Diego Martín Lafuente's personal blog about business, design, history, technology, and other topics.https://minid.net/enhttps://minid.net/2026/8/2/the-actor-was-the-expensive-part/https://minid.net/2026/8/2/the-actor-was-the-expensive-part/AI video models like ByteDance's Seedance 2.5 can now generate finished film, sound and image together, in a single pass from reference material, holding characters and voices consistent across shots. That collapses the real cost of moviemaking, which was never the camera but everything physical in front of it. This post works through what follows: budget stops gating imagination, historical accuracy becomes a setting, characters get recast after the fact, film sagas stop aging wrong, and a great deal of human craft becomes worth much less, all at the same time.Sun, 02 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTCulturehttps://minid.net/2026/7/14/how-to-automatise-with-ai/https://minid.net/2026/7/14/how-to-automatise-with-ai/Yes, Father, I have sinned. I let a machine write the boring parts. No, I am not vibe coding. There is a difference, and the difference is two weeks of rules, a clear architecture, automated checks, and knowing exactly when to take the shovel back.Tue, 14 Jul 2026 23:09:55 GMTTechnologyhttps://minid.net/2026/7/10/ai-works-for-me/https://minid.net/2026/7/10/ai-works-for-me/After 27 years of writing code, I have stopped spending time on a long list of small but painful engineering tasks. AI agents now handle commit messages, pull request descriptions, code comments, naming conventions, Git hygiene, issue tracking, and release workflows with more consistency than most teams ever managed by hand.Fri, 10 Jul 2026 16:25:33 GMTEngineeringhttps://minid.net/2026/7/3/the-one-person-company-fantasy/https://minid.net/2026/7/3/the-one-person-company-fantasy/AI leaders are making some people imagine companies where a single CEO sits alone with a machine that builds everything. That future may be possible, but it is not very probable. The real constraint is not generation speed. It is judgment, responsibility, ethics, and the accumulated weight of decisions that make a company work.Fri, 03 Jul 2026 17:24:30 GMTTechnologyhttps://minid.net/2026/6/27/real-engineer-vs-bootstrapper/https://minid.net/2026/6/27/real-engineer-vs-bootstrapper/In software, there has always been a line between people who understand how computers work and people who learned a framework as a trade. AI did not erase that distinction. It made it more obvious.Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2026/6/25/is-blogging-still-worth-it-in-2026/https://minid.net/2026/6/25/is-blogging-still-worth-it-in-2026/Blogging used to be the natural way for people to publish, share ideas, and bypass the old gatekeepers. Then social networks moved the conversation elsewhere. Now AI is eating the web itself. So, is blogging still worth it in 2026? Not really. Which is exactly why I am writing this.Thu, 25 Jun 2026 07:24:30 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2026/6/15/the-web-is-going-to-dissapear/https://minid.net/2026/6/15/the-web-is-going-to-dissapear/Every generation of computing believes the interface it loves will last forever. It never does. I saw information move from floppy disks to BBSs, from BBSs to the Web, from the Web to Flash, from Flash back to open standards, from websites to mobile apps, and now from search engines to AI chat interfaces. The Web will not vanish overnight, but the Web as we know it, the open place where people search, click, read, browse, publish, and discover, is already being replaced by something more convenient, more centralized, and much harder to escape.Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:53:00 GMTTechnologyhttps://minid.net/2026/6/14/the-interview-starts-before-the-first-question/https://minid.net/2026/6/14/the-interview-starts-before-the-first-question/After interviewing more than a thousand engineers over 27 years, I have learned that great hiring is not about clever questions, resume theater, or gut feeling. It is about structure, signal, preparation, and the ability to separate people who can merely make things run from people who can actually think, design, debug, and own complex systems. This article is a practical, opinionated guide for interviewers and candidates who want engineering interviews to be less random, less theatrical, and far more useful.Sun, 14 Jun 2026 13:00:00 GMTTechnologyhttps://minid.net/2026/6/1/my-ai-workflow/https://minid.net/2026/6/1/my-ai-workflow/AI transformed the way I work in 2026. Back in 2020, when I started using AI, it felt more like a novelty: a tool that could help me with specific tasks. I saw it as a plain, generic product. Five years later, I see it very differently.Mon, 01 Jun 2026 19:32:30 GMTMinidhttps://minid.net/2019/9/16/a-common-dilemma-in-ux-is-how-to-handle-product-listings-on-e-commerce-websites/https://minid.net/2019/9/16/a-common-dilemma-in-ux-is-how-to-handle-product-listings-on-e-commerce-websites/E-commerce websites often let users change how many items they see per page. This looks like a simple feature, but when it resets the list or moves the user away from their current position, it creates unnecessary friction. This article explains the problem and proposes a better behavior for “items per page” controls.Mon, 16 Sep 2019 19:05:31 GMTDesignhttps://minid.net/2019/8/12/in-defense-of-functional-css/https://minid.net/2019/8/12/in-defense-of-functional-css/Functional CSS is still treated by some developers as a messy or undisciplined way to write interfaces. I think that criticism misses the point. Functional CSS can reduce CSS growth, make changes more explicit, and lower the cost of maintaining large front-end projects.Mon, 12 Aug 2019 07:24:30 GMTCSShttps://minid.net/2019/7/30/find-a-problem-and-solve-it/https://minid.net/2019/7/30/find-a-problem-and-solve-it/Everyone in the startup graveyard solved a real problem. This is about why that was not enough, and what the survivors did differently. The companies that last are not the ones with the best solutions. They are the ones people cannot imagine quitting.Tue, 30 Jul 2019 19:31:43 GMTProducthttps://minid.net/2019/4/7/the-css-utilitarian-methodology/https://minid.net/2019/4/7/the-css-utilitarian-methodology/We have been writing CSS in the wrong way for a long time. It is time to move forward. The Utilitarian CSS Methodology, or UCSS, reduces the size of CSS files, improves loading, rendering, and painting speed, and makes projects easier to maintain and understand. This article explains why traditional CSS architectures tend to grow into large, fragile systems, and why a utility-first approach can solve many of these problems.Sun, 07 Apr 2019 17:33:11 GMTCSShttps://minid.net/2016/1/5/superstition-in-rome/https://minid.net/2016/1/5/superstition-in-rome/Reading historical accounts, one realizes that the level of superstition among the Romans was very high, even excessive. So much so that nowadays it would probably make us laugh to read in a magazine or newspaper that a citizen had sacrificed a cow to appease the anger of a god and bring more jobs to the city.Tue, 05 Jan 2016 18:24:27 GMTHistoryhttps://minid.net/2015/4/6/the-road-made-by-the-sword/https://minid.net/2015/4/6/the-road-made-by-the-sword/A literary reconstruction of the Roman victory over the Volsci, following Vettius Messius through the collapse of his army and examining what happened after the fighting ended, when prisoners, weapons, animals, and every other trace of value became part of the victor's spoils.Mon, 06 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMTHistoryhttps://minid.net/2015/1/25/being-remembered-on-ancient-rome/https://minid.net/2015/1/25/being-remembered-on-ancient-rome/Sun, 25 Jan 2015 07:24:30 GMTHistoryhttps://minid.net/2014/11/1/severity/https://minid.net/2014/11/1/severity/In the era of the Roman Republic, the values that defined the famous Roman virtue, or "virtus," were frugality, severity, righteousness, dignity, and service to the country above all else. These were the values that were taught as personal goals to every Roman citizen. All of these values comprised the Roman Virtue and were a basic characteristic of success and renown that every noble Roman pursued, in addition to combating baldness and being physically fit to enhance their masculinity. Today, I want to tell you about the severity that characterized the