Complete catalogue
Blog
Short updates, essays, and experiments. 19 posts and counting, newest first.
- JN-2619AI Water Usage and Orders of MagnitudeOctober 18, 2025Sorting through conflicting claims about AI data-center water use and why orders of magnitude matter when comparing numbers.
- JN-2618Vibe coding an Atari 2600 port of FortniteJune 28, 2025Building a rough Atari 2600-style Fortnite with Amazon Q: constraints, glitches, and a playable demo.
- JN-2617Doom unto allMay 29, 2025NYT embedded Doom; a quick note on the web port and the irresistibility of playing it.
- JN-2616Fireflies are on the declineMay 26, 2025Childhood memories of abundant fireflies and the unsettling reality of their decline.
- JN-2615Sometimes AI remembers the wrong meMay 23, 2025ChatGPT's memory can overfit past queries, producing the wrong 'me' and raising personalization concerns.
- JN-2614Turns Out I’m Not Famous (or in the Force)May 22, 2025A funny 'Separated at Birth' anecdote about look-alikes and a reality check on my supposed fame.
- JN-2613Microsoft’s AI Security Chief eats some dogfoodMay 21, 2025A protest at Microsoft Build led to an accidental screen-share leak of Walmart AI plans, highlighting security optics.
- JN-2612AI has the most dangerous demosMay 21, 2025Trying low-stakes AI experiments shows how demos hide the hard parts; real value comes from skill, iteration, and context, not flashy outcomes.
- JN-2611Shortcuts Don’t Skip the ClimbApril 14, 2025A conversation with my son about AI and school, and why shortcuts do not replace foundational skills.
- JN-2610The one about Shopify's AI positioningApril 10, 2025Tobi's memo on making reflexive AI use a baseline expectation at Shopify, preserved in full.
- JN-2609John Carmack on AI in game devApril 10, 2025Carmack's quote on tooling and compute sparks a reflection on AI as a force multiplier in game dev.
- JN-2608"Can we use AI?"April 10, 2025On the reflexive 'can we use AI?' impulse in civic and organizational settings and the real gap: skills to use it well.
- JN-2607Pinterest Gets SloppedMarch 3, 2025Pinterest search is getting flooded with AI-generated slop; quick sampling and what it means for discovery.
- JN-2606Asserts > AlertsMarch 3, 2025Why assertions beat alerts for risky code: fail fast on bad assumptions and reduce silent failures.
- JN-2605Custom Sorting in SAQL, Domo, and BI Dashboards Without Ugly Number PrefixesFebruary 25, 2025How to implement custom sort orders in Salesforce CRMA/SAQL without ugly numeric prefixes.
- JN-2604The one about tabsFebruary 23, 2025Too many browser tabs as a form of memory and curiosity; a small reflection on attention and knowledge work.
- JN-2603AI Tinkerers, Jan 30 2025January 31, 2025Recap of the Jan 30 AI Tinkerers meetup in Toronto: talks, demos, and why the community event mattered.
- JN-2602The Blind Spot in Internal AI: Security and Reputation RisksOctober 19, 2024Internal chatbots are easy to jailbreak and can create reputational risk; practical steps to harden them.
- JN-2601Three Mindset Shifts Required for Successful AI Adoption in TeamsOctober 13, 2024Three mindset shifts - AI is not cheating, speed does not reduce value, and creativity can grow with tools - plus ways to reinforce them.