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William Pittman

@wspittman.bsky.social
42 followers 22 following 80 posts

Staff+ Software Engineer I like to scale up those startups LLMs | Seattle | Kids | D&D

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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
I appreciated the update from Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Ben Shuldiner about the collective bargaining situation. It struck me as thoughtful and well-reasoned. I hope the mediator is useful and that both sides do what is right for the kids. app.smore.com/n/kmv5t-a-me...
app.smore.com
A Message from Ben Shuldiner
A Message from Ben Shuldiner
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
When I go to gmail (web), my inbox flashes then redirects to "workspace.google.com/intl/en-US/gma…" with a big "AI-powered email for everyone" banner to create an account. No way into my email yet. Assuming a routing error, but it sure seems like an in-your-face sign-up-for-AI callout.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
TIL about `git switch`. `git checkout` supports two different operations: switch branch and wipe changes to a file So 7 years ago `git switch` and `git restore` are added to make it clearer. Given that git tends to be magic incantations, probably most of us still `git checkout` from muscle memory.
git-scm.com
Git - git-switch Documentation
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
From the O'Reilly early learner series. A child's introduction to scripting languages.
A children's book cover with a picture of a dinosaur titled "A fun day with Bash!"
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I was legit surprised to see Dan Strauss propose something that doesn't include "small businesses" in the headline.
myballard.com
Strauss proposes new rules, services for vehicle residents
Councilmember Dan Strauss proposed six measures that would fund services and create new parking and permit rules for people living in vehicles.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
A consistent annoyance in AI tooling is the inconsistent treatment of both Enter (new line or submit?), and Ctrl + Shift + V (Paste without formatting or activate voice mode?).
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
"It turned out that YouTube’s automatic AI detection tools wrongly think that our very much human-made videos are AI Slop. So it started to choke our channel." www.patreon.com/Kurzgesagt/p...
patreon.com
YouTube’s AI Detection Kicked Us in the Face | Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Every creator's worst nightmare just happened to us: The YouTube algorithm actually blocked us. It started slowly at first. Some videos star
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Today I'm asking AI the hard questions
Why does afroman put so much of that chicken clucking noise in his tracks?
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
I can't stand YouTube's auto-dubbing of non-english videos into their emotionless AI robot english.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
LOL The Bricks and Minifigs thing has broken containment so much it made it to the BBC front page. www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
An ultra-rare Star Wars Lego collection went missing - it's sparked viral conspiracies
Bricks & Figs shops around the US have been receiving threats due to the missing Star Wars Lego set, the company says.
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Ed Lazowska @edlazowska.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Allen School recognizes David Dawson and Nodira Khoussainova with 2026 Alumni Impact Awards www.cs.washington.edu/allen-school...
cs.washington.edu
Allen School honors David Dawson (B.S., ‘06), Nodira Khoussainova (Ph.D., ‘12) - Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
Dawson and Khoussainova, the 2026 Alumni Impact Award recipients, have combined their computing skillset with their entrepreneurial spirit to build companies that are making a positive impact in peopl...
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ICFP Programming Contest 2026 @icfpcontest.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
The ICFP 2026 Programming Contest will run from July 24th to July 27th. We'll get icfpcontest2026.com updated with more information on the contest in the coming weeks :)
icfpcontest2026.com
ICFP Programming Contest 2026
The 29th ICFP Programming Contest runs July 24–27, 2026. An online programming competition for teams of any size, anywhere.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
I can't stop thinking that what this BAM thing needs is an Afroman / Reckless Ben collab song. Really tie the whole thing together.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Whenever your plans aren't turning out the way you expected, remember that the GIF format spec says: "The Graphics Interchange Format is not intended as a platform for animation, even though it can be done in a limited way."
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
LOL No Wikipedia article on "Bricks & Minifigs" so it redirects to the page about the dispute, which does exist.
Bricks & Minifigs - Reckless Ben controversy. Redirected from Brick & Minifigs.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
This whole bricks and minifigs thing is giving me lemon pound cake vibes.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
I guess I'm not allowed in the Fred Meyer's any more.
