The software world tends to view open source as some kind of a boolean flag. A library either is open source or it isn’t. Is that piece of code open source? Yes? Ok. But I think we can all agree there’s a world of difference between something like the Android SDK (Apache 2.0) and a random stranger’s…

From NoCode to AI-Assisted Every few years, a shiny new technology emerges that promises to make software developers obsolete. The headlines follow a predictable pattern: "The End of Coding," "Anyone Can Build Apps Now," or my personal favorite, "Why Your Five-Year-Old Will Be Programming Before…

“In short, one may say anything about the history of the world—anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can’t say is that it’s rational.” —Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground This past December, a wave of collective jouissance swept the internet as the CEO…

Illustration by Richard Beacham / Ikon Images Last month, the influential Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen published on his firm’s website a piece of writing entitled “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto”. The post was, among other things, a reaction against a cultural tone of caution and…

When you own one of the best cameras for photos and videos, you’ll naturally want to pair it up with one of the best lenses for astrophotography or one of the best zoom lenses. Conversely, even if you own a basic entry-level camera, investing in the best glass you can afford can often be a more…

Spread the love When the Canon EOS R7 was launched, people stood divided about the camera, as it was an APS-C offering from the company. But it wasn’t after the reviews that one began to appreciate the device and the specifications it offered. It has been three years since we heard anything from…

Programming with LLMs is both promising and frustrating. While these AI assistants can help with coding and debugging, they often waste time too. Yet for senior engineers, pair peer programming with LLMs shows real potential. This article is a collection of blog posts written by other senior or…

My experience with motherhood started in a cold hospital room filled with fluorescent lights and beeping machines. I was isolated from my daughter’s dad for reasons I can’t even fully remember, probably some fucked-up COVID protocol. While trying to concentrate on the breathing exercises I picked up…

One of the most harmful pieces of advice is to not reinvent the wheel. It usually comes from a good place, but is typically given by two groups of people: those who tried to invent a wheel themselves and know how hard it isthose who never tried to invent a wheel and blindly follow the advice Either…

“Everywhere, everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for further ordering.” — Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology Earlier this week, I posted a screenshot of ChatGPT’s take on life in NYC, a response so oddly…

GitHub issues is almost the best notebook in the world. Free and unlimited, for both public and private notes. Comprehensive Markdown support, including syntax highlighting for almost any language. Plus you can drag and drop images or videos directly onto a note. It has fantastic inter-linking…

On Hacker News and Lobsters I often see blog posts with titles like: Why I built my startup on Common Lisp and DragonflyBSD Rewriting PyTorch in APL (year six update) I will never, ever, ever learn Docker The general form being: why Obscure Thing is better than Popular Thing. And always the…

In hindsight, 2016 was the beginning of the beginning. And 2024 is the end of that beginning and the start of something much, much worse. It began as a tear in the information space, a dawning realisation that the world as we knew it – stable, fixed by facts, balustraded by evidence – was now a rip…

Programming in a Trance Version française I’ve been an early adopter of large language models (LLMs) since 2022, to be precise. I discovered the power of large language models while reading the article "Inner Monolog," which utilized one of OpenAI’s first instructed models: Instruct-GPT. I must say,…

In the race to an all-optical AI data center, a major player has now placed a bet on a different horse. Semiconductor manufacturing giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) announced that it will work with Sunnyvale startup Avicena to produce microLED-based interconnects. The…

Ever had this weird gut feeling that something is off in your code, but couldn’t put the finger on why? Are you starting your projects with the best intentions, following all best practices, and still feel like your architecture turns weird eventually? So far, I’ve held it at PyCon US 2025 in…

Canon Inc. and Canon Marketing Japan Inc. announced today that Canon’s EOS R1 (released in November 2024), the flagship model of its EOS R System, received Camera of the Year, which is the highest honor, at the Camera Grand Prix 2025. Additionally, the EOS R5 Mark II, a full-frame mirrorless camera…

If you’ve been keeping an eye on upcoming Canon announcements, there's one release rumored to significantly shake up the market. With increased resolution, powerful video upgrades, and improved autofocus on the horizon, this Canon model could make it worthwhile to reconsider whether your current…

For people who wear a cumbersome mask to bed to avoid the life-threatening, long-term effects of a serious breathing disease, the prospect of shedding the headgear for a single pill taken at bedtime has been the stuff of dreams. Now, those dreams appear likely to become reality for at least some…

