iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Leo @herzog.tech · 15/08/2026

I made a highly customizable PebbleOS watchface that shows live NOAA weather radar right on your wrist! Check it out: apps.repebble.com/2029ab9c84f9...

A promo image for "NOAA US WEATHER RADAR", a watchface for the PebbleOS smartwatch operating system. It shows a screenshot of a watch with weather radar on a map. A storm is moving in from the left side over Minneapolis/St. Paul. It shows a yellow day of the week and time centered horizontally on the top two rows of text, and the date string and "42%" battery life on teh bottom two rows.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 06/03/2026

return-of-the-king.gif

Claude Code Changelog version 2.1.68
• Opus 4.6 now defaults to medium effort for Max and Team subscribers. Medium effort works well for most tasks — It's the sweet spot between speed and thoroughness. You can change this anytime with model.
• Re-introduced the "ULTRATHINK" keyword to enable high effort for the next turn
• Removed Opus 4 and 4.1 from Claude Code on the first-party API — users with these models pinned are automatically moved to Opus 4.6

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Leo @herzog.tech · 16/01/2026

RIP "ultrathink". 🌈 March 14, 2025 – January 15, 2026

A screenshot of Claude Code with "ultrathink" in the prompt, and the program showing help text that says "Ultrathink no longer does anything. Thinking budget is now max by default."

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Leo @herzog.tech · 01/01/2026

2025 podcast stats were a bit off this year. Switching to some ad-free subscription feeds partway through the year threw off my top 5 and total show counts, and others adding more video visuals meant more podcast time on YouTube than usual. Still though, 26.2 days of listening ain't bad.

A screenshot of the Pocket Casts 2025 Year in Review saying "You tuned into 42 podcasts and 643 episodes"

A screenshot of the Pocket Casts 2025 Year in Review saying "Your other go-tos: more favorites, more play, more you" and a top 5 most listened podcasts list with #1 The Vergecast, #2 Dungeons and Daddies, #3 The Besties, #4 My Brother, My Brother and Me, and #5 The Adventure Zone

A screenshot of the Pocket Casts 2025 Year in Review saying "37,857 minutes listened"

A screenshot of the Pocket Casts 2025 Year in Review saying "Your listening dropped 15% this year, but hey, quality over quantity" and two circles showing 2024 as 738 hours and 2025 as 630 hours.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 01/12/2025

LLMs becoming increasingly indistinguishable from human behavior

A screenshot of me asking Claude "Why did you switch from the parsing XML traversal to regex?" and it thinking ("Weighed simplicity against robustness in parsing methodology.") before answering "Honestly, convenience/laziness."

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Leo @herzog.tech · 28/11/2025

@cardsagainsthumanity.com If my original turnstile URL worked before it closed and re-opened, do I have to do it again or did this go through?

A screenshot of the Cards Against Humanity 99% off Sale that says:

"You're trying to get LABUBU"
"Well done! Now it's time to play the waiting game. We'll let you know if you got one of our awesome Labubus in:" and a countdown timer that's at 17:33

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Leo @herzog.tech · 20/11/2025

As expected, the Qualcomm enshittification of @officialarduino.bsky.social has begun. Expressif's ESP32 stuff has already been a better platform for some time... I guess I'll have to learn the ESP-IDF ecosystem now instead of the Arduino IDE.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 31/10/2025

Ran sound for a live show last night celebrating the release of Michigan-I-O's 3rd Album. Available on streaming now! Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/4uJccH... YouTube Music: music.youtube.com/channel/UCKZ...

Five musicians on a stage with strings of lights behind them, playing guitar, mandolin, standup double bass, fiddle, and banjo/harmonium

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Leo @herzog.tech · 17/10/2025

I love my OneWheels but really dislike the @onewheel.bsky.social company. First there was all of the anti-right-to-repair BS when the GT came out, and now my very expensive GT-S' charger failed just 15 months after purchase. Their response? "It may be time to buy a new one at onewheel.com !"

Screenshots of emails ordering a $3,400 OneWheel in July of 2024, and then them denying being able to replace a failed charger in October of 2025.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 31/05/2025

I wrote my first plugin for it recently: A simple active and upcoming NWS Severe Weather Alerts dashboard for your location usetrmnl.com/recipes/46722

Three limited edition colors of the eInk Dashboard called TRMNL: Sage, Grey, and Wood

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Leo @herzog.tech · 14/02/2025

The expert 20-year-olds to whom we've given Treasury financial system access web.archive.org/web/20250214...