Roman people, how it was forged, and what role it played in their development.Sat, 01 Nov 2014 19:05:31 GMTHistoryhttps://minid.net/2014/6/9/lizard-brain/https://minid.net/2014/6/9/lizard-brain/Products rarely become complicated because anyone planned them that way. They become complicated one reasonable request at a time, until the interface looks like a remote control and nobody remembers what the product was originally supposed to do.Mon, 09 Jun 2014 00:00:00 GMTProduct Designhttps://minid.net/2014/5/5/designing-for-mobile-phones/https://minid.net/2014/5/5/designing-for-mobile-phones/Designing a native mobile app is not the same as shrinking a website until it fits inside a phone. It requires thinking about hardware, unreliable connections, platform conventions, performance, measurement, localization, and the many creative ways real users can break software.Mon, 05 May 2014 00:00:00 GMTProduct Designhttps://minid.net/2014/4/28/the-checklist-manifesto/https://minid.net/2014/4/28/the-checklist-manifesto/Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto explains why experienced professionals still make avoidable mistakes and how a short, well-designed checklist can bring discipline to complex work without replacing judgment, skill, or responsibility.Mon, 28 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMTBookshttps://minid.net/2014/3/6/boredom-is-killing-you/https://minid.net/2014/3/6/boredom-is-killing-you/Thu, 06 Mar 2014 07:24:30 GMTDevelopmenthttps://minid.net/2014/2/16/10-types-of-tattoos-you-should-never-get/https://minid.net/2014/2/16/10-types-of-tattoos-you-should-never-get/Sun, 16 Feb 2014 18:24:27 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2013/11/30/on-unsolicited-redesigns/https://minid.net/2013/11/30/on-unsolicited-redesigns/There is a strange little phenomenon in web design that many people have probably seen, or even done, without realizing it has a name. It is called "unsolicited design". I like to call it "unexpected design".Sat, 30 Nov 2013 07:24:30 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2013/8/11/how-to-install-jekyll-in-osx/https://minid.net/2013/8/11/how-to-install-jekyll-in-osx/Sun, 11 Aug 2013 07:24:30 GMTDevelopmenthttps://minid.net/2013/7/30/i-used-a-framework/https://minid.net/2013/7/30/i-used-a-framework/Using a framework does not make a developer less capable. A good framework removes repetitive work, documents shared decisions, and lets a team focus on the parts of a product that are actually unique. The real problem begins when developers use one without understanding what it does.Tue, 30 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMTWeb Developmenthttps://minid.net/2013/5/6/cleaning-my-iphone/https://minid.net/2013/5/6/cleaning-my-iphone/After accumulating applications for nearly every imaginable task, I deleted almost all of them from my iPhone. The cleanup removed more than icons. It reduced the number of small, pointless decisions I was making every time I unlocked the phone.Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 GMTPersonal Technologyhttps://minid.net/2013/3/28/bad-wifi-login-pages/https://minid.net/2013/3/28/bad-wifi-login-pages/Wi-Fi captive portals are often slow, difficult to use on a phone, and overloaded with branding nobody asked to see. A good portal should make authentication fast, accessible, and almost invisible, then get out of the user’s way.Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMTProduct Designhttps://minid.net/2013/2/7/the-inevitable-end-of-paper-books/https://minid.net/2013/2/7/the-inevitable-end-of-paper-books/Paper books will not disappear from the planet, but their life as a mainstream commercial platform is coming to an end. Nostalgia is powerful, but convenience usually wins.Thu, 07 Feb 2013 07:24:30 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2013/1/29/why-links-are-blue-colored/https://minid.net/2013/1/29/why-links-are-blue-colored/Blue links became one of the web’s most recognizable conventions, although their origin is less obvious than it seems. What began in early hypertext systems and was popularized by Mosaic eventually became a useful lesson in conventions, accessibility, and the value of making interactive text look interactive.Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMTWeb Designhttps://minid.net/2013/1/23/the-great-intermediary-panic/https://minid.net/2013/1/23/the-great-intermediary-panic/Every time technology makes distribution easier, the old intermediaries discover tragedy. Newspapers, record labels, TV networks, video stores, software distributors, cinema chains, and even once-dominant technologies like Flash all shared the same problem: they confused temporary control over distribution with permanent value.Wed, 23 Jan 2013 07:24:30 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2012/11/28/protect-me-from-facebook/https://minid.net/2012/11/28/protect-me-from-facebook/A legal-sounding notice was spreading across Facebook, promising to protect users’ photos, personal information, and other content from the company. Unfortunately, copying a paragraph into a status update cannot rewrite the agreement accepted when opening an account.Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMTInternethttps://minid.net/2012/11/17/a-500k-euro-website/https://minid.net/2012/11/17/a-500k-euro-website/A public website can absolutely cost half a million euros. The real problem is not the price tag. The problem is spending that money badly, locking yourself into proprietary software, treating design as decoration, and delivering something that looks and behaves like it came from another era.Sat, 17 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2012/10/26/the-wonderful-world-of-svg/https://minid.net/2012/10/26/the-wonderful-world-of-svg/SVG gives the web resolution-independent graphics that can be styled, inspected, animated, and manipulated like the rest of the document. This introduction explains how the format works, where it is useful, how its coordinate system behaves, and which mistakes to avoid when adding it to a product.Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTWeb Developmenthttps://minid.net/2012/10/21/alamut/https://minid.net/2012/10/21/alamut/Sun, 21 Oct 2012 13:47:16 GMTBookshttps://minid.net/2012/10/18/the-art-of-presenting/https://minid.net/2012/10/18/the-art-of-presenting/Effective presentations hinge on simplicity, storytelling, and strategic slide design. Preparation and practice are vital. Learn from seasoned speakers like Guy Kawasaki and prioritize clarity and engagement over complexity.Thu, 18 Oct 2012 07:24:30 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2012/10/15/my-blog-without-comments/https://minid.net/2012/10/15/my-blog-without-comments/This blog no longer has comments. After eleven and a half years of writing and reading blogs, I no longer think comments are necessary, at least not on my own blog.Mon, 15 Oct 2012 07:24:30 GMTMinidhttps://minid.net/2012/10/12/how-i-stopped-smoking/https://minid.net/2012/10/12/how-i-stopped-smoking/It is possible to quit smoking. Even the most addicted person can do it, it's just a matter of wanting to quit. It takes willpower and discipline. You can start now, but it may be beneficial to consider other strategies. In this article, I explain how I quit smoking.It is possible to quit smoking. Even the most addicted person can do it, it's just a matter of wanting to quit. It takes willpower and discipline. You can start now, but it may be beneficial to consider other strategies. In this article, I explain how I quit smoking.Fri, 12 Oct 2012 07:24:30 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2008/12/29/49-pesos/https://minid.net/2008/12/29/49-pesos/Vacationing in Argentina with euros or dollars is not cheap at allMon, 29 Dec 2008 07:24:30 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2008/8/6/being-free-and-having-peace/https://minid.net/2008/8/6/being-free-and-having-peace/Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:24:30 GMTBookshttps://minid.net/2007/12/27/dexter/https://minid.net/2007/12/27/dexter/Thu, 27 Dec 2007 07:24:30 GMTserieshttps://minid.net/2007/12/12/a-ver-si-lo-entienden/https://minid.net/2007/12/12/a-ver-si-lo-entienden/Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:01:00 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2007/10/1/taiko/https://minid.net/2007/10/1/taiko/Mon, 01 Oct 2007 03:00:34 