Published
Weekend Reading — Is it me you're calling for?
MostlyHarmless "The bloody hipsters have gone too far."
Tech Stuff
Embeddable When you need a little widget on your website that converts traffic (newsletter signup, posted review, discount checkout, etc), why not let AI do the walking? This doesn't look horribly expensive, $19/month for 100 tokens.
The job board for fractional jobs Fractional work is part-time, done by experts, embedded into the company. It is for companies that keep a lean team, keep burn low, need expert talent, and want to maintain flexibility.
No, AI is not Making Engineers 10x as Productive Most "10x" claims come from:
• AI startup founders (incentives matter)
• Managers making engineers feel replaceable
• Engineers in their honeymoon phaseBeen testing Claude Code, Cursor, and others for months. They're useful tools. Not productivity revolutions.
doxx When you need to read Word documents in the terminal.
Email is Easy Take this quiz to find out how well you know whether an email address is valid or not.
Glyph 🤯
I have never worried about the singularity because I had a single conversation in 2007 with a guy who worked in a chip fab, and learned just the tiniest bit about the physical, mechanical process that goes into actually manufacturing a microprocessor, and how much of it requires direct intervention of human hands despite everyone involved in the process having wanted to automate it all since 1980
The Top AI Tool for Devs Isn’t GitHub Copilot, New Report Finds The top AI dev tools that your company pays for (for royal "your").
Floot Another player in the text-to-working-code category, Floot also lets you draw your changes.
MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing If it sounds like AI is a waste, maybe read through the details first:
“Some large companies’ pilots and younger startups are really excelling with generative AI,” Challapally said. Startups led by 19- or 20-year-olds, for example, “have seen revenues jump from zero to $20 million in a year,” he said. “It’s because they pick one pain point, execute well, and partner smartly with companies who use their tools,” he added.
But for 95% of companies in the dataset, generative AI implementation is falling short. The core issue? Not the quality of the AI models, but the “learning gap” for both tools and organizations. While executives often blame regulation or model performance, MIT’s research points to flawed enterprise integration. Generic tools like ChatGPT excel for individuals because of their flexibility, but they stall in enterprise use since they don’t learn from or adapt to workflows, Challapally explained.
The data also reveals a misalignment in resource allocation. More than half of generative AI budgets are devoted to sales and marketing tools, yet MIT found the biggest ROI in back-office automation—eliminating business process outsourcing, cutting external agency costs, and streamlining operations.
monotype An iOS app that feels like a real typewriter.
Jonty Wareing "Bring me the head of the Logitech designer responsible for this"
Eye for Design
How AI Is Changing Search Behaviors
Our study shows that generative AI is reshaping search, but long-standing habits persist. Many users still default to Google, giving Gemini a fighting chance.
Forced every engineer to take sales calls. They rewrote our entire platform in 2 weeks
Most of our team are backend engineers too and I think this fundamentally made them better product designers. At the end of it, they were sketching a completely different architecture without my "PMing". Because they finally understood who was actually using our product.
The rewrite took 2 weeks. We removed 60% of features. Added a simple progress bar. Built Slack integration for questions. Created "done-for-you" workflows.
Our support tickets dropped 70%.
Pricing Pages Here's what separates pricing pages that close from those that confuse: winners show price immediately — no "Contact Sales" hiding. Even enterprise tiers display starting points. Winners solve, not sell — instead of feature lists, they show business outcomes. "$47K saved annually" beats "Advanced analytics dashboard." Your pricing page isn't just a formality. It's your 24/7 closer. Or your 24/7 deal killer.
Stephen Royle "This poll made me laugh. Isn’t it amazing that not a single person (out of 1,386) clicked yes. Even in error." 🤣
Peoples
Do not Interrupt Developers, Study Says I didn't think that I needed a study, but maybe that's because I pay attention to people?
The research showed that it takes 10-15 minutes for a developer to return to editing code after an interruption, and as much as 30-45 minutes to recover the full context they had before breaking focus. That disruption does not mean that they’ve wasted only those 10 to 15 minutes; the cost is also in fragmented flow and decreased creativity. And the importance of the requester increased the impact of the interruption.
A study done by GitHub estimates that interruptions can erase up to 82% of productive work time when developers face frequent disruptions from meetings, messages, and quick questions.
The Management Skill Nobody Talks About The real question isn’t whether you’ll make mistakes — it’s what you do after:
What happens next determines everything. The manager who never acknowledges what they put the team through? That’s how you lose your best people. But the manager who comes back and says, “I put you in an impossible position. I should have consulted you first. I’m sorry for the stress that caused, and here’s how I’ll handle it differently next time”, that manager builds trust even through the mistake.
