Ernie Smith

Because I was curious: The last Mac laptop to ship without a backlit keyboard was the 2010 polycarbonate unibody MacBook.

Every Mac laptop sold since the 2011 MacBook Air has had one. Well, until now.

Not the only thing that‘s missing, either […]

The Case For Making A Bet Against Substack I once turned down Substack because of their design limitations. As they emerge yet again in the news cycle, I thought I’d make my point about them via design.

I was messing around with an experimental email layout and I decided to turn it into a @tedium issue about Substack. I put a web version here:

https://tedium.co/2026/03/02/betting-against-substack/

Here’s the actual email version in case you’re curious how the experimental layout turned out. Perfect in Gmail and webkit, hover function broken in Outlook web, vintage Outlook has a good-enough option […]

The Case For Making A Bet Against Substack I once turned down Substack because of their design limitations. As they emerge yet again in the news cycle, I thought I’d make my point about them via design.

I was messing around with an experimental email layout and I decided to turn it into a @tedium issue about Substack. I put a web version here:

https://tedium.co/2026/03/02/betting-against-substack/

(FWIW this works better on matte screens)

Keep looking at this you might see it

Let’s see how good the image compression is on Mastodon.

Why Email Spam Looks Better Than Usual These Days The problem with making coding easier for more people is that it makes spam more conventionally attractive. Which is bad.

“But what I think the real tell is that these emails hang together when you have images off, which they did not in the past. This is a problem, because in your spam folder, images are automatically turned off.”

https://tedium.co/2026/02/25/vibe-coded-email-spam/

Why Email Spam Looks Better Than Usual These Days The problem with making coding easier for more people is that it makes spam more conventionally attractive. Which is bad.

The problem with vibe coding is it lowers the barrier for everyone. Even email spammers.

https://tedium.co/2026/02/25/vibe-coded-email-spam/

new @tedium

@fogoplayer @tedium I've heard some of this but I think static ads are still a possibility. I think the case for it from a decentralization aspect may offset that. After all if the feed supports a platform with a business model, it's still a win.

Polymaths are my favorite people.

I just had the best conversation and I can’t wait to tell you all about it. It involves slot machines, and drafting, and art, engineering, and scale models, and patents.

And very briefly, a company whose name you know by heart.

The Great Markdown Rebranding Of 2026 For some reason, a bunch of big companies are really leaning into Markdown right now. AI may be the reason, but I kind of love the possible side benefits.

“To me, when I see, ‘Cloudflare wants to give every webpage a Markdown version,‘ my thought is essentially, ‘Oh, they want to make AI agents stop DDoSing these poor PHP servers that still dominate the internet.’”

https://tedium.co/2026/02/17/markdown-growing-influence-cloudflare-ai/

The Great Markdown Rebranding Of 2026 For some reason, a bunch of big companies are really leaning into Markdown right now. AI may be the reason, but I kind of love the possible side benefits.

So Markdown is getting a glow-up right now, thanks to (wait for it) AI.

But I think it could end up being great for the Web even if you don’t care about AI.

https://tedium.co/2026/02/17/markdown-growing-influence-cloudflare-ai/

new @tedium

Do Companies Really Give Their Layoffs Nicknames? Why do corporate restructuring plans get code names the way operating systems do? And why are the names often so bizarre?

After Amazon’s “Project Dawn” nickname was revealed to the world, I had a question: What leads a company to nickname their layoffs? And why?

I got really salty in this one.

https://tedium.co/2026/02/16/corporate-turnaround-code-names-history/

new @tedium

Do Companies Really Give Their Layoffs Nicknames? Why do corporate restructuring plans get code names the way operating systems do? And why are the names often so bizarre?

After Amazon’s “Project Dawn” nickname was revealed to the world, I had a question: What leads a company to nickname their layoffs? And why?

I got really salty in this one.

https://tedium.co/2026/02/16/corporate-turnaround-code-names-history/

new @tedium

Shaving the Yak Sometimes, the best adventure to take is the one you stand no chance at succeeding at. But you learn something anyway. ® Filed under: technology

Added a bind in Niri that

1) screenshots an image
2) OCRs it
3) copies the text of the OCR’ed image into the clipboard.

I also created a separate command to OCR whatever image is in the clipboard to generate alt-text. I call this the “Yak Shaving Special.” […]

[Original post on writing.exchange]

I’ve had a weird thought lately: For the past 40 years we’ve been completely wedded to the GUI to do graphic design work. What if, at least in some cases, we’re better off in a terminal, or a text editor?

Let’s follow that thought monster through […]

Technically, You Don’t Need A GUI To Design Stuff Design is perhaps the software paradigm most wedded to the mouse and the GUI. But there’s no reason it can’t be text-driven.

“One thing that I think people don’t realize about graphic design, particularly the print form, is that it’s creativity, but there’s also math going on. It’s not that far removed from architecture, if you think about it.”

https://tedium.co/2026/02/14/text-based-design-mindset/

I’ve had a weird thought lately: For the past 40 years we’ve been completely wedded to the GUI to do graphic design work. What if, at least in some cases, we’re better off in a terminal, or a text editor?

Let’s follow that thought monster through […]

300: The number of people who are left restless because they forgot their phones were in their pocket.

Used it to build a social object. Not bad. The dots were actually made with Typst.

Typesetter A minimalist, local-first Typst editor.

The tool I used for this is called Typesetter, which is a Linux app on Flathub. Kind of impressed.

I feel like that split layout style that the markdown editor Mou originated in the early 2010s has proven super-influential even if Mou itself is forgotten.

https://typesetter.trowell.net

Typst: The new foundation for documents Typst is the new foundation for documents. Sign up now and experience limitless power to write, create, and automate anything that you can fit on a page.

This wouldn’t be the *best* choice for doing more nuanced layout, say cutouts and things like that. But this has a ton of potential for repeatable design.

Tool is commercial, markup language is open-source.

https://typst.app

Testing out my calendar idea

Messing around with Typst, something of a Latex-meets-Markdown layout language. This might be just what I need to finish that Tedium wall calendar I’ve been threatening for the past five to seven years.

This week was a bit heavy for me so I’m only getting to write about The Post now, but here’s what I’ll say—WaPo was one of the few real “safe harbors” in journalism where reporters could stay for decades.

That’s now gone, and that’s really concerning […]

This week was a bit heavy for me so I’m only getting to write about The Post now, but here’s what I’ll say—WaPo was one of the few real “safe harbors” in journalism where reporters could stay for decades.

That’s now gone, and that’s really concerning […]

You know what makes me happy? Publishing a piece by Andrew Egan—who I haven’t had on the site in three freaking years! He’s got a great story about the plaques that show up around NYC—and the townhouse that doesn’t have one, but probably should […]

Been doing some server optimizations this AM so in case udm14 or Tedium have been a bit slow, that’s why. I think I got it fixed but give a shout in case you’re still having an issue.

Yeah, that’s what people want from Windows 11. Another bar to go with the first bar. Give ’em a MacOS/MATE hybrid. That’ll win over the normies.

https://www.theverge.com/news/870663/microsoft-windows-11-top-menu-bar-powertoy-experiment

@grammargirl Every editor I’ve ever had removes the ellipsis from my writing … despite the fact that I love them.

(Should note that this isn’t as bad as it seems: LanguageTool is open source and that OSS tool is trivial to install. Just a single brew command will get you up and going. Plus, it means you’re managing this all locally and not taking up their cloud resources unnecessarily.)