labnotes.org

# Labnotes (by Assaf Arkin)
> 🔥 All about software design, development, and culture. A mix of insightful and funny. Goes great with coffee. ☕
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. Use `/llms-full.txt` for consolidated page and post context.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).

## Pages
- [👏 Hey there, I’m Assaf.](https://labnotes.org/about.md) - ☕ Founder CEO of Rentail, where we help Gen-Z merchants make money by gaining them a foothold at shopping centers. Find me on Mastodon, labnotes.org, Github, LinkedIn, and via snail email 📬 assaf@labnotes.org. My newsletter: Weekend Reading 🔥 Catch up on the weekend, with the weekly newsletter ab…
- [🕵️‍♀️ Search](https://labnotes.org/search.md)
- [Welcome and thank you](https://labnotes.org/welcome.md) - Thank you for subscribing. This newsletter started over 20 years ago — yes it's that seasoned! I read a lot of blogs, newsletters, and social media. Every single day. I always find a few interesting things to write about. Some that are just silly or funny. Maybe a rant or two — I try to keep these…

## Posts
- [Weekend Reading — It's gettin' hot in here …](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-its-gettin-hot-in-here.md) - Tjeerd Royaards "Hot. Cartoon from last year." Tech Stuff DevCleaner Free space on your Mac that's currently used by the caches of Xcode, npm, Cursor, Claude, et al. Runs local, minimum memory footprint, and there's a free version. Cotypist Text auto-complete that runs in every app you use. Press T…
- [Weekend Reading — A sourdough finisher](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-a-sourdough-finisher.md) - CrankGPT The human-powered, local-first, private AI. Tech Stuff Lettera Based on Bear's remarkable Markdown editor, a standalone app for editing Markdown files from your file system. I like Bear's Markdown editing, so I think Lettera is an interesting idea. Currently beta release, so no price yet.…
- [Weekend Reading — Future-proofed like there’s no tomorrow!](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-future-proofed-like-theres-no-tomorrow.md) - Neil "Just because you can...." Tech Stuff OfficeCLI A CLI to help AI create/read/edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Open source and doesn't require a Microsoft Office license. I just installed this for the benefit of my 3 AI agents that have to deal with office documents (legal, marketing…
- [Weekend Reading — Little Bobby ignore all previous instructions](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-little-bobby-ignore-all-previous-instructions.md) - Frechrotz_Pix 'Lego- bzw. Klemmbausteine' Tech Stuff pitchfork A devilishly good daemons manager: start/stop daemon, automatic restarts, health checks, file watching, cron scheduling, and many more useful features. Greg Wilson OH: "Their version of agile is, we can keep changing our mind until it's…
- [I Got $4.84 From a Class Action Settlement and They Really, Really Didn't Want Me to Have It](https://labnotes.org/i-got-4-84-from-a-class-action-settlement-and-they-really-really-didnt-want-me-to-have-it.md) - So here's the thing. When a company loses a class action lawsuit and has to pay millions to regular people, they don't just write you a check. They go out of their way to make sure you never actually get to spend your cut. I'm not being dramatic. I have receipts. Over the past couple years I've got…
- [Weekend Reading — How to lose 2 hours](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-how-to-lose-2-hours.md) - geekysteven Tech Stuff Zed I really like using Cursor but it's a huge IDE (basically VS Code) which takes forever to load and eats up too much memory and sometimes I have to restart it just to fix a broken extension. I started using Zed for the occasional quick file edit (tweak .gitconfig, edit .cl…
- [Weekend Reading — I do not think, therefore I do not am](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-i-do-not-think-therefore-i-do-not-am.md) - Natasha "Fragile Handle With Care" by Roman Pankoy (2020) Oil on canvas Tech Stuff Animata A collection of React + Tailwind animations and effects to enhance your UI. A pretty substantive collection of animated elements. You'll likely find a few for the marketing website, a handful that would be us…
- [Weekend Reading — Low-maintenance passive traffic calming](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-low-maintenance-passive-traffic-calming.md) - Sophie Schmieg "Work moved to a new building. I didn't expect to take SAN damage from facilities." Tech Stuff Magic Notebook A free app, simple and elegant UI, no cloud sync, just open a folder and get working. Can handle DOCX, Markdown and text files. I love the simplicity of it. charmbracelet/glo…
- [coolify-deploy — Vercel-style deploys on your own hardware](https://labnotes.org/coolify-deploy-vercel-style-deploys-on-your-own-hardware.md) - Introducing coolify-deploy — git push to your own server with the simplicity of a platform. I used to host everything on Vercel and honestly it was great. Connect a repo, push, your app is live — simple enough that it spoils you fast. When I outgrew the free tier I upgraded to Pro at $20/month. My…
- [Weekend Reading — Locally hosted torment nexus](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-locally-hosted-torment-nexus.md) - John "Posted today by Lego on their official Instagram account. Well done, Lego, well done. 😁" Tech Stuff portless HTTPS for npm dev using .localhost URLs instead of port numbers: Portless runs an HTTPS reverse proxy on port 443 by default. Each app registers a route mapping its hostname to an ass…
- [Weekend Reading — The background noise of the AI bubble](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-the-background-noise-of-the-ai-bubble.md) - Fake Metro Trains "Due to ongoing delays with the delivery of our new Xtrapolis 2.0 trains, we've implemented some temporary measures to keep our network running." Tech Stuff What's actually new in JavaScript (and what's coming next) This is a helpful introduction to what's new in ES2025 and what's…
