A blog about connections by Bobbie Chen
Piecing together how software connects to itself and society.

Bobbie Chen 7/5/26 Bobbie Chen 7/5/26

Zero-defects code: the prescient Microsoft memo from 1989

Bobbie Chen 6/15/26 Bobbie Chen 6/15/26

Seth Larson on making things

An interview with open-source maintainer Seth Larson on creativity and taking up space.

Bobbie Chen 6/15/26 Bobbie Chen 6/15/26

Nolen Royalty on making things

An interview with eieio.games on how to connect people and keep the internet fun.

Bobbie Chen 6/15/26 Bobbie Chen 6/15/26

Morry Kolman on making things

An interview with multimedia artist Morry Kolman on humor and his creative process.

Bobbie Chen 6/15/26 Bobbie Chen 6/15/26

Amit Patel on making things

An interview with the creator of Red Blob Games on motivation, ambition, and creative process.

Bobbie Chen 6/15/26 Bobbie Chen 6/15/26

Making things: interview series

When you can make anything, what do you choose? And why even try, when someone else is doing it better?

Bobbie Chen 4/11/26 Bobbie Chen 4/11/26

Lighter, not faster

Bobbie Chen 3/23/26 Bobbie Chen 3/23/26

The Phantoms of the Fraudpera: an overview of anti-detection tooling

My talk at BSides SF 2026

Bobbie Chen 3/1/26 Bobbie Chen 3/1/26

Assorted links (2026-03-01)

Clashes of tech and the US government.

Bobbie Chen 2/8/26 Bobbie Chen 2/8/26

Making a font with 9,999 ligatures to display thirteenth-century monk numerals

Bobbie Chen 1/25/26 Bobbie Chen 1/25/26

The behavioral cost of personalized pricing

Bobbie Chen 1/11/26 Bobbie Chen 1/11/26

Computers that used to be human

Bobbie Chen 11/30/25 Bobbie Chen 11/30/25

Year one for Digital Seams

And what’s next.

Bobbie Chen 10/19/25 Bobbie Chen 10/19/25

Any decent error message is a kind of oracle

The real reason for all those “Oops!”

Bobbie Chen 10/5/25 Bobbie Chen 10/5/25

A recent phishing attack on GitHub

Bobbie Chen 9/21/25 Bobbie Chen 9/21/25

Image transcription humbled me

Plus thoughts on the bitter lesson.

Bobbie Chen 9/7/25 Bobbie Chen 9/7/25

Image descriptions on Bluesky

A firsthand investigation of 2.8 million posts.

Bobbie Chen 8/23/25 Bobbie Chen 8/23/25

The Gypsy document editor: celebrating 50 years

Bobbie Chen 8/9/25 Bobbie Chen 8/9/25

Assorted links (2025-08-10)

Art, history, and the agent experience.

Bobbie Chen 7/27/25 Bobbie Chen 7/27/25

Interfaces for representing uncertainty