# reading club (blogs) — RSS Amplifier Recent posts from the 2 feeds in the RSS Amplifier directory that cover reading club. Page: Feed: --- ## [How AI really works](https://bobbie.net/2026/08/17/how-ai-really-works/) _2026-08-17 · Bobbie Johnson · Start here_ Three things I read this past week or so that I wanted to share. There’s a theme in here, I suppose. But that’s where we’re at right now. PS these are all by people I know, but they’re very worth your while. Legacy Media Wants to Hire You (No, Not You) In Scratch, Rahawa Haile \[…\] ## [Dotfiles backup and bootstrap](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2026-08-15-dotfiles) _2026-08-15 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ Dotfiles backup and bootstrap ## [Gluttony and the guillotine](https://bobbie.net/2026/08/05/gluttony-and-the-guillotine/) _2026-08-05 · Bobbie Johnson · Start here_ If you live in the continental United States and get bitten by a bat, or a raccoon, or a fox, your doctor will probably advise you to go and get rabies shots. Rabies isn t common, but it s common enough that about 100,000 people go through the preventative protocol every year. This process is no joke. \[ \] ## [tmux trick #3: open URLs without the mouse](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2026-06-28-tmux-open-urls) _2026-06-28 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ tmux trick #3: open URLs without the mouse ## [tmux trick #2: copy to clipboard](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2026-05-17-tmux-clipboard) _2026-05-17 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ tmux trick #2: copy to clipboard ## [20 years of programming](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2026-03-27-programming-20-years) _2026-03-27 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ 20 years of programming ## [Stay classy](https://bobbie.net/2026/03/23/stay-classy/) _2026-03-23 · Bobbie Johnson · Start here_ I will read pretty much anything Andrew O Hagan writes in the London Review of Books (which is a subset of I ll read pretty much anything in the London Review of Books also a true statement) but I particularly enjoyed his demolition of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew of The Epstein Files, the Duke \[ \] ## [Craig Mod: “We’re probably doing a lot of things the wrong way”](https://bobbie.net/2026/03/06/craig-mod-were-probably-doing-a-lot-of-things-the-wrong-way/) _2026-03-06 · Bobbie Johnson · Start here_ A few weeks back I had a really stimulating conversation with Craig Mod, the bookmaker, writer, photographer and author of Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir, which was February s book of the month at Curious Reading Club. One thing I mentioned in our chat was that Craig actually has had a profound impact on \[ \] ## [The tyranny of advertising](https://bobbie.net/2026/02/25/the-tyranny-of-advertising/) _2026-02-25 · Bobbie Johnson · Start here_ Not quite 18 months ago, Sam Altman said that OpenAI putting ads in ChatGPT was definitely certainly probably not a good idea. Ads plus AI is sort of uniquely unsettling to me, he said at a Harvard event in October 2024. I kind of think of ads as, like, a last resort for us for \[ \] ## [Jennie Erin Smith: “I didn’t want researchers to spoon-feed me the story”](https://bobbie.net/2026/02/07/jennie-erin-smith-i-didnt-want-researchers-to-spoon-feed-me-the-story/) _2026-02-07 · Bobbie Johnson · Start here_ What fun to talk with Jennie Erin Smith, the author of Valley of Forgetting: Alzheimer s Families And The Search For A Cure, which was Curious Reading Club s book of the month for January. It s a really fascinating book about a major research trial in Colombia which focused on a huge group of people who carry \[ \] ## [Web Coding With AI, Live (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/3xKdS1O8Hw5f) _2026-02-07 · **Sponsored**_ Collaborative screen sharing with simultaneous remote control, open source. ## [FOSDEM 2026](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2026-02-02-fosdem) _2026-02-02 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ FOSDEM 2026 ## [Pipelining and prefetching: a 45% speedup story](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2026-01-28-prefetch) _2026-01-28 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ Pipelining and prefetching: a 45% speedup story ## [Preserving the past](https://bobbie.net/2026/01/17/preserving-the-past/) _2026-01-17 · Bobbie Johnson · Start here_ For Dweb Digest I wrote a short profile of the archivist Rick Prelinger, and his work to create decentralized copies of vast tranches of archival data alongside his friends and partners at the Internet Archive. It was a lot of fun driving over to their East Bay warehouse and sitting down to talk to him \[ \] ## [David Baron: The Martians used to be the good guys](https://bobbie.net/2025/12/30/david-baron-the-martians-used-to-be-the-good-guys/) _2025-12-30 · Bobbie Johnson · Start here_ December s Curious Reading Club book is The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-of-the-Century America by former NPR science editor David Baron—a rollicking read about the gilded age s obsession with aliens, and the space-obsessed Boston brahmin Percival Lowell who made it happen. David s book looks at how the craze took hold, \[ \] ## [Downloading AoC puzzle inputs with curl](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2025-11-29-aoc-download) _2025-11-29 