Things I Read: 1-13 April 2026
I’ve long been inspired by the recently read lists published by my friends Ben Cotton and Vadim Rutkovsky. In that spirit, here’s a list of things I found interesting, or that stuck with me for other reasons.
This period was marked by some trips down memory lane. The Supreme Court of the US is always in the news, these days usually for less than pleasant reasons, and this time it was joined by the fast-food burger chain Wendy’s.
Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft on upstream Linux in Azure. These are my personal notes and opinions.
Memory Lane
The Surprising Reason Neil Gorsuch Has Been So Good on Native Rights
I searched for this piece after a random Mastodon toot referred to Justice Gorsuch as being "ride or die" for Native Americans. I knew I wouldn't find anything that would change my opinion of his rulings, but what I did find was still unexpected. The original framers of the Constitution were very specific (weirdly so for the time period) about Native rights, and as an originalist Gorsuch supports this view. Even a broken clock is right twice a day ...
What the Hell Happened to Wendy’s?
It’s also increasingly difficult for any brand to keep anyone’s attention in a manic and incoherent media ecosystem where the aura that a CEO projects while biting into a burger on camera is seemingly more important than the quality of the burger itself.
Wendy's has always had amazing chili (and they provide hot sauce!) and a spicy chicken sandwich that couldn't be beaten. While I wouldn't miss their fries, I don't honestly care if the McDonald's CEO looks good eating a hamburger or not.
LLMs and AI
THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS
What if our AI bullishness continues to be right...and what if that’s actually bearish?
This think piece surfaced some ideas about how success with LLMs, and to a degree AGI, could still turn into a downward cycle. I hadn't thought about the threat of disintermediation multiplied by the loss of per-seat revenue. It also makes recent comments by Microsoft about LLM agents needing seat licenses make more sense.
I used AI. It worked. I hated it.
the tool requires expertise to validate, but its use diminishes expertise and stunts its growth. How does one become an expert? There are no shortcuts; there is only continuous hard work and dedication.
There is a continuous drumbeat about the loss of the expertise required to operate LLMs effectively, while simultaneously insisting that the tools are failures unless completely untrained people can use them without trouble. This isn't a new problem. Almost all technological innovation comes at the cost of higher abstraction levels that require a deeper understanding of the space while also eliminating some core knowledge of how things work. I am firmly of the opinion that using any tool effectively requires training, and that we have a long history of doing a bad job training people on computing tools. But I also don't believe upping the abstraction level automatically means we can't train a new generation to be effective. Airline pilots, accountants and machinists all did it. Why can't developers?
Other Technology
Self hosting as much of my online presence as practical
[M]y ISP doesn’t guarantee a static IPv4 [therefore I am] running a Wireguard link between a box that sits in a cupboard in my living room and the smallest OVH instance I can
My ISP literally routes me no inbound internet except in response to an outbound request. It is simultaneously refreshing and frustrating. I had long debated trying to pull off a link like this with Tailscale but hadn't bothered. I may now be inspired to try.
I tested three Windows laptops in the MacBook Neo’s price range — there’s no contest
Despite years of rumors, the MacBook Neo still seemed to take the Windows world by surprise.
Is literally anyone surprised by the lack of actual consumer focus in the low-end laptop market? The problem here has never been the "Windows Tax." It's the unwillingness to do the integration work required to make the hardware and the OS behave like a coherent product. OEMs and Microsoft could do this, but the OEMs won't force their suppliers to meet that bar.
The Nail Test: Why this $54 billion innovation is terrifying Western auto executives
If you can reproduce the failure one hundred times, identically, then and only then have you understood the mechanism.
It's interesting to see failure-based TDD in the industrial world. I knew China was big on EVs and batteries, but this specific engineering drive was one I hadn't seen written up so directly before. It is a Fast Company article so the quality may drift, but it's a solid read.
Fun
🎓 On Geldings and the 'Natural' Social Order of Horses
It also, if you think about it for more than a second, cannot possibly be how natural horse societies work.
Almost everything Eleanor writes is amazing, and this is a great piece on something I never thought I'd be interested in.
Even if horses aren't your thing, her comments on 'bachelor bands' and the place they hold in non-breeding male horse life are worth reading. The introduction of geldings by humans changed how horses interact and socialize. It also reminded me how badly we've warped the ways young men are taught to socialize in an age where garbage like the Manosphere is given a platform.
'Starfleet Academy' Season 3 Could Have Done the 'Voyager' Sequel Episode of Robert Picardo's Dreams
I always liked the Voyager episode, "Living Witness" and Voyager in general (though DS9 is better overall, imho). I’ve missed a lot of the “new” stuff but it sounds like this would’ve been a motivator.
And finally
If you're like me and a person approaching a certain age, well ... you need to know. One of the best personal changes I have made is going to the gym twice a week for almost the last year. I am privileged and able to have a personal trainer. It isn't just the accountability, it is the ability to have an expert in a domain where I am not an expert do the thinking. She directs, I lift.