Ben Dixon
@talkingquickly.co.uk
CTO and Co-Founder of getsona.com (backed by Felicis, Northzone, Gradient and more), #ElixirLang programmer, Photographer, MX5 / Miata enthusiast (IRL & iRacing!). Excited by what 2025 has in store for AI & Neovim
Fascinating concept; that a lot of applications are structured as "inboxes" which creates the psychological effect of "needing to action everything" even though there is no practical obligation www.terrygodier.com/phantom-obli...
Phantom Obligation
Why RSS readers look like email clients, and what that's doing to us.
www.terrygodier.com
January 30, 2026 at 11:08 AM
Fascinating concept; that a lot of applications are structured as "inboxes" which creates the psychological effect of "needing to action everything" even though there is no practical obligation www.terrygodier.com/phantom-obli...
Now obsessively looking for other places this phenomena might occur; restaurant occupancy by hour due to queue depth perhaps?! www.quantamagazine.org/in-mysteriou...
In Mysterious Pattern, Math and Nature Converge | Quanta Magazine
All complex correlated systems, from Arctic melt ponds to the Internet, appear to be governed by the same math as a random matrix.
www.quantamagazine.org
January 29, 2026 at 4:55 PM
Now obsessively looking for other places this phenomena might occur; restaurant occupancy by hour due to queue depth perhaps?! www.quantamagazine.org/in-mysteriou...
Great piece on how the space you live in is far more than just "a space" and how living well in a space is closer to "sailing the building" than just existing www.scopeofwork.net/how-to-sail-...
How to Sail a Building
Domestic calm is what I'm after, come hell or high water.
www.scopeofwork.net
January 28, 2026 at 11:08 AM
Great piece on how the space you live in is far more than just "a space" and how living well in a space is closer to "sailing the building" than just existing www.scopeofwork.net/how-to-sail-...
Bees have a concept of time, cool! edition.cnn.com/2025/11/12/s...
December 1, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Bees have a concept of time, cool! edition.cnn.com/2025/11/12/s...
"How do you know the motor is running at full speed?"
"You hear a gear grind sometimes"
An imperfect but really useful model for thinking about how hard to push.
"You hear a gear grind sometimes"
An imperfect but really useful model for thinking about how hard to push.
December 1, 2025 at 8:41 AM
"How do you know the motor is running at full speed?"
"You hear a gear grind sometimes"
An imperfect but really useful model for thinking about how hard to push.
"You hear a gear grind sometimes"
An imperfect but really useful model for thinking about how hard to push.
Interesting potential revision on attachment theory, e.g. that closest childhood friends may have as much impact on attachment styles as primary caregivers; nautil.us/childhood-fr...
Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most
Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most: A new study upends conventional wisdom about how we relate to those closest to us.
nautil.us
November 30, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Interesting potential revision on attachment theory, e.g. that closest childhood friends may have as much impact on attachment styles as primary caregivers; nautil.us/childhood-fr...
AI is messing with startup economics from a lot of different angles, e.g. cost to build product, size of product it's reasonable to build, type of value added etc. Interesting piece on what it means for B2B sales; a16z.com/need-for-spe...
Need for Speed in AI Sales: AI Doesn't Just Change What You Sell. It Also Changes How You Sell It. | Andreessen Horowitz
Enterprise sales are evolving fast. Startups are now adapting their GTM playbooks for the AI era: faster pilots, proof-driven demos, and higher trust standards.
a16z.com
November 29, 2025 at 4:55 PM
AI is messing with startup economics from a lot of different angles, e.g. cost to build product, size of product it's reasonable to build, type of value added etc. Interesting piece on what it means for B2B sales; a16z.com/need-for-spe...
I can't quite work out why there's so much effort going into trying not to believe that LLM's are good at writing high quality code? Engineering is still awesome, it's just a very different job to six months ago
November 28, 2025 at 2:18 PM
I can't quite work out why there's so much effort going into trying not to believe that LLM's are good at writing high quality code? Engineering is still awesome, it's just a very different job to six months ago
I've been gradually converted from "Event Sourcing is basically never the answer" to "Event sourcing MIGHT just be the answer sometimes", anyway this post is a super clear introduction to how it works; skoredin.pro/blog/golang/...
