🤣 Blogging on a Nintendo Wii

Hey everybody!

This week, we’re covering everything from running a blog on a Nintendo Wii to OpenAI’s $3B Windsurf acquisition. Plus, Python’s new t-strings, why AI feels more like a mech suit than a human, and the surprising truth behind password length limits.

Let’s dive in!

Quick Links

🤣 This blog is hosted on a Nintendo Wii
Ever dreamed of running a blog... on a Nintendo Wii? Well, Alex Haydock just did it. Unlike old-school Linux ports to consoles that are now ancient history, NetBSD's Wii support is alive, kicking, and fully updated with the latest 10.1 release. After spotting it listed alongside heavyweights like the Raspberry Pi, Alex knew he had to push it further, and now, his Wii is serving up his blog for the world to see.

🤖 Why LLM-Powered Programming is More Mech Suit Than Artificial Human
Using LLMs like Claude Code feels less like hiring a robot and more like strapping into a mech suit. Last month, Matthew Sinclair cranked out around 30k lines of code across two serious projects, faster than ever before. These AI tools didn’t replace him; they supercharged him, much like Ripley’s Power Loader in Aliens. You still need to steer, think, and build, just way faster and stronger.

🧵 Python's new t-strings
Python 3.14 is officially bringing template strings, aka t-strings, into the mix! Shipping in late 2025, t-strings aim to make string handling safer and more flexible, building on the huge success of f-strings since Python 3.6.

🧠 OpenAI buys Windsurf
In a low-key but massive move, OpenAI just dropped $3 billion to acquire Windsurf, yeah, the startup you probably haven't heard of unless you confused it with the sport. For a two-year-old company (five months under the Windsurf name), that's an insane exit. Windsurf, formerly Codeium, plays in the AI coding assistant space, competing with Cursor and GitHub Copilot, all offering eerily similar UX despite minor feature differences.

⁉️ Why do websites still restrict password length?
A Reddit thread recently asked a great question: why do websites still restrict password length? The obvious guess was bad design, but what’s the real reason?

More Reading

• Pipelining might be my favorite programming language feature.

• Reverse engineering Tiktok’s virtual machine.

• You should ship software that does nothing. Absolutely nothing.

• Faster Lazy Loading in React Router v7.5+.

• The record and tuples proposal for Javascript has been dropped.

• DeepSeek launches its own open-source distributed file system called 3FS

My Career Advice For Anyone Feeling Stuck In Life

I wasted my 20s. No one spoke anything positive or beneficial to me early in that decade, and I had no clue what to do with my life, career-wise.

Unfortunately, that continued until I was 34. At that time, however, I came across a diagram that changed my life.

In this video, I want to share that exact diagram with you and show you the power of all the questions it answers.

Until next week,

Travis.