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The fucking news
I finally finished the last episodes of The Newsroom recently, and it got me thinking and worrying about the future of journalism. I know a lot of old guard organizations that did great work are dying a slow death into irrelevance, and that’s sad. I see hope in a lot of new organizations popping up doing great…
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The “I’m guilty of this too” trope
You’ve all gotten that email or spoken message from a boss, preaching to the team about how everyone needs to break some bad habit. And then they say it. “I know it’s tough. I’m guilty of this too, but we all need to come together and stop doing this.” Can we agree this trope needs…
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When things go wrong in Apple-land
In a previous post i discussed a way Apple could tweak its development process to make its software products more reliable. But even if Apple can achieve a product that fails 0.0001% of the time, that’s still a pretty large absolute number of failures at Apple’s scale. And what’s worse, now that Apple’s products need…
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On The Bravery Of Trans People
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about Leelah Alcorn’s death. But this post isn’t really about Leelah. It’s more about the people who slog through the life that would have been too painful for Leelah to bear.  Being gay I can relate to trans people in that we’re both somewhat outsiders, but I am…
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Reclaiming “It Just Works”
Everyone agrees that Apple’s software quality has taken a dive in the last couple of years. Interestingly, I hear a lot of fingers being pointed at Apple’s yearly release schedule as being too aggressive.  That isn’t the reason quality is suffering, though. Apple’s hardware is updated yearly (or more) and has been for years…
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Using Data To Reduce Inequality
The racism we deal with today in America has evolved to be a lot more elusive than it was during the Civil Rights Movement. You can see its effects by looking at the country in aggregate. If you’re nonwhite, you’re more likely to be poor. You’re disproportionately more likely to have a run-in with the…
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TIL
After being inspired by a bunch of Ruby Rogues episodes and in part by my colleague Brett’s year of Ruby tips I decided to try a simple experiment in which I get into the habit of starting to document every time I encounter some new piece of information. Sometimes days pass by when I feel…
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The Detroit Project
As many if you may know, I’m somewhat of an ideas guy. I’d like to share with you an idea of mine that’s been floating around. I think I have a solution to the San Francisco’s ongoing issues. It’s overcrowded with technology startups. Unable to expand outward, rent and property prices are skyrocketing. Traffic is…
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Apple Extended keyboards – My setup
I’ve owned classic Apple mechanical keyboards for some time, but over the past few weeks I’ve been using the Apple Extended Keyboard and Apple Extended Keyboard II as my main keyboards and I really like them. They provide a lot of tactile feedback and they’re relatively quiet. My biggest pet peeve with them has been…
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The Markdown Shitshow, Part Deux
So, after watching the Markdown standardization shitshow play out, some more substance is starting to come out of the woodwork. First off, I was right in that people weren’t pissed about the name. Jeff Atwood changed the name to Common Markdown, then changed it again. In the original renaming blog post, it was revealed that…