Mark Finkle
@mfinkle.bsky.social
đ€ 159
đ„ 74
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Technology curmudgeon
https://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/
https://mastodon.cloud/@mfinkle
I didn't check to see if
@siracusa.social
was named in the article
about 1 month ago
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Random weird thing: Apple Pay is only a direct payment option in Starbucks app without an account. When you create your account the option disappears... and the experience gets worse. I deleted the account
about 1 month ago
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I can't imagine AOL employees are happy about this outcome
add a skeleton here at some point
about 2 months ago
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Mark Finkle
Dare Obasanjo
about 2 months ago
Hard to imagine how the government being shut down could be much worse than the government weâve had over the past 9 months.
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Gareth Watkins
about 2 months ago
Dam been writing a book about this and she just TikToked it in 90 seconds.
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Katie Martin
about 2 months ago
đ "the US experience is peculiar. Young Euro area workers have record low unemployment. In the UK, the young personsâ unemployment rate has fallen steadily. Employment by young Japanese workers is near all-time highs. It seems implausible that AI uniquely hurts the prospects of younger US workers."
add a skeleton here at some point
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Mark Finkle
Mar
2 months ago
Amazing how those democratic lawmakers who were hunted down in their homes in the middle of the night in Minnesota werenât a watershed moment of political violence, huh?
add a skeleton here at some point
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Merriam-Webster
3 months ago
enshittification | noun | when a digital platform is made worse for users, in order to increase profits
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I'm concerned that my first thought was: Does
@siracusa.social
know about this?
add a skeleton here at some point
3 months ago
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Mark Finkle
Paul Kinlan
4 months ago
For 20 years Mozilla has developed one of the most useful tools for web devs.
developer.mozilla.org/en-US/blog/m...
Congrats to the MDN team on an awesome milestone. I'm happy that we've played a small part in its history and I'm excited to see it continue to be at the core of every web dev's job.
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Celebrating 20 years of MDN | MDN Blog
MDN turns 20! Let's look at how we started, how MDN became the most trusted resource for web developers, the impact it's had on the open web, and yes, there's cake, too.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/blog/mdn-turns-20/
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Pre-sleep thought: My hotel room has a mini-fridge, empty, but running. Opportunity for removing mini-fridges to save energy? Or at least make a smarter mini-fridge?
4 months ago
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Seen in Slack: it is working due to a litany of absolute HACKS! One person's hacks is another person's temporary fix
4 months ago
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Mark Finkle
Dare Obasanjo
5 months ago
Congratulations to Figma for filing for an IPO. Regulators blocking the Adobe deal must have felt bad in the moment but this is a better outcome. Stay independent and get rich on your own terms.
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Figma files for IPO on NYSE, plans to 'take big swings' with acquisitions
Figma filed its IPO prospectus on Tuesday, as the design software vendor looks to raise money and awareness to take on Adobe.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/01/figma-fig-files-for-ipo-as-tech-debuts-gain-steam.html
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Dare Obasanjo
5 months ago
"We're all going to die anyway" - Ancient Republican Proverb
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E.P.A. Plans to Reconsider a Ban on Cancer-Causing Asbestos
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/us/epa-trump-asbestos-ban-delay.html?smid=bs-share
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What reason could I possibly have to use such a browser?
techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/p...
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Perplexity CEO says its browser will track everything users do online to sell 'hyper personalized' ads | TechCrunch
Perplexity is building its own browser is to collect data on everything users do outside of its own app to sell ads.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-browser-will-track-everything-users-do-online-to-sell-hyper-personalized-ads/
7 months ago
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Google released Agent Development Kit, a framework for building agent workflows with everything we expect from an agent frameworks. I recreated my ToolAgent quasi-framework using ADK. I could expose my mock tools, add ReAct planning, and switch between different LLMs. It worked out really well. đ
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Exploring LLMs as Agents: Google Agent Dev Kit
Up to this point, I have been experimenting with my own home-grown agent framework, based on Simon Willisonâs great LLM project to handle wrapping the different LLMs. Armed with some experienâŠ
https://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/04/exploring-llms-as-agents-google-agent-dev-kit/
7 months ago
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I finally got around to exploring local LLMs. It was easier to set up than I expected. I tired a few different models of different sizes. The smaller ones didn't have enough "reasoning" ability to work as agents, but the larger ones did a pretty good job.
starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/04...
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Exploring LLMs as Agents: Local Models
I finally got around to exploring local models, which is surprisingly simple to set up. I wanted to see how well a local model would perform in ToolAgent compared to the remote models (mostly GeminâŠ
https://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/04/exploring-llms-as-agents-local-models/
7 months ago
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I took some time to experiment with MCP Client and Servers. I converted my ToolProvider system to become an MCP Server and made an MCP Client from my ToolAgent. I use zero dependencies on other frameworks, just to see how the protocol works.
starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/03...
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Exploring LLMs as Agents: Model Context Protocol
I will likely run out of topics to cover in the âLLMs as Agentsâ series, eventually. I wanted to explore creating a chat UI and what I could do with embeddings but I didnât do thaâŠ
https://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/03/exploring-llms-as-agents-model-context-protocol/
8 months ago
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This is pretty interesting. After building something similar (WebAgent), I can understand what the code is doing. I also exposed Playwright as "tools", but I didn't realize Playwright has a a11y snapshot feature to get a reduced set of elements. Very handy.
starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/03...
add a skeleton here at some point
8 months ago
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With the new ToolAgent framework, I refactored my web automation agent into WebAgent. The Playwright-based automation actions are now tools used by the agent. I had to stop sending the entire HTML content of the page to the LLM đ±
starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/03...
