I didn't expect a parable about a fisherman to smack me in the face with such clarity, but here we are. While reading Grow slowly, stay small on Herman’s blog, I learned about The Fisherman and The Businessman , which goes like this: A businessman meets a fisherman who is selling fish at his stall one morning. The businessman enquires of the fisherman what he does after he finishes selling his fish for the day. The fisherman responds that he spends time with his friends and family...

EA’s planned “take private” by a triumvirate of investors consisting of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, private equity giant Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner’s Affinity is, in many ways, straightforward. At the time of the deal, EA’s stock was up 14.1% year-to-date and since January 1, 2021, it had grown only 17.2%, spending most of that four-and-a-half year period underwater. EA’s stock price doldrums reflected several challenges. For example, a series of unconsummated talks ...

When my wife saw me playing with my new encrypted radio, she asked what it was for. “Imagine,” I said, “if I could type a message on my phone and send it to you, and the message would appear on your phone. Instantly!” She wasn’t impressed. “It also works if phone lines are down due to a power outage… or societal collapse.” Still nothing. “If we’re not within radio range of each other, we can route ou...

Last week we talked about some of the reasons why we want data independence. This week I want to talk about some of the historical steps that brought us to where we are today, and why the relational model is a good fit for modelling data. The first real database is often thought to be IDS, the "integrated data store," which was designed by Charles Bachman. Bachman won the Turing award for his work on databases and his Turing award speech The Programmer as Navigator is a really important...

I don’t remember where I heard this story, but it stuck in my mind to this day. It goes something like this: A doorman is guarding the entrance of a very important corporate building. He lets people in and out based on their badges. One day, the owner of the company arrives. As she approaches the door, the doorman asks for her ID. The owner’s secretary says, “Don’t you know who she is? Let her in!” The owner of the company hands him her ID, and he lets her in. ...

While I work to round out the details of the Recovery Kit Ultra, I thought it would be a great time to share the smaller "desk buddy" that is the Recovery Kit Nano. The nano has a humorously small 5" screen from the company who brings you the many variants of the Raspberry Pi. This small 5" screen with a tremendous bezel is really left to act more as a showpiece on your desk, but it does so with a surprising amount in common with the Raspberry Pi Recovery Kit, the Recovery Kit Mini, and even t...

I will answer this question, but it’s best explained by telling you about the post I wrote on LinkedIn last week: Github’s Design System has banned toast messages. Toast messages are little messages that appear on top of the UI to give you feedback about an action you just took. Banning toast messages is an excellent decision because they’re not accessible and have bad UX. Here’s a few reasons why: (1) They disappear automatically after a few seconds - at best this is stressf...

Last week I ran a meetup for writers on the web . During the session, I brought up the topic of distance in writing. [1] We explored the topic in various ways – the distance between writing and publishing, the distance between reader and writer, how distance varies. As I write, I am thinking about the distance of poetic writing. When I write poetically, I can use the ambiguity of poetic language to create a space for the reader to interpret something in whatever ways come to mind. I find it e...

Shield AI Expands into Space Domain through Partnership with Sedaro WASHINGTON (December 3, 2025) — Shield AI and Sedaro today announced a strategic partnership to advance autonomous operations in orbit. The collaboration establishes Shield AI’s Hivemind Pilot as Sedaro’s preferred autonomy software for on-orbit demonstrations, extending the company’s proven edge autonomy from air and sea into space. Under the agreement, Shield AI will use the Sedaro Platform as its primary enviro...

This document curates the most common questions Shreya and I received while teaching 700+ engineers & PMs AI Evals. Warning: These are sharp opinions about what works in most cases. They are not universal truths. Use your judgment. 👉 Want to learn more about AI Evals? Check out our AI Evals course . It’s a live cohort with hands on exercises and office hours. Here is a 25% discount code for readers. 👈 Listen to the audio version of this FAQ If you prefer to listen ...

