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 Intelligence #

We’ve seen a huge explosion in the adoption of Large Language Models in the last couple of years. This rapid adoption has inevitably resulted in some growing pains and negative impacts. These problems are interesting to discuss but make this section more negative than I would like.

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 article discusses how LLM crawlers perform DDoSes on open-source repositories.

Please stop externalizing your costs directly into my face

Drew DeVault

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

Mozilla: AI in the browser is disgusting. Please stop

Gardiner Bryant

Mediocracy machiness #

The key take away of this article for me is: “In the Who Cares Era, the most radical thing you can do is care.”

The Who Cares Era

Dan Sinker

LLM features #

A great analogy for unwanted LLM features appearing in everything.

They're putting blue food coloring in everything

Luna Winters

An article about the opportunity cost of LLM features - what if we spend this effort making technology better instead?

What could have been

Emilio

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

This article is about what users expect from a search engine.

Did you mean..?

Hugh Rundle

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