Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
We have the kiddos for the weekend so let’s see how much of this I can get through before they wake up. My first cup of coffee is nice and hot and my fingers are ready to type.
I hope you enjoy the links.
The promise of AI – the promise AI companies make to investors – is that there will be AI that can do your job, and when your boss fires you and replaces you with AI, he will keep half of your salary for himself and give the other half to the AI company.
We’re beginning to see what Cory is talking about. Layoffs continue at tech companies, see Meta for example.
I’m curious to see if we have course corrections somewhere down the road. Will these companies decide they need more people due to LLMs?
You must imagine Sam Altman holding a knife to Tim Berners-Lee’s throat.
It’s not a pleasant image. Sir Tim is, rightly, revered as the genial father of the World Wide Web. But, all the signs are pointing to the fact that we might be in endgame for “open” as we’ve known it on the Internet over the last few decades.
We’ve spent so much collective time making the open web an amazing place it’s difficult to think it may be eaten alive by the billionaires and tech bros.
Publicly released exploit code for an effectively unpatched vulnerability that gives root access to virtually all releases of Linux is setting off alarm bells as defenders scramble to ward off severe compromises inside data centers and on personal devices.
Very scary, easy to exploit, security vulnerability. In 1995 I watched a co-worker exploit a know security vulnerability in SunOS to gain access to our bosses computer because we needed to get something from it. Yes, the boss knew we needed it an approved us getting it. I don’t remember the exact reason but I do recall we really needed to get whatever the thing was. I just remember this grey beard saying “I hope he hasn’t patched his OS yet.” He hadn’t, we got in.
In March, Windows president Pavan Davuluri confirmed plans to address serious “paint points” across Windows 11that have eroded user trust and generated a wave of negative sentiment around the OS, spawned from Microsoft’s relentless push into AI and enshittification while neglecting core Windows fundamentals such as performance and reliability.
I really hope Microsoft can get their act together and make Windows more stable and get their UI sorted out. It’s embarrassing for an operating system I still believe is great to be in the position its in now.
Here’s to a better Windows. 🙏🏼
And so today we’re going to begin an experiment to see what that version of Platformer would look like. Free subscribers can still look forward to one column per week. Paid subscribers will get an additional column on Thursdays that we’re thinking of as a reporter’s notebook: what I’m hearing, what we’re working on, a Hard Fork preview, and a mailbag. Some of these may read like traditional columns; others may feel more formally daring.
I really want to see more indie media like Platformer survive and thrive. Casey and gang provide a real service to the community and change is difficult and scary. I hope this move is exactly what the doctor ordered and they trive for many years to come.
David “Underscore” Smith via Mastodon
I’ve been spending the morning going through loads of old Apple Watch screenshots for a post I’m writing about my various efforts over the years at putting maps on the wrist…just came across a folder full of concepts for custom watch faces I’ve built. 😔 Maybe one day…
It was neat to see his experiments. Third party watch faces is all I’ve wanted from the watch since it was introduced. I could see some extremely cringe movie inspired faces but I can also see some thoughtful, gorgeous, faces from great designers.
For 4 months now, I have been using multiagent AI workflows and in mid-March 2026 I decided to take on the task of porting Notepad++ to macOS as a native application. The macOS version retains most that made the original great, which is syntax highlighting for 80+ programming languages, powerful regex-based search and replace, split view editing, macro recording, and a plugin ecosystem. I think that gradually it will be feeling right at home on the Mac. It runs on macOS 11 and later, launches instantly on Intel and M-series chips.
When I was a Windows developer I used Notepad++ like I use BBEdit today, for tasks on the periphery of development. Things like writing scripts or browsing code from other projects for things I’d done in the past and would like to steal from.
I have yet to try this new version and I’m in no hurry because I do like BBEdit and my fingers are accustomed to how it works.
But I am curious.
One of my favourite aspects of Lua’s design that I like to preach about is how it’s really tight and small, while also being genuinely really sweet to write. Today, I’d like to focus on its Lisp-like aspect: domain specific languages (DSLs)—specifically, we will use it to build a templating language for HTML.
I’ve been a Lua fan for a long time and there was a time when I’d go poke around the code once in a while because it was fun to read. Riki’s use is novel and I love seeing folks build code in unexpected ways.
I showed it to Claude Code and asked “how easy would this codebase be for you to work with?” I told it not to hold back. Review it purely from an agentic coding perspective, ignore human aesthetics entirely.
The feedback wasn’t great.
Apparently shops are using LLMs to find bugs of all kinds, be it your garden variety crash to serious security flaws.
I’ve been thinking about running Stream through Claude, but I’m kind of afraid of what it’ll say. 😃
Two weeks ago, I quit my job.
It wasn’t a bad job, not by most metrics. It ticked the boxes a job is supposed to tick: good pay. Health insurance. Remote work. Time off. Nice coworkers.
The closer I get to retirement age the more I want to walk away from corporate life and focus on things I want to do. The reality is, I can’t because I didn’t plan properly.
Kim thinks I need to go back to school and get a history degree so I can get a job at the Smithsonian or place like that in D.C. I really do love history and especially our own American history. It’s a good idea, but time is a precious commodity and as I watch mine tick away all I want to do is spend it with Kim and our family more than ever. And, yes, I’d also like to work on my software projects. 😃
