jacobian.org
Several recommendations for LLM usage in the context of open source. “The long term goal of software freedom is to eliminate the harm of proprietary technology. While we work toward that greater goal, we should seek to mitigate the harms that we cannot immediately eliminate. These recommendations aim to abate the damage of these systems, and also consider how these tools might…
I think vegetarians are mostly right. Most of their arguments about why we shouldn’t eat meet — environmental impact, treatment of animals, treatment of workers in the industry, health effects of too much meat consumption, climate impact, etc. — I tend to nod along. I’m broadly in agreement with most of their main arguments. And yet, I still eat meat. Why? Partially, it’s because…
Notes (mostly for myself but maybe useful to others?) on how I set up Immich for storing/archiving photos. Goals: Consolidate all my photos – old archives off a NAS, a couple of years of photos stored in Google Photos, and ongoing photos taken with my iPhone – into a self-hosted Immich instance running on my NAS (a Synology). iCloud remains as a capture tool; Immich is the storage,…
Absolutely fantastic guide — all the impactful stuff, none of the nonsense.
Elections for the 2026 Django Software Foundation Board are now open. You can read candidate statements on the Django blog , and DSF members should have a ballot in their inboxes. (If you don’t: email foundation@djangoproject.com ). Elections are open through November 26th at 23:59 Anywhere on Earth . Please vote! How I’m ranking candidates The DSF faces some significant challenges in…
The default working model for open source projects is working in public: public bug trackers, public forums, “pull requests welcome”, and so forth. Sure, there’s some level of gatekeeping – it’s extremely rare for an open source project to accept code from anyone without some level of review by a trusted group – but the key point is: you don’t need…
A risk scenario is a fictional but plausible event that could harm your organization. Writing one well improves communication with others…
“FACETS is an acronym presented by Ian McCammon to describe a set of 6 heuristic traps that were common in his study of recreational accidents.”
I was reminded of this classic paper in the threat modeling literature canon. Hilarious and also insightful — worth a read if you haven’t seen it before.
A trap that many people fall into when trying to threat modeling or risk planning is a fear of being incomplete that leads them to not even try. People think, “there are so many possible things that could go wrong, so many potential risks. It’s going to be such a huge effort to enumerate all possible scenarios, and I don’t have time, so I guess I can’t do threat…
Here’s a tool I find useful at pre-trip briefings that can help the group assess its ability to tackle some tricky objective. It’s especially good for groups with mixed skill levels where people aren’t necessarily familiar with everyone else’s skill set. I’ve used this in contexts like group kayak trips, group canyoneering trips, ambitious adventure runs, and so…
Via RC’s AI article, a fascinating recording of someone programming a game almost entirely by prompting Claude by voice. This feels truly “futuristic” to me. Sure it’s clunky at times, but damn if this isn’t closer to the Star Trek computer than I ever thought I’d see in my lifetime.
Detailed, nuanced, and well-thought-out. Tons of great and insightful quotes from RC alums. And their conclusion is, I think, perfect: You should use AI-powered tools to complement or increase your agency, not replace it.
Would you believe me if I told you that this was safe? That we’ve considered the risks very carefully, and mitigated them? Or would you say that someone who rappels down waterfalls probably isn’t thinking very clearly about risk? The “people suck at thinking about risk” framing There’s a common belief among risk professionals that people are inherently bad at thinking…
10 pounds is a ridiculous and arbitrary limit chosen entirely on the basis of how “nice” the number 10 sounds. If the US was on the metric system, would it have been 10 kilograms instead? If we used a base 16 number system would it be 16 pounds? A slightly better target would be a percentage of body weight, but … The original “point” of the ultralight ethos is that…
A bunch of really useful custom features for OnShape
An interesting 3d printing lesson about how the physical characteristics of printed parts differ from other manufacturing: I needed to replace a rubber hydraulic hose retention strap on my tractor. The part’s $40 + shipping – ludicrous for a 6x2" strip of rubber – so perfect to try to replicate. I have some TPU filament that’s of similar flexibility, let’s go. For V1,…
The Meyer/Williamson matrix is a framework enumerating potential causes of accidents in outdoor activities. I first ran across it in Deb Ajango’s Lessons Learned II , but I’ve had a really hard time finding an original source to cite. It appears to be taken from various presentations that Dan Meyer and Jed Williamson have given over several decades. There are various PDF versions…
I have two important announcements: I’m leaving the tech industry. Hopefully “for good”; if not, at least “for now”. As such, the content on this blog is going to shift, perhaps dramatically. I’m going to be writing about a broader range of topics that interest me (projects around my hobby farm, wilderness trips, emergency medicine) – more writing for me ,…
Great example of a simple risk framework in action.