Weekly Thing #109 / Jun 8, 2019
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Weekly Thing
Join over 1,000 subscribers to the Weekly Thing by Jamie Thingelstad! Each Saturday morning, you will get my thoughts on technology, leadership, productivity, culture, privacy, and anything else interesting. I add commentary combining my decades of experience leading teams and building technology. I also include my personal writing, what I’m currently into, and a photograph of the week. There is even a fortune at the end! 🥠 A friend once described the Weekly Thing as a “direct feed from Jamie’s brain.” 🧠 There are no ads, your email will never be shared, your privacy will be protected, and it is free. Subscribe now and positively impact your journey with knowledge, insight, and perspective! Here is what others have to say. 🙌 “I’m a better person and leader because of the Weekly Thing!” — Jenny “I look forward to reading what you are digging.” — David “I don’t find the interesting links you share anywhere else!” — Andy “It’s a perfect start to every Saturday!” — Phil
Weekly Newsletter from Jamie Thingelstad
Issue #109 / Jun 8, 2019
This week was the end of the school year for our kids. It was another year along in grade school for Tyler, but Mazie celebrated the significant milestone of moving on from Junior High and next year going on to the “big show,” aka, High School.
We went to her promotion ceremony today and heard several speeches from select kids in her class. Some heartfelt, some funny, all a little goofy or a bit awkward in that teenager transition sort of way. As some kids were called up for recognition, Tammy and I remarked of ones that seemed like they were in there twenties and others that seemed more kid-size still.
During the ceremony, I felt a lot of pride for my daughter and her friends, and all that they have done to get this far. I also felt that sense that in another dozen years, they will be starting down the path to adulthood and making significant contributions. I loved the optimism and positivity that they showed. They beamed with it, while all were expressing a “freak out” about the pending high school transition.
It was a special moment, one I’m thankful I was able to be part of. It was also a moment that made me think we need to do this more in life. Celebrate the important moments. Take note of the positivity we can bring to a project. And don’t worry about being a little goofy or awkward, even though you are well past those transition years.
Featured Links 🏅
How Cooking Can Change Your Life - Michael Pollan - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX7kwfE3cJQ) www.youtube.com
Great, short talk from Michael Pollan (https://michaelpollan.com) on the importance of the fundamental act of cooking food for ourselves and our families. Via Patrick Rhone (https://www.patrickrhone.net/how-cooking-can-change-your-life-michael-pollan/) and Swissmiss (https://www.swiss-miss.com/2019/06/in-defense-of-home-cooking.html)
Apple’s Audacity – Stratechery by Ben Thompson (https://stratechery.com/2019/apples-audacity/) stratechery.com
Thompson’s recap of the WWDC 2019 announcements is insightful. He gave a lot of attention to the new Sign In with Apple capability and the privacy components of it.
This is the context for Sign In with Apple: developers can now let Apple handle identity instead of Facebook or Google. Furthermore, users creating accounts with Sign In with Apple have the option of using a unique email address per service, breaking that key link to their data profiles, wherever they are housed.
I’ve been using Maskmail (https://www.maskmail.net) to create unique email addresses and one of the things that frustrates me is how many websites block services that allow you to generate random email addresses. One upside to Apple doing this is I don’t see people trying to block them.
My Weekly Photo 📷
Peony Flowering in Lyndale Rose Garden.
Peony Flowering in Lyndale Rose Garden. Jun 2, 2019 at 4:01 PM Lyndale Rose Garden, 1500 E Lake Harriet Blvd, Minneapolis MN
Notable Links 📌
In Conversation with Juan Porral and Gregory Haley | FOD NYC (https://fodnyc.org/2019/05/29/in-conversation-with-juan-porral-and-gregory-haley/) fodnyc.org
Greg was one of my roommates in college and his passion for architecture and design has always been so front and center. Reading this interview with him it reminded me a lot of people that build software as well. Greg highlights that design brings people together and is relatable. There is a lot of technology that aspires to do the same thing. 😎
How to Organize Your Life With GTD (Step-By-Step Workflow Guide) (https://doist.com/blog/gtd-todoist/) doist.com
Good introduction and overview of GTD. I’ve been using GTD for 10+ years and plan on using it for another 10 and more.
An update on Sunday’s service disruption | Google Cloud Blog (https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/inside-google-cloud/an-update-on-sundays-service-disruption) cloud.google.com
When the biggest cloud providers in the world have issues it’s a good reminder on how hard it is to run technology platforms, at scale, continuously.
In essence, the root cause of Sunday’s disruption was a configuration change that was intended for a small number of servers in a single region. The configuration was incorrectly applied to a larger number of servers across several neighboring regions, and it caused those regions to stop using more than half of their available network capacity.
