Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 09/10/2025In football, kicking a ball really hard isn't what wins games. 000
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 08/10/2025Farmers give talks at conferences talking about "artisinal hand-maintained unix servers, not serverless functions" 020
Reposted by Brian ScanlanSam Lambert @samlambert.com · 18/09/2025Listen to @bscanlan.bsky.social talking to @quinnypig.com about how Intercom moved from AWS Aurora to @planetscale.com t.co/ZlRtVVr7Rst.cohttps://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/from-aurora-to-planetscale-intercom-s-database-evolution-with-brian-scanlan/ 093
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 21/09/2025Bought my sister a print of this for her birthday. Looks even better in real life. 010
Reposted by Brian Scanlanlastweekinaws.com @lastweekinaws.com · 19/09/2025Plot twist: Intercom's on-call system uses VOLUNTEERS, not conscripts. @bscanlan.bsky.social explains how they compensate engineers for after-hours work instead of mandating it by team assignment. Result? People actually want to join the rotation. 🎧 to the podcast:lastweekinaws.comFrom Aurora to PlanetScale: Intercom’s Database Evolution with Brian ScanlanScreaming in the Cloud 021
Reposted by Brian Scanlanlastweekinaws.com @lastweekinaws.com · 18/09/202513 Aurora clusters to a sleek move onto PlanetScale. Intercom’s database journey wasn’t just a migration, it was a rethink. On the latest Screaming in the Cloud, @bscanlan.bsky.social (Senior Principal Engineer @ Intercom) joins Corey Quinn to talk about.. 132
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 18/09/2025The rumours are true - I did a podcast with Corey. 020
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 29/08/2025When mountains go on fire, there’s talk of randos being careless with BBQs. Definitely not systematic burning by sheep farmers. 010
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 17/08/2025Sebadoh mention on Second Captains’ Oasis podcast on Friday had me no longer thinking about Oasis. 020
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 08/08/2025Last year Intercom used 41.069 MTCO2e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide) in our use of AWS. This is equivalent to the electricity used by 8 average homes in the USA. The vast majority of this was produced in the Sydney region - Australia sure loves burning coal. 010
Reposted by Brian ScanlanRizel Scarlett 🇦🇬🇬🇾 @blackgirlbytes.bsky.social · 07/07/2025I started reading The Staff Engineer’s Path by Tanya Reilly, and there’s one line I really liked — something along the lines of: “If you find yourself saying, ‘Someone should do this,’ then you should probably do it.” 2537
Reposted by Brian ScanlanCharity Majors @charity.wtf · 19/06/2025I just released my edit of "In Praise of 'Normal' Engineers": why the best engineering orgs in the world are the ones where ✨normal engineers✨ can consistently move fast, ship code, fix shit, help their users, and move the business forward...a little more, every day. charity.wtf/2025/06/19/i...charity.wtfIn Praise of “Normal” EngineersThis article was originally commissioned by Luca Rossi (paywalled) for refactoring.fm, on February 11th, 2025. Luca edited a version of it that emphasized the importance of building “10x engi… 412831
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 13/06/2025aws.amazon.com/security/sec... The perfect security bulletin.aws.amazon.comCVE-2025-6031 - Insecure device pairing in end-of-life Amazon Cloud Cam 020
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 11/06/2025Good time to get out the 6 hour Pet Sounds box-set. 010
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 20/05/2025I managed to tear my MCL on my left leg (grade 2) going down the outside waterslide in Center Parcs. 100
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 02/04/2025I still don't know how to pronounce JWT, but this is a really compelling replacement for how Intercom has been authenticating users until now. Great to see it in beta - obviously we already use it ourselves. www.intercom.com/help/en/arti...intercom.comAuthenticating users in the Messenger with JSON web tokens (JWTs) | Intercom HelpHow to protect your Messenger and user sessions against cross-user impersonation, session theft and more. 010
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 02/04/2025I wrote up what happened the other day when Intercom broke: www.intercomstatus.com/us-hosting/i...intercomstatus.comProblems with our APIs in all regions. - US Hosting StatusThis issue should now be resolved and all services are restored to normal functionality. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to team@intercom.io: mailto:team@intercom.io if you have any further quest... 010
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 19/03/2025I can't believe that there's popular songs celebrating unvetted military age economic migrants: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSxX...youtube.comNa Buachaillí Álainn (Remastered 2021)YouTube video by Clannad - Topic 000
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 18/03/2025Oh no - I see VPNs in my future. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/... 020
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 28/02/2025I wrote up an Intercom outage that happened this week: www.intercomstatus.com/us-hosting/i...intercomstatus.comIncreased Error Rates & Latencies for Intercom users - US Hosting StatusBetween 1429 UTC and 1511 UTC, customers using Intercom would have experienced periods of elevated error rates and high latency. We have taking mitigating action and this incident is now resolved. Pl... 100
Reposted by Brian ScanlanColm MacCarthaigh @colmmacc.bsky.social · 07/02/2025Reading Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" fascicles as they came out was incredibly key to discovering the Shuffle Sharding pattern, but I don't think I've ever written about it before ... news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4297...news.ycombinator.comBack in 2010 when we were building Amazon Route 53, we had a really big problem ... | Hacker News 04711
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 18/12/2024(loved the implicit references to HEAnet from Colm :) ) 010
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 18/12/2024My fave talks from re:Invent: Eric talks about network defence: www.youtube.com/watch?v=65mX... Marc talks about metastability etc.: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvHd... colmmacc talks about networking: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzpz... 1134
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 18/12/2024This is my most watched vid on YouTube this year. 010
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 02/12/2024First 🤯 of re:Invent - AWS are using "hollow core fibre" to allow availability zone buildings to be further away from each other without breaking their intra-AZ latency requirements. 120
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 26/11/2024That was stressful. Hopefully they'll play more than one show. 140
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 21/11/2024We need to run these migrations often enough. It’s very uncomfortable for us to block feature development. Our entire product is built on the realtime performance of our databases - we have zero margin on load, and backups are a crucial part of our compliance posture. 010
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 21/11/2024I think I need to take a few days off to think about this. 010
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 20/11/2024The old way: migrating our largest MySQL table takes 70-80 days and can contribute to occasional latency spikes. The new way on PlanetScale: migrating our largest MySQL table takes less than a week and Just Works. 2235
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 19/11/2024End of year engagement stats need to get juiced in time for promotion season. (j/k looks like a brief bug) 010
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 18/11/2024Did you use GitStream or something else? I like this idea. We've been doing some auto-approvals (markdown docs, security related dependancy upgrades) and I think it has been going well. 100
Brian Scanlan @bscanlan.bsky.social · 18/11/2024I am proud to be associated with engineering fixes that would not look out of place in the Soviet space program. 1110
