Anil Dash

I'm a big fan of being a big fan of things. you can email me at [email protected] or SMS/signal at +1 646 541 5843. kind but not nice. #tfr

Public Key

npub18a43qgqwjp627jsapn7k9lnptezr55vhklaam3ytvq3plghsc00qm5yqwr

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsr76csyq8fqa90fgwseltzles4u3p62xtm077acj9kqgsl5tcv8hspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsaw6shs

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relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub18a43qgqwjp627jsapn7k9lnptezr55vhklaam3ytvq3plghsc00qm5yqwr

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Last Notes

2026-07-24 20:00:45 GMT

Most documents we encounter in the course of doing our work are somewhere between middling to terrible. A few years ago, I wrote "Make Better Documents", a simple set of guidelines for making presentations, reports, etc.
Now, I've turned that set of suggestions into a Better Documents skills.md file, an agent skill for those who use LLMs to help review documents. Naturally, it’s 100% free & open source, so I'd love for you to give it a try & let me know what you think.
https://anildash.com/2026/07/24/make-better-documents-skill/

2026-06-23 18:23:23 GMT

The biggest reason I don’t use Mastodon nearly as often as I’d like to is because, unlike other platforms, too many of the people who act like asses here are people who *follow me*. It’s really weird, because every platform has assholes or whatever, but usually it’s due to context collapse from strangers. Here, it’s usually a tiny minority that wants to scold or police over (often contrived!) objections, and it’s just… exhausting. Takes the fun out of hanging out online. Not sure how to fix it.

2026-04-30 13:33:01 GMT

Inspired by Hank Green’s fun new timeline of photos from the Artemis II mission, I wrote up an answer to a question that's more pertinent these days than it may seem: Why are the Artemis II photos on Flickr? https://anildash.com/2026/04/30/artemis-photos-flickr/

2026-04-21 16:19:51 GMT

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@nprofile…6fyy okay. Pretty much everybody I’ve talked to who worked with him or had a relationship with him talks about him in the opposite way, even if they stopped working together on less-than-positive terms

2026-04-20 14:02:21 GMT

Tomorrow marks 10 years since Prince passed. For the first time, I gathered nearly two decadesq of my writing, podcasts, talks & more into one curated resource, including playlists, rarities, a review of every video he ever made, and collaborations I did with his estate. I close it out with a talk I gave in Minneapolis on Prince’s birthday just after he passed – one of my most personal ever, and one I’m most proud of. I hope you’ll check it out. https://anildash.com/2026/04/20/prince-ten-years/

2026-04-17 00:19:40 GMT

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@nprofile…wu2c I got a correction from a reader! Didn’t get it right the first time.

2026-04-03 20:23:36 GMT

Thanks to the extremist agenda of the richest tycoons supporting the authoritarians agenda, American tech companies are going to see a collapse in revenues and growth in these markets. Was it worth it just to support a bunch of child sexual predators? https://techpolicy.press/almost-two-thirds-of-europeans-back-replacing-us-tech-poll-finds

2026-04-02 15:13:23 GMT

The thing I would most like to see come from the Claude Code leak is not (just) that all the LLM-focused tools incorporate the features that were exposed, but that *bash itself* build in the things that Claude is trying to do with scripting, and make them part of the shell.

2026-04-01 21:54:54 GMT

What is the maximum amount of value destruction that could be wrought on the big centralized commercial AI vendors, and the maximum amount of acceleration of the ecosystem of open source and community-led
alternatives, using the knowledge gained from the leak of the Claude Code source code?

2026-04-01 06:36:54 GMT

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@nprofile…eexk Bonus: Cindy shouts out Mastodon during this interview!

2026-04-01 03:25:05 GMT

Really happy with this conversation — I got a chance to drop in on The Vergecast, which is one of my favorite tech podcasts because they go deep into the systems that affect how and why we're able to innovate, and what shapes the markets we all operate in. David Pierce let me nerd out about how important it is that technologies like podcasts stay open for everyone to be able to participate without any gatekeepers. I think you're going to like this one! https://youtu.be/JLNShOwOaig?t=2618 (Starts at 43:38.)

