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Leaving Google has actively improved my life
In May of 2023, Google introduced “AI overviews” into their search engine.^1] This followed years of decisions leading to worse search quality and the consum...
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 662 posts.
542
An ode to houseplant programming (2025)
Waxing poetic about hyperlocal phytoid software development
543
The Hunt for Dark Breakfast
With a theoretical model of breakfast, can we derive the existence of “dark breakfasts,” breakfasts that we know must exist, but have never observed?
544
Setting up phones is a nightmare
Some thoughts about my experience getting my parents' new devices up and running, and how bad it keeps getting today.
545
The happiest I've ever been
It was around January 2020. I became the head coach of a youth basketball team.
546
The Slow Death of the Power User
There’s a certain kind of person who’s becoming extinct. You’ve probably met one. Maybe you are one. Someone who actually understood the tools they used. Someone who could sit down at an unfamiliar system, poke at it for twenty minutes, and have a working mental model of what it was doing and why. Someone who read…
547
I'm helping my dog vibe code games
My cavapoo Momo vibe coded playable Godot games. All I had to do was teach her to type, route her input to Claude Code, and build the right tools.
548
I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
A story about Disneyland's Space Mountain and a 10-year-old inventor.
549
"Just a little detail that wouldn't sell anything"
A blog about software craft and quality
550
Reading English from 1000 AD
The past was not as foreign as we think.
551
Japanese Death Poems
by haiku poets
552
Blue light filters don't work – controlling total luminance is a better bet
Why controlling total luminance is a better bet
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Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging
An interactive data journalism piece exploring the rise of young-onset colorectal cancer, with population simulations, risk factors, and prevention information.
556
Dinosaur Food: 100M year old foods we still eat today (2022)
I just finished Oliver Sacks’ excellent Everything in Its Place. In it, he mentioned as an aside that the Ginkgo biloba tree is hundreds of millions of years old, and its phenotype has been practically frozen since then – a living fossil.
557
The Perils of ISBN
Last year I got into using Letterboxd, to complement my goal of watching more (good) movies. It’s got a really clean interface, the social features are useful but unobtrusive, and it makes remembering what I’ve watched and when I watched it easy. So why isn’t there a Letterboxd for books?
558
What is happening to writing? Cognitive debt, Claude Code, the space around AI
"Cognitive debt," Claude Code, and the negative space around AI
559
15 years later, Microsoft morged my diagram
How Microsoft continvoucly morged my Git branching diagram.
560
How I use Obsidian (2023)
My personal Obsidian vault template. A bottom-up approach to note-taking and organizing things I am interested in.
561
I swear the UFO is coming any minute
Links 'n' updates
562
Thinking hard burns almost no calories but destroys your next workout
Your brain uses 20% of your body's energy just idling. Intense thinking barely adds to that. But the mental byproducts of a long cognitive day quietly sabotage your endurance in ways no amount of willpower can fix.
563
Neurons outside the brain
The three brains in our body
564
"Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name
You're absolutely right!
565
Ex-Tech –> Homeless in SF
Dignity moves, the mission of survival, and $140 million across the river
566
I love the work of the ArchWiki maintainers
For this year's "I love Free Software Day" I would like to thank the maintainers of Free Software documentation, and here especially the maintainers of the ArchWiki. Maintainers in general, and maintainers of documentation most of the time get way too little recognition for their contributions to...
567
A Programmer's Loss of Identity
This is the follow-up to last year’s I’m an American software developer and the "broligarchs" don’t speak for me . In that essay, I tried to express why I was so agonized by the leaders in my industry doing a speedrun towards dystopia and how it all felt so divorced from what technology could, and should be…
568
How to make a living as an artist
An essay by fnnch on making a living as an artist.
569
NetNewsWire Turns 23
NetNewsWire 1.0 for Mac shipped 23 years ago today! 🎸🎩🕶️ Here’s where things are on this particular February 11: we just shipped 7.0 for Mac and iOS, and now we’re working on NetNewsWire 7.0.1. After a big release, no matter how careful we are, there are often some regressions to fix and tweaks to make right away, so…
570
Why vampires live forever
The modern longevity movement's obsession with blood transfusions makes perfect sense — if you accept that Peter Thiel and Bryan Johnson are vampires.