Published
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Comedy Wildlife Awards 2025 – in pictures Collection of amazing photos for your enjoyment.
Tech Stuff
Your data model is your destiny
Your product's core abstractions determine whether new features compound into a moat or just add to a feature list. Here's how to get it right.
Spreadsheets: The Second Best Tool for the Job (via Iris)
For businesses that are not yet in this predicament but can see some of the symptoms emerging, my advice is to think critically about whether a spreadsheet is really the right tool for that next feature you want to add. Even half an hour of considered research into the different softwares available will get you further than most people. Watch a couple YouTube tutorials and see if you like the user interface. Check the pricing page and see if you can fit it into your budget. The more you do this, the more you will start to get a feel for the software landscape, and the next time you think to add something to the spreadsheet, you might get a healthy little alarm bell in your head that says “maybe it’s time”.
It used to be common for people in their late thirties to forties to acquire “project car”, which was often a high school dream car purchased at the end of its life with the goal of restoring.
In the 2010s the retro computing scene emerged in the same age group.
In this essay I will
closing all my tickets as wontfix because the software is provided as-is
Introducing ChatGPT Atlas Friendly reminder:
A neat reminder that AI "agents" share many of the characteristics of assistive technologies, and benefit from the same affordances.
Eye for Design
Catbus of Lost Souls "Wes Anderson saw these computers as a child and never recovered"
Natasha Jay "We need more television set 📺 design like this ...(a Kuba Komet, West Germany, 1957 with radio console and turntable )"
Peoples
This started as a shitpost but I'm genuinely inspired by Columbo solving crimes by being distracted and hyperfocusing on random stuff. Neurodivergent heroes don't have to just be autistic-coded, like your meticulous and methodical Poirots and Sherlocks. Sometimes we can just be goofy doofuses who get away with wandering into people's houses and confusing people into confessing because they underestimated you
The worst designer I've ever worked with was also the most productive On flooding the backlog:
When someone brags about how much they shipped, don’t applaud. Ask where it moved the needle. Ask who it helped. Ask what would’ve happened if they’d done nothing. That’s the measure. Everything else is waste.
Business Side
AI Workers Are Putting In 100-Hour Workweeks to Win the New Tech Arms Race "Never have a group of people worked so hard to build the technology that will replace them." — Dare Obasanjo
Google pulls the plug on Privacy Sandbox, leaving cookies in-place Cookies … we will not miss you because you're not going anywhere:
After six years of experimentation and regulatory negotiation, Google's privacy-focused vision for post-cookie advertising has come full circle. Third-party cookies remain embedded in Chrome, and the web's advertising model is largely unchanged.
Machine Intelligence
Dane Stuckey (OpenAI CISO) on prompt injection risks for ChatGPT Atlas In case you're curious how I feel about the new crop of LLM browsers:
As I’ve written before, in application security 99% is a failing grade. If there’s a way to get past the guardrails, no matter how obscure, a motivated adversarial attacker is going to figure that out.
We are in the "gentleman scientist" era of AI research
In one sense, this is a truism. The job of “professional scientist” only really appeared in the 19th century, so all discoveries before then logically had to have come from amateurs, since only amateur scientists existed. But it also reflects that any field of knowledge gets more complicated over time.
Two Kinds of Writing Cheatsheet: when does AI help you with writing?
Both performative and cognitive writing require thinking, but thinking is the explicit purpose of the latter. Knowing why you’re writing will help you use it appropriately — and it starts with understanding the difference between writing for sharing and writing for thinking.
Insecurity
‘I realised I’d been ChatGPT-ed into bed’: how ‘Chatfishing’ made finding love on dating apps even weirder Seems that I learn a new word every day, and today's new word is "chatfishing":
Where once people were duped by soft-focus photos and borrowed chat-up lines, now they have to watch out for computer-generated charm. But it’s one thing to use a witty phrase – another thing entirely to build a whole fake persona …
my dishwasher just texted me to say it needs more rinse aid.
who the hell gave my dishwasher my phone number?
A funny case study of the 21st century “software engineering” at its best.
As result of AWS failure, a number of commercial products stopped working that relied on AWS hosted services. Such as the Eight Sleep Pod beds.
Yes, physical beds for sleeping relied on AWS to work. And it was not some kind of extremely sophisticated “AI” processing, but simple schedule “make warmer”, “make colder”, “raise/lower” etc. All that was controlled through AWS.
When AWS stopped working users started complaining that their beds got stuck in weird positions and users were unable to control them. So yes, a bed say in Netherlands stopped working because it could not retrieve instructions from US server which were sent there by the person physically present on said bed.
And the bonus: each bed sent 20 GB of telemetry data to AWS each month.
Everything Else
Mina Harker "Love this sculpture by Penny Hardy, especially on such a windy day."
I have never in my life wanted “more relevant ads”
26yo: What band are you seeing tonight?
Me: They Might Be Giants
26yo: Are they famous?
When it comes to underwear, absence makes the heart go launder
daria-andrea "trailrunners ready to start the weekend"
I really pity people without kids. They have to spend their money on dumb stuff like vacations and fun
boomers are gifted with the ability to shift effortlessly between talking about how every crime should carry a punishment of life in prison at minimum to how they used to steal construction vehicles in the middle of the night to go joyriding in high school
Sea Otters Are Stealing Surfboards in California. Again. (via Global Museum)
Two years after Otter 841 menaced wave riders near Santa Cruz, there have been new encounters between the furry marine mammals and surfers.
Headline: “Women who own horses live longer”
Implied correlation: Horses make you live longer.
Reality: If you own a horse, you can likely afford health insurance.
Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein was not the monster. Wisdom is understanding that Frankenstein WAS the monster. Enlightenment is understanding that I, the person who brings this up at every chance in every conversation, am the monster.
Wild bear stealthily enters California zoo, is found visiting the bear exhibit
On the tour trail was a wild American black bear leaning on a gate to peer in at the three black bears in their habitat within the park, according the zoo’s Facebook post.
“The wild bear did not appear aggressive and was observed interacting with Tule, Ishŭng, and Kunabulilh through their habitat fencing,” the post said.
Then: The Internet is designed to route around failure.
Now: The Internet is five companies and one of them is broken.
TIL we use "farther" for physical distances, "further" for metaphorical ones.
A mnemonic for this: "Mercury is farther from the sun than Earth? Nothing could be further from the truth."
Warsaw opens metro station ‘express’ library to get commuters off their phones
An “express” library has opened in a new metro station in Warsaw, aiming to provide an appealing cultural space to encourage residents and commuters to forgo smartphones in favour of books and, thanks to fresh herbs growing in a vertical garden, a dash of subterranean greenery too.
Former Apple Employee Sam Sung Changed His Name to Avoid Attention
He ultimately decided to change his last name to Struan, which he says is the name of one of his favorite places in Scotland. Though he doesn't regret his name change, he says that he wishes he could tell his younger self to "see it as a funny thing" and not stress out about his job.
I, a French Jewel Thief, Refuse to Rob the Louvre Before Mid-Morning
In France, we pride ourselves on enjoying life’s simple pleasures: food, drink, and the occasional grand larceny. To rush through these things would not just disrupt our leisurely schedule; it would be a sin. One must savor the moment, not run from robbery to robbery like a buffoon.
Madcollector "That's nice. But how many coyotes did that mural kill?"
