Latest posts
- Computers and the Internet: A Two-Edged SwordFeb 27, 2026
Dave Rupert articulated something in “Priority of idle hands” that’s been growing in my subconscious for years: I had a small, intrusive realization the other day that computers and the internet are probably bad for me […] This is hard to accept because a lot of my work, hobbies, education, entertainment, news, communities, and curiosities are all on the internet. I love the internet, it’s a big p
- Making Icon Sets Easy With Web OrigamiFeb 23, 2026
Over the years, I’ve used different icon sets on my blog. Right now I use Heroicons. The recommended way to use them is to copy/paste the source from the website directly into your HTML. It’s a pretty straightforward process: Go to the website Search for the icon you want Hover it Click to “Copy SVG” Go back to your IDE and paste it If you’re using React or Vue, there are also npm packages you can
- How AI Labs ProliferateFeb 22, 2026
SITUATION: there are 14 competing AI labs. “We can’t trust any of these people with super-intelligence. We need to build it ourselves to ensure it’s done right!" “YEAH!” SOON: there are 15 competing AI labs. (See: xkcd on standards.) The irony: “we’re the responsible ones” is each lab’s founding mythology as they spin out of each other. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
- A Few Rambling Observations on CareFeb 18, 2026
In this new AI world, “taste” is the thing everyone claims is the new supreme skill. But I think “care” is the one I want to see in the products I buy. Can you measure care? Does scale drive out care? If a product conversation is reduced to being arbitrated exclusively by numbers, is care lost? The more I think about it, care seems antithetical to the reductive nature of quantification — “one deat
- Unresponsive Buttons on My Fastest Hardware EverFeb 11, 2026
This is one of those small things that drives me nuts. Why? I don’t know. I think it has something to do with the fact that I have a computer that is faster than any computer I’ve ever used in my entire life — and yet, clicking on buttons results in slight but perceptible delays. Let me explain. Imagine a button that looks like this: <Button onClick={async () => { const data = await getSessi
- A Brief History of App Icons From Apple’s Creator StudioFeb 09, 2026
I recently updated my collection of macOS icons to include Apple’s new “Creator Studio” family of icons. Doing this — in tandem with seeing funny things like this post on Mastodon — got me thinking about the history of these icons. I built a feature on my icon gallery sites that’s useful for comparing icons over time. For example, here’s Keynote: (Unfortunately, the newest Keynote isn’t part o
- Study Finds Obvious Truth Everybody KnowsFeb 06, 2026
Researchers at Anthropic published their findings around how AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills: We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery […] Using AI sped up the task slightly, but this didn’t reach the threshold of statistical significance. Wait, what? Let me read that again: using AI assistance led to a statistically significant
- Saying “No” In an Age of AbundanceFeb 03, 2026
You’ve probably heard this famous quote from Steve Jobs about saying ‘no’: People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.
- The Browser’s Little White LiesFeb 01, 2026
So I’m making a thing and I want it to be styled different if the link’s been visited. Rather than build something myself in JavaScript, I figure I’ll just hook into the browser’s mechanism for tracking if a link’s been visited (a sensible approach, if I do say so myself). Why write JavaScript when a little CSS will do? So I craft this: .entry:has(a:visited) { opacity: .5; filter: grayscale(1
- The Don’t “Contact Us” PageJan 28, 2026
Nic Chan comes out as the whistleblower on how many “Contact Us” pages are made (spoiler: they’re designed to keep us from contacting anyone). A “fuck off contact page” is what a company throws together when they actually don’t want anyone to contact them at all. They […] are trying to reduce the amount of money they spend on support by carefully hiding the real support channels […] If you solve y