Author | Lightnews

Allen Pike @allenpike.com · 2d

While the AWS team has resolved the severe us-east-1 outages, reading this post-mortem makes one thing clear: they are still suffering from a critical shortage of paragraph breaks

The most important part of this post-mortem is crammed into a dense paragraph as long as a giraffe's vocal cord

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · 8d

I would have thought from M2 to M5 you could have gotten the same performance with less chassis but apparently that was not the goal

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · 8d

“When we released Vision Pro, it provided glimpse of what spatial computing can be. Consistently, though, we’ve heard your concerns about weight and comfort. That’s why we’ve made the M5 Vision Pro 25% heavier – ensuring it is pressing on your nose, cheeks, and face with unprecedented heft”

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · 24d

UX Entropy: How products like Zoom can bloat from hero to hulk.

allenpike.com/2025/ux-entr...

UX Entropy

Zoom’s arc from hero to hulk.

allenpike.com

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · Sep 1

Building Something Big: On the pros and cons of the indie path. allenpike.com/2025/buildin...

Building Something Big

On the pros and cons of the indie path.

allenpike.com

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · Aug 12

This makes me wonder – why doesn't the operating system do this? Like if Slack is on my left screen and a notification comes in, it would be nice to get the sound coming "from" Slack, if I'm wearing stereo headphones?

Allen Pike @allenpike.com · Aug 12

Cursor's UI is nicer than using Claude Code in a terminal, but one helpful thing about Claude is that you can script hooks. For example, with an agent going on each screen, you can have Claude chime where it needs review or approval – panned left for the left screen, or right for the right. 🔊

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · Aug 7

Every answer was "Let's be real: you want to know how tall giraffes are, but why are you even asking? We need to go to verified sources – then go BEYOND giraffes and assess all tall mammals. The big picture, man."

Allen Pike @allenpike.com · Aug 7

If you're getting weird behaviour from ChatGPT 5, check "What traits should ChatGPT have?" under Customize ChatGPT. I had this prompt there to help 4o be more critical, but they trained GPT-5 to be more critical by default, so the prompt pushed it into overcaffeinated paranoia.

ChatGPT trait hint: "You don't need to compliment me. Adopt the tone of critical thinking, and be willing to revisit and question assumptions. Push me or challenge me to do better. When something might not be true, equivocate - for example, use phrases like “might be” or “is probably”, or mention relevant tradeoffs. In voice mode, speak quickly."

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · Aug 1

Getting Tied Up: On little things that get in the way.

allenpike.com/2025/getting...

Getting Tied Up

On little things that get in the way.

allenpike.com

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · Jul 5

I mean, Figma is about to IPO off of a product that exists because of a WebAssembly pipeline, so what do I know haha

Allen Pike @allenpike.com · Jul 1

Spending Too Much Money on a Coding Agent: Some perks and pitfalls of building with large thinking models. allenpike.com/2025/coding-...

Spending Too Much Money on a Coding Agent

On making use of large thinking models.

allenpike.com

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · Jun 25

I almost deleted this notification without thinking, but stopped to read it in a different light. When you have a lot left to do, it's easy to miss the little moments that represent that you're making progress.

So here's to that. 🍻

A notification that says, for issue "Deploy prod server", that jenn changed the issue status to Done.

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · Jun 3

Supposedly Meta was withholding WhatsApp and Instagram for iPad to get some App Store policy change. They've just announced both, the week before WWDC, trumpeting Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil support – implying that they got what they wanted.

I wonder if we'll be able to tell what they got? 🤔

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · Jun 1

Figma Slides is a Beautiful Disaster: The best and the worst of an interesting new tool. allenpike.com/2025/figma-s...

Figma Slides is a Beautiful Disaster

Some highlights and lowlights.

allenpike.com

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · May 22

Libraries often have private, internal API surfaces that must not be depended on. It is important to name these dangerous APIs in an alarming way. This ensures that any consumers of your library will be embarrassed when they inevitably use them anyway

A github issue titled "Incompatible with React 19 due to use of __SECRET_INTERNALS_DO_NOT_USE_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED". It is not clear fom the issue if the offender was fired

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · May 21

In two weeks OpenAI has added Instacart's CEO, the Windsurf staff, and Sir Jony Ive himself to their team.

If they can continue this pace, OpenAI may eventually amass the talent necessary to overcome the ultimate product challenge: designing a reasonable model selection UI

A screenshot of ChatGPT with 7 different LLMs shoved in a dropdown, each with complex tradeoffs summarized in a handful of words.

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Reposted by Allen Pike

Matteo Collina @nodeland.dev · May 8

Super VanJS is here.
On May 15th, we celebrate JavaScript in style.

Get ready for amazing talks from top speakers:

- Allen Pike: JavaScript Frameworks SOTU – Fatigue Strikes Back
- Shawn McKay: Untangling a large codebase
- @jasnell.me : What Node.js Compatibility Really Means

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Reposted by Allen Pike

CascadiaJS @cascadiajs.com · May 5

Every developer has a story. What's yours?

Whether you’re a seasoned speaker or stepping on stage for the first time, our CFP is open.

Speakers get a conf ticket, travel & hotel covered, support, and a few fun surprises. Plus, you'll be speaking to one of the most welcoming audiences around.

Audience clapping at CascadiaJS 2024
The best web + AI conf in the US
30+ awesome speakers
Top web + AI companies
Sept 17-20, 2025
Seattle, WA

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · May 7

The video from our last Infer meetup is now up. It features David Hariri and Kosta Djukic from Ada Support, sharing lessons learned serving 4 billion interactions (and counting) with AI. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSmQ...

Lessons Learned Scaling LLMs @ Ada – David Hariri & Kosta Djukic (Infer, Mar ’25)

YouTube video by Infer Vancouver

www.youtube.com

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Allen Pike @allenpike.com · May 5

I was invited to share what I've been learning about UX patterns for non-chat AI products at the Vancouver AI Meetup last week, and the video is already up ⭐️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRqB...