English posts from Zainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/https://b.zzn.im/blog/beautiful-visualization-business-storytelling/https://b.zzn.im/blog/beautiful-visualization-business-storytelling/What NYT, The Pudding, FT and 3Blue1Brown have in common, why a chart library can't make you look good, and how to design interactions that explain instead of merely demonstrate.Thu, 03 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/speech-to-text-apis-august-2026/https://b.zzn.im/blog/speech-to-text-apis-august-2026/Hosted APIs versus open models you can run yourself, compared on accuracy, price per audio-hour, diarization, and what self-hosting actually costs.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/post-heroku-paas-landscape-2026/https://b.zzn.im/blog/post-heroku-paas-landscape-2026/Heroku isn't dead, but it's no longer the default. A 2026 field guide to Railway, Fly.io, Render, Heroku, and self-hosting — with real pricing math for running 10 to 100 small side projects.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/why-i-started-building-guestsafe/https://b.zzn.im/blog/why-i-started-building-guestsafe/After a compromised Mac and AI agents leaked secrets into session logs, I began building GuestSafe: a local, auditable alternative to .env.local.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/the-pen-is-a-virgin-the-printing-press-a-whore/https://b.zzn.im/blog/the-pen-is-a-virgin-the-printing-press-a-whore/AI is feared as dangerous and mocked for producing junk. Five centuries ago, the printing press drew both complaints. History shows the argument is not new.Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/local-first-secrets-for-ai-agents-macos-survey/https://b.zzn.im/blog/local-first-secrets-for-ai-agents-macos-survey/A field survey of local secret stores for AI agents on macOS—and the privilege boundary needed to keep an agent from erasing its own access trail.Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/reciprocal-choice-section-230/https://b.zzn.im/blog/reciprocal-choice-section-230/Your decision, your responsibility. Not your responsibility, not your decision to make. A common-sense framework for rethinking platform liability by tying responsibility to the specific decisions platforms actually make.Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/mvp-list/https://b.zzn.im/blog/mvp-list/Two tired parents, a one-year-old, and a thousand bookmarked places we keep meaning to visit. Here is the small planning agent we built so that every Saturday no longer starts with the same question: 'so... where are we going today?'Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/maintain-your-personal-distro-part-2/https://b.zzn.im/blog/maintain-your-personal-distro-part-2/A technical deep-dive into why Carried Patch Queue (CPQ) is the gold standard for individuals maintaining their own software stacks in 2026 — and why the old ways of managing downstreams will eventually kill your project.Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/maintain-your-personal-distro/https://b.zzn.im/blog/maintain-your-personal-distro/It is now possible for each person to maintain their own personal distro with AI: a fast-moving, opinionated downstream version of software that continuously rebases on upstream while preserving your own defaults, workflows, and carried patches.Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/claude-code-v2.1.88-security-analysis/https://b.zzn.im/blog/claude-code-v2.1.88-security-analysis/A deep-dive security review of Claude Code's internals, reconstructed from its published source maps. Covers permission sandboxing, shell execution, credential handling, remote killswitches, and 10 findings.Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/learning-notes/Design-System-Skills-for-AI-Agentic-Development/https://b.zzn.im/blog/learning-notes/Design-System-Skills-for-AI-Agentic-Development/Figma is invisible to AI agents. Developers across X have spent the past two weeks converging on the same fix: make design principles explicit, structured, and agent-executable.Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/prettysafe-address-poison-prevention/https://b.zzn.im/blog/prettysafe-address-poison-prevention/Address poisoning isn't a user problem — it's a wallet UI bug. How wallets enable this $68M attack and how to fix it.Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/Trust-In-Mail/https://b.zzn.im/blog/Trust-In-Mail/A technical proposal for decentralized email anti-spam using trust propagation, group trust, and optional pay-to-email mechanisms.Tue, 08 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/Orange-Perk-Exchange-Phase-1/https://b.zzn.im/blog/Orange-Perk-Exchange-Phase-1/A proposal for Orange DAO to create a Perk Exchange page where founders can share and discover startup perks and credits.Wed, 18 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/Reflections-on-Accounting/https://b.zzn.im/blog/Reflections-on-Accounting/An entrepreneur's journey to understanding accounting: from the balance sheet to income statements, demystifying the core logic.Mon, 09 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/overhead-and-min-size/https://b.zzn.im/blog/overhead-and-min-size/How 'overhead' shapes content length, music distribution, and business scale — from Broadway shows to blockchain micro-transactions.Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/Car-of-Thoughts/https://b.zzn.im/blog/Car-of-Thoughts/AI is to thinking what the car was to walking — a reflection on how tools from handwriting to AI have amplified human intellectual capacity.Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/Why-International-Flights-Often-Require-Manual-Check--In/https://b.zzn.im/blog/Why-International-Flights-Often-Require-Manual-Check--In/Why international flights still require manual check-in, and a proposal for standardized APIs between airlines and customs for digital verification.Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/Blockchain-and-Tipping-Culture/https://b.zzn.im/blog/Blockchain-and-Tipping-Culture/How blockchain could transform tipping from unreliable one-off transactions into a transparent, reputation-based system that rewards good service.Wed, 07 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/Why-Customer-Call-Experience-Sucks/https://b.zzn.im/blog/Why-Customer-Call-Experience-Sucks/A constructive analysis of why calling customer service is so painful — from wrong numbers to complex menus to repeated identity verification.Sat, 03 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/book-notes-united-states-of-europe/https://b.zzn.im/blog/book-notes-united-states-of-europe/《The United States of Europe》读书笔记：从二战到2004年，欧盟的历史、关键人物和欧元诞生过程。Sat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/onchain-reputation/https://b.zzn.im/blog/onchain-reputation/How on-chain reputation creates a qualitative leap over traditional systems through openness, decentralization, and fairness.Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/recommendations/https://b.zzn.im/blog/recommendations/A curated list of books I highly recommend, from Bill Gates to Vitalik Buterin.Sun, 19 May 2024 16:17:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/on-group-delegatee/https://b.zzn.im/blog/on-group-delegatee/Exploring the concept of group delegatees in DAO governance — how collectives using multi-sig wallets can serve as more resilient delegates.Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/eth-overview/https://b.zzn.im/blog/eth-overview/A technical overview of Ethereum for internet engineers, covering its state machine model, execution layer, and consensus mechanism.Wed, 10 Jan 2024 06:14:51 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/how-i-write/https://b.zzn.im/blog/how-i-write/A living document on my writing workflow: Markdown, Obsidian, Jekyll on GitHub Pages, inspired by the Zettelkasten method.Sun, 07 Jan 2024 20:23:12 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/what-i-use/https://b.zzn.im/blog/what-i-use/A running list of tools and gear I use daily — blogging, IDE, full-stack development, headphones, and sport monitoring.Sun, 07 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/why-i-write/https://b.zzn.im/blog/why-i-write/My foundational article on why I write: self-expression, personal growth, connecting with readers, and the joy of creative exploration.Thu, 04 Jan 2024 19:34:30 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/d3serve-manifesto-digital-trust/https://b.zzn.im/blog/d3serve-manifesto-digital-trust/A vision statement of D3Serve: why digitizing trust — like the digitization of information before it — promises a leap in productivity, loss-less precision, lower cost, and automation.Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/what-why-how-for-community/https://b.zzn.im/blog/what-why-how-for-community/A framework for understanding communities: what defines them, why they matter for collaboration, and how to build them.Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:49:30 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/occ-en/https://b.zzn.im/blog/occ-en/Defining the Open Contributor Community model: everyone can contribute, trust is earned through contributions, and contributions are rewarded.Sun, 28 Feb 2021 20:29:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/matterbridge/https://b.zzn.im/blog/matterbridge/A quick guide to bridging Slack and Discord channels using matterbridge with Docker in just 3 minutes.Sat, 21 Mar 2020 22:41:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/hamilton-education/https://b.zzn.im/blog/hamilton-education/从汉密尔顿因教会资格被拒而无法上学的经历，思考教会权力、社会保障与国家形态的关系。Sun, 21 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/ecc/https://b.zzn.im/blog/ecc/A presentation on the philosophy behind building and engineering a thriving community of contributors.Tue, 31 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhouhttps://b.zzn.im/blog/how-to-code-review/https://b.zzn.im/blog/how-to-code-review/A practical guide to code reviews based on experience at Google, covering pre-screening, understanding, and evaluating change lists.Tue, 19 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMTZainan Victor Zhou