I like and live that approach, and giving a shit is very different from being a workaholic and making work your life (which is bad). Giving a shit is about persistence and always trying to make things better. It's also great to work with other people who give a shit.
Sleep Facilitates Problem Solving With No Additional Gain Through Targeted Memory Reactivation Your next breakthrough might be a nap away:
→ 62% of people solved complex problems after sleeping
→ Only 24% solved them while staying awake
→ Sleep didn't just help—it nearly tripled success ratesWe're coding until 3 AM thinking we're being productive. The most successful engineers understand that rest = better code.
Business Side
Do things that don’t scale, and then don’t scale If at first you don't scale, don't worry — maybe you don't need to scale every single effort:
• See a need that matters to you.
• Build the smallest, simplest thing that solves it.
• Resist the urge to make it bigger.
• Enjoy it.
Recruiter: ...and then, the finalists will be invited back for a fifth interview, which will be a panel with our senior managers. How does that sound?
Me: Are you considering me to be your new CEO?
Recruiter: Uh . . . no?
Me: Then it sounds like you're interviewing me four times too many.
The head of product for Google Gemini says their PM teams are moving from writing PRDs to vibe coding prototypes. This is a strange decision as these solve very different problems. A PRD explains why you’re building something, how you measure success, relative priority of features and what the features are. A prototype gives you an interactive version of one of these. The rest are also quite important and it is a risky way for a team to operate without aligning on those up front.
Commonwealth Bank backtracks on AI job cuts, apologises for 'error' as call volumes rise
Commonwealth Bank announced 45 job cuts last month, as it introduced an AI "voice-bot", but has now reversed its decision.
The bank has apologised to affected employees for the "error", but the Finance Sector Union says the "damage is already done" to workers.
Machine Intelligence
College Students Have Already Changed Forever Members of the class of 2026 have had access to AI since they were freshmen, and almost all of them are using it to do their work:
But nobody thought it would happen this quickly. Three years later, the AI transformation is just about complete. By the spring of 2024, almost two-thirds of Harvard undergrads were drawing on the tool at least once a week. In a British survey of full-time undergraduates from December, 92 percentreported using AI in some fashion. Forty percent agreed that “content created by generative AI would get a good grade in my subject,” and nearly one in five admitted that they’ve tested that idea directly, by using AI to complete their assignments. Such numbers will only rise in the year ahead.
On my journey as an AI enabled PM, I decided to use AI to help with addressing some feedback on a strategy document I'm working on. I learned two things:
- Prompting AI for complex tasks can be pages of instructions. This is very different from my ChatGPT usage. The prompt really makes all the difference, followed by which model you use.
- An session asking you detailed questions about various sections of your strategy document or PRD is helpful to clarifying your thinking.
What’s the point of vibe coding if I still have to pay a dev to fix it? Thank you Reddit for getting straight to the point:
what’s the point of vibe coding if at the end of the day i still gotta pay a dev to look at the code anyway. sure it feels kinda cool while i’m typing, like i’m in some flow state or whatever, but when stuff breaks it’s just dead weight. i cant vibe my way through debugging, i cant ship anything that actually matters, and then i’m back to square one pulling out my wallet for someone who actually knows what they’re doing. makes me think vibe coding is just roleplay for guys who want to feel like hackers without doing the hard part. am i missing something here or is it really just useless once you step outside the fantasy
Chinese unicorn Z.ai, Alibaba Cloud team up to deploy new AI agent Another AI executive assistant coming your way, this one from China's Alibaba. Reminder, Manus the most recent king and quite useful AI EA has relocated to the less restrictive Singapore.
I'm dying here. Just had a customer come in, asking where his drink was. We never got any mobile orders for him. "I asked ChatGPT to order it for me and it said I could pick it up."
Dare Obasanjo "Your next lawyer will be rocking this according to the founder of Google’s generative AI team."
Insecurity
One of the most effective security controls you can ever invest in, is a decent work computer for your employees. Yep, it’s a bit more cash up front to get a bit more RAM or a bit more CPU poke, but your job in IT/Security is to get people the gear they need to do their jobs without thinking ‘this would be quicker if I used….’ Because we all know what happens when your VP of Finance decides to prep the W2’s on their kids Alienware gaming desktop full of Minecraft plugins downloaded from every corner of the internet.
The SSO Wall of Shame A list of vendors that treat single sign-on as a luxury feature, not a core security requirement.
Why are such scams working? It is easy to blame the AI summary for it and I think Google shares a lot of the blame that goes around. But I would like to put the focus on a different aspect: Companies are enabling scams like this by refusing to publish hotline numbers. Customer service is expensive and companies like Google are successful even though they are completely unwilling to communicate with their customers. For Google, Amazon and others the only acceptable way to reach them is through completely automated systems. This is seen by the industry as a blueprint for success and therefore you now see others emulating that. They see: you can get away with being completely shielded from the customer. Of course this leaves a gap and that is accepted by the companies. But the moment it creates a sufficient pain on the customer side, they are desperate to talk to someone. And this is the moment scammers jump in. So as summary: Hostility towards customer service is an enabler for scammer.