Event Sourcing in Go: From Zero to Production
Append-only log as database. No UPDATE, no DELETE. Complete audit trail built-in.
skoredin.pro
November 28, 2025 at 11:08 AM
I've been gradually converted from "Event Sourcing is basically never the answer" to "Event sourcing MIGHT just be the answer sometimes", anyway this post is a super clear introduction to how it works; skoredin.pro/blog/golang/...
Well worth reading Gate's latest letter on climate strategy in full; www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-pa... interesting thinking on how we approach large scale problems
www.gatesnotes.com
November 27, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Well worth reading Gate's latest letter on climate strategy in full; www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-pa... interesting thinking on how we approach large scale problems
Continually surprised by the range of things you sort of think LLM's won't be good at but it turns out they are; 9to5mac.com/2025/11/21/a...
Apple study shows LLMs can tell what you’re doing from audio data - 9to5Mac
Apple researchers have published a study that looks into how LLMs can analyze audio and motion data to get a better overview of the user’s activities.
9to5mac.com
November 26, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Continually surprised by the range of things you sort of think LLM's won't be good at but it turns out they are; 9to5mac.com/2025/11/21/a...
OK it's a 153 page PDF but the Opus 4.5 System Card is really interesting; assets.anthropic.com/m/64823ba748... in particular multi agent combinations seem to be giving the types of bump we used to get from thinking tokens whereas the benefit of thinking tokens seems to be waning.
November 25, 2025 at 4:55 PM
OK it's a 153 page PDF but the Opus 4.5 System Card is really interesting; assets.anthropic.com/m/64823ba748... in particular multi agent combinations seem to be giving the types of bump we used to get from thinking tokens whereas the benefit of thinking tokens seems to be waning.
Research suggesting that human brain cells have some level of "pre-configuration" for behaviour that allows interpretation of the world around rather than starting from an entirely blank slate; news.ucsc.edu/2025/11/shar...
Evidence suggests early developing human brains are preconfigured with instructions for understanding the world
Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Tal Sharf's lab used organoids to make fundamental discoveries about human brain development.
news.ucsc.edu
November 25, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Research suggesting that human brain cells have some level of "pre-configuration" for behaviour that allows interpretation of the world around rather than starting from an entirely blank slate; news.ucsc.edu/2025/11/shar...
Just discovered; github.com/sunlei/zsh-ssh which is one of the fastest dev quality of life experiences I've found in a while! #zsh super smooth fzf based auto complete of the SSH hosts in your `~/.ssh/config`
GitHub - sunlei/zsh-ssh: Better host completion for ssh in Zsh.
Better host completion for ssh in Zsh. Contribute to sunlei/zsh-ssh development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
October 5, 2025 at 9:36 AM
Just discovered; github.com/sunlei/zsh-ssh which is one of the fastest dev quality of life experiences I've found in a while! #zsh super smooth fzf based auto complete of the SSH hosts in your `~/.ssh/config`
So it turns out in iterm on macos you can hold down option while highlighting and then you will _always_ be able to select text and copy it using system clipboard. I don't know how many thousands of hours this would have saved me. iTerm is awesome.
September 6, 2025 at 12:02 PM
So it turns out in iterm on macos you can hold down option while highlighting and then you will _always_ be able to select text and copy it using system clipboard. I don't know how many thousands of hours this would have saved me. iTerm is awesome.
gpt-oss:20b combined with open web UI is wildly good, like “I’ve stopped using Claude as my day to day bounce ideas off good” and then open chat UI’s OpenAPI spec approach to tool calling has me questioning why I’m using MCP. So that’s a thing.
August 26, 2025 at 3:55 PM
gpt-oss:20b combined with open web UI is wildly good, like “I’ve stopped using Claude as my day to day bounce ideas off good” and then open chat UI’s OpenAPI spec approach to tool calling has me questioning why I’m using MCP. So that’s a thing.
Stuff I believe about LLM’s which you’d be justified in calling me crazy for, but I think are true all the same; www.talkingquickly.co.uk/unreasonable...
Some unreasonable things I believe about large language models - talkingquickly
Blog by Ben Dixon, Co-founder of Sona, about startups, elixir, AI, climbing and photography
www.talkingquickly.co.uk
August 26, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Stuff I believe about LLM’s which you’d be justified in calling me crazy for, but I think are true all the same; www.talkingquickly.co.uk/unreasonable...
