Published
Weekend Reading — KVICK SÖRT
Tech Stuff
Tangled Interesting 🤔 If GitHub bumped into Bluesky, a social-enabled git collaboration platform using atproto.
LLM Rankings: The New Battleground Welcome to the mention economy!
If you want to appear in AI search results, your brand name has to show up often, in credible places, alongside experts who matter. That credibility is finite, and you can’t automate your way into it.
nuqs Get the back/forth buttons working: like useState but stores the state in URL search parameters.
The AI features in Notion are a great example of where AI not only works, but opens up a product to a broader audience. I can tell it to construct a database, link to other databases to pull information in from it, format it, and more – all in natural language.
AgentMail When you're building an AI agent that needs to send, receive, and parse emails.
The YAML Document from Hell The different ways in which YAML is just not a good format:
Yaml aims to be a more human-friendly alternative to json, but with all of its features, it became such a complex format with so many bizarre and unexpected behaviors, that it is difficult for humans to predict how a given yaml document will parse. If you are looking for a configuration format, toml is a friendly format without yaml’s footguns.
Helium Browser New open-source browser based on Chromium with ad-blocking by default. No adware, no bloat, no noise. I like that they demo Kagi as the default search engine.
A second thought now, newly surfacing in the wake of the Wordpress fiasco and the emerging Ruby gems crisis: We should pay a lot more attention to the •human system• dependencies we’re introducing when we import a library, not just the code.
JerryZLiu/Dayflow A macOS app that records your screen, analyzes it every 15 minutes using AI, to create a timeline of your activities throughout the day with summaries. You can use it with Ollama to avoid these screenshots leaking to external services.
AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity (via J Lam)
Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools are being used to produce “workslop”—content that appears polished but lacks real substance, offloading cognitive labor onto coworkers.
MagicLight.ai Turn your prompt into a story video.
Peoples
“Micro-shifting” is the new favorite way to work I see your "quiet quitting" and I raise you “micro-shifting”:
“Micro-shifting” ...
… involves breaking up work into shorter, non-linear blocks to allow for other activities during the traditional work day.
Deal or no deal Reason #4786 why your sales team should share their Kanban board with the group.
(* if they don't yet have a Kanban board, they should start with that)
Business Side
Is Your Startup Idea Any Good? Borrow These Validation Tactics from the Founders of Linear, Mercury and More “Founder discovery” — every idea that seems to work for some people needs a catchy name. I actually like this idea and I hope it also works for me, still I find this obsession with catchy names a silly "jargon overload":
"With founders, I wasn’t asking, ‘Would you buy this?’ But instead, ‘Would you start this company? And what are the things that you think you might bump into?’” he says. Turns out most of the founders he spoke to chose the same idea. It was through this “founder discovery” that he singled out the one that would eventually become his current company, Crossbeam.
Something I hear often from start-ups is that they don't need very skilled devs to begin. Once the £ starts rolling in, they can "upgrade". Here's what usually happens, though. Those first hires set the tone for years to come. A "bish bosh that'll do" culture can be very hard to shake. Your first dev hire needs to be someone you can build a strong team around. It's a load-bearing role.
Product Hunt is Dead This is not news, but it's worth reminding people this service is way pass its useful days:
It is nothing. These aren't real users and PH's audience has never been a source of sticky users. $100 is too much to spend on vanity. And it's predatory to foster a "community" where clout peddlers can prey on susceptible, good-faith founder
Dedicated mobile apps for vibe coding have so far failed to gain traction "Although there’s certainly interest in vibe coding, the consensus is that it’s not ready for prime time.”
The largest of these is Instance: AI App Builder, which has seen only 16,000 downloads and $1,000 in consumer spending. The next largest app, Vibe Studio, has pulled in just 4,000 downloads but has made no money.
Machine Intelligence
Understanding AI Agents: Patterns of Thought and Action What fascinates me about AI Agents:
Perhaps the most profound realization is that in designing these systems, we are participating in the next great abstraction in software development. We are moving from writing explicit code to orchestrating intent, sculpting behavior through conversation and structured prompts. And this field is not standing still.
My 9 year old and his classmates have started using “that’s AI” to mean “I don’t believe you.”
Me: we’re having dinosaur meat for dinner
Kiddo: that’s AI
Chatbait Is Taking Over the Internet Chatbait is the new clickbait:
Some bots appear to be more guilty of chatbait than others. When I ditched ChatGPT and asked Google’s Gemini for headache help, it offered a long list of advice, then paused without asking any follow-ups. Anthropic’s Claude wanted to know whether my headache was tension-related, due to sinus pressure, or something else entirely—hardly a goading question. That’s not to say that these other bots never respond with chatbait. Chatbots tend to be sycophantic: They often flatter and sweet-talk users in a way that encourages people to keep talking.
Education report calling for ethical AI use contains over 15 fake sources Oh the irony … (via AnnaAnthro)
AI medical tools found to downplay symptoms of women, ethnic minorities Just a reminder that while medical AI tools are smart and useful, by extrapolating from learned human knowledege they repeat human biases.
Who aligns the aligners? (via labria)
Every day, thousands of researchers race to solve the AI alignment problem. But they struggle to coordinate on the basics, like whether a misaligned superintelligence will seek to destroy humanity, or just enslave and torture us forever. Who, then, aligns the aligners?
Agents turn simple keyword search into compelling search experiences
Like human users, the agent can build a “mental model” of how the search tool works. If there’s a clear, predictable correspondence between stimulus and output, the agent will figure it out. However, a large, complex system might not be as transparent.
