Fletcher Nichol

May we all live in serene and peaceful times

Signing out on the LinkIn mobile app is the pitch blackest of dark patterns. But not once I’ve committed the move to long term memory!

Thank fucking god. 🇨🇦

Great read and I find this hard to disagree with bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/05/t...

Any recommendations for a book I could read covering the 2001 dot com bust? Lately I’ve read “1929” and now “Too Big To Fail” both by Andrew Ross Sorkin. It’s been illuminating reading the parallels both historical and contemporary

I've been running CachyOS as my daily driver since January & it's been an excellent workstation setup. I can't live without ZFS/boot environments/optional root FS encryption/etc., so I've been maintaining an official installer patcher to help: github.com/fnichol/cach...

Ok, it's our little secret but…I'm decommissioning a VM that I deployed in April of 2009! Good 'ol Ubuntu 8.10. Honestly, it's amazing it's running anything of value still. Not for long though, time to say goodbye :)

Experience

The peril of laziness lost bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/04/12/t...

Fascinating read of how NASA has advanced their computer systems from the Apollo era to Artemis era. Full systems determinism is a high bar and really bucks the trend for us folks working on systems down here in the dirt. cacm.acm.org/news/how-nas...

Of course I’m on social media: after checking feeds there’s a lot of porch erections going on

Watching the reentry of Integrity and splashdown this evening. It’s deeply inspiring to see what humans can accomplish working together using science, engineering, dedication, and training. A damn near *perfect* mission. #ArtemisII

LinkedIn: Algorithmic Confirmation Bias. My god friends, please be careful.

LLMs are currently the technologist’s Rorschach test, and it’s a lot

LLMs are trivially susceptible to “Don’t think of an elephant” behavior. Now all my agent files will only contain `Elephants.`

There's no better form of time travel than listening to the music of your teenager years.

Do companies not need people to build software anymore… or do people not need companies to build software anymore?

...the heck, a CLI? Well I mean, if you want to venture into my terminal, who am I to say no?

Technologists reflect: friction is not a universal liability, but rather a tool.

The first edition is one of my top favorite technology books of all time—cannot wait for this second edition. I’ll also say that due to how it’s written and the content being high level, the audiobook version is my top favorite technology audiobook.

CachyOS users and ZFS fans: today is your lucky day! My friend @fnichol.com created an installer just for you. github.com/fnichol/cach...

Me: I need options to solve X LLM: Great idea! Here's options A, B, C, I prefer B Me: Hm, none of those are great, are you sure there aren't alternatives? LLM: Great point! There's a better approach in option D Me: D is still too strange... LLM: Right, I have a better solution: E! Me: ...

I still remain highly skeptical of blanket trust in & applications of LLMs but I'm finding an intentionally configured Claude Code with Skills leads to a powerful brainstorming & planning system. I haven't felt this generally creative in a long time & it's mostly due to "writing things down".

Last night I had a pretty vivid dream of playing the original Battlefield 1942. I remember when my friend showed me this game for the first time. I've never been so blown away by any video game experience as that day. It felt like anything in the environment could be manipulated and used.

Your annual reminder that the "oct" in October is because it's the eighth month

State files drift, lock, and lie. Real-time simulation keeps infra accurate, collaborative, and safe to change. That’s @systeminit.com Read @stack72.dev 's post to help you realise the pain www.systeminit.com/blog/statefi...

// Don't ask me why, but this line makes everything 100x faster.

Most tools promise faster automation. @systeminit.com promises something different: a new way to think about infrastructure. Not just code. Not just pipelines. A system that models reality, simulates change, and shifts how you approach every decision. www.systeminit.com/blog/what-wi...

Our friends at Cloud Life were directly the inspiration for what SI is today. www.cloudlife.io/resources/in...

. @systeminit.com is launching the world’s first AI Native Infrastructure Automation platform. Read more about how to supercharge your productivity on our blog, www.systeminit.com/blog/ai-nati..., and get started today: systeminit.com

Right now 1200 late night show interns are scrambling to get as many zingers in the bag before each show tapes youtu.be/LXQ6Rm9CGTo

I’m fascinated how the concepts in Promise Theory (for me: autonomous agents & the idea that “all you can do is ask another, never command”) apply to complex systems, human interaction, societal cooperation, etc. Thank you, Mark!

Happy new Rust! 🎆🦀 Rust 1.89.0 has been released! This release brings you inferrred array length, new lints, u128/i128 in extern "C", NonZero<char>, File::lock, many x86 intrinsics, and much more! ✨ Check out the blog post and release notes for all the details: blog.rust-lang.org/2025/08/07/R...

In the last Oxide & Friends, @bcantrill.bsky.social argues in favor of dumb questions for getting real understanding, and I feel that one in my bones.

Promise Theory is now 20 years old! 🎂

Congrats, Oxide!

Finding speedups in a codebase is always fun github.com/systeminit/s...

years after working with a team that was vehemently against deleting any test, no matter how flaky, I have assembled my counter-doctrine: you should delete tests andre.arko.net/2025/06/30/y...

Another case where #rustlang is fast, which can lead to bugs. I forgot to handle this Tokio task cancellation, so the task got locked in a tight loop. Enough to pin CPU cores once deployed. Well *that* explains what happened! github.com/systeminit/s...

Honestly, if I could figure out how to make *this* a little more a part of my working day…some days the creativity flows like water out on the “road desk”

Sometimes I imagine someone from the past visiting 2025 and being amazed at our technology! - Can't watch the game because the TV is doing a mandatory OS update - Can't make a cup of coffee because the machine can't connect to wifi - Can’t drive the car because the fob battery died

Happy Canada Election Day! It’s our right, our privilege, and our freedom to elect our representatives and leaders. If you haven’t already, please do vote!