Published
Weekend Reading — Bunny Time
Friends I think there's some bunMovement going on! We just noticed a giant bun with a army of small buns standing at a local hypermarket 😮 perhaps this is it! WeBuns are going to take over! All the snac will belong to us!
Tech Stuff
BUSY Bar A Pomodoro timer and distraction blocker for deep focus workflow. Bunch of buttons, one big LED display, smaller display at the back, open source with an API, WiFi and USB, $249, what's not to like???
PostgreSQL Full-Text Search: Fast When Done Right (Debunking the Slow Myth)
Let's dive into how to correctly set up and use standard PostgreSQL FTS for optimal performance, addressing the specific configuration flaws likely present in the baseline used in the Neon benchmark, and demonstrating the true speed of built-in FTS. We'll show concrete numbers demonstrating a ~50x performance increase just by applying these standard optimizations to the baseline configuration.
the “short” URL domain for Teams links is
urlshortener.teams.cloud.microsoft. never change, Microsoft
prompt-kit UI components for building AI applications: chat, agents, assistants, etc. Built on top of shadcn/ui, so React, Tailwind, Vite, and other good things.
MagicQuit That's quite the collection of benefits rolled in one simple single-purpose app: automatically closes apps when you don't use them anymore, for a cleaner desktop and better battery life. 0% CPU usage, free, and open source.
OH: putting the sad in sysadmin
Kwack Experience the satisfying sound of quacking while typing.
Never lose a z-index battle again To calc(infinity) and beyond!
t0st’s fix was a PR win for Rockstar, but it didn’t solve the underlying issue. For every high-profile bug that gets fixed, thousands languish in backlogs, forgotten and ignored. The real takeaway here isn’t that companies don’t care about bugs. It’s that they’re often paralyzed by competing priorities, bureaucratic inertia, and the cold calculus of profit.
Smithery Basically NPM but for MCP services that you can access from your LLM (Claude, VS Code, Cursor, etc). A very interesting idea, but right now quite rough around the edges — I spent a couple of hours and couldn't get Kagi search MCP to work properly 😡 But I will give it another try in the future.
Related, Using Claude and MCP to control your browser.
And also, TuanKiri/weather-mcp-server Get the weather into your LLM with this MCP server.
React Bits When you need some fancy animations in your React: blur, circular text, gradient, decrypt animation, glitch effect, counter, carousel, lightning, and many many more.
"no one ever got fired for picking Java" yeah exactly that's exactly the problem right there
ALPS and the Topographic Mindset
A flat OpenAPI doc might say:
"POST here, then GET there.“ALPS says:
"From here, you could create, explore, update, or transition. Here's what those actions mean, and what they'll afford you.”It's a shift in mindset ...
Mind Map Wizard I never understood MindMaps, but I know some people find them incredibly helpful, and thankfully, now we can generate MindMaps using the power of AI!
Programming in PostScript Or how to run games on your printer.
occurring to me that this is perhaps a @scattapilla question but home wifi routers are like little roman hearth gods, right? placed in a shrine in a position of relative prominence, each is given a name, there are complex and esoteric rituals to appease it when things go wrong, part of being a guest rather than a visitor is being let in on both its public and secret name, etc. etc.
Kevin Griffin “I’m not trying to brag, but because of my kids I’ve gotten really good at replacing the screens on iPhones and iPads.”
Holy shit, the PCB design of this new sensor board, called Ophanim, of CERN’s Aegis experiment just fucking slaps. Right now, there don’t seem to be many images of it on the web, but I hope to see more in the future.
DeeAnn Little “I actually kind of like this one”
Eye for Design
Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?
A humorous exploration of the uncanny resemblance between AI company logos and human anatomy. Discover why circular, gradient-based designs dominate the AI industry, and what this design convergence tells us about branding in tech.
Better typography with text-wrap pretty “Support for text-wrap: pretty just shipped in Safari Technology Preview, bringing an unprecedented level of polish to typography on the web.”
mathew “User interface menu control options.”
Peoples
The Best Programmers I Know I think it's a matter of style but so happens to be my style and so I'm 100% in agreement:
Don’t go to Stack Overflow, don’t ask the LLM, don’t guess, just go straight to the source. Oftentimes, it’s surprisingly accessible and well-written.
The ADHD Body Double Using a body double to work around the limits of ADHD:
The aim of a body doubling session is for you and your body double to work alongside each other. You don’t have to do the same thing. What’s most important is that both of you are working on something. That could be doing the laundry, paying bills, exercising, or completing a work project.
Business Side
Google AI Search Shift Leaves Website Makers Feeling ‘Betrayed’ 2025 SEO RIP
In March 2024, website owner Morgan McBride was posing for photos in her half-renovated kitchen for a Google ad celebrating the ways the search giant had helped her family’s business grow.