Access Denied. You don't have permission to access "http://www.fredmeyer.com/" on this server.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Writing something in your company values doesn't make it true. If it isn't already a part of your company culture, if you aren't incentivizing that behavior, then it isn't a company value. It's just words on a screen.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
I understand why they are making this switch and it is probably the right decision for their business. But for folks on the annual plan they should have honored that until the end of the plan period. NGL it sure feels like a bait-and-switch. github.blog/news-insight...
github.blog
GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing
Starting June 1, your Copilot usage will consume GitHub AI Credits.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
The number of recruiter reachouts coming my way has really increased recently. Is this: - Coincidence? - Seasonal timing? - Job market improving? - My skill set becoming more desirable? - Resources moved from inbound to sourcing?
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
This is going to be my favorite professional communication of the week. Me: The way we get slugs is I have a ton of slugs. Colleague: how'd you collect the slugs? Me: Manually.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
I guess its an invalid handle kind of day
Profile for William Pittman with Invalid Handle warning
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
And I'm just going to go over to my unused Cursor account... Now where is it? Ah, there it is. *Delete Account* news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4785...
news.ycombinator.com
SpaceX says it has agreement to acquire Cursor for $60B | Hacker News
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
TIL npm --workspaces won't stop on failure. This means that if you are doing something like `npm run test --workspaces`, test failures in an earlier workspace won't stop the process. You need to be able to review all the outputs, no simply that last output to be printed to the terminal.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Today is April Fool's Day But every single day The news is full of Fools. Our country's actions are jokes, The deals it makes are tricks, It's leadership, clowns. Today is April Fool's Day But I cannot tell.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Nice. The noncompete ban went through. All existing noncompetes will be void as of June 30, 2027. Thanks @staterepjuliareed.bsky.social and state rep Liz Berry for sponsoring!
natlawreview.com
Have Employees in Washington State? Say Goodbye to Non-Competes
Following the national trend of restricting employment-based non-compete covenants, Washington has effectively banned all non-competes effective June 30, 2027. Governor Bob Ferguson recently signed En...
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
I spent most of the day in bed recovering from sickness, so I didn't get to No Kings this time. Glad to see that so many others made it out. Fed up with this lunacy.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
An EU alternative to the standard Delaware C-Corp would probably be quite helpful for Europe's startup scene. ec.europa.eu/commission/p...
ec.europa.eu
Commission presents proposal for EU Inc. - unlocking the full potential of the Single Market for Europe\'s entrepreneurs
Today, the European Commission presented its proposal for EU Inc., a new single set of corporate rules, building the cornerstone and starting point for the EU\'s 28th regime. EU Inc. is an optional, d...
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Ugh, VSCode update switched the theme around so it looked obnoxious to me. Took a bit before I found and enabled the previous theme again. Or maybe it is the closest-to-previous theme? I can't tell.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Oh, they actually finished it. Hooray!
geekwire.com
Microsoft, Lime and others helping to celebrate opening of new light rail line from Seattle to Eastside
Events will take place at 10 stations across the expanded 2 Line from the International District to Bellevue and Redmond.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Farewell, free coding CLI. "Model restrictions for free tier users: Starting March 25, 2026, Gemini Pro models will only be accessible via paid subscriptions. Free tier users will be limited to Gemini Flash models." github.com/google-gemin...
github.com
Service update: mitigating abuse and prioritizing traffic · google-gemini gemini-cli · Discussion #22970
Hello, friends. 👋 We are making adjustments to the service backing Gemini CLI, and want to be upfront about what is changing. 🌟 Key changes Abuse Detection: We’re implementing more robust detection...
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
I was trying to figure out why I've been so enamored the past few days with the whole afroman / lemon pound cake thing. I think it is because it is an unabashedly good time during a month when a lot of the other national/global news coming my way is such a bad time.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
I have the Lemon Pound Cake song stuck in my head today.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Dropping some great calendar knowledge here.
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Vite @vite.dev · 12/03/2026
⚡️ Vite 8.0 is here! The most significant architectural change since Vite 2. ⏬ Powered by @rolldown.rs bringing faster production builds and more consistency 🛤️ New features such as tsconfig paths and emitDecoratorMetadata support vite.dev/blog/announc...
vite.dev
Vite 8.0 is out!
Vite 8 Release Announcement
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Node.js @nodejs.org · 10/03/2026
