What I’m reading

A list of things I’ve read that I felt were worth my time; the ‘best-of-the-best’ of my bookmarks. Perhaps you think they’re worth your time too.

Entries are dated according to when I encountered them, not when they were published.

2026

This is not sustainable: Thoughts on the infosec flood.
And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway: Civic hygiene.
Your harddrive is probably full: A quirky statistical bias.
What are your favourite lobste.rs comments?: A lot of wisdom to be found here.
Write for 1 person: Some excellent advice.
a bunch of stuff i used to not know about K&R C: Fun and horrifying factoids.
Humanities in the Machine: Against tech nihilism.
Linux is an interpreter: Horrors and joys beyond comprehension.
Lines of code are useful: The coefficient is negative.
Do the Illegible: Productivity defeats attempts to measure it, and other lessons.
SQLite for Everything: SQLite is probably fine.
Why I don’t think AGI is imminent: Some very strong arguments.
Why there’s no European Google?: A different way of doing business.
The fall of the theorem economy: Maths is more than proving stuff.
LocalFirst: You Keep Using That Word: Toward a tighter definition.
A sufficiently detailed spec is code: Programming is more than implementing stuff.
Utopian Scholastic: This made me feel things.

The CRDT Dictionary: A great resource.
K-Anonymity: Elementary dataset privacy.
Why SSA?: Compiler optimiser design.
Design for the trash can: Some of the best advice in SWE.
We are not special: Other engineering fields have already solved the problems we face.
Seeing like a software company: On metrics, bean-counting, and Goodhart’s Law.
How Complex Systems Fail: Essential reading.
Fil’s Unbelievable Garbage Collector: GC design notes.