Jeff Couturier

Your weekly reminder that every single paid speech-to-text app on MacOS is a scam – they all cost $0 to run because they're using a free local model. Download the free handy.computer or any of the many open source alternatives and go get a coffee.

As a research project, I built a needed tool with Claude Code. I though it would be a disaster, but It wasn't. I have some complicated feelings about it.

today and always ./🏳️‍⚧️

the very first correct ai overview in modern history, i fear

Everyone has a right to exist.

If your title is "designer" & you keep using AI gen'd images for your articles & posts, all you're telling me is that you're too lazy to do the thing you claim to be an expert at. If I said I'm an expert chef & brought a microwave dinner to our pitch meeting, you'd laugh me out of the building.

"How much of this can be local" should be the default question every dev asks. Most have gotten too comfortable with defaulting to remote hosting even the tiniest services. Glad to see a growing pushback for local-first. A nice mini-doc from @cultrepo.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=10d8...

Why do so many modern SaaS sites look the same? First, Tailwind. Second, agentic tools using it by default. From @jim-nielsen.com : "When you offload your thinking, you might be on-loading someone else’s you’d never agree to — personally or collectively." blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/opacity...

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I finally installed my own self-hosted instance of Gitea (about.gitea.com) and it's so good and so fast. I should have done this a long time ago. I really like Gitlab for a lot of reasons, but for 90% of my projects and especially solo work Gitea is fantastic.

Nothing is illegal on stolen I.P.

Good.

This should make your blood boil. Please contact your reps (@resist.bot is a great way to do it) and keep the pressure on to stop this. No kid, no matter where they or their parents are from, should be imprisoned like this.

Look at this horror show. This is just one span tag from high-profile production site. I won't say Tailwind is inherently bad, but it sure is a crutch that's used poorly more often than not.

I built a free #dnd tool that lets you add all of your character's available actions, set how many actions you can use per turn, and then easily plan your next turn. Runs in any browser (including your phone), no login or sign-up. jeffcouturier.com/blog/dd-acti...

It's the tail end of 2025 and I'm still seeing UI's with iconography that isn't descriptive at all. I have no idea what that weird box with an off-center circle inside is supposed to mean. "But it's our brand style." Then your brand style is a lack of clarity. Be clear first, then be fancy.

It's been years and years, and I still despise React's JSX camel case for HTML properties. I get it, that's how the DOM API works, but React leans in to wacky convention-breaking quirks like this. It still feels dirty and things like Svelte have proven it doesn't have to be like that.

Seeing designers use shoddy AI art as heroes for their blog posts is disappointing. We can and should do better, pressure be damned. Selling out your own craft doesn't reflect well on you.

As promised earlier, for your weekend joy: @ohhelloana.blog and her talk about "Maintaining and Modernising CSS" given at #btconf Berlin 2025. Have a wonderful weekend everyone! youtu.be/6ZP1e8iQtBQ

Big tech has convinced most people that they *have to* use their walled gardens and pay for their apps. But you don't. That's the beauty of the web, and it's very easy and cheap (free options too!) to have your own site/blog/whatever. Take advantage of offers like this.

Google changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Dump Truck just means it isn't a trusted source of information anymore. Geography isn't named by the POTUS.

The web has cancer, and this is a carcinogen.

I really like this from @simonwillison.net "I realized that one of the best things about open source software is that you can solve a problem once and then you can slap an open source license on that solution and you will never have to solve that problem ever again"

I was about to rant about unordered lists, and then I turned my volume up... 😂

For young adults everywhere…

It is the year 2025. I should not be landing on your conference website and seeing a line up of only men.

If you're a front-end dev, you need to be watching HTMX closely right now. htmx.org/essays/future/

This is *critically* important when our attention is the real commodity now, and the opposition has mastered getting attention and manufacturing outrage to divide and distract.

Where is the innovation and out-of-the-box thinking they keep crowing about, and why can't they use that to build ethical systems. Can't, or won't?

If you need to write half a dozen articles to outline your neato process for using JSON, npm packages, build scripts, and five other abstraction layers to just output some SCSS and CSS, then I don't think you understand CSS at all. All that needless complexity is crazy.

Today, the W3C's Ethical Web Principles became a W3C Statement. They include sustainability, privacy, internationalisation and accessibility… all aspects of the web that are commonly under threat and need our full attention. Tnx @torgo.com and @hadleybeeman.bsky.social! www.w3.org/TR/ethical-w...

I created a “Women in Tech” Starter Pack! Highly recommend to follow these incredibly talented women. 💖✨ go.bsky.app/PNKtkEe (Feel free to suggest edits, of course!)

It's Thursday which is usually relatively quiet and therefore prodiuctive, but I haven't been sent a single chat message today and I'm getting suspicious.

This seems like basic 101 stuff, but it's surprising how many devs don't know about this feature and others like it. And yes, Firefox has it too (also had it first, and does it better).

2025 LLM/AI challenge: build something humanity actually needs that improves the lives of real people, not whatever snake oil you think you can sell if you market it enough. There are plenty of real problems to solve. "What if books but with virtual avatars of deceased authors" is not one of them.

job hunting sucks #design

I work with some really, really cool people.

If you don't know how to code, coding with AI seems amazing. If you do know how, you know AI produces problematic shit unless you spend more time re-instructing the AI than you would have spent just coding it yourself. The day will come when these tools are better, but it sure as hell is not today.

For professional design bsky pals, I'll reshare one of my major contributions to the field, which involved drawing two boxes around an illustration I got from wikimedia commons. This is what I picture when I hear UX and why I don't apply the label to my work.