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I summarise all key actionable items to reduce time-to-understand by paraphrasing to:
reduce length/verbosity/repetition
reduce complexity/jargon- without altering sentiment/plagiarising
- (inject my own opinions/comments, typically in nested parenthesised bullets)
remove cruft/distractions (marketing, layout, fonts, …)- (suppress my latent desire to add a relevantxkcd comic)
draw attention to important things with emojis
Correct Walking Posture
2024 Jun 03 About 1 minhttps://www.techradar.com/health-fitness/everybody-walks-wrong-this-walking-expert-gives-four-tips-to-help-improve-your-posture-and-age-proof-your-bodyFix knee, back, & breathing issues.
delay lifting the back foot, making you peel it off the ground as if showing the person behind your soles ...Read MoreManagement for Morale and Retention
Things managers should do.
trust engineers don’t question every implementation detail allow engineers to drive some requirement...Read MoreLLM Use Cases
Some real-world “use cases” (half of which I disagree with).
Retrieval/Search both inter- & intra-document (find doc in corpus & find i...Read MoreThe Invention
The greatest invention (past, present, and future) is the Internet.
humans are separated from animals by knowledge
knowledge is prima...Read MoreOpen Source is Illegal
We might be accidentally fighting on behalf of worst-offending profiteering companies.
not all terms in (software) licences are legally bindin...Read MoreCRA & PLA Cybersecurity Laws Need Rewording
Proposed EU laws to restrict irresponsible businesses might be abused to hurt FOSS free & open-source software volunteers due to poor wording. the Cyb...Read More
Open Source is Bad
For public safety, governments should incentivise warranties/support/maintenance for widely-used FOSS free & open-source software. FOSS licences ...Read More
AI Stupidity
2023 Mar 28 About 5 minshttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/16/the-stupidity-of-ai-artificial-intelligence-dall-e-chatgpt“Replacing your job” is not the biggest problem with current AI artificial intelligence. “prompt engineering” (carefully framing AI inputs to maximise qual...Read More
Deno JS runtime advantages
New JavaScript runtime (deno) tries to fight the “worse-is-better law of software evolution”. simplifies software development by removing “accidental complexity”...Read More
ChatGPT is a Toy
2023 Jan 05 About 6 minshttps://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/chatgpt-openai-artificial-intelligence-writing-ethics/672386Current AI artificial intelligence bots are “A” but not “I”. output is fluent (grammar/syntax) but uninteresting (meaning) structure & st...Read More
Aggressive Agile
“Agile” is a mindset, not a process/methodology. pragmatic-vs-purist-debate is invalid (because “agile” is a mindset) everyone has a different understanding...Read More
Wine Quality
If you like it, drink it. constituents: supertasters (circa 25% of people) can consistently identify subtle flavours in wines preference: most (including ~90% of...Read More
AI Bill of Rights
Principles to limit data misuse & automation from causing (unintentional) harm or infringing on civil rights. Safe & Effective Systems con...Read More
Active Allies
Effective teamwork through knowledge rather than fear. understanding: curiosity about others’ viewpoints introspection: know thy own biases privilege: ackno...Read More
Good Parenting
2022 Nov 07 About 1 minhttps://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/29/i-raised-2-successful-ceos-and-a-doctor-heres-the-no-1-unpopular-parenting-rule-i-always-used-with-my-kids.html Suzanna E. RochaDon’t patronise your children. They lack experience, not intelligence.Read More
Startup Sales Strategy
Product & sales strategy must co-evolve together.
partition: have a clear (yes/no binary) definition of “target audience”
scoring:...Read MoreWorkflow vs Process
Workflows address tasks, processes address business goals.Workflow usually ordered sequence of steps to complete a task (“tactical”)
each workflow...Read MoreRule of Six
A line of code should do <6 things.
human short-term & working memory can only cope with upto 6 pieces of info simultaneously# badmap(lambda x: x.split('=')[1], s.split(...Read MoreMaximise asynchronicity for remote productivity
2022 Sep 04 About 3 minshttps://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/productivity-asynchronous-remote-work.htmlMaximising flexible/asynchronous work is key to remote productivity.
