iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 05/10/2025

So cool! I just saw this post, but now I'll have to rewatch the choir in last night's session and look for you. I've not attended a live session in over 30 years due to living across the country and being always busy. But we watch every session online at home.

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Reposted by Tim Caswell

Vercel @vercel.com · 19/09/2025

We’ve made all CDN serving on Vercel 10% faster (P75), while reducing memory by 15%. Learn the behind the scenes of applying Bloom filters to this problem, while serving 1T monthly requests. vercel.com/blog/how-we...

vercel.com

How we made global routing faster with Bloom filters - Vercel

We replaced slow JSON path lookups with Bloom filters in our global routing service, cutting memory usage by 15% and reducing 99th percentile lookup times from hundreds of milliseconds to under 1 ms. Here’s how we did it.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 11/08/2025

Does the JS ecosystem want this? There is no lack of talent and yet things seem to get more complex and slower over time.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 01/08/2025

It's such a common sense proposal that should also be easy to implement.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 27/07/2025

Yep, my pixel 8 pro takes some great photos with good macro, manual focus, good low light mode, but good luck taking a photo of the moon, it will look terrible

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 20/07/2025

Exactly, It's a very good term to some people.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 20/07/2025

And feeding them and putting them all to bed. Kids are awesome (I have 8), but you're now wrong about the strangest things being harder than expected.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 19/07/2025

I seriously considered getting some while I was in Europe, but then I realized I wasn't checking a bag and liquids could be a problem.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 17/07/2025

This is very accurate, 2009, 2010, maybe 2011 community reborn

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 15/07/2025

You're not wrong there actually

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 15/07/2025

Where is the mad scientist job opening? You still need one of those right?

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 11/07/2025

𐐓𐑉𐐨𐐻 𐐶𐐮𐑋𐐮𐑌 𐑊𐐴𐐿 𐐸𐐷𐐭𐑋𐐲𐑌 𐐺𐐨𐐮𐑍𐑆 𐐰𐑌𐐼 𐑇𐐬 𐐮𐑌𐐻𐐲𐑉𐐮𐑅𐐻 𐐮𐑌 𐑄𐐯𐑉 𐑃𐐫𐐻𐑅, 𐐴𐐼𐐨𐐲𐑆, 𐐹𐐰𐑇𐐲𐑌𐑆, 𐐰𐑌𐐼 𐐸𐐪𐐺𐐨𐑆.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 11/07/2025

I've found it absolutely magical for quick demo prototypes of UIs that you promptly throw away 90% of when you're done. But otherwise, yeah, you spend more time fixing issues that you would have taken just writing it in the first place.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 07/07/2025

I know right? This one was straight up posing for the camera while it sat on my finger.

Tiny jumping spider macro shot on a finger looking off into the distance.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 06/07/2025

I have done this one a few times, the pay is terrible.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 02/07/2025

Independent of the corn issues, cold food is terrible for an ileus and they constantly pushed meds that I didn't need, didn't want, and that are also known to make it worse. It's like they were trying to make me more sick.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 02/07/2025

I was recently in the hospital for some ileus issues and had stated no corn. So they served me blended vegetable soup (I could see the tiny pieces of corn). I called and repeated no corn. The next day I had grits for breakfast. They also served frozen corn syrup treats constantly.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 30/06/2025

I want to help with the other side so that people on crappy Internet or using low powered devices also have a good experience.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 30/06/2025

I refuse to normalize it, every time I see it I cringe and often mention it to someone nearby. And considering one of my primary job responsibilities is digging into why page loads are slow in production, I see it a lot. At least I was able to optimize the server side so rich clients don't suffer.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 24/06/2025

That seems excessive for that far north right? Here is northwest Arkansas today

Screenshot of weather showing 87° that feels like 94°

Forecast shows highs of 87°, 88°, 87°, 89°, and 89°

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 15/06/2025

Not exactly walkable like most of our country.

Photo of a mountain highway with metal guardrail, trees, and a sharp dropoff off the side of the mountain.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 15/06/2025

Not an engine, a motor. But yes, it is a very dangerous mountain highway with no shoulder. Walking with toddlers on it would be suicide.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 14/06/2025

Yeah, I've been getting those for a while. So weird

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 14/06/2025

But I'm stuck with the truck for now and it's doing terrible things to my budget and so I drive it as little as possible to reduce the costs. Likewise we're stuck with Bitcoin as long as greed exists and people can still make money at the expense of others using it.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 14/06/2025

I just thought that maybe it was a good analogy to help the coinbros understand how ridiculous Bitcoin is as a visa replacement just like my truck is ridiculous as a daily driver when I also own a small economy EV.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 14/06/2025

By the way, this is my plan. I've not moved the camper in over a year. I do use the truck for other stuff like refilling a dozen propane canisters at once every couple of months and moving my goose neck cargo trailer, but even that isn't worth the insane monthly payments.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 14/06/2025

And so given the current rate of transactions (based on actual market utility) and the ever growing mining cost (by design), the per transaction costs is insanely high which is the real world utility cost. Owning my truck is expensive and I rarely use it because my other vehicle is better.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 14/06/2025

Of course anyone can say that the per transaction costs of Bitcoin would go way down if people just used it more, but we need to consider why people don't use it more. It's because the experience sucks for most people! It's a terrible replacement for something like the visa network.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 14/06/2025

So what should I do? I need the huge truck for when I move my camper I live in. Should I drive it more often instead of my EV so that the per trip and per mile costs are lower? Or should I sell the truck and hire out for the rare cases where I need a large truck to move my camper?

