I don't like the phrase "Technical Debt". It's effectively lost all meaning.

I always need to ask, "what about it is technical debt?"

I've gotten a variety of responses:
- the abstractions are wrong
- the performance is bad
- the technology is out of date
- it's undocumented
- I don't know the tech

That last one in particular when someone told me, "It's technical debt because I don't know the tech," is when I knew the phrase had lost all meaning.

This tool lets you drag (or paste) an image onto the page and then shows a comparison of different sizes and quality settings, each of which can be downloaded

A useful image tool. Bluesky, Twitter, LinkedIn etc all benefit from a 2x1 aspect ratio "card" image. I built this custom tool for creating those - you can paste in an image and crop and zoom it to the right dimensions.

The iPhone 17 Pro Camera Review is here! <https://www.lux.camera/iphone-17-pro-camera-review-rule-of-three/>

I'm up to 124 little mostly-vibe-coded apps on my tools.simonwillison.net site and most of them are trivial but some of them aren't, so I wrote up this guide to the ones I think are most worth checking out <https://simonwillison.net/2025/Sep/4/highlighted-tools/>

Kando is an open-source cross-platform pie menu. You can use it to launch applications, execute keyboard macros, open files, and much more!

Multitouch lets you execute a custom action when you perform a specific trackpad or magic mouse gesture. Easily execute keyboard shortcuts, control your browser's tabs, perform a middle mouse click, and more.

- A powerful gesture engine
- First class window management included
- Keys & Mouse Buttons, too

Everyone’s into AI feeds in 2025. Meanwhile, I’m here polishing my RSS feed with XSLT. 😂
(Also because I’m a reader of Jamie Zawinski’s blog.)

<https:www.cedricbonhomme.org/2025/08/18/rss-xslt-styling/>

[#rss](https://fosstodon.org/tags/rss) [#atom](https://fosstodon.org/tags/atom) [#newsreader](https://fosstodon.org/tags/newsreader) [#web](https://fosstodon.org/tags/web) [#xslt](https://fosstodon.org/tags/xslt) [#indieweb](https://fosstodon.org/tags/indieweb)

Python app to work with pictures and associated metadata from Apple Photos on macOS. Also includes a package to provide programmatic access to the Photos library, pictures, and metadata.

OSXPhotos provides the ability to interact with and query Apple's Photos.app library on macOS and Linux. You can query the Photos library database — for example, file name, file path, and metadata such as keywords/tags, persons/faces, albums, etc. You can also easily export both the original and edited photos. OSXPhotos also works with iPhoto libraries, though some features are available only for Photos.

- A command-line tool to download all your iCloud photos.
- Works on Linux, Windows, and macOS; laptop, desktop, and NAS
- Available as an executable for direct downloading and through package managers/ecosystems (Docker, PyPI, AUR, npm)
- Developed and maintained by volunteers (we are always looking for help).

Parachute is a set-and-forget backup companion for iCloud Photos and iCloud Drive. It automatically syncs your memories—photos, videos, and documents—to your own storage, giving you peace of mind and full control.

1-Click Photo Library Backup

Back up your entire photo library to any storage location, including external drives and network locations like NAS devices. Supports iCloud and all media types such as videos, live photos, portraits, slo-mo, and more and preserves all non-destructive edits, albums, locations, and timestamps . Backups can be restored directly into a photo library while maintaining all metadata.

Monsters invaded your base, do you have enough time to guard it?

Save Safari website as PDF (with syncing cookies).

Swift script

Act on your Finder files with natural language, with this unique command bar.

Convert, organize and more: control your Mac and its files with natural language.

Just drop sakura.css into any webpage and go from an ugly-looking 1900s website to a pretty, modern website in literally 0 seconds.

It’s easy to customize and build on top of sakura.

Sakura supports extremely easy theming using variables for duotone color scheming. It comes with several existing themes, which can be found in the css folder of this repository.

A syntax-aware git merge driver for a growing collection of programming languages and file formats.

The Bookmark Everything app. Hoard links, notes, and images and they will get automatically tagged AI.

Quickly save links, notes, and images and karakeep will automatically tag them for you using AI for faster retrieval. Built for the data hoarders out there!

dessine-moi les personnages de l’histoire dit le petit prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry / Richard Berner, UK-based illustrator
[#drawing](https://h4.io/tags/drawing) [#art](https://h4.io/tags/art) [#history](https://h4.io/tags/history) [#illustration](https://h4.io/tags/illustration)

I just released v2 of Toney, A TUI Note-taking app for the terminal.

