Last week I opened Edge to test my Internet connection, because that's the only thing I use it for, and noticed something new. Right beneath the address bar was a new bar with a button offering to let the browser launch automatically whenever I start my computer. That was st...
Have you ever watched any old hack movie lately? The hacker can write at 180 WPM, never using the backspace or changing his mind ever. It’s like before they ever started, they already knew the last character they would type on the screen. But that’s not how it works in real ...
I started learning web development around the time the term search engine optimization, SEO, was becoming more common. You could still see the shift between pre-SEO content and post-SEO content. A popular article titled "Forgotten" (a great story) was suddenly republished as...
This was so casually uttered by LG executives in their sales pitch to advertising companies.
We own the glass.
What they mean is, they own your tv. They own everything on it. You may have paid for the box, but they own the glass. They can run anything they want on it, and...
My biggest challenge isn't code per se. It is explaining to someone else what I am trying to do with the code. It is surprisingly hard to convert the thoughts in my head (or the code) into something coherent someone else can understand.
I still believe that. I don't even remember when we had this discussion, but I'm glad Walter has kept it up. And a great reminder of my priorities.
If you weren't coding, what would you be doing?
I'd be a writer. (not a good one, but one nonetheless)
It's easier for someone in my position, after working 20 years in this field to talk about morals. I can disagree with the choices my employer makes. In fact, I can walk away. But I remember the dilemma I felt I was in, earlier in my career. The lead developer stood behind...
The YouTube tag marking a video as AI-generated is as insignificant as the little "Sponsored" text in search ads. I've taught my mother and her friends to check for that tag, but most, if not all, of the videos they share with me don't even have it. Even though they're cle...
I don't think it's going to work out the way everybody thinks it will. The current narrative, at least the one pushed by the companies selling the shovels, is that AI will become centralized. Anthropic and OpenAI will offer safe, vetted AI. Developers will become mere prompt...
There is a machine called Productivity, and on this machine there is a knob and a button. The knob increases productivity, and the button is labeled "reset." My job was data entry at a non-profit. It was my first job in the US where I didn't have to lift heavy objects. My ...
What are you supposed to do after you've created the most successful product? Not just successful, but the most useful. In an ideal world, you would sail into the sunset and enjoy your riches. In this real world, you have to come up with another, even more successful product...
The aliens arrived, and their first instinct was to check our networks. They accessed one of our most important websites. A government website. Unfortunately, they were met with a reCAPTCHA.
Are you a robot?
They are not robots. But after fifteen minutes of squinting and trying to select all the fire hydrants and traffic lights, they gave up. Defeated by a checkbox, they returned to the stars.
The aliens arrived, and their first instinct was to check our networks. They accessed one of our most important websites. A government website. Unfortunately, they were met with a reCAPTCHA.
Are you a robot?
They are not robots. But after fifteen minutes of squinting and trying to select all the fire hydrants and traffic lights, they gave up. Defeated by a checkbox, they returned to the stars.
During the pandemic, we completed one of our largest projects at work. To celebrate, since we couldn't meet in person, we all ordered food on DoorDash and played an online escape room game together. We were on a Zoom call, helping each other out and having fun. The first cha...
You must use the tool. We must justify it. These aren't the words companies use, but that's what it comes down to. When you buy an expensive solution before you've clearly identified the problem, you have to use the tool to justify its line item in the spreadsheet. At most c...
A couple weeks ago, the CEO of Snap was all over the news in the US because he and his wife made a large donation. The weird part about it was that every news outlet that covered it had an acrobatic title where they didn't specifically say how much they donated, yet insisted on that $550 Million amount.
I think I finally figured it out. That is, the reason why AI written articles suck:
Both the author and I are reading the article for the first time.
When an article is insightful I don't even mind the emdashes or that the stark truth is not X, but Y. A good take can transcend even llmism. But then you have questions, and somehow the author doesn't even know what you are talking about, it's simply because they are discovering the insight at the same time you are.
They were busy, they didn't have time to write. As a consequence, they only dedicated enough time to skim the result before publishing. They don't know what's in it. You can't ask them what they were thinking when they came up with the insight because, well, they didn't think.
The great article sucks because there is nobody behind it.
You've probably heard this one before. It might have come from a parent, a teacher, or a friend who bought an expensive item and wanted to justify it. It goes something like this:
A poor man buys a cheap pair of boots for a few dollars. They fall apart within a year, so h...
When I was a kid, my father bought a family home computer and placed it in the living room for all to see. When guests came to our house, they would stop by the computer and admire its marvel without even turning it on. While everyone else was careful with the computer, trea...
I like building websites. But in some circles, I might as well say that I like to drive to the forest before sunrise, chop down a tree, load it in my trunk, and gather some dry wood as well, then drive back before first light. All this just to use the wood to start a fire an...
Imagine being worth $2 billion. Would you give away $550 million? That's a quarter of your wealth, more money than I could spend in several lifetimes. Yet that's how much Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snapchat, and his wife have donated to a charity in California. Specifically, t...
Amazon has been accused several times for ripping off merchants on its platform. And every single time they denied any wrongdoing. A merchant, or anyone really, can create a product (or source it from China), then resell it on amazon. Amazon is the service provider, and ho...
I've always been interested in how dating apps work. You really only have two choices if you want to get in the business.
Help people find a match, and they will never come back
Make people pay and keep them on the platform as long as possible.
Let's pretend for a secon...
I don't understand why this generation can't afford a home. When my grandfather was 18, he had already saved enough money from his paper route and various odd jobs to buy his first home. By the time my father turned 26, he was already married, had his first child, and was mo...
The Washington Post reported that the US government will decide who can use state-of-the-art LLMs. After the ban of Fable and the limitations coming to ChatGPT 5.6, what's next? My bet is Chinese models. For all of Anthropic's doomsaying and propping up of their secret mod...
- "If you talk to me, I'll punch you in the face, are you ok with talking with me?"
- "Nods in agreement."
- "Proceeds to punch the man in the face." That's how I feel whenever I hear the Miranda rights being read. It was designed specifically to scare anyone being read to...
I am a father of twin boys. There is a question I often think about. It often appears as a midlife crisis where I am not sure when I became a man responsible for a family.
It looked so easy for my father. It was as if he was born into it. He was a leader, a strong man, one that an entire community could rely on. When does that kick in for me? When do I become this leader? Or have I already become?
That's what I was thinking when I wrote this short story about my father 10 years ago. I couldn't find a way to describe him, without mentioning clocks. It was fitting since he loved them so much.
I hope you enjoy this "Ode to my Father". Happy Father's day to you all.
PS: please excuse the AI generated images, I'm still trying to find the best way to present it. The text was entirely written by me in 2016-2017.
Remember that scene in the Matrix where Neo is strapped into the chair and Link uploads all sorts of martial arts into his mind? When Neo wakes up, he says "I know Kung-fu," then proceeds to demonstrate his skill in a battle with Morpheus. That was a pretty amazing scene. Bu...
The worst type of bug is one that only happens on prod. And only on prod. If you checked this blog in the past few weeks, you might have encountered a big fat 500 error. I'd had the same design for 10 years, and I wanted something fresh. But who can redesign without also i...
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