2026-03-31 22:43:52 GMT

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@nprofile…pjlp @nprofile…eexk exactly! she has such mastery that she can stay with conviction on that point. And she ended up staying another 20+ minutes afterward to talk through it with him, and he came along to see her point.

2026-03-31 21:42:15 GMT

Yesterday, I got an incredible opportunity to watch Cindy Cohn bring @nprofile…eexk's story to one of its biggest audiences yet, as she did an extraordinary job on the Daily Show, pulling off the unlikely task of making the topic of digital privacy and civil liberties seem fun, engaging and witty. I took the chance to share some reflections — and a couple of behind-the-scenes photos. https://www.anildash.com/2026/03/31/defending-privacy-daily/

2026-03-28 01:48:14 GMT

You must picture Sam Altman holding a knife to Tim Berner-Lee's throat. We are in a truly existential level of danger when it comes to the survival of the open web, across every front. This year is when it all comes to a head. https://anildash.com/2026/03/27/endgame-open-web/

2026-03-26 21:40:22 GMT

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@nprofile…kt0j my issue is, even if you feel that way… what’s the plan? This is the stance that failed with social media, failed with ride sharing apps, failed with crypto. Even if critics were morally right to say “nobody should ever use this”, they didn’t succeed in harm reduction. And that has to matter more than smugly being “right” when the stakes are this high.

2026-03-25 03:30:18 GMT

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@nprofile…t73u sorry to have missed it!

2026-03-13 13:46:48 GMT

There are (sort of) two kinds of coders: those who see it as just a well-paying, stable job, and those who do it on nights and weekends because they love it, and it’s part of their identity. Today’s LLM tools now enable an individual to essentially be an entire software _factory_, and this is going to impact those 2 kinds of coders very differently — especially in how they respond to *both* of their bosses trying to put them out of work. https://anildash.com/2026/03/13/coders-after-ai/

2026-03-09 15:56:03 GMT

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@nprofile…u7m0 for sure that’s part of it

2026-03-09 14:00:56 GMT

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@nprofile…jqp2 I’m not blind to it! “For sale in fewer markets” is not the same thing as “doesn’t exist”. They didn’t just expand the old M1 Air to more markets — why? Do you get that point?

2026-03-08 22:25:33 GMT

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@nprofile…mqul It's not a refurb! It's a brand new product, that they've been selling both in-store and on the web, continuously, for years. Sorry to be aggro on this, I've had like 5 different people say the same thing. It only went out of stock on Walmart's website the week before last. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Apple-MacBook-Air-13-3-inch-Laptop-Space-Gray-M1-Chip-8GB-RAM-256GB-storage/609040889

2026-03-08 21:58:53 GMT

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@nprofile…mqul I know it's too hard to click the link and read the article, but THEY HAVE BEEN SELLING A $599 LAPTOP WITH THESE SPECS FOR YEARS.
https://media.me.dm/media_attachments/files/116/195/792/615/791/461/original/fb945144b73d4183.png

2026-03-08 21:15:41 GMT

A lot of folks got very excited about the MacBook Neo — but Apple's been selling a machine with almost these exact specs for *years*. So what did the bright colors and rounded fonts really try to solve? Maybe Apple's embarrassment about serving Walmart customers. https://www.anildash.com/2026/03/08/neo-apple-embarassment/

2026-03-08 16:07:05 GMT

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@nprofile…xelm appreciate the kind words. Been trying to have more of these conversations in public, in hopes of catalyzing a different narrative than a lot of what’s out there right now.

2026-03-07 23:04:16 GMT

Nine years ago, predicting the rise of “self-driving news”. Now, major publishers are seeing 90+% drop-offs in traffic from search engines as LLMs generate synthesized versions of news stories instead of sending readers to read original media articles. https://anildash.com/2017/03/01/tech-and-the-fake-market-tactic/

2026-03-01 18:20:08 GMT

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@nprofile…n202 yes. They added support for HLS for streaming video, but you have to use their approved vendors to serve the HLS video.

