Michael Lynch

I've seen other people complain about unexpected side effects from Heroku's silent upgrades recently: x.com/jessethanley...

Migrating a ZFS pool from RAIDZ1 to RAIDZ2 How to migrate from RAIDZ1 to RAIDZ2 without a spare ZFS server or a boatload of extra disks.

I successfully migrated from a RAIDZ1 ZFS pool to RAIDZ2 without a spare ZFS server or external storage. It was a bumpy ride and involved some neat hacks, but I moved all 18 TB of my data successfully.

FWIW, that guy actually does know his stuff. When hackers ransomwared my paperback copy of Moby Dick, he helped me using his expertise in novel malware.

Underused Techniques for Effective Emails For software developers, there's tremendous value in writing effective emails. Good emails save time, reduce misunderstandings, and earn recognition from upper management.You can drastically improve y...

Writing emails is a bit like driving in that everyone assumes they're above average at it, but nobody thinks critically about how to grow their skills. I wrote about the techniques I wish more developers knew for writing effective emails. refactoringenglish.com/chapters/tec...

Okay, better now weeks.mtlynch.io/2025-07-11/

This is my first weekly update on my simpler weekly update site (looks like I need to improve the social sharing) weeks.mtlynch.io/2025-07-11/

I'm shutting down What Got Done, my free weekly status update app. The source remains available, and I've added tools for exporting/migrating your data. Thanks to everyone who tried the app over the years! www.whatgotdone.com/shutdown-not...

Grok: searching X for “from:elonmusk (Israel OR Palestine OR Hamas OR Gaza)” If you ask the new Grok 4 for opinions on controversial questions, it will sometimes run a search to find out Elon Musk’s stance before providing you with an answer. …

@simonwillison.net wrote about this today: simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/11/...

June was my most productive writing month ever, but now I'm trying to avoid juggling too many tasks at once. mtlynch.io/retrospectiv...

A release announcement should never include the phrase, "various improvements and bugfixes." You might as well boast that the team proudly breathed air throughout development and used the latest version of the Internet. If you can't articulate how a change benefits your users, don't highlight it in your release announcement. Save the exhaustive list of changes for your release notes, but even there, please leave out "various improvements and bugfixes." — Michael Lynch

A quote from Refactoring English made it to LWN's development quote of the week. lwn.net/Articles/102...

Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos in your camera roll you haven't yet shared | TechCrunch By clicking "Allow," you'll let Facebook generate new ideas from your camera roll, like collages, recaps, AI restylings, or photo themes.

🕵️‍♂️ Maybe you should read the privacy policy: Meta now asks to scan your unshared photos to train its AI - tucked away in the fine print.

📰 TechCrunch article by @sarahp.bsky.social
techcrunch.com/2025/06/27/f...

At @zeitkapsl.eu, we keep things simple: 🔐 #E2EE.
Read ours: 👉 zeitkapsl.eu/en/privacy

goHardDrive Leaked Personal Data for Thousands of Customers How goHardDrive exposed tens of thousands of customer records to anyone with a web browser.

I recently returned two dead hard drives to a merchant and was surprised to discover that they'd accidentally published my home address, email, and order details, along with every other customer who'd returned defective merchandise.

You guys do a great job with the release announcements! I had such a hard time finding a good open-source project to feature as an example of doing it well, so I was so glad to find Gleam's announcements.

How to Write Compelling Software Release Announcements Effective writing for software developers

So many release announcements just enumerate new features without connecting them to real use cases, essentially just a fancy changelog. A good release announcement should excite users. And it should NEVER include the phrase "various bugfixes and improvements." refactoringenglish.com/chapters/rel...

I'm trying to learn a new programming language that's significantly different from other languages I know, so here are my notes from my first few hours working with Gleam mtlynch.io/notes/gleam-...

Gergely I appreciate your work but it diminishes your credibility to omit the fact that you believed the incorrect story and further propagated it. It's good that you corrected it, but it's dishonest to leave yourself out of the article about who spread this false story.

Tracking Personal Finances using Python 🐍 Learn double-entry bookkeeping with Python. Build a plaintext accounting system using Beancount in this comprehensive book for software developers.

Finally, after a few weeks of work (evenings and weekends), personalfinancespython.com has been updated to reference Beancount 3!

I also took this chance to freshen up the book's cover as well as the website. The git diff shows over 10k changes, making it a significant update.

#buildinpublic

Are you talking about code reviews on Github? I used CodeApprove and found it a way better code review experience than Github. The flagship feature is that it defaults to diffs since your last review (rather than GH just show everything), but I believe they also support file-level comments

Based on this CO2 graph, can you guess the point in the weekend I was playing with dry ice?

Whoa! Is it a lot of simple find/replace or is there that much churn?

Screenshot of a Github PR with the title "Update book to reference Beancount 3", showing 46 commits, 70 files changes, 5537 additions, and 5381 deletions

Just finished updating the contents of personalfinancespython.com to use Beancount 3, and the git diff is sitting at over 10,000 changes 😅

I'm experimenting with the Gleam programming language @gleam.run. One of its features is that it can call Elixir libraries, but I couldn't find any examples, so I wrote my own. mtlynch.io/notes/gleam-...

Ghost doesn't generate static HTML, does it? I thought it's still pulling from a database and generating the HTML in response to HTTP requests like WP does.

Can you make a dedicated NFS share for malware, make the NFS read-only, and write new files via SSH/rsync? Not as convenient as a regular rw share but it will prevent accidental deletion

May 2025 Retrospective: Educational Products: Month 8 I just need to focus for one hour per day.

In my May retrospective, I discovered that giving myself more time limits in my writing has helped me publish more and focus better. mtlynch.io/retrospectiv...

In fact, it’s so rare for a book to deliver on its promise that readers will adore you for doing just that one thing. I’ve heard plenty of people recommend a messy-but-effective book by saying: Listen, it’s terribly written and full of typos and has a cover that appears to have been drawn by a distracted toddler, but it’s got something inside that’s just too important to miss. It’s going to change your life. You’ve got to read it. Trust me. But I’ve never heard even a single person recommend a problem-solver with the inverse argument of: This book is a real zero-impact way to spend thirteen dollars and three hours. But you can tell that the author is super smart, the cover is gorgeous, and there’s not even a single typo. You’re going to love it.

One of my favorite pieces of advice about writing educational books and products comes from Write Useful Books by Rob Fitzpatrick.

I've been donating to IA monthly since 2022, so I support the project, but I was just curious about the importance of this particular collection.

For people out of the loop, why is Mark Pines' media so interesting/valuable? I looked at a few of the videos, and I admit I don't really recognize what's notable about them.

Oh, I'm surprised. I've only heard bad things about iOS/MacOS development. Are SwiftUI dev tools available outside of MacOS?

I'm looking for a new programming language to learn. I want something that will frighten and confuse me as a Go/Python/C++ programmer. Must treat web apps as first-class citizens and be friendly for making simple CRUD apps. Bonus for static typing. mtlynch.io/notes/which-...