iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Yeah, I am definitely the one making that pile bigger and so I have to triple review my own PRs nowadays!

Week 2 at the new house, and a different horse has popped by.

A picture of a horse chilling on my drive

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New blog post: On realising I need to evaluate my engineering principles in a post-LLM world This year, I've come to understand that the values (which have paid off incredible dividends) for the last decade aren't as applicable today as they were blog.puzzmo.com/posts/2026/0...

A screenshot of my blog post masthead, it reads:

A link I have relied on for the last 8 years broke:

<https://github.com/artsy/README/blob/main/culture/engineering-principles.md>

The link was a markdown document in Artsy's shared open-source documentation repo, it was the result of a few introspective sessions by the Artsy dev team where we settled on a series of principles that describe our general approach to software. I used the link in blog posts, hiring notices and in private chats a bunch.

Here's [the fixed link btw](https://github.com/artsy/README/blob/e4b7dff3209b43f4ab63bad919f2500972aade1b/culture/engineering-principles.md) because it's a git repo. I think the removal of the engineering principles isn't some ominous mark against the current day Artsy dev team, but I wonder if they just spotted a cultural change before I noticed it.

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Welcome back to the week, for folks who might have missed it. I've been working on allowing 3rd party games on @puzzmo.com this year and we're opening the doors just an inch to test the waters for this week bsky.app/profile/stfj...

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Derek Kunsken @derekkunsken.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Perhaps you could submit a text description of it? but you are going to be compared to people who have submitted full entries I'm afraid

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Reposted by Orta Therox

The Quantum Dawn, 4th book of my space opera series, is being published in just weeks! I'm very excited. Let me know your favourite bookstore to order it from!

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Orta Therox @orta.io · 26/09/2026

I'll get in touch with the guy

Orta Therox @orta.io · 25/09/2026

For almost a year the largest project I have been working on is building support for non-Puzzmo games on @puzzmo.com Ribbit was built in 90% of that system, and Hue Complete Me was 100% in it. A month ago I ported the Crossword to it. Got a game? We're exploring opening up bsky.app/profile/stfj...

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Orta Therox @orta.io · 25/09/2026

React Native? Office, Windows, a lot of the iOS ecosystem

Orta Therox @orta.io · 24/09/2026

When we were exploring buying circuits we did similar things, including trying to make an 'infinite circuits' where you have to then try extend it yourself

Orta Therox @orta.io · 20/09/2026

Yeah, I sure missed something there

Orta Therox @orta.io · 20/09/2026

Horse neighbour just popped round to check on my plants, thanks friend

A picture of a horse leaving my driveway

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Orta Therox @orta.io · 19/09/2026

7 years between runs is enough to forget the details, and the game is in the details

Orta Therox @orta.io · 18/09/2026

Complete a second run of The Obra Dinn. What a game!

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Orta Therox @orta.io · 12/09/2026

Personally, I think code (e.g. claude code) _is_ the killer app - agree about whether anything else turns up is a much more of an open question

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And a special shout-out to @stefankingham.bsky.social - this is excellent editing/interviewing, and I'm so happy you're getting your name on your work

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The folks I've had chance to work with from that team were so smart, thorough and diligent about their work. I don't doubt they're gonna be figuring out what the next thing is for working and interacting with code + agents + whatever for the next decade.

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The Story of VS Code | Official Documentary

The @vscode.dev documentary was such a great watch, I thought I knew most of the story but there are so many details that are fleshed out in this almost 2 hour whopper www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHL3...

youtube.com

YouTube video by Visual Studio Code

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Really though, what is 'it'? old.reddit.com/r/PS5/commen...

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Orta Therox @orta.io · 02/09/2026

@robdubbin.bsky.social My dude, I got the bag! Thank you so much! I've got a present for you coming to puzzmo hq (hopefully this week) which I can leave there either till next xword con or can get left with zach/Brooke too so cool!

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wow, I wonder if they can make shell jumping user friendly!