Great and entertaining piece on how wild AI skepticism about coding feels once you’ve seen it working! fly.io/blog/youre-a...
My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts
My smartest friends have bananas arguments about LLM coding.
fly.io
June 3, 2025 at 6:44 AM
Great and entertaining piece on how wild AI skepticism about coding feels once you’ve seen it working! fly.io/blog/youre-a...
Still hearing a lot of “LLM’s are good for scaffolding” [as opposed to writing complex code] which is like 10% of what they can do. We need better ways to push people past the “wow” moment of realising what they can actually do. Ideas appreciated! #elixirlang
May 21, 2025 at 7:13 AM
Still hearing a lot of “LLM’s are good for scaffolding” [as opposed to writing complex code] which is like 10% of what they can do. We need better ways to push people past the “wow” moment of realising what they can actually do. Ideas appreciated! #elixirlang
Any #elixir devs who are as ridiculously excited about agentic / vibe coding as I am and going to be at #elixirconf #elixirconfeu in Krakow this week? If so let's hang out, I'll be there with the Sona crew!
May 13, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Any #elixir devs who are as ridiculously excited about agentic / vibe coding as I am and going to be at #elixirconf #elixirconfeu in Krakow this week? If so let's hang out, I'll be there with the Sona crew!
TIL; if you leave a set of Bluetooth headphones which are turned on and connected to your phone in the cup holder of a 2006 Mazda MX5 and then leave the car and lock it with the phone they’re connected to in your pocket. The alarm will intermittently go off! Top 5 bug for sure.
May 11, 2025 at 1:14 PM
TIL; if you leave a set of Bluetooth headphones which are turned on and connected to your phone in the cup holder of a 2006 Mazda MX5 and then leave the car and lock it with the phone they’re connected to in your pocket. The alarm will intermittently go off! Top 5 bug for sure.
AI coding is the most fun I've had building software in a decade. Things that should take a week take an hour... It's really hard to see a world where 80%+ of code isn't written by AI 12 months from now; talkingquickly.co.uk/vibe-coding-...
AI Coding ("vibe coding") is real, and that's a good thing
Blog by Ben Dixon, Co-founder of Sona, about startups, elixir, AI, climbing and photography
talkingquickly.co.uk
May 8, 2025 at 3:33 PM
AI coding is the most fun I've had building software in a decade. Things that should take a week take an hour... It's really hard to see a world where 80%+ of code isn't written by AI 12 months from now; talkingquickly.co.uk/vibe-coding-...
I'm blown away pretty much daily by some little detail of @obsidian.md. Combined with Excalidraw it's now my tool of choice for the workflow "sketch some things on an iPad and then write commentary to turn them into a document for distribution on a laptop"
March 7, 2025 at 11:34 AM
I'm blown away pretty much daily by some little detail of @obsidian.md. Combined with Excalidraw it's now my tool of choice for the workflow "sketch some things on an iPad and then write commentary to turn them into a document for distribution on a laptop"
The concept of "AX" (Agent Experience) here biilmann.blog/articles/int... really resonates. E.g. there are now three paradigms we have to design for; people (UX), API (DevX) and Agents (AX). As a side effect, good UX tends to equal good AX so thing agents are going to drive better UX. #ai
Introducing AX: Why Agent Experience Matters
As builders, we need to start focusing on AX or “agent experience” — the holistic experience AI Agents will have as the user of a product or platform.
biilmann.blog
March 4, 2025 at 7:27 AM
The concept of "AX" (Agent Experience) here biilmann.blog/articles/int... really resonates. E.g. there are now three paradigms we have to design for; people (UX), API (DevX) and Agents (AX). As a side effect, good UX tends to equal good AX so thing agents are going to drive better UX. #ai
Super excited that Sona is sponsoring and hosting London's #ElixirLang meetup next week! www.meetup.com/elixir-londo...
February 2025 Meetup, Thu, Feb 27, 2025, 6:30 PM | Meetup
Elixir London Meetup; February 2025 edition. All are welcome.
**Group-led code reading session**
We're gonna look at the implementation of two functions:
* [Phoenix.Live
www.meetup.com
February 20, 2025 at 7:50 AM
Super excited that Sona is sponsoring and hosting London's #ElixirLang meetup next week! www.meetup.com/elixir-londo...