Bobbie Chen

5 July

Of course, heard of the memo via @stevesi.xyz's excellent Hardcore Software, a memoir of his time at Microsoft during the PC revolution.

28 June

Digitizing some home VHS tapes makes me believe that the modern computer needs more satisfying noises.

aresluna.orgShow your hands honor for the strange power they bring youOn designing finger-friendly interactions

19 June

Really great article from @aresluna.org with lots of keyboard/mouse interaction demos! aresluna.org/show-your-ha...

digitalseams.comMaking things: interview series — Digital SeamsWhen you can make anything, what do you choose? And why even try, when someone else is doing it better?

Today, it has never been easier to create something, anything. But when given the opportunity, most people never do. So I interviewed four creators I admire, on how they make the exciting, creative, uniquely-personal things they do - and here's the result: digitalseams.com/blog/making-...

Nolen (@itseieio.bsky.social): as I wrote - whenever you post a new project, I feel like a kid on the playground again. Really glad we got to chat! digitalseams.com/blog/nolen-r...

digitalseams.comNolen Royalty on making things — Digital SeamsThe internet feels smaller than it used to be, as fun stuff concentrates into a few mega-platforms. But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Nolen Royalty creates strange, fun new places and invites...

digitalseams.comSeth Larson on making things — Digital SeamsYou’ve probably used code touched by Seth Larson - he’s the lead maintainer for one of the most widely-used Python libraries, urllib3, and he works on open-source security at the Python Software Found...

And Seth (@sethmlarson.dev): when we talked I was touched by how you described the inherent value of people and our relationships to each other. Thank you! digitalseams.com/blog/seth-la...

digitalseams.comMaking things: interview series — Digital SeamsWhen you can make anything, what do you choose? And why even try, when someone else is doing it better?

digitalseams.comAmit Patel on making things — Digital SeamsFor decades, Amit Patel’s interactive explainers have been reference points for programmers, game developers, and curious people on the internet. Red Blob Games is one of my personal favorites.  ...

Huge thanks to the folks I interviewed: Amit (@redblobgames.com): you inspired this project directly from a Bluesky thread a while back! Thanks for helping me see it through. digitalseams.com/blog/amit-pa...

digitalseams.comMorry Kolman on making things — Digital SeamsMorry Kolman’s art makes you laugh. Then it makes you think. He might be best known for Traffic Cam Photobooth , which uses the traffic camera infrastructure at intersections throughout New York Ci...

Morry (wttdotm.com ): what a great conversation on bringing in stupidity - it's really changed the way I think about getting started digitalseams.com/blog/morry-k...

Bobbie Chen reposted

Adam Conover

@adamconover.net

15 May

I’m sorry but “everyone is going to use AI to code their own apps” sounds like “everyone is going to learn HTML and code their own websites.“ like … have you met people? no they’re not

Bobbie Chen reposted

wint

@dril.bsky.social

27 Apr

why breed dogs with jaws large enough to tear through Flesh, when you could breed dogs with minds large enougj to tear through Fallacy.....

24 Apr

On newer Macbooks, the trackpad has no physical bouncy parts at all. The haptic feedback is entirely controlled by software. I remembered this today because Docker ate all my RAM and I couldn't even feel my clicks while trying to kill it

reuters.comLong Island Iced Tea skyrockets after renaming itself Long BlockchainBeverage maker Long Island Iced Tea Corp's <LTEA.O> shares jumped nearly 300 percent on Thursday after the company said it would rebrand itself Long Blockchain Corp, the latest U.S. firm to tap ...

15 Apr

History repeats itself. Were Allbirds ever that great? www.reuters.com/article/tech...

aprilcools.clubApril Cools' Club

1 Apr

Didn't have time to do one this year but I'm enjoying this year's April Cools posts! www.aprilcools.club

Hillel@hillelwayne.com

Tomorrow is the fifth annual April Cools! Let's celebrate with my favorite posts from the last few years: 2022: To Ace Exams, Get Better At The Easy Questions (predr.ag/blog/to-ace-...) by Predrag Gruevsky, with apparently an invalid handle. I've shared this post with others; it's real helpful!

predr.agTo ace exams, get better at the easy questionsMost tests are tests of speed, not tests of knowledge. Improve your speed to improve your results!