- [Weekend Reading — Dream of bigger things](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-dream-of-bigger-things.md) - GeriAQuin Tech Stuff Tolaria I just added this app this to my repertoire. I didn't get a chance to use it much yet, but it looks interesting — build a knowledge you can share with your AI that's version controlled and doesn't require an Office 356 license. Tagline: "Organize your notes as Markdown…
- [Weekend Reading — Penguin drama](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-penguin-drama.md) - Niki "Most useless sign in the universe" Tech Stuff ShowMD The Markdown space is heating up 🔥 Today I installed a Markdown editor (Scratch), upgraded my Markdown viewer (mud), and setup this Markdown QuickLook previewer (ShowMD). erictli/scratch Minimalist, offline-first markdown note-taking app f…
- [Weekend Reading — Look Away](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-look-away.md) - Someone Turned an Old Ford Van Into a Mini Semi and It’s Fantastic Tech Stuff LookAway This is one app I have to run on my Mac. It forces me to take a break every 45 minutes — not a Pomodoro break (which I never got the hang off), but a short 30 second break to look away from the screen and give my…
- [Weekend Reading — For entertainment purposes only](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-for-entertainment-purposes-only.md) - Natasha "Perfect for Easter, EGGO is a two piece construction toy" Tech Stuff PopTask As a concept I find this super interesting — a task list that lives in the menu bar and understands human inputs like "evry tue thu 7 30 n sat mrng". Supports sub-tasks, repeating tasks, and more. I'm a long time…
- [Weekend Reading — The paperwork flood](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-the-paperwork-flood.md) - Holeintheheadesign Tech Stuff HopTab Open source app switcher and tiler to replace Cmd+Tab. If you Cmd+Tab a lot you may find this app quite useful. Number, currency, and unit formatting Did you know that the mathematical value 1234.56 looks different in Boston, Berlin, and Bangalore? Hardcoding fo…
- [Weekend Reading — First roll back, then debug](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-first-roll-back-then-debug.md) - Lady Laura "Pack of Dogs by John Littleboy" Tech Stuff Infisical I'm trying this service as a replacement for Doppler. Seems to have more capabilities plus it's an open-source project you can self-host (if you so care). Does feel overwhelming at first with all its capabilities but I got my training…
- [Weekend Reading — Happy π day!](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-happy-p-day.md) - Mina "It's PiDay!" Tech Stuff How to Do Code Reviews in the Agentic Era I've been working on open-source for over 25 years, I suspect that's why I accept The LLM as just another project contributor: My “unpopular” take: I don’t really care if a human or an agent wrote the code. In open source, cont…
- [Weekend Reading — Go forth and prompt](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-go-forth-and-prompt.md) - cliff538 "What a great artistic reuse of old license plates!" Tech Stuff Shepherd "Stay focused. Grow your sheep." Chrome extension that auto-categorizes thousands of sites as productive, neutral, or distracting—keep using productive sites and watch your sheep grow. If Pomodoro timer did nothing fo…
- [Weekend Reading — Sunlight with ads](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-sunlight-with-ads.md) - ConnectionWithWonder "Knitted bollard-warmer Weymouth" Tech Stuff UNF* Records every version of a file and can easily rewind back without having to manually commit changes. Perfect if you're working with AI agents and don't trust them. Also perfect if you're just prone to accidentaly deleting or mo…
- [Weekend Reading — Known to cause boys in yards](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-known-to-cause-boys-in-yards.md) - Marcel "It's embarrassing how quickly a bit of sunshine can change my mood." Tech Stuff Current is a new RSS reader that’s more like a river than an inbox If you want to enjoy RSS give Current a try. $9.99 as a one-time fee, no subscription: Current, however, proposes a different RSS experience. In…
- [Weekend Reading — The Cone of Uncertainty](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-the-cone-of-uncertainty.md) - Dinosa Labs "Bueno, ahora sí, os presento a CLOROPLASTO, la minúscula ciudad de la fotosíntesis 🪄✨🌱😌" Tech Stuff npmx If you search for npm packages frequently, give npmx a try. It's much faster and the UI is an elevated design over npmjs. skillshare SKILL.md aka "a standard way in which you ins…
- [Weekend Reading — Load bearing post](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-load-bearing-post.md) - David Zinn "Jen’s response to winter is to wear big boots and keep on stomping." Tech Stuff pandoc for the people The pandoc wasm web-app is now available and allows to run any kind of document conversion that pandoc supports in the browser. The documents never leave the computer, thus ensuring ful…
- [Weekend Reading — A very British problem](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-a-very-british-problem.md) - Stéphane Bortzmeyer Tech Stuff Craft Agents Claude Cowork is the Claude Code brains for working with office documents (Word docs, presentations, etc) which I think is a powerful idea. Yet, I just started using Craft Agents and I like it much better—similar in spirit to Cowork, uses Claude Code brai…
- [Weekend Reading — Universe closed, use Rainbow](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-universe-closed-use-rainbow.md) - Natasha In "Albuquerque, NM, Rainbow road runs parallel to Universe blvd." Tech Stuff Pencil The demo looks amazing, basically an MCP server that can design your product with pixel-perfect precision. Let Claude Code be your canvas. (via Vinicius) Ian Betteridge Then, in 1999, Adobe InDesign was rel…
- [Rentail.space Launches AI-Powered Marketplace Connecting Businesses with Short-Term Retail Spaces](https://labnotes.org/rentail-space-launches-ai-powered-marketplace-connecting-businesses-with-short-term-retail-spaces.md) - Rentail.space, an AI-powered specialty lease marketplace, today announced its official launch, transforming how businesses discover and secure short-term retail spaces in shopping centers across the United States and Canada.
