I am building QuietReads (quietreads.com) - a single-player book tracking app with an AI assistant.

I got tired of the gamification and social elements of Goodreads, StoryGraph and others. I don't care too much about reviews, but do care about engaging deeply with what I am reading.

Lot's to do still: - Refining the experimental MCP integration so I can bring my bookshelf into my AI assistants - OCR to build notes from screenshots - Voice notes

I wrote a little about why I am building the app here: quietreads.com/about Thoughts on building the app: https://thinking.luhar.org/2026/01/building-at-the-speed-of-...

Accelerationists and doomers both assume AI means rapid change. But what if the incentives point toward stasis instead? A world frozen in place by those who got there first.

Looks like AWS is also impacted?

Yeah the graph for that one looks exactly the same shape. I wonder if they were depending on some azure component somehow, or maybe there were things hosted on both and the azure failure made enough things failover to AWS that AWS couldn't cope? If that was the case I'd expect to see something similar with GCP too though.

Edit: nope looks like there's actually a spike on GCP as well

It's possibly more likely that people mis-attribute the cause of an outage to the wrong providers when they use downdetector.

Definitely also a strong possibility. I wish I had paid more attention during the AWS one earlier to see what other things looked like on there at the time.

Great post - I recommend reading "Apple in China" to get a great insight into the how the Chinese manufacturing industry (and economy) has developed over the last 30 years.

I have! It's a great book. I don't work in that field at all but I find industrial infrastructure and manufacturing business endlessly fascinating. I wish I worked in it tbh because then I'd have an excuse to visit Shenzhen. It's on my bucket list.

I bought a Nikon FE2 recently from keh.com. There are plenty of manual focus film SLR cameras available. You may also want to try your local camera store. Mine has a good selection of used cameras and lenses. Things are more expensive than they used to be but there are still plenty of options available.

I would try to order online next time someone is coming from USA. KEH is one of the sites I planned check to order from.

(Local scene isn’t really great where I live. I tried.)

Can confirm that Ethan Allen is still selling decent, US made, furniture - though at high prices. We got a couch for an awkward sized space from Ethan Allen and were very happy with the shopping experience, installation, and the quality of the furniture.

Yes - and the more focus on “Culture War” topics by the Tories is equally ridiculous. It’s a generational failure of leadership.

TLDR - Credit Suisse has been a sh*t show for over a decade. This has been coming for a while.

Credit Suisse is in investment banking and wealth management. It does not have a significant retail presence (EDIT - outside of Switzerland). Credit Suisse has also had a number of accounting, risk management, and other scandals over the last few years. They were bailed out late last year by a fund linked with Saudi Arabia who took a ~10% stake in the company. Today, they (the Saudi fund) refused to inject more capital and the shares have collapsed.

What? CS has a massive retail bank. It’s their most profitable division and has existed for 150+ years.

Wealth Management is not the same as retail banking.

"The Wealth Management division offers comprehensive wealth management and investment solutions and tailored financing and advisory services to ultra- high-net-worth (UHNW) and high- net-worth (HNW) individuals and external asset managers"

Reference: https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/our-company/struct...

How is that relevant? You said: "It does not have a significant retail presence." Meanwhile, CS does have a massive retail presence, in Switzerland, and has done for 150+ years.

Fair enough. I stand corrected. Thank you.

Crédit Suisse has a major retail presence in Switzerland, at least.

I am in a similar situation to you - 2 year old and a newborn and feeling a little burnt out at work. The way I have been coping is just realizing that at this stage the timelines for pretty much everything shrink from months or years to hours and days. You need to focus on getting through the day at work, keeping sane, and being present for your partner and kiddo. Your work might not be pleasant, but you have been there for ten years so you should have a good idea of what your MVO (minimum viable output) is. I think the Kanban approach of reducing the Work In Progress is the way to go. I have made a conscious effort to not worry too much about big picture "career questions" and just focus on the task at hand. Our first kid is young enough for me to know that things become more manageable once the kid is sleeping 5-6 hours at a time. For us, this happened around 4 months in. Good luck, and I wish you and your family well!

I think a key skill to evaluate is the "learning how to learn". Can a developer pick up a new language and are they flexible enough to get their head around a different concept. I agree that we need to support learning - knowledge can be acquired, but the willingness to go outside your comfort zone is something that is a bit more innate.