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!
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
Breaking the Spell of Vibe Coding by
This post relates the flow obtained by vibe-coding to the same dark flow induced by gambling. I enjoyed this piece, and I agree that current large language models are great at “disguising losses as a win”. I find coding agents are experts at introducing technical debt to get to a “working solution” at breakneck speed.
Added: March 13, 2026
CodeReader by
This is such a cool project! Reading a book as if you’re reading a codebase. Makes you look like an #UltimateHacker :D
Added: March 13, 2026
Congratulations to Nolan on 15 years of blogging! So much life unfolds in that time period and it takes a steadfast commitment to keep going. Here’s to another 15 years!
Added: March 1, 2026
A programmer's loss of a social identity by
I’m unsure what it means to be a computer programmer in 2026. I agree that technology discourse has changed dramatically over the last three years.
Though that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people passionate about crabs, creating local-first software, etc. Those folks are still there, even if they’re not the mainstream.
This is why I’m such a big proponent of curating your web experience using RSS feeds. It might take some effort to find people on the small/personal/indie web, but it’s soo worth it.
Added: March 1, 2026
It’s heartwarming to see someone create an app that brings joy to the people around them. Ham’s Doppelkopf Club not only lets you play a traditional German card game, but also teaches you how to play as well! This preserves cultural knowledge.
Home cooking to me is a necessity (lest I go broke) as well as a craft. Recently, I’ve been cooking Paella weekly slightly tweaking each time to get to a recipe that I enjoy.
Added: March 1, 2026
Saying 'No' In an Age of Abundance by
In an age of abundance, restraint becomes the only scarce thing left, which means saying ’no’ is more valuable than ever.
I fully agree! We all excel at different tasks, and with time and focus we can cultivate them. Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should. There’s always a trade-off.
The piece was written in the context of building a product in a business, but honestly many of these points apply to our lives in general.
What’s our story? What do we care about? Saying yes to everything muddies the waters. At the same time, however, don’t say no to everything. The most rewarding oppurtunities are not always the most obvious.
Added: March 1, 2026
The Web is Larger Than Facebook by
It annoys me how much of a grip Facebook still has on being able to digitally participate in your local community.
Same with Instagram. Though I get it – it’s so easy to pull up your phone and post on these platforms.
Recently, I found The 518 which is a newsletter which covers events happening in the capital region of New York. Luckily they surface all the events posted on Instagram for me. Though I do wonder what my life would be like if I acquiesced and signed up for Meta’s platforms.
Added: March 1, 2026
A nice interview with a concept artist. What Tano said about overcoming creative blocks reasonated with me.
You have to sit through that uncomfortable feeling, once you have done this enough you realize that is just a fleeting moment of insecurity, be aware that sometimes it will be present, and then it will pass, the inspiration comes back.
The problem is how much importance we give to this feeling and how afraid we are that they will never go away. Once you realize that they do fade, you have learned how to deal with the block.
Added: February 1, 2026
The RAM Nightmare: How I Lost My Sanity (and Almost My Deadline) by
Ouch a RAM stick going bad sounds no fun. I haven’t had that happen to me before, so it’s informative to see the possible symptoms.
Added: February 1, 2026
Tiny Talk with Keith Wehmeyer by
I really enjoyed this interview. It’s cool to read about the life of a farmer. It’s also wholesome to see how the folks in their community help each other out.
Added: February 1, 2026
Optimization Countermeasures by
Every so often one has to fight the compiler to prevent certain optimizations from taking place. This article talks about using value barriers (which are essentially empty inline assembly blocks) to prevent the compiler from optimizing code based on the value of a variable. Miguel writes about how these techniques are used all the time when writing Cryptographic code which fights against the constant-time threat model.
Added: January 27, 2026
Crypto grifters are recruiting open-source AI developers by
This system relies on your celebrity target being dazzled by receiving a large sum of free money. If you came to them before the money was there, they might ask questions like “why wouldn’t people just directly donate to me?”, or “are these people who think they’re supporting me going to lose all their money?“. But in the warm glow of a few hundred thousand dollars, it’s easy to think that it’s all working out excellently.
Personally, I find it weird how some crypto platforms are trying to conflate supporting a creator and expectations of profit. I agree, why wouldn’t people just directly donate?
Added: January 25, 2026
Why there's no European Google? by
This article is a great reminder of all the successful technology projects that came out of Europe: the web, Linux, git, OpenStreetMap, VLC – to name a few. While some of these projects might not be multi-billion dollar corporations, we can all agree that they have made a large impact on the world.