- [Weekend Reading — A server raclette](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-a-server-raclette.md) - MTV Rewind If you miss MTV from back when it was a TV station that plays music, aka the good old days. Tech Stuff dbreunig/whenwords This is seriously cool. A library that provides timeago ("in 3 days"), duration ("2h 30m"), parse_duration, human_date ("today", "yesterday", etc), and date_range ("M…
- [Weekend Reading — So close to the end of the world](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-so-close-to-the-end-of-the-world.md) - Laura Manach Tech Stuff Convert & Compress When you need to process a batchload of files: convert them to a different format, limit their width/height, compress with specific quality loss, etc. (* To make sure my webapp is performing well, I run a script that goes through all files in the directory…
- [Weekend Reading — Where are all the coffee filters?](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-where-are-all-the-coffee-filters.md) - Volpeon "Make yourself a little foxxo companion" Tech Stuff TapHouse Manage Homebrew form the convenience of a GUI with single-click installs, doctor and cleanup tools, auto update, menu bar mode, and more. Mise Simplifies your dev setups by managing runtimes, env vars, tasks, Docker, GitHub Action…
- [Weekend Reading — A double young-man](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-a-double-young-man.md) - Mabelz Tech Stuff BrewServicesManager Manage Brew services from the menu bar. CSRF protection without tokens or hidden form fields New to me and quite useful: The Sec-Fetch-Site header can have one of four values: * same-origin, when the request comes from the same origin as the target server * sam…
- [Weekend Reading — Sparkling spaces](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-sparkling-spaces.md) - ARGVMI~1.PIF "Well, you can't say you weren't warned." Tech Stuff How I wrote JustHTML using coding agents Yes. JustHTML is about 3,000 lines of Python with 8,500+ tests passing. I couldn't have written it this quickly without the agent. But "quickly" doesn't mean "without thinking." I spent a lot…
- [Weekend Reading — This heater is from space](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-this-heater-is-from-space.md) - Street Art Utopia "Painted Octopus! By Lumen Street Theatre in Limerick, Ireland." Tech Stuff Building a Toast Component This is the story of Sonner, why they came up with that name, how they managed animation and stacking, momentum-based gestures, and more. I love Sonner, the API is so easy to use…
- [Weekend Reading — The “Can that wait till January?” club](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-the-can-that-wait-till-january-club.md) - David Zinn "Claude’s secret to surviving winter is having a grandma who knits." Tech Stuff W4G1/multithreading The missing standard library for multithreading in JavaScript. Supports modern browsers, Node.js, Deno, and Bun. voici.js Print tables on the terminal — more evolved than console.table wit…
- [Weekend Reading — Torment Nexus is financially sound](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-torment-nexus-is-financially-sound.md) - Slirt "Don't forget to save enough SPACE for dessert... Nanu-nanu!" Tech Stuff Respinner For when you need React spinner components. Rebane 🤯 cursed CSS trick: use the Q unit instead of px, it looks almost the same and saves a character doxx You can now view Word documents from the command line. x…
- [Weekend Reading — Increase time in the bathroom](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-increase-time-in-the-bathroom.md) - Real Life Bog Person "My SIL has informed me that this exists in Auburn WA. I have a new place to visit!" Tech Stuff Grila If you calendar a lot you're going to love this app: a keyboard-driven calendar. Pure CSS Tabs With Details, Grid, and Subgrid Although my solution then could possibly still be…
- [Weekend Reading — 404 bragawatts](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-404-bragawatts.md) - John S Russell "Where I post from." Tech Stuff Zod + TypeScript: Schema Validation Made Easy Learn how to use Zod, a TypeScript schema validation library that allows you to validate external data at runtime. abbiistabbii ftw you realise that pacman is short for Package Manager and you start to ques…
- [Weekend Reading — Aggravation is observed](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-aggravation-is-observed.md) - Wilhelm Gere "This should explain things" Tech Stuff Cursed Knowledge Immich shares their experience and I love that their product website (it's not a dev tool!) has this page. (via archiloque) You Should Write An Agent In the mantra of "you only think you understand how a bicycle works, until you…
- [Weekend Reading — Cloud outages will continue until morale improves](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-cloud-outages-will-continue-until-morale-improves.md) - Kevin Beaumont Tech Stuff I am sorry, but everyone is getting syntax highlighting wrong I'm using Alabaster to see how I like it (PS it's an extension, not a theme): The problem with that is, if everything is highlighted, nothing stands out. Your eye adapts and considers it a new norm: everything i…
- [Weekend Reading — More relevant ads](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-more-relevant-ads.md) - Comedy Wildlife Awards 2025 – in pictures Collection of amazing photos for your enjoyment. Tech Stuff Your data model is your destiny Your product's core abstractions determine whether new features compound into a moat or just add to a feature list. Here's how to get it right. Spreadsheets: The Sec…
- [Weekend Reading — And a ghostty October to you](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-and-a-ghostty-october-to-you.md) - The Autistic Innovator "Someone didn't think that design through" Tech Stuff LaunchOS Launchpad is back! Not my favorite UI, I never cared to use Launchpad, but I know a few people who swear by it, and now you can brew install launchos on your macOS 26. The AI-collapse pre-mortem (via Lars Marowsky…
- [Weekend Reading — Prime minister of France for 15 minutes](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-prime-minister-of-france-for-15-minutes.md) - Lizzy "You guys i did a thing" Tech Stuff Folder Quick Look fixes an all-time Mac grievance for free This is pretty slick, very useful, and free to use. How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Trust AI Coding Agents Mirrors my experience as well. Differnet problems, different solutions, but same Claude:…