25 Mar

Preach @berkun.bsky.social - "Our culture rewards us with status for never having time for things. We admire busy... When we see a silly video on social media, we often judge the creator by saying, “Well, that’s someone with too much time on their hands.” This is just Puritanical bullshit;

rulestolive.substack.comRule #23: Be inefficient on purposeLearn to be time rich instead of time poor

25 Mar

a sad, warped, work ethic that only values capitalistic production. That person in the silly video was having fun. How often do we do that? Isn’t that the goal of all the work we do? To “make time” to, you know, enjoy life?" rulestolive.substack.com/p/rule-23-be...

digitalseams.comThe Phantoms of the Fraudpera: an overview of anti-detection tooling — Digital SeamsThis weekend, I gave a talk at BSides SF 2026 to a full theater at the Metreon AMC. This is that talk, as a blog post. It’s about the hidden ecosystem of attackers’ tools and how they factor into a...

23 Mar

In case you missed it, I converted my talk into a blog post! digitalseams.com/blog/phantom...

Bobbie Chen@bobbiechen.com

A preview of my talk at #BSidesSF tomorrow! Looking forward to it :)

20 Mar

A preview of my talk at #BSidesSF tomorrow! Looking forward to it :)

calebhearth.comDon't Get DistractedI’m going to tell you about how I took a job building software to kill people. But don’t get distracted by that; I didn’t know at the time.

6 Mar

Thinking about this 2017 talk from @calebhearth.com today: Don't Get Distracted. calebhearth.com/dont-get-dis...

20 Feb

I once playtested my friend's video game, which used the Pavlok to shock you when you get hit. I got shocked a lot (they told me I was by far the worst playtester). It was a VR game, and I didn't realize I could look around. (Image via @genmon.fyi: interconnected.org/home/2026/02...)

productpicnic.beehiiv.comCorporations demand perfection from workers, but AI gets unlimited slack.LLM users have bottomless patience for inconsistent tools, and no grace left for their colleagues. What if we could flip it around?

16 Feb

From the excellent @spavel.bsky.social: "The LLM experiment has taught us one thing: people are willing to tolerate error, explain themselves, collaborate, trust."

16 Feb

"Today, they are choosing to invest this positive energy into a synthetic slop extruder. But tomorrow, they could invest it into their fellow human beings, if they chose to do so." productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/corporatio...

digitalseams.comMaking a font with 9,999 ligatures to display thirteenth-century monk numerals — Digital SeamsAs the title implies, I just created a font that displays numbers in a compact format used by Cistercian monks . You can play with it on my demo site here :

10 Feb

You know what's better than a font with 9,998 ligatures? digitalseams.com/blog/making-...

bobbiec.github.ioCistercian Numeral FontA font that renders numbers as medieval Cistercian numerals

10 Feb

Demo site: bobbiec.github.io/cistercian-f...

digitalseams.comComputers that used to be human — Digital SeamsBefore Macs or mainframes, computers were people: a brief etymology of people becoming tools.

11 Jan

Alternate-world person-tool etymology: Protractor used to be someone who made meetings drag on longer by considering new angles (some say this role still exists today) digitalseams.com/blog/compute...

4 Jan

Happy new year! I'm thankful for all the little interactions with people here and looking forward to more!

24 Dec 2025

There are three kinds of Bluesky alt text

lyra.horseSVG Filters - Clickjacking 2.0A novel and powerful twist on an old classic.

5 Dec 2025

What a journey, I fear SVG now lyra.horse/blog/2025/12...

Bobbie Chen reposted

I Hope This Email Finds You

@thisemailfindsyou.bsky.social

17 Nov 2025

I hope this email finds you under his domination you will never be free again.

github.blogRemoving notifications for @mentions in commit messages - GitHub ChangelogTo reduce unwanted noise and help you focus on what matters most, we’re removing notifications generated from mentions in commit messages. Previously, mentioning a user or team in a commit…

9 Nov 2025

And... they've disabled tag notifications, presumably because they can't handle the abuse: github.blog/changelog/20... what a shame

Bobbie Chen@bobbiechen.com

A clever phishing attack today against developers on GitHub, using GitHub issue notifications to send a legit-looking message from an official GitHub email. Another supply chain attack attempt?

bobbiec.github.ioBluesky Alt Text StreamA view of all alt text (image descriptions) on the Bluesky Firehose

3 Nov 2025

At my first IETF in Montreal! #IETF124 @bibo7086.bsky.social , meeting you inspired me to fixup some bugs on my Bluesky alt text stream, thanks! bobbiec.github.io/bluesky-alt-...