But by the time the ad ran about a month later, traffic from Google had fallen more than 70%, McBride said. Charleston Crafted, which features guides on do-it-yourself home improvement projects, had weathered algorithm changes and updates in the past; this time, it didn’t recover. McBride suspected people were getting more of their renovation advice from the artificial intelligence answers at the top of Google search.
Dare Obasanjo Yet also:
Google still having to do layoffs after offering buyouts in January is why I thought the buyouts were a bad idea for the company.
When you pay people to leave it’s your best employees that can find jobs elsewhere that take it. And you likely won’t get many takers in a tough job market. So you end up doing layoffs anyway after paying your best to leave.
Shopify CEO says no new hires without proof AI can’t do the job If you’re wondering why Shopify is in the news:
Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke sent a memo to employees saying that before they ask for more headcount or resources, teams must show why they “cannot get what they want done using AI.”
Former Substack creators say they’re earning more on new platforms that offer larger shares of subscription revenue It sounds like Substack is a bit of a Subpay:
Broderick, for example, estimated that revenue for his newsletter Garbage Day had increased by roughly 20% to 25% year over year since he left Substack in January 2024, though he didn’t provide exact figures.
Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati Targets Record-Breaking $2 Billion Seed Round For New AI Startup Murati managed to secure $2B for her — I think this is the biggest one ever — seed round that can fund this futuristic wall of text. Not to be left behind, Sutskever also raises $1B, for his less stylish wall of text.
Murati’s new venture is called Thinking Machines, which is a throw back to the famous Thinking Machines that came out of MIT and built supercomputers for AI but ran out of money by 1994. Maybe you don’t remember the company itself, but surely you recall what a CM-2 looks like from that famous movie about dinosaurs. Something tells me that using the same business name to speed run through marketing is not a winning strategy.
Machine Intelligence
Tracing the thoughts of a large language model If you still believe LLMs are stochastic parrots maybe read this first. On how LLMs think one level of abstraction above tokens, can do some mental math and multi-step reasoning, jailbreaking safety mechanisms, and why LLMs are still prone to hallucinations. It’s all about the default "don't know" feature:
Once the model has decided that it needs to answer the question, it proceeds to confabulate: to generate a plausible—but unfortunately untrue—response.
Exclusive: Walmart AI tool speeds up fashion trends amid trade war Walmart believes they can dress you better — or faster which for them means cheaper — through the power of AI:
The Trend-to-Product tool analyzes trends by pulling information from the internet and social media. It then creates mood boards, which designers and merchants use to create the pieces.
What if an AI CEO ran Starbucks? If ChatGPT can do one thing that's for the betterment of society.
Saniger raised millions in venture funding by claiming that Nate was able to transact online “without human intervention,” except for edge cases where the AI failed to complete a transaction. But despite Nate acquiring some AI technology and hiring data scientists, its app’s actual automation rate was effectively 0%, the DOJ claims.
12 Graphs That Explain the State of AI in 2025 I wouldn't bet on the US keeping its lead in the scope of "intelligence".
Meta got caught gaming AI benchmarks
In fine print, Meta acknowledges that the version of Maverick tested on LMArena isn’t the same as what’s available to the public. According to Meta’s own materials, it deployed an “experimental chat version” of Maverick to LMArena that was specifically “optimized for conversationality,” TechCrunch first reported.
NaNoWriMo Goes Bankrupt After Embracing AI I wouldn't call this surprising news, after all, the people who like writing wrote about this likely outcome at length.
When they said that AI is going to start hurting people I didn’t expect that it’s going to be through allergic reactions
Insecurity
Meta whistleblower alleges work with China on censorship According to Facebook "Sarah Wynn-Williams' testimony is divorced from reality and riddled with false claims," so Facebook is telling me to trust everything she has to say. OK.
"One thing the Chinese Communist Party and Mark Zuckerberg share is that they want to silence their critics. I can say that from personal experience," Ms Wynn-Williams said during her testimony.
Related, 'Careless People' Is the Book About Facebook I've Wanted for a Decade.
Microsoft is about to launch Recall for real this time Recall is coming back and in a brilliant way that would allow Microsoft to defer any liability whatsoever for installing a piece of software that captures everything in a way that's legally admissible in court. And it doesn’t have to be your computer, it could be someone else that’s opening an email you sent, visiting a link you shared, etc. Recall captures it all. So enjoy the new Copilot Plus PC!
