I joined Twitter in 2007 and my brain slowly morphed over the next 15 years from hopelessly verbose to nihilistically pithy. I've kicked the Twitter habit, but the takes keep flowing. That's why I post them here and format them as a social network of one. You're welcome to bookmark any of these takes, though I'm not sure why you would.
By the way, the hearts and like counts are fake. They're just there to make you feel safe.
TIRED: Panic-buying toilet paper
WIRED: Panic-buying cameras and SSDs
There's the headline. You know it's real when they pull out the pics of floor traders touching their faces. theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/trump-tariffs-stock-market
The best test framework for Ruby finally became useful. TLDR 1.0 is here: github.com/tendersearls/tldr
In general, I love how Japanese society prioritizes cleanliness, but one thing that's never made sense to me is how the rice sold at supermarkets is absolutely FULL of germs.
My first "vibe-coded" program. Claude Desktop with MCP file server. Never touched an editor. Never read the source. Works. github.com/searls/icloud-dotfiles/blob/master/bin/code
Proud to say this post has aged like fine wine since I wrote it thirty years ago in 2024 justin.searls.co/posts/3-simple-rules-for-using-my-large-language-model/
The best argument against e-mail based authentication is that it’s impossible to guarantee the delivery of e-mails. Once a user says they've checked spam, there's basically nothing else you can do for them beyond checking your configuration for the millionth time.
Imagine my surprise when I learned that PopStroke was a fancy putt-putt chain and not a competitor to the Fleshlight.
Drop what you're doing and go play with this. Good things will surely come of this technology, with zero unintended consequences. openai.com/index/introducing-4o-image-generation/
My washing machine’s timer has been pegged at 1 minute remaining for over 45 minutes. With estimates like this, I should hire this thing as a software developer.
When your CI server notifies you of JavaScript test failures in a modern Rails app, is it sending you a Stimulus check?
Though making things with computers involves a fair bit of misery and frustration, what keeps me at it is the feeling of FINALLY getting over the hump and unlocking the next chunk of rapid progress.
The closest analogue is how it felt to receive a present as a child and want to run away from the party to immediately play with it. As soon as I'm unblocked, I can't tear myself away.
Pro-tip: if your AirPods Pro have been in your ears for a while without audio playing and your device won't connect, brush the stem so as to adjust the volume. This will wake them up and they'll connect more quickly.
I wonder whether dudes enthralled by right-wing incel manosphere influencers realize that being an alpha male and having something to prove by posting online are fundamentally incompatible.
Everyone’s recent realization that the software industry has been living in a vibes-based alternate reality makes me wonder if the tech sector of the 2010s won’t be remembered the same way we think of finance in the 1980s. A gold rush typified by unbridled greed, lavish excess, and excessive risk.
Moral bankruptcy slowly giving way to literal bankruptcy.
The fact RuboCop can’t lint ERB templates is a pretty huge cop-out IMO
One reason Apple Intelligence has been slow to roll out is… a lot of this shit just isn't useful. I'm a sadist that insists on coding with LLM-based tools all day every day and it's almost always a waste of time compared to raw-dogging it myself. macrumors.com/2025/03/13/apple-announced-swift-assist-wwdc24-so-where-is-it/
Someone brought up this older post of mine today and i'm pleased to report that (with the benefit of my no longer remembering it years later), it is as good a post on the topic as I could hope to find and that past-me was indeed very smart testdouble.com/insights/necessary-sufficient
"Send Later" functionality in Mail and Messages are both (according to Apple's documentation) completely client-side. That being the case, why does it support iMessage conversations and not SMS/RCS ones?