Published
Weekend Reading — I’m bringing .exe back
David Phd "The British are adding panels to the Bayeux Tapestry while its in London"
Tech Stuff
Chatto aims to be the group chat application that you actually enjoy using. You’re probably familiar with the one that rhymes with “knack”, or the one that rhymes with “beams”, or the one that rhymes with “this gourd”.
…
It’s designed to be extremely easy to self-host on your own infrastructure. In its most basic shape, you just run the executable, and that’s it. It even serves its own frontend!
A new app, HyperTexting, turns the open web into a scrollable social media-like feed HyperTexting behaves just like a regular social media app (a plus), works using RSS feeds (also a plus), but doesn't talk about RSS at length (yet another plus). Try it for yourself and see how you like it.
“Instead of chasing the platforms — the handful of websites we call social media today — and instead of trying to assert some opinion in this decentralized federated social networking thing that’s happening right now, my opinion is that the greatest decentralized social network ever created already exists, and it’s called the World Wide Web,” he said. “Like, let’s just use that.”
[talking to a plural system] so are you dualbooting or is it more of a docker situation
Davit macOS app for Apple's container platform, so you can run Linux containers on your Mac, no need to mess with Docker Desktop.
linuxrebel/DocuBrowser Turns a messy pile of documents into something you can actually search. Point it at your files — PDFs, ebooks, Word docs, notes, whatever — and it builds a smart index that understands not just keywords, but meaning. Ask for "that contract about the lease renewal" and find it even if those exact words never appear. Click any result for an instant AI summary before you even open the file. PII aware and works with multiple document directories.
Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to fit everything into 640 KB.
Now one browser tab needs 2 GB of RAM so 17 analytics companies can find out I looked at socks.
Opinionated and easy Pi.dev configuration I like it. You run npx @robzolkos/lazypi and it gives you a menu of Pi extensions you can selectively install. There's also CLI to selectively remove extensions you no longer need. Includes extensions for running sub-agents, using MCP servers more efficiently, persistent memory, Claude Code integration, usage tracking, Ralph Wiggum loop, 60+ skills, and much more.
HotkeyClash Scans running apps, Karabiner, skhd, and macOS system shortcuts to show you where two or more use the same hotkey so you can avoid hotkey conflicts. Open source with zero dependencies.
I’ve been working with computers for five decades. Some people view me as an “expert” in certain subjects.
And I can tell you that when I am learning a new technology I still feel like the dumbest newb on the planet. I make tons of mistakes. I go down stupid rabbit holes of my own making. I have tons of self doubt.
So give yourself some grace. Everybody goes through this phase. Take a deep breath. Believe that you can do this.
Quay macOS menubar app to start, stop and monitor services — project servers, Homebrew formulae, Docker containers, terminal agents, etc. Open source and built on Tauri v2 so lightweight.
The Website Specification is an attempt at creating a spec, that answers the question “regardless of the stack you build on, what should a good website do? “. This covers 160 topics, organised in a checklist from foundations to accessibility, SEO, security and beyond and comes with a MCP if you want to run it via an agent. A project by Joost de Valk
Eye for Design
Buried Apple Feature Turns an iPhone into the Perfect Kids' Dumb Phone Super interesting accessibility feature:
It's called Assistive Access. Introduced with iOS 17, Apple designed it for those with cognitive disabilities. If you've never encountered or stumbled across it, it's a distinctive iOS experience: fewer options, more focused features, easier to navigate. The aesthetic is ideal for kids: large, friendly tiles for the apps replace the smaller icons of the “normal” Apple interface.
AirKaren Need to lodge a complaint with the airline? Karen webchat to the rescue! Tell Karen what happened and she will cross-references your case against real passenger-rights regulations to determine your compensation eligibility.
Peoples
How Successful Companies Go Blind I worked at a couple of these companies:
Companies who have forgotten what it took to become successful are similar: they stop recognizing competence, because the environment has stopped expressing the trait in anyone the company hires. Call it competence blindness, which is different from incumbents who fail because they cling to the customers and margins of yesterday’s market. Firms with competence blindness do not disappear. In fact, they can survive for decades.
