, and the unique needs of the market you’re designing for. If you’re creating a website for a customer base that craves authenticity and simplicity over sophistication, an “ugly” design might just be the perfect strategy.
404s "404 pages, where joy and errors meet. A growing gallery of 404 page designs from around the internet. For all those lost pages, error pages & page not found out there."
The rings of Saturn indicate that it is currently selected in the solar system UI
ColorWare Apple Crayon Pros These Crayon-styled Apple pencils just look fantastic and even though I don’t use my Apple Pencil that much I want them!
Peoples
Nobody: "You can't really represent the concept of masking visually."
Artist: "Hold my trout”
Micromovements Reveal Hidden Emotional Cues in Autism So NT is a comprehension disability?
New research reveals that individuals with autism express emotions using the same facial muscles as neurotypical individuals, but at intensities too subtle for the human eye to detect. Using a novel method called micromovement spikes, researchers captured these faint expressions in five-second videos, uncovering emotion where others see none.
Communicating across the divide: What to know as a neurotypical
There's no sugar coating it: sometimes we need to step away. We get overstimulated by the lights or sounds, or by the emotions in the room (especially negative ones), or it's just been too many hours and too much of whatever takes more effort than you think it does: talking, listening, masking.
Tech workers are leaving notes in robot taxis seeking workers and lovers Missed connections gets a new lease on life:
A few days later, another handwritten ad found in a Waymo was shared on X from a single man looking for a date. The bachelor described himself as a 26-year-old who works in tech but "doesn't make it my whole personality" and left a phone number for interested parties to text. The post has gotten more than 200 replies.
The Parking Letters Meanwhile down south, LA takes a more (passive) aggressive approach:
Take that F-150 I found parked in a compact space at the Whole Foods parking lot in Venice. A typical Los Angeles scene: Congratulations on getting your truck into that spot, and thanks to you no one else can open their doors.
Business Side
How Nintendo Bled Atari Games to Death Behind every great console is a great legal fight.
Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy
Why do startups typically fail? It turns out that "avoiding those things" is already a plan for success.
The Open Guide to Equity Compensation Everything you need to know about the over complicated employee equity compensation scheme: stocks, RSU, ISO vs NSO, 83(b), 409A, and many more things.
MEActNOW “London bus stop near Amazon HQ 🎯🔥”
Machine Intelligence
Everything wrong with MCP Lack of security, lousy UI/UX, LLM limits, and more. Personally, I’m not an MCP (Model Context Protocol) fan yet because I’ve been barely able to use a couple MCP servers successfully, but this could just be bleeding edge issues and most will be resolved quickly enough. 🤞
Why are AI companies so bad at naming their models? In which the article’s author answers their own question:
Naming your models after a creative class you threaten to displace is an act of cruelty.
Tired: Teachers using tools to find students cheating with AI.
Wired: Teachers using tools to figure out how many of their new students are bots who are just there to submit enough AI-completed assignments that they can claim financial aid in someone else's name.
This story from the Voice of San Diego is worth a read:
…
"The bots’ goal is to bilk state and federal financial aid money by enrolling in classes, and remaining enrolled in them, long enough for aid disbursements to go out. They often accomplish this by submitting AI-generated work. And because community colleges accept all applicants, they’ve been almost exclusively impacted by the fraud.“
New York mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo writes his housing plan with ChatGPT Of course he did (or more likely someone he paid). But the best part:
The plan is 29 pages long. By page 28, it devolves into gibberish:
This is a politically convenient posture, but to be in. Victory if landlords — small landlords in particular — are simply unable to maintain their buildings.
A citation on page 28 includes ChatGPT in the cited web page URL.
Insecurity
Google is so sneaky. This prompt inside Gmail gives you three options. The two most visible options (number 1 is 'Try it now' and number 2 is 'Continue') basically mean 'Enable Gemini AI to write emails.' The third option cancels it which is hidden well. Google, you could do better than this. This is a perfect example of a dark pattern. For those who want AI to write basic emails can enable it but there is not need to do this kind of "shady" stuff.