Added: January 25, 2026
Wikipedia's 25th birthday proves the power of free speech by
Happy birthday to Wikipedia! Here’s to another 25 years.
In this article, Kunal writes about how Wikipedia is able to flourish in part due to a lack of censorship by the US. This, however, should not be taken for granted. Free speech (like many rights) have to be continously fought for.
Added: January 25, 2026
Some internet history reading by
Title says it all. A nice list of books which go over the history of the early Internet.
Added: January 24, 2026
The Toll No One Charges but Everyone Pays by
We all pay in time for sitting in traffic. Even with that, Kyle points out that there’s no positive incentive to carpool. I see this in my own life. To get to my office, I can drive 7 minutes and park near the building. Or, I can walk 10 minutes to the bus stop, take a 20 minute bus ride, and then walk 10 minutes to my building. A trip that nearly takes 6 times the amount of time!
If as a society we had better incentives, then we would have a lot more resources to get me to my office. Imagine if there was a van that can pick me up from my apartment and take me directly to my office.
Added: January 24, 2026
Steven brings up an interesting trend that simulation games tend to simulate how we consume an experience rather than perform it. The strongest example he gives here is sports simulation games.
Part of it, I think is that watching sports is already a hobby. So why not make a game that engages people in their hobby more.
Another reason I think is that first-person perspective games are rare in general. Even in the shooter genre, we see third-person perspectives.
Funny enough, vehicle simulation games such as Truck Simulator and Flight Simulator are closer to the actual experience. I remember when I first played the former I was frustrated that I couldn’t park an 18-wheeler easily ;D
Added: January 11, 2026
This is the first time I’ve heard of a service where you have a Christmas tree at your house for a month out of the year and it spends the rest of its time at a farm. Very interesting!
Added: January 10, 2026
WHOIS is dead, long live RDAP by
Public service announcement that we should be using RDAP now instead of WHOIS.
Added: January 7, 2026
It’s Uncomfortable To Sit With “I Don’t Know” by
Overall as humans, we like self-confident people. I’m not an expert in large language models (LLMs), but I can only imagine that during fine-tuning they were optimized to exhibit confident behavior.
What this means for us is that we need to be skeptical and take responses with a grain of salt. Though that isn’t a new issue. What’s more interesting to me is how we treat these LLMs similar to how we treat news outlets: trusting that coverage in an unfamiliar area is correct even if we don’t trust it’s reporting in an area that we’re familiar with.
Added: January 6, 2026
How does a smoke alarm work? by
Wow, I didn’t think that a smoke detector is primarily a photo sensor! This post shows a cool picture-by-picture breakdown of one that was in Andreas’ house. Simple, but gets the job done.
Added: January 4, 2026
NarraScope is open for submissions by
It’s super cool to see an interactive narrative conference happening in my neck of the woods! If you’re interested, definitely check it out.
Added: January 4, 2026
Reasons to Love the Field of Programming Languages by
Great collection of human, mathematical, and pragmatic reasons to love programming languages.
Added: January 4, 2026
Friendly Little Wrapper Types by
I’m all for introducing opaque wrapper types. It also makes it easier to identify the parts of the codebase we need to change when we want our user id to wrap over something else.
Added: December 28, 2025
Oh no! I hope the solar panel has some windshield wipers to clear off the snow. At this time of writing, his solar dashboard shows that the battery is at 11%.
Added: December 28, 2025
Writing down (and searching through) every UUID by
This is such a fun idea! I also love Nolen’s idea of designing a bijective function between the natural numbers and the UUIDs themselves. This allows for a seemingly random order, while also staying complete and quickly searchable.
Added: December 28, 2025
Drawing Truchet tiles in SVG by
These truchet tiles look very cool and funky. Another awesome example of algorithmically generated art.
Added: December 27, 2025
I really enjoyed the fisherman and businessman parable. To me, the journey of life is important and I believe that we should strive to appreciate each year. Otherwise, we’ll get to the destination and realize it’s not all we imagined it to be.
Added: December 27, 2025
One weird trick for cheaper physical Switch 2 games? by
Buying a physical game and selling the box is such a funny strategy! Even if that strategy tanks with adoption, at least it’d encourage physical copies more. I worry about the day where everything becomes digital and tied to your account.
Added: December 27, 2025