I finally got tired of XKCD #2347 living rent-free in my head, so I built Stacktower: a tool that takes any real package’s dependency graph and turns it into an actual tower of bricks. Along the way I had to wrestle some surprisingly spicy problems.

Full blog post here: https://stacktower.io

The result is half visualization tool, half love letter to the chaos of modern dependency trees. Open-source, works with PyPI, Cargo, npm, and more.

Code: https://github.com/matzehuels/stacktower

I was writing a blogpost on Medium and I noticed errors, tried to open LinkedIn? down. tried downdetector? down. Claude.ai is also down

A “hiring” link came across the front page yesterday. After saying they plan to acquire “profitable SaaS companies,” they soon follow with “No support staff answering tickets.” That’s a pretty big red flag; if I’m the paying customer, I’ll be working hard to find a replacement if this company acquires one of my vendors.

This business plan reads like Soulless Private Equity who comes in, eliminates staff expenditures and increases subscription pricing by an order of magnitude to pump the valuation, then sells to some unwitting buyer at a huge profit with a total disregard for the consequences to customers, employees, and whomever else might provide resistance to their monetary motives.

“If you think we're wrong, don't apply.” I’m pretty sure that should go without saying for any job on offer. Phrasing like this just confirms to me there’s no nuance.

Are these the current ethics in Y Combinator?

In Safari on macOS when visiting the Facebook newsfeed, the system mic active icon appears in the menu bar and says that Safari is using it.

I haven't granted permission. When I asked ChatGPT it said 'Safari creates an audio capture session even if the user has not granted microphone permission, for capability negotiation, but no audio data leaves the device until permission is granted.' - is that accurate?