Published
Weekend Reading — 👋 "Say it's an OKR meeting"
This week we text from a plane, review a large PR (or not), use Twitter even less (or is it fewer?), and decode 15th-century PR spin.
Be Prepared ⇧ grrr …
Tech Stuff
Ryan Jones This one cool trick lets @FlightyApp show real-time updates while you're in the air:
Everyone’s asking how @FlightyApp’s Airplane Mode works:
- Plane WiFi allows iMessage
- Guess what else uses that protocol? new Live Activities
- So, send LA updates (max 4kb payload!) and have app load that data
Presto! The app updates via Live Activities 😎
No architecture is better than bad architecture I'm just posting this here as a note to myself, but if you also find it a helpful reminder:
Turns out, architecting code—introducing granular concepts, abstractions, relationships, and giving all those things names, scopes, and responsibilities—has a cost. On top of that, undoing such structures is 10 times more costly than building them.
Another risk is that architecting and structuring your code is a great and fun way to procrastinate. As a technical founder, I don't like many things I have to do to run a successful project. Tinkering with code often just feels like a refuge from all the anxiety generated by things I should be doing instead.
ScripKit ScriptKit is like a launch bar, but all the tasks are scripts written in JavaScript.
Nolan From the just released "Out of the Software Crisis" book (by @baldur):
Too many great quotes, but here's one that hit me in the gut:
"Truly catastrophic software failures rarely get discovered in a sprint review or shipping retrospectives. The serious bugs that induce panic attacks only appear once the software is distributed widely enough to begin to experience edge cases. Most of the time, that only happens long after the software development team has moved on and marked the project as successful or challenged."
TwClassed What if you could use TailwindCSS but as CSS-inJS?
TwClassed looks interesting: quickly build React components that support multiple variants, styled with TailwindCSS, typed for auto-completion.
An Interactive Guide to Flexbox Josh Comeau makes fantastic tutorials on his blog, this one covers flexbox.
Sarah Drasner One bitten, twice better at naming things:
You know why us Senior+ engineers have good hygiene around structuring and naming conventions?
It’s because we’ve been bitten by our mistakes enough times to have respect for what we can do wrong when we’re careless.
@bvaughn@mas.to “GitHub should just add this image as one of the default PR review status options.”
Eye for Design
How to use huge type on the web The Bold and the Readable:
I’ve been advocating more daring and bolder use of typography on the web ever since I started the Better Web Type project. Picking a sans-serif font for titles and a serif one for the content is boring. So is placing the title at the top of the post and centre-aligning it. We’ve now had the tool ...
Business Side
Erik Bernhardsson I have some ideas … metaverse strategy … blockchain … microservices … OKRs …
Let's say you infiltrated an evil megacorp by getting hired as a CTO, and you want to thwart its output as long as you possibly can (without getting caught/fired). What would you do?
Dan Hon 👇 ”Happy holidays, everyone…a story in four parts. doorbell rings Shhhh. Say it’s an OKR meeting.”
Machine Thinking
GPT-3 itself already is mind-blowing – but it gets even crazier when you start chaining prompts with intermediate services! 🤯
Check this out:
We can query our @laravelphp application database using natural language.
The examples are running on a seeded What The Diff database.
Everything you need to create images with AI Easy to use, Stable Diffusion v2, text to image, image to image, inpaint/outpaint, find and replace.
The New Social
Embed your timeline Another weeked project: embed your Mastodon timeline on your website. Screenshot from my blog.
- Copy and paste a URL to any blog/CMS that supports oEmbed
- Dark mode — you don't need to configure anything
- Google fonts — ditto
- Options to show/hide profile, show/hide reblogs, etc
- Yes it's an iframe, so separate browsing context and all
ooh.directory Let's bring blogging back! Find an interesting blog — or a few — to follow.
Mastodon-bridge Delightful way to see which Mastodon instances your Twitter follows migrated to.
Everything Else
Out of nowhere, my nephew just asked, “Do you think Pavlov thought about feeding his dog every time he heard a bell ring?” and now I’m going to be haunted by this question
The correct amount of creme cheese on a bagel is just about too much.
When Splines Were Physical Objects “This is how they used to make curves, back when 'cad' meant 'jerk'”
I have a mug that says "Pay no attention to my browser history, I'm a writer, not a serial killer." I half expect a visit in the near future from someone from the government wondering why I'm so interested in how Air Force Bases are laid out. #writing
Charles V: French scientists decode 500-year-old letter French team decoded a letter from Charles V, revealing rumur of an assassination plot, corporate politics, and putting the PR spin on a rebellion:
But Charles V gives instructions on how Saint-Mauris is to "spin" the news at the French court. The Prague rebellion is a minor affair, he is told to say, and Ferdinand has left the city because he wants to join his father - the emperor's brother - on campaign.
VeryBritishProblems Email translations:
“I was under the impression”
Translation: I’m furious“As per my email”
Translation: I’m furious“With respect”
Translation: I’m furious“Whilst I appreciate”
Translation: I’m furious“As I’m sure you’re aware”
Translation: I’m furious
3D Map: The World’s Largest Population Density Centers A picture is worth 1000 CSV data points.
