iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I can't help but compare and contrast paying a programmer by the amount of code they generate vs paying an LLM by the number of tokens it generates. 🤔

000

Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 30/09/2026

📖👍 Some parts were a bit too obvious and over-the-top, others too subtle and drawn out. For me, though, The Amber Spyglass was a fascinating exploration of these ideas and a good ending to an interesting trilogy. Full review: puf.io/books/the-amb... 3/3

000

Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 30/09/2026

📙🔍 The Amber Spyglass is the last, and seemingly most divisive, book in the trilogy. It’s much more philosophical than the previous two, exploring religion, free will, divine authority, and how love can take many different forms. My review and links 2/3

101

Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 30/09/2026

📚3️⃣ Philip Pullman’s oft-praised His Dark Materials trilogy starts with a world and its “magic” system, expands into a multiverse, and increasingly explores responsibility, sacrifice, free will, and divine authority. Book 3 and review 👇 in 🧵 1/3

100

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: 🙏🇪🇸🇲🇽

000

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.

011

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

Which place is more optimistic?

100

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)

000

Frank van Puffelen @puf.io · 27/09/2026

Different in what way?

100

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

Here's another image from Gemini Nano Banana, after I clarified that it had to use the specs and images of the real iPhone Duo. 2/2

100

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

110

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-...

000

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...

010

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

OMG, this is beyond the uncanny valley!

000

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... 😂

100

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...

000

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? 😂 💙🇮🇷📣

000

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! 💙❤️‍🔥🇲🇽

011

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

000

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.

000

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-...

001

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

632264

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. 😅

000

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...

000

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.

010

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-...

000

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...

010

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/...

010

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...

001

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-...

000

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-...

010

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

001

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

That hand on the right is a joke, right?

010

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

If your project is on the new Firestore Enterprise edition, you can now use native geoqueries. 👏 For those of us on the good-old original Firestore though, the above workaround is still the best way to go. 📍 2/2

000

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

100

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...

060

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--...

001

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

I found Pratchett’s treatment of the deeper moral issues still a bit more obvious and less nuanced here than in many later Discworld books, but it’s already a long way from the earliest works. Fascinating, if not always satisfying. ★★★☆☆ More: puf.io/books/witches... 3/3

000

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

🎧📕 I just finished listening to the Witches Abroad audiobook, with Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick confronting fairytale stories, destiny, happily ever after, and a fairy godmother forcing people into expected roles. Review and link 👇 2/3

100

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

100

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...

000

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

📚🗡️ *The Subtle Knife* didn’t fully live up to my expectations. There’s less interesting world-building than book 1, but the plot still moves along nicely﹠ends on as big a cliffhanger as the first book, only darker. Rating: ★★★☆☆ Full review: puf.io/books/the-sub... 3/3

000

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

📚🗡️ *The Subtle Knife* starts with 12-year old Will and lives in our world in the late ’90s. He discovers a way to travel to the world Lyra from book 1 went to. They meet, and through a series of adventures and fights, Will ends up in control of the titular knife. More 👇 2/3

100

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

100

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.

000

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! ☕️📧

000

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

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

020

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

000

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-...

001