Inspired by Jedda’s Postroll, here is an incomplete list of blog posts that I’ve read and enjoyed in the last 3 months. This list refreshes daily.
If you find any of these posts interesting, I suggest that you give them a follow!
Brocards for vulnerability triage by
Even though brocard is a weird name for them, I enjoyed reading the principles that William uses to triage vulnerabilities.
Added: June 12, 2026
SSH certificates: the better SSH experience by
Using a certificate authority to sign a user’s public SSH key instead of storing them on the machine is pretty neat. I’ve worked on systems before where we had short-lived SSH keys and I imagine that the setup had to be similar to what’s presented here. If I scaled up and down infrastructure in my homelab more, then I can totally see myself implementing this.
Added: June 12, 2026
How to check out selected directories from Git repository by
Woah! I didn’t know that you can do sparse checkouts with git! That was one of my favorite features from subversion. This makes working with large mono-repos more bearable.
Added: June 9, 2026
Taxing Small Cars to Improve MPG by
I also own a Honda Fit and am sad that they discontinued them in the US. Not only are smaller vehicles more fuel efficient, they’re also easier to parallel park!
I’m not sure when the government set these CAFE MPG targets, but they seem quite aspirational! Even though I would love a small car that drives 70 MPG, it’s rough that these regulations are incentivizing companies to focus on larger vehicles.
Added: June 9, 2026
The Archivist In Me Turned This Blog Into a Book by
What a crazy and fun project! I can imagine archiving a blog as a journal/periodical where you have volume numbers. For example, “Brandon Rozek’s Ramblings Volume 1”.
Added: June 9, 2026
On Take-Home Coding Assignments by
I recently went through several rounds of interviews and from my experience startups prefer take-home coding assignments while larger companies wanted me to give a talk.
Honestly, both those tasks require work. I get it though – it’s difficult for companies to assess the competency of their applicants. Kitty provides other alternate assessments in this post that employers should consider using.
Added: May 18, 2026
The Problem of Pedagogy in Advanced Mathematics by
I resonate with Susam about how “proofs” written in many textbooks aren’t complete proofs but more outlines. In addition to “the proof being obvious”, I would say that many of the details are left “as an exercise to the reader”. Sometimes I share such exercises on this blog.
Added: May 18, 2026
Contributor Poker and Zig's AI Ban by
There seems to be a misunderstanding in some folks where they believe that the end product is all that matters and that code quality or the social components of open source are unimportant.
Loris shares how the Zig language views folks who submit PRs as potential future collaborators. They hope you’ll come back and be part of the community! Vibe coding a feature completely doesn’t help build the context required to become a maintainer.
They’re not unique in that stance. Matplotlib has a policy against AI generated submissions on good first issues exactly for this reason.
Added: May 4, 2026
I like the idea of preserving a first take instead of letting it flee from your short term memory. Dave’s “Keep Your Head” piece makes me laugh ;D
Added: May 4, 2026
Who Is That Knocking At My (SSH) Door? by
I try not to think about how my machines are being constantly attacked by bots. I think having sheep as a username is cool, but maybe I shouldn’t do that ;)
Added: April 28, 2026
Great reminder to build what you want to see in the world. Hedgehogs are cool!
Added: April 26, 2026
Weather Model based on ADS-B by
Using ADS-B data from planes to capture wind speed data is really cool! I never thought about how we have thousands of little wind sensors flying around in the sky.
Added: April 22, 2026
Very informative piece on how Iran structures their internet infrastructure. It discusses the incentives developed over many years as well as some of the underlying assumptions that are being challenged.
Added: April 21, 2026
Nice introduction to BGP and a fun live video of a map showing BGP announcements!
Added: April 21, 2026
The Self-Cancelling Subscription by
Distributed systems are difficult to get 100% right. This article goes over a recent story where it went wrong.
Added: April 21, 2026
Development AI vs Runtime AI by
It’s not too surprising to me that Tesla would use LLMs to present a “human readable summary” to describe a fixed set of inputs. Add that to the lessons learned bucket.
Added: April 19, 2026
Quietly quantum-resistant blogging by
Public service announcement to make sure you’re using post-quantum cryptography. Alex shares Cloudflare’s tool which lets you know if a webserver supports post-quantum TLS key exchange. Also don’t forget to check your SSH server! Luckily, many recent versions of these softwares ship with this enabled out of the box.
Added: April 19, 2026
Security Advisories and Cognitive Overload by
I’m thankful to all the open-source maintainers out there that work hard to ensure that the applications we use are polished and secure. It’s always been a lot of work, but I do worry about the amount of “vulnerabilities” filed against these repositories today. Unfortunately (as Hendrik describes), every author believes their issue critical. Even if an act of God would have to occur for their vulnerability to be exploited.
Added: April 19, 2026
A great story about how companies should be careful with their documentation and not write something that a user can misinterpret.
If only these companies are proactive and don’t need to wait for a user to get compromised before changing anything…
Added: April 18, 2026
Another great piece by David! If you haven’t already, check out his mini fantasy theater series as well! The montage of scanning a drawing and then layering on top of a picture of an empty sketchbook is neat.
