Weekly Thing #117 / Sep 14, 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 #117 /
I’ve been progressing from a full on hobble on Tuesday, to a notable limp on Wednesday, then mostly walking fine today. On Monday night I was kicking the soccer ball with Tyler. He was in goal and I was making shots so he could be the World’s Best Goalkeeper. We were waiting for Mazie to finish Piano practice. Anyway, I tried to put a shot in the upper-corner of the net and went too low with my kick, caught the ground, rotated my knee too much and felt a shot of pain and a pop in my knee. The pain was quickly followed by hoping nobody witnessed my buffoonery. This is just one of life’s reminders that you’re middle-aged and if you don’t use it, your gonna lose it. I was worried I may have hurt the knee more, but today the only thing that caused me any real difficulty was going down stairs. I suspect that will be fine in a couple more days.
This week Apple had their annual iPhone event with a bunch of new announcements. If that’s your thing, you’ll find a good set of links. If that isn’t your jam, well, they are still there. 😊 I’m not upgrading on this cycle. The only thing that looked really fun to me is the ulra-wide angle lens on the new iPhone 11 Pro. I am on deck to upgrade my Apple Watch to the new Series 5, and the always-on display that it has feels like a big deal. But I’m going to wait a while before I do anything.
Featured Links 🏅
How the World Would Look in 2050 If We Solved Climate Change | Time (https://time.com/5669022/climate-change-2050/) time.com
Provocative article from Bill McKibben (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_McKibben) looking back from a fictional 2050 at how we have adapted to climate change.
I Quit Social Media for a Year and Nothing Magical Happened | Josh C. Simmons (https://joshcsimmons.com/2019/09/10/i-quit-social-media-for-a-year-and-nothing-magical-happened/) joshcsimmons.com
A year is a long enough time to get real perspective and see more than just the initial changes.
I don’t see myself ever going back to social media. I don’t see the point of it, and after leaving for a while, and getting a good outside look, it seems like an abusive relationship – millions of workers generating data for tech-giants to crunch through and make money off of.
A good read on what it’s like outside of the bubble.
A Radical Guide to Spending Less Time on Your Phone (https://forge.medium.com/a-radical-guide-to-spending-less-time-on-your-phone-a5419b1538ee) forge.medium.com
I know a lot of people that feel like they inadvertently spend too much time on their phones.
Over the years, though, that pride has worn off. My phone, once a source of liberation — I could check my email without having to go home, which meant I could spend more time out doing things — eventually became a weight that tied me down. Instead of making me better at my job, it started preventing what Cal Newport calls “deep work” — focused, dedicated, creative time. Instead of helping me have fun, it was making me miserable.
So recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to use it less. About how to get the benefits from the technology without all the downsides.
I have done some of these things for a long time, others I would not recommend. All are good food for thought.
My Weekly Photo 📷
Symmetric Stairs. You could also consider this what happens when you don’t see much photo worthy during a week, and then you realize it’s that time for the newsletter and you haven’t captured something yet. 🙄
Symmetric Stairs. Sep 13, 2019 at 3:02 PM 801 Marquette Ave, Minneapolis MN 55402
Notable Links 📌
Stripe Corporate Card: The corporate card for fast-growing businesses (https://stripe.com/corporate-card) stripe.com
New offering from Stripe for companies. Getting a message from your credit card after a business expense and messaging the photo of the receipt back seems very cool. Very innovative ideas here.
Encrypted DNS could help close the biggest privacy gap on the Internet. Why are some groups fighting against it? —Deeplinks (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/encrypted-dns-could-help-close-biggest-privacy-gap-internet-why-are-some-groups) www.eff.org
I’ve done a lot to protect my privacy using tools on my web browsers, but DNS is very hard to protect. Think of DNS like the phone book for the internet, and right now every time you look you an entry, anyone in your network can see what you are looking up. This is a gold mine for companies like Comcast to watch what websites you visit and sell that data.