The modern developer tooling ecosystem has exploded with choices, leading to frustrating scenarios where some piece of code builds perfectly on someone’s system, runs flawlessly in production, but mysteriously fails to build for you and you have absolutely no idea why. You’re left debugging with no…

You’re afraid that looking like being a small company means you’ll lose sales. It’s actually the opposite – you’re alienating your best customers. source I talk to a lot of companies that are still hunting for customer #1, or a few sales have been made but the ball isn’t rolling yet. Most of them…

I'm about thirty-five years into Unix shell programming now, and I continue to despise it. The shell's treatment of whitespace is a constant problem. The fact that doesn't work is a constant pain. The problem here is that if one of the filenames is bite me.jpg then the cp command will turn into and…

Logo text Friendship writer-director Andrew DeYoung is flattered to hear that his feature directorial debut evokes comparisons to What About Bob? and The Banshees of Inisherin. The black comedy chronicles working stiff Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson) as he befriends his local weatherman neighbor,…

As we know, Canon surprised us with the RF 28-70mm f/2.8 IS STM in September and followed it up with an RF 16-28mm f/2.8 IS STM in January. That gave us two small and affordable constant aperture zoom lenses for full-frame cameras. We think most of us now expect a ‘holy trinity’ sort of thing with…

Today, we’re introducing the next generation of Claude models: Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, setting new standards for coding, advanced reasoning, and AI agents. Claude Opus 4 is the world’s best coding model, with sustained performance on complex, long-running tasks and agent workflows. Claude…

There’s a house for sale on the northern plain, in a place you’d never go. It sits by a field just a mile from the river, where a million bass and perch are jumping just now as I write this. By modern standards, it’s a tiny little house — just 600 square feet. But if you adhere to the standard of…

Thank you to Bucknell University for inviting me to be this year's commencement speaker. And congratulations to the Class of 2025! Thirty-two years ago I was sitting where you are now. At least, I assume I was. I can't really remember anything about my own graduation. I was too hung over. The main…

1994 December 1994Netscape releases Netscape Navigator 1.0 Netscape Navigator 1.0 was a watershed moment for the web. It quickly became the most popular web browser, as it was faster and easier to use than Mosaic (a web browser released in 1993). It had a slick graphical UI, unlike many of the…

As we introduce new, emerging capabilities and state-of-the-art models, we want to provide more ways for people to get access to the best of what Google AI has to offer to help them be more knowledgeable, creative and productive. Today, we’re introducing Google AI Ultra, a new AI subscription plan…

From idea to app: Introducing Stitch, a new way to design UIs MAY 20, 2025 Product Manager Arnaud Benard Research Scientist Sam El-Husseini Software Engineer Building great applications always comes down to a powerful partnership between design and development. Designers envision the user…

Hey there! Recently, we took a trip to Canadian University Dubai to scout for some fresh talent. One of the key questions we always ask potential interns is: "Which operating system are you using?" Oh, and by the way, we judge people based on their answer—very harshly: Windows: You are probably not…

Ethan Zuckerman wrote in The Atlantic in 2014: I have come to believe that advertising is the original sin of the web. The fallen state of our Internet is a direct, if unintentional, consequence of choosing advertising as the default model to support online content and services. Through successive…

Python 3.14 introduces a powerful new feature: template strings, formalized in PEP 750. While f-strings (f"") offer convenient inline interpolation, they immediately evaluate to plain strings, making it impossible to extract metadata, control rendering behavior later, or inspect what expressions…

Issue one of Vittles magazine, spring 2025. Picture: Killian Faith-Kelly The first time Vittles founder Jonathan Nunn read a food magazine was in 2015, in a New York cafe whose coffee table was supporting a stack that included the now-defunct Lucky Peach. “I opened it, and there was an article about…

Image by Annie Ruygt Litestream is an open-source tool that makes it possible to run many kinds of full-stack applications on top of SQLite by making them reliably recoverable from object storage. This is a post about the biggest change we’ve made to it since I launched it. Nearly a decade ago, I…

Fair warning: this is the longest thing I've written on this newsletter. I do apologize. Soundtrack: EL-P - $4 Vic Listen to my podcast Better Offline. We have merch. Last week, Bloomberg profiled Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, revealing that he's either a liar or a specific kind of idiot. The article…