August 2026 Bakery

js-notes is my personal knowledge management system. It captures articles, podcasts, and videos, extracts their full text, and enriches them with AI-generated summaries and semantic search. This is everything that caught my attention in August 2026.

The Heretics is done and lands May 2027, which is the only book release date I am tracking.

Progress Report August ’26 - Joe Abercrombie

Delighted to say that sticky summer is now fading into the rear view mirror and the season of falling leaves, tweed and corduroy fast approaches. Much more my speed… What is UP you say? Well, holidays over the last couple of months of course. Spent a lovely two weeks with the family in Oslo, Gothenburg […]

Joe AbercrombieJoe Abercrombie

I can see myself using Omarchy.

Stripe’s economists on business formation moving out of the big metros while frontier tech stays put.

AI and the city

More businesses are forming outside major metros, but big cities still matter for frontier tech.

Stripe EconomicsMarisa Rama

A good interview with Addy Osmani about his career in tech.

From Chrome DevTools to AI Engineering, with Addy Osmani

Addy Osmani shares lessons from 14 years at Google and how AI agents are reshaping software engineering, developer workflows, and the skills engineers need to succeed.

The Pragmatic EngineerGergely Orosz

Attackers get positive expected value from automation and defenders get negative, which is why defense keeps humans in the loop and loses.

Autonomy and Innovation

Incentives favor offense when it comes to agentic cybersecurity; it’s the same dynamic that will limit incumbents and fuel startups in the long run.

Stratechery by Ben Thompson

Gruber and Thompson on Omarchy: DHH is de-fajita-izing desktop Linux, and it is a good bit.

Omarchy and Open Macs

Episode from Dithering

Snipd

You are not Linus Torvalds, so do not copy his temper.

You should never be angry at work

I try not to give a lot of prescriptive advice about working in tech companies. There are many ways to be successful, and every company works differently. If…

The back office keeps the world spinning, and it runs on trust between ops teams who split the difference.

Two banks can’t agree on fourth-grade math | Alex Elliott

The back office keeps the world spinning.

Complex SystemsPatrick McKenzie

Stripe buying OpenRouter is a bet that no model wins, and the aggregator above them does.

Stripe Acquiring OpenRouter, Aggregating AI?, Flipping the Business Model

Stripe is reportedly acquiring OpenRouter, an implicit bet on a future market of models and the chance at Aggregation.

Stratechery by Ben Thompson

Douthat’s last episode as host, spent arguing with Bryan Johnson about whether death should be the enemy.

Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint for a 150-Year Life: Is It Worth It?

Episode from Interesting Times

SnipdCharles Stief

LLMs collapse the cost of bespoke cons, so scams that used to target whales now target you.

LLMs and the economics of Evil, Inc., with Manish Goregaokar

Sophisticated cons just got cheap enough to run on ordinary people.

Complex SystemsPatrick McKenzie

Opus judged non-TDD solutions higher more often than not, and TDD cost 3 to 8x the tokens.

TDD inside the agent loop - theater or actual value?

Notes from my Thoughtworks colleagues on AI-assisted software delivery

martinfowler.comBirgitta Böckeler

A Know Your Enemy episode on the machinery of settlement, with Jasper Nathaniel’s reporting.

Archaeology and Annexation in Palestine (w/ Jasper Nathaniel)

Episode from Know Your Enemy Patreon

Snipd

DHH is having the most fun he has had with a computer in forty years.

Endless execution

The age of agents has brought us endless execution. Every idea, every hunch, every experiment is now within immediate reach. For people with endless ideas, this is nirvana. It’s also the most fucking sci-fi thing I’ve ever been privy to. The internet was a revelation, but it all felt understandable. The science, the standards, the meth…

Cursor’s head of talent on personalizing every touchpoint from outreach to offer.

The playbook for building high-talent-density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at Cursor

Episode from Lenny’s Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

SnipdClaire Hughes-Johnson

Redshirt boys, restore vocational tracks, and other ideas to help boys.

Scott Galloway: America Abandoned Its ‘Unremarkable’ Young Men

Episode from Interesting Times

SnipdScott Galloway

Justin's back!

v55 - I’m a good guyjin

Episode from Breaking Change

Snipd

Discrediting a whole field over bad headline studies backfires with everyone who knows the field.

The Beauty Of Settled Science

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Astral Codex TenScott Alexander

One of my dad's favorite jokes has something to say about cancel culture.

MacGregor The Bridge Builder

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Astral Codex TenScott Alexander

More data centers please.

Opinion | The A.I. Giants Weren’t Prepared for This

The New York TimesBy Ezra Klein and Rollin Hu

The Russian superwoman and the irrelevant Russian man, traced from Bolshevik feminism to Putin’s pro-natalism.

Julia Ioffe on Russian Women, Missing Men, and the Roots of Autocracy (Ep. 285)

How a nation of superwomen ended up with a shortage of decent men

Conversations with TylerWashington correspondent for Puck

This is so good. Very relatable.

Germicidal light now, please.

The economics of putting germicidal light in every room, with Misha Gurevich and Vivian Belenky of Aerolamp

Germicidal light is cheap, effective, and almost entirely undeployed.

Complex SystemsPatrick McKenzie

Doing things beautifully at Stripe is a way to break out of standard practice, which I believe.

Be liberal with sharing credit.

Giving and taking credit in big tech companies

Engineers often complain that visibility should be their manager’s job. In other words, they think engineers should be able to focus on the code, while their…

On Phish's five night MSG run built on early-Nineties songs.

Phish in the Nineties: What a Time It Was

A lifelong Phish fan traces his journey from discovering “Esther” in a Missouri frat house to touring the country and hosting Phish Radio on SiriusXM.

Rolling StoneJonathan Schwartz