New Vulnerability in GitHub Copilot and Cursor: How Hackers Can Weaponize Code Agents Rule files as a new attack vector.
riseandignite/mcp-shield Scan your MCP servers to determine how likely they are to land you in a world of trouble.
harishsg993010/damn-vulnerable-MCP-server A deliberately vulnerable MCP server for educational purposes.
Everything Else
likealeaf These “Invisible Jumpers” are amazing. 👈 Click that link to see more photos.
I only eat locally sourced, free range, organic microplastics
OH: "He's like ChatGPT. He talks with complete confidence about things he knows nothing about."
omg.lol Make a profile page (Markdown is all you need), join Mastodon, use Fastmail, and a few more delightful things you can use to build your new presence on the internets.
Fesshole I knew it!
Supermarket delivery driver here. We do look through your shopping and we do judge. Eat some vegetables FFS
The Rules of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote Cartoons
Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote’s greatest enemy.
Ye Olde Blogroll Because we need to bring blogs back, this over-reliance on Facebook, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Medium, et al is losing us too much.
Your honor, I did not “stab” him. We were playing “Is it cake.” And as it turns out, the victim is not cake.
That is awesome 😀
When I was a kid, I once had dinner with a neighbour, and they served me a mashed potato steam boat with sausage chimneys and carrot round portholes, sailing through a gravy sea.
Such whimsy did not exist in my house, and - as you can see - it stuck with me!
A Visit to Costco in France If you need a spoonful of mustard, head over to French Costco! They also have almond croissants. (In my limited experience grocery shopping in France, I do not recall anyone buying anything in XXXXL sizes)
Rippling is trying to serve Deel’s CEO, but bailiffs can’t find him I always thought that distributed computing is about how we spread algorithms over multiple CPUs, and never thought it’s about how we distribute CEOs over multiple countries:
Bouaziz is “highly nomadic” but remains “very attached to France,” French magazine Challenges reported. Bouaziz lists his location as Tel Aviv on LinkedIn, but New York on X.
Amazon Turned Drivers Into First Responders in Europe Experiment For the low low price of only $149 a year you too can get a Life Saving Prime(tm) membership that delivers CPR* straight to your home!
(* Some rules and conditions apply, void where prohibited, we’ll be more precise when we enforce our limits but speak vague to avoid any whatsoever liability)
Charging station concept lets you integrate Lego pieces for creative purposes Technically, this is a concept for an iWatch charger that's made of Lego and there are several different designs. I like the charger I have by my beside much more, but I do also have an older iWatch that I'm no longer using and I'm thinking … do I turn it into a flower?
LinkedIn is a waiting room of doom.
This isn’t a wave. It’s a collapse in motion. And it’s wildly out of sync with the world outside the feed.
U.S. unemployment is around 5%. LinkedIn’s is 21%.
That means “Open to Work” is four times greater than the national unemployment average. And that number—220 million—is just the tip of the iceberg.
As San Francisco car break-ins plunge, these businesses are suffering Unfortunately, in San Francisco fewer people are breaking into cars nowadays, which is causing a wide disruption in the nascent auto-glass industry. How dare them not break into cars!?!
Like many glass repair specialists, Wee was reluctant to blame a reduction in crime for the slump. Instead, he and other shop owners pointed to literally anything else: increased competition, economic uncertainty, consumers’ hesitancy to spend money.
(I guess they couldn’t find glass shop owners that would blame lack of business on diminishing break-ins, but they could find a journalist to write about it)
A jury found Blue Cross liable for fraud and awarded the hospital $421 million. The insurance company denied wrongdoing and has appealed.
Cheetos Pants These pants are everything you want: large size pockets to fit a Cheetos bag, rough towel-like texture to wipe your hands clean, orange on orange on orange with a shade of orange.
