Welcome to my personal blog where I share my thoughts on technology, programming, and life. Here are some of my latest posts:
The Internet Is (still) the Platform
It started with a post from Mark Zuckerberg. It wasn't the content of that post that drew my attention – that was just the Metaverse pitch recycled with "AI" swapped in – it was the form. It felt quite surprising to see plain text in Times New Roman following a good old H1 tag. But something felt off. The page didn't load instantly - something one would expect from a minimalistic page like this. There was some weird layout shift in the middle of the page rendering - something one would not expect from a minimalistic page like this. And if you opened it without Meta cookies already in your browser, up came the consent dialog.
WhatsApp is not a messenger app for your kid
Walk down a street in Helsinki and pick a random 7–12-year-old with a smartphone. In 9 out of 10 cases, you’ll find WhatsApp installed. In Finland, WhatsApp is widely seen as a simple messaging tool — private, low-risk, and the default choice for kids to stay in touch with friends and family. But this view is outdated. It no longer reflects reality.
Leaving Parasocial Media Behind
I created my Facebook account 17 years ago, in the fall of 2007. Early Facebook was quite different from what it is today. It was about a new way of staying connected with old and current real-world acquaintances—whether childhood friends, coworkers or relatives. Networks were built primarily between people with some kind of real-world connection, and within these networks, we shared updates about life, relocations, jobs, and relationship statuses. It was called a social network, a term that fairly accurately described the concept at the time.