iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 29/09/2026

At a guided tour to Chichen Itza yesterday, the guide explained things in both Spanish and English, and I was proud of how much of the Spanish I could follow. 🦉 Until she switched to Q&A mode, when I had no idea what it was about. 😅 To everyone who speak slowly: 🙏🇪🇸🇲🇽

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Reposted by Frank van Puffelen

Paul Kinlan @paul.kinlan.me · 28/09/2026

Out of China and India, it's different. China has a lot of the infra that they can build, India has relatively few (if any local models). But a lot of the people I spoke to (devs) in India saw it as a massive opportuntity for them. Likewise with developers in China.

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 28/09/2026

Since you never know what shows up, I did this search in incognito mode first. I certainly did not expect a lorum ipsum there. 😂 (I was looking for the release year btw, which is always 🤯 to me)

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 25/09/2026

I was curious how the new iPhone Duo fits in my hand (when folded), so I asked Gemini (🔬🍌) to generate an image. Pic 1: the (real) pic I gave as input, with my 2025 Motorola Razr Ultra ❤️ Pic 2: the image Gemini generated The tech is amazing, but so are the problems… 1/2

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 24/09/2026

📕🚧 Crisis Engineering is about navigating high-stakes crises, restoring shared clarity, and figuring out what to do when complex systems stop behaving as expected. I especially liked the practical framing around sensemaking. ★★★★☆ Full review: puf.io/books/crisis-...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 24/09/2026

📚🧙 Witches Abroad has all the Terry Pratchett ingredients: fairytales, good intentions gone wrong, free will, expected roles, and plenty of winks along the way. I liked it, but not quite as much as the later Discworld books. ★★★☆☆ Full review: puf.io/books/witches...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 23/09/2026

It took Google Photos Wardrobe a few hours to come up with this list of my most worn itemw. I feel seen... 😂

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 22/09/2026

📚 The Subtle Knife continues the trend from The Golden Compass for me: enjoyable, but not quite living up to the expectations I had for the series. The plot moves nicely though, with a darker ending than the first book. Rating: ★★★☆☆ Full review: puf.io/books/the-sub...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 21/09/2026

Oooh... look at that: there's a speaker guide for FlutterConf LatAm. This is the first time I hear of it, so maybe I should read it. The conference starts tomorrow, so... what could possibly go wrong? 😂 💙🇮🇷📣

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 21/09/2026

At FlutterConf LatAm, learn how I rebuilt a classic multi-player Google Doodle that honors the Mexican Lotería game. Play the original today on: doodles.google/doodl... Or join me live at @FlutterConfLAT on Tuesday at 3:30 for a chance to win a Sparky plushie! 💙❤️‍🔥🇲🇽

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 21/09/2026

"She'd never mastered the talent for apologizing, but she appreciated it in other people." - Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 20/09/2026

I mean, I know SF has its own interpretation of "bike lane" - but this drawing takes it into a whole new abstract direction.

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 20/09/2026

🥇 A first for me: I got to read Mother Dearest by Clare Bird as an advance copy. The unusual perspective and epistolary format kept it moving nicely, even if I saw a bit too much of the plot coming. ⭐⭐⭐ Full review: puf.io/books/mother-...

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Reposted by Frank van Puffelen

Benjamin Soulé @benjaminsoule.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I made a game for #pico1k ! Just click to jump on a lilypad, but time it well! :) you play here : benjamin-soul.itch.io/lily-leap #gamedev #pico8

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 19/09/2026

I asked an LLM agent to parse a terms-of-service change from my bank for me: > This one changes exactly nothing for you. > 33 pages of legalese, zero impact - file and forget. I like it when they have a bit of attitude like that. 😅

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 18/09/2026

❤️🌁 The Hearts in San Francisco statue series never disappoints. Here's Open Heart, which has been at the end of Pier 39 since 2014. So if you're visiting Fisherman's Wharf, grab a shot of this one after you've seen/smelled the sea lions. 🦭 puf.io/tags/hearts-i...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 17/09/2026

For those who fear knowledge work is going away: the biggest constants I've brought to all my tech jobs are: * Unbridled curiosity * Belief in/insistence on forward motion * Healthy disregard for the impossible Nothing has changed there. Skills change, values are more stable.

