At first glance, it looks like Apple has provided podcasts hosts no documented way to host video for their podcasts except through a third-party hosting provider. Boo. podcasters.apple.com/support/5593-how-to-publish-video
Video of this episode is up on YouTube:
I feel like I'm getting saltier, and it's concerning. If you want me to tone it down and/or up, let me know. It'll go a lot better if you just write to podcast@searls.co instead of yelling at your phone.
As usual, I brought the goods. Now here are the receipts:
- prove_it is doing its job, mostly
- Aaron's puns, ranked
- Starsand Island studio confused by alleged 'praise-bombing' attack
- Sony is considering holding back PlayStation 6 until 2028 or 2029
- Southwest changes are infuriating fans (News+)
- NYT: All the news that's fit to manspread
- Gurman: Tesla CarPlay Held Back by Need for Wider Adoption of Apple's iOS 26 (Archive)
- YouTube on Vision Pro (News+)
- Apple Announces Special Event in New York, London, and Shanghai on March 4
- Filed my first SwiftUI bug as feedback. It's FB21962656
- Thoughtworks concludes TDD is good and billable juniors valuable
- Ugh, Anthropic CEO was right about the timing of AI writing all the code
- Peter Steinberger Chose OpenAI. The Code Was Never the Point
- Eternity
- Starfleet Academy
- Your Friends & Neighbors
Enjoyed Dave's post coining Deterministic Core, Agentic Shell. Functions aren't going anywhere, but imperative code is shifting from if/else to an LLM's decisions.
Lotta folks losing the thread here. blog.davemo.com/posts/2026-02-14-deterministic-core-agentic-shell.html
One month left on Anthropic CEO's prediction that, "in 12 months, we may be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the code." Myself and the folks I talk to have already been there for awhile. businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-code-3-to-6-months-2025-3
Added a /prove skill to my prove_it library. It pushes Claude Code to go beyond merely analyzing source and running tests to demonstrate the code is working.
Example: it spun up a complete example project and ACTUALLY proved my cached test runner works github.com/searlsco/prove_it
I just haggled with a chatbot
We ordered a wood chest that arrived with cosmetic damage. After logging the damage in their customer support interface, it prompted me to start a chat with their AI virtual assistant.
What happened next:
- It immediately offered me a 15% refund to keep the product
- I asked for 20% and it immediately agreed
- I asked for 25% and it immediately agreed
- I asked for 30% and it turned me down
- I took the 25%, which was, indeed, immediately refunded
Turns out that negotiating with a rules engine is way easier than negotiating with a human tasked with operating a rules engine.
So basically, all Wayfair did was add a chatbot to the end of their existing "Report a Problem" interface that will give customers more money if they ask for more money. What a world. 🌍
My prove_it CLI is already proving valuable. Just watched Opus 4.6 complete an hourlong rewrite without me… ONLY because 6 times prove_it's own script & agent hooks blocked Claude from prematurely declaring victory. It's letting me focus on WHAT, not HOW github.com/searlsco/prove_it
Mitchell Hashimoto, founder of Hashicorp and, more recently, Ghostty in a post on his relationship with AI coding:
Instead of giving up, I forced myself to reproduce all my manual commits with agentic ones. I literally did the work twice. I'd do the work manually, and then I'd fight an agent to produce identical results in terms of quality and function (without it being able to see my manual solution, of course).
This was excruciating, because it got in the way of simply getting things done. But I've been around the block with non-AI tools enough to know that friction is natural, and I can't come to a firm, defensible conclusion without exhausting my efforts.
But, expertise formed. I quickly discovered for myself from first principles what others were already saying, but discovering it myself resulted in a stronger fundamental understanding.
- Break down sessions into separate clear, actionable tasks. Don't try to "draw the owl" in one mega session.
- For vague requests, split the work into separate planning vs. execution sessions.
- If you give an agent a way to verify its work, it more often than not fixes its own mistakes and prevents regressions.
More generally, I also found the edges of what agents -- at the time -- were good at, what they weren't good at, and for the tasks they were good at how to achieve the results I wanted.
I recorded an interview on the freeCodeCamp podcast a few days ago saying the same thing. Namely, that this reminds me of every other time programmers have needed to learn a new way to do something they already know how to do some other way. When I was teaching teams test-driven development, I always had to encourage them to force themselves to test-drive 100% of their code without exceptions so they're forced to actually learn the difference between, "this is hard because it's a bad tool for the job," and, "this is hard because I've not mastered this tool yet."
Over-application of a tool is an important part of learning it. And it applies just about every time we're forced to change our ways, whether switching from Windows to Linux, a graphical IDE to terminal Vim, or from Google Drive to a real filesystem.
Either you're the type who can stomach the discomfort of slowing down to adopt change, or you're not. And many (most?) programmers are not. They're the ones who should be worried right now.
I bought a Doggett
My friend Eric Doggett became a Disney Fine Artist a couple years back and he's currently being featured at EPCOT's 2026 Festival of the Arts. Each day this week, he's holding court to talk to people about his work at a pop-up gallery just outside the Mexico Pavilion. Myself and a few other friends ganged up on him this afternoon to lend our moral and financial support by showing up and buying a few pieces.
I really like the painting I picked up. It's a semi-subtle ode to Big Thunder Mountain, a celebration of Walt's love of trains, a not-so-hidden Mickey-shaped rockface, and a tiny nod to the goat.
If you're a local, swing by and say hi to Eric—he's great! If you're not, check him out as @EricDoggett on YouTube—the videos of how he works are pretty cool. I immediately hung it in my office / studio when I got home, because Eric's audio engineering talents are a big reason why Breaking Change sounds as good as it does!