Sounds similar to other big outages, unintended consequences of a change or accidental scoping of a change. These changes come from expert administrators, so the machines follow the direction. I don’t think it’ll be that long before we build some skepticism into our platforms to not always trust even an expert administrators direction if the scope of that change is large.
The Full List of Automation Triggers in Shortcuts for iOS 13 – MacStories (https://www.macstories.net/news/the-full-list-of-automation-triggers-in-shortcuts-for-ios-13/) www.macstories.net
This is a pretty big power user feature coming to iOS. Being able to trigger a Shortcut on the events shown here will bring a whole new set of customization capabilities to Shortcuts. 👏
Shopify Unveils First State of Commerce Report - MarketWatch (https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/shopify-unveils-first-state-of-commerce-report-2019-06-05?siteid=nbsh) www.marketwatch.com
A variety of retail consumer behavior information collected by Shopify. Some interesting highlights in here.
iOS 13: The MacStories Overview – MacStories (https://www.macstories.net/news/ios-13-the-macstories-overview/) www.macstories.net
I really dig these improvements coming in iOS 13. Scheduling Shortcuts to run on a schedule opens up a whole bunch of new things that you can do on your phone. The photos changes look great. I don’t use Reminders, I’m an OmniFocus user, but the improvements there will be welcome by many people. Good stuff! 👍
watchOS 6: The MacStories Overview – MacStories (https://www.macstories.net/news/watchos-6-the-macstories-overview/) www.macstories.net
Good overview of new capabilities coming in watchOS 6. Looks like some good stuff.
iPadOS: The MacStories Overview – MacStories (https://www.macstories.net/news/ipados-the-macstories-overview/) www.macstories.net
Solid overview of the capabilities coming in the newly named iPadOS!
Announcing Snowflake on Google Cloud Platform | Google Cloud Blog (https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/announcing-snowflake-on-google-cloud-platform) cloud.google.com
We have had amazing success with Snowflake and it’s great to see that it is now on all three of the major cloud providers!
nextdns (https://www.nextdns.io/) www.nextdns.io
This looks like a compelling DNS service.
The first cloud-based private DNS service that gives you full control over what is allowed and what is blocked on the Internet.
I’m still leaning towards using Pi-hole (https://pi-hole.net) .
An Exercise Program for the Fat Web (https://blog.codinghorror.com/an-exercise-program-for-the-fat-web/) blog.codinghorror.com
This may have convinced me to jump into Pi-hole (https://pi-hole.net) and better protect privacy for my entire home network. I was using the Eero Plus (https://eero.com/shop/eero-plus) service but I’ve found that to have some performance issues, and I no longer trust that it will be true to it’s mission now that they have been acquired.
A People Map of the US (https://pudding.cool/2019/05/people-map/) pudding.cool
This is really cool and fun to play with.
A People Map of the US, where city names are replaced by their most Wikipedia’ed resident: people born in, lived in, or connected to a place.
it’s very interesting to drill down to towns you know and see the names highlighted.
Give Back 🎁
https://letsencrypt.org
Let’s Encrypt (https://letsencrypt.org) is a free, automated, and open certificate authority, run for the public’s benefit. All connections to web servers should be encrypted! The biggest challenge with encrypting the web historically has been the cost and hassle of getting an SSL certificate. Let’s Encrypt has changed that entirely by being a free certificate authority. Let’s Encrypt is possibly one of the most important things to happen on the web in recent years. Donate to Let’s Encrypt today! (https://letsencrypt.org/donate/)
Yet More Links 🍞
- Exercise-Bike Maker Peloton Files Confidentially for IPO - WSJ (https://www.wsj.com/articles/exercise-bike-maker-peloton-files-confidentially-for-ipo-11559746316) www.wsj.com I’m a huge fan of our Peloton gear and the service. Seems like it would be a good investment!
- Xcode - SwiftUI - Apple Developer (https://developer.apple.com/xcode/swiftui/) developer.apple.com SwiftUI looks amazing and simple. 🕴
- SEC.gov | SEC Charges Issuer With Conducting $100 Million Unregistered ICO (https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2019-87) www.sec.gov This seems significant. 🚨
Microposts 🎈
Sunday @ 7:05 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2019/06/02/we-had-family.html)
We had family pictures taken today at the Rose Garden with Karen Feder (https://www.karenfederphotography.com) . Looking forward to seeing the pictures! 📷
Saturday @ 10:43 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2019/06/01/burned-through-a.html)
Burned through a big pile of scrub today. A lot of pine tree branches! 🔥🔥🔥
Fortune 🥠
You’ve made it all the way to the end! 👏 Here is your fortune for this week.
Your present plans will be successful.
Thank you for subscribing to the Weekly Thing (https://weekly.thingelstad.com/) !
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