jeremymcanally

I got into HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) fencing last year through a club in my little town. Olympic/sport fencing is fun, but imagine (safely) swinging a 4lbs. steel longsword with two hands at your opponent instead. It's a ton of fun, a great workout (I burn ~1500 calories per class), and competitive so it keeps my interest.

Then there's the whole nerd layer of reading all the original sources from the 15th century, attempting to retain the historical character of the techniques while engaging in real combat, etc. It's both intellectually and physically stimulating.

That's because publishers these days basically require you to have that magnitude of social media presence or they generally won't touch you. If they do, they will do next to nothing to help actually sell your book after it's printed. Very rarely will you see someone who hasn't built a platform already be given any sort of extra marketing or distribution for their work. You'll effectively give them 90% of the sale price for printing and possibly some limited distribution. Publishers used to be tastemakers and make picks and bets based on book merit, but now it's basically like they're just looking for things that would already succeed on their own and injecting themselves into the process.

They've basically figured out how to take half of their job and shove it off on the author while they still take their oversized cut. It's pretty egregious in my opinion.

I've seen this with all types of publishers, btw, from children's books to technical books. Heck, most technical publishers these days are mostly print on demand, so you're barely getting any unique product from the publisher at all.

Getting an error claiming it, but I assume they’re getting pelted by people claiming it right now.

A new numbers game named Sigma. It’s like a crossword plus Sudoku (kind of). Try it out? https://jm.cool/games/sigma

On macOS, select images, right click, “Quick Actions,” “Convert Image.”

My mom spends easily that much with her tax preparer who is an independent person who tries to dissuade usage of software like TurboTax. My sister spends about $100 to file, and they have simple W-2 stuff. I know several folks at my church who spend $50-$75 on TurboTax or something similar every year.

I just spent like $200 to file mine with TurboTax only because I have a very simple 1099-K/Schedule C since my wife sells things on Etsy. I know Schedule C can range from my simple setup to absolutely ridiculous, so I don't totally grudge it. But at the same time, there are a lot of small business owners where that's a big chunk of change for them.

Precisely why I built https://freetofile.com (it’s a simple static site with React for internationalization that automatically renders in Spanish, Chinese, Haitian Creole, or English depending on browser settings). It’s shocking and depressing how many low income people don’t know they don’t need to spend $100-200 to file their taxes.

I want to blanket my area (well the whole country really but baby steps…) in signs with the URL during tax season. I really do loathe the entire industry at this point due to their gross practices around free filing. Some offer “free” online filing but deceptively upsell until they squeeze some money out of the customer. So I want to make any little push back I can against these companies.

GitHub was founded to make managing permissions and sharing a git repo easier. It was a nightmare when git was first starting to get traction. Their original tagline was “git repo hosting - no longer a pain in the ass.”

The social stuff came later as they realized that a big part of the friction in software development (and the actual business opportunity) was the actual working together part. They really innovated here and created a culture of workflows that has permeated the way most of us work.

But then there were a few years where they really didn’t seem to do anything of note (I remember there was a five month stretch where they didn’t post a single product update). And then they got bought. After that I don’t really know what their intention has been, but I guess this change brings it more into focus.

The product works fine for our use cases (and the fact everyone has a GitHub account makes the management piece super easy even with wacky enterprise requirements), but I hope they don’t start jacking up prices to pay for AI that I really really don’t want.

Apple certainly do have web frameworks they’ve written in Swift.

No, I don’t know why they aren’t publicly available (at least yet). But I do know they power a number of public facing services.

Working for me?

There are a lot of odd choices here. Is there a mailing list thread or something where this was worked out? I couldn't seem to find one on a quick scan, but I don't know where these discussions happen these days.

I really don't want to assume incompetence or ignorance at all since I'm sure someone worked really hard on this. But I'm genuinely puzzled by a lot of what's going on.

Unfortunately not currently, but I will definitely post around again if one opens up in the future!

Bingo! Both of those.

Sequoia Capital - REMOTE (but must be US based and enrolled in a college/university)

I'm looking for a software engineering intern for the summer at Sequoia!

Here's a tl;dr:

- It's paid.

- It's full-time.

- It's remote.

