iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 10/09/2026

Breath of fresh air hearing Jake and his values and admirable to see him sticking to them. It's such a weird time in our industry and I have mixed feelings about using LLMs and depending on these VC funded companies when we've seen their playbook time and time again.

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 21/08/2026

Just saw a post about this in Pi's GitHub discussions thinking "oh, someone's writing a web-based GUI for Pi" And then noticed it: "Wait, JetBrains is writing a GUI for Pi?!"

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 07/08/2026

Wrangling with the a sandbox extension on Pi. Every new platform/language means allowing a whole bunch of new folders to write and domains to access. There's gotta be a better way than that.

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 30/07/2026

Hot take: You do not need to know your LLM provider quota like your life depends on it. Not in the menu bar, not in a widget, definitely not on your wrist watch.

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 14/07/2026

Wrapped up work at 5 for the first time in a while. Not to jinx it but feels like this week will not get out of hand.

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 13/07/2026

@raycast.com what do you folks using for Dictation? It's so fast. Parakeet v3?

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Adam McNeilly @adammc.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Screaming into the void some thoughts on AI coding. androidessence.com/leave-me-beh...

androidessence.com

Leave Me Behind | Android Essence

Simplified Android Development

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 06/04/2026

As much as I'm loving AI coding to build stuff, it's as addictive as a slot machine. Right now, the cost is subsidized by VC money right. I'm afraid that once we're completely hooked on this tech, these companies are gonna hike the prices, triggering the burst of the AI bubble.

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 03/04/2026

npx is a security nightmare.

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Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 03/04/2026

The more I use AI tools, the more I have to admit that I'm not that much more productive... I simply FEEL that much more productive. In reality, the context switching of kicking several things off wipes out my perceived productivity gains. At least in many/most cases!

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 15/01/2026

How many fucking admin portals does Microsoft have? No, really. Entra, 365, Opal, Teams. What else?

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TJ @tunji.dev · 28/08/2025

I've been experimenting a lot with the new navigation events library and navigation 3, and wrote about 3 unique animations and transitions you can create with them: www.tunjid.com/articles/3-u...

tunjid.com

3 unique predictive back animations you can create with the navigation events library

Swipe to pop, drag to pop, and sticky shared elements animations

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 27/08/2025

The best outcome from all this "developer verification", "age verification", and similar surveillance tools is that maybe, we'll just stop using the internet for everything non-essential and go back to living real lives. Who am I kidding, we're spoiled rotten.

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Márton Braun @zsmb.co · 26/08/2025

There's no good reason why people distributing apps outside the Play Store should need to provide their personal data to Google. This is just taking Android into the horrible world of dev accounts and notarization that Apple enforces.

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Mark Murphy @commonsware.com · 27/08/2025

Another issue, another set of uncomfortable questions. Time time, they are about the proposed Android developer verification program: commonsware.com/blog/2025/08... #AndroidDev

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Chris Ward @chrisward.de · 27/08/2025

To be clear, this article headline is deeply misleading. The real headline: Google is banning sideloading on Android. It's anti-competition, deeply intrusive, and extremely dangerous to those in countries with totalitarian regimes (which Google typically bends a knee to).

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 27/08/2025

Suddenly, Google needs to know the real identities of developers. Do you think malware creators will register their APKs with you before they exploit the OS? If not, then it's clear that you're after individuals who are creating apps that you don't like.

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Kelly Vaughn @kvlly.com · 04/08/2025

AI was supposed to make us more efficient. Instead, it’s fragmenting our workflows, bloating our calendars, and burning out high performers. I wrote about the false promise of AI productivity and why we’re actually working harder than ever: afterburnout.co/p/ai-promise...

afterburnout.co

AI promised efficiency. Instead, it’s making us work harder.

AI tools were supposed to free up our time—but they’re increasing our cognitive load and making us less productive. Here’s what’s really happening (and how to use them without burning out).

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Chet Haase @chethaase.com · 07/08/2025

Don't have the Androids audiobook yet? Or need a second copy to listen to it in stereo? My publisher is running a 50% off sale through September 5, get yours for $10: www.audiobooks.com/promotions/p...

audiobooks.com

50% OFF Androids: The Team that Built the Android Operating System

The fascinating inside story of how the Android operating system came to be. In 2004, Android was two people who wanted to build camera software but couldn't get investors interested. Today, A...

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Matt McKenna @mmckenna.me · 29/07/2025

Stop calling AI a "junior engineer" blog.mmckenna.me/stop-calling...

blog.mmckenna.me

Stop Calling AI a “Junior Engineer”

They are tools, not teammates

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 25/06/2025

Lol had some fun with Goose at MCP hack night in Toronto. Everything's fun when the tokens are free 😅 @iandouglas736.com Thanks for hosting this! #TorontoTechWeek

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Dan O'Dowd @realdanodowd.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Safety critical and driving errors on day 1: 1. The Supervised Robotaxi failed to turn left and panicked during Rob Mauer's ride, whipping the wheel back and forth. It then drove on the wrong side of the road, failed to correct itself and continued to drive down the wrong side of the road.

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 24/06/2025

Everyone's saying we're more productive with AI now. So we can finally have a 4 day work week then?