2026-03-01 18:19:37 GMT

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@nprofile…cslf not in the way that contemporary users understand them. If you search for Amy Poehler’s show in Apple Podcasts, you can’t watch it.

2026-03-01 18:18:09 GMT

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@nprofile…wcul then I don’t think you understand the economic and political definition of the term.

2026-03-01 01:53:12 GMT

Apple is adding video support to its podcasting apps — that’s great. But the way it’s doing so might jeopardize the openness that’s kept podcasting from getting enshittified like every other form of media. It’s not too late for them to fix this. https://anildash.com/2026/02/28/apple-video-podcast-power/

2026-02-28 04:00:31 GMT

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@nprofile…ezja 🫡

2026-02-28 00:42:20 GMT

Everybody is (understandably) very excited that Anthropic isn't selling their AI for Hegseth to use to automate his war crimes. But I would gently suggest that we not accept setting the bar quite so low. https://www.anildash.com/2026/02/27/a-cookie-for-dario/

2026-02-25 17:12:47 GMT

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@nprofile…k5kh even there, a plain-language front end to deterministic code could be so much more powerful!

2026-02-25 15:46:30 GMT

One of the things that's most frustrating about the hype cycle around OpenClaw is that so much of what people are excited about is just... software? You can automate doing lots of cool stuff with your inbox with deterministic software that's been around for decades, and it won't delete your inbox! And much of it is easier to install than OpenClaw is!

2026-02-24 00:15:09 GMT

Okay, so I've been talking about the ways that Big AI directly harms kids. But what can we *do* about it? Here are some things you can do, at work and and your kid's school, to take action today, complete with scripts to follow: https://www.anildash.com/2026/02/23/taking-action-ai-harms/

2026-02-19 18:12:35 GMT

On this day in 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court *unanimously* decided that people of South Asian descent could not be American citizens, and retroactively stripped citizenship from many who had already been naturalized. Years of organized persecution followed. https://www.saada.org/explore/publications/tides/articles/united-states-of-america-vs-vaishno-das-bagai

2026-02-11 06:35:30 GMT

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@nprofile…dgjf he very seldom missed, for sure.

2026-02-11 04:32:15 GMT

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In his 1998 interview with Guitar World, Prince spoke directly about one of the reasons why he was seeking ownership of his work: to have artistic control so there couldn't be unauthorized digital manipulation of his work after his death. https://sites.google.com/site/prninterviews/home/guitar-world-october-1998
https://media.me.dm/media_attachments/files/116/050/121/610/422/639/original/fa37546bbdf7bf6f.png

2026-02-11 03:12:11 GMT

"In 1999, I interviewed Prince for TIME and he told me to leave my tape recorder off because he didn’t trust what future technology might do with unauthorized recordings of his voice.
At the time, I thought Prince was being paranoid ... I realize now that Prince wasn’t paranoid, he was prescient."
https://time.com/7338205/rage-against-ai-generated-music/

2026-02-09 16:31:09 GMT

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@nprofile…gmuw @nprofile…twh5 🫡

2026-02-09 00:39:25 GMT

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@nprofile…twh5 @nprofile…gmuw sure, on the other hand, over there I don’t have someone who’s been spamming my mentions with a few thousand words of ranting about how I’m an evil journalist (I’m not a journalist?) for the last few months. So every platform has its shortcomings.

2026-02-09 00:21:02 GMT

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@nprofile…gmuw lol copy & paste error, sorry. Should be fixed now!

2026-02-09 00:18:28 GMT

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For example, you may know that Prince covered the Foo Fighters’ “Best of You”; you may not know that the Foos had just covered his song “Darling Nikki” and gotten a radio hit out of it — even though the same song had gotten Prince persecuted by Congress in the 80s, leading to the creation of the Parental Advisory sticker. “Is someone getting the best of you?”

