Pete Millspaugh

did a double take reading this and seeing dotcom.press/history-of-domains in there :)

actually I think it'd work better as an anthology, like

*Deprecated: a collection of essays by software engineers about the existential crisis brought on by LLMs*

I also think "existential crisis" and "psychological ennui" are good descriptions for it

I've been thinking of it as "cognitive dissonance" in pete.garden/the-nature-of-the-job and in talking to friends, but it's deeper than dissonance

I like the name Deep Blue because sometimes it really does get me down, blue

I have those "pangs of Deep Blue" as Simon calls them almost weekly

just listened to this and had an idea for a book I hope someone writes titled *Deprecated*

with a subtitle something like *the software engineering identity crisis*

Thanks, and good eye! I think it was the first software engineering book I ever read :)

adding npm package names to my mental list of things that sneakily have secondary markets

- domain names
- 1-800 phone numbers
- instagram/twitter/et al handles
- license plates
- ...

Reminds me of the ICANN community spending countless hours on domain minutia so that DNS continues to "just work" (which, of course, relies on undersea cables!)

Say Goodbye to the Undersea Cable That Made the Global Internet Possible History was unmade last year, as engineers began the massive project of ripping the first-ever transoceanic fiber-optic cable from the ocean floor. Just don’t mention sharks.

Ever wonder what happens to a cable when it’s no longer cabling? Wonder no more! This story has been a joy to write, and I hope I’ve done everyone in it justice.

I hope the story of the people of infrastructure cleanses your timeline a little. (And I promise it’s not about sharks.)

This is great! Love the aim to highlight all the good human work behind the "invisible" infrastructure

notes on @aliahanna.bsky.social's *Take It From Me*

petemillspaugh.com/take-it-from-me

useful read for nonfiction authors -- I'd recommend it!

ah, it was an April fools' thing
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ElgooG

(credit to @samwho.dev for mentioning this!)

in 2015 google put up a backwards homepage on com.google with a CSS transform

they still use the .google brand tld for some things, like registry.google

Made a site comparing the sizes of living things :)

The great Julius Csotonyi spent 5 months painting over 60 illustrations for the site, no ai used

> neal.fun/size-of-life/

From useplaintext.email via ratfactor.com/cards/email

(top posting joke) A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?

TIL that "top posting" in email replies (now the norm) is considered bad email etiquette

"Talk of the Town" illustration for blog.val.town

more doodling and writing on the job
blog.val.town/talk-of-the-town-feb-2026

added another one to the "nature of the job" collection:
ratfactor.com/tech-nope2

full collection:
petemillspaugh.com/the-nature-of-the-job

The Address Book y Deirdre Mask

Evicted by Matthew Desmond

Snowy path

Joy and Matt’s Books

snowy run to the library to drop off and pick up some books

this was fast! @val.town is cool

Whoops, forgot the links:
chriscoyier.net/2023/10/11/r...
remysharp.com/2023/09/26/n...

Found it! Looks like originally from @remysharp.com's "404 No More." Looks like you answered Chris's wish:

> Still, I could see this implemented at different levels. Maybe the speed is a solveable problem. Like a browser extension? A WordPress plugin?

I remember reading about dead link fallbacks on @chriscoyier.net's blog a couple years ago which I thought was a nifty trick

@case.bike I used your great IANA data repo (but barely haha...all it does is grab the ISO 3166 country name)

started playing with mcp servers today and built a little one with just one tool to look up country by ccTLD

val town for the server and @cloudflare.social's ai playground for testing is a nice feedback loop

Yeah I like that. @jakelazaroff.com has a nice hover preview too

gwern.net

I like how gwern.net hyperlinks have ::after hints like “W” for Wikipedia links

found one answer: pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/u...

side note: why aren't Cory and Gordon on bsky? have they written about it publicly?