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Márton Braun @zsmb.co · 28/05/2025

I was barely online during KotlinConf 2025, so here's my follow-up now. Thank you so much everyone who joined us, in person or online. It was an incredible experience connecting with the community! ❤️ Here are some highlights of news below, as you've probably missed some! 🧵

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iury souza @iurysouza.dev · 22/05/2025

Union types + Rich Errors Still not clear to me how union types will work (typescript PSTD), but Im all in for rich errors

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 16/05/2025

I wouldn't mind a future where I controlled my computer over voice to tell some LLM to code different things, wearing AR glasses to glance at what it was doing when needed, while walking in a park during the work day. The pieces are kinda all there, except maybe the AR glasses to peek at the screen.

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 16/05/2025

Anybody tried out @getpieces.bsky.social ? I just tried it and while it's super cool. It gave me "keylogger with an AI" vibes just because it's always screen recording and has all the accessibility permissions. Plus, it didn't help that Local mode didn't do anything on my M1 Mac.

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Ben Weiss @keyboardsurfer.dev · 15/05/2025

Don't use Gson on Android. Use Kotlin Serialization instead. It relies on code generation instead of reflection. This helps avoid optimization related crashes and faster app performance. github.com/google/gson?... github.com/Kotlin/kotli...

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Chet Haase @chethaase.com · 08/05/2025

Wait, you *still* haven't listened to the Androids book? What are you waiting for? A sale? Good call: my publisher is selling the audiobook for 50% off until May 11 here: www.audiobooks.com/promotions/p...

audiobooks.com

50% OFF Androids: The Team that Built the Android Operating System

The fascinating inside story of how the Android operating system came to be. In 2004, Android was two people who wanted to build camera software but couldn&#39;t get investors interested. Today...

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Kotlin by JetBrains @kotlinlang.org · 06/05/2025

🔥 Compose Multiplatform for iOS is Stable and Production-Ready! 🔥 Build mobile apps faster with shared UI code, full control over native experiences, and the confidence to ship at scale. Explore all the updates in Compose Multiplatform 1.8.0: 👇 blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2025/...

blog.jetbrains.com

Compose Multiplatform 1.8.0 Released: Compose Multiplatform for iOS Is Stable and Production-Ready | The Kotlin Blog

Kotlin Multiplatform becomes a complete solution for mobile development, enabling flexible code sharing across both business logic and UI without compromising app quality or losing control over platfo...

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Mark Allison @markallison.social · 05/05/2025

I'm currently looking for a new fully remote, contract role. I have 15 years of Android experience, and plenty more Kotlin, Java , C / C++, and even more obscure stuff

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 29/04/2025

Google and new Google assistant APIs. Every couple of Android versions, there's some new way.

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Jesse Wilson @swank.ca · 26/04/2025

Using a todo app is good. I chuck tasks into the thing and trust I won’t drop ’em. Todoist is an excellent todo app. It’s easy to get started and has scaled really well for me.

todoist.com

Todoist | A To-Do List to Organize Your Work & Life

Trusted by 30 million people and teams. Todoist is the world's favorite task manager and to-do list app. Finally become focused, organized and calm.

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 24/04/2025

Compose 1.8.0 dropped yesterday #AndroidDev - Finally auto-fill in Compose + autofill commit will be called automatically (we’ll see if that works for us though) - Text auto-size - `Modifier.onLayoutRectChanged`. Less overhead than `onGloballyPositioned` 🧵 1/2

android-developers.googleblog.com

What’s new in the Jetpack Compose April ’25 release

Upgrade your Android UI development with Jetpack Compose 1.8: autofill integration, text enhancements, visibility tracking, stabilized APIs, and more

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goose @opensource.block.xyz · 04/04/2025

🪿 It’s really Goose vs. Goose! 🪿 Matt and Joe go head-to-head in The Great Goose-Off! 🥊 They’ll have the same task, the same time limit, but different prompts, different MCP servers, and different strategies. 📆 April 8, 2025 at 10 am PT/ 1pm ET 📺 linktr.ee/blockopensou... Join us for episode 2!

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goose @opensource.block.xyz · 31/03/2025

🪿 Which LLMs pass the vibe check? We evaluated Goose's performance with popular closed and open source models — from coding Flappy Bird to creating wiki pages. Here's what we found → block.github.io/goose/blog/2...

block.github.io

Community-Inspired Benchmarking: The Goose Vibe Check

See how open source AI models measure up in our first Goose agent benchmark tests

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 31/03/2025

Let's build an Electon video conferencing app (Around.co alternative maybe?) with Gemini! #vibecoding www.twitch.tv/afzal____

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Afzal Najam @afzal.me · 25/03/2025

Been trying to find an alternative to around.co now that it's shutting down and it's insane how many alternatives that were launched within the last 5 years have shut down or been acquired!

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Chris Banes @chrisbanes.me · 13/02/2025

🚀 Should you use Kotlin Sequences for Performance? I have always thought that using asSequence() was the way to optimize chained operations in Kotlin. But after benchmarking, the results shocked me: Sequences are often slower! 😱 #Kotlin #AndroidDev chrisbanes.me/posts/use-se...

chrisbanes.me

Should you use Kotlin Sequences for Performance?

Should you use Kotlin Sequences for performance? I put List, Sequence, and Flow to the test with kotlinx-benchmark, and the results were surprising!

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Ian Lake @ianlake.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Bug fixes and beta releases headline today's #JetpackReleaseNotes with releases of Compose 1.7.8, Fragment 1.8.6, Navigation 2.8.7, Paging 3.3.6, and Wear Compose 1.4.1 plus Room KMP's first beta release! developer.android.com/jetpack/andr...

developer.android.com

Recent Release Notes | Android Developers

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