managers often give mixed messages, officially encouraging flexible hours witho...Read MoreMiddle Management for Remote Work
2022 Aug 29 About 3 minshttps://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/07/remote-work-wfh-debate-management/670482Middle management ideas to make remote work a moral necessity rather than a culture-killer. remote work is successful for old trusted employees with defined rol...Read More
Sustainable FOSS Management
Maintaining FOSS free & open-source software projects without burning out; and contributing successfully. goals
maintaina...Read MoreProduct Walk-throughs
2022 Aug 20 About 2 minshttps://twitter.com/aprildunford/status/1560640569801461761?s=12&t=CSwuo9YdDF7J5hd3eSaxGAAddress what makes the product better than alternatives.
don’t waste time on mundane (non- USP unique selling proposition/point) features don’...Read MoreDocumenting Software Architecture
What & How: practical, pragmatic approach to documenting architecture. Intro & Goals motivation/business problems solved, e.g. tabulated use ...Read More
Dashboards Prove Data Accessibility
2022 Aug 17 About 1 minhttps://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/08/the-point-of-a-dashboard-isnt-to-use-a-dashboardA dashboard is not just an interface; but proof of data CRUD create, read, update, and delete & comparison.
dashboards are not for a “C...Read MoreProgramming Principles
Maintaining clean code & making realistic dev time estimates.
KISSkeep it simple, stupid especially subprograms: ...Read MoreCloud Demigration
Migrating away from clouds back to on-premise could be cheaper & more performant.
clouds argue that ML machine learning infrastruct...Read MorePrototype Fast
2022 Aug 03 About 5 minshttps://www.mindtheproduct.com/video-tom-chi-on-rapid-prototyping-product-managementProduct management focused on rapid prototyping (somewhere between thinking aloud and making a polished product). Applicable to software, hardware, and even organ...Read More
Introduce problems before solutions
A hammer seems pointless if you’ve never seen a nail. solutions seem pointless if the corresponding problem/purpose isn’t clear… even if the problem is encountered ...Read More
Policing FOSS
2022 Jul 24 About 5 minshttps://www.technologyreview.com/2022/07/14/1055894/us-military-sofware-linux-kernel-open-sourceIs it feasible to provide a warranty for FOSS free & open-source software like the Linux kernel and Python? the world’s servers rely on the Linux kernel...Read More
Marketing to developers
2022 Jul 23 About 17 minshttps://www.developermarkepear.com/blog/paid-advertising-developer-marketingHow to target developers (where traditional advertising often fails) & a comparison of the ad channels/platforms.TL;DR for the TL;DR choose goal ...Read More
Best dev practices from experience
Excellent content written in the worst possible way. The deliberately bad language is fun for a few sentences, but quickly becomes painfully obfuscating. Ironic for some...Read More
VSCode is semi-FOSS
Interesting release/licensing strategy. vscode is public/MIT but released binaries are augmented with MS proprietary code, branding, telemetry etc. and non...Read More
The Five Principles
2022 Jul 06 About 1 minhttps://www.economist.com/business/2022/06/30/mars-inc-gets-the-purpose-v-profit-balance-right4th generation family business running on “The Five Principles” of quality, responsibility, mutuality/stakeholderism, efficiency, freedom. “They may sound lik...Read More
Clouds are outsourcing less
AWS Amazon Web Services, Azure Microsoft Azure, and GCP Google Cloud Platform are moving towards running their own data centres rather than outsourcingRead More
8 Levels of Reproducibility
I’m happy being at “level 5 reproducibility” for most FOSS free & open-source software projects. What concerns me more is APIs are forever. -1: not reprod...Read More
GitHub non-code rendering
2022 Jun 28 About 1 minhttps://docs.github.com/en/repositories/working-with-files/using-files/working-with-non-code-filesGitHub renders more than just code.The following are supported: various image diff modes (side-by-side, swipe, blend) *.stl 3D models, incl. webGL acceleration &am...Read More
