Happy Friday. Here’s what caught my attention this week.
Lijstduwer, Felipe Rodriquez Award, BNR, NRC, btw en meer
“Samen met vele anderen hameren we al jaren op digitale autonomie en hoe bezopen afhankelijk we zijn geworden van Amerikaanse clouds.”
The conversation around digital autonomy is finally shifting from niche nerd circles to mainstream policy. When we rely entirely on American clouds, we’re not just making a tech choice—we’re making a geopolitical one. Europe waking up to this reality is long overdue.
Firmware Update for the Treedix TRX5-0816 Cable Tester
“For some reason, lots of Chinese manufacturers don’t like publishing updates on their websites. Instead they supplied me with a link to a Google Drive containing an instruction PDF and an small .exe”
It’s endlessly fascinating how hardware distribution has evolved while firmware updates remain stuck in the early 2000s. Shipping a mystery .exe via Google Drive for a cable tester perfectly encapsulates the chaotic charm—and security nightmare—of modern cheap electronics.
Blue Monday by New Order released, 1983
“Their goal was to create an encore they wouldn’t have to play themselves. They could simply reappear on stage, take a bow, press a button, and slip back off stage.”
The ultimate programmer move: automating your own encore. It’s a great reminder that some of the most iconic innovations—in music or software—are born purely out of a desire to do less work.
Advice for staying in the hospital for a week
“Whatever you’re imagining — ‘oh I’ll catch up on reading’ or ‘maybe I’ll do some light code review’ — no. Stop... Your brain is going to be running on fumes, painkillers, and whatever cursed cocktail of medications they have you on.”
We engineers love to optimize every waking second, even when our bodies are literally shutting down. This is the reality check we all need: sometimes downtime isn’t a problem to be solved, it’s just downtime. Let the brain rest.
Steve Jobs in 2007, on Apple’s Pursuit of PC Market Share: ‘We Just Can’t Ship Junk’
“We Just Can’t Ship Junk”
Even years later, this mantra holds up as the ultimate product strategy. In an era where “move fast and break things” has resulted in a lot of broken things, refusing to compromise on baseline quality is actually a competitive advantage.
Pluralistic: Blowtorching the frog (05 Mar 2026) executive-dysfunction
“It’s not that we’re deliberately committing civilizational suicide, it’s just that slow-moving problems are hard to confront, especially in a world replete with fast-moving, urgent problems.”
Doctorow nails the core issue with both climate emergencies and tech enshittification. Our brains are wired to react to sudden fires, not the gradual warming of the room. Recognizing that cognitive flaw is step one; building systems that account for it is the hard part.