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Alex Hyett

alexhyett.com · English

Alex Hyett is a Software Developer, YouTuber and Writer focussed on helping people transform their lives by learning how to code.

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Sep 13, 2026
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  1. The death of SaaS and reverting to offline software
    Sep 13, 2026 · original
    This week I was reading this article, " we have a year to fix security everywhere ". The TL;DR, is that GLM-5.3 flash can be run locally on $5-15k hardware and is apparently good at hacking, especially when using an "abliterated" version which doesn't adhere to any safety checks. In other words, anyone with a bit of money can run an agent 24/7 to find vulnerabilities and exploit them across the web. At least that is what it claims. In the past, ethical hackers used to find vulnerabilities in a companies code and then email them to give them time to fix it, usually with the expectation of receiving a bounty. There are many cases of these vulnerabilities taking months to fix and it only getting resolved when the hacker decides to go public. With hackers using agents to find and exploit vulnerabilities, companies no longer have months to fix these vulnerabilities, they may not even have hou
  2. Becoming more nostalgic in my old age
    Aug 30, 2026 · original
    I say "old age" in the title of this post, I am still in my 30s, and I don't turn 40 until next year, but I have grey in my beard and I have definitely paraphrased "back in my day" more than once. Admittedly it is mostly to my children, so they can learn a little bit about what it was like growing up in the "late 1900s" not being surrounded by technology and the internet every second of the day. My daughter asked me whether it was better growing up as a kid when I was younger vs now. Obviously I am biased, but I think we did have it better as kids. Yes there was less choice when it came to entertainment and toys but abundant choice isn't always a good thing. Certainly in the UK where we only had 4 TV channels, with kids shows limited to a few hours each day, everyone watched the same thing. We were all exposed to the same adverts and ended up playing the same games and getting the same t
  3. But At What Cost?
    Aug 16, 2026 · original
    As a race, humans are really bad at doing cost benefit analysis. We might try and weigh up the pros and cons but we all have a tendency to exaggerate the pros if they are beneficial to us and downplay the cons that we can't directly see. This is also the case if the downsides are not immediate but will affect us at some point in the future. We see this pattern throughout history. We find something useful or pleasurable and later discover that it is harmful or unethical, and then continue doing it for another 50 years. Asbestos # Take asbestos for example. It has been used for hundreds of years, it is dirt cheap, strong and fire resistant. So we used it everywhere in tiles, in furniture and even in clothing. The first documented death from asbestos was in 1906. In 1918 insurers stopped covering asbestos workers due to the known health risks. It took until 1999 to completely ban it in the
  4. Uniqueness is the key to standing out
    Aug 2, 2026 · original
    The other day I saw this post about "Stolen Buttons". It is a browser extension that "steals" a button from every website that you visit. You can see the creators collection of "stolen" buttons here: Stolen Buttons | Anatoly Zenkov If you scroll through the list there will likely be a few that catch your eye, as they are a little bit different. It might be the shape, the colour, or the font used that makes them stand out. The majority of the buttons though are flat and pill shaped. They are usually blue or purple. A lot of this is due to the prevalence of CSS and UI frameworks like Tailwind and Bootstrap over the last decade. These frameworks have made it a lot easier for developers to put together websites and UI designs but without additional customisation everything starts looking the same. I must admit I am guilty of this as well. Over the years, a lot of the personality and uniquene
  5. Reducing my screen time with another device...
    Jul 19, 2026 · original
    In an attempt to reduce the amount of time I spend staring at my phone, I have bought myself another device. At least that is the lie I told myself for buying yet another gadget because it looked cool. After seeing Max Glenister and Neil Brown speak so highly of this device I just had to buy the XTEINK X4 e-reader . Note, this is not sponsored in any way I just wanted to share it with you! This is the 3rd e-reader that I own, so I definitely didn't need this device. I also have an old Kindle which I use exclusively for reading Kindle Unlimited books and a Kobo Clara Colour which is my main reading device. This device though is different to the others. Its dimensions are 114 x 69 x 5.9mm which is just a little bit bigger than a credit card. It doesn't have a touchscreen but has physical buttons on the bottom and the side. There is also no backlight. The device comes with a 32 GB SD card,
  6. I Tried Building a Real App With AI. It Took a Year.
    Jul 17, 2026 · original
    My wife and I have been looking for an app to track things like habits, hobbies, and when we last did certain chores. To be honest there are probably hundreds of different habit trackers on the App Store. Next to todo list apps they are supposed to be the easiest apps to create so it is not really that surprising there are so many options. But we must have tried dozens of different apps but none of them quite fit what we were looking for. Of course now we have AI, so this sort of thing should be easy to create. You just right a couple of prompts and AI will build it for you, while you sleep, or sip cocktails on the beach. As we shall see it didn't quite turn out that way. Requirements and Existing Apps # So for this app I had a few requirements: We wanted to have the habits in a long list and not have to go through multiple pages to find them. We didn't want any data be stored in the clo
