2026-09-29 01:03:36
I’ve seen three blog posts about major performance improvements recently. Two of them are from Cloudflare: How we saved 100 terabytes of memory by optimizing 1.1.1.1’s DNS cache and Saving another 100TB of RAM with math (and Rust).
The third comes from Anthropic: How we made claude.ai 3x faster in two weeks. And they couldn’t be more different.
Starting with the title, which in the case of both Cloudflare’s posts gives a (pretty big) hint on the area of the performance improvement. They go deeper and explain in detail, what and how they optimized, explaining memory layouts and alignments, cache strategies, and so on. Overall, it is an excellent read, from which everyone can learn something. Or at least be amused by the scale of Cloudflare operations, where every byte saved on some structures stored in memory can lead to gigabytes and terabytes of savings across their datacenters.
Anthropic’s blog post has a very different goal. You wouldn’t learn much from it. Instead, you will repeatedly hear how they tasked Claude (without disclosing any prompts) and how it improved something (without disclosing exact solutions or results).
What worked best from the marketing perspective? A SEO-optimized post mentioning Claude in every other sentence or a real optimization story where one actually learn how the system operates?
For me, the answer is pretty clear.
2026-09-27 02:16:57
The Steve Jobs Archive has published the second book after the Make Something Wonderful, a collection of Steve Jobs’ speeches, letters, and interviews.
I enjoyed that book and expected the same level of inspiration here as well. But Letters to a Young Creator didn’t keep up with the promise.
It features some big names, but only few of their letters worth mentioning or quoting. Here are some:
…don’t do the right thing, avoid it like the plague. So, what am I suggesting you do, the wrong thing? Of course not. Do the brave thing.
—Lee Clow
Many people are precious about their ideas. But ideas are cheap. It’s good ideas that are hard to find.
—David Kelley
“The days of thoughtless design for thoughtless consumption are over”, I also wrote that years ago. Unfortunately, this wish has not yet been fulfilled. I pass on my wish to you. Do less, but better things.
—Dieter Rams
“Do what you think is right and treat everything as a learning experience.”
—Alice Rawsthorn
The crazy ones are sometimes the ones who do crazy impossible things.
—Larry Brilliant
If you can learn to harness your fear—to let it push you forward instead of holding you back—it’s incredibly powerful.
—Jimmy Iovine
Don’t think about building a career; think about making something every day.
—Mona Simpson
Besides the quoted letters, I’d recommend the ones from Samuel Ross and Jon M. Chu.
★★★☆☆ short, and worth it only when you have nothing else
2026-09-23 02:15:16
My upcoming trip to the JetBrains Amsterdam office reminded about the elevators there. They are using the destination dispatch system. It features a kiosk on each floor where you choose your destination floor and it assigns a car for your ride, optimizing the wait times for everyone.
Unsurprisingly, the research shows the effectiveness of the algorithm. Well, at least when there are enough elevators.
But the user experience is somewhat mixed. Yes, sometimes it leads to a faster ride, but more than often I need to fight with the touchscreen device to select a correct floor, and then frantically look around to find the assigned car.
Sometimes, I’m okay to wait a little bit longer to just tap a button.
2026-09-22 02:34:44
Starting February next year, consumer electronics in the European Union must come with a replaceable battery, if they have any.
Some companies like Logitech don’t like this change, claiming that the change was not requested by any customers.
But I, for one, very much support the legislation. Especially with regard to Logitech devices.
I once had a Spotlight presenter, which unfortunately got into a deep discharge state during the pandemic. And since it had non-replaceable battery, it wasn’t even possible to open it without destroying. With this EU regulation, it wouldn’t have become electronic waste.
2026-09-20 05:29:59
I want (once again) to motivate myself to write more often, so I make a second attempt at #100DaysToOffload.
Previous attempt two years ago improved my writing consistency somewhat, but not enough to reach 100 posts in a year. This time, I started with two straight weeks posting five posts a week.
Wish me luck again!
2026-09-18 22:47:26
For years, there were just two image formats available on the Web: JPEG and GIF. One for lossy images (e.g. photos), one for lossless (e.g. icons).
Then came PNG. It was lossless, meant to replace GIF. It added transparency and better compression, which lead to smaller size, but dropped animation. (Yes, there was APNG, but it was never properly supported anywhere)
And those three were everywhere for decade or more.
There were multiple attempts to improve compression even further. For example, Google’s Guetzli for JPEG images. But all improvements were still limited by fundamental constraints of those formats, one needed to choose either lossless or lossy compression.
There are now not one, but two formats, that can efficiently handle both 12MP photos and 16×16 icons. WebP is slightly older and supported more widely, AVIF is even more compact, and has wide enough support in modern browsers.
They both support transparency, which previously was limited to lossless formats only.
So, from now on I only use AVIF images on this webpage. And if you, like me missed this silent revolution, you should consider these new formats as well.