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 16/09/2026

📕💥 I just read the book Crisis Engineering about navigating high-stakes crises. A relatively easy read for a potentially complex subject, with lots that felt familiar from working with SREs and on difficult projects at Google. ★★★★☆ Full review: puf.io/books/crisis-...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 15/09/2026

Reading Discworld backwards from its highest rated subseries has made Pratchett’s evolving style fascinating to watch. Witches Abroad is already a long way from the earliest books, even if the deeper ideas still feel a bit obvious. ★★★☆☆ Full review: puf.io/books/witches...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 14/09/2026

New blog post from Firebase: "Introducing Firebase spend caps" From there: > Billing circuit breakers for AI and serverless workloads So you can now set a maximum spend on AI and Cloud Run/Functions, which are the main causes of abuse/runaway mistakes. firebase.blog/posts/...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 14/09/2026

📚🗡️ I finished The Subtle Knife, book two in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Like The Golden Compass, it didn’t fully live up to my expectations, though the plot moves along nicely and ends on a big, darker cliffhanger. ★★★☆☆ More: puf.io/books/the-sub...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 12/09/2026

📔 I've been a pro-wrestling fan since my early teens, and discovered Bret Hart through The Hart Foundation. His memoir is self-centered, bitter, packed with wrestling history, and ultimately fascinating. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars ★★★★☆ Full review: puf.io/books/hitman-...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 12/09/2026

📕 Mother Dearest by Clare Bird is the second book I’ve read this year that's written as a bunch of letters. Is there a 2026 trend I don’t know about? 🤔 Easy to read, nicely paced, and an interesting look at some deeply warped reasoning. ⭐⭐⭐ puf.io/books/mother-...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 11/09/2026

Just a few more weeks until we're gonna play ¡La Lotería! at FlutterConf LatAm and the animations are coming together. 💙 + 🔥 = 🫘 Who's joining us at the event? 🎟️ flutterconflatam.dev/ 🗓️ September 22–23 📍Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico #flutterconflatam @FlutterConfLAT

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 10/09/2026

That hand on the right is a joke, right?

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 10/09/2026

📍🗺️ Geoqueries on Firestore used to mean geohashes and 5.4x read overhead. 💸 With multi-field inequalities, you can now drop that overhead to ~1.3x. But there's a catch: you now pay for index scans. Those *are* much cheaper, but... details 👇 puf.io/posts/how-to-... 1/2

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 09/09/2026

I've answered ~18,000 questions on Stack Overflow. Was ChatGPT trained on my code? I looked for my own fingerprints in its output - and found them. puf.io/posts/was-cha...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 09/09/2026

📓💬 Babel had the makings of a four-star read for me. I loved its alternate history and fascinating translation-based magic, but the characters felt one-dimensional and the story somewhat predictable. Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 stars out of 5) Full review: puf.io/books/babel--...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 08/09/2026

🥏🌎 In my continuing quest to read Terry Pratchett’s 41 Discworld novels, starting from the highest rated subseries and working backwards, I’m now going through the Witches books. Book outline and review 👇 in 🧵 1/3

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 06/09/2026

📚 Craig Alanson’s Expeditionary Force is a 19-book series about US soldier Joe Bishop, an interstellar conflict, and an ancient AI named Skippy who is as sarcastic as he is brilliant. I’ve now read Book 1, Columbus Day. Rating: ★★★☆☆ Full review: puf.io/books/columbu...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 05/09/2026

📚🗡️ Philip Pullman’s *His Dark Materials* trilogy often ranks as one of the greatest young adult and fantasy series ever written. It’s a coming-of-age story set in an expanding series of parallel universes. Book 2, review, and links 👇 in 🧵 1/3

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 05/09/2026

Writing With Unnatural Constraints by John Gruber Good article about writing prose with artificial constraints, and how this extrapolates to AI watermarking of its text output.

daringfireball.net

Writing With Unnatural Constraints

It’s sophistry to argue that one can write within a constraint without the constraint affecting the quality of the writing.

