This is me at least once a week, Joe.

There’s been a lot of sickness in our house this winter. Managing it is a balance between being a parent and also appreciating that SciShow Kids is educational and magical when it’s on headphones… and trying to find work that’s okay to interrupt because I don’t know when the next interruption is. Or when my 6 year old is just content to read by himself for an hour and something I needed to do actually got done.

It’s always nice to see your posts. Hopefully I’ll see you again at a Ruby conference in the future.

Take care!

Ben
cloudbreak.app

Last week, I saw three different tools for cramming entire codebases into a single text file. Nobody was asking for this. But sometimes you just need to feed your whole project to Claude and think “you know what would make this easier?”

Source: The Great Flood of Adequate Software

You know, it’s funny. I’ve found AI generated code to be needlessly verbose more often than not. Even the above example is probably just a find command like this:

find . -name '*.rb' -type f -exec awk 'FNR==1{print "--- " FILENAME " ---"} 1' {} \; > out.txt

That’s half AI generated and half human generated. And that’s the point. I know these tools and what I can do with them. It’s often still faster to know what I’m doing. On the other hand, If I asked any AI for something like this in English, it would probably spit out a 200 line Python program that does a bunch of error handling and tree traversal. And is that okay? Sometimes. Very often it’s just “okay, good enough” (adequate). However, it can lead to massive codebases if not done well. So, there’s a line. And you need to have experience to know where the line is.

So yeah, I’ve generated tons of adequate code and just said “meh” and gone with it. And other times? Well, when it’s important it requires more attention because the AI just did something very stupid.

It’s a great thing that it’s easy to generate lots of code that would have taken weeks in years past. That said, lots of code is often not the right solution. If you lean on the AI for everything without understanding, it’s going to take you down the wrong path eventually. I’m wary of anyone who says otherwise.

Known issue: if the chat name isn’t on the screen, it uses the name of the first chat instead. It turns out Gemini doesn’t even know the name of the chat on the screen until scrolling down to it in the history (check the top of the screen to see what I mean). I’m opting to ignore the issue until Google improves the situation.

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Google Gemini Tab Renamer
// @namespace    https://benjaminoakes.com/
// @version      1.0
// @description  Sets tab title to the title of the selected chat
// @author       Benjamin Oakes
// @license      CC0-1.0
// @match        https://gemini.google.com/*
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';

    function syncTitle() {
        const targetElement = document.querySelector('.conversation-title');

        if (targetElement && targetElement.innerText.trim().length > 0) {
            const newTitle = targetElement.innerText.trim();

            if (document.title !== newTitle) {
                document.title = newTitle;
            }
        }
    }

    setInterval(syncTitle, 1000);
})();

A comprehensive guide to using .localhost domains for better local development environments.

Source: Better local development with .localhost subdomains

Toy Story was a transitional project. Since Pixar couldnt send digital data to theaters, every one of the movies frames was printed on analog film. When Toy Story originally hit home video, that 35 mm version was its source. Only years later, after technology advanced, did Pixar start doing digital transfers - - cutting out the middleman. And Toy Storys look changed with the era.

Source: The ‘Toy Story’ You Remember - by Animation Obsessive Staff

Here’s an LLM summary that matches my understanding:

Chat Control is an EU legislative proposal to mandate detection and reporting of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online, including requiring clientside scanning for endtoend encrypted services and creating an EU centre to coordinate reports. Critics warn it undermines privacy and encryption, risks false positives and centralisation harms, and its effectiveness and legal proportionality remain hotly disputed.

Germany is trying to stop it now, as people were pushing for. Update from yesterday: German government comes out against Chat Control

Nothing like this in the US yet, but we shouldn’t get complacent.

Android and Chrome OS have been developed in parallel for years, but Google is planning to streamline its operating systems. In a recent interview, Android Ecosystem President Sameer Samat stated bluntly that Android and Chrome OS are merging. This shift, a long time in the making, could give Google more room to maneuver as it plans for new mobile computing experiences.

Source: Chrome OS is “combining” with Android, but what does that mean? - Ars Technica

I want my Android phone to be more like ChromeOS, and I don’t think that’s what they plan.

In a somewhat anticipated move, Belkin is killing most of its smart home products. On January 31, the company will stop supporting the majority of its Wemo devices, leaving users without core functionality and future updates.

Source: Belkin shows tech firms getting too comfortable with bricking customers stuff

From what I can tell:

Wemo smart plugs will stop working in Google Home and the official Wemo app on January 31st, 2026. The company that makes it (Belkin) doesn’t want to support it anymore, probably because they want people to buy new ones.

The good news is that it should (?) keep working in Home Assistant indefinitely. In fact, that would seem to be the only way older Wemo devices will work anymore. This is because it can work only over Wi-Fi, but I guess they don’t do that for the official way of making it work. It’s not clear if you can still set up Wi-Fi on newly obtained devices.

Thank goodness for the people who made Home Assistant.

Am I suggesting Mozilla entirely pivot to this business model overnight? Of course not. But at least give us the option. Run an experiment. Publish a version of Firefox with no sponsored content, no telemetry, no Google (by default), and ad-blocking built in. I wouldnt hesitate to pay.

If Mozilla doesnt do it, I fear someone else will.

Source: Let me pay for Firefox!

And…

I use Firefox because I dont believe in an advertising funded web, otherwise Id still be using chrome. Paying for the cloud features of firefox would make sense to me.

Yes. This should be an option instead of them contorting themselves out of recognition into somehow getting money from someone other than users.

Azure Linux is an internal Linux distribution for Microsofts cloud infrastructure and edge products and services. Azure Linux is designed to provide a consistent platform for these devices and services and will enhance Microsofts ability to stay current on Linux updates.

Source: microsoft/azurelinux: Linux OS for Azure 1P services and edge appliances

Linux, from Microsoft.