2026-02-09 00:18:08 GMT

Many folks are reflecting on Prince’s extraordinary halftime performance, the greatest of all time. What you may not know is that it was a profound, nuanced statement and a powerful reclaiming of a proud Black music tradition. Some background: https://anildash.com/2021/02/05/how-prince-won-the-super-bowl/

2026-01-26 22:51:54 GMT

I wrote a little bit about tech workers speaking up about the current moment — both how we work to shift the Overton window so more feel comfortable to do so, and what the power can be when we do: https://anildash.com/2026/01/26/why-we-speak/

2026-01-22 19:03:27 GMT

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@nprofile…zaxj Okay, so now we're talking about a valid set of concerns. I think it makes sense to say we should design for tools trained entirely on consensual materials. Part of why I'm talking about these technologies is I'm interested in any path that lets people transition towards such options in the future, since people are using nonconsensual tech right now.

2026-01-22 18:17:10 GMT

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@nprofile…zaxj I think there are a lot of people who want to have created something more than they want to have created code. Do you think people who use site builders instead of writing HTML shouldn’t get to have websites?

2026-01-22 14:52:11 GMT

Amidst all the buzz around things like Gas Town and Ralph, etc. there are some bits of actual substance that promise to actually empower coders — and potentially shift the power dynamic away from Big AI, while making it easier to create software just by describing ideas in plain text. I've been thinking of the idea as "codeless" software creation, for lack of a better term (the jargon doesn't matter, I just needed a name to talk about it) and would love your thoughts! https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/22/codeless/

2026-01-21 01:23:31 GMT

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@nprofile…cffc @nprofile…h0ll thanks for splitting this hair, please give me your precise measurement of exactly how many fewer units of discounting effect were present, so that I can correct the record and prevent any of this kind of bullshit Mastodonism in my mentions

2026-01-20 23:17:17 GMT

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@nprofile…32hv @nprofile…h0ll the thing about it is, it's really just about cultural norms. That's the part I have to sit with. Which social groups people are in, and what their expectations are about behaviors; this is largely just a function of age and context. He's in a social group where that is expected behavior that doesn't carry stigma, and has very likely never encountered anyone saying why it should or might.

2026-01-20 23:16:02 GMT

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@nprofile…h0ll yeah, I get it. I had the same discounting effect on the rest of the piece from it.

2026-01-20 20:23:03 GMT

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@nprofile…h0ll yeah, I was honestly quite surprised by that one. seemed unnecessary at the very least, even if I'm not as put off by it as you are.

2026-01-20 20:22:12 GMT

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@nprofile…mhe5 @nprofile…ph92 @nprofile…4w8z I had so many digressions that I had to cut that I didn't want to get into the whole history of blogging, lest I go for another 50,00 words

2026-01-20 20:20:54 GMT

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@nprofile…4w8z @nprofile…hqqf I was thinking about that while watching the same brilliant person wax rhapsodic about Tivo for an hour, speaking of those who make useful warez!

2026-01-18 05:21:38 GMT

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@nprofile…7dh8 one thing I’m very grateful for is to have folks like you’ve who I’ve gotten to be in community with for decades, who do great work that I can be inspired by, who remind me that we’re all not crazy, that we’ve all come along together with this set of values. Appreciate you!

2026-01-18 03:52:20 GMT

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@nprofile…7dh8 🙏🏽💜

2026-01-17 20:44:54 GMT

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@nprofile…ylve you’re very welcome! I’m just trying to put out more of the writing that I do. I’ve always written a lot, but hadn’t been as diligent about getting it all published.

2026-01-15 22:42:52 GMT

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@nprofile…qe94 every major AI company has been exploiting Wikipedia content for years without compensating the community at all, consuming enormous amounts of resources from the platform. Is it your belief that they should continue to pay nothing and be subsidized by the Wikimedia Foundation to do this?

