lukewrites

  Location: Seattle/Remote
  Remote: Yup
  Willing to Relocate: Yes, looking for interesting opportunities outside the US
  Technologies: Python, AI tooling, etc
  Resume/CV: linkedin.com/in/lukepetschauer
  Email: luke at <my user name>.com
  About: I research, create, and deliver learning sessions about how to work with AI. I have been a teacher and a software engineer, and use my combination of engineering knowledge and teaching skills to create sessions that are comprehensible, accurate, and actionable. Technical & non-technical audiences see immediate, measurable productivity and knowledge gains from my sessions. AI enablement is fun, and I'm good at it.

They absolutely are zealots; the zealotry focuses on profit.

Why these types of stories are so jarring to some is that they serve as a reminder that your pet technology or project will get fed into the wood chipper if enough bloodless “Ex-Bain, Ex-Mercer, I Love LinkedIn” types tell the ceo it’s a profitable idea. And you and I are just as expendable.

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=tariff

Spoiler: the word is originally from Arabic :)

I think parents have to counteract the negative effects of this by exposing their kids to the joys of words and reading. I agree with you 100% that there's an amazing diversity of texts out there now! Every so often when I grab an ereader I think about how blown away I would have been as a kid to think that I could take HUNDREDS of books with me on vacation.

I’ve just strived to read like hell to my kids and make reading one of their most fun things around. Pretty much all we read is stuff they like, even if I hate it (I’m looking at you, Pokemon novels). If they like an author (in our house we love Daniel Pinkwater) I will go out of my way to find that authors books. We write to authors, we talk about what we read (somehow I serialised a retelling of Killing Commendatore), my 8 yo listens to my audiobooks in the car with me, we are frickin bookworms.

And of course they still play Minecraft and animal crossing. It’s just that picking up a book is one of their default go-tos, and I think that’s enough. They’re building the habit and the understanding of what reading is about, and if we keep that up they will be ok.

Throughout it I continued reading to him daily, mostly stuff that he comprehends just find but find too difficult to read on his own.

I think it just comes in its own time if nurtured.

Edit: I really like what John Gotto (I think…he wrote a book called Dumbing Us Down) observed about literacy; for a long time it just developed naturally without much formal instruction. I had that in mind for our kid and am glad I did.

Thanks to the various waves of “education reform”, there is less literature on offer and less time for pleasure reading. However, if you’re reading them exciting things at home (and telling them about the exciting stuff you’re reading), they will love to read.

https://fosstodon.org/@lukewrites/100907932236227641

> Several rules come from 2025-2026 industry research on agentic coding failure modes

What are some of the papers you read?

I wish more browsers would target seniors. Accessibility and usability is universally a nightmare.

There's a convincing body of evidence that the way you get kids to read books is pretty simple: read them books that interest them and then give them access to more interesting books as well as time to read to self. Unfortunately, the lethal combo of Common Core and No Child Left Behind has left teachers at best too time-strapped (or, at worst, uninterested) in doing so because of mandatory curriculum and testing.

I read to my kids, make sure they see me reading, and talk to them about both what I'm reading and what they're reading. They've done fine despite awful reading instruction at school.

How did you find an ideal tent + tilt setup? Whenever I've tried I've wound up with sore wrists or hands, so just gave up. It seems like the glove80 w/out wrist rests does "good enough" so I stopped trying to optimize, even though the temptation remains.

I've seen some members of the erg keyboard community design and print their own pcbs based on their hand dimensions. I just don't have the time for it and fear how far down the rabbit hole I'd wind up if I did.

I couldn’t make the corne variants work because tucking my thumbs hurt. The ergodox is too big. Even a keyboard like the ZSA Voyager just doesn’t fit me right. However, the glove80, running a 40 key layout that I’ve come up with after doing a fair amount of heat mapping my own keystrokes, gets rid of all my hand and wrist discomfort. My only complaint is what a hassle it is to haul around.

The only “wisdom” (hard earned) I would pass along is:

- Make a heat map of your keyboard over a few days to see what keys you need.

- tweak your layout to make it easy and comfortable to get to the keys and key combos you use.

- remember you do NOT have to use every key!

An EV that's designed to be user-serviceable, has modular upgrades, and isn't full of surveillance technology? This checks all the boxes for me. Can't wait to play with it.

The Monarcida line is less expensive and has 4E sizing (the SW or Super-Wide models) but I’ve never really liked them because of the synthetic material they’re made from and the studs on the shoes.

The other option, which I’ve gone with, is the Monarca line. They’re usually made from Kangaroo leather (which can be stretched) and have a relatively wide sole plate. There are different Monarcas, looks for the “classic” ones not the alphas which have a synthetic upper and are said to run more narrow. Of the Monarca line, the MIJ (Made In Japan) shoes are supposed to be the widest and highest quality.

After so many years of wearing minimalist shoes I’ve found that cleats aren’t too comfortable to run in so I’ve gone to just wearing turf shoes. Mizuno’s previous models had a very bendy sole that lets my foot move pretty freely.

I ordered one to use secretly. My dad’s 90 and was a working musician since he was 15 or so. He’s always wanted to make recordings of his playing but gets distracted by the technology, even something relatively plug and play like Garage Band. I’m looking forward to plugging this in and just capturing his playing without distraction.

I've noticed that when I read on my Kobo I run into issue with ebook files. When I use Calibre to send .epub files I'll have lots of reliability issues; books will freeze up, pages won't turn, whole sections of the book wind up being unreadable, stuff like that. Having Calibre reformat books in the kobo epub format seems to help some, but I still have page turn issues from time to time.

Have you see any of this behavior before? As far as I'm concerned this would be the perfect ereader if it were just more reliable.

Archive.is snapshot of the article

This is a good point that marketers will never accept because their livelihood depends on the proposition that what they push down the trough will seem so delicious that the hogs will slurp it up.

I’m an ad blocking zealot and feel a big FU towards ads that slip through. Much less likely to trust the brands or their products, especially the scummy junk that pops up on yt. (“I bet you think doing cardio is the best way to lose weight…”)