What a month. This year 2025 already has 12 months in the bucket (or so it feels). So many things happened! I don't want to add to the frustration and fear, so I will try to give a little bit of positivity into your life.
One of my New Year's resolutions was creating more content than consuming. Due to watching the news unfold (on Mastodon) I probably failed this month. But I posted 9 blog posts in January and quite some posts on Mastodon. I found my pixelfed home on bonn.pics and you can follow me there. I am in the process of deleting my presence on all the major platforms, moving to the federated universe. I went to Mainz, went to Titisee twice and to beautiful Berlin where we spent two days with Torben from Dark Horse Innovation in a wonderful workshop.
A.I.
Everybody is talking about DeepSeek. But wasn't a performant, more efficient approach to modelling the most natural thing to happen? There is a lot of talk about it online, but since I cannot link to Twitter anymore. So I will need to find alternative sources.
- Mike Mason gives an overview on DeepSeek on thoughtworks.com
- langdock.com is the perfect AI assistant for companies, since it incorporates all the models for a fraction of their totalled monthly subscription fees - I hope they are able to gain on the price drop that I am expecting. They have published the DeepSeek r1 model in their catalogue.
- I have been following Simon Willison for many, many years. Now he comes up with Things we learned about LLMs in 2024 and it turns out to be the most detailed and geeky crafted article that I have found so far.
- Another great article Simon wrote in October: What he built with Claude Artifacts in a week.
Building websites
- I know it's 2025, but even in 2024 there were easier methods to handle favicons than ever
Inspiration
- This must be the most beautifully crafted recap article of 2024
Podcast
- Last October one of the best German roleplaying, pen & paper and tabletop podcasts, the DorpCast, went into a longer break.
- Sascha Pallenberg with 5 positive predictions for 2025.
The fediverse and the open web
The big eXodus is running and people are leaving X, facebook and Instagram by the truckload. So, if you are interested in what the fediverse really is about and how you get there, here are a few newer, interesting articles and videos about it.
- MKBHD and his team on his WVFRM podcast about what the fedivers is (YouTube)
- What is the Fediverse? on the YouTube channel of wordpress.com
- How do I follow hashtags on Mastodon and the Fediverse?
- Here is a guide how to implement the activitypub protocol in a static website
And if you care for your digital sovereignty, check out this digital safety checklist.
One important thing for your sovereignty in the fediverse is that you are supporting the people that offer federated services and portals like Mastodon and pixelfed. A lot of service providers are small companies or even private people and they are creating transparency on the costs they have so you can decide how to support them. Often it's just a coffee a month that's needed to help them. Here are some transparency reports:
- Sascha Förster hosting bonn.pics (and several other services) on revenue and costs in 2024
- freiburg.social e.V. on their costs in 2024
- The money report for chaos.social
- There are services created on the fediverse protocols that you can subscribe to. masto.host offers Mastodon instances and more. You can check their pricing and you get a pretty good idea on what these services cost.
Product Management
- It's never to late to visit the origin of LEAN product management at the The Toyota Production System
- About the Sonos case on the verge.com
- Garmin may see their own Garmingeddon with the latest update rendering their watches nearly useless
Running software is hard!
- This must be the most beautiful product roadmap I have ever seen
Games
- I enjoyed many hours of Minecraft with my kids. Now Ralf Stockmann put together an article (in German) on how you can setup your Minecraft playtime with your kids
Useful
- Need unique illustrations or sketches for your lessons material? Check out cocomaterial.com /via MiBro
- Here is a great UI library on system components and behaviours that earn trust
That's it for January. Don't lose your hope! Go vote at the end of the month. Remember, the seemingly easy path is rarely the way out. I wish you a great February. Watch out for each other!