Over the last few weeks, I launched my book, learned some useful typography tips, and started using @atuin https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2026/10/

I've made lots of little improvements to my book's typography in the past few weeks. Individually, each felt small, but collectively, they made a noticeable difference.

This article really packs a lot of punch:

https://morewrong.lol/?post=overdose-offsets-why-every-bag-of-fentanyl-i-sell-is-net-life-positive

Perforce are starting to ask communities for input for next year's "State of Open Source Report" (In partnership with @osi and @EclipseFdn).

A warning: The results are usually gated behind a form requesting a lot of personal details (with lacking justification), and they previously performed a copyright takedown against me when I attempted to directly share the results with others:

https://danb.me/blog/perforce-open-source-report-link-takedown/

How do LLMs keep advancing so rapidly while coding agents can't even juggle multiple tasks? https://mtlynch.io/why-are-coding-agents-so-dumb/

What are your favorite anti-patterns in software blogging? https://refactoringenglish.com/blog/anti-patterns-software-blogging/

If you publish any #OpenSource and you want people to use it, may I please implore you to test your README?

Can you actually follow the steps you've written down? Does it work if the user doesn't have the same development packages installed as you?

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/10/how-to-actually-test-your-readme/

I'm pleased to announce the official release of my book, Refactoring English. I've spent the past two years capturing all the techniques for improving my writing that I've learned over the course of my career as a developer. Grab yours for 30% off during launch week. https://refactoringenglish.com/

A SKILL.md for commenting on Hacker News: https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/blog/hnskill/

I'm looking for work, please boost!

I'm a software engineer with 35 years of experience. I've worked across an unusually wide range of domains: mobile game backends, privacy-preserving data platforms, high-throughput COVID testing infrastructure, email and account systems, e-payment processing, job marketplace systems, and bioinformatics. I pick up new domains quickly and have a history of doing it repeatedly. I understand how to turn business needs into engineering requirements.

I prefer to work remotely but I am open to an in-office job in the Philadelphia area or especially in Philadelphia itself. I've often worked remotely since the 1990s and can operate with minimal supervision. Several of my favorite projects were self-directed: I identified the need, built the thing, and shipped it. My preferred time zone is America/New_York, but I'm flexible.

Some of the many, many technologies I've used are: Python, Perl, TypeScript/JavaScript, Haskell, Go, C, Java. Postgres, MySQL, SQLite. Flask, SQLAlchemy. AWS (Lambda, S3, RDS, SQS, EC2). Docker, Git. Github and Gitlab.

I've also repeatedly picked up new languages and stacks as needed: Haskell for differential privacy research, TypeScript for a 24/7 AWS Lambda system, Flask for my most recent employer. I've become productive with new systems over and over, and I can do it quickly.

I'm a published author (Higher-Order Perl, Morgan Kaufmann), longtime blogger, and conference speaker with a reputation for making complex ideas clear.

I am a U.S. citizen.

My résumé is at https://
plover.com/~mjd/cv/Mark%20Jason%20Dominus.pdf

mjd@pobox.com

Thanks!

#OpenToWork #remoteWork #softwareEngineering #Python #backend #hiring
#fediHire
#getFediHired

I decided to offer a print copy of my book and am more excited about it than I expected https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2026/09/

New, exclusive (and cathartic), from me:

The consumer data broker Radaris.com has long had a reputation for ignoring requests to remove personal information from its vast empire of people-search services online. That reputation caught up with the company recently in a lawsuit alleging Radaris violated a New Jersey privacy law that provides for hefty fines against data brokers that publish personal information on state law enforcement officials. In the face of repeated stonewalling and prevarication by attorneys for Radaris, the judge in the case ordered that radaris.com and more than a dozen other data broker domains be transferred to the plaintiffs.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/09/data-broker-radaris-loses-domains-in-privacy-fight/

I've been reading the digital version of @lcamtuf 's new book but it was fun to get the hardcover in the mail this week

Interesting to see Steve Yegge say that he never successfully built anything with Gas Town (other than Gas Town).

In https://danluu.com/ai-coding/, I mentioned not finding any of these super vibed orchestration frameworks useful because the reliability was too low (in terms of them actually getting agents to complete a non-trivial task). Turns out the author of the best known of these frameworks had the exact same issue.

My article "How to Write an Effective Software Design Document" is on the front page of Hacker News today. I tried submitting this myself 4x a couple months ago, and it flopped every time, so I'm excited to see this hit #1.

I regret to inform everyone that my copy of QBittorrent escaped its sandbox last night and downloaded a whole bunch of content owned by major corporations, and then my copy of Jellyfin broke containment and added those unfortunately-downloaded media files to its various libraries. I'm conducting an internal investigation to figure out how this happened, which will involve consuming these media files until the answers become apparent. Thank you for your cooperation during this trying time.

New blog post: Debian Code Search: Fast TurboPFor with Go SIMD 🥳

This August, I accomplished what I wanted for many years: I deleted the last cgo dependency in Debian Code Search! This was made possible by Go’s recently introduced SIMD support, because now we can implement the TurboPFor integer compression format as efficiently — more efficiently, in fact, by using the newer AVX512 instruction set! — as the reference implementation.

https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2026-09-06-dcs-fast-turbopfor-go-simd/

#golang #debian #simd