- [Weekend Reading — Ancient Ruins](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-ancient-ruins.md) - link (t)wink Tech Stuff How I Use AI An ever growing list of ways in which David Bauer uses AI for work, life and play. Includes some interesting prompts. I took one to help Claude write for brevity. Nine HTTP Edge Cases Every API Developer Should Understand If you're working on any web app you nee…
- [Weekend Reading — KVICK SÖRT](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-kvick-sort.md) - KVICK SÖRT Tech Stuff Tangled Interesting 🤔 If GitHub bumped into Bluesky, a social-enabled git collaboration platform using atproto. LLM Rankings: The New Battleground Welcome to the mention economy! If you want to appear in AI search results, your brand name has to show up often, in credible pla…
- [Weekend Reading — The Yeet Sheet](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-the-yeet-sheet.md) - Laura Manach Tech Stuff How to keep package.json under control With the latest npm hacks adding a cooldown period to installs should be regarded as standard security practice. Now available in pnpm, npm-check-updates and hopefully other package management tools. Your First 10 Users > Your First 10…
- [Weekend Reading — The battle at Git's Hub](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-the-battle-at-gits-hub.md) - elle "All I saw was cheesecake boat and ocean for at least 5 minutes" Tech Stuff sonner When you want a nicely designed React toast component. I just started using it in my project and it's pretty slick looking with an elegantly simple API. Apple’s biggest announcement today was Memory Integrity En…
- [Weekend Reading — Geiger counter](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-geiger-counter.md) - brettezeleliquide Spoonbill bird in flight. Tech Stuff Vibe Coding as a Coding Veteran The road from 8-bit Assembly to English-as-Code: This gives an entirely new meaning to Knuth’s “literate programming”: Rather than interspersing natural language specification and its corresponding artificial lan…
- [Weekend Reading — First rule of Eight Club: no typos](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-first-rule-of-eight-club-no-typos.md) - Natasha Jay “Biker gang - believe this group are leaders in the illegal cat nip trade ...” Tech Stuff looks-same Nice library for visual regression testing, when you need to compare images from different platforms (dev, CI, etc) that are not pixel for pixel identical, using a fairly simple API. Mar…
- [Weekend Reading — Is it me you're calling for?](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-is-it-me-youre-calling-for.md) - MostlyHarmless "The bloody hipsters have gone too far." Tech Stuff Embeddable When you need a little widget on your website that converts traffic (newsletter signup, posted review, discount checkout, etc), why not let AI do the walking? This doesn't look horribly expensive, $19/month for 100 tokens…
- [Weekend Reading — I'm back and I miss you all! 💋💋💋](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-im-back-and-i-miss-you-all.md) - Syulang "Soooooo.... capitalism is at it again." First the good news: 10 days ago was the 20th year anniversary of this very blog! 🎂 Many happy returns! Unfortunately, I spent last weekend in the hospital — it took them 4 days to queeze me into a one hour trivial procedure that didn't require full…
- [Weekend Reading — "big" is smaller than "small"](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-big-is-smaller-than-small.md) - Meanwhile in Canada "You know it's hot when the cat melts" Tech Stuff Kiro "Tame complexity with spec-driven development" Smart use of generative AI: Kiro turns your prompt into a requirements document, and then uses that to build your code, so when you get hit a challenge, you can edit the require…
- [Weekend Reading — Swipe right](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-swipe-right.md) - diana "Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip" Tech Stuff daisyUI What goes around comes around and this Tailwind plugin brings back proper CSS classes. And it comes with CSS classes for buttons, cards, modals, avatars, alerts, footers, you name it, there's a class for it, and of course you can custom…
- [Weekend Reading — Eat plenty of fiber](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-eat-plenty-of-fiber.md) - a beautiful bitch "This is why i make sure i eat plenty of fiber" Tech Stuff kompressor macOS image convertor with a very interesting UI: drag & drop images into the wormhole, then toggle the kind of processing you want, and away we launch! secretlint/secretlint Linting tool to prevent committing c…
- [Weekend Reading — a24z](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-a24z.md) - Information Is Beautiful "Seems to fit?" Tech Stuff kepano/defuddle When you need to clean up a web page and extract only the important contents. This library claims to offer some benefits over Readability. Sindre Sorhus You don’t need a roadmap, you need caffeine and unreasonable optimism Writing…
- [Weekend Reading — Code remains liquid at room temperature](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-code-remains-liquid-at-room-temperature.md) - Tiki Bunny Imports "Y'ALL. LOOK. My inner 8-year-old is beaming and SO HAPPY with 42-year-old adult me right now." Tech Stuff Remix Utils A collection of utility functions for use in your Remix (or React-Router) app. There's a big chance you'll need one of these functions someday, so why rewrite wh…
- [Weekend Reading — Monotation](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-monotation.md) - Uphill Rd, Joshua Tree, CA I shudder to think of how many birds have unwittingly plowed into this place. Tech Stuff Min A very minimal browser, offers more space for the web page, fewer distractions. Ryan Grove Software developers, I need you to listen to me: error states are as important to handle…
- [Weekend Reading — Wrong opinions, weekly held](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-wrong-opinions-weekly-held.md) - Jen Gentleman “I'll never be able to unsee this” Tech Stuff Nxtscape An open-source agentic browser. Basically you instruct the browser what you want it to do. Eniko Fox It's a common misconception that types exist on computers. In reality everything is just integers, except for floating point whic…