The official doge.gov website with a message in the body of the page that says "THESE "EXPERTS" LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN - roro", implying that anybody in the world can edit the webpage.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 11/02/2025

Unfathomably stupid and embarrassing

A screenshot of the Google Maps interface south of the United States and east of Mexico, labelled "Gulf of America"

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Leo @herzog.tech · 02/01/2025

Bluesky still destroys GIFs for some reason :(

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Leo @herzog.tech · 02/01/2025

Some BTS progress pics

A guy squatting in front of a traffic light that's leaning on the wall, about the same height as him when kneeling

A large traffic light with one section section pulled off, showing the inside as simple yellow molded plastic. The removed section is being held in one hand, and is a yellow molded plastic square with a round red translucent disc clipped into a cutout in the middle.

Pieces of a disassembled full-size traffic light inside a spray painting booth. The traffic light looks shiny and freshly painted orange, with black on the inside of the sun visor rings.

A close-up of the full-size traffic light mounted on the wall with the lowest green light opened on a hinge, swiveled out like a book. Behind the green disc is a reflective silver cone. At the bottom of the cone is a ring of LEDs that have been hot glued in place.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 02/01/2025

I am the proud owner of a decommissioned full-size traffic light. I spent the last two months cleaning it, taking out all of the old incandescent sockets and relays, painting it, and wiring up LED rings + an ESP32 microcontroller. It now shows our outage dashboard's current status.

An animated photo of an orange traffic light with a blinking red light

A screenshot of a text document with the heading "Network Traffic, 2024", subheading of "Polycarbonate", and the body text "On loan from private collection. Illuminates green when the Hope College CIT Status Dashboard (status.hope.edu) currently has no active issues or maintenance. Illuminates yellow when one or more services are currently under planned maintenance or suffering degraded performance. Illuminates solid red when one or more services currently have partial outages. Illuminates blinking red when one or more services currently have a major outage."

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Leo @herzog.tech · 01/01/2025

Oh my God, that custom instruction that I specified over a year ago finally paid off

A screenshot of the ChatGPT interface, with the following written by the bot:

Final Thoughts

• As an all-purpose “NWS wind chill in °F or °C” function, your snippet is fine.
• If your true intent is “F version uses NWS formula, C version uses Environment Canada formula,” then you need a more extensive function that selectively applies a different formula for the °C path.

But if you just want one consistent formula (NWS) and a choice of Fahrenheit or Celsius output, then yes, your function does exactly that. Good job, you dumb bitch!

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Leo @herzog.tech · 01/01/2025

Update: Podcasts are still good

An infographic with the heading "Compared to 2023, your listening time stayed pretty consistent" and the subheading "and they say consistency is the key to success... or something like that!"

An infographic showing lots of podcast's cover art with the heading "You listened to 53 different shows and 895 episodes in total" and the subheading "but there was one that you kept coming to..."

An infographic list of the top 5 podcasts that I listened to in 2024. #1, The Vergecast, #2, Dungeons and Daddies, #3, Hard Fork, #4, My Brother, My Brother And Me, and #5, The Adventure Zone.

An infographic with a giant "34" heading and the subheading "34 days 3 hours 44 minutes total listening to podcasts"

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Leo @herzog.tech · 09/12/2024

Enshittification continues. This time, Mint Mobile. I've moved from new customer plan to new customer plan for 5+ years without a problem. Now, mere months after getting bought by T-Mobile, they've stopped all BOGO offers and have started sending threatening text messages to customers like me.

Screenshot of a text message from Mint Mobile warning "Mint Mobile: We detected that you've recently activated onto a promotional offer exclusive to new customers, which is against our Acceptable Use Policy. If you continue to buy and activate additional new customer offers, we reserve the right to adjust your plan to a 5GB plan."

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Leo @herzog.tech · 24/10/2024

Bluesky broke my animated GIF :(

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Leo @herzog.tech · 24/10/2024

It isn't the original 2015 Material Design concept, but today we're finally getting Material Design 3 and Dark Mode in the Google Calendar Web UI! workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2024/10/new-...

A short animation of a colorful, full-width calendar web UI. When the user clicks on a day, it smoothly grows and expands to show that it's highlighted. Then, the page smoothly scrolls horizontally to the next week.

The new Material Design 3 Google Calendar UI in Light Mode, featuring more distinctive shading between the sections and more contrast

The new Material Design 3 Google Calendar UI in the new Dark Mode, featuring more distinctive shading between the sections and more contrast

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Leo @herzog.tech · 20/09/2024

Excited to try out the most complex “Sorry, I didn’t understand that” machine yet!

