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.
iOS lets you set a default app for 9 different categories, but of course Reminders is not among them. All I want is to be able to funnel everything into Things with minimal shenanigans support.apple.com/en-us/121430
Not gonna lie, zero regrets for having spent the weekend panic-buying just about every piece of electronics I need for the next year. reuters.com/technology/chinese-electronics-company-anker-starts-raising-prices-amazon-2025-04-11/
Sure, Nate's CEO hired Filipinos to "be the AI", but If investors had bothered to read the pitch deck, they'd have noticed he defined LLM as "Large Labor Model" techcrunch.com/2025/04/10/fintech-founder-charged-with-fraud-after-ai-shopping-app-found-to-be-powered-by-humans-in-the-philippines/
The reason AI startups like Windsurf, Cursor, et. al, are all fucked is that "you’re a product, not a platform" is the new "you’re a feature, not a product."
If you fail to secure a massive acquisition, you're gonna get steamrolled by the big tech companies as soon as they catch up.
It’s a bad time to sell stocks, but it’s the PERFECT time to sell my playstupid.games domain. Want it? E-mail me at wtf@searls.co
Good post for engineering leaders struggling to figure out how to make their business counterparts happy. Bonus: a rare 2x2 matrix that makes a meaningful point. testdouble.com/insights/beyond-mvp-why-your-most-valuable-tactic-matters
The latest episode of Breaking Change is the first that feels like it clicks as a video. Genuinely preferred watching it over simply listening for the first time youtube.com/watch?v=y6G5a_myb4M
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.