Bobbie Chen reposted

Jon Bois

@jonbois.bsky.social

24 Oct 2025

generally speaking, people should be eating way more candy than they do. next time you find yourself reaching for fresh produce at the grocery store, consider a bag of candy instead

18 Oct 2025

Me as a birdwatcher messing with the guy interviewing me: "After a great deal of practice, many bird-watchers can identify a bird by the ‘way it looks’... They even have a name for this brute property, which they call the bird’s ‘jizz’."

web-archive.southampton.ac.ukweb-archive.southampton.ac.uk

18 Oct 2025

Via "The Art of Chicken Sexing", by Richard Horsey: web-archive.southampton.ac.uk/cogprints.or...

17 Oct 2025

The Student's t-test is "named" after a brewer at Guinness. It's not Henry Gosset's t-test though; he published under the Student pseudonym so that rival breweries wouldn't realize the value. I wonder what other discoveries are bottled up in some corp right now?

Erika Hall@erikahall.bsky.social

This is also how you can tell we’re doing technofeudalism. If there were actual competition for customers of products and services, anything that was a true accelerator or super-efficient quality maximizer would be a trade secret.

17 Oct 2025

Visited the Eames chair exhibit at the Transamerica Pyramid recently and it was delightful to realize that so many iconic chairs were designed by the same couple. And the staff there were really knowledgeable too!

web.archive.orgOffice of Medical History

2 Oct 2025

In the World War II draft, 8.8% of men failed dental examinations, mostly for missing the required 12 teeth! Twelve! web.archive.org/web/20190627...

2 Oct 2025

Via @tricialockwood.bsky.social in Will There Ever Be Another You It is a delight and worth following up on every little dangled thread

lea.verou.meIn the economy of user effort, be a bargain, not a scam • Lea VerouUser effort is a currency. To create a product users love, design the tradeoffs of use case complexity to user effort with the same care you design your pricing scheme.

30 Sept 2025

"Users are much more vocal about things not being possible, than about things being hard." Loved this post!

Lea Verou, PhD@lea.verou.me

🔥 New blog post! Covering, among other things: - Why making simple things easy and complex things possible is not enough - How to maximize your UI’s signal-to-noise ratio - Why you can’t uncover friction through user feedback - How to prioritize user needs lea.verou.me/blog/2025/us...

22 Sept 2025

An update on better alt text for Bluesky images: I was really overconfident in how easy it would be to transcribe screenshotted text.

digitalseams.comImage transcription humbled me, plus thoughts on the bitter lesson — Digital SeamsDoes the existence of better tech on the horizon demotivate you from working on problems today?

22 Sept 2025

And, instead of doing the extra work to fix it, I'm really tempted to wait for some magical tech advancement to solve it for me instead. And I wonder: who else feels this way? Full notes here: digitalseams.com/blog/image-t...

20 Sept 2025

A clever phishing attack today against developers on GitHub, using GitHub issue notifications to send a legit-looking message from an official GitHub email. Another supply chain attack attempt?

digitalseams.comEvery app is a messaging app — Digital SeamsEvery application will be used for messaging. What do spreadsheets, email drafts, and system notifications have in common? Inventive people use them in creative ways to send and receive messages. Peop...

20 Sept 2025

Every app is a messaging app again (and I should have subtitled it, every messaging app is a phishing app) digitalseams.com/blog/every-a...

18 Sept 2025

Somewhere out there, there's a talking head vertical video saying this same thing (with captions that highlight each word)

Andy Craig@andycraig.bsky.social

The huge information environment dividing line isn't between offline (effectively nobody is now) and online. It's between people who became accustomed to the internet when it was still predominantly text-based as opposed to people habituated to primarily consuming audio/video.