- [Weekend Reading — Reefer Madness](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-reefer-madness.md) - OnlMaps “Air traffic in the Middle East” Tech Stuff Fireflies.ai When it's a meeting that you need to capture, transcribe, summarize, and turn into meeting notes, try Fireflies. Wispr Flow Typing: 45 wpm. Talking: 220 wpm. I know some people love talking to their computer and Wispr will catch your…
- [Weekend Reading — 🎻 World's smallest violin](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-worlds-smallest-violin.md) - Scientists at Loughborough University create 'world's smallest violin' Tech Stuff TLTD #29 - Vibe Coding Your Way to a Seed Round On the relentless march toward zero-cost prototyping: Enter vibe coding: now founders can translate ideas into working prototypes by describing what they want to AI tool…
- [Weekend Reading — 😎 Good morning LA](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-good-morning-la.md) - Good morning LA! I just moved to downtown LA to experience the nice weather and delicious food, though you're more likely to find me at a coffee shop drinking iced Matcha latte because that's the Z thing to do. Tech Stuff Just a QR Code When you need to generate a QR code quickly and easily and wit…
- [Weekend Reading — Only one Wiener](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-only-one-wiener.md) - Hot diggity dog! Wienermobiles put on riveting race in Wienie 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway In this race there will be only one Wiener. Tech Stuff lucy github actions have github consequences zumerlab/snapdom Captures any HTML element as a scalable SVG image, preserving styles, fonts, backgrou…
- [Weekend Reading — Sell your soul for cuteness and regret nothing](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-sell-your-soul-for-cuteness-and-regret-nothing.md) - Ricki Crush Bandicute Tarr “1983 was a wild time.” Tech Stuff Marginalia Search A search engine that prioritizes non-commercial web sites. And they do have some interesting filters: blogs, academia, small web, plain text, tidle, etc. Operates out of Sweden. Renaud Chaput 👍 We also migrated from Je…
- [Weekend Reading — Turbo round and round](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-turbo-round-and-round.md) - Silicon Valley perplexed by traffic innovation: the turbo roundabout Tech Stuff Inngest Durable functions that stand for job queues, save state, run cron jobs, and all the other plumbing your project might need. Restate Break up your app into multiple steps and use Restate to track them, retry fail…
- [Weekend Reading — Run time/rest time](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-run-time-rest-time.md) - Tech Stuff Bored Spreadsheet RTO got you down? Stuck in the cubicle? Boss hovering? You can now play classic games that look like you're working on a spreadsheet! “A refreshing take on spreadsheets that makes data entry more enjoyable” Sindarina, Edge Case Detective My new cover band will be called…
- [Weekend Reading — 🦩 Flamingo](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-flamingo.md) - Street Art Utopia "Whales in the sky! 🐋✨ From the beach to the clouds at the 38th International Kite Festival in Berck-sur-Mer, France. Absolutely surreal!" Tech Stuff Spring Jo 💪 The EU is introducing an energy label for phones, together with mandatory requirements for phones sold in the EU;5 ye…
- [Weekend Reading — Distributed CEO](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-distributed-ceo.md) - Ben Royce "Why do I feel like I'm in an art museum for some odd reason?" Tech Stuff Managing Developer Experience Debt When I was leading a tech team at a previous startup, I would love Mondays because they were the start of another fun week full of solving real problems. And I told my team, if you…
- [Weekend Reading — Bunny Time](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-bunny-time.md) - Nuno & Lua Friends I think there's some bunMovement going on! We just noticed a giant bun with a army of small buns standing at a local hypermarket 😮 perhaps this is it! WeBuns are going to take over! All the snac will belong to us! Tech Stuff BUSY Bar A Pomodoro timer and distraction blocker for…
- [Weekend Reading — 🐧 Tax the Penguins!](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-tax-the-penguins.md) - Sin of empathy Tech Stuff new.email Get some AI help to build the perfect email template, using react.email which is a super cool email template library, so you can resend your emails away! (If you’re still stuck in MJMLand, give it a try!) react-international-phone The nice thing about this librar…
- [Weekend Reading — Fuck aboot, find oot](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-fuck-aboot-find-oot.md) - Tech Stuff Denny Karri Saarinen: 10 Rules for Crafting Products That Stand Out Linear’s CEO shares his approach to quality and craft: 1. Commit to quality at the leadership level 2. When it comes to building teams, go small and aim high 3. Do away with handoff 4. Resist creating specialized product…
- [Weekend Reading — Department of weird](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-department-of-weird.md) - Dan Neuman “Nice one, IKEA” Tech Stuff ⌘K Fast, composable, unstyled command menu for React. Not to be confused with Paletro, a command palette for every macOS app. Remind Me Faster I think this is the perfect app for people with ADHD and at $3.99 not at all expensive, my only complaint is there's…
- [Weekend Reading — Not like us](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-not-like-us.md) - Baby koalas rescued in wake of storm Tech Stuff Here’s how I use LLMs to help me write code The best way to learn LLMs is to play with them. Throwing absurd ideas at them and vibe-coding until they almost sort-of work is a genuinely useful way to accelerate the rate at which you build intuition for…
- [Weekend Reading — The Agentic AI revolution](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-the-agentic-ai-revolution.md) - Street Art Utopia “Darth Fisher sculpture by Frankey for Amsterdam Light Festival in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Photos by Janus van den Eijnden.” Tech Stuff Claude Code overview The Agentic AI revolution is taking shape and apparently Claude Code is this week's top contender. I just tested it on a…
- [Weekend Reading — 🇺🇦 Slava Ukraini](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-slava-ukraini-2.md) - Elise “periodic reminder that Barcelona has a supercomputer inside an old church and it's one of the most rad things you can see” Tech Stuff macOS Tips & Tricks It's going to take me forever to learn all of these shortcuts, or even just the few I find absolutely useful. So many of them, but this is…
