The blogosphere is alight with you-had-it-comings regarding the US government’s export ban of Fable/Mythos. But I keep coming up with new reasons why this is great for Anthropic. Here are five six seven. It’s validation of “it’s too dangerous to release” claim There was much guffawing and rolling of eyes at Anthropic’s claims that Mythos was “too dangerous to release”. Well, this is now validation…
You might think that the title is clickbait but it’s not. It’s literal. LLMs are widely regarded as good enough to help management make quicker decisions about who is and isn’t doing well. Hiring Your CV LLMs are looking at your CV to give the recruiter a first insight into whether they should spend time on a screening call. Gone are the days of keyword stuffing to game ATS’s. Is there such a…
My drafts folder is full of posts that are nearly done - they just need that final push to get over the line. But I often don’t know where that line is. I don’t know whether this is good enough. I’m trying to work through how I can make that decision. First, writing is typically evaluated in terms of novelty and correctness. Novelty: Does it offer something new? Am I just repeating what’s already…
Another year another price increase alert for .io domain. This year it’s increasing to $65.98 for registrations and $75.98 for renewals. Here are my renewals: Year Price 2017 $35.00 2018 $35.00 2019 $38.00 2020 $38.00 2020* $32.88 2022† $34.98 2023 $44.98 2024 $48.98 2025† $52.98 ($62.98) 2026 $75.98 * Transferred domain from Gandi to Namecheap and got a discount. † Renewed in December of the…
Last years review. Targets for 2025 🚫 Publish at least 36 posts (3 per month) Nope, only 11, most of those just cleanups of posts that have been drafts for a while 🚫 Reach at least 200k readers (not sure how to track this accurately since I’m not keen to add analytics and GoAccess doesn’t seem to be super accurate) Depending on where I look I get between 1 and 3 k “users” per month. No idea what…
AI SLOP WARNING This post is entirely AI generated. It’s an idea for a post I had that I diddn’t find interesting enough to actually put in the effort. Understanding Codes of Conduct Through D&D Alignment Charts Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) alignment charts are a fascinating way to categorize characters based on their moral and ethical perspectives. These alignments can also be used to understand…
Many (most?) engineers go from university to a sizable company significantly distancing them from the actual value their code creates. They labour under the delusion that they’re paid to write code. In fact, they’re paid to make money, and writing code is probably the most expensive way that they can do that. They will often say things like “We should scrap this entirely and re-write it, it will…
In The Innovator’s Dilemma Christensen talks about how when acquiring a company you might either be acquiring its product or its processes. Depending on which it is, you need to handle the integration differently. I’ve realized that hiring a new manager follows a similar pattern: either they’re expected to integrate into the organization, or be independent and create some change. That expectation…
I love Ben Brode’s Design Lessons from Improv talk. It presents techniques that we could all use more frequently. I particularly took the “Yes, and…“ to heart. It is an excellent technique, or attitude really, that keeps the conversation going. Conversations often start slow but get progressively more interesting the deeper you go. And “Yes, and…” makes it possible to get there. One of my favorite…
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten is to take a minute, or a week, after you’ve had a difficult conversation. By and large, people are not unreasonable. They’re not out to get you. They’re not trying to make your life miserable. They’re probably trying to do what they think is right. But tough conversations happen and when they do it’s important to take time to process the…
There is nothing as inevitable as a re-org when a new VP joins. When a new executive joins they’re often overwhelmed by the amount of context they need to absorb to start being effective. The more seasoned ones aren’t pertrubed by this: they understand that gathering this context is their full-time job for the next several weeks or months. There’s even a book about this period. The less savvy…
This post is a dump of a comment I would have made on the linked HN thread. Understand that besides the actual development you are also providing training. This means teaching your clients instead of just doing things for them. It also means that you should over-inform them rather than keep things to yourself to keep them on the hook. So if they ask you to do something, do it and then teach them…
At a conference a while back, I noticed a couple of speakers get such a confidence boost after solving a small technical glitch. We should probably make that a part of every talk. Have the mic not connect automatically, or an almost-complete puzzle on the stage that the speaker can finish, or have someone forget their badge and the speaker return it to them. Maybe the next time I, or a consenting…
I’m trying to figure out how to get JavaScript embedded in a QR code. I’ve thought of a few ways to do it, none of which are actually embedding and executing it directly. The most obvious is to link to a page that has the JS you need. Lame. If you wanted to have arbitrary JS in the code itself, you could host a page with an eval and a bit of code to pick up a query parameter. But if you control…
JPG images convert -strip -interlace Plane -gaussian-blur 0.05 -quality 85% simple-captcha.jpeg result.jpg PNG images pngquant simple-captcha.png Optimizing images for the blog was originally published by Ognjen Regoje at Ognjen Regoje • ognjen.io on April 03, 2025.
I didn’t write much this year. The projects that I worked on (at work) used up most of my creative mental capacity leaving little for writing. The backlog is brimming, however. Targets for 2024 ❌ Publish at least 40 posts 11 ❌ Reach at least 200k readers Don’t have an accurate number ❌ Have at least 6 posts on the front page of something Probably would have met this if I had posted more – I had…
From the links in the sources, the following code snippet can be used to track the cursor: <style> .dot { background : red ; position : absolute ; width : 2px ; height : 2px ; z-index : 10000 ; } </style> ( function () { " use strict " ; document . onmousemove = handleMouseMove ; function handleMouseMove ( event ) { var dot , eventDoc , doc , body , pageX , pageY ; event = event || window . event…
There was a great post about doing unforgettable work. Absolutely. Go above and beyond. Do what’s right. But also, do forgettable work. Work that you won’t remember the following week. Do a lot of it. In fact, do at least 30 minutes of utterly forgettable work on something you’re trying to improve every day. Very soon it’ll stop being forgettable. Do forgettable work was originally published by…
Over the past year or so I’ve done about two dozen systems design interviews (as an interviewer) and have two somewhat subtle observations that would help some candidates. 1. The word system has two meanings The definition most engineers reach for immediately is the one relating to computers. But the organization itself is a system, in a generic meaning of the word. It’s important to consider the…