These brain implants speak your mind — even when you don't want to The future is an AI that can literally read your mind which is how you ended up in jail for your recent thought crime:
The team found that imagined speech produces signals in the motor cortex that are similar to, but fainter than, those of attempted speech. And with help from artificial intelligence, they were able to translate those fainter signals into words.
Excel! The spreadsheet program! The one that is already very good at what it does, which is calculation and data analysis. You put some numbers in and it spits some numbers out. According to The Verge, "Microsoft Excel is testing a new AI-powered function that can automatically fill cells in your spreadsheets." Using natural language, the idea goes, you tell it what you want and then the AI will "classify information, generate summaries, create tables, and more."
But they do keep you informed that:
COPILOT uses AI and can give incorrect responses.
To ensure reliability and to use it responsibly, avoid using COPILOT for:
Numerical calculations: Use native Excel formulas (e.g., SUM, AVERAGE, IF) for any task requiring accuracy or reproducibility.
Tasks with legal, regulatory or compliance implications: Avoid using AI-generated outputs for financial reporting, legal documents, or other high-stakes scenarios.
Everything Else
Blink twice if you are trapped in an inescapable license agreement
My to-do list is now a historical document of things I once thought I had the energy for.
Mark A. Rayner "Monday's, amIright?"
You’re in his DMs, I’m in his restraining order. We are not the same.
I've decided to quit my job as a personal trainer because the weights are too heavy. :(... I just handed in my too weak notice.
I think people misunderstand what makes a submarine unique. Any boat can go underwater, what defines a submarine is being able to come back up.
No, I didn't "forget your name", I didn't store it in the first place, it's called being GDPR compliant.
Mars Pro For $199 it's not the cheapest speaker in the world, but it does have a certain character to it!
My pronouns are he/him/../../../etc/passwd
Landlines are making a comeback… with children
Landlines don't do much besides make phone calls, which is why they're making a comeback among parents who want to give their kids more autonomy.
IKEA launches solar panel kits, igniting enthusiasm and demand No permits, no installers, just buy one and plug it yourself. Currently only available in Germany:( 800W is about enough to cover 35% of a typical European apartment's daily electricity use.
There will always be these people. Good lord. You reminded me of the early days of Twitter. An American traveler in GB, or possibly he was on the continent, had an emergency in their hotel room. Geesh. I can't remember the particulars. Anyway he's on Twitter asking for the police and an ambulance. He never once picked up the phone to call the front desk.It went on for hours until someone else on Twitter called for him.
The Autistic Guide to Communicating and Connecting Published Aug 21 2025, 304 pages.
Written by autistic author Niamh Garvey, this book combines up-to-date research and lived experience perspectives to create the ultimate guide to supporting your autistic social self in hectic, everyday life.
Is Rotten Tomatoes Still Reliable? A Statistical Analysis
After delving into the data, this "conspiracy" seems more like "fact" (which makes for a rather boring conspiracy theory).
So today, we'll delve into the suspicious recalibration of Rotten Tomatoes, tracing when and how Hollywood's foremost stamp of artistic excellence turned rotten.
I Tried Every Todo App and Ended Up With a .txt File Because productivity isn’t about finding the perfect app, it’s about:
→ dumping things onto paper so your brain can forget them
→ checking the list regularly
→ executing the taskseverything else is procrastination dressed up as organization.
In recent years, many archaeologists and historians have taken a different approach, asking: what was it like as an ordinary person to live through these imperial collapses? You may assume that a collapse in the imperial superstructure meant that people went hungry and homeless, and that is certainly the picture in the poems of lamentation and sorrow. But the physical evidence of people’s health, for instance, shows something very different.
Ned Yeung "A billboard in Vancouver"
I’m not really sure what the long-term implications of shamelessness will be. I also don’t think that everybody has to employ this strategy to win (at least, I hope not!). But what I do know is when I see my peers rolling their eyes at someone or deriding them for being “shameless”, there’s a good chance that, instead of writing them off, we should examine their actions a bit more closely.
How Tea’s Founder Convinced Millions of Women to Spill Their Secrets, Then Exposed Them to the World So it was an inside job yet still no. 2 on the App Store?
Burns’ offer to make Sanchez the “face” of Tea wasn't the first time she had reached out to her, but Sanchez never replied to Burns, despite multiple attempts to recruit her. As it turned out, Tea did not have all the “safety measures” it needed to keep women safe.