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 05/09/2026

I might have pushed a few too many things to the weekend. Hope yours is starting off swimmingly! ☕️📧

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 05/09/2026

Well... that is certainly a timely heads-up CoPilot. 🤷

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 05/09/2026

When your game of La Lotería needs you to mark all four corners… I hope somebody gets a claim sooner then this when we play the game ⌛️ 🎟️ flutterconflatam.dev 🗓️ September 22–23 📍Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico #flutterconflatam @FlutterConfLAT @FlutterDev @Firebase

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 04/09/2026

Bret Hart will remind you every few pages of his Hitman autobiography that he's an exceptional wrestler. And it's not just him saying it. 😉 The book is dense, self-centered, sometimes bitter, but a fascinating personal view of pro-wrestling history: 4/5 puf.io/books/hitman-...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 03/09/2026

What on earth made the Gemini/Chrome team think that I'd want this toggle to be on by default? Gemini in Chrome is definitely getting Google+ levels invasive.

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 03/09/2026

📖✍️ I just read Mother Dearest by Clare Bird ⭐⭐⭐ The prose is easy to read, the epistolary format works well, and the plot rolls along nicely, even if it was a bit too predictable for my taste. Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy Full review: puf.io/books/mother-...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 02/09/2026

I guess it's *that* type of day... 🔥💛

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 02/09/2026

I finally got to ride a new Waymo Ojai car in San Francisco. It's fun to try and compare their behavior versus the original Jaguar cars at 4-way stops. I know they probably all run the same software, but let's admit it… we all love seeing a personality in whatever they do. 😅

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 31/08/2026

📓🇬🇧🇨🇳 Just read Babel by R.F. Kuang. The world, magic system and almost-but-not-quite-real Oxford are fascinating. The predictable story, one-dimensional characters and often pedantic writing worked less well for me. Rating: ★★★☆☆ Full review: puf.io/books/babel--...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 30/08/2026

I often find myself smiling at small things in daily life: a dog dragging a piece of cardboard around, patterns in flower petals, the colors of houses. Ian Bogost’s The Small Stuff is about noticing such everyday moments﹠finding joy in them. Review: puf.io/books/the-sma...

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Roderick Gadellaa @rgadellaa.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

JFC people.kernel.org/monsieuricon...

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 28/08/2026

Talk about dark UX patterns... Google Antigravity IDE *requires* that you opt into data collection, and then explains that you can opt out later. The correct, non-asshole flow would be to not require your users to opt in to begin with. @antigravity

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 28/08/2026

★★★☆☆ for Craig Alanson’s Columbus Day 📚 Pure space opera pulp, with splashes of Hitchhiker’s Guide-esque absurdism. Very readable, fast-moving, funny﹠functional. I enjoyed it for what it is, but wonder how that holds up across a 19-book series. puf.io/books/columbu...

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Jonathan Slater @jonathanslater.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

From De Strandharker.. just lovely

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GroguFanboyXX ❌👊🏽❌➕ @grogufanboy.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Bret can but I think them killing his brother and Bill Goldberg doing a move wrong and ending his career and income makes it feel deserved as opposed to 98% of bitter pro wrestlers who just never got the moment they felt entitled to receive. Thanks for reviewing and reintroducing Brett out there! 🩷👓

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 27/08/2026

📗🤼 Bret Hart was a pro-wrestler from 1978 to 2000, best known for his time in WWF as The Hitman; first as one half of The Hart Foundation with Jim The Anvil Neidhart, and later as one of the promotion's biggest singles stars. Book review 👇 in 🧵 1/3

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Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 27/08/2026

It's national parks week in the US! And Google celebrates a different park each day in its doodle. Today's entry is Yosemite, with its ancient sequoias and giant half dome. 🏞️ Since this is US only, here's the animation for the rest of the world. 👇🌍

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