Best practice API design
From AWS Amazon Web Services CTO. APIs are Forever: never delete or change an API application programming interface, otherwise you will break the busine...Read More
Clouds are becoming more specialised
2022 Jun 10 About 2 minshttps://a16z.com/2022/06/09/the-cloud-killed-infrastructure-long-live-infrastructureBoth generalist competition and specialised products are increasing. entire companies can be built around task-specific cloud tech apps are increasingly lo...Read More
GenesisCloud GPU instances
New cloud provider focused on low-cost GPUs. Missing an equivalent of auto-scaling groups (ASGs) though. regions: iceland or norway instances: focused on consumer GPUs...Read More
Making errors helpful
Pay attention to error verbosity & handling; your future self will thank you for it. fail noisily and informatively mission-critical killed process not report...Read More
Build for "real" developers
Putting the majority (but not all) of future maintainers & consumers first. build for “real” devs (99%: insurance, healthcare, retail, banking) rather than i...Read More
Interviewing developers
2022 Jun 01 About 2 minshttps://stackoverflow.blog/2022/05/23/the-science-of-interviewing-developersPretty sure this is a more complete, thought-out superset of ideas. no 15-hour task, no 5-min chat. Something in-between. assuming you have some closed source code, ...Read More
Active Metadata
The article is bit abstract & unclear, but the lists seem to contain some info. What is “active” metadata? Improved context of metadat...Read More
Sphinx versus Mkdocs
both sphinx & mkdocs are mature with nearly identical feature matrices, and we’re not considering any other options. However, primary intended use is diffe...Read More
How not to make a second successful startup
Succeeded once; could not reproduce. success & experience does not guarantee a second success
“[existing solutions] were […] not great, but just go...Read MoreEmail breach via expiring domain takeover
2022 May 25 About 1 minhttps://python-security.readthedocs.io/pypi-vuln/index-2022-05-24-ctx-domain-takeover.htmlDon’t let your domains expire, or don’t use them for email. someone took over an expiring domain to get a dev’s emails no 2FA two-factor authentication so cou...Read More
Best practice communication & documentation
2022 May 04 About 2 minshttps://stackoverflow.blog/2022/04/25/empathy-for-the-dev-avoiding-common-pitfalls-when-communicating-with-developersdon’t forget the purpose keep in mind the users what do they already know? what problem do they want to solve? focus on how not what: “A common mistake […] is ...Read More
Best practice unbiased & quick hiring
Confidence bias selects for candidates who are good at interviewing [and not necessarily coding]. Solutions: first call: serious applicants get 30-45 min pre-sc...Read More
Hiring engineers
2022 Apr 05 About 2 minshttps://blog.mangoteque.com/blog/2020/02/21/engineering-the-hiring-of-engineersGet the whole company to engage in hiring, and care for your candidates. $2k employee referral bonus may be an order of magnitude too small consider internships...Read More
Agile needs good culture, not just good processes
Mental health, communication, openness, and a supportive culture are important. Agile fails if people fail to communicate “Individuals and interactions (i.e...Read More
Five levels of remote work
2021 Dec 10 About 1 minhttps://medium.com/swlh/the-five-levels-of-remote-work-and-why-youre-probably-at-level-2-ccaf05a25b9cOutcompeting office-based companies.Levels: no plan recreate office online real-time shared documents, spontaneous chats, default meeting length 15 min w. ...Read More
Make remote work asynchronous
Tips to increase remote work productivity.Use: task boards office hours & scheduling tools shared documents slack plugins email pluginsRead More
Research versus Reality
2020 Jun 12 About 1 minhttps://towardsdatascience.com/exploring-machine-learning-solutions-for-credit-scoring-farmers-in-kenya-8fb653db4b08Side note given that I grew up in Kenya: the premise of the article is wrong. nice quote about being “too much of a research [rather than practical/useful] model:” ...Read More