My favourite articles of 2025

I read a lot of articles about programming and technology as a way of keeping up with the industry and expanding my knowledge. Here are some articles I read in 2025 that I recommend reading.

Artificial Insanity #

LLMs and Open Source #

Large Language Models are hungry for ever larger datasets. LLM crawlers impose a heavy cost on open-source and hobby websites, which are often volunteer run and have small budgets.

This is yet another kick in the teeth for open source. LLMs have resulted in a large amount of extra work for open-source maintainers, reviewing code slop pull-requests and helping users with problems hallucinated by word salad machines.

Please stop externalizing your costs directly into my face

Drew DeVault

This article eloquently explains why Mozilla’s recent focus on AI is frustrating and against its mission.

Mozilla: AI in the browser is disgusting. Please stop

Gardiner Bryant

Developer experience #

This is an interesting article about the Developer Experience (DX) of using LLM tools.

The Copilot Delusion

Jj

Mediocracy machines #

This article discusses how AI is being used to produce apathetic and low-quality works.

The Who Cares Era

Dan Sinker

AI features #

A great analogy for unwanted AI features appearing in everything.

They're putting blue food coloring in everything

Luna Winters

Another article about unwanted AI features.

What could have been

Emilio

An article about how Google search is getting worse:

Did you mean..?

Hugh Rundle

Online Safety Act #

The UK’s Online Safety Act came into effect this year. I went through the tedious and time-consuming process of doing the risk assessment for ContentDB, and ended up writing a letter to my MP.

Here’s another letter to an MP:

Feedback on The Online Safety Act (an email to my MP)

Ben Tasker

And this is an interesting reflection on the OSA, comparing it to food safety:

Food Safety vs Online Safety

Terence Eden

Side projects #

Last year, I was looking into how we can own our identities on the fediverse. The Fediverse is a collection of social networks that can communicate with each other. This includes Mastodon but many others.

I discovered an interesting fediverse platform called Takahē. This article is by the author of Takahē discussing why they will no longer be working on it.

Life-Critical Side Projects

Andrew Godwin

Android developer verification #

I work as a Android app developer. One of the reasons that I like Android app development is that it’s very open - you can just start making apps for your phone, you don’t need to pay for a developer license or a particular laptop. Android was also friendly to side-loading, the practice of installing apps outside of the official channels.

This changed in 2025 when Google announced that they will be cracking down on side-loading, and requiring developer verification for all apps. This is deeply troubling to me. If you own a device, I believe you should have the right to run anything you’d like on it.

Here is an article by F-Droid, the most popular open-source app store for Android:

F-Droid and Google's Developer Registration Decree

F-Droid - marcprux

Technology #

Here is an interesting article about making databases that synchronise between clients (a browser) and a server.

Database in the Browser, a spec

Stepan Parunashvili

An article about burnout in tech.

The true cause of tech burnout

KD

Politics #

Here are two good articles about DHH:

DHH and Omarchy: Midlife crisis

Jordan Petridis

As I remember London

Christian Hellmann

Conclusion #

I hope you found some articles worth reading. What were your favourite reads last year? Feel free to send article suggestions you think I might like.

Cover Image © Engin Akyurt