FeedCity: Featured

Adding dynamic features to an aggressively cached website

My blog uses aggressive caching: it sits behind Cloudflare with a 15 minute cache header, which guarantees it can survive even the largest traffic spike to any given page. I've recently added a couple of dynamic features that work in spite of that full-page caching. Here's h...

Simon Willison's Weblog
28 Jan 22:18

The Five Levels: from Spicy Autocomplete to the Dark Factory

The Five Levels: from Spicy Autocomplete to the Dark Factory Dan Shapiro proposes a five level model of AI-assisted programming, inspired by the five (or rather six, it's zero-indexed) levels of driving automation. Spicy autocomplete, aka original GitHub Copilot or copying...

Daring Fireball
28 Jan 22:18 • John Gruber

★ Politics and the English Language, January 2026 Edition

Patrick McGee (author of last year’s bestseller, Apple in China, and guest on The Talk Show in May), commenting on Twitter/X re: Tim Cook’s company-wide memo regarding the “events in Minneapolis”: This literally says nothing, via intention and cowardice. It’s the kind o...

kottke.org
28 Jan 21:54 • Jason Kottke

Vintage Tourist Maps of Japan

The gang at Present & Correct found a cache of pre-war tourist maps of Japan while rummaging around in Tokyo’s Jinbōchō used book district. They photographed them for a new self-published book called Paper Trails. Tags: books · design · Japan · maps · Paper Trails

kottke.org
28 Jan 20:36 • Jason Kottke

The Copyrightability of Fonts Revisited by Matthew Butterick, a type designer &...

The Copyrightability of Fonts Revisited by Matthew Butterick, a type designer & copyright litigator. “If a court were asked to directly consider the copyrightability of an ordinary digital font, it would likely rule in the negative.”

xkcd.com
28 Jan 20:09

Chemical Formula

Some of the atoms in the molecule are very weakly bound.

Daring Fireball
28 Jan 20:06 • John Gruber

Tim Cook Wrote a Memo on the ‘Events in Minneapolis’

macrumors.com/2026/01/27/tim-cook-responds-after-minneapolis-shootings/

Tim Cook, in a company-wide memo (first published by Mark Gurman): Team, I’m heartbroken by the events in Minneapolis, and my prayers and deepest sympathies are with the families, with the communities, and with everyone that’s been affected. This is a time for deescala...

kottke.org
28 Jan 19:42 • Jason Kottke

Clint Smith visits the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery,...

Clint Smith visits the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. “The goal of the sites is to force visitors to confront the violence of the past without the counterweight of a more uplifting narrative to assuage their distress.”

kottke.org
28 Jan 18:45 • Jason Kottke

Bruce Springstein wrote & recorded a song about Minnesota’s battle against tyranny:...

Bruce Springstein wrote & recorded a song about Minnesota’s battle against tyranny: Streets Of Minneapolis. “Our city’s heart and soul persists / Through broken glass and bloody tears / On the streets of Minneapolis.”

kottke.org
28 Jan 18:44 • Jason Kottke

David Lynch Went to the First Beatles Concert in the US (1964)

In one of his final on-camera interviews, David Lynch recounts going to the very first Beatles concert in the US in 1964. I ended up going to this concert. I didn’t really have any idea that it was the first concert. I didn’t have any idea how big this event was. And it w...

kottke.org
28 Jan 17:52 • Jason Kottke

Why do RSS readers look like email clients? “When we applied that...

Why do RSS readers look like email clients? “When we applied that same visual language to RSS (the unread counts, the bold text for new items, the sense of a backlog accumulating) we imported the anxiety without the cause.”

kottke.org
28 Jan 16:57 • Jason Kottke

A collection of “well-made apps and sites” gathered by Marcin Wichary....

A collection of “well-made apps and sites” gathered by Marcin Wichary.

Daring Fireball
28 Jan 16:27 • John Gruber

Meta’s Response to Reuters Report on ‘Romance AI Chatbots’ for Teenagers

x.com/andymstone/status/2016242174447223049

Andy Stone, VP of communications at Meta, responding, in a series of tweets on Twitter/X, to Jeff Horwitz’s report at Reuters yesterday, linked here last night, which claimed that “Zuckerberg blocked curbs on sex-talking chatbots for minors”: Never let the facts get in t...

Song Exploder
28 Jan 16:26 • Hrishikesh Hirway

Leon Thomas - Mutt

play.prx.org/listen?ge=prx_93_afdaed83-e403-423a-8113-cf91b7ffd364&uf=http%3A%2F%2Ffeed.songexploder.net%2FSongExploder

Leon Thomas is a singer, songwriter, producer, and actor. He’s nominated for six Grammys at this year’s Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist, Best R&B Album, and Album of the Year for Mutt. Mutt is his second album, and I talked to Leon about the title track, which was a breakout hit. He’d already won a Grammy for his work with SZA, but he reached a new level in his own career with this song and this album. I also spoke to David Phelps and Rob Gueringer, AKA D. Phelps and Freaky Rob, who produced the song.

For more info, visit songexploder.net/leon-thomas.

kottke.org
28 Jan 15:30 • Jason Kottke

People Photographed With Their Vehicles

For his project called Homo Mobilis, Martin Roemers travelled the globe and photographed people with their cars, bikes, scooters, etc. You can see a selection of the photos on Roemers’ website, at The Guardian, or in his forthcoming book, Homo Mobilis (Amazon). (via @steveportigal.bsky.social) Tags: cars · Martin Roemers · photography

kottke.org
28 Jan 14:57 • Jason Kottke

Why Some People See Collapse Earlier Than Others: Perception, pattern-seeking, and the...

Why Some People See Collapse Earlier Than Others: Perception, pattern-seeking, and the role of neurodivergence in a failing civilisation. “Collapse awareness is fundamentally a pattern-recognition event. Some people are wired for that.”

kottke.org
28 Jan 13:51 • Jason Kottke

Kristen Radtke remembers Alex Pretti. “I didn’t realize, in the hours before...

Kristen Radtke remembers Alex Pretti. “I didn’t realize, in the hours before his name was released to the public, that the man millions of people had seen lying facedown on the pavement from multiple angles…was my childhood best friend.”

The Atlas Obscura Podcast
28 Jan 05:05 • SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Thomas Edison’s Botanical Laboratory

Toward the end of his life, the great inventor Thomas Edison became obsessed with one final project: finding a source of rubber that could grow in the United States. It would transform his Florida home into a bonafide botanical laboratory. This episode was produced in partne...

Daring Fireball
28 Jan 00:18 • John Gruber

Court Filing Claims Zuckerberg Blocked Curbs at Meta on Sex-Talking Chatbots for Minors

reuters.com/legal/government/meta-ceo-zuckerberg-blocked-curbs-sex-talking-chatbots-minors-court-filing-2026-01-27/

Jeff Horwitz, reporting for Reuters: Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors to access AI chatbot companions that safety staffers warned were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta documents filed in a New Mexico state court case...

Daring Fireball
27 Jan 23:39 • John Gruber

‘The Secret Fear of the Morally Depraved’

theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/the-neighbors-defending-minnesota-from-ice/685769/?gift=Je3D9AQS-C17lUTOnl2W8L893jn-xkg4gA0ahaD_Ltw

Adam Serwer, reporting from the streets of Minneapolis for The Atlantic, “Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong” (gift link): The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological co...