Best of Theo - t3․gg — March 2026

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    Avatar of t3dotggTheo - t3․gg·11w

    AI is ruining open source

    AI is creating serious problems for open source maintainers through PR spam, lower-quality contributions, and increasingly toxic users who lack foundational understanding. Projects like TL Draw are closing external PRs entirely, Node.js has raised bug reporting requirements due to AI spam, and maintainers are burning out faster than ever. The funding model for open source is also deteriorating as AI tools reduce the need to purchase templates, courses, or UI kits. Community tools like Vouch (a trust-based PR filtering system) and PR Stats offer partial solutions, but GitHub itself is criticized for failing to provide adequate moderation tools. The Open Source Pledge—where companies commit $2,000/dev/year to open source—is highlighted as a meaningful funding initiative. Developers are urged to be kind to maintainers, contribute thoughtfully, help triage issues, and financially support the projects they rely on.

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    Avatar of t3dotggTheo - t3․gg·12w

    Are you f**king kidding?

    California and Colorado have passed/proposed laws requiring operating systems and app stores to collect age verification data from users, with fines up to $7,500 per affected minor for intentional violations. The author argues these laws are written by legislators who don't understand software, will create massive compliance burdens for open-source maintainers, fragment software distribution across state lines, and expose users to unnecessary privacy risks by forcing collection of sensitive identity data. Real-world effects are already visible: MidnightBSD updated its license to exclude California residents, Canonical is reviewing Ubuntu's response, and Discord is requiring face scans or IDs. The author calls on developers—especially those in California—to contact their state representatives to push back against these laws before they spread further.

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    Avatar of t3dotggTheo - t3․gg·13w

    Stop telling me to use Obsidian

    A content creator defends using Notion over Obsidian for managing a collaborative video production pipeline with six team members. The core argument is that Notion's relational database features, real-time collaboration, automations, and calendar views are essential for running a content business — none of which Obsidian supports for multi-user workflows. Obsidian is clarified as not being open-source (a common misconception), and is positioned as a personal note-taking tool rather than a team collaboration platform. The broader point made is that unsolicited 'why don't you just use X' suggestions ignore the invisible complexity of established workflows.

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    Video
    Avatar of t3dotggTheo - t3․gg·12w

    gpt-5.4 is really, really good

    GPT-5.4 (released as '5.4 Thinking') is reviewed after a week of hands-on use. Key highlights: 1M token context window, improved reasoning token efficiency, better mid-task steering, and significantly improved browser/computer use and vision capabilities. The model is praised as the best general-purpose AI for coding tasks, with Cursor internally endorsing it. However, it still lags behind Claude Opus and Gemini for front-end UI design. A notable security regression exists: prompt injection via function call return data succeeds ~2% of the time. GPT-5.4 Pro is expensive ($30/$180 per million tokens in/out) and often underperforms standard 5.4. The Codex model line appears to be discontinued in favor of 5.4 as the unified base. Prompting guidance from OpenAI is highlighted as more important than ever given the model's high steerability.

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