2026-01-15 21:39:52 GMT

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@nprofile…3qt3 it's really just a shorter form of "how obedient will you be?"

2026-01-15 21:39:04 GMT

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@nprofile…d4qy @nprofile…u9xf @nprofile…wq8w what is the corrupt and immoral thing you do to pay your bills?

2026-01-15 21:24:43 GMT

Today, Wikipedia turns 25 years old. It's never been more important — or under more attack from authoritarians. Here's what to know about how we got here, and what we can do to push for its future and support them as they start to demand fair support from the AI companies that are profiting off of the community. There's no better example than Wikipedia of the web we make together. https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/15/wikipedia-at-25/

2026-01-15 05:49:15 GMT

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@nprofile…u9xf @nprofile…wq8w I get it. I really do.

2026-01-15 03:21:41 GMT

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@nprofile…wq8w all credit due to Cydney Hayes for making me sound coherent!

2026-01-14 17:27:30 GMT

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@nprofile…plwx someone is running the infrastructure we’re using right now. How do you advocate that this happens?

2026-01-14 02:42:08 GMT

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@nprofile…qyp9 I’m not sure! But I caught it took, gonna debug.

2026-01-12 23:13:03 GMT

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@nprofile…fp4m I … just caught that. Sorry about the noise, gonna troubleshoot.

2026-01-12 23:09:05 GMT

If you reserve this, they’ve got… some land on the moon they’d like to sell you?

2026-01-12 23:09:04 GMT

If you reserve this, they’ve got… some land on the moon they’d like to sell you?

2026-01-12 23:07:19 GMT

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@nprofile…67m7 for somebody who’s so proud of all their credentials, you sure can’t read. It must suck to be less literate than those of us poor plebes who didn’t go to college.

2026-01-12 23:07:18 GMT

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@nprofile…67m7 for somebody who’s so proud of all their credentials, you sure can’t read. It must suck to be less literate than those of us poor plebes who didn’t go to college.

2026-01-12 23:06:13 GMT

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@nprofile…tus5 yeah, I mean, I make many mistakes, but calling him out more than a dozen years ago had a huge negative impact on my career, and seeing the likes of him around the White House is so disheartening it’s unreal. To then be likened to him is just about more than I can take. Appreciate you understanding where I’m coming from.

2026-01-12 23:06:13 GMT

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2026-01-12 23:04:29 GMT

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@nprofile…67m7 in that case you should shut the fuck up.

2026-01-12 23:04:28 GMT

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@nprofile…67m7 in that case you should shut the fuck up.

2026-01-12 23:02:54 GMT

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@nprofile…67m7 I never purported to be a journalist, this is another of the many things you’ve imagined about me while you were making shit up

2026-01-12 23:02:54 GMT

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@nprofile…67m7 I never purported to be a journalist, this is another of the many things you’ve imagined about me while you were making shit up

2026-01-12 23:02:53 GMT

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@nprofile…67m7 I never purported to be a journalist, this is another of the many things you’ve imagined about me while you were making shit up

2026-01-12 23:01:26 GMT

@nprofile…67m7 if you say I’m the same as someone who has directly endangered my loved ones, who I paid a significant social cost for calling out when nobody else was, I’m not going to be calm and rational about it! I’m okay with looking like an asshole about it!

2026-01-12 23:01:25 GMT

2026-01-12 23:01:24 GMT

2026-01-12 22:59:16 GMT

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@nprofile…67m7 it’s harassment to group me in with a fascist knowing that others will use this as justification for targeting us for being “the same”. This has *literally happened before*. You can just fucking let it go. Keep my name out of your mouth and you won’t have to worry about it. See how easy that is?

2026-01-12 22:59:15 GMT

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2026-01-12 22:57:27 GMT

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You have to nip this shit in the bud, because if you leave it unchecked, it becomes the truth, and people will point back to it and say “see? He never denied it!” So: go fuck yourself. Stop lying about me. Stop grouping me with literal white supremacist fascists who have personally endangered people I love. Keep my name out of your fucking mouth and stop writing multi-thousand word fanfic screeds about me for days on end. I’m happy to block harmless shit. I won’t tolerate being targeted.

