In my latest blog post, I dive into a whirlwind of captivating stories and topics. I share how my washing machine mishap sparked insights into estimating software efforts. The post also discusses the potential triumphs of an AI-driven future alongside a surprising comparison between ChatGPT and seasoned therapists in couples therapy. Stay tuned as we also uncover Japanese work-life philosophies and Warren Buffett’s money wisdom.

• My Washing Machine Refreshed My Thinking on Software Effort Estimation: I recently had a saga with a washing machine that reminded me why one of the most feared and hated tasks for software developers starts with the question: “So how long will it take you to build that?”
• What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future:
• In psychotherapists vs. ChatGPT showdown, the latter wins, new study finds: Researchers prepared couples-therapy scenarios and then had responses—from experienced therapists and the AI chatbot—rated by over 800 participants.
• How To Be Successful: 4 Secrets Backed By Research: How do you achieve success if you’re a late bloomer? Let’s dig into the research and see what it takes to shine on a different timeline…
• uchū: is the color palette for internet lovers, by NetOperator Wibby.
• Homemade polarimetric synthetic aperture radar drone: Designing a cheap synthetic aperture radar mounted on FPV drone.
• DON’T buy a Track Saw? Build this instead!: The video “DON’T buy a Track Saw? Build this instead!” is by Izzy Swan. In this project, Izzy explores whether a DIY in-feed system for sheet goods can replace the need for an expensive track
• Comments on NASA’s 10 rules:
• How I Automated My Computer Routine With macOS Folder Actions:
• A New Way to Read:
• The Last Human Choice: In a world of AGI, there may be only one meaningful choice left: whether to keep choosing at all.
• Toast, Trees and a Wassailing Queen: An Ancient English Ritual Is Back: The centuries-old tradition of wassailing is making a comeback in rural England, with rituals and revelry meant to chase away evil spirits and the winter blues.
• What if Eye…?:
• 🏆 100 Most Watched Software Engineering Talks Of 2024: A complete list of the top 100 most watched talks of 2024 ordered by the number of views.
• Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture: A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible.
• We are destroying software:
• Why Blog If Nobody Reads It?: What’s the point of blogging?
• Next-gen paywalls balance privacy, engagement, revenue growth: New paywall technology now enables news publishers to leverage real-time intelligence to optimise paywall decisions — without requiring cookies.
• All-in-one solution for managing your home bar: Impress your dinner guests and unleash your inner bartender! Bar Assistant is a new home for all your favorite cocktail recipes and drinks.
• Hoarder: The Bookmark Everything app. Hoard links, notes, and images and they will get automatically tagged AI.
• Revised and Extended: What’s Happening Inside the NIH and NSF:
• Understanding Reasoning LLMs: Methods and Strategies for Building and Refining Reasoning Models
• Simulating water over terrain:
• There to Where: Making moving easy.
• Why You’re Always Busy but Never Productive (and How to Fix It): You’re always busy, but are you productive? Learn how the four types of work shape your success—and why we often ignore the most important ones.
• FT head of newsletters on how title quadrupled email subscribers in four years: Publisher newsletter strategies: A masterclass interview with Financial Times head of newsletters Sarah Ebner.
• Introducing memberships to Hearst’s iconic magazine portfolio: “There’s no one-size-fits-all,” says Katie Vanneck Smith: Hearst UK CEO Katie Vanneck Smith talks about communicating membership benefits, putting brands at the heart of the proposition and the importance of publishing teams in making magazine memberships successful.
• Are better models better? — Benedict Evans: Every week there’s a better AI model that gives better answers. But a lot of questions don’t have better answers, only ‘right’ answers, and these models can’t do that. So what does ‘better’ mean, how do we manage these things, and should we change what we expect from computers?
• Spicy, Creamy Weeknight Bolognese: This pasta sauce captures the soul-soothing essence of a long-simmering Bolognese even though it cooks quickly Searing ground beef gives it a caramelized taste that mimics the depth of slow-cooked meat Adding a few spoonfuls of red curry paste doesn’t make it taste like curry, but gives it instant nuance and depth
• Research shows 3 design features predict subscription bundle success: Three elements determine the success of a news company’s bundle strategy: product mix, subscriber experience, and content discovery.
• slack-export-viewer: A Slack Export archive viewer that allows you to easily view and share your Slack team’s export – hfaran/
• Ingesting Millions of PDFs and why Gemini 2.0 Changes Everything: Sergey Filimonov’s blog
• Eggs US – Price – Chart – Historical Data – News: Eggs US increased 1.28 USD/DOZEN or 22.03% since the beginning of 2025, according to trading on a contract for difference (CFD) that tracks the benchmark market for this commodity. This page includes a chart with historical data for Eggs US.
• Deep Dive into LLMs like ChatGPT: This is a general audience deep dive into the Large Language Model (LLM) AI technology that powers ChatGPT and related products. It is covers the full traini…
• A Coup Is In Progress In America: A coup is underway in the United States, and we must stop pretending otherwise. The signs are unmistakable and accelerating: in just the past 48 hours, Elon Musk’s DOGE commission has seized control of Treasury payment systems and gained unauthorized access to classified USAID materials, while security officials who followed protocols were removed. Career civil servants…
• How AI is changing the face of B2B publishing in 2025: Discover how publishers are using AI to create premium products, turn their expertise into goldmines and why waiting on the sidelines could be the riskiest strategy of all
• Inside The World Of TOPS News: A Magazine That Helps Members Lose Weight Sensibly. A Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Team TOPS News.: TOPS News is the membership magazine for TOPS Club Inc. TOPS stands for Take Off Pounds Sensibly. Its motto for the last 75 years since its inception is Real People. Real Weight Loss. In 2025, and for the first time, the TOPS News magazine started accepting advertising on the pages of the magazine. Through an…
• Training AI to Understand Relevance: What Every Business Needs to Know: Summary: AI struggles with relevance realization, a human ability to prioritize meaning across contexts. Businesses should evaluate AI systems’ relevance handling, integrate human feedback, and ensure human support for key interactions. In the beginning of “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” Evelyn Greenslade (played by Judi Dench) has just lost her husband. In the midst of…
• Visualizing all books of the world in ISBN-Space: Libraries have been trying to collect humanity’s knowledge almost since the invention of writing. In the digital age, it might actually be possible to create a comprehensive collection of all human writing that meets certain criteria. That’s what shadow libraries do – collect and share as many
• fullmoon: chat with private and local large language models
• Japanese Philosophies For a Healthy Work-Life Balance: Feeling overworked? Here are 3 Japanese philosophies that’ll help you establish a healthy, sustainable work-life balance through daily rituals.
• Short daily walks may reverse cognitive aging by four years, study finds: Everyday physical activity, even light movement, improves cognitive processing speed, equivalent to reversing four years of cognitive aging. This highlights the short-term brain benefits of staying active.
• The ‘secret strategy’ that could boost your ability to learn: It may sound illogical, but growing evidence shows the benefits of testing yourself before you start learning new material
• GyulyVGC/sniffnet: Comfortably monitor your Internet traffic 🕵️‍♂️:
• Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown: Renowned author Dan Brown woke up in his luxurious four-poster bed in his expensive $10 million house – and immediately he felt angry. Most people would have thought that the 48-year-old man had no reason to be angry. After all, the famous writer had a new book coming out. But that was the problem. A…
• A quote from Anthropic: While we encourage people to use AI systems during their role to help them work faster and more effectively, please do not use AI assistants during the application process. We …
• Everyone knows your location: How I tracked myself down using leaked location data in the in-app ads, and what I found along the way.
• DIY plane spotting at home with a Raspberry Pi: Building a plane spotting system with a Raspberry Pi and an old Android phone
• seemoo-lab/openhaystack: Build your own ‘AirTags’ 🏷 today! Framework for tracking personal Bluetooth devices via Apple’s massive Find My network. –
• Once You’re Laid Off, You’ll Never Be the Same Again: It’s been over a year since one of the most significant turning points in my life, and it’s time to reflect on that.
• To Change The System Of Work We Must First Change Leaders’ Mental Models: IT leaders have historically been put in positions to control IT resources, largely due to other execs not being able to fully understand what IT does and through the mis-understanding that it was a…
• The Stories in Our Heads (Fact vs. Meaning): Things happen, and then people come up with stories about those things—especially when they are missing information. Our interpretations—the meaning we make—color what we think Reality is. They can make someone a villain or a hero, but they’re often made up. If you’re feeling frustrated with yourself, someone else…
• Government Tech Workers Forced to Defend Projects to Random Elon Musk Bros: A recent high school graduate and former Neuralink intern has joined meetings to review lines of code and other work history of career public servants, sparking chaos at a major government agency.
• Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect:
• TEMP-1 Temperature Sensor For Home Assistant: TEMP-1 is a ESP32 controller with a 1.5m waterproof flat temperature probe that can be used with your Home Assistant. Check the specs here.
• LLM Course – Build a Semantic Book Recommender (Python, OpenAI, LangChain, Gradio): Discover how to build an intelligent book recommendation system using the power of large language models and Python. Learn to transform book descriptions int…
• Advice for a friend who wants to start a blog: What’s odd about you is what’s interesting.
• Writer RAG tool: build production-ready RAG apps in minutes: The new predefined RAG tool on the Writer platform allows applications to autonomously access and utilize data from a Knowledge Graph through a simple API call.
• How to Make Better Decisions Under Pressure: A conversation with Harvard Medical School’s Carol Kauffman on navigating high-stakes challenges effectively.
• Design systems: Clear documentation transforms abstract design principles into practical tools. Read how leading teams build and maintain documentation that evolves alongside their design systems.
• Bookshop.org launches new e-book platform that exclusively supports local bookstores: Indie bookstores miss out on millions of e-book sales to big companies like Amazon. Bookshop.org’s new platform could help them turn a new page.
• AI in Publishing: A 2025 Industry Forecast: As we embrace 2025, the publishing industry should view AI as an ally—a powerful tool that amplifies human creativity rather than replacing it.
• Warren Buffett: 6 Best Pieces of Money Advice for the Middle Class: For one of the richest people in the entire world, Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, is surprisingly down to Earth. He famously lives in the same modest house in Omaha that he bought in…
• Fix Three Broken Things: Seneca pointed out that people tend to be reflexively stingy with their money, but almost comically wasteful with their time. There are at least two ways to take this. One is that Seneca thought he used his time better than […]