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Is There Room For Beauty In A Vibe-Coded Future?

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  Beautiful Code was published nearly 20 years ago in 2007. The blurb on the back cover promises an over-the-shoulder look of leading developers creating elegant solutions to hard problems. Some of those shoulders belong to well-known heavyweights of an earlier period, including Brian Kernighan and Jon Bentley . A bit closer to the present, Yukihiro Matsumoto, nicknamed Matz and inventor of Ruby, writes "Treating Code As An Essay."  Notably, Matz argues that code is meant to be read by humans. Ideally, beautiful code would be simple, balanced, and make developers happy and productive. In contrast, I must point out, AI generated code is meant to be, at most, corrected. Separately, Bjarne Stroustrup had this to say when asked by  Lex Friedman  on how can you tell when your code has reached the Einstein level of  simplicity : "It's easier to recognize ugly than to recognize beauty in code. . . sometimes beauty comes from something that is innovative and unusual,...

These Keycaps Make My Keychron Q3 Pro Much Better

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Back in December, I reviewed the Keychron Q3 Pro.  I liked it... mostly.  What I didn't like were the keycaps which were sharp, sculpted, high, and deep. Designed to guide and cradle your fingers, the aggressive shape captured your fingers and tortured them. It took energy, focus, and deliberation to type on the OEM keys. 

Old McLeary Built An AI Data Farm, AI-AI-Oh!

Kevin O’Leary — multi-millionaire and host of Shark Tank — is backing the Stratos Project in Utah. A planned AI data center, it’s big, expensive, power hungry and wastes precious water. Read more about this in The Salt Lake Tribute . Meanwhile, feel free to add more verses.

Happy 50th, Apple

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In the 1983 movie " WarGames ," a young Matthew Broderick and a likeable AI come to a tense nuclear moment. The AI concludes "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." Today, in 2026, amidst a tense AI spend and scramble, Apple has come to the same conclusion: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

Two Things I Did Not Know About The Apple Studio Display

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Every written and spoken word about the Apple Studio Display is true. The brushed aluminum hardware is beautiful. The panel, sharp and vibrant, is stunning.  And the price, starting at $1599, is crazy high. Back in 2022, I was merely  thinking about getting one. By 2025, those thoughts turned into reality. I purchased the display and maxed it out with the height adjustable stand and the nano texture glass. Now in 2026, my heart is a little heavy because Apple just released a new 2026 Studio Display . More on that later. My old iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch) had a very glossy panel, and I struggled during the day with mirrored sunlight from my windows and a skylight, and at night with reflections from a lamp. The nano texture glass effectively neutralized them all without sacrificing image quality. It was well worth the added cost. Over time, I discovered two things not discussed much: The ambient light sensor is not in or near the camera lens. The display continuously draws 11-1...

Use-After-Free Exploit Again?!?

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  It's an all too common attack. Hackers break C code by finding a way to re-use a freed pointer. A recent exploit was serious enough for Google to issue an emergency Chrome update. For a business perspective, read the Forbes article . For a technical look, watch the youtube video from Low Level . This is an old problem with an old, and apparently forgotten, solution.

The Keychron Q3 Pro TKL

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  This is the Keychron Q3 Pro TKL. Normally costing $150, Keychron offered it for $125 configured with banana switches. I thought I was getting a deal but I failed to read the fine print. Because the keyboard was shipped from China, DHL invoiced me $25 to cover the tariff. This is not an uncommon story, as any coffee drinker will tell you. You can probably find this keyboard stocked a US warehouse, and thereby avoid any tariffs, but I was looking for the banana switches which are tactile. Think  Gatreon Brown or Nuphy's Wisteria  switches. The Keychron Q3 Pro is a good keyboard with some quirks.  Mechanical, full height with a heavy aluminum base (~3.5 pounds!), it supports three bluetooth connections and one wired connection. The OEM keycaps are sculpted, feel deep, and have a sharp edge. All that works fine until you press a key on the bottom row. The well defined keycap edge cuts into your thumbs, especially when pressing the spacebar. For a work around, look clos...