08-Jan-2026 Content of Interest

Software

The Rime of the Ancient Maintainer (JA Westenberg) "What we lack is language for the equally difficult work of keeping existing things from falling apart."
The Napoleon Technique: Postponing Things to Increase Productivity (Itamar Shatz) Good advice.
Code is a liability (not an asset) (Cory Doctorow) comment
Culture Debt (Mike Fisher) "Technical debt slows teams; culture debt divides them."
Change is the root of all (evil) bugs (Fernando Hurtado) "Because if you don’t understand where change comes from, it will surprise and bite you."
What Used to Take Months Now Takes Days (Obie Fernandez) Wow, just Wow!
2026 Tech Predictions (Ted Neward) Yearly tradition.

More Efficiency, More Demand (Mike Fisher) "When technology makes a task cheaper or easier, we don’t do less of it. We do more."
What are some interesting projects that you’ve done this year? (lobste.rs) Long list with a wide variety of projects.
The Compiler Is Your Best Friend, Stop Lying to It (Daniel Beskin) "A "lie" would be to write code that communicates one thing at compile-time while doing something else at runtime."

Technology is culture (Daniel Lemire) "Technological progress does not follow a path from the blackboard of a middle-aged MIT professor to your desk, via a corporation."
Thanks AI! (Rich Hickey) "When did we stop considering things failures that create more problems than they solve?"
Building internal agents (Will Larson) TL;DR, but many interesting details.

An unsolved question in sleep science (Curiositry) "Both short and long duration of sleep are significant predictors of death in prospective population studies."

Neurable secures $35m to expedite BCI technology commercialisation (Prasanna Gullapalli) "Neurable focuses on developing AI-driven tools for brain signal translation and BCI technology."
Brain Gear Is the Hot New Wearable (Emily Mullin) TIL: Apple filed a patent in 2023 for EEG-sensing AirPods
Sam Altman’s New Brain Venture, Merge Labs, Will Spin Out of a Nonprofit (Emily Mullin) "The name Merge Labs refers to the Silicon Valley concept of “the merge,” the point when humans meld with machines."

Sisyphus versus the Conductor (Obie Fernandez) "Sisyphus can be compelling. But ultimately the conductor wins."
When Change Outruns Us (Mike Fisher) "Instead of asking what will create the most value, people ask what will help them survive the next change."
Avoid mini-frameworks (laike9m) "we should be really really careful introducing new concepts. If you can, avoid it."
How to not be replaced by AI (Max Berry) Great read.
52 things I learned in 2025 (Tom Whitwell) TIL: Japan has two electrical grids, and lots more.
No, Clojure: your REPL is not new – or best (Dimension AI Technologies) "The REPL is an immensely valuable tool. Its lineage stretches back more than six decades."
Where Architects Sit in the Era of AI (Dave Holliday, João Carlos Gonçalves, Manoj Kumar Yadav, Luca Mezzalira) "What does it mean to be an architect when architectural thinking can be automated?"

Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work (Simon Willison) "A computer can never be held accountable."
If You’ve Never Broken It, You Don’t Really Know It (Tim O’Brien) "Every Useful Thing I’ve Learned About Databases—and Now AI Coding Tools—Started with Failure."
Unintended Consequences (Mike Fisher) "The most mature teams don’t fear surprise; they study it."
Why “Microservices” Debates Miss the Point (Derek Comartin) "The root of the problem is coupling."
Being an architect isn’t the sum of skills. It’s the product (Gregor Hohpe) "It’s not just about tech. But also not just about non-tech."
Why you shouldn’t use INs in SQL and what to use instead (Domenic Helfenstein) "Table-Valued Parameters, or TVPs"
What happens when the coding becomes the least interesting part of the work (Obie Fernandez) "That act of explanation does something important. It slows you down enough to notice when your instincts are off."

A little bit uncomfortable (Dr. Werner Vogels) "In hindsight, these scary (and occasionally terrifying) moments are the ones that we all learn the most from."

Avoidable Software Failures Cost Trillions - IEEE Spectrum (Harry Goldstein) "The FDA recalls on average 20 medical devices per month due to software issues."

Deprecate Like You Mean It (Entropic Thoughts) "What if we intentionally made deprecated functions return the wrong result … sometimes?"
The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI (Cory Doctorow) "How to be a critic whose criticism inflicts maximum damage on the parts of AI that are doing the most harm."
Tech Debt vs Quality (Mike Fisher) "The goal isn’t to find balance; it’s to build acceleration that lasts."
Everything New Has Bugs (Mike Fisher) "The deeper issue isn’t speed itself, it’s the lag time between faster motion and the adaptation of supporting systems."
How good engineers write bad code at big companies (Sean Goedecke) "I expect to be re-orged at least every year, and often much more frequently."

After the Bubble (Tim Bray) Good read. "The GenAI bubble is going to pop. Everyone knows that."