Really? Is this right? I know nothing to be able to question - but it does seem to be an extreme that I would have heard about before?
The real problem is that Vercel doesn’t let you set a spending limit. Someone could DoS your app while you’re asleep and you’d wake up to a $10,000 bill with no recourse. It’s 2026 — AI crawlers and bots are everywhere, constantly hitting endpoints, triggering serverless functions. Vercel charges for CPU execution time, not bandwidth, so every bot visit costs you money. This isn’t a theoretical edge case. I couldn’t justify the risk anymore.
💬 Assaf Arkin
🔗 coolify-deploy — Vercel-style deploys on your own hardware — Labnotes
A Podcast and Transcript of Peter Kafka Talking to Roger Lynch
Roger Lynch reveals that Condé Nast’s survival isn’t about scale or content volume, but about brand authority and direct audience relationships, he suggests that when Google search collapses and AI platforms commodify content, only publishers with deep trust and “taste” that machines can’t replicate will make it.
All my life I’ve suffered from ‘MOBS’. As the name suggests, it only affects males, and in my case is particularly severe.
So when Jax asked me last night to get her AirPods from her desk, I immediately said yes, while my internal alert system moved into overdrive.
I searched the desk, surrounding area, even where they would normally be charging, eventually returning to the kitchen, head hung low - to report an ‘F2F’ - that would be Failure to Find to you rookies.
She was quick to reply: “On the right-hand side of the desk, by the journals.”
Back upstairs I went. Nope. Not there. I searched the whole room. Nothing. Nada. Null.
Back downstairs I came.
“Still not there,” I reported.
“Good grief, do I need to go?”
“Yes,” I said. “Clearly I am incapable.”
She downed tools, walked two steps, and announced: “They’re in my pocket.”
Of course to Jax it was hilarious. Me? Still working through the emotional roller coaster that I typically ride in these situations.
MOBS? I hear you ask … Male Object Blindness Syndrome
🔗😂📼 Fridges tend to be the first experience of a man experiencing MOBS
🔗 What data sovereignty means for New Zealand
Data sovereignty is often viewed as a technical problem with a technical solution. In reality it is a question of accountability: who has the right to access information, under what rules and in whose interests. For New Zealand organisations, the answer increasingly depends less on where data is stored and more on whose law governs it, who controls the infrastructure and whether those arrangements can be trusted to hold when they are tested.
💬 Bill Bennett
We are learning - fast - that our laws seem to count for less and less.
Crucial Track 🎵 May 15, 2026
"I Write the Songs" by Barry Manilow
Never a fan of Barry. Too saccharine, too schmaltzy. Not my style - but there is always an exception to the rule (still looking for Rush’s exception - but that remains another story.)
When I first heard this in 1976 - my instant reaction - was - ‘TYPICAL - BLOODY BARRY.
But it hooked me. Totally - and still to this day remains on my Apple Playlist called Just Good Songs.
Of course he didn’t write the song, something I learned a little later - and so my dichotomy was resolved. Of course it was a great song - it was written by a ‘Beach Boy’ - and the claim ‘I write the songs …’ as certainly more defensible. Even more so when I realised that;
The ‘I’ in the song is God, and that songs come from the spirit of creativity in everyone.
💬 Bruce Johnston
(Why not share Bruce's version? In my mind - just not as good - so sticking with the version that hooked me.)
Crucial Track 🎵 May 14, 2026
"Une Nuit a Paris, Pt. 1 / The Same Night In Paris, Pt. 2 / Later the Same Night In Paris, Pt. 3" by 10cc
Thought I would follow a prompt for a change:
Share a song you call something other than its official title. What do you call it?
That's the way the croissant crumbles
Epic - from one of the most underplayed bands in the history of 'oldy goldys' - 10CC - and this offering will always be 'One Night in Paris' - I am English for heaven's sake.
This reminds me of my own setup at home. An OpenClaw instance running on one machine, network-attached storage, a few other boxes humming away. Work-related computing running over a residential connection. I suspect that within a few years, this will be commonplace.
💬 Om
Not so long ago we had ‘family computers’ - I have friends who still use a shared computer.
The edge of two personal computers is moving to the norm.
I hear the Mac Mini is selling well these days.
They shoot horses don’t they? I wonder if they shot typesetters?
🔗 Twilight of the Velocipede: Typesetting Races before the Age of Linotype
Kid” DeJarnatt, “Bangs” Levy, and “Young Jack” Fasey — they carved out reputations in what soon became a national touring circuit. A few became minor celebrities, like the Tribune’s star compositor, Thomas Rooker, who took to wearing diamond studs on his shirts.4 One particularly gifted compositor, William C. Barnes, stunned onlookers by setting type blindfolded, with his type cases reversed.
💬 The Public Domain Review
🔗 Diagrams from Willem ten Rhijne’s De Acupunctura (1683) — The Public Domain Review
I know acupuncture is an ancient Chinese medicine.
I did now know it had reached the Western world over 400 years ago.
This time last week (checks calendar), actually yesterday, ‘Collective Wisdom’ said that ‘Consulting is Dead’.
But life moves fast. Today is a new day.
OOHH OOHH - I know let’s set up a consulting division.
No - let’s partner with a consulting company.
No - even better - let’s acquire a consulting company.
💬 Anthropic and OpenAI
🔗 OpenAI launches OpenAI Deployment Company, acquires Tomoro
Tom Siebel’s playbook from the 90s is alive and well - so much for ‘Collective Wisdom’ - which also has the habit of crowing about how everything is new - the old world no longer applies.
Right then.
The thing about 90% of TDMs [Technical Decision Makers] is that they’re motivated primarily by NOT GETTING FIRED. These aren’t people who browser Lobsters or push to GH on the weekend. These are people that work 9 to 5, get paid, go home, and NEVER THINK ABOUT WORK AGAIN. So to achieve all that, they follow secular trends supported by analysts and broad public sentiment. Oh, Gartner said that “AI strategy” is most important? McKinsey said “context” needs to be managed? Well, “Context Engine for AI Apps” is going to be defensible. Buy it.
💬 Mitchell Hashimoto
Nathan makes an important point. 🔗 Why this is not a newsletter.
Commentators with a large and loyal audience quit their jobs at a newsroom—which hires support staff, investigative reporters, and others who have no such followings—and bring a decent chunk of their economic value with them. The newsletter service and payment platforms get a cut. Money moves from institutional support to influencer economies. The commentators get some newfound freedom.
But if we don’t have robust journalistic institutions doing news-gathering work, what is there to comment on?
💬 Nathan Schneider
🔗 Apple is missing the thing that once made it great.
Apple devices also often used to come in real colors. Sure, every now and again Apple will allow a blue or a red or an orange to land on an iPhone as if by clerical mistake.
💬 The Macalope
Fully aware that;
- 3 of my 6 sites are very broken.
- 1 is a little broken
- 2 are not broken at all.
Coincidentally;
- 3 of my 6 sites allow me to modify things - a lot.
- 1 a little bit.
- 2 not at all.
Off to read up on correlation and causation.
👁️ Spotted on LinkedIN.
Wouldn’t ‘Battery As A Service’ be called ‘Electricity’ outside of the Bay Area?
We just don’t build them like this any more.
🔗 Markus Brunetti’s Monumental Photos Venerate European Ecclesiastical Landmarks
🤯 .. A ballpoint pen❓
🔗 Habib Hajallie’s Meticulous Ballpoint Pen Drawings Examine the Depths of Emotion.
I used to get told off for doodling in text books when I was a kid. This guy’s drawing pictures on Ancient Texts. #Wonderful