- The work will be based around a discrete project that we will select alongside the intern to give them something to add to their CV rather than just "I worked at a place."

- The position is on my team of experienced folks who will help appreciably level up the intern's skills while also exposing them to a lot of interesting tech and people.

- Candidates must be U.S.-based and currently enrolled in an institution of higher learning (i.e., college or university, not a bootcamp, sorry! We're working on options for those folks soon).

My team works on a wide range of projects, from simple integrations to full on AI pipelines and everything in between, so the project possibilities are wide. If that sounds interesting, please send me an email at jmcanally@sequoiacap.com with "Intern" in the subject. In the body of the email, include a short paragraph about yourself and your studies, a list of any project ideas you might have, and any links we might find interesting (e.g., GitHub, blog, social media, etc.). If you have a resume/CV, please attach that as well.

(Side note: please do not use an LLM to compose this email. We want to talk to you not a machine! )

I'll be accepting applications of interest through Friday April 19. Once you reach out, I'll be in touch with next steps and a very short technical assessment. The assessment will be 3 questions and should take much less than an hour to complete.

I look forward to hearing from you! If you have any questions, please feel free to email me or leave a comment here. We're really looking for a wide set of applicants from all backgrounds, schools, and even programs of study (assuming you can pass the assessment!), so please share at will!

Properly used white list parameter controls (i.e., strong parameters) that are the default Rails behavior at this point would have prevented this bug completely.

I found the book “Python Distilled” got me up to speed quickly after not doing a ton of Python for about a decade.

Maybe my experience was different but the lack of smell from COVID was farrrrr more acute and noticeable than I’ve ever had with a sinus infection. It was like the sensation just starkly disappeared rather than diminished. It was really one of the most disconcerting symptoms I had if I’m honest!

I have a lot of friends (including my spouse) who are teachers, and I can pretty confidently say that an office environment/culture/work sphere as we as engineers are used to is vastly different than working in a classroom. We don’t often value experience because, you’re right, often times fresh eyes do bring useful insights. But in the case of teaching (and probably many other things), consensus seems to be that experience does vastly affect one’s effectiveness.

I applaud the OP for their attempt to bring something new, but I feel like if maybe they’d waited a couple more years they may have an easier time thinking through the problem set and creating a product to fit the need. Perhaps I’m wrong! But that’s just my feeling from the many conversations I’ve had with teacher friends.

Probably because “alias” is a keyword in Ruby.

I had, literally, eight different majors over my Bachelor's career, with almost enough credits for two whole B.A. degrees by the time I was done. I just finally picked a major that I had the most credits towards and was cheapest/easiest to finish distance learning (a degree in theology). Of course, by this time, I was over 30 and had already built a career sans degree and (if I recall correctly on timing) was working at Apple as a software engineer.

I've always been an autodidact not as a point of pride but instead of necessity. I grew up really poor and, given it was Alabama, our education/library system wasn't great. I taught myself a lot of things, and because of that, had a lot of interests, which led to a...er...chaotic college experience when the road to education was less narrow.

My point is, yes a lot of people go through this, and the only path you're limited to is the one you pick. Getting into a career in engineering without a degree does require some hustle to get over the initial inertia, but you can do it. If you feel like you have the knowledge and wherewithal to make it happen, major in a "backup" or something that interests you. If not, there's no shame in it, so pursue the plan you laid out. All in all, the ultimate result is that you learn how to think about things and pick up some skills along the way. However you and your brain get there isn't really defined.

(Ninja edit to say: I was a low B student in high school, had a 3.2 GPA in my bachelor's work. I took some master's classes from Harvard when I could afford them, and I was knocking them down with a 4.0. Environment makes a big difference too, so don't feel like you're stuck in what you've tried. You might just need to find the right place.)

Sounds like you need to hire better magicians. :)

Given they're a legal startup, I really hope it's Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Birdman,_Attorney_at_La...

I definitely could be wrong! I think there will always be cultural centers because people like gathering together (virtually or otherwise). Things like memes and TikTok trends create shared culture, but I don’t think we have a monoculture. The algorithms on these platforms create cultural centers but there are lots of them rather than a meta stream that everyone feeds off of. The vast difference between what I see on my TikTok feed and what my wife and her friends see on theirs is wild. They algorithms are like hipsters that into account things you like haha!

