11 Oct 2024, 12:00 p.m.

Double Standards And Volunteer Behavior

A fictional example:You're in a volunteer group that does a public service chore, like sprucing up a local park or maintaining a health information website. It's been around for many years. Most people treat each …

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03 Oct 2024, 10:00 a.m.

Mailing List Metaphors

On a weekend morning many years ago, the constant low-level radiation of mailing list fracas led me to idly fantasize of sending a beseeching plaintive-yet-rousing post to one of them:Do you think there is no …

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26 Sep 2024, 9:20 a.m.

Changelogs and Release Notes

My friend Ned Batchelder posted, "A list of commits is not a changelog!" and spurred this post.Summary: We'd all benefit from restoring the distinction between a detailed changelog and brief release notes, but that's hard …

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07 Aug 2024, 14:15 p.m.

Tim Walz's Policy Approach

This week, US Presidential candidate Kamala Harris announced that her choice to join her on the ballot as running mate is Tim Walz, who's currently governor of Minnesota.A number of people on Bluesky, in the …

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31 Jul 2024, 12:00 p.m.

Middle Age and Absences

My friend Mel Chua died this week.I'm middle-aged now. I started this weblog as a young adult, and now it's been more than twenty years, and today I'm really feeling that change.Nearly eleven years ago, …

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25 Jul 2024, 22:10 p.m.

"A Story About Jessica" by SwiftOnSecurity

The cybersecurity expert SwiftOnSecurity, a decade ago, wrote a parable called "A Story About Jessica" and posted it to their (now-deleted) Tumblr blog. I found it moving and insightful. The consultancy Superbloom pointed to it …

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22 Jul 2024, 12:00 p.m.

Things I Wish I'd Done Before Catching COVID

In mid-June I caught COVID-19 for, I'm pretty sure, the first time. The current dominant variants are transmissible enough that they got past my defenses. I believe I caught the virus either while wearing an …

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22 Jul 2024, 8:00 a.m.

Make Room for Big News

We live in interesting times.A friend of mine was taking an online class yesterday, and big national news (President Biden deciding not to pursue re-election) interrupted that class. The news distracted everyone and shattered concentration.Sometimes …

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19 May 2024, 14:40 p.m.

Links and References For My PyCon US Keynote

Today I’m giving the closing keynote address at PyCon US 2024, sharing “Untold stories from six years working on Python packaging.”I aim to post a fuller transcript with slides within the next several weeks. But, …

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24 Apr 2024, 11:42 a.m.

Model UX Research & Design Docs for Command-Line Open Source

If you work on open source software, especially command-line tools, I want you to know about newly available research reports and design guidance, and a user research HOWTO, that you can pick up and reuse.The …

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