GMTBookshttps://minid.net/2007/6/25/to-be-born-again/https://minid.net/2007/6/25/to-be-born-again/Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:33:11 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2007/5/9/the-american-friend/https://minid.net/2007/5/9/the-american-friend/"The perfect crime does not exist," Tom told Reeves. "Believing that it does is just a parlor game. Of course, many murders go unsolved, but that's quite different."Wed, 09 May 2007 07:24:30 GMTMovieshttps://minid.net/2007/3/14/adjacent-css-selectors/https://minid.net/2007/3/14/adjacent-css-selectors/The adjacent sibling combinator lets CSS select an element based on whatever appears immediately before it. It is a small piece of syntax that can eliminate unnecessary classes, take advantage of the document structure, and make a stylesheet considerably easier to maintain.Wed, 14 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMTWeb Developmenthttps://minid.net/2006/7/14/driver-stop-please/https://minid.net/2006/7/14/driver-stop-please/Blogs once felt like an enormous conversation between people sharing what they knew, liked, and thought. Advertising did not destroy that conversation, but the pressure to publish constantly for money has turned too many personal voices into small, interchangeable newsrooms.Fri, 14 Jul 2006 02:45:09 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2006/5/12/asa-el-ejecutor/https://minid.net/2006/5/12/asa-el-ejecutor/Fri, 12 May 2006 03:00:34 GMTBookshttps://minid.net/2006/2/12/blogs-without-comments-are-still-blogs/https://minid.net/2006/2/12/blogs-without-comments-are-still-blogs/Comments can improve a blog, create a community, and give readers a convenient place to respond. They can also produce spam, moderation work, server costs, and an endless supply of people convinced that your website is public property. None of this determines whether the site is a blog.Sun, 12 Feb 2006 00:00:00 GMTBlogginghttps://minid.net/2006/1/23/devils-advocate/https://minid.net/2006/1/23/devils-advocate/Mon, 23 Jan 2006 02:45:09 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2005/6/6/airports-are-prisons/https://minid.net/2005/6/6/airports-are-prisons/A delayed flight from Buenos Aires to Barcelona turned into a full day of mechanical trouble, airport confinement, missed connections, repeated controls, and an interrogation in Rome. It left me with a lasting distrust of places where every traveler is treated as a possible criminal.Mon, 06 Jun 2005 00:00:00 GMTTravelhttps://minid.net/2005/2/7/ciberminid/https://minid.net/2005/2/7/ciberminid/Mon, 07 Feb 2005 19:05:31 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2005/1/26/42-hours-without-smoking/https://minid.net/2005/1/26/42-hours-without-smoking/Wed, 26 Jan 2005 12:24:14 GMTopinionhttps://minid.net/2004/4/27/1399-euros/https://minid.net/2004/4/27/1399-euros/Tue, 27 Apr 2004 09:46:41 GMTBookshttps://minid.net/2004/3/25/assault-on-the-viceroy/https://minid.net/2004/3/25/assault-on-the-viceroy/Thu, 25 Mar 2004 09:46:41 GMTBookshttps://minid.net/2003/12/17/100-aos-en-el-aire/https://minid.net/2003/12/17/100-aos-en-el-aire/Wed, 17 Dec 2003 16:53:20 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2003/12/9/killed-by-inventing/https://minid.net/2003/12/9/killed-by-inventing/A perfect little story claimed that angry cab drivers threw taximeter inventor Wilhelm Bruhn into a river. Unfortunately for the story, Bruhn survived long enough to keep filing patents. It is a useful reminder that the most memorable facts on the internet are often the ones nobody bothered to verify.Tue, 09 Dec 2003 00:00:00 GMTInternethttps://minid.net/2003/11/3/aciberneto/https://minid.net/2003/11/3/aciberneto/Mon, 03 Nov 2003 17:56:36 GMTRantshttps://minid.net/2003/6/27/good-things-cost-money/https://minid.net/2003/6/27/good-things-cost-money/A 2003 reflection, written around the launch of the Power Mac G5, about Macs, PCs, long-term value, and why cheap often becomes expensive.Fri, 27 Jun 2003 00:00:00 GMTTechnologyhttps://minid.net/2001/5/20/what-is-a-weblog/https://minid.net/2001/5/20/what-is-a-weblog/Sun, 20 May 2001 07:24:30 GMTInternethttps://minid.net/2001/3/25/first-post/https://minid.net/2001/3/25/first-post/Sun, 25 Mar 2001 02:45:09 GMTpersonal