Because of this, I’d argue the traditional, thick search APIs are counterproductive to being used by agents. They may be too complex for agents to reason about effectively.
Insecurity
I've just had a devious fraudulent phone call. The caller claimed to be from my bank and said that someone had attempted to buy travel money for delivery to another city. He said he'd get the transactions cancelled. To do that, he'd send me a six-digit code, which I'd have to read back to him. The caller knew part of the card number and he knew the expiry date. At that point, it smelt like fraud, so I asked for a number on which I could call him back and he instantly dropped the call. I rang my bank, using the number on the back of the card, and they confirmed that no such purchases had been attempted. They cancelled the card and they'll issue a new one. By looking from another perspective, you can see what happened: criminals who had obtained my card details (perhaps from a data breach) wanted to make a purchase, but they were asked to type in a code sent to my phone by SMS, and they needed to persuade me to read it out to them. Don't be taken in!
Call-recording app Neon, which became the #2 social app on the US App Store, goes dark after exposing users' phone numbers, call recordings, and transcripts People were so willing to share their phone call transcripts with AI for 30¢ per minute, it turned into the #2 social app on the App Store, except that …
The app already has thousands of users and was downloaded 75,000 times yesterday alone, according to app intelligence provider Appfigures. Neon pitches itself as a way for users to make money by providing call recordings that help train, improve, and test AI models.
But Neon has gone offline, at least for now, after a security flaw allowed anyone to access the phone numbers, call recordings, and transcripts of any other user, TechCrunch can now report.
How to stop AI’s “lethal trifecta”
The worst effects of this flaw are reserved for those who create what is known as the “lethal trifecta”. If a company, eager to offer a powerful ai assistant to its employees, gives an llm access to untrusted data, the ability to read valuable secrets and the ability to communicate with the outside world at the same time, then trouble is sure to follow. And avoiding this is not just a matter for ai engineers. Ordinary users, too, need to learn how to use ai safely, because installing the wrong combination of apps can generate the trifecta accidentally.
GitHub notifications abused to impersonate Y Combinator for crypto theft
A massive phishing campaign targeted GitHub users with cryptocurrency drainers, delivered via fake invitations to the Y Combinator (YC) W2026 program.
I’ve Written About Loads of Scams. This One Almost Got Me. Pro tip: you can avoid all Zelle scams with the simple act of never using Zelle:
That’s when he offered to transfer me to his supervisor. That simple phrase, familiar from countless customer-service calls, draped a cloak of corporate competence over this unfolding drama. His supervisor. I mean, would a scammer have a supervisor?
Everything Else
The first rule of NDA club is [ REDACTED ]
I like how the solution for signing online forms is typing your name, but in a cursive font.
valkyrie "oh you grew up watching tiktok? i grew up searching for aliens"
It's called synesthesia. Perhaps you've tasted it.
Took me a while to realize this: All of our buttons and knobs being replaced by touchscreens is one (possibly subliminal) reason behind the rising obsession with mechanical keyboards.
This zipper-shaped boat creates the illusion of opening the river. Designed by Japanese artist Yasuhiro Suzuki, this unusual vessel creates the impression that it is cutting through the water like a fly. Already a cult hit on the web, the poetic and viral Zip-Fastener Ship has made a big impression in Tokyo.
Repeat after me: Poor planning planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
Everybody thinks they're immune to propaganda. That's why it works.
Fat Bear Week is here early, and the bears are fat and playful Some good news:
This year's salmon run was extraordinary, with salmon numbers surpassing anything seen in recent memory," Matt Johnson, the park's interpretation program manager, told NPR via email. "As a result, the brown bears of Katmai are well-nourished and looking for other things to do besides scrap[p]ing with each other for food.
I propose a law:
Any document format that lives long enough evolves towards turing completeness.
if a system is unsustainable and will fail without continuous yet invisible heroic efforts…sometimes it’s better to stop being a hero. let the system fail, make the effort visible, and force people to reckon with the choices they have made
[Fundamentals] Start right before you get eaten by the bear Save the backstory for some other time:
Even as my newsletter has grown to 75,000+ subscribers, I often find myself referencing these principles with clients and in my own work. Whether you’re new here or a longtime reader, this concept deserves a spot in your toolbox.
This week’s fundamental principle: tart right before you get eaten by the bear
In an era of split attention, there is more than one type of ADHD
The difference between Type I and Type II ADHD is akin to the difference between Type I and Type II diabetes. Type I ADHD is theorised to reflect early dopamine and brain-wiring differences, much as Type I diabetes stems from an early insulin shortfall. In contrast, Type II ADHD seems to arise after years of digital stimulation that desensitises reward circuits.
This has got to be one of the best. In Wales, UK, there is a legal requirement for road signs to be in both English and Welsh. So, in this case, the official of the Highways department emailed the English wording to the translator and, after receiving a reply, proceeded to have the sign made and installed. Unfortunately, a few weeks later, Welsh-speaking drivers began to call up to point out that the Welsh reads..... "I am currently out of the office. Please submit any work to the translation team."
Always invite Anna That's so sweet:
But then she said something that stayed with me: She was grateful. She was grateful to be part of that brief friend group because she felt like she had a family away from home. And that even though she never partied with us, she always felt included because we would stop by her room and invite her anyway.
This story made me smile: Canadian dog owner has made it his mission to bring a smile on people’s faces, and he does so by walking his dog… dressed as his dog.