PyPi publishing party! Pyriodic project is packaged and published on Python's package page, PyPi PyPi publishing party! Pyriodic project is packaged and published on Python's package page, PyPi

I’ve had my VORON Trident for 2 years and I’ve run it for 2600 hours. Overall I’m happy with the printer but I’ve been itching to make some more mods to it. Having finally finished the VORON 0 ( with mods ) I now have a backup printer I can use to rescue myself when I screw up. As the printer was starting to crap out with a leadscrew starting to grind down again , the chamber thermistor stopped working, and PLA clogging up the Rapido hotend again it was time for a bit of a rebui...

Name: Izumo Social media: X , YouTube SPONSORED Being productive at home is about getting the right things done, not everything do...

BILL: I honestly do not know whether ChatGPT will make programmers more productive. (I am not touching question of whether it puts programmers out of work. That's a problem for Future Bill.) Who can I ask? I found two people who disagree on the issue: Alice who supports developers in industry. She doesn't write code full time now, but she has written plenty before. She thinks that NO, ChatGPT and LLMs DO NOT help programmers. Bob is a  friend of a friend who writes code for a living and owns ...

A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure. — Segal’s Law Take this example: func validate ( input string ) ( bool , error ) { // Validation check 1 if input == "" { return false , nil } // Validation check 2 if isCorrupted ( input ) { return false , nil } // System check if err := checkUpstream (); err != nil { retu...

DragonFire laser being tested in 2024, via Wikipedia . Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This week we look at NIMBYism and aesthetics, defibrillator drones, railway track detonators, a proposed mach-23 space gun, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber. NIMBYism and aesthetics A common opinion I hear about opposition to new housing constru...

There are certain books within technical communities where even an indirect reference (a pointer , you could say) will conjure wonderful memories of first learning to program in anyone who hears it (these are distinct from Clojure memories). The Pickaxe Book. K&R. Chunky Bacon. You don’t need to mention the title, the year of release, the full name of the writers, the publisher, or anything else about it for people to know exactly what you’re talking about. So integral are they to th...

I’ve recently started on the journey to get a private pilot’s license. One thing I’ve enjoyed about the process so far is the extent to which you’re encouraged to understand how most of the systems work at a fairly deep level. Contrast this to driving a car, where you can mostly get away with “turn key, use gas & brake pedals, don’t do anything stupid that would cause you to lose traction.” Most trainer aircraft still in use were designed (and sometimes built) in the 1960s or ‘...

I took a break from this series of posts for a couple of days to focus on looking for a new role and because I’ve hit a bit of a roadblock. In the most recent version of the simulation, testers can bounce work back to the development queue if they find bugs: +----------------+ +-----------+ +------------+ +------------+ +---------+ | task generator | -> | dev queue | -> | developers | -> | test queue | -> | testers | +----------------+ +-----------+ +------------+ +---...

Reddit is one of the longer-standing platforms on the internet, bringing together folk to discuss, rant, grumble, and troll others on all sorts of topics, from Kafka to data engineering to nerding out over really bright torches to grumbling about the state of the country —and a whole lot more. As a social network it’s a prime candidate for using graph analysis to examine how people interact—and in today’s post, hunt down some sneaky shills ;-) I’ve loaded data for se...

Here is a peek at some lunar samples from China’s Chang’e 5 nearside landing mission as well as the Chang’e 6 farside one! Holding them is an incredible feeling that vividly reminds you of the immense and irreplaceable value of exploring our Moon . 🌙 Roughly two-billion year old lunar sample brought to Earth by Chang’e 5. Image: CNSA / CAS / HKU Roughly 2.8-billion year old lunar sample brought to Earth by Chang’e 6. Image: CNSA / CAS / HKU Chang’e 5 and 6 samples. Image: CNS...

I just discovered a new way to tell if a blogpost is AI slop or at least if someone blindly copied and pasted commands from Claude Code: the first line of a group of commands isn't indented but the rest are, like this: sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade sudo apt autoremove sudo apt autoclean This happens because the raw CLI output of Claude code for this question looks like this: > What are the commands to fully...

If you are reading this, you are considering building a brand new road! First, congratulations! Building a new road is a serious undertaking and you probably don't even know where to start. That's okay! This instructional will walk you through your first "roadie" considerations. Do "You" Want To Build This Road? Friends pressure us into things sometimes. Are you considering building a road because you want to or because your friend wants to? It's good to go along with friends—this is how we bu...