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Kevin Roose • @kevinroose 18h Claude Code is so good. I built a Pocket clone over the break and it kept adding new features (TTS read-alouds, video summaries, spaced repetition emails, Kindle sync, etc.) and now I have a perfect external brain? From like 12 prompts? How does any app developer survive this? • 87 17 28 ° 1,111 ll 156,041 Alex Heath @alexeheath You're not gonna gatekeep this, right? 1 17 13 Ill 8,237 17h Kevin Roose • @kevinroose I have to, adding multiple user auth was annoying (but I promise you the prompt was extremely basic) 3 17 24 H 7,274 17h Alex Heath C @alexeheath Share it 3 17 • 19 hil 3,034 17h Kevin Roose @kevinroose ok here it is, i am really not good at prompting 11h 3 17 35 Il 20,487 Kevin Roose @kevinroose and 16 prompts later (some of which were just like "yesssss claude keep going") here we are slash • All Saves All Saves D Aticies - Kindi 11h ine ai revolution is nere. will the economy survive the transition? This new app wants to help prose-loving journalists 2025 in Review: Jagged Intelligence Becomes a Fault Line Looking back on 2025, the incredible pace of Al is stunnin 2025 Year in Review Jan 10, 2026 • 4:45 AM UTC 4 17 43 Ill 2,465

As a software developer who spends his days building a link-saving app and his nights telling everyone that in the very near future people will be able to easily build their own software to solve their personal problems — this is my existential crisis coming to life.

a variation of the "we should improve society somewhat." vs "yet you participate in society. very curious! i am very intelligent." sketch with the heckler's quotes replaced by the xkcd standards comic

yes, always have been

oops I missed the outage, I was too busy writing in Obsidian

The reality of offering “unlimited” plans for any service where the provider has costs based on usage.

There will always be users who abuse it in ways the provider doesn’t expect it (at least at first).

For AI, generating tokens costs $$. So “unlimited” is either subsidized or removed:

I would love to automate this setup at some point. Right now, it works fine for me.

I consider articles above 2500 words (>10min reading time) to be worth transferring to my Kindle for a more comfortable reading experience.

Desktop app "Calibre" is open, showing a list of articles by Gergely Orosz.

3. calibre. Converts HTML articles into ebooks. Can edit metadata, generate a nice cover, and transfer to the Kindle. The reading experience is native-like, like reading an EPUB or a MOBI ebook. Images and links still work in the converted ebook articles.

calibre-ebook.com

Pandoc stylesheet for Kindle-compatible HTML articles Pandoc stylesheet for Kindle-compatible HTML articles - kindle-styles.css

I also apply some custom styles because quote blocks turn out wrong with the default styles.

gist.github.com/ddanielgal/8...

Pandoc script to fix links in articles downloaded with MarkDownload Pandoc script to fix links in articles downloaded with MarkDownload - fix_links.lua

I run a lua filter script with pandoc to counteract some of MarkDownload's wrong formatting around links and quoted images.

gist.github.com/ddanielgal/a...

Terminal emulator showing command: pandoc --css=kindle-styles.css --lua-filter=fix_links.lua -s --embed-resources "article.md" -o "article.html"

2. pandoc. Converts markdown articles to HTML. Downloads and embeds images as base64 strings into the document. Can add post-processing and styles.

pandoc.org

GitHub - deathau/markdownload: A Firefox and Google Chrome extension to clip websites and download them into a readable markdown file. A Firefox and Google Chrome extension to clip websites and download them into a readable markdown file. - deathau/markdownload

1. Markdownload. Browser extension to save any web article as markdown.

github.com/deathau/mark...

I like to read tech articles on my Kindle. I recently simplified my blog-to-kindle pipeline. All I need is a browser extension, a command, and a desktop app. All free and open source.

People on this app get really angry every time I point out that social media manipulation is a real phenomenon that we are all stewing in and that’s having real world consequences and I’m sure part of that is engagement farmers who do that manipulation not liking people talking about it

Can't recommend this enough - algorithms were always pitched as a means of giving us a personalised, customized and "curated" feed but have quickly become a way to take away any control over experiences that the algorithm now hyper-monetizes

YouTube video by penguinz0 Stop Killing Games

I don't have much skin in this game (heh), but it seems like Stop Killing Games would be a good initiative to back if you're in the EU (see youtube.com/watch?v=6sJp...).

The next big step I think all of us have to start considering... is a shift back to forums as a community hub

there's a few right now that are going that I'm a part of, but they aren't really the art/design community I wish I had. With the resurgence of geocities web 1.0 type stuff, maybe??

Most of the time, boolean props on react components are a bad idea. They don't evolve well. More boolean props create impossible states and the component becomes a "thing" that does way too much.

Go for string literal union types and slot props (composition) more often than not.

Bluesky is most definitely alive and kicking CEO Jay Graber says the days of winner-take-all social networking are over. Thank heavens she’s right.

Bluesky CEO @jay.bsky.team is right, we need to stop thinking of social media as a zero-sum game that platforms are “winning” or “losing.”

Why not measure friendships, or genuine connection? We need to rethink what we value in our online tools for socializing.

Amusing how X is dying a long and prolonged death 2.5 years after letting go 80%+ of the team and parts of the site die without devs even noticing

And how Bluesky keeps working… with a tiny but focused eng team.

Bullish on Bluesky, bearish on X (where my DMs no longer work ha)

After 15 straight years of being the prime minister of Hungary, Orban's popularity has nosedived thanks to the economy tanking. He is looking to lose power in 2026.

His solution: a Russia-style crackdown to ban the remainder of the free press and the most popular political party

why pay $30/month for streaming services when you can just buy $500 of hardware and maintain a media server at home

With regard to LLMs and what they can actually do I recommend literally two people - @simonwillison.net and @minimaxir.bsky.social. Real ones that know their stuff about the actual things these models can do and not hype focused at all

I’m tired of hearing the “AI is killing tech jobs” narrative. Here is data on “top” tech companies and startups hiring.

The last 2 years (since GenAI went mainstream and AI coding tools evolved greatly) we’re seeing more hiring from them. Below the pandemic peak ofc

how I download youtube videos for @jellyfin.bsky.social:

github.com/ddanielgal/ytdl

A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die.

Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.

This unprecedented concentration of power - through politics, capital, and platforms too - creates ripple effects that once took institutions decades to achieve, turning what was once progressive, constructive change into tidal waves of chaos. The decisions of a few now shape the future for all. 1/7

Bluesky CEO: imagine a 'world without Caesars' Jay Graber dunks on Mark Zuckerberg without mentioning his name.

the feminine urge to

Most of what we call "tech" is about getting the right information into a database and trying to prevent the wrong person from reading or updating it.