blog.jim-nielsen.com — w0rdz aRe 1mpoRtAnt
The other day I was looking at the team billing section of an AI product. They had a widget labeled “Usage leaderboard”. For whatever reason, that phrase at...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Book Notes: “Blood In The Machine” by Brian Merchant
For my future self, these are a few of my notes from this book. A take from one historian on the Luddite movement: If workmen disliked certain machines, it...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Computers and the Internet: A Two-Edged Sword
Dave Rupert articulated something in “Priority of idle hands” that’s been growing in my subconscious for years: I had a small, intrusive realization the...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Making Icon Sets Easy With Web Origami
Over the years, I’ve used different icon sets on my blog. Right now I use Heroicons. The recommended way to use them is to copy/paste the source from the...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — How AI Labs Proliferate
SITUATION: there are 14 competing AI labs. “We can’t trust any of these people with super-intelligence. We need to build it ourselves to ensure it’s done...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — A Few Rambling Observations on Care
In this new AI world, “taste” is the thing everyone claims is the new supreme skill. But I think “care” is the one I want to see in the products I buy. Can...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Unresponsive Buttons on My Fastest Hardware Ever
This is one of those small things that drives me nuts. Why? I don’t know. I think it has something to do with the fact that I have a computer that is faster...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — A Brief History of App Icons From Apple’s Creator Studio
I recently updated my collection of macOS icons to include Apple’s new “Creator Studio” family of icons. Doing this — in tandem with seeing funny things like...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Study Finds Obvious Truth Everybody Knows
Researchers at Anthropic published their findings around how AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills: We found that using AI assistance led to a...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Saying “No” In an Age of Abundance
You’ve probably heard this famous quote from Steve Jobs about saying ‘no’: People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — The Browser’s Little White Lies
So I’m making a thing and I want it to be styled different if the link’s been visited. Rather than build something myself in JavaScript, I figure I’ll just...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — The Don’t “Contact Us” Page
Nic Chan comes out as the whistleblower on how many “Contact Us” pages are made (spoiler: they’re designed to keep us from contacting anyone). A “fuck off...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — You Can Just Say No to the Data
“The data doesn’t lie.” I imagine that’s what the cigarette companies said. “The data doesn’t lie. People want this stuff. They’re buying it in droves. We’re...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — CTA Hierarchy in the Wild
The other day I was browsing YouTube — as one does — and I clicked a link in the video description to a book. I was then subjected to a man-in-the-middle...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — New Year, New Website — Same Old Me
I redesigned my www website. Why? The end of year / holiday break is a great time to work on such things. I wanted to scratch an itch. Websites are a worry...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Easy Measures Doing, Simple Measures Understanding
In his talk, I like the way Jake Nations pits easy vs. simple: Easy means you can add it to your system quickly. Simple means you can understand the work...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — In The Beginning There Was Slop
I’ve been slowly reading my copy of “The Internet Phone Book” and I recently read an essay in it by Elan Ullendorff called “The New Turing Test”. Elan argues...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — The AI Security Shakedown
Matthias Ott shared a link to a post from Anthropic titled “Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign”, which I read because I’m...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — A Letter of Feedback To Anyone Who Makes Software I Use
I don’t much enjoy being a lab rat to your half-baked ideas. I can tell when your approach to what I use is: “Ship it and let’s see how people respond.” Well...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Creating “Edit” Links That Open Plain-Text Source Files in a Native App
The setup for my notes blog looks like this: Content is plain-text markdown files (synced via Dropbox, editable in iA Writer on my Mac, iPad, or iPhone)...