Take a tour around the popular subreddits to see if we have a fragmented culture. I’m often blown away how popular some niche subreddit that I’ve literally never heard of will be even though I’ve been on Reddit for 15+ years! The panoply of ideas and interests on there is super cool to see.

He almost hits on what's changed in my brain, but then kind of wanders into this weird criticism of...things people enjoy.

I think the shift is that we don't have a monoculture anymore (thanks to the Internet and especially social media) so what seems like we're losing nerd culture and these niche interests in "bad" things really just means that everyone can find them now and likewise folks who are into these niche interests can find each other. This change is creating the (for lack of a better term?) "illusion" of mainstreaming. The people who would be interested were always there. It was just the means of mass cultural communication and spread to reach them with whatever interest weren't. The main "stream" is now the main "lake" and everyone's jumped in. Things you think are "bad" can now reach enough "nerds" who think they're good to reach a modicum of popularity. I view this as maybe a good thing?

Of course, the other edge of this sword is that it allows folks who have unhealthy interests and ideas to find each other as well. That's why we've seen an uptick in radical ideologies of all sorts and things like the incel movement take such deep root. Those weren't part of the normalized zeitgeist before, but now that everything's in the pool and given equal cultural footing, it again creates a bubble of popularity that sometimes has an outsized impact.

We have decided that algorithms are the answer to this problem, and maybe that's a good answer. But I think we've also decided that commercial driven, ad laden algorithms are not the answer. So I'm not sure we have a good solution currently. Maybe if we spread some AI on it (and throw some ML and heck a few blockchains in for good measure) we can generate something useful.

Myst Island is free on the new one but the ages are a one time IAP. Kind of a neat way to let folks try the game out IMO.

Whoops that’s my bad, not intentional. Doing it on mobile and just grabbed the link. Sorry about that. Can’t edit it now.

They released an updated version, and I snapped it up as soon as I learned about it. It’s not only updated but has a lot of new things as well: https://amzn.to/3VnjtKF

I miss books like this and the Klutz Press books. They explore things in way that still instills wonder and excitement.

I used to feel the same way, but I don't think the idea is to abandon all your values in pursuit of success. Instead it's to figure out the system you're entering into and how to operate within it, what values of your may have to change or at least be suspended, and what new values you might have to adopt to function. You have to figure out the motivations that move the organization forward, what shadow power structures exist (because trust me, they do), and how to accomplish your job within the political and interpersonal "game" that's already in motion by the time you join. And from someone who has worked in orgs as small as 5 people up to Apple's 80k+ behemoth, one has to do this no matter the organization size.

Of course, if doing so requires you to abandon some of your core values, then perhaps that organization or job isn't a good fit for you anyhow. :)

When approaching seemingly insurmountable technical issues, I've found it important to find the root issue of what's causing all the chaos. Yes, the code is a mess. OK, the database design is non-sensical. Sure, things never get deleted. But why?

From what you've mentioned, it sounds like every change that isn't additive is viewed as too risky. So at this point before trying to make big shifts, some work should be done to de-risk the situation as much as possible. Granted, you probably can't stop work and introduce a bunch of new practices and patterns, but you need to start reduce the risk to unleash the team to make necessary changes.

For example, introducing version control should be a slam dunk. Start using a database migration facility for all database changes. Create a release schedule that requires features to be stabilized by a certain window for deployment. Create some really, really simple Selenium tests by just browser recording yourself using the app.

Once you can start making changes more confidently, then you can start unwinding some of the bad choices moving forward. Resist the urge to start "making a good foundation for the future" by trying to rewrite core parts of the system immediately and instead start thinking in terms of forward progress oriented changes. Need to add a feature? Make sure to write that feature properly with good practices and make only the necessary changes to other parts of the system. I realize that's probably going to be painful, but eventually you will accrete enough of these small changes that you can string them together with a little more work into larger scale changes under the hood.

These things are rarely easy, especially in established legacy systems. But if this is the revenue engine for your company, you'll need to move conservatively but decisively or risk making the situation worse. Good luck!