Alongside technologies like TLS 1.3 and encrypted SNI, DoH has the potential to provide tremendous privacy protections. But many Internet service providers and participants in the standardization process have expressed strong concerns about the development of the protocol. The UK Internet Service Providers Association even went so far as to call Mozilla an “Internet Villain” for its role in developing DoH.
I’ve considered bringing DNS into my house with Pi-hole (https://pi-hole.net) , but even better would be encrypted DNS requests.
Spoils of #nature on Instagram - Beside (https://beside.media/dossier/spoils-of-nature-on-instagram/) beside.media
This is bonkers and even just the animation at the top of the story makes you shake your head. Give it a full read for the full depth of crazy that folks will go to for social media, something. 🤦♂️
The importance of humility in product management - Thor Mitchell - Medium (https://medium.com/@thor.mitchell/the-importance-of-humility-in-product-management-7878e6640b8b) medium.com
A good dose of humility and empathy is a great thing for nearly (every?) role in a company. This is an interesting read thinking about those aspects for product managers. Worth reading for others as well to get some insight into the complicated world that product managers live in.
When Waterfall Principles Sneak Back Into Agile Workflows (https://hbr.org/2019/09/when-waterfall-principles-sneak-back-into-agile-workflows) hbr.org
Very few companies have Agile practices embedded through every facet of their organization. As the Agile process interfaces with non-Agile components, you need to be very mindful of how you structure them.
Waltz: A Distributed Write-Ahead Log (https://wecode.wepay.com/posts/waltz-a-distributed-write-ahead-log) wecode.wepay.com
Streaming systems are very popular right now, but many of them have challenges around once-only delivery and transactional ordering. Waltz seems to solve that.
Waltz is similar to existing log systems like Kafka in that it accepts/persists/propagates transaction data produced/consumed by many services. However, unlike other systems, Waltz provides a machinery that facilitates a serializable consistency in distributed applications. It detects conflicting transactions before they are committed to the log. Waltz is regarded as the single source of truth rather than the database, and it enables a highly reliable log-centric system architecture.
Definitely a highly focused service, but for certain solutions this would be a big deal.
The iPhone and Apple’s Services Strategy – Stratechery by Ben Thompson (https://stratechery.com/2019/the-iphone-and-apples-services-strategy/) stratechery.com
Ben Thompson continues to elucidate on one of the biggest companies in the world, Apple, and it’s very intentional shift to more services revenue.
To that end, how long until there is a variant of the iPhone Upgrade Program that is simply an all-up Apple subscription? Pay one monthly fee, and get everything Apple has to offer. Indeed, nothing would show that Apple is a Services company more than making the iPhone itself a service, at least as far as the customer relationship goes. You might even say it is innovative.
Outside of the gear and software itself, it seems that Apple is making a very intentional shift in services revenue, something it had nearly none of not that long ago.
Apple Watch Series 5: The MacStories Overview - MacStories (https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-watch-series-5-the-macstories-overview/) www.macstories.net
Always-on screen for the Apple Watch is a big deal! The compass as a new sensor isn’t all that interesting though. I’m due to upgrade my Apple Watch S3 on this cycle, and I expect the screen technology to be a big deal. The delay for Apple Watch to activate it’s display isn’t long, but you have to trigger it. It’s hard to catch a glimpse at your watch to check the time.
iPhone 11 and 11 Pro: The MacStories Overview - MacStories (https://www.macstories.net/news/iphone-11-and-11-pro-the-macstories-overview/) www.macstories.net
My preferred overview of the new iPhone’s announced this week. The photography geek in me is super excited for the ultra-wide angle lens. It does make me wonder how many cameras are companies going to stick on the back of a phone. If 3, why not 5? Why not 9? A lot of other improvements too, but nothing that I’ll pine after too much from my current iPhone XS.
The Founder’s Guide to Discipline: Lessons from Front’s Mathilde Collin | First Round Review (https://firstround.com/review/the-founders-guide-to-discipline-lessons-from-fronts-mathilde-collin/) firstround.com
This is written for startup founders but the communication structures and practices suggested could be modified for many in a leadership role.