Orta Therox @orta.io · 01/09/2026

bsky.app/profile/chen... and bsky.app/profile/marv... are fresh in my mind

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Orta Therox @orta.io · 01/09/2026

Best frenzy does give you that leaderboard (I think)

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Orta Therox @orta.io · 01/09/2026

Cool to see @typescriptlang.org shipping a bunch of the long-term 'we don't think we have the perf budget to add these features' issues now that the go port is stable! They must be having a blast

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Reposted by Orta Therox

Jiahan Chen @chenjiahan.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Excited that TypeScript will finally support module types based on import attributes! Bundlers and frameworks can now provide accurate types for custom imports:

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Orta Therox @orta.io · 30/08/2026

This has happened to me a bunch too

Orta Therox @orta.io · 27/08/2026

@shew.dev turborepo 2.11 is looking impressive, nice work

Orta Therox @orta.io · 25/08/2026

React Compiler on puzzmo.com: JS gzip 1036 -> 1235 KiB (+19.2%), so roughly +20%. Assuming it lives up to its goals, I'd take that cost

Screenshot with this text:

Bundle size: React Compiler on vs off
Two clean vite build runs of apps/puzzmo.com, identical otherwise. 173 JS chunks in both.

off on delta
JS raw 3,640,015 B (3.47 MiB) 4,157,304 B (3.96 MiB) +517,289 B / +14.2%
JS gzip 1,061,291 B (1036 KiB) 1,264,999 B (1235 KiB) +203,708 B / +19.2%
CSS 2,923 B 2,923 B 0
Biggest chunks by gzip delta:

main 277 -> 332 KiB +54 KiB
PlayGameScreen 113 -> 152 KiB +39 KiB
TodayScreen 27 -> 36 KiB +9 KiB
StripeSubscriptionInfo 14 -> 21 KiB +7 KiB
RelayLeaderboards 13 -> 19 KiB +6 KiB
compiler-runtime 0 -> 3 KiB +3 KiB (new chunk)
Chunk graph is otherwise identical — the only structural change is jsx-runtime being replaced by compiler-runtime. The cost is spread across essentially every component chunk (the _c(n) cache arrays and hoisted memo blocks), it isn't concentrated anywhere you could trim.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority @mta.info · 24/08/2026

I've 1.0.0'd my Danger JS re-write today: Risk If you use Danger in GitHub + GitHub Actions then it should be a simple dependency switch and you'd end up with substantially less moving parts I've been using it daily in Puzzmo for 6 months with no issues npmx.dev/package/risk

A screenshot of the risk nom package page on npmx.dev

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Reposted by Orta Therox

Feeling nostalgic 👾💾

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Thanks @boshen.github.io (and other contributors!) This is a substantial improvement Link for others: github.com/vitejs/vite-...

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7 months ago I did a big "Upgrade to vite/rolldown" PR ( bsky.app/profile/orta... ) which reduced @puzzmo.com build times solidly. Today we have experimental support for the react compiler in Vite natively (via oxc) This managed to get all of puzzmo.com built in @vite.dev in under 3 seconds now!

Shows a GitHub pull request with the notes puzzmo.com : 13.4 seconds down to 2.8 seconds

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Not great! So, I previously gated deploys by my computer etc Now, I have it so that only org admins can create tags and a CODEOWNERS for workflows. Deploys then run off the tags.

A screenshot of the ruleset only allowing admins to make tags

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Joe Fabisevich @mergesort.me · 22/08/2026

Shipped the first version of Danger JS to use trusted publishing. For the longest time Danger operated on the Moya community guidelines (if you get a PR merged, we'll offer you org access) which meant if GitHub write access was what mattered, then we had over 200 people who could make deploys!

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Reposted by Orta Therox

Thinkin' a bit about today @joanwestenberg.com's recent essay on ethics for the modern world. www.joanwestenberg.com/p/neo-...

15. Don't join in a punishment
because it has attracted a
crowd.
An algorithm will regularly show you a
stranger and invite you to help destroy
them. It will offer one clip, sentence, or
accusation, then encourage immediate
certainty.
Refuse the pleasure of acting as judge,
jury, and eager member of the crowd.
You probably don't know the whole story,
and the crowd certainly won't know when
to stop. Even if it's all entirely justified,
the mob doesn't need another pitchfork-
wielding, pearl-clutching, outraged
asshole.
Kierkegaard's formulation: "The crowd is
untruth." The algorithm has simply given
the crowd push notifications.

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Orta Therox @orta.io · 22/08/2026

Competing in the ALGS Challenger Circuits today, wish me luck! I wonder if it'll be on twitch