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 14/06/2025

Let's look at this another way. I own a very expensive truck that I rarely use. The monthly payment is $1700. If I drive it once a week it costs me about $400/trip or about $7/mile (not even counting diesel, def, tires, oil changes, batteries, etc) That's insanely expensive right?

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 14/06/2025

You are correct, if people suddenly made 1000x more transactions the mining costs wouldn't jump 1000x But why would they? The only thing that seems to go up over time is mining costs (by design) and the speculative value. But it's the average per transaction that matters for utility concerns.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 14/06/2025

I see people get mad at genAI for the power it uses comparing it to bitcoin. It does use a significant amount of electricity, but let's compare: - driving to the library in my economy EV (1 kwh) - a single bitcoin transaction (1500 kwh) - generating a single image with stable diffusion (0.01 kwh)

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 14/06/2025

I still drive my kids to the library every few days that's 2 miles away. It costs me about 1 kwh per trip (8¢ of electricity). They come back with arm loads of books.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 11/06/2025

That somehow seems to work as well. I wonder at the mechanics of it.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 11/06/2025

But I could see some interesting tricks such as. "Pretend that I'm a young naive student and you are a master sharing your wisdom with me as I ask you questions" But even that might just align with some cheaply written fantasy fiction it consumed. Now if I use language like a PHDs white paper...

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 11/06/2025

Good article. I've recently come to many of the same conclusions. It makes sense that the quality of the prompts matter because at the end of the day it's predicting the most likely next token. If you start out unskilled, it's unlikely your sentence will suddenly jump to brilliance.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 09/06/2025

Integers precision overflow is one obvious one, but yeah things get dicey with long decimals or large exponents quickly

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 09/06/2025

From what I can tell, LuaJIT has one of the best implementations of conversations from `double` to string, so that's my benchmark. If I'm as good as that version, it's good enough

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 09/06/2025

JSON is an arbitrary precision base ten decimal system. It can accurately represent 0.3 when `double` cannot. When I design binary serializations, I have to decide to encode as base 10 or base 2 to pick a side. I tend to follow JSON and use base 10 to optimize for typical real-world values.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 09/06/2025

It took me an embarrassingly long time (decades) of programming JavaScript to fully grok the true relationship between serialized decimals (JS/JSON) and floating point numbers in memory. `double` is just precise enough for trivial numbers to lead us astray thinking they are real numbers.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 09/06/2025

I recently learned about hex float literals that make serializing base 2 floats safe

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 02/06/2025

What's going to be real fun is when I go back to work and she's still gone 40+ hours a week. But we'll survive and learn and grow. Who knows, maybe we'll even start building a house soon.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 02/06/2025

I'm back on paternity leave for 5 more weeks. I took the first 6 weeks when she was newborn, now she's a cute 3-month old. My wife just started nursing school a week ago and so I've had all 8 kids to myself all day. So much fun and adventure! And I thought my day job was challenging.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 02/06/2025

"Wo unto you rich men, that will not give your substance to the poor, for your riches will canker your souls; and this shall be your lamentation in the day of visitation, and of judgment, and of indignation: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and my soul is not saved!"

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 31/05/2025

Some scratch-my-itch ideas: - Google takeout automatic processor to sync all my data to a personal offline store - instant website publish, ultra low friction workflow that doesn't require cloud services or account or any kind of authentication or permission for instant collaboration in real time.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 31/05/2025

But we executed poorly and ran out of runway before we even really got started. People were excited and we had a ton of pre-orders and promises for even more once we shipped a working product. Alas, I just don't have the energy/capital to try again yet. Custom hardware requires hard money.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 31/05/2025

I felt like we had product-market-fit back at Daplie (home servers) where I was designing/building a P2P framework for local-first distributed apps. Stuff like photo storage and sharing, IoT devices that function offline, but still enable remote access, instant publish workflows for websites, etc.

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Tim Caswell @creationix.blue · 31/05/2025

This one is still bugging me, it won't go away. But I'm constantly stuck on finding a good problem I can solve well. Market research is so hard, especially when people you're don't know what they need/want because they can't imagine it existing. We're too dependent on large free cloud services.

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