LinkedIn, a mass grave of ghost jobs, is now becoming a dating app From the "we knew this would happen" department:
“LinkedIn has inadvertently become the blue checkmark of the dating world, serving as a more reliable background check than traditional dating apps,” the report says. “In an era of online ghosting and deception, a resume and a verified career history are now viewed as the real indicators of stability and character.”
Rejection Emails Should Be Written Like Error Messages
Be direct. Tell me I'm not going to be interviewed in the first sentence. Don't hide it in the second paragraph.
Machine Intelligence
A global workspace in language models Anthropic engineered Claude to peek into its J-Space which holds the internal thoughts of the model. Yes, the model has an internal thought process. Also, friendly reminder: “Telling Claude to avoid a thought partly brings the thought to mind, much like what happens to people who are told not to think about a white bear.”
GLM 5.2 is (nearly) as accurate as a human book-keeper at less than 1% of the cost Indirectly I'm promoting GLM 5.2 because I think it's super great and very affordable. But the reason I'm posting a link to this article is because I hope LLMs — in all their varieties — put an end to us having to use TurboTax et al to submit our taxes.
Sixty-five years of "no more programmers"
Each wave automated a chore and left the mission alone. COBOL took the chore of writing assembly. The 4GLs took the chore of hand-building the same forms and reports. The AI is taking the chore of writing the syntax. None of them touched the mission, because the mission was never the typing.
Insecurity
How to stop spam signups on your Ghost membership site Lots of Ghost self-hosters are getting hit with waves of spam sign-ups. Jannis explains how to mitigate these spam attacks. And the general technique presented here (verify request integrity, WAF, etc) will work with any service you build or maintain, not just Ghost blogs. (via Mark Stosberg)
Everything Else
Chris Petrilli "My passion is infographics."
The internet promised us a library and mostly delivered a pub argument that never closes and has no bouncer.
I have reached the stage of the heatwave where I plug in the air fryer outside so I don’t make the house hotter by cooking.
The landscaping service has arrived to trim the bushes in our front yard.
He's great, doesn't even bill us
It's okay to peel that protective film off of the screen of that thing you bought. You have my permission.
I’m bringing .exe back.
Aeropickles: How the Internet Fell in Love with Japan’s Dancing Pickles I have no idea why I enjoy this so much, but my TikTok feed is now full of aeropickles.
Every hobby starts with curiosity and ends with storage problems.
highly praised and little read
There's a new mayoral candidate in chicago named Lisa Nee and unfortunately it's impossible to search for her name without it autocompleting "ds braces"
The Second Derivative: Why No One Understands the AI Boom
There is a deeper misclassification beneath the 2000-versus-2008 question, and it is the one that does the real damage. The market is pricing AI as a technology cycle when its actual anatomy is that of a credit-driven real estate cycle - which is precisely why the 2008 mechanics apply - and the two break for entirely different reasons.
… This is not a software business that happens to own servers. It is a real estate business that happens to compute.
The reason there are no more good ideas in tech is that every office has these "low odor" whiteboard markers. Ten years ago, every Design Thinking session participant was way more creative because they were strung out on marker fumes.
Cats are often entertained by simple things, such rolling a small ball underneath furniture and then trying to get it out.
As a sophisticated ape, I require far more complex forms of entertainment such as watching a cat rolling a small ball underneath furniture and then trying to get it out.
This is what streets look like if you reduce car traffic by redesigning the public space. Barcelona creates superblocks by blocking the traffic caused by cars. You only enter those streets if you want to pick someone up. The main traffic is flowing around - not through - the superblock.
1/3 James Bond
There's a wonderful true story about Roger Moore meeting a young fan in Nice airport in 1983.
Mark Haynes was seven years old when he recognized Moore as James Bond while travelling with his grandfather and asked if it was okay to get an autograph.
"As charming as you'd expect, Roger asks my name and duly signs the back of my plane ticket, a fulsome note full of best wishes," remembers Mark. "I'm ecstatic, but as we head back to our seats, I glance down at the signature. It's hard to decipher it but it definitely doesn't say 'James Bond'. My grandad looks at it, half figures out it says 'Roger Moore' - I have absolutely no idea who that is, and my hearts sinks.
"I tell my grandad he's signed it wrong, that he's put someone else's name - so my grandad heads back to Roger Moore, holding the ticket which he's only just signed.
