Weekly Thing #78 / Nov 3, 2018
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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 #78 / Nov 3, 2018
Last week the moving train 🚂 was going and now it has fully left the station and is chugging down the tracks at a good clip! We signed the purchase agreement and have a close date for the new house. We won’t be moving until January, but will close in the middle of December. Now job #1 is to sell our current house! Know anyone that wants a great house in South Minneapolis? 🤩
The last few weeks have been a challenge for me to keep on top of things. I have a good system and try to keep projects moving along, but some balls have been dropped. If you’ve emailed me and not got an answer, that is why! 🙄
A quick report on the Tesla Model 3 (https://www.tesla.com/model3) after a few weeks, I still am enamored with it! If you sat down and designed a car, just for me, a market of one, I don’t know what you would do different than the Model 3. 😍
Featured Links 🏅
A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley - The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/phones-children-silicon-valley.html) www.nytimes.com
This is such a hard issue. I feel very conflicted about it. I used to spend a lot of time on my Apple //c back in the day, but what you could do was so different. Now I find my son sitting on his iPad and in reality all he’s doing is watching TV. No brain stimulation.
“I try to tell him somebody wrote code to make you feel this way — I’m trying to help him understand how things are made, the values that are going into things and what people are doing to create that feeling,” Mr. Lilly said. “And he’s like, ‘I just want to spend my 20 bucks to get my Fortnite skins.’”
It is perhaps too nuanced, but I think you have to move beyond just “screen time” and really look at the activity. What is your child doing on the device? Are they programming? Diving into the tarpits of social media disgust? Watching TV mindlessly? Reading a book? Reading the largest encyclopedia in the world? Learning how to build a robot?
My Weekly Photo 📷
Dock reflecting on the cool, still water of fall.
Dock reflecting on the cool, still water of fall. Oct 27, 2018 at 8:35 AM Cannon Lake, Faribault MN
Notable Links 📌
Clipboard Shortcuts with Siri (http://www.macdrifter.com/2018/11/clipboard-shortcuts-with-siri.html) www.macdrifter.com
Cool ideas for manipulating your clipboard with Shortcuts.
The five types of mentors you need in your life (https://ideas.ted.com/the-5-types-of-mentors-you-need-in-your-life/) ideas.ted.com
I like this approach to thinking strategically about the kind of advice and feedback you need in different aspects of your life.
How We Built OmniFocus for the Web (https://theomnishow.omnigroup.com/episode/how-we-built-omnifocus-for-the-web) theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Most of this is not all that interesting except for people that are into Omni and their software. However, the part where they talk about building a “headless” version of OmniFocus that runs on the server and handles the API connections from OmniFocus for the Web made me do a double take. I can’t tell if it’s novel and interesting, or downright crazy!
Mac mini: The MacStories Overview – MacStories (https://www.macstories.net/news/mac-mini-the-macstories-overview/) www.macstories.net
The Mac Mini hasn’t gotten an update in a very, very long time. This new one looks pretty great. It has a significant number of configuration options. I could easily see this being a great option for many people.
The New 12.9- and 11-inch iPad Pros: The MacStories Overview – MacStories (https://www.macstories.net/news/the-new-129-and-11-inch-ipad-pros-the-macstories-overview/) www.macstories.net
The new iPad Pro’s look amazing. I do the majority of my computing on an 11” iPad Pro at home, and a 12.9” iPad Pro at work. I’ve already pre-ordered the new more compact iPad Pro for the office, and I’m ready to upgrade at home and am considering going for the larger one as well. The previous 12.9” with it’s large bezel and weight was just too big, but this new one looks very compelling. I’m wondering if I couldn’t do with one of these instead of a laptop at home. The fact you can plug a monitor into the USB-C port is pretty compelling as well for photo editing. 🤔
IBM’s Old Playbook – Stratechery by Ben Thompson (https://stratechery.com/2018/ibms-old-playbook/) stratechery.com
Some great analysis of IBM’s position with Red Hat.
This is the bet: while in the 1990s the complexity of the Internet made it difficult for businesses to go online, providing an opening for IBM to sell solutions, today IBM argues the reduction of cloud computing to three centralized providers makes businesses reluctant to commit to any one of them. IBM is betting it can again provide the solution, combining with Red Hat to build products that will seamlessly bridge private data centers and all of the public clouds.
Thompson has a great take on this.
