The Curious Engineer

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Jonathan Libov's website and blog

Essays / personalTech news / industryCrypto / fintechAI / ML

’15’20’25
Posts
117 from 22 Feb 2013 to 17 Nov 2025
Posting
now and then (1 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog

2025 3

  1. Skeuomorphism pulls, originality pushes
  2. AI slop will save us from human slopSep 30, 2025
  3. Vibecoding is skeuomorphic because code generation is slowAug 10, 2025

2023 2

  1. AI still doesn’t really understand memesNov 10, 2023
  2. Remember whenApr 2, 2023

2022 7

  1. The honor system is the best system Dec 12, 2022
  2. Creating and playing gamesDec 7, 2022
  3. Cynical optimism for cryptoOct 3, 2022
  4. Shitposting is the highest form of consciousnessApr 5, 2022
  5. What the Turing test got wrong
  6. Walking through doors
  7. Weaponizing Christensen and Perez

2021 5

  1. No Slack
  2. Digital Halls of Fame
  3. LEFT JOIN me
  4. Owner modeWhy Owner Mode, introduced in Madden in 2013, explains everything Mar 24, 2021
  5. You merely adopted dark mode

2020 1

  1. Speculation Adjacent

2019 2

  1. Legibility
  2. Literally social insurance

2018 8

  1. Should you accept a pull request from a very bad person? (Part I)
  2. Should you accept a pull request from a very bad person? (Part II)
  3. Should you accept a pull request from a very bad person? (Part III)
  4. On urgency
  5. A 21-million foot leap
  6. Denouement
  7. Leadership as Liability
  8. The Thrill of Becoming Obsolete

2017 4

  1. Slow Joe in the Back Row
  2. A big forking deal
  3. Hello Coindexter
  4. No choice

2016 11

  1. A(Junior)VCThe best place for junior VC’s to hang is on the fringeAug 31, 2016
  2. On jury dutyThe thing that everyone tries to avoid which is actually awesomeAug 4, 2016
  3. Art, culture and creativity at zero marginal costWe’re moving to a world where machines not only recommend human-created creative work, but one where machines actually do the creative workMay 31, 2016
  4. The pre-market market
  5. Come for the science, stay for the network
  6. Knowledge is in the world
  7. Time is money is equity is growth
  8. Subatomic units
  9. Automating the network away
  10. Fear of sudden death
  11. The Next Metaphors

2015 18

  1. Not Network Effects
  2. Why Messengers
  3. Server-side humans
  4. Light ’em up
  5. Mobile search expressions
  6. What SMS is good for
  7. What the web does best
  8. What Bill Simmons means to us
  9. Destination: Everywhere
  10. A blockchain company is a promise, enforced
  11. Make art, not gloss
  12. A case of mistaken incumbency
  13. The hypocrisy of secrets
  14. Network Accessories
  15. Split-screen multitasking on iOS has been hiding in plain sight
  16. Futures of textA survey of all the current innovation in text as a mediumFeb 23, 2015
  17. Don’t judge a Bitcoin by its price
  18. Don’t shoot!

2014 20

  1. Barbershop Revival
  2. It’s never been a better or worse time to be an iOS developer
  3. Three easy steps to help non-designers make an MVP look great
  4. Introducing Fifty for iPhone
  5. Arbitrary positions
  6. Emoticons are the enemy of humor :-D
  7. All the reasons why adoption might have slowed with iOS 8
  8. Feature plateaus
  9. Presently anticipating experiencing considerable precipitation
  10. Open sometimes wins
  11. The Unbundling of The New York Times
  12. Prediction: Nav bars will go away
  13. Baggage Networks
  14. A Close Look at Language Choices in GitHub’s Statement
  15. Double U, Double U, Double U: The Scourge of the URL
  16. Exactly why is it better when there’s “an app for that”?
  17. The Charm of “Bad” Design
  18. Games are Movies, Apps are TV Shows
  19. Facebook Paper and the Irony of the Digital Hoity Toity
  20. Jelly’s something

2013 34

  1. The Galaxy Gear Smartwatch is a great holiday gift for people who don’t have eyes or skin
  2. The sameness of iOS 7 apps reinforces the false idea that Apple makes all iOS apps
  3. Exceptions to the Android-First Myth
  4. Unfollowing myself
  5. How do you capitalize “iPhone” or “iPad”?
  6. The most patronizing way to announce an acquihire
  7. Apple: “It’s what you buy”
  8. My interviews with Horace Dediu (Asymco), Benedict Evans, and Ben Thompson
  9. The Cognitive Drain theory of why mid-tier paid apps don’t sell
  10. All the snobbish reasons I won’t go Android
  11. Your brand’s evil twin
  12. When did consumers get so interested in the business of things?
  13. Learn to code in Railsburger, with extra pickles
  14. What if in-app purchase came to real life?
  15. My app and I are hurting
  16. Why the F%#& should we care about Yahoo’s “30 Days of Change”?
  17. The End of App Store Milestones
  18. Surf’s up: The rhythmic weirdness of iOS 7
  19. The Unbearable Depth of Facebook Home
  20. They called my name
  21. You never forget how it feels
  22. Flat design is great for mediocre designers like me
  23. Ceci n’est pas un comment (“This is not a comment”)
  24. Truth is only one dimension of entertainment
  25. An Ode to TinderA Winklevossian tale of an invention whose time has come, and nearly left me behind.Apr 15, 2013
  26. The Armchair Neuroscientist
  27. Apple’s best offense is a good defense
  28. A (sorta) wise entrepreneur once said
  29. Learn to code. Or don’t!
  30. The MBA Hedge
  31. Teens have always gone where identity isn’t
  32. What Facebook Needs Now: Silent Connect
  33. Digital Salt
  34. Welcome

Undated 2

  1. Whoops
  2. Slices