Alex
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alexleighton.com
Alex
@alexleighton.com
52 followers 110 following 150 posts
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alexleighton.com
Listening To: Songs From My Castle Tower by MJ Noble — drum and bass / jungle under ethereal vocals and flute. Evokes a hyped-up fantasy soundtrack.

alexleighton.com/posts/2025-1...
Listening To: Songs From My Castle Tower
By MJ Noble
alexleighton.com
November 30, 2025 at 5:19 AM
alexleighton.com
TIL about the Linear Pottery culture’s brutal, still-mysterious collapse: mass graves of headless bodies on the edge of 7000-year-old settlements, from a fascinating article in Science.

alexleighton.com/posts/2025-1...
Lost Farmers of Neolithic Europe
The brutal collapse of an early farming culture.
alexleighton.com
November 30, 2025 at 5:17 AM
alexleighton.com
Why I like TypeID (type + UUIDv7), how it will keep identifiers git-merge-conflict-free for my purposes, and adapting the OCaml library into the knowledge-bases repo.

alexleighton.com/posts/2025-1...
TypeIDs for Knowledge Bases
Data consistency and the primary identifier for content.
alexleighton.com
November 30, 2025 at 5:14 AM
alexleighton.com
Listening To: Splashes Of Colour by Teen Daze — chill electronic music.

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Listening To: Splashes Of Colour
By Teen Daze
alexleighton.com
November 30, 2025 at 5:11 AM
alexleighton.com
Photos of the early light over Lake Washington.

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Promise on the Horizon
Early morning at Lake Washington.
alexleighton.com
November 30, 2025 at 5:09 AM
alexleighton.com
Listening To: It's now safe to turn off your computer. by

Cybernetic, dark synthwave. I love the edginess.

alexleighton.com/posts/2025-1...
Listening To: It's now safe to turn off your computer.
By </body>
alexleighton.com
November 26, 2025 at 6:25 AM
alexleighton.com
Unison 1.0 released today. It's built on content-addressed code — every expression is identified by its hash. This transforms distribution, version control, API compatibility, among others. I've been watching from the sidelines, but now it's time to dig in.

alexleighton.com/posts/2025-1...
Unison 1.0 Released
The big ideas I'm keen on exploring.
alexleighton.com
November 26, 2025 at 6:18 AM
alexleighton.com
Wikipedia Picture of the Day: Basilica of Superga above Turin, Alps in the background.

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Basilica of Superga
Photograph by Domeian on Wikipedia.
alexleighton.com
November 26, 2025 at 6:15 AM
alexleighton.com
Listening to “Radio” by Bershy — instant classic.

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Listening To: Radio
By Bershy
alexleighton.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:21 PM
alexleighton.com
Alexa’s new “AI” voice leans into pseudo-human intimacy, but LLMs aren’t intelligent and shouldn’t pretend to be. Selling them to act like humans distorts what they are and guarantees an uncanny, disappointing product.

alexleighton.com/posts/2025-1...
"AI" Systems Shouldn't Pretend To Be Human · Alex Leighton
Chatbot uncanny valley.
alexleighton.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:19 PM
alexleighton.com
TigerBeetle’s “Write Last, Read First” rule clicked instantly for me because it’s how we kept indexes consistent with the main table in DynamoDB at Amazon. Main table with strong consistency as the system of record and the indexes as systems of reference.

alexleighton.com/posts/2025-1...
Re: Write Last, Read First
Applying the rule to NoSQL databases.
alexleighton.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:10 PM
alexleighton.com
Solid, in-your-face rock and roll from Blue Zero on the CONFUSION EP.

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Listening To: CONFUSION - EP
By Blue Zero
alexleighton.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:07 PM
alexleighton.com
Charles Stross imagined corporate-born AI reshaping markets in Accelerando, which a recent “economy of AI agents” paper feels reminiscent of. I wrote a short note on the connection:

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Accelerando
Prescient science fiction.
alexleighton.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:05 PM
alexleighton.com
Listening To: Recursive Infinity by The Algorithm

Cyber djent, synthwave metal, taking you on an operatic odyssey.

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Listening To: Recursive Infinity
By The Algorithm
alexleighton.com
November 23, 2025 at 5:50 AM
alexleighton.com
Right Into The Dark — onwards through a moody and dramatic day.

alexleighton.com/posts/2025-1...
Right Into The Dark
Onwards through a moody and dramatic day.
alexleighton.com
November 23, 2025 at 5:49 AM
alexleighton.com
TIL: about Server Sent Events (just a standardization of the old Comet pattern), and Websockets (starts as HTTP, drops down to a binary frame-based protocol over the TCP connection).

alexleighton.com/posts/2025-1...
TIL: Websockets and SSE
Protocol basics at the transport layer.
alexleighton.com
November 23, 2025 at 5:47 AM
alexleighton.com
Listening To: CHASING SHADOWS by Magnolia Park

Copied from their bandcamp description: Pop Punk ┌П┐(►˛◄’!)

alexleighton.com/posts/2025-1...
Listening To: CHASING SHADOWS
By Magnolia Park
alexleighton.com
November 23, 2025 at 5:45 AM
alexleighton.com
From the November 20th Wikipedia featured article, regarding the Nuremberg trials — 🤔 wondering if a Wikipedia editor has something on their mind regarding current American politics...

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Echoes of History in the Feed
Featured Wikipedia article for November 20th.
alexleighton.com
November 23, 2025 at 5:43 AM
alexleighton.com
I agree with Nicholas Carlini — for folks thinking that LLMs are a valuable technology, it is imperative that they work on mitigating the increasingly clear consequential problems.

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Quote: Are LLMs worth it?
Software engineer responsibility.
alexleighton.com
November 23, 2025 at 5:40 AM
alexleighton.com
Listening To: VCR (Four Tet Remix) by The xx

Grooving, chill. Fun to hear vocals from The xx members — I haven't listened to the band since their first album, but their voices are still so recognizable.

alexleighton.com/posts/2025-1...
Listening To: VCR (Four Tet Remix)
By The xx
alexleighton.com
November 23, 2025 at 5:36 AM
alexleighton.com
Thoughts on agent-first development, like subtractive vs additive manufacturing. Let agents over-generate a “block” of code, then use strong review, architecture sense, and process design to grind, sand, and shape it into something maintainable.

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Additive vs Subtractive
Metaphor for future software engineering practice.
alexleighton.com
November 18, 2025 at 6:07 AM
alexleighton.com
Listening To: Awake by Metrik.

Drum and bass!

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Listening To: Awake
By Metrik
alexleighton.com
November 18, 2025 at 6:05 AM
alexleighton.com
Listening To: LEVEL SELECT by Pizza Hotline.

Chill, nostalgia-laden, liquid drum and bass.

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Listening To: LEVEL SELECT
By Pizza Hotline
alexleighton.com
November 18, 2025 at 6:03 AM
alexleighton.com
Damp November walk between Seattle rain.

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Damp
Between the rain.
alexleighton.com
November 18, 2025 at 6:02 AM
alexleighton.com
TIL about the existence of Rob Pike’s structural regular expressions. A way to compose regexes so they describe and edit the structure of text across lines.

alexleighton.com/posts/2025-1...
TIL: Structural Regular Expressions
38 year old treasure by Rob Pike.
alexleighton.com
November 18, 2025 at 6:00 AM