Don’t Be Evil (https://logicmag.io/03-dont-be-evil/) logicmag.io
A deep dive into the culture and memes of Silicon Valley.
I Bought Used Voting Machines on eBay for $100 Apiece. What I Found Was Alarming | WIRED (https://www.wired.com/story/i-bought-used-voting-machines-on-ebay/) www.wired.com
This whole article is concerning. It shouldn’t be this easy to get these devices and dissect them for flaws.
If getting voting machines delivered to my door was shockingly easy, getting inside them proved to be simpler still. The tamper-proof screws didn’t work, all the computing equipment was still intact, and the hard drives had not been wiped. The information I found on the drives, including candidates, precincts, and the number of votes cast on the machine, were not encrypted. Worse, the “Property Of” government labels were still attached, meaning someone had sold government property filled with voter information and location data online, at a low cost, with no consequences. It would be the equivalent of buying a surplus police car with the logos still on it.
Eek.
Driven to Distraction – the future of car safety (https://steveblank.com/2018/10/29/driven-to-distraction-the-future-of-car-safety/) steveblank.com
Being a very happy owner of the new Tesla Model 3 I read this article with much interest. The comparison of airplane cockpits as they became more autonomous is interesting.
Parsing logs 230x faster with Rust (https://andre.arko.net/2018/10/25/parsing-logs-230x-faster-with-rust/) andre.arko.net
This is a fun read walking through a high performance solution and the best way to solve it. The way this references cost is a good example of considerations engineers need to keep in mind in the cloud. ☁️💰
What Engineers Found When They Tore Apart Tesla’s Model 3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj1a8rdX6DU) www.youtube.com
This is an interesting take on the Model 3. They seem to have good points on the body and challenges with assembling that. They were very impressed with the motor.
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 🍞
- October 21 post-incident analysis | The GitHub Blog (https://blog.github.com/2018-10-30-oct21-post-incident-analysis/) blog.github.com Detailed and thorough writeup of GitHub’s recent production issue.
- turtle.audio (http://turtle.audio/) turtle.audio What happens when the turtle 🐢 from logo meets music? 🎶
- Shortcuts 2.1 Brings New Weather and Clock Actions, iCloud Sharing Improvements, and More – MacStories (https://www.macstories.net/ios/shortcuts-2-1-brings-new-weather-and-clock-actions-icloud-sharing-improvements-and-more/) www.macstories.net The addition of weather data for Shortcuts is surprisingly nice!
- Red Hat + IBM: Creating the leading hybrid cloud provider (https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-ibm-creating-leading-hybrid-cloud-provider) www.redhat.com Big move from IBM!
- All of the Apple logos from the October 30th event invites - Album on Imgur (https://imgur.com/a/ufybGk6?grid) imgur.com What a cool collection of Apple logo art. 🤩
Microposts 🎈
Wednesday @ 6:47 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/31/i-found-my.html)
I found my trick-or-treat! 🍺 Thanks @ajdomie (https://twitter.com/ajdomie) ! White Oak Jai Alai IPA – such a great IPA!
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Wednesday @ 6:36 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/31/achievement-unlocked-giving.html)
Achievement Unlocked: Giving out full-size candy bars for Halloween! 🎃🍫👍
Wednesday @ 6:19 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/31/231947.html)
Happy Halloween! 🎃
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Wednesday @ 4:00 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/31/we-opened-up.html)
We opened up the 16th floor in SPS Tower this week! What an amazing space for our growing team! 👍 The Library space, bright colors and fun references in the space are great!
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Tuesday @ 8:58 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/30/015818.html)
We all got our pumpkins carved! 🎃 👨👩👧👦
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Sunday @ 10:27 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/28/032738.html)
Had a fabulous evening learning and tasting Bourbons, Whiskey, and Scotch with Rich Howard (https://twitter.com/scotchprophet) tonight! 🥃
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Saturday @ 10:51 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/27/awesome-campfire-tonight.html)
Awesome campfire tonight. 🔥
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Friday @ 8:42 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/26/the-pixl-magnetic.html)
The PIXL Magnetic Building System (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antsylabs/pixl-a-magnetic-building-system) looks really cool. Backed it! Fun to see the Fidget Cube team back at it.
Fortune 🥠
You’ve made it all the way to the end! 👏 Here is your fortune for this week.
Open confession is good for the soul.
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