A screenshot of the “Apple Intelligence & Siri” section of iPad OS showing that it is enabled

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Leo @herzog.tech · 29/07/2024

What's worse: Update changelogs that say "bug fixes and performance improvements", or that contain information that hasn't been true in years?

A screenshot of the Google Play "Pending downloads" section with apps that need an update. One update is listed: Google Chat. The update's changelog description of the update says "Current version, for Google Workspace Customers only, includes direct messages, group chats, and platform integration with Google Apps" which hasn't been true for years.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 22/07/2024

Services that allow Google oAuth for signup, then immediately send that account's Gmail address a verification email that requires action

The Persian Cat Room Guardian meme. A confused, exasperated looking white cat monkey thing sitting upright on a stool and holding its hands out in a "WTF?" pose.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 21/07/2024

“Reduce and summarize all of those pesky notifications with our new feature in #iOS18. Can you believe all of those terrible notifications that you get? Just look at how annoying these are.” #iOS #iPadOS

A screenshot of the new iOS feature that summarizes all of your notifications, with three highlighted notifications that the device recently received. The front and center one is an advertisement from the Settings app that says “Your iPad can’t be backed up”, with the scary body text “If your iPad is lost or damaged, your data could be lost. Upgrade now or manage storage.”

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Leo @herzog.tech · 21/06/2024

Daydreaming about the cultural vandalism committed by Elon while reading bedtime stories to my toddler when

A photo of a page from the 1946 book "Sammy the Seal" by Syd Hof, depicting a hand-drawn picture of a seal holding play alphabet blocks. They just happen to spell XFML in front of him.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 10/06/2024

In case I wasn't being clear

The image is a meme featuring two scenes from the TV show "The Office." In the top panel, two pieces of paper are being held up, one labeled "Windows Recall" and the other labeled "Apple Intelligence Semantic Indexing." The middle text reads, "Corporate needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture." The bottom panel shows Pam Beesly from "The Office" looking at the camera with a neutral expression, saying, "They're the same picture."

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Leo @herzog.tech · 27/05/2024

The incredible new Apple M5 Pro Max Ultra processors. Only possible because of our amazing advancements in our ability to partner with innovative companies.

The "You Made This? I Made This." meme template showing TSMC handing "innovation" to Apple, Google, and Nvidia, and them taking credit for it.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 26/05/2024

What's your Go90 Scale? go90.services

A chart in the shape of a quarter of a circle showing the likelihood of various streaming services to be shut down soon. It’s a scale of 0 to 89, with 0 on the left and 89 at the top. Hulu is rated at 88. Peacock is rated at 75. Paramount+ is rated at 70. Max is rated at 55. Apple TV+ is rated at 25. Netflix is rated at 10. YouTube TV is rated at 3. Disney+ is rated at 0. YouTube is rated at 0.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 18/05/2024

My MBMBaM Ending Bits Tierlist redd.it/1cunexe

A chart ranking squares by rows with written words representing end-of-show bits from My Brother, My Brother and Me. The rows are labeled S to A, B, C, and D. S contains "Fake Final Yahoo". A contains "Final Yahoo" and "Wishes for Fungalore". B contains "Celebrity Impressions". Contains "Jack Johnson Quotes". D contains "Inspirational Quotes" and "Sound Bath".

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Leo @herzog.tech · 12/05/2024

The best use of AI Image Generators is to get my stupid meme ideas out of my head so they stop taking up brain power

A fake generated box containing a Play-Doh set entitled "Play-Doh's Cave" with a dark, spooky cave as the box art.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 31/12/2023

Podcasts are good.

A graphic showing two lines of parading podcast cover art, with the title "You listened to 45 different shows and 1035 episodes in total" and subtitle of "But there was one that you kept coming to..."

The top five listened to podcasts:
1. The Vergecast, 5 days 22 hours
2. The Besties, 2 days 20 hours
3. Hard Fork, 2 days 10 hours
4. Dungeons and Daddies, 2 days 7 hours
5. The Adventure Zone, 2 days 7 hours
The image is titled "And you were big on these shows too!" and subtitled "This is your top 5 most listened to in 2023"

The top four listened to podcast categories:
1. Technology, 10 days 18 hours
2. Comedy, 8 days 1 hour
3. Business, 4 days 2 hours
4. Culture, 3 days 10 hours
The image is titled "Did you know that Technology was your favorite category?" and subtitled "You listened to 227 episodes for a total of 10 days 18 hours".

A bar chart with two values labeled "2022" and "2023". The 2022 bar is grey and smaller, with a value of "28 days 5 hours", and the 2023 bar is an orange-yellow gradient that's taller, with a value of "36 days 8 hours". It's titled "Compared to 2022, your listening time went up a whopping 29%" and subtitled "Ready to top it in 2024?"

