Robin Osborne

The Great Software Quality Collapse: How We Normalized Catastrophe The Apple Calculator leaked 32GB of RAM.

The Great Software Quality Collapse: How We Normalized Catastrophe

(aka, ship slow, build well, hire juniors and let them learn by making lots of small mistakes)

techtrenches.substack.com/p/the-great-...

Using Local LLMs to Automatically Simulate APIs in ASP.NET Core MimimalAPI (English) Scott Galloway is a lead developer and software engineer with a passion for building web applications.

www.mostlylucid.net/blog/llmapi

This is a pretty clever use for a local LLM in aiding development

Playing Music Roulette with an ancient harddrive that I've networked up via a raspberryPi: luckily this one is New Order, including Blue Monday!

Less than a month to go to get your ticket and join us on November 14th.

Line up is solid, inspiration assured, and an amazing day just waiting for us all.

Join us: 2025.ffconf.org

GitHub - jmsdnns/webbol: A minimal static web server written in COBOL A minimal static web server written in COBOL. Contribute to jmsdnns/webbol development by creating an account on GitHub.

A minimal static web server WRITTEN IN COBOL

github.com/jmsdnns/webbol

Incredible. And honestly, the comments in the code is helping me understand the huge COBOL codebase I'm having to help migrate right now...

How on Earth did Immortals: Fenyx Rising not become a total smash when released? It's fantastic! I realise it was overshadowed by Breath of The Wild, but it's like the Arcade Version of BoTW, with great humour and exploding with Greek mythology. Fave game of the moment, for sure.

Everyone going nuts over Model Context Protocol (MCP) for building an LLM-friendly interface to your API, and I'm just thinking about how much easier it was to build coffeescript API abstractions for Hubot backintheday...

npm Author Qix Compromised via Phishing Email in Major Supply Chain Attack
socket.dev/blog/npm-aut...

Oof... Reminds us of the importance of vulnerability scanning in the CI pipeline, and how bizarre it is to blindly rely on random people's code

A proposal for inline LLM instructions in HTML based on llms.txt - Vercel llms.txt is an emerging standard for making content such as docs available for direct consumption by AIs. We’re proposing a convention to include such content directly in HTML responses.

A proposal for inline LLM instructions in HTML vercel.com/blog/a-propo...

Something I hadn't considered: adding helpful instructions specifically for metal-based users into HTML, without affecting meat-based users.

Getting Creative With Images in Long-Form Content | CSS-Tricks Images in long-form content can (and often should) do more than illustrate. They help set the pace, influence how readers feel, and add character that words alone can’t always convey.

Getting Creative With Images in Long-Form Content css-tricks.com/getting-crea...

Some nice examples of how to make your content more interesting to read (note too self: ease up on the text-heavy articles.. 😬)

Google Chrome at 17 - A history of our browser Chrome turns 17 this week, and it feels like a good time to reflect on how far we have come in terms of Chromes guiding principles

Google Chrome at 17 - A history of our browser addyosmani.com/blog/chrome-...

A great article to celebrate the history of the Chrome browser, which I remember totally changing my browsing experience backintheday. I hadn't appreciated how it impacted other browser development too!

My eldest is starting 6th Form, and I'm very much enjoying seeing her A Level Computer Science work, as it's helping me remember Python 😁

(My CompSci A Level was using Turbo Pascal! Anyone remember that?!)

Current middle class annoyance: ITV's coverage of the Women's Euros, referring to it as "the Women's Euro's, *twenny twenny* five".

Twenny.

(After I've spent the last decade or so attempting to correct my children, now "it's on TV, in an announcement, so it must be ok")

*apparently epic

Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath frontman and icon of British heavy metal, dies aged 76 The singer, who later became famous on reality TV show The Osbournes, dies less than three weeks after retirement concert

Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath frontman and icon of British heavy metal, dies aged 76
www.theguardian.com/music/2025/j...

At least he got the, statement epic, Sabbath reunion done . 🥹

🖤🤘🏻

Scientists reportedly hiding AI text prompts in academic papers to receive positive peer reviews Research papers found carrying hidden white text giving instructions not to highlight negatives as concern grows over use of large language models for peer review

Scientists reportedly hiding AI text prompts in academic papers to receive positive peer reviews
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Hahahahahahahhaaaa

I saw a comment somewhere a while ago that said using AI to write your work is like sending a robot to the gym for you and expecting to see results. The essay isn’t the point. Writing the essay is.

CDs Are Cutting-Edge Tech Once More Aaed Musa built a wrist-mounted launcher for Mini CDs that fires 5 discs per second for some real-life Fruit Ninja fun.

CDs Are Cutting-Edge Tech Once More

Google demos Android XR smart glasses with Gemini AI, visual memory, and multilingual capabilities Until now, Google's Android XR glasses had only appeared in carefully curated teaser videos and limited hands-on previews shared with select publications. These early glimpses hinted at...

Google demos Android XR smart glasses with Gemini AI, visual memory, and multilingual capabilities

As per usual, the one day of the year when people are slightly more hesitant to believe what they read online, instead of being constantly critical of the crap random people put out there.

Woe betide any company releasing something REAL and interesting today..

Another way to ensure markup is streamed to the browser quickly is to rely on static rendering which generates HTML files during build time. With the full file available immediately, web servers can start sending the file immediately and the inherent nature of HTTP will result in streaming markup. While this approach isn't suitable for every page on every website—such as those requiring a dynamic response as part of the user experience—it can be beneficial for those pages that don't require markup to be personalized to a specific user.

You always gotta push it Zach! 😁

How about this?:
web.dev/articles/opt...

Black, upright, rotary phone, looks like it's from the mid 1900s. Coin slot at the bottom. Front view.

The back of the rotary phone shows a stumpy bottle of whiskey hidden inside

Whiskey fan? Like, *really* a fan? He's some dangerous news: a whiskey auction just started today.. 😬

https://whisky.auction/auctions/preview

Loving this rotary phone one!

I have no idea why anyone pays for AI... Just go ask any "helpful" assistant on any website these days.

Current frustration: websites developers that don't understand the EU cookie policy, so hitting "decline" doesn't write a cookie saying "a choice has been made, don't ask again", meaning the cookie overlay appears on every page, every time...

What's the solution? I'm looking at courses to learn "front-end" again, but they're all React or similar. What is it I'm really trying to achieve?

Maybe it's just getting good with "current CSS" and general design.. hmm.. forget js, yeah...

Once again I find a random website offering a random SaaS solution that I could build no problem, only to remember I haven't really done front-end for a lot of years and I hate js frameworks with a passion.

is it good or bad that a billionaire oligarch with close ties to foreign dictators is currently downloading the most sensitive information the us federal government has about its citizens to his own private servers?

The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML I've told this story at conferences - but due to the general situation I thought I'd retell it here. A few years ago I was doing policy research in a housing benefits office in London. They are singul...

Here's a story about why it is vital to ensure that basic services work for *everybody*.

shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01...

wikipedia is aggressively centrist - NPOV requires centrism - and it was founded by a libertarian.

but if these fuckwits are determined to have a fight on the question of facts being facts, they're getting one.