  7. Opting for privacy in webmentions
    Jul 7, 2026 · original
    Last week I went full speed into setting up webmentions on my site. My implementation works around using webmention.io in my site's head and Bridgy for sending me webmentions for comments, likes and reposts on my posts that I share. Ideally I would like to self-host my webmentions endpoint so I am not relying on another service but I haven't found a suitable replacement yet. Maybe I should just self-host webmentions.io as it is open source. While looking for alternatives I came across this post The Indieweb privacy challenge (Webmentions, silo backfeeds, and the GDPR) by Sebastian Greger. He makes an excellent point when it comes to "silo backfeeds" which in this case is talking about sending webmentions from the Fediverse and Bluesky. My webmention implementation involved showing names and avatars for all the people who liked, reposted or commented on my content including those from the
  8. Setting up Webmentions on my Static Site 💬
    Jul 5, 2026 · original
    I have been getting back into blogging recently. I know I write this newsletter every 2 weeks, but I try and keep to a set number of topics as I know my audience is mostly developers. My blog gives me chance to write about whatever is on my mind, without worrying about it being relevant to my audience. When I first started "surfing the web" it was all about personal websites and going from one person's blog to another via links and blogrolls. I miss that style of the internet. You know, before it was consolidated into a handful of tech giants. That internet is still there alive and well, you just need to look a little harder for it. The best way I have found to stumble onto new blogs is to use these: Kagi Small Web - Keep clicking Next Post and it will take you to random websites. Bubbles.town - This is a fairly new addition. It is like HackerNews for personal blogs. Of course it is all
  9. Focussing on my fitness 💪
    Jun 30, 2026 · original
    It is safe to say I am not getting any younger. Although I suppose that is the same for all of us apart from Benjamin Button. I am turning 40 next year and with that comes quite a lot of retrospection on how I have led my life, whether I have made the right choices and what I can improve on going forward. As far as most life goals go I am fairly satisfied with my lot: Married ✅ House ✅ Kids ✅ As a self confessed geek, I have never enjoyed sports and being a software developer has meant nearly 2 decades of sitting down. Apparently there is a World Cup going on at the moment but I couldn't tell you who was playing this week. The only physical activity I truly enjoy is walking (in nice surroundings), swimming, and ice skating. The last two I don't do very often due to cost and proximity of a decent swimming pool. We do have an ice rink near us and I need to go again as it has been just over
  10. Taking the unconventional path
    Jun 29, 2026 · original
    Two weeks ago I quit my job. I had been working as a staff engineer at this startup for the last 2.5 years. The people, pay, and workload were all good but it was time to move on. I have worked with most of the team before this job and I am sure we will probably end up working together again in the future. So why quit? To be honest, I can't 100% rule out a midlife crisis. I turn 40 next year and with everything that has been going in tech in the last year I feel like it is time for a change. This is not what I signed up for # When AI first came out I was quite interested. I have always been a sucker for new shiny tech and AI seemed like a childhood dream come true. I could finally build my own Jarvis as seen in all the Iron Man films. Who wouldn't want a sarcastic AI assistant that is constantly mocking you when you ask for help. Of course making funny assistants was never the goal for t
  11. Getting back into blogging
    Jun 24, 2026 · original
    It has been a while since I have sat down and wrote a blog post that is not directly related to programming or self-hosting. If I look back to 2023 I used to write about all sorts of different topics. I was reading the post 📦 Don't put yourself in a box the other day and I realised I have been doing something similar. My website doesn't get that much traffic at around 8000 visitors a month, so it is not that I am feeling pressure for my posts to be meaningful, but I have stuck myself in a genre box. Even though I label myself as a “software developer” it isn't my entire identity, and I am sure those reading my blog have other interests as well. I shouldn't worry about overwhelming my readers as not that many people subscribe directly to my everything RSS feed (I don't think). Even if they do, having something interesting to read regardless of whether it is technical or not, is surely a
  12. Setting up webmentions
    Jun 23, 2026 · original
    Today I have been trying to set up webmentions on my website. Brennan Kenneth Brown has a great article that goes through his process for setting up webmentions: How Webmentions Work on brennan.day . I learned that I need to set up microformats which I believe I have done correctly. It seems to be coming back correctly using this tool: PHP Microformats Parser The downside is I actually need some likes, reposts, replies, mentions and comments to test everything out. Let's see if the fediverse can help!

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