(Yes, this tech does have some usefulness in helping you not forget things, the problem is that legally these records are admissible in court, and if you opt out, someone else might still be recording your sensitive data)
Go through your phone apps and delete the ones you don't use. They take up space and there's always some risk they can find a way to spy on you even if you don't open them. Most things can be done by the mobile website anyways - even if they beg you to use their app
[NAME AVAILABLE ON REQUEST FROM COMPANIES HOUSE] If fixing any security mishap was this easy:
I just noticed that the legendary company name
; DROP TABLE "COMPANIES";-- LTDis now listed as[NAME AVAILABLE ON REQUEST FROM COMPANIES HOUSE]on the UK government Companies House …
UK's demand for Apple backdoor should not be heard in secret, says court TL;DR According to court, if the UK wants to spy on you, you reserve the right to spy on them spying on you.
razhael 🧵 Here’s a story of how the infosec community is fighting for your security, in concept, just not in this one particular instance:
THREAD: When Chris Krebs and his workplace, SentinelOne, was singled out by Donald Trump on Wednesday, I thought it was an opportunity to weigh the cybersecurity industry's rhetoric against their real world actions.
I don't mean to brag you guys but loads of companies really care about my privacy
Everything Else
Maggie Maybe “This is hot.”
I'm convinced that all of this upheaval is Pluto's revenge for being demoted.
Be nice to people with glasses. We paid to see you.
Natasha Jay “Feels relevant somehow -”
Does anyone have an extra void I can scream into? Mine is getting full.
I am such a great starter of projects and such a terrible finisher.
Unsecured penguin caused helicopter crash in South Africa The Penguins didn’t appreciate the tariffs and made their opinion known!
Them: Can you explain this gap in your résumé?
Me: I spent six hours formatting it in Google Docs and you’ve opened it in Word.
45 minute connection at O’Hare: You need to sprint between three terminals
3 hour connection at O’Hare: You are three gates away
Why close a tab when you can just open another?
We are all about to get really good at maintaining old computer equipment.
Capitol Trades When you want to trade in the stock market like an “in the know" politician.
Confused Waymo shuts down Calif. restaurant's drive-thru
A self-driving Waymo vehicle temporarily shut down the drive-thru of a Santa Monica, California, Chick-fil-A on Monday, as KTLA first reported.
(I love to make jokes about Waymo because of course, but a Waymo isn’t going to learn where you live and then stalk you, so beats getting in an Uber any time)
An anonymous Al engineer is funding the city's oddest events SF can be weird and also immensely cool. This article is about one Francisco San, a secret benefactor that backs fringe culture events — drop her a note online and she might Venmo you some moneys. One event was a scavenger hunt, using black-and-white posters featuring a stick-figure man that would take days to complete:
At one stop, a crowd gathered, waiting for the 13th minute of the hour, because that’s when the next clue would drop.
Car Picture Bot “This tree growing through an old car is a powerful reminder of the unstoppable force of nature”
Man loses legal bid to cash in $59,500 in chips from now-defunct New Jersey casino How to not make money from the casino:
- There was a Playboy Hotel and Casino
- Of course there was
- It was in operation for 4 years from 1981 until 1984
- You can still cash your winnings, there’s a “state agency responsible for redeeming outstanding chips”
- A former casino employee took some chips and “put them in a bank deposit box”
- The “bank where the chips were stored opened the box in 2010 and confiscated the chips, eventually sending them to the auction house”
- Man bought them in the auction, tried to cash them for $60K, but apparently they’re considered “pilfered”
1 dead, 5 injured in shooting during Memphis anti-violence meeting The US is weird like that:
One person was killed and five others injured during a shooting at an office park in southeast Memphis, Tennessee that was hosting a meeting of a community violence intervention group, police and local media said.
Plane Full of U.S. Lawmakers Is Hit on Runway After FAA Cuts I guess the lesson here is don’t be on the same American Airlines flight as US lawmakers?
Idaho mom who killed 2 of her kids goes on trial over death of her husband Just your ordinary suburban mom and her doomsday-focused religious beliefs:
Vallow Daybell was a beautician by trade, a mother of three and a wife — five times over.
She married Vallow in 2006, and later adopted JJ, but by 2019 their marriage had soured. The two were estranged but still married when Cox fatally shot Vallow.
Public interest from around the world only grew as the investigation into the missing children took several unexpected turns, each new revelation seemingly stranger than the last.
Daybell, who was once a contestant on “Wheel of Fortune,” has been the subject of a Netflix documentary and Lifetime movie.
Gunkroad Last week's Weekend Reading included a link to the "open source" Gumroad project. Turns out the Gumroad founder is associated with DOGE and the project went "open source" just ahead of the article getting published. So I deleted that link (no SEO juice from me) and added Gumroad to my personal IP blocklist.
Numeric Citizen “Yesterday, while waiting for the bus on Sherbrooke Street, downtown Montreal. It’s the first time I notice this street art piece. It is so contemporary.”