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Exploring LLMs as Agents: WebAgent Gets a Refactor
My fifth post on LLMs as Agents. I just itâs a series now. After refactoring ToolAgent, I decided to do the same with WebAgent, building it on the ToolAgent system. For more context and a refâŠ
https://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/03/exploring-llms-as-agents-webagent-gets-a-refactor/
8 months ago
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I'm still exploring ("playing") with using LLMs as Agents. I refactored the code into a tiny framework. Have I become that which I wanted to avoid? Maybe đ« More tools and a benchmark system allowed me to really improve the agent success outcomes.
starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/03...
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Exploring LLMs as Agents: Tools & Benchmarking
I spent some time refactoring the Tool Agent code, added some additional mock tools and even some basic benchmarking. For more context, checkout the previous posts: Minimalist Approach: I kicked ofâŠ
https://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/03/exploring-llms-as-agents-tools-benchmarking/
8 months ago
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Mark Finkle
Craig Silverman
8 months ago
BREAKING: The head of the $42 billion federal BEAD program that aims to bring broadband internet to rural and unserved areas has left the Commerce Dept. He sent a departing email warning of "deeply negative outcomes" for people if the Trump admin shifts $$ from fiber internet to Musk's Starlink:
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I spent some time adding "planning and reasoning" improvements to my LLMs as Agents project. I introduced a "Reasoning & Action" (ReAct) strategy that allows the LLM to "think out loud" and improve its outcomes.
starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/03...
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Exploring LLMs as Agents: Planning via Prompting
My exploration of how to use LLMs as Agents continues. In this post, Iâm looking at ways to improve the outcomes by using better approaches to planning. For more context, checkout the previouâŠ
https://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/03/exploring-llms-as-agents-planning-via-prompting/
8 months ago
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I finally updated my Apple Watch from a Series 1 to a Series 10. Other than short battery life, the Series 1 was working fine. I am looking forward to the extra features of the Series 10.
8 months ago
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Mark Finkle
Dexter Gramfors
9 months ago
Great breakdown of how the "WoeMeter" from the latest Severance episode was built:
make3.co/work/woemeter
@adafruit.com
ESP32-S3 Feather spotted!
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Continuing my exploration of using LLMs as agents. I spent some time adding a read/write set of tools to tool_agent. I used appointment booking as the scenario. It worked better than I thought. Checkout some of the interesting exchanges and the updated code.
starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/03...
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Exploring LLMs as Agents: Taking Action
Iâm still exploring how to use LLMs to build agents. In the first post, I described some of the motivation and approach. I started working on two agents: web_agent: A basic agent that completâŠ
https://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/03/exploring-llms-as-agents-taking-action/
9 months ago
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I wanted to get some hands-on experience trying to use LLMs as agents, so I started working on some very simple examples. Simple, bare-bones prototypes help me get a better understanding of what's happening. I use
@simonwillison.net
LLM library and Playwright.
starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/03...
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Exploring LLMs as Agents: A Minimalist Approach
Large Language Models (LLMs) are powerful tools for generating text, answering questions, and coding. Weâve moved beyond generating content, and LLMs are now being used to take actions as ageâŠ
https://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2025/03/exploring-llms-as-agents-a-minimalist-approach/
9 months ago
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Really hope I get to use "marshmallows are for team players" sometime
9 months ago
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"Green Lantern: Extended Cut" is on HBO Max and I'm honestly tempted
10 months ago
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Mark Finkle
Sarah Drasner
10 months ago
âYou canât be a performance expert without also being an images expertâ A quote that has been living rent free in my head for years, thanks to
@gri.gs
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Dare Obasanjo
10 months ago
Unprecedented. The Sonos app update that customers have been complaining about for months has led to the CEO resigning because âthey let far too many people down.â Heâs being replaced by Tom Conrad, founder of Pandora and former head of product for Snap and Quibi.
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Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is leaving following bungled app update | TechCrunch
Speaker manufacturer Sonos is seeing some significant changes. Patrick Spence, the companyâs chief executive officer (pictured above), is leaving the
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/13/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-is-leaving-following-app-update-disaster/
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After playing around with ATTiny85 and getting I2C working, I made some simple PCBs to make prototypes easier.
11 months ago
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Preparing for a drive to Toronto. Spending a few days at HQ. (as long as the weather allows)
11 months ago
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Mark Finkle
adafruit
11 months ago
Dropped some đ„ new gear! Sleek panel-mount USB-C, MicroSD, and DC connectors, plus sewable power jacks for your builds. Vibrant 1.14" Color TFT Displayâabsolute vibes for your next project. Level up! Go get some! đâš
www.adafruit.com/new
#electronics
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Gian-Carlo Pascutto
11 months ago
My talk at FOSDEM got accepted! Join me in the Mozilla devroom on Sunday Feb 2nd, 15h00 to hear about crash reporting and analysis: "The most fun you'll ever have dealing with Firefox crashes"
fosdem.org/2025/schedul...
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FOSDEM 2025 - Mozilla
https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/track/mozilla/
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Weekend fun: Trying to use I2C to connect an ATTiny85 to an 128x64 OLED or 16x2 LCD and failing miserably.
11 months ago
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Mark Finkle
dietrich
12 months ago
wild, the Webview CG stood up a version of Caniuse for webviews called Caniwebview. even has Baseline and Web Features support!
caniwebview.com/news/2024-10...
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Can I WebViewâŠ
Baseline for WebViews now supported
https://caniwebview.com/news/2024-10-18-WebFeatures/
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I was playing around with 3d printing "suspended" objects using "strings", and it was trickier than I expected. Thankfully I found a short Tinkercad tutorial.
12 months ago
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