Apple/Macbooks/macOS just feel more and more broken lately. Not that long ago I had a Big Sur update completely fail and lose my entire account. Now I’m either Disk Utility, Time Machine or the T2 chip on the Macbook that is broken, or some combination of the above. After setting up Zorin 16 on an old laptop, I’m actually tempted to run it as a daily driver. It looked and ran slick and everything I tried just-worked™️. Even the printers and scanners in the household were picked up and I was able to print immediately. It’s been awhile since I kicked the tires on any Ubuntu desktops but it’s pretty impressive from the last time.

Read 📜

Articles 📰

Heard 👂

Podcasts 🎤

  • Founders Talk: Iterating to globally distributed apps and databases
    • I really like the points about What are you optimising for? and The Velvet Rope.
    • The former is something that you can be asking yourself as a business but also just as a person living their life. What do you want to be achieving in life? Is that congruent with what you’re currently doing? If not, why not? Basically a reminder to step back and think about the bigger picture.
    • The latter is sort of in-line with the previous point, but basically using the analogy of being a bouncer at a bar. What kind of clientelle do you want to serve? Do you want to service a single high-paying customer or do you want to offer something less bespoke that’s affordable?
    • As a kind of aside, I’m a big fan of businesses doing one thing well, rather than trying to be everything to anyone. That said, I understand and have seen how it can be difficult when you have existing customers asking for features, possibly ones that your competitors are already offering or introducing, and there’s a pressure to keep up. Do you follow the competition and dilute your offering?
  • Ship It!: Bare metal meets Kubernetes
  • Go Time: Building actually maintainable software

Music 🎵

Really didn’t listen to much music this week.

Watched 👀

Movies 🎬

  • The Suicide Squad (2021)
    • It’s a passable action movie. Set your expectations for mild entertainment and you might not be disappointed.