- [Weekend Reading — I. Kant.](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-i-kant.md) - Terry Matz “Seems like a good time to share this free knitting pattern for the This Is Fine Sweater by Yu Jie 玉杰” Tech Stuff Ólafur Waage Databases are still using tables? Don't they know we've switched to <div> years ago? Rethinking Find-in-Page Accessibility: Making Hidden Text Work for Everyone…
- [Weekend Reading — I'll take one Canadiano please](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-ill-take-one-canadiano-please.md) - CM Harrington "Timeline cleanse: Her name is Nibi." Tech Stuff pandan Not to be confused with the flavor, this is a fantastic time-tracking app that lives in the menubar. I like to know how long I'm spending at the coffee shop. I used the iPhone timer app for a while, but often forget to run it. I…
- [Weekend Reading — As asap as possible!](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-as-asap-as-possible.md) - Ben “Nice lil guy I just found out we own” Tech Stuff AI Prompt: Writing Supabase Edge Functions This is a new Supabase article but it's also a good example of how to write prompting rules for Cursor, which I just learned are easy to structure as plain text files. julesh Programming languages train…
- [Weekend Reading — On energy saving mode](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-on-energy-saving-mode.md) - I'm Not Lazy, I'm on Energy Saving Mode Current status Tech Stuff Trammell Hudson “my new years resolution is 80x25” Jake Rayson “If you think technology will solve your problems, you don’t understand technology and you don’t understand your problems” ~ attrib. Laurie Anderson Improving my terminal…
- [Weekend Reading — Sortie dramatique](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-sortie-dramatique.md) - heyheymomo “Lovely day lovely day” Tech Stuff Niki Tonsky “Old classic” Some Dude Was Keeping the Company Afloat The wildest part? No one in the company realized he was doing this. Not his manager, not the dev team, not even upper management. This guy wasn’t just some random employee; he was the un…
- [Weekend Reading — When you excel …](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-when-you-excel.md) - BasicAppleGuy “Lumon Industries Macrodata Refinement Terminal.” Tech Stuff vivus A library that will animate SVG files bringing them to life. Justified Text: Better Than Expected? When you need your text properly justified: text-wrap: balance; hyphens: auto; hyphenate-limit-chars: 10; CSS light-dar…
- [Weekend Reading — The whisky war of 1973](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-the-whisky-war-of-1973.md) - sjvn “Best snow truck name ever.” Tech Stuff trimMiddle This is such a cool function: it trims any string to the desired length by dropping text from the middle of the string, like Finder does with filenames. And a lot of times when you’re trimming text, eg email address, that’s exactly how you wan…
- [Weekend Reading — DOOM x 2](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-doom-x-2.md) - Andy P “But it is public domain” Tech Stuff Fish 4.0b1 I'm giving Fish a try. So far it’s really amazing and a step up from ZSH, which itself was a step up from Bash. 4.0b1 is out, noted as “highly stable” and as better in a lot of ways (also, it’s a rewrite in Rust.) But the default install is sti…
- [Weekend Reading — Happy New Year! 🥳](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-happy-new-year.md) - Vitalis 🇺🇦 The most original and unusual landmark in Odesa, which has become a symbol of the creativity of Odesa residents. Tech Stuff Cursor I really really like Cursor. I had a great time using VS Code + Github Copilot. I found the autocomplete to be such a huge time saver. But Cursor, which pr…
- [Weekend Reading — Happy "That's a January Problem" week](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-happy-thats-a-january-problem-week.md) - Can Christmas season start a little earlier this year Tech Stuff Ramsey Nasser fuck it happened i am in a situation where i do actually need to reverse a linked list Atuin I just learned about Atuin and am giving it a try. I think it’s good and worth trying out. It makes it a lot easier to go back…
- [Weekend Reading — Claim denied](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-claim-denied.md) - The Mighty Git "One of the curious upsides to discovering you have ADHD as an older man is that suddenly other people have an easier time finding presents for you..." Tech Stuff Mantine DataTable When you need an all powerful data table in your UI that can do everything and more: control cell styli…
- [Weekend Reading — Make Orwell Fiction Again](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-10.md) - MostlyHarmless Tech Stuff colinaut/action-table A web component that allows users to sort/filter a table. Just wrap your table inside <action-table>. So simple and works like a charm. VineJS A library for validating form data that supports HTML forms and JSON and is optimized for speed and ease of…
- [Weekend Reading — Never](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-never.md) - For Europeans...... Tech Stuff da_667 “people who write javascript don't make threats, they make promises” NumberFlow - Transition and format numbers An open source component to transition, format, and localize numbers — because sometimes you want the numbers to change and also look like they're ch…
- [Weekend Reading — More time to write](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-more-time-to-write.md) - More Time to Write A fully functional clock that ticks backwards, giving you more time to write. Tech Stuff Martijn Faassen (FWIW I don’t know how to use any debugger other than console.log) People tend to look down on print debugging as it's not using sophisticated tools at all. You're not using d…
- [Weekend Reading — The future is reduced for quick sale](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-9.md) - Sure is Tech Stuff What I Wish Someone Told Me About Postgres If you’re just starting with Postgres, make sure to not repeat past mistakes. No GPS required: our app can now locate underground trains Yes! “Our offline motion detection shows where you are between stations, and reminds you when your s…
- [Weekend Reading — 😱 Existential angst](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-existential-angst.md) - This week we got message in a bottle, weight of our coffee beans, AI bizarre, a spying air fryer, bossa nova sound track, mental music in a smash room, and grandma advice.
