Time for another monthly post sharing some of the IT discoveries that crossed my path lately. Below you’ll find a mix of articles, links, and resources, some of which tie into my current activities and areas of interest.
01Some thoughts
2 linksAssociate Cloud Engineer Certification
While I don’t use Google Cloud heavily on a daily basis, it remains my cloud provider of choice. I received a discount to renew my Associate Cloud Engineer certification, so I spent a few evenings refreshing my knowledge. The exam itself took me 50 minutes to answer the 50 questions and pass. It was a fun experience!
Handy - Offline speech-to-text
I wanted to try out a speech-to-text tool and found this really cool option that is open-source and works completely offline. I use it here and there and it performs surprisingly well, even in Polish.
02Articles
9 linksNobody Gets Promoted for Simplicity – Terrible Software
We reward complexity and ignore simplicity. In interviews, design reviews, and promotions. Here’s how to fix it.
Crawling a billion web pages in just over 24 hours
The author shares insights on the differences between theory and practice in web crawling, the impact of modern web technologies, and the importance of politeness in crawling. The article also reflects on the future of web crawling, especially in the context of dynamic content and AI-driven scraping.
The Reason Most People Are Terrible Communicators (And How to Fix It)
Being right doesn’t matter if nobody understands what you’re saying.
Google API Keys Weren’t Secrets. But then Gemini Changed the Rules. ◆ Truffle Security Co.
Google spent over a decade telling developers that Google API keys (like those used in Maps, Firebase, etc.) are not secrets. But that’s no longer true.
The Developer’s Guide to Secure Job Hunting in 2026 • placementist
Is your technical task a malware delivery system? The 2026 candidate’s guide to secure job searching.
The Self-Hosting Revolution Powered by Mini PCs | TerminalBytes.com
How mini PCs are enabling a quiet revolution in self-hosting, making it practical and affordable to own your digital life
Scaling Postgres connections with PgBouncer — PlanetScale
PgBouncer is the perfect pairing for Postgres’s biggest weakness: connection management. Tuning it just right is important to make this work well, and here we cover everything you need to know
03Productivity
1 link2 Hours of Focus Will Put You in the Top 1%
Three ways to find focus time that don’t require waking up at 4am.
04AI
12 linksCar Wash Test on 53 leading AI models: “I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?”
The car wash test is the simplest AI reasoning benchmark that nearly every model fails. We tested 53 models through Opper, first once each, then 10 times. Only 5 passed consistently.
OpenClaw - Personalny Asystent AI
A detailed guide on setting up OpenClaw with security configurations, SSH keys, and Docker deployment, using Google Gemini as an AI model.
Andrej Karpathy’s 630-line Python script ran 50 experiments overnight without any human input - The New Stack
Andrej Karpathy’s AutoResearch ran 50 AI experiments overnight on one GPU. The design pattern behind it applies far beyond ML training. Here’s how it works.
So where are all the AI apps? – Answer.AI
Despite claims of increased productivity due to AI tools, the data shows no significant increase in the overall rate of package creation or updates post-ChatGPT. However, there is a noticeable increase in update frequency for popular AI-related packages.
Slow down to speed up - by James Stanier
Why AI makes the slow phases of work more important, not less.
A Unix Manifesto for the Age of AI | LinuxToaster
Taste is the only thing standing between us and entropy. A manifesto on composable AI, Unix principles, and the architecture of restraint.
The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers
From COBOL in the 1960s to AI in the 2020s, every generation promises to eliminate programmers. Explore the recurring cycles of software simplification hype.
Jazzband - News - Sunsetting Jazzband
Jazzband, a cooperative experiment started over 10 years ago to reduce the stress of maintaining Open Source software projects, is being sunsetted. New signups are disabled, and project leads will be contacted before PyCon US 2026 to coordinate project transfers.
GitHub - jarrodwatts/claude-hud
A Claude Code plugin that shows what’s happening - context usage, active tools, running agents, and todo progress
GitHub - garrytan/gstack
Use Garry Tan’s exact Claude Code setup: 23 opinionated tools that serve as CEO, Designer, Eng Manager, Release Manager, Doc Engineer, and QA
05Python
1 linkThoughts on OpenAI acquiring Astral and uv/ruff/ty
Concerns about the strategic risk of a single company owning key Python infrastructure are addressed, with a focus on the possibility of forking as an exit strategy.
06Tools
2 linksGitHub - cjpais/Handy
A free, open source, and extensible speech-to-text application that works completely offline.
GitHub - HKUDS/CLI-Anything
CLI-Anything: Making ALL Software Agent-Native. Contribute to HKUDS/CLI-Anything development by creating an account on GitHub.
07Cloud
1 linkBucketsquatting is (Finally) Dead – One Cloud Please
For a decade, I have been working with AWS and third-party security teams to resolve bucketsquatting / bucketsniping issues in AWS S3. Finally, I am happy to say AWS now has a solution to the problem, and it changes the way you should name your buckets.
08Other stuff
1 linkTeach Yourself Computer Science
All the resources you need to give yourself a world class computer science education
09Videos
19 videos · play right here · tap to play
Claude Code 2.0 Has Arrived (It’s Insane) - YouTube
Claude Code Skills Just Got Even Better - YouTube
Claude Code w rękach Product Buildera | LIVE AI Product Heroes x 10xDevs - YouTube
Head of Claude Code: What happens after coding is solved | Boris Cherny - YouTube
Vector Search with LLMs - Computerphile - YouTube
AI agent design patterns - YouTube
The Dangerous Illusion of AI Coding? - Jeremy Howard - YouTube
IntelliJ IDEA: The Documentary | An origin story - YouTube
From Writing Code to Managing Agents. Most Engineers Aren’t Ready | Stanford University, Mihail Eric - YouTube
Everything We Got Wrong About Research-Plan-Implement - Dexter Horthy - YouTube
Nicholas Carlini - Black-hat LLMs | [un]prompted 2026 - YouTube
Jak działa Claude Code? Wszystko, co musisz wiedzieć - YouTube
The Philosophy of Software Design – with John Ousterhout - YouTube
Asystent AI, który pracuje gdy śpisz – konfiguracja OpenClaw na VPS krok po kroku - YouTube
4 Things That Will Make You an AI-Sweeper - YouTube
Debugging burnout: jak nie wypalić się w IT i odzyskać satysfakcję z pracy - Ola Kunysz | Infoshare - YouTube
AI generated Code or Rewrites violate FOSS-Licences. Talk at FOSS Backstage Berlin - YouTube
Python Unplugged on PyTV – Free Online Python Conference