Like most people, I have too many tabs floating around in my browser. I just finished reading a New York times commentary that’s a couple of months old now, but well worth the read; it’s called “The Surprisingly Large Cost of Telling Small Lies.” Some relevant quotations: I did some research and it seems most Read More
This month’s Vanity Fair has a story on an odd criminal case every programmer should familiarize themselves with, if only for their own safety. The story involves Sergey Aleynikov’s (unfair, some might say) prosecution for allegedly stealing high frequency trading source code from Goldman Sachs. From the article (and emphasis mine): In April 2009, Serge Read More
Friend and colleague @bear recently wrote up a post1 discussing “magic tricks” developers have started using to store their deploy secrets in git. Apparently it involves putting data directly into git using “the plumbing,” and encrypting it somehow? The post doesn’t reference specific techniques; if readers have pointers to those, I’d love to read them. Read More
By now, most of you have probably heard about local news station KTVU’s gaffe involving the names of the Asiana 214 pilots. If not, you can
A few weeks ago, I tweeted about a great blog post on a technique for managing the massive amounts of email many of us navigate daily. I’d become frustrated with the state of my own inbox1 and had been on the prowl for a new method to manage the email torrent. Having used it for Read More
I recently read FastCompany’s interview with John Lilly. I knew John from my time at Mozilla1, so it was interesting to hear him talk about the developments after my tenure at the Corporation. One thing he said stood out to me: [W]hen I was at Mozilla the activity I did mostly was to tell the Read More
Allow me say this as plainly as I can: all “haters” are critics1, but not all critics are “haters.” During a recent (mostly-online) discussion, one of the responses to the issue at hand that I (indirectly) ran across was “don’t be a hater yo.” It’s a common response in tech circles these days, especially among Read More
I recently told a friend of mine I had discovered James Altucher. He said “Oh, he’s a great read! I love reading his stuff. He’s totally crazy.” At the time, I didn’t understand. But after reading more of Altucher’s work, I realized what he was referring to: Altucher’s frankness1. As I’ve continued to enjoy his Read More
My communication was supposedly so poor,it necessitated “gifting” me this book… One of the worst mistakes I have ever made was letting my manager-at-the-time convince me I was a poor communicator. Quality communication is hard, certainly1, and we could all be better at it. But I’d been in the workforce for some time at this Read More
In another life, I would’ve been a journalist. It’s unclear which is more tragic here:the column’s title… or my hairstyle. During my junior and senior high school years, I wrote a column, published weekly in the local newspaper, on issues teenagers face in a standard, mid-sized western town. In retrospect, the writing wasn’t great: my Read More