Added: April 18, 2026
Business logic does not (usually) belong in the database by
A great analysis of when we should embed business logic within a database query versus in the application itself. Give it a read!
Added: April 13, 2026
Let yourself fall down more by
I often see students afraid of being wrong in my office hours. Similar to reinforcement learning agents, it’s useful to try different actions and get feedback from the enviornment. Even if we don’t think it’ll lead to success, the results may surprise us. Our minds are great at spotting patterns and learning new skills this way.
Added: April 13, 2026
Does Clarivate understand what citations are for? by
I agree that using a tool to lift references supporting a claim encourages folks to not do literature review and instead write their piece first. After all, it’s faster to ask the confirmation bias machine to then go back and make it appear academic.
I do think, however, that AI has a place in the literature review process. It’s vastly superior than plain keyword searching. Though at the end of the day, researchers are still responsible for creating a mental model of related work and what has been done before.
Added: April 12, 2026
5 quick tips for giving better presentations by
Great list! I’ll echo that exercising control through (1) “finishing strong” and (5) “trusting in the tech” result in stronger impressions. I believe it’s possible to pull this off while also exhibiting personality traits :)
Added: April 11, 2026
Claude is an Electron App because we’ve lost native by
Niki points out in this post that the reason we’re not building native apps (even with helper coding agents) is because native apps don’t have a lot to offer. I’m still hopeful though that we’ll eventually get to an age where apps are written in memory-safe languages, are light-weight, and meaningfully integrate into our desktops.
Added: April 11, 2026
Mailcall by
I agree that physical mail is very fun! I’ve written before how USPS stamps are cool. I’ve sent a few birthday cards this year, thought I think it would be fun to also send random postcards.
When I think of postcards, I think of the standard travel-based ones. To me, they’re somewhat cringy/braggy. I need to research if there’s a way to either make them myself physically or buy a variety pack that I agree with.
Added: April 11, 2026
The Unbearable Sameness of 'AI' by
In this post Bastian works out his thoughts on why people use AI-generated images and the like. I’ll respond with some ill-formed thoughts of my own.
I got a glimpse that helped me understand why those “AI” tools might have an appeal to some people. […] Setting up the cameras for recording stills and video, getting (un)dressed and then recording themselves with the identical gestures, poses and movements that must be popular on the content consumption platforms.
I’m not active on social media myself, so I don’t fully understand this mindset. If I was to guess, I believe that this is to instill some sense of belonging. In the tourism example, it is actually kinda romantic/spiritual if you think about it. More than one person has traveled the same path and did the exact same actions. It’s the opposite of a extreme individualism.
Does this translate to using Ghibli-styled AI images? Unsure.
Bastian started his post by talking about the increasing number of travel stickers made using generative AI. It reminds me of a recent local market I went to where someone was selling goat soap and their signage had a sepia-ghibli-styled photo of a goat.
Initially, I’m disappointed. However, this often comes from an expectation that someone would’ve spent the time, effort, or money to put a nicer graphic together. In that fantasy world, the goat soap seller would hold a paintbrush and spend many hours perfecting their signage. Instead, they’re likely more worried about their inventory, figuring out which scents are popular in their region, etc.
The big question is: if we didn’t have these image generation tools, would those particular people bother making stickers/signage? If so, would they go beyond clip art? As noted, these AI tools have an innate style by default. I hope that those who went above and beyond in the past, still exercise their creative muscle.
Added: April 11, 2026
Weekend flights along the Pareto frontier by
I like this idea! Finding the cheapest flights per time spent.
Of course there’s other factors to take into account like time of travel, whether it’s in the middle of the night or during the day, and if there’s an exact time/date you need to be somewhere. If you’re looking at a three-day weekend, it might be a little cramped.
I have a general rule of thumb (that I don’t always follow) which says that I should aim to spend at least the same amount of time somewhere as I spend traveling. For example, if I spend two hours driving one way somewhere then ideally I’d spend 4 hours there.
Though using a tool like this seems like a great starting point!
Added: March 23, 2026
Bringing Interactivity to a Static Blog: The Clap Button by
Fun to see another blogger implement this feature! I call it the “high-five” button but I also like being applauded :)
Reading through the code, they allow for multiple claps per post. To spam their server less, they use a technique called [debouncing] (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Debounce). I haven’t heard of that technique before, but the main idea is to set a timeout for some amount of time after the event. If another event happens before the timeout, then it clears that timeout and sets a new one. Otherwise, it’ll send one message to the server that contains all the events. Clever!
Added: March 22, 2026
Also: if your insurance company offers towing coverage, it’s not a “nice add-on feature.” Each time you use it counts as an insurance claim
I try to think through a company’s incentive when they provide a service. If I personally called the towing company, then they would be excited to do business with me. As opposed to the insurance company that loses money with each call.
Sometimes that trade-off works well. If you live near an amusement park, many offer season passes for as little as the cost of two visits. Though in that case they’re hoping that you buy extra things within the park.
There’s many insurance products out there but remember that the main purpose of insurance is to protect you against catastrophic loss.
Added: March 15, 2026