- [Weekend Reading — Thingy brokey](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-thingy-brokey.md) - This week we learn about timezones, build a Turing machine in LEGO, learn to turn off the Mac, turn out PDFs into brainrot, revive Snap, block the roads, get a borchestershire shot, pitch our friends, and learn to ignore deadcats.
- [Weekend Reading — Voting time!](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-8.md) - Halloween humor Hello and welcome back. If you missed me, I went on a trip for three weeks, so didn't have time to post. But I did enjoy delicious food, beautiful sites, and super fast trains. Now I'm back to posting and this weekend I'm also voting because every vote counts! Tech Stuff Maximal eff…
- [Weekend Reading — Our traffic light-identifying overlords](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-our-traffic-light-identifying-overlords.md) - How to respond to your weird neighbor’s Drumph sign. Tech Stuff Mac Firewall Apps When you don't want apps broadcasting your every move out to the world: Little Snitch, LuLu, Radio Silence, and Lockdown Privacy Desktop. ben-n93/SQL-tips-and-tricks These are really good tricks if you don't use a goo…
- [Weekend Reading — “Tonic” Masculinity](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-tonic-masculinity.md) - This week we race the track in an Isetta M, we clean our MacBook keyboard, we got a new wallpaper, we Agile all the Scrum Master out of Agile Grooming, put the nuclear plant in safe hands, squeeze ChatGPT into an TI-84, deliver pizza from the future, and scour the swamps.
- [Weekend Reading — Concept of a plan](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-concept-of-a-plan.md) - This week we play Tetris on our database server, learn BASIC again, upgrade to a Victorian iPad, avert the shoplifting crisis, turn HTML back to Markdown, replace the podcast bro with AI, get unlimited data for free, and throw baby Puffins off a cliff.
- [Weekend Reading — Human Slots Machine](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-human-slots-machine.md) - This week we learn a new Postgres trick, write JavaScript for MS-DOS, we answer phone calls on our washer, go big on monospace fonts, we teach you how to market, Rickroll our customers, name our wifi Stinky, and cross the street in the modern world, and vote for the Tara Iti.
- [Weekend Reading — Home office the way I like it](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-home-office-the-way-i-like-it.md) - This week we run a search through Postgres, wear our Mac on our wrist, font with the Z80, hyperfocus through this post, remember Quiznos, close the circle of grift, watch Cybertruck in its habitat, lay off our wizard, make way for the ostrich, and blow on our wine.
- [Weekend Reading — Florida clown](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-florida-clown.md) - This week we learn how to Zod, we draggy and swappy, we interview our internal customers, don’t get anything completed on time, lay off our energy healer, decode the ToS, guard our headphones, walk around with normal human items, and visit the Mullet state.
- [Weekend Reading — Very demure, very mindful](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-very-demure-very-mindful.md) - This week we get our dev docs offline, color the windows, guesstimate our credit score, sue an ice cream, honk like a self-driving car, experiment on a lion, cancel our Disney+ account, and reuse our unexpired N95 mask.
- [Weekend Reading — Momala and Popala](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-momala-and-popala.md) - This week we do a screen recording, restart WordStar, take our printer to space, play medieval tunes, sample the LLM, and watch out for the blow-nado.
- [Weekend Reading — Emotional support billionaires](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-emotional-support-billionaires.md) - This week we watch the olympics, make a todo list, propose new password rules, purchase a domain for > $1M, get an AI massage, shot with hand in pocket, save 100% by not buying anything, and measure our height in corgis.
- [Weekend Reading — 🥥🌴 Canadian Dogs](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-canadian-dogs.md) - This week Jupyter and Notion have a baby, we play mockup in the browser, we can’t talk much — fish in the car, we get to keep our cookies, we use an LLM to do math, and we embrace our childless cat lady hero!
- [Weekend Reading — Bumpy safety yellow](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-bumpy-safety-yellow.md) - This week we test a new test framework, get a smartwatch from 1984, become a pet psychic, use AI to get funnier, realize Cellebrite is not breaking into our iPhone, not fall in love with our first theory, drink Modelo Negra, and tour through an underground village.
- [Weekend Reading — Tactical Assault Shiba](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-tactical-assault-shiba.md) - This week we’re headed to the JSON station, we find a lighter and faster alternative to lodash, steal like an artists, generate better prompts than an Oath Keeper, discover Britain’s new ruler, and read the funniest Reddit story about cheese.
- [Weekend Reading — Gesturing wildly and in every direction](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-gesturing-wildly-and-in-every-direction.md) - This week we kick start the Slow Software Movement, CTRL+F the Spice Rack, walk over the kitchen table, slop the book, hide behind a tree, skip leg day, and hide under the weighted blanket.
- [Weekend Reading — Legally prohibited from complaining](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-legally-prohibited-from-complaining.md) - This week we write 200 lines of code, play breaker with the calendar, sprint plan our week with the spouse, teach Claude to SQL, blur the cat’s face, patch our Oreo cookies, and apologize for how hot it is.
- [Weekend Reading — Occam's shaving kit](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-occams-shaving-kit.md) - This week we work around our ErrorBoundary, ignore our \\TODO, write in Sans Bullshit Sans, pay $500/hour to dress the same as always, count succors borne every minute, and name a dinosaur after Loki.
