Published
Weekend Reading — Timeshare for cats
Tech Stuff
Textus When you need a solid, open-source Markdown editor that run on macOS, Linux and Windows. I quite enjoy using it, and it does come with an AI writing assistant (grammar check, revision, built-in skills, etc). It can export to PDF, Word, and HTML, runs on your own device and uses your AI provider of choice. iPhone and iPad support in the works.
Zen Another browser reviving Arc with workspaces, left-side tabs, glanceable links, proper split view and more.
38 things we've learned about building AI products Fantastic list of learnings from 4 years of building AI products at PostHog. Recommended reading.
The compiler was supposed to end programming too What is more accurate than the imminent end of programming as we know it?
On 10 November 1954, IBM’s Programming Research Group finished a preliminary report on a new language called FORTRAN. One sentence in it says that FORTRAN “should virtually eliminate coding and debugging.”
Pele Mermaid diagrams as themeable SVG. Developed for Obsidian and people are excited, no surprise there: it bears zero dependencies, so 6× smaller, and up to 500× faster than Mermaid.js.
OpenFlowKit Keep your architecture diagrams in sync with your code — draw them, write them out, talk to your AI agent, or ask it to glean at you GitHub repo.
I'm old enough to remember when we didn't feel the need to dedicate entire meetings to the question of what software engineers should do when their tokens run out.
Mac.apk Run Android apps on your Mac. Expect native speed — it's not an emulator — real Mac app behavior, and there's no need to mess with Docker or VMs.
Local Wikipedia Wikipedia for the things that are half an hour's walking distance from where you are.
(Me, whispering: Maybe the reason PHP is everywhere and in everything is that ease of use, ease of modification and ease of deployment are actually good things and making easy, fun things safe is way, way more important to real world practices and uptake than trying to graft ease of use and fun onto guarantees of safety that computing has never been willing, much less able, to really guarantee anyway.)
llm-over-dns Query large language models over DNS. For reasons. (via Ian Campbell)
Eye for Design
They take one look at the UI and abandon it. Review the UI with fresh eyes:
But as a new user, you don’t have that history, or that experience-backed confidence that a bunch of stuff can simply be ignored as it’s not crucial to everyday operation. Add to this the industry’s perverse incentives that often present new additions as the most important ones, and it’s much harder to make a sense of it all as a newcomer. And all the while, the creators and existing users might not see the problems you do.
Peoples
Why AI isn’t replacing project managers, it’s exposing them I worked with project managers that fit this pattern and … well, I wouldn't hire them again:
That question lands differently depending on how you’ve understood your role as a project manager. If you’ve defined your contribution primarily as coordination and documentation, this moment can feel destabilizing. If you’ve always understood project management as influence, framing, and protecting shared understanding under pressure, this moment clarifies your importance.
The pressure isn’t about speed anymore. It’s about judgment.
Periscope - Fetch and Read Web Content Instantly Your friendly reminder that it isn't just AI that hallucinates facts:
In a new survey of more than 5,400 Americans, 73 percent of male respondents told Harvard researchers they knew who Altman was. A little over half—53 percent—said they knew of Murati, Milner, and Dalton.
There’s one problem. Murati is a real person: she’s the former CTO of OpenAI and the current CEO of Thinking Machine Labs. Milner and Dalton, on the other hand, do not exist.
Business Side
Predictability vs Outcomes Which of these two is your business optimizing for?
Yet, here we are, in 2026, in the midst of AI turbocharging product development, and we have never had the problem of abundant output yet scarce outcomes more than we do today. I wrote about that recently in The AI Productivity Paradox.
Unfortunately, most companies are implicitly making a different choice. To them, predictability is the clear priority, and outcomes are a hoped-for consequence of shipping what was promised.
Especially in organizations still running the project model, where their feature teams are set up “to serve the business,” and so they aren’t in a position to take responsibility for outcomes.
Machine Intelligence
Imagine Every AI Agent on Earth Buying the Same Cheap Paper Towels Not exactly the future we were promised, but for the incredible low price of $0.15 per 1 million input tokens, it's the future we’re going to get:
While you brew your coffee, a program browses online retailers to compare toilet-paper prices, and another solicits competitive bids for Sheetrock work you need done in the garage. During your commute, a bot moves your upcoming dentist appointment to avoid a scheduling conflict. On your lunch break, you get an alert that computers acting on your behalf noticed some unclaimed funds and class-action payouts in a state database and claimed them. Also, the machine has negotiated a cheaper internet plan. By the time you get home, the groceries are on your doorstep, and you’ve gotten back $150.
Insecurity
The Adult Children Cleaning Up Their Parents’ Feeds Social media is no longer optimized for social. Or for media. It's optimized to act as a dopamine drip that addicts people to the benefit of scammers, and AI slop is the latest added feature:
“It seems like an addiction,” says Beth, a 51-year-old lawyer from Ohio, who tells me she has watched her 84-year-old mother’s attention span atrophy over the past few years. “It kind of has the same symptoms — getting fussy if she’s not online or just constantly going back to try and get online.”
…
Jim recently ran an experiment on his mother. He pulled up her Facebook feed and asked her to identify which posts were AI — by his estimate, about a third of them were. Gloria couldn’t reliably pick out one, including posts she had shared. It nagged at Jim that his mother, once able to discern features well enough to paint them, couldn’t distinguish the synthetic from the real. “You know how the face is supposed to look,” he told her.
“PHP, Gitlab, Node.js, the Number Four. Being a systems administrator today is more stressful than ever. Today, we’ll take a look at the best types of gin to help you cope with the horrors of the modern Internet, on this edition of ‘The Computer Chronicles.’”
Everything Else
I folded another Origami figure. It's the Grim Reaper, but in his leisure outfit — the purple cloak. 😅
I don't have black paper. It would look great in black. Or white as a more generic ghost.
I think the final figure looks pretty awesome. It has a nice 3D look to it and it wasn't all that hard to fold. Not easy enough that I could do it again without instructions, but there were no hiccups while I was folding along with the video. 😊
The cats have now switched places. I am a timeshare
Y'all, I just got my first set of noise cancelling headphones and I can't believe how amazing this is. Why did no one tell me?
Narrator: Everyone had, in fact, told him.
RailPass Take an infinite train ride watching the view pass by. You can choose from a variety of different countries. Relax and enjoy. (via JNL)
As I approach 60, I can share one of the most useful lessons my life has taught me.
When you treat yourself to a new pair of earbuds, the original pair has a funny way of turning up within a week.
Jessamyn 🧵
Drop-In Time is a time where I hang out in a room at the library with a big table and a lot of chairs and help people with their technology problems for two and a half hours. These are their stories. It was cold today so I was warming up some water for tea and by the time I got upstairs at three past the hour there were four people waiting for me. Whoops!
Bob and Kathy had a Medicare prescription drug plan that wasn't going to be around next year so they needed help finding a new one.
Street Art Utopia Amazing!
