I've always felt reassured analyzing code because, no matter how gnarly, I knew that at its heart that a human wrote it for some reason. You could figure out its intention. That assumption has been blasted away in the past few years, and I worry what we've lost due to code written without meaning.

What's the point of offering me the option to login via password (instead of by email) if you're just gonna make me verify my identity with an email anyways?

I'm enjoying the game, but I can't tell if Vampire Crawlers' UI is purposefully trolling me or just bad. There's a screen that shows which cards evolve with each other, but the *only* time you can't view that screen is when you're picking new cards - the *only time* you need a card combo reference.

Rumor has it that if GitHub is down for more than 15 minutes, you can leave work.

"Into the Spider-verse" is miles better than every other Spider-man movie.

If you're coming to Minnebar20, check out my talk, "what the fuck are passkeys and why are they everywhere now?" (Yes, that's the real session title; I'm excited for this one!) sessions.minnestar.org/sessions/1932

If you use spreadsheets and don't know what pivot tables are you are missing out my friend.

I recently got the game "Little Kitty, Big City". My cat is not a fan.

My bank is always imploring me never to share their one-time codes, but what if it's a really cool one, like 123456? Other people need to know.

The update of the beast!

Stupid bastard falls for it every time

I bought a Newton's cradle on Amazon. Amazon automatically sent me some tips on keeping my sleeping baby safe. Not that kind of "cradle", Amazon!

I keep fighting the same boss over and over again until I get good enough to beat them, but why don't they get better at beating me at the same time? It'd be a shitty game experience but it'd be unique if a boss adapted to your style at the same time as you adapted to theirs.

Instead of project post-mortems, my team runs celebration of life ceremonies.

When you no longer offer free delivery but don't want to pay for a new neon sign.

I asked a Jeopardy expert help. Her advice? "Question everything."

I'm joining the culture war, on the side of culture.

Give 110%? No thanks. That’ll reduce my battery life quickly. Living that slow charging, 80% limit lifestyle instead.

I'm at the Domino's. I'm at the gun store. I'm at the combination Domino's and gun store.

For the crime of donating to a political campaign, your punishment: one thousand years of spam emails & text messages.

Who needs a fidget toy when you could have safety pin + bent paperclip

Masterful juxtaposition between this Star Tribune's headline & accompanying photo.

Journalists, I beg of you: please stop confusing unsold eBay listings for actual sales.

Why are sensors on bathroom sinks so crappy, but the sensors on the paper towel dispensers flawless? How did the paper towel industry develop such technological lead over faucet manufacturers?

🎵The LoveSac is a little old place where we can sit together 🎵

Is there some sort of weird psych trick around these preset donation amounts...?

GitHub commit activity sweater

Saying "never meet your heroes" is like saying "never date; you could get your heart broken." True, but also, you could have a great time! I've met some of my heroes. They ranged from lovely to horrible, but I wouldn't give up the good experiences just to avoid the bad.

My Asus router's convenient list of "famous games", from the year of our lord 2025.

Some fun stories from the (mostly) innocent hacking I did on Displate's website. blog.danlew.net/2025/11/18/h...

Folks haven't been this excited about steam machines since the industrial revolution.

Random side project: Balatro's least erratic Erratic decks. blog.danlew.net/2025/11/03/b...

Finally wrote up this short post that's been on my mind forever, regarding audio problems in video calls: blog.danlew.net/2025/10/16/f...

Excited to start reading the latest book from my sister, @bethlewwilliams.bsky.social! (Maybe if I'm lucky I can get the author to sign a copy...)

I didn't wake up thinking I'd be explaining the Seven Bridges of Königsberg & graph theory to my 2nd grader, but you need it to solve this maze game in his school's math app. (You pick where you start, and every bridge disappears as you cross it, so it requires Euler's bridge analysis...)

I'm undeniably human! (Verified by this fantastic CAPTCHA game from @neal.fun: neal.fun/not-a-robot/)

When I was in philosophy, my professor would constantly use the phrase "you can't be a married bachelor". But I just learned one of my kid's friend's last name is Bachelor. Someday he might be married. Take that, college professor!

I'm surprised Silksong is getting such glowing reviews; it was released with a fuckton of bugs.

One way to test whether a candidate is a serious prospect for your company is to schedule an interview right when Silksong releases tomorrow.

Just realized that I've been confusing The Wiz (the anthemic black musical) with Return to Oz (the nightmarish Disney movie). I must've had at least one past conversation wherein I described how terrified I was of The Wiz as a kid (and they probably thought I was just wildly racist).

A recent episode of @getplayedpod.bsky.social brought up an ancient, defunct Sim City-themed CCG from the 90s. I was fascinated by the fact that it had "tall cards" so I picked some up (for cheap) on eBay. I thought I'd share some of the more bizarre/hilarious cards I got...

Beethoven once said that the Moonlight Sonata was like the Dark Souls of piano pieces.

For every day a programmer doesn't have a meeting, they gain 1X, up to a maximum of 10x. But if they attend a meeting, they lose all their Xs (and half of their gold).

I've been laid off! (Startup downsizing to a skeleton crew, sadly.) I'm looking for my next dev role. Lots of experience in Android, most recently worked on Node/TS and Python. Ideally landing at a mission-driven place (been focusing on sustainability recently, but any public benefit will do).

Everyone's obsessed about how many Xs (1x? 10X? .4X?) they can get out of an AI engineer, but by far the biggest impact devs can make to a timeline is by adjusting requirements to make a feature easier or even skipping facets altogether. AFAIK, AI never says "what you're asking for is ridiculous."

It's extremely inconvenient that you only get good at something after you've done it for a while. I'd prefer to be good at it from the start.

A not insignificant number of past coworkers think I created the "gradlew" script and named it after myself. (It's the "Gradle wrapper" script.)

I had 8 teeth removed when I was young, which means I have 8 fewer gaps to floss. Supposing flossing takes one second per gap, and I floss once a day, every year my missing teeth give me 48 minutes more free time. I started effectively flossing ~15 years ago - that adds up to 12 extra hours.

"The Turtle and the Hare" only it's "The Programmer and the Vibe Coder". The vibe coder is way ahead and decides to take a nap while the AI does its thing. While sleeping, the AI deletes the prod database.

I shouldn't be allowed to go on vacation and let my mind wander.