jacobian

Changing Directions - Jacob Kaplan-Moss <p>I have two important announcements:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I&rsquo;m leaving the tech industry. Hopefully &ldquo;for good&rdquo;; if not, at least &ldquo;for now&rdquo;.</p> </li> <li> <p>As such, the co...

Reading @jacobian.org 's exit from tech rings a bell. We love computers but we hate the tech industry. We love space but we dread the space industry. We love music but we loathe the record industry.

We can have nice things, just not under capitalism.

(OTOH, excited for him ❤️)

In case anyone’s wondering, `jacobian . bsky . social` isn’t me. Super flattered that I now rank high enough to score an impersonator tho!

Oh neat! Related, I’ve often wished for some sort of Gantt charts that can show uncertainty, but I don’t have good enough designer/dataviz chops to really know what that would look like.

Beware tech career advice from old heads - Jacob Kaplan-Moss If you’re new to tech – say, less than 5 years in the field – you should take career advice from people who’ve been in the industry more than 10-15 years with enormous skepticism.

A lot of tech people, particularly more junior folks, are looking for jobs right now. A short but important note for them: newcomers should generally ignore career advice from people who've been in the field longer than 10 or 15 years.

jacobian.org/2025/mar/13/...

A reminder: doing illegal things is illegal. If somebody gives you an order to do something illegal, it is your obligation to say no. "Just following orders" has never been a defense, legally or ethically.

Here’s how to share sensitive leaks with the press Thinking about securely leaking information to news organizations? This guide will show you how.

Worth reviewing: freedom.press/digisec/blog...

Sidebar #4: Quantitative Risk Revisited - Jacob Kaplan-Moss In part 1 of this series, I briefly covered quantitive risk measuring – assigning a numeric value to risk, like “$3,500”, rather than a qualitative label like “medium” – only to quickly recommend agai...

Part six of my risk series is up — a final (long) sidebar to the introduction, coming back around the the concept of quantitative risk analysis and giving a more complete explanation of what I see as the pros and cons of that practice: jacobian.org/2025/jan/28/...

> Lots of situations in life are like this, where there’s a loud way to accomplish very little and a quiet way to do some good. And far too often, we reward people for doing the loud ineffective thing.

alexgaynor.net/2025/jan/27/...

What accomplishments sound like on software engineering resumes - Jacob Kaplan-Moss Effective resumes need to contain two things: responsibilities and accomplishments. The first tells the read what your job was; the second, what your results were. Unfortunately, most people fail at t...

I'd like to write a version of jacobian.org/2020/may/8/e..., but tailored to management roles.

If you have a manager resume that lists specific accomplishments, and you'd be OK with me anonymized bits in a post like that, please email me your resume? jacob at jacobian dot org.

Do You Work For the Federal Government? ProPublica Wants To Hear From You. We’re doubling down on our coverage of government agencies and federal policy. With your help, we can dig deeper.

💪❤️🇺🇸 hello former 18f and usds colleagues. reach out and say hi www.propublica.org/tips/federal...

400 individual members of the Django Software Foundation As of a few weeks ago, the Django Software Foundation reached 400 individual members.

400 individual members of the Django Software Foundation – pretty cool milestone! https://thib.me/400-django-individual-members Now going for 500! 🌈 That’d be a great milestone to reach for the 20-year birthday of #Django in July 2025. Submit a nomination, or 2, or 3 to help make it happen?

Funny, in infosec we do “event” vs “incident”. “Incident” triggers regulatory/contractual obligations, so we call things an “event” until we’re sure it’s a real incident and not a false alarm.

Last night someone lit a Tesla on fire at the dealership here in Salem. Golly gee.

The holiday app names thing was my favorite Easter egg, good times

Sidebar #3: Two Flavors of Medium Risk - Jacob Kaplan-Moss When you look at a likelihood/impact risk matrix, you might notice that “medium” appears twice – once as high-likelihood/low-impact, and once as low-likelihood/high-impact. These two “mediums” aren’t ...

Part whatever in my risk series:

When you look at a likelihood/impact risk matrix, you might notice that “medium” appears twice – once as high-likelihood/low-impact, and once as low-likelihood/high-impact. These two “mediums” aren’t at all the same!

jacobian.org/2025/jan/17/...

Sidebar #2: The Swiss Cheese Model - Jacob Kaplan-Moss In the real world, accidents happen when a series of small missteps align to create severe consequences. This is something we call the “Swiss Cheese Model”: imagining a systems failure as a set of “ho...

Most serious accidents aren't singular events, but instead are the result of a series of small, seemingly-inconsequential missteps. We call this the Swiss Cheese Model, and it's one of the most important concepts in risk management:

jacobian.org/2025/jan/16/...

Sidebar #1: "Exposure" - Jacob Kaplan-Moss Risk is usually defined as the product of two factors: Likelihood and Impact. However, some disciplines include a third factor: Exposure. What’s that about, and when is it useful?

Continuing my risk series with a short sidebar: we usually define Risk as the product of Likelihood and Impact, but some disciplines include a third factor, Exposure. What's up with that?

jacobian.org/2025/jan/15/...

I am a former incarcerated firefighter. I served in a California fire camp from 2009 to 2012.

Misinformation is afire on the internet, so here are facts about the prison firefighter program, all in one place.

A thread.

shotenfreude (n): the pleasure at watching the other team shoot an airball

“SLIPPED ON DOCK TRYING TO EXIT BOAT, HAD ABOUT 6 BEERS, FELL FACE FIRST IN WATER, HAD GUN IN PANTS POCKET THAT FIRED. GUNSHOT WOUND TO PENIS”

🎶 And I’m proud to be an American… 🎶

What Horrible Things Did We Do To Our Penises Last Year? | Defector Happy new year to one and all. Make a resolution never to do any of these things. All descriptions are taken verbatim from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s database of emergency room visi...

My favorite new years tradition is reading about all the dumb things people did to their wieners last year defector.com/what-horribl...

I was on the board of a nonprofit that received funding from MacKenzie Scott. Her no strings attached gift was game changing. More philanthropists need to adopt this model instead of capitalist brained ideas of efficiency that are ultimately counterproductive.

No DSF Office Hours this week — we’re all off celebrating various holiday things. See y’all next week!

No DSF Office Hours this week — we’re all off celebrating various holiday things. See y’all next week!

Oh that’s not too bad. Thanks!

I heard there was a secret ooze that turned four reptiles into dudes, but you don’t really care for turtles do ya

Yup! BofA and Schwab both support webauthn, and I think there are a few more out there.

I still had to use four different apps for this trip (ABRP, PlugShare, two different payment apps) which is incredibly ridiculous, so that aspect still puts road trips in a non-Tesla EV into something of an early adopter territory. But things are getting better, and fast.

Did my usual Portland/San Francisco trip yesterday, third year in a row doing it in an EV (Ioniq 5). Went super smoothly; the charging infrastructure along I-5 is _noticeably_ better than even just a year ago. New stations with more plugs, no de-rated stations, all just super smooth.

Oh you have a roof box! I’ve been thinking about getting one for my i5 but unsure what it does to the range. Do you notice a big difference?