37 links from the last 24 hours · 8 October 2026
RAM's expensive again. Can existing software run faster with 50% less RAM via an unloved compiler flag?
Terence Tao (@tao@mathstodon.xyz)
"Math 1.0" placed a premium on being the first to solve an open problem, even if the solution was not initially well understood. Now that this goal has been optimized to the point of unsustainability, "Math 2.0" will need to decenter the role of raw problem s…
I've always been kind of into computers since I was young. And then when film started to move from analog film to digital, I became more interested in that aspect …
The one where I provide employment advice.
Meta and Microsoft Limit Employee Use of Claude AI Tools
Meta and Microsoft are implementing new measures to limit employee use of Claude AI—discover what this means for the future of AI in the workplace.
How can undefined opcodes ud0 and ud1 have parameters? How undefined were they? - The Old New Thing
They weren't defined, not even as undefined.
ascii.rest: animated ascii art for web pages, by @bas3line
191 animated ascii pieces for web pages, in TypeScript with no dependencies: for React, Next.js, Astro, or one HTML tag. MIT licensed.
What It Costs to Vibe-Code an Email Marketing App
I used Broadcast's full git history to estimate what it costs to rebuild it with Claude Opus 5.5, on the API and on a Claude Max plan. The numbers, the method, and when building your own is the right call.
Everyone is an engineer now
Software engineering is supposedly going extinct. Yet I know more people writing code and building products today than I've ever known before—often for the first time in their lives.
Stop telling people to delete their social media
In 2017, I deleted my Facebook account. It was triggered by an HN comment that I cannot for the life of me find, but at the time it felt like the right thing to do. Everybody smart on the internet was saying social media was rotting our brains and the only way…
Slop on Sale
Continued attempts to understand and mitigate slop, this time with Claude Haiku 4.5 and GPT-5 Mini
Lots of people are no longer reading code. Agents are at a point where you can make software, as a black box, that might do what you wanted it to do. Maybe then you poke at it, and it doesn't do one of the things you wanted it to do, and then you tell your age…
From Electron to Swift – Phiewer
Why Phiewer was an Electron app for years, why I deleted it and rewrote it in Swift, and why the photo grid then had to move from SwiftUI to AppKit after all. For developers, with code.
the world hasn’t figured out yet that you can literally just fix everything with a Nix overlay
There are many things that are uncertain in our industry right now, but one thing I am certain about, and have been for almost 13 years, is that Nix is a terrible programming language. I remember when I first learned it, it felt like pushing shit uphill. The …
Although they appear to merely be words on a page, I often feel that Om's work almost always carries a rare introspective insight. Perhaps it's truth. Perhaps it's something else.
Software developers are not okay
Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
The Terminal Dev Stack I Wanted 10 Years Ago
Neovim, AstroNvim, tmux, modern language servers and a new generation of terminal tools now cover most of my everyday development work — while AI makes the whole stack dramatically easier to configure and learn.
Explaining the Magelight XP glitch in Skyrim - Vox Silva
Explaining why casting Magelight outside Solitude grants so much XP in Skyrim
GPT-6 and Intelligent UI for everyone
GPT‑6 is rolling out globally in ChatGPT with Intelligent UI, delivering faster responses with visuals and interactive experiences you can explore and use directly.
Anti-Patterns in Software Blogging
Effective writing for software developers
Will software remain valuable? Will software development remain a valuable trade? What about software companies? These questions often get muddled up. Here is my attempt at looking at them separately.
Unrolled Code - Noteflakes
Introducing Claude Haiku 5.5
Claude Haiku 5.5 is our fastest, most capable small model. Built for high-volume work like summarization, subagents, and browser use.
Deleting RAG from our web agent made it 2.3x faster
We rewrote Skyvern from scratch using Pi as inspiration, making it 2.3x faster and score 90.5% on Odysseys benchmark.
BIGWORDS.PAGE: Turn any screen into a sign
Turn a phone, tablet or TV into a sign. Type a message and it fills the screen: welcome signs, timers, Wi-Fi passwords and more. No app, no account, free.
Supposing you were imbued with the sum total of all human knowledge, would you find it hard to make a decision? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but one thing is for certain: our large language model (LLM) friends do find it difficult. I’ve had an experience with this…
Building geometric intuition for the Jacobian in the change-of-variables formula, with interactive figures.
Consider the Switch: From iPhone to Fairphone
Find out why I decided to switch from Apple to a Fairphone. Discover some great European alternatives!
Designing for voice first – Anton Sten
Five principles for designing voice-first interfaces, from making context count to helping people trust what happens when they stop looking at the screen.
Personal notes and experiences by Sangmin Yoon.
As previously promised, here’s Anthropic’s new fast, low cost model: Introducing Claude Haiku 5.5. The previous Haiku, 4.5, was very much showing its age. It came out almost a year …
Visa, Mastercard, Major Banks Facing New Litigation Over ‘Anticompetitive’ Merchant Credit Card Transaction Fees
A class action lawsuit alleges Visa, Mastercard and some of America's largest banks have conspired to artificially inflate merchants' credit card transaction fees.
Last rites for Gentoo's Chromium package
Chromium, the open-source upstream project for Google's Chrome web browser, is the browser of c [...]
Janet on x32: 32-bit Pointers, 64-bit Speed, 25% Less RAM
RAM's expensive again. Can existing software run faster with 50% less RAM via an unloved compiler flag?
Some excellent writing advice from Michael Lynch. Michael warns against "meandering intros", misjudging your reader's existing knowledge, assuming they'll read your previous posts, and excessive formality. He also warns against …
GitHub - boykopovar/AnyPS5: Tool for automatic PS5 executables porting to Linux and Windows
Tool for automatic PS5 executables porting to Linux and Windows - boykopovar/AnyPS5
Decisions | OpenAI API
Use the Decisions API to check conditions, select from fixed options, and score text and images against a rubric.