2026-01-12 22:53:14 GMT

So I seldom quote-post people, but one of the times you have to do it is when people knowingly do shit like *conflating me and Curtis Yarvin*, when Yarvin has publicly targeted me, did so more than a dozen years ago, incited his white supremacist followers to come after me including showing up at my workplace, they _still_ harass me as part of the campaign that never ended, and this person has never been targeted by Yarvin and his ilk. Why would you do this? Because you agree with his goals.

2026-01-12 22:53:13 GMT

2026-01-12 22:28:58 GMT

One of the toughest things to judge when considering a new job or a new role is, basically, “Will this crush my soul?” Here’s a simple list of questions you can ask to help improve the odds that your next gig will be less soul-crushing: https://anildash.com/2026/01/12/will-that-job-crush-your-soul/

2026-01-12 22:28:57 GMT

2026-01-10 15:54:55 GMT

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@nprofile…ghxt yeah that was the point where I went full “Ohh, buddy…”

2026-01-10 15:54:15 GMT

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@nprofile…n944 (I take your point, though — it’s certainly not something I’ll make a habit of.)

2026-01-10 15:53:18 GMT

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@nprofile…n944 eh, that’s fair. And I seldom do this, but I’ve seen the dame person go after much smaller accounts, and I do think there’s value in showing someone that there are social costs to negative behaviors. Going unchecked has obviously not made them reflect at all, nor have their followers encouraged them to behave decently.

2026-01-10 15:53:17 GMT

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2026-01-10 05:12:48 GMT

One pattern you can always count on: if you ever explain a technology by describing how the human and social aspects matter more than the obscure technical details, a certain cohort of dudes who are inept at socialization will lash out about their insecurities by trying to condescend. Who here thinks I wrote ~5000 words on Markdown but I don’t know what plain text files are? https://social.vivaldi.net/@synlogic4242/115867938428640814

2026-01-10 02:59:48 GMT

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@nprofile…8qh7 oh! Thanks, I always forget to check. (And I didn’t have any tracking on my site so I never know what’s driving clicks.)

2026-01-10 02:59:47 GMT

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@nprofile…8qh7 oh! Thanks, I always forget to check. (And I didn’t have any tracking on my site so I never know what’s driving clicks.)

2026-01-10 01:16:45 GMT

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@nprofile…288f I think one common reason people feel that way is that WYSIWYG editors tend to be quite finicky or fiddly, and can break the formatting of the sites they're being used with. But if the editor you have works in the context you're using it, then that's great!

2026-01-10 01:14:49 GMT

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@nprofile…9d4g There were certainly other community sites that supported it before then, but I'm sure Reddit helped contribute to its spread. I think Stack Overflow's adoption was really key, because it taught lots of coders, who then went on to build it into other sites. Same with GitHub.

2026-01-09 21:26:05 GMT

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@nprofile…6p0k well, “supports” in the way that Apple always defines “support”.

2026-01-09 21:26:05 GMT

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@nprofile…6p0k well, “supports” in the way that Apple always defines “support”.

2026-01-09 21:26:04 GMT

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@nprofile…6p0k well, “supports” in the way that Apple always defines “support”.

2026-01-09 21:24:42 GMT

Looks like my Markdown piece has been submitted to Hacker News; if you frequent the orange site, I guess please upvote? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556695

2026-01-09 21:24:41 GMT

Looks like my Markdown piece has been submitted to Hacker News; if you frequent the orange site, I guess please upvote? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556695

2026-01-09 17:22:14 GMT

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@nprofile…u7m2 It took me a long time to arrive at this view, but I think our tendency as technologists to want to push towards "correctness" is generally a trap. We should maybe try for anticipating a Postellian approach in the ecosystem, and have sort of "just enough" spec to get by.