- [Weekend Reading — Move slow and improve things](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-move-slow-and-improve-things.md) - This week we upgrade out clock, get a bumper sticker, practice the RTO of layoffs, convince HP to buy us for $25B, listen where we look, have a sad day indeed, enjoy spicy ramen, and ravel at the new defender.
- [Weekend Reading — Video should have been a blogpost](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-video-should-have-been-a-blogpost.md) - This week we get the Homebrew App Store, dump Bartender, get AI to do all our work, elect an LLM mayor, avoid using Windows 11, watch the Raven diagram, make tea in the tank, and travel in style.
- [Weekend Reading — All romes lead to roads](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-all-romes-lead-to-roads.md) - This week we get cranking on our indexes, keep our focus on iOS, change jobs on first day of the month, find the Google Search leaked documents, check our boss for signs of AI, twist our hands, and wear a kilt.
- [Weekend Reading — Don't give eeffoc](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-dont-give-eeffoc.md) - This week we turn web app into desktop app, discover a new tablet, stop chasing our dreams, review the new Google “No Intelligence” Search, Microsoft spying on you, OpenAI’s ties with News Corp, grieve over Kabosu, avoid Teslas, and scream out loud.
- [Weekend Reading — Objection-oriented programming](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-objection-oriented-programming.md) - This week we find a power-up box, replace GitHub Actions with Maven XMLs, avoid the worst website in the world, revisit RTO policies, “listen” to OpenAI employees, watch our Slack private messages, do laundry for free, and fall asleep to a YouTube video.
- [Weekend Reading — Stack over you](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-stack-over-you.md) - This week we remove gatekeepers from our CI, break a Guinness world record, redesign review ratings, understand the meaning behind “job requirements”, and level up.
- [Weekend Reading — May the fourth](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-may-the-fourth.md) - This week we setup our new Minecraft server, play Spacewar, avoid burnout, wonder about Facebook AI spam, lose our passkeys, and claim stairs on the way back home.
- [Weekend Reading — The Bob Ross of programming](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-the-bob-ross-of-programming.md) - This week we use coffee tasting as our design practice, get as close to and as far away from the metal as possible, find an easier way to write documentation, discover why Google Search is getting so bad, and why Siri was never good, keep our password secure, and enjoy the figures.
- [Weekend Reading — WD40 smells so delicious](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-wd40-smells-so-delicious.md) - This week we got a new incarnation of Norton Commander, the best flopping electric vehicle, a reason to keep everyone happy, conscious invertebrates, a 420 cat, and colorful eggs.
- [Weekend Reading — If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-if-you-enjoyed-this-episode-please-like-and-subscribe.md) - This week we have an app for managing group trips, and one for recommending and following podcasts, we’re unsure about the size of a minute, appreciate the new nutrition labels, have a lot of security and privacy issues to worry about, and wait for the next season Bluey.
- [Weekend Reading — Healthy living isn't available in your country](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-healthy-living-isnt-available-in-your-country.md) - This week we got a great app for hikers, a way to threaten our code, place to put our cursor, another story of a dying startup, some really bad tales about AI, a shirt to commemorate the earthquake, and some good news about COVID and bees.
- [Weekend Reading — Ctrl click back](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-ctrl-click-back.md) - This week we deploy a real-time server app, mute our keyboard, apply ethical social proof, run LLM on our computer, of all things in Excel, and uncover the most insidious backdoor.
- [Weekend Reading — Hurkle-Durkle](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-hurkle-durkle.md) - This week we play the songs of Vim, double performance every 2 years, draw a manual wheelchair properly, learn about the reality of a Silicon Valley Unicorn, discovery the uncanny history of AI, and change our toothbrushing routine.
- [Weekend Reading — The magic word](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-the-magic-word.md) - This week we got a UI for writing markup and securely reading emails, we avoid context switching, and seek out optimism, find our traffic sources, get more realistic about artificial intelligence, and read the new villain origin story.
- [Weekend Reading — Bill for unused domain names](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-bill-for-unused-domain-names.md) - This week we got tools for URLs and PDFs, a better search engine, semantic HTML, some ideas for running your business, reversed engineers prompts and biased AI, a honest password form, problematic aircrafts, and the best meme image.
- [Weekend Reading — That escalated quickly](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-that-escalated-quickly.md) - This week we discover new way to publish blogs and manage our tasks, stick to memory-safe programming languages, discover Japanese design show, improve developer experience, understand the difference between LLM and “next word completion”, and celebrate a billionaire that did the right thing!
- [Weekend Reading — Places where I've lost my glasses](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-places-where-ive-lost-my-glasses.md) - This week we catalog the risks we’re addressing, run Postgres in the browser, modernize our app using generative AI, learn about focus and ADHD, stop trusting product reviews from Google search, and keep the operating room free of cats.
- [Weekend Reading — The real luxuries](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-the-real-luxuries.md) - This week we over infrastructure decisions, plea for lean software, find some interesting productivity apps, remember good old Lander, meet the world’s most responsible AI model, revisit the World Economic Forum, and finish watching For All Mankind.
- [Weekend Reading — The Zoom meeting crowd](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-the-zoom-meeting-crowd.md) - This week we tally the most in-demand frontend frameworks, learn how to PDF using an iPhone and no 3rd party app, make luck and avoid the paradox of goals, and wish you a happy new year and a wonderful Valentine’s Day.
- [Weekend Reading — Put � in random text fields](https://labnotes.org/weekend-reading-put-in-random-text-fields.md) - This week we have some disappointing metrics from Copilot, revisit React, learn how to write a Git commit message, did you know about Font Variant Numeric?, speculate the fastest growing software sectors, watch sleeping cats, and play with bouncing balls.

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