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ Downloading AoC puzzle inputs with curl ## [Tania Branigan: “Everybody thinks they would have been in the Resistance in wartime.”](https://bobbie.net/2025/11/24/tania-branigan-everybody-thinks-they-would-have-been-in-the-resistance-in-wartime/) _2025-11-24 · Bobbie Johnson · Start here_ This month s Curious Reading Club pick is Tania Branigan s Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution (WW Norton, 2023). It s an absolutely fascinating look at people s memories of this turbulent, horrific period of recent Chinese history, and how people wrestle with what they have done and what they didn t do. Tania is an old \[ \] ## [The hike](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2025-10-22-hike) _2025-10-22 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ The hike ## [In the NYT: AI crosses the deepfake rubicon](https://bobbie.net/2025/10/19/in-the-nyt-ai-crosses-the-deepfake-rubicon/) _2025-10-19 · Bobbie Johnson · Start here_ I have an opinion piece in the New York Times today about my extreme distaste for Sora, the new social video app from OpenAI that was built to create and share fake videos. At a time when we are surrounded by fakes and fabrications, Sora seems precisely designed to further erode the idea of objective \[ \] ## [Podcast: North Korean sleeper cells](https://bobbie.net/2025/10/19/podcast-north-korean-sleeper-cells/) _2025-10-19 · Bobbie Johnson · Start here_ Change Agents is a podcast about terrorism, crime, intelligence, warfare and all manner of gnarly stuff, hosted by former Navy SEAL Andy Stumpf. Let s just say it s not my normal audience! But I joined Andy recently for a conversation about the North Korean pretender scam. (See my recent story in Wired or read the background \[ \] ## [When I say "alphabetical order", I mean "alphabetical order"](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2025-09-28-alphabetic-order) _2025-09-28 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ When I say "alphabetical order", I mean "alphabetical order" ## [Make any domain metal (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/dE26DXSSE8MX) _2025-09-27 · **Sponsored**_ Turn any domain into a blacked-out metal landing page with an email waitlist ## [Declarative package management with Alpine Linux](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2025-08-16-alpine-declarative) _2025-08-16 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ Declarative package management with Alpine Linux ## [Stunned by the borrow checker 🦀](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2025-06-26-borrow-checker) _2025-06-26 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ Stunned by the borrow checker 🦀 ## [Cargo culture shock 🦀](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2025-06-13-cargo-culture-shock) _2025-06-13 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ Cargo culture shock 🦀 ## [A masochist's guide to web development](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2025-06-06-webdev) _2025-06-06 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ A masochist's guide to web development ## [Things I learned rewriting a project from scratch](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2025-04-05-learned-rewrite) _2025-04-05 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ Things I learned rewriting a project from scratch ## [Getting started with QT, without the nonsense](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2025-04-04-qt-minimal) _2025-04-04 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ Getting started with QT, without the nonsense ## [Elliptic curves and JavaScript](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2025-02-27-elliptic-curves-javascript) _2025-02-27 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ Elliptic curves and JavaScript ## [Taming C++, episode 3: templates, constraints and concepts](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2025-01-21-taming-cpp-templates) _2025-01-21 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ Taming C++, episode 3: templates, constraints and concepts ## [Taming C++, episode 2: RAII](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2024-12-26-taming-cpp-raii) _2024-12-26 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ Taming C++, episode 2: RAII ## [2-factor authentication without a smartphone](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2024-12-03-2fa) _2024-12-03 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ 2-factor authentication without a smartphone ## [Transcript-Driven Stock Discovery (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/5XzGREsbGNsi) _2024-12-02 · **Sponsored**_ Ranked, evidence-backed watchlists from indexed executive transcripts for 1–2 quarter horizons ## [How to write a Python module in C](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2024-10-08-python-c) _2024-10-08 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ How to write a Python module in C ## [Sometimes it's the hardware](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2024-09-29-fail) _2024-09-29 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ Sometimes it's the hardware ## [Shell scripting in C](https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2024-09-20-c-scripting) _2024-09-20 · Sebastiano Tronto's blog_ Shell scripting in C