Node.js is moving to one major release per year starting with Node 27! 🚀 ✅ Simpler: Every release becomes LTS. ✅ Predictable: Version numbers now align with the year. ✅ New: A 6-month Alpha channel for early testing. bit.ly/4rnosLg
nodejs.org
Node.js — Evolving the Node.js Release Schedule
Node.js® is a free, open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment that lets developers create servers, web apps, command line tools and scripts.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Of all the op-eds I've seen, this is the one that resonates with me most.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Gross Windows 11 update changes start menu to make it more noisy no way to turn it off just another day with windows 11 what I don't even
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Truth. "So, for some companies that have used AI and have a really healthy system, it has amplified that system. ... On the other side, we have organizations which were dysfunctional already and are now more dysfunctional: they’re dysfunctional faster." - Laura Tacho
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com
The Future of Software Engineering with AI: Six Predictions
Notes from The Pragmatic Summit and ‘The Future of Software Development’ workshop
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
I'm surprised that "what does this website look like on both mac/windows?" is still such an annoying problem if you don't own both device types. It is 2026.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Two weeks ago with npm v11.10.0 they introduced a `--min-release-age` argument that works like `--before` but lets you specify a number of days instead of a date string. So now ergonomic workflow.
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MdDoogie3 @mddoogie3.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
I don’t really know what I expect in posting this, but maybe some people see it and can learn from it. I’ll call it “lessons from an unwilling immigration attorney.” 1/
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
*Restart after Windows update* Windows: Hi there! It's time to get your Windows set up! (for the 21st time) Win: Let's make Edge your default browser! Me: No Win: Get ready to "Decline"/"Skip" 10 times! Me: Clicks 10 times Win: Welcome! We've broke your background image, so it looks messed up!
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
LOL privacy policy template
A website's Privacy Policy page, but all the text is template keys like "privacy.sections.intro.title" and "privacy.sections.intro.content"
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Love to see it! Boo to non-competes.
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
Wow this looks like a great set of utilities
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Once upon a time, I did not need to read the VSCode release notes every month. Now I do. There is always something useful about a new setting or capability that is really useful. I wonder how much of this from AI in general and how much is from trying to compete with the VSCode forks and LLM CLIs?
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William Pittman @wspittman.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
I tried Wispr Flow for awhile because I really like the idea of it, but man it could not understand what I was saying. So many edits needed I'm not sure if any time was saved at all. Maybe it will be cool in another year.
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Mossy Dev @mossydev.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Dang, Notepad++ used to be prolific. Updates June 2025 through December 2, 2025 are affected.
notepad-plus-plus.org
Notepad++ Hijacked by State-Sponsored Hackers | Notepad++
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
A reader (who wished to remain anonymous for reasons of naturalization status) passed along to me their version of a Battle Hymn of Minneapolis, which I now share with you. 'Tis, as they say, a banger. justpaste.it/battle-hymn-...
Lyrics, reading, "My eyes have seen the glory of the city that won’t fall,

Seen it shelter in its bosom hunted children, big and small;

I have seen the hunters pushed back and spat on in front of all,

The city's standing strong.

 

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

The city's standing strong.

 

George, roused from gentle slumber by his vine and his fig tree,

Saw fresh tyrants threaten terror, ached to call out for a steed,

Then he saw that Minneapolis held firm in thought and deed,

And proudly he smiled on.

 

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

So proudly he smiled on.

 

As Abe stood deep in grieving by the million Union men,

Voiceless now to move the living to beat evil back again,

The songs of Minnesota soothed his soul with their refrain—

Friend Abe, they carry on.

 

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

Yes, Abe, they carry on."Song lyrics, reading, "At the Hall of Heroes’ entrance Martin stood twice in two weeks

There to welcome the new martyrs with tears running down his cheeks,

And he told them “Lay your burdens at your brethren’s tireless feet,

For, look, they carry on.”

 

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

Yes, still they carry on.

 

In the whirlwind stand two women who well know their time is here:

One is blind, the other bloodied, yet they know no pain nor fear;

One holds sword and one holds flame—their blazing promise perseveres:

For all they shall stand strong.

 

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

By them we shall stand strong."
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