How to manage up with your boss — Quartz at Work (https://qz.com/work/964501/how-to-manage-up-with-your-boss/) qz.com
There isn’t a ton written on this topic, or at least I haven’t read a lot of it. This is short and sweet, and pulls in references from some of my favorite business writers.
17 Reasons NOT To Be A Manager – charity.wtf (https://charity.wtf/2019/09/08/reasons-not-to-be-a-manager/) charity.wtf
I think every engineer that wants to become a manager should read this list several times over before deciding to make that commitment.
Systems Thinking in Practice (https://www.ryanfrantz.com/posts/systems-thinking-in-practice.html#title) www.ryanfrantz.com
I’ve read and shared copies of Thinking in Systems (http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/1603580557) . This link is a good quick overview of the concepts.
Analyzing hundreds of millions of SSL handshakes | Little Short Bulletins (https://www.leebutterman.com/2019/08/05/analyzing-hundreds-of-millions-of-ssl-connections.html) www.leebutterman.com
Interesting read on real world activity in SSL certs. It’s awesome that Let’s Encrypt is already servicing the majority of SSL certificates. I didn’t even think you could make a certificate that didn’t expire for a 100 years.
Opinion | Don’t Trust Facebook With Your Love Life - The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/opinion/facebook-dating-app.html) www.nytimes.com
It’s hard for me to understand why anyone would trust Facebook with more of their personal data. I concur with the recommendation. The question to ask with nearly any move that Facebook makes is “What data does this give them to better monetize me?”.
The Egg (http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html) www.galactanet.com
Interesting read to make you think for a moment. 🥚
Travis Kalanick wrote an awesome letter to Uber employees. They never saw it. - without bullshit (https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/travis-kalanick-wrote-an-awesome-letter-to-uber-employees-they-never-saw-it) withoutbullshit.com
I always assumed Kalanick was unrepentant about the caustic culture that he helped create at Uber, but it looks like he did see the light right at the end. It was far, far too late by then though. The analysis of this never-sent email is a fun read.
Yet More Links 🍞
- Apple Arcade — Let the games begin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frLeePH8W9Y) www.youtube.com 100 second overview of games coming in Apple Arcade. 🎮
- Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Evolving “nofollow” – new ways to identify the nature of links (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/09/evolving-nofollow-new-ways-to-identify.html) webmasters.googleblog.com nofollow has been around for a long time. It makes sense to add additional link relationship values. sponsored and ugc make a ton of sense.
- My Apple Event Notes – On my Om (https://om.co/2019/09/10/my-apple-event-notes/) om.co I like Om’s highlights of the Apple event this week.
- Replay Apple’s September 10, 2019 Keynote and New Product Videos - MacStories (https://www.macstories.net/news/replay-apples-september-10-2019-keynote-and-new-product-videos/) www.macstories.net The individual video cuts from this weeks Apple announcements. 📺
- Our journey to type checking 4 million lines of Python | Dropbox Tech Blog (https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2019/09/our-journey-to-type-checking-4-million-lines-of-python/) blogs.dropbox.com I guess this is the kind of thing you can do when you hire the creator of Python (https://www.python.org/~guido/) to be on your team.
Microposts 🎈
Monday @ 9:07 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2019/09/09/watched-shazam-last.html)
Watched Shazam (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/shazam/) last night. Pretty fun movie! 🎬👍
Saturday @ 6:10 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2019/09/07/i-never-tire.html)
I never tire of the scene of smoke billowing out of the Big Green Egg. 😊🔥
Saturday @ 11:04 AM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2019/09/07/time-for-some.html)
Time for some Saturday morning Dirty Pineapples soccer! ⚽️ Tyler’s practicing his penalty kick here.
Saturday @ 11:01 AM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2019/09/07/delicious-espresso.html)
Delicious espresso. ☕️
Friday @ 7:46 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2019/09/06/legend-of-zelda.html)
Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening (https://www.zelda.com/links-awakening/) looks like a fun game. It should expand the Zelda universe to more casual players.
Fortune 🥠
You’ve made it all the way to the end! 👏 Here is your fortune for this week.
Don’t look now, but there is a multi-legged creature on your shoulder.
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