<https:github.com/SourcewareLab/Toney>
<https:sourcewarelab.github.io/Toney/>

PS: Actively looking for contributors! It would be great if you could star the repo, I am a student and it really helps applications. Thanks!

[#OpenSource](https://mastodon.social/tags/OpenSource) [#productivity](https://mastodon.social/tags/productivity) [#terminal](https://mastodon.social/tags/terminal) [#development](https://mastodon.social/tags/development) [#developers](https://mastodon.social/tags/developers) [#neovim](https://mastodon.social/tags/neovim)

<https:ansi.tools/> looks pretty useful

TIL about caligula, a CLI disk burning tool that automates away some of the usual steps you might take when using dd for the same task.

<https:github.com/ifd3f/caligula>

/via <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BxIpVk_xZI>

[#Rust](https://mastodon.decentralised.social/tags/Rust) [#Linux](https://mastodon.decentralised.social/tags/Linux)

if you put a webserver up on the internet. anywhere, hosting anything, you will see "the background radiation of the internet", and it looks like this:

Once again, dealing with email shenanigans and bumped into this, which someone put a lot of time into…

<https:www.learndmarc.com>

Last month I walked across Spain.
Here are some reflections from the experience.

<https:matthewrocklin.com/camino.html>

There goes my day: <https://isle.pizza>

[#legoisland](https://mastodon.social/tags/legoisland)

I've spent the day trying out [@steveklabnik.com](https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/steveklabnik.com)'s [#jujutsu](https://wandering.shop/tags/jujutsu) tutorial, and as a forcing function I'm trying it out on a couple of my own repos.

I'm very used to the [#magit](https://wandering.shop/tags/magit) workflow in [#emacs](https://wandering.shop/tags/emacs) and I don't know how much I'm gonna like moving over to a full TUI for version control. So far, I feel like a rank newbie again, which is strange given how relatively expert I think I've become with git.

Do you worry about the effectiveness of your writing style? As emerging scholars, perfecting the craft of writing is an essential component of developing as graduate students, and yet resources for honing these skills are largely under utilized. Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program, led this session in an effort to communicate helpful rules, skills, and resources that are available to graduate students interested in further developing their writing style.

This app is the spiritual successor to iTunes Volume Control, offering a simple yet powerful way to adjust volume for your favorite music apps directly from your keyboard — especially when listening via AirPlay or external speakers.

Due to macOS security restrictions, the app is not signed with an official Apple Developer certificate. Please follow the installation instructions below.

I've been using the [#HelixEditor](https://hachyderm.io/tags/HelixEditor) as my daily driver for the better part of a year now and I couldn't be more happy with it. I've managed to get a near-IDE setup and experience thanks to zellij and some awesome TUI tools.
This article aligns well with my experience, I recommend reading it if you're "modal editor curious" or dissatisfied with your (neo)vim config maintenance burden.

<https:herecomesthemoon.net/2025/06/i-like-helix/>

[#helix](https://hachyderm.io/tags/helix) [#modaleditor](https://hachyderm.io/tags/modaleditor) [#vim](https://hachyderm.io/tags/vim) [#neovim](https://hachyderm.io/tags/neovim)

- pleasing to the eye thanks to a nice table view
- filterable and sortable output
- interactive killing of processes
- JSON and custom formattable output
- from netstat -tulpn to somo -l
- you can find all features further down

A fast, minimalist directory tree viewer, written in Rust. Inspired by the command line program tree, with a powerful interactive mode.

You can play Tux Racer directly in your browser here: Play TuxRacer.JS

IMAPdedup is a command-line utility that looks for duplicate messages in a set of IMAP mailboxes and tidies up all but the first copy of any duplicates found.

To be more exact, it marks the second and later occurrences of a message as 'deleted' on the server. Exactly what that does in your environment will depend on your mail server and your mail client.

Some mail clients will let you still view such messages in situ, so you can take a look at what's happened before 'compacting' the mailbox. Sometimes deleted messages appear in a 'Trash' folder. Sometimes they are hidden and can be displayed and un-deleted if wanted, until they are purged.

Whatever your system does, you will usually have the option to see what has been deleted, and to recover it if needed, using your email program, after running this script. (If your server purges the deleted messages automatically, you may be able to prevent this with the --no-close option.) There is also a 'dry-run' option, so you can check what might happen before doing anything scary.

What stood out above all else was Yap’s speed. By harnessing SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriber on-device, the command line tool tore through the 7GB video file a full 55% faster than MacWhisper’s Large V3 Turbo model, with no noticeable difference in transcription quality.