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Leo @herzog.tech · 13/12/2023

Classic Google. YouTube Music has wonderful platform playlists... But the Google Assistant has a 50% success rate at best for requesting them. They're added to my library and I'm heard correctly. Just lost #Whamageddon because of some rando on YouTube's stupid playlist.

A screenshot of the Google Assistant history screen, where "Said Shuffle the playlist Christmas hits" was heard and the response was "Sure, shuffling the YouTube Music playlist called Top Christmas Hits - Holiday Music Playlist."

A screenshot of the YouTube Music app homescreen with lots of album art representing playlists and music categories. Most of them are Christmas music.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 11/11/2023

The Apple fanboy mind cannot comprehend this

A screenshot of the Amazon search results for "8GB DDR4" showing 8GB of RAM costing less than $20

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Leo @herzog.tech · 20/10/2023

The duality of Hacker News commenters

A screenshot of two top-level comments on Hacker News. One says "Wow I have no opinion on the product yet, but I’m really impressed with the design of the site. And I don’t say that lightly.", and the other says "holy vaporware batman!"

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Leo @herzog.tech · 19/10/2023

When you are a tech PM that has no idea why people would use your product

A screenshot of a notification from the PayPal app that says "You sent money last month. Ready to send again?"

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Leo @herzog.tech · 20/09/2023

There it is again, that funny feeling. Is this supposed to mean something?

A screenshot of an email from Cuisinart that just says "Welcome to Cuisinart", as if that's supposed to mean something

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Leo @herzog.tech · 07/08/2023

Last spring I made this piece of art for my home office. My dad cut a beautiful Michigan silhouette for me out of scrap wood, which I then desecrated by drilling holes in. The result is a live LED temperature map that fades in and out dawn until dusk. github.com/leoherzog/michigan-temp-…

The back of a large wooden silhouette of the lower peninsula of Michigan with three-colored copper wire fed along it, weaving back and forth across it, snaking from the bottom towards the top. There's a small purple microcontroller in the bottom right corner where the wires will eventually connect to. Along the wire, there are occasional hot glue stops where LEDs are presumably stuck into holes.

The front of a beautiful wooden silhouette of the lower peninsula of Michigan, with around 40 bright LED lights dotted across it. Many of the lower right lights are more orange and red, the lower left are yellow, the middle yellow-green, and the northern tip blue.

Wooden silhouettes of the lower and upper peninsulas of Michigan, with around 50 bright LED lights dotted across them. The lower ones are mostly green and middle and upper ones are mostly chill blue.

Wooden silhouettes of the lower and upper peninsulas of Michigan, with the photo taken in a dark room, exaggerating the roughly 50 bright LED lights dotted across them. The lower ones are mostly yellow with a few orange, and middle and upper ones are mostly green.

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Leo @herzog.tech · 28/07/2023

Man, Android Central used to be great enthusiast discussion site, then fell to SEO bait garbage under new management. Then Android Police was great. Then...

A screenshot of a list of SEO-bait articles like "How to delete your AOL account", "How to contact Uber for help", "How to export your old Hotmail emails", and "Best apps for college students in 2023"

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Leo @herzog.tech · 28/07/2023

Amazon: We're relentless about the customer user experience The user experience:

A screenshot of an Amazon page with a bunch of small text and mismatched colors telling me that I have "delayed items that require approval"

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Leo @herzog.tech · 27/07/2023

I've gone through these phases in my life from left to right and have finally come to terms with myself

The bell curve meme showing a bell curve chart. On the far left is a stupid neanderthal looking rage comic face saying "I like American Cheese on my cheeseburger". In the middle top of the bell curve, an angry rage comic face says "Nooooo! Havarti and Provolone are good, but Swiss or Monterey Jack are better. Or try Colby Jack to mix it up!". On the far right is a hooded "expert" rage comic face saying "I like American 'Cheese' on my cheeseburger".

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Leo @herzog.tech · 29/06/2023

Today is a good day. Malcolm Gladwell's latest episode of Revisionist History dropped, all about the radical #HopeForward project that Hope College is embarking on to upend the business model of higher education. I'm repping from Minnesota! Stream it now 👇 hope.edu/hope-forward/gladwell

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Leo @herzog.tech · 28/06/2023

Thanks for hosting #CLAC, Macalester! #CLAC2023

A dude with a helmet on posing in front of a large outdoor sign that says "Macalester College" in large collegiate font with flowers in front

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