James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 05/03/2026Kicking off Planet Nix with Kelsey Hightower and Ron Efroni talking about how the industry is changing with AI and what it means for technologies like Nix. 040
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 05/03/2026First time taking a Southwest flight with reserved seats and it feels really strange to go to just one seat. 020
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 02/03/2026Planning in software development has had artifacts and ceremonies that serve a purpose. This is a great summary of strain from AI-generated artifacts and pressure to adopt AI and what it does to erode a long-time carefully constructed culture of writing 6-pagers at Amazon.bigtechnology.comWriting Crystalized Thinking At Amazon. Is AI Muddying It?Amazon’s famously writing-centric culture is being aided by generative AI. What does that say about the company’s culture, priorities, and future? 030
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 28/01/2026I love stories like this one from Gladys West who helped with the foundations of the mathematics of GPS. The story was told so much later, similar to the movie "Hidden Figures." or “The Imitation Game”. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/s...nytimes.comhttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/science/gladys-west-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.H1A.5iFv.WT0u-GGL7JaP&smid=nytcore-ios-share 030
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 16/11/2025I just learned that Loophole Labs found a clever way to dramatically increase Linux container network bandwidth by over 12x. I ❤️ seeing innovation at low levels of the infrastructure stack with big payoffs! loopholelabs.io/blog/xdp-for...loopholelabs.ioUsing XDP for Egress TrafficXDP only works for ingress. We found a loophole that lets it work for egress. Here's how we did the impossible. 021
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 08/09/2025I've had an open tab for a few weeks (link in comment) that AWS added RDS and Aurora instance type recommendations to the AWS Compute Optimizer. It's pretty wild that you can save somewhere around 10% across a big variety of database instance types. 110
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 07/07/2025Used Electrify America L3 charger for the first time and wow is that nice. Usually we charge at home, but this was fast, convenient, and not very expensive while we were far from home. 120
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 04/07/2025I believe in user-controlled privacy. I'm very disappointed in the lack of privacy laws in the United States. I love seeing this update from Google that they have open sourced a Zero Knowledge Proof library that can be used in support of technology standards that preserve privacy. 110
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 01/07/2025Last week Cloudflare launched Containers, which is a significant update to their serverless compute offerings. Cloudflare Workers support is limited to JavaScript and WASM, and this new Containers offering let's you bring a container to their global compute runtime. 100
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 26/06/2025I tried Wispr (wisprflow.ai) as a voice input method today on my Mac and it works really well. I really like the UX. They've done a nice job with it. MacOS Dictation also works decently so they'll have to be a lot better than that for it to really catch on. 010
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 24/06/2025Citing your sources is so important. I researched cloud network pricing and ChatGPT confidently told me that Azure charges from cross-AZ traffic within a Virtual Network. I thought changed, so I checked. Azure made cross-AZ traffic free in May 2024! Check the citations of these chatbots! 010
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 19/06/2025There are some amazing new images of a galaxy named NGC 253 that is 11.5m lightyears away that is generated from data captured with with the Very Large Telescope. 110
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 15/06/2025An Incredible read from my former colleague Jack about his experiences trying an alternative job to engineering after being on the HashiCorp rocketship from the beginning. A Year in EMS www.jackpearkes.com/posts/a-year...jackpearkes.comA Year in EMSMy experience working as an EMT in LA County. 030
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 12/06/2025Want to hide annoying cluttered menu-bar icons in MacOS? Hidden Bar is a simple, free, and OSS utility that hides menu bar items behind a simple expander. When you don't need to use the icons, they are hidden from view. youtu.be/Y8OmjbySFaoyoutu.be 100
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 11/06/2025Ever needed to describe personas and roles involved in cloud decisions? I met the FinOps.org team at a conference and after looking around their website, I found that they had mapped out the Personas really effectively for various people at organizations that work on cloud. 110
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 02/06/2025It’s really common to use Postman to try and test APIs. Thanks to Corey Quinn’s weekly AWS newsletter to highlight this article. Be careful what you share with Postman because they are logging your secrets. anonymousdata.medium.com/postman-is-l...anonymousdata.medium.comPostman is logging all your secrets and environment variablesI was originally investigating this report that Postman is not HIPAA compliant. I found that Postman is not just wholly unsuitable for… 100
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 30/05/2025🚀 Heading to @AI & Big Data Expo next week? I'll be @Vultr booth 152 🎤 I’ll be speaking about Move to Vultr in Minutes, Not Months, highlighting how FluidCloud and Vultr are working together to power cutting-edge AI infrastructure. 📅 Stop by to learn, connect, and explore what’s next in AI. #AIExpo 010
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 08/05/2025This Bill Gates interview is a fascinating read on the state of global philanthropy.nytimes.comThe $200 Billion Gamble: Bill Gates’s Plan to Wind Down His Foundation 220
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 01/05/2025Today's Gemini let-down inside Google Sheets is expected, but still pretty disappointing. 000
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 26/04/2025Redmonk's Rachel Stephens has a great post describing how the job and expectations of the Product Manager is changing with AI. Recently, Toby from Spotify shared a company letter to employees that said AI is now part of their evaluation criteria. (1 of 2)redmonk.comVibe Coding is for PMsVibe coding is an extension of developers ability to tinker using LLMs, but its true power will come in enabling adjacent personas like product managers to more closely collaborate with their dev t… 100
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 17/04/2025Today I transfered a domain name from Namecheap to Cloudflare. The name says it all, they should be cheap, but they charge 70% more than Cloudflare for a .com! Even though I had to divert time to do it, it's a principles thing to me. The internet, cable, and phone providers all do it. 110
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 08/04/2025Intercom posted about their big benefits (availability, sharding simplicity, cost) from switching to Planetscale DB Metal from AWS Aurora. Learned about this from Corey Quinn's newsletter.intercom.comEvolving Intercom’s database infrastructure: Lessons and progressAn update on the progress we've made on the overhaul of our database architecture. Find out how PlanetScale Metal has unlocked greater scalability, performance improvements, and zero-downtime… 010
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 30/03/2025Got my first local MCP server example running today in Claude Desktop. The tutorial is pretty straight-forward. modelcontextprotocol.io/quickstart/s... I've seen some criticism from people I trust that MCP will be like SOAP and ws-*, but so far looks like it's enabling some cool integrations. 030
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 13/03/2025I'm super impressed with PlanetScaleDB's latest metal offering and website design. The performance numbers are incredible. Their main landing page is primarily text and super developer friendly. Kudos to them! 110
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 13/03/2025LastPass breach is so damaging years later. Recent news is that hackers have cracked LastPass Vaults from the hack over a year ago. I'm savvy enough to change passwords on my own, but people in my orbit that I'm helping struggle with the basics of changing passwords. 100
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 09/03/2025Have you ever wanted to create a short YouTube clip from a much longer live-stream or much longer YouTube video? I wrote a GDoc (kind of like a blog!) that covers some options.docs.google.comShort clip from a long YouTube videoDo you want to make a short video clip of a long YouTube video? If the resulting clip will be under 1 minute, then there is a built-in way to do it on YouTube called “Clip”. However, if you want to… 000
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 22/02/2025Friend asked for a computer backpack recommendation. Many years ago Adam Jacob swore by the GoRuck GR1 so I decided to spend the money on it. I'm pretty sure I've had it for a full 10 years and taken it all over the world and back. 110
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 17/02/2025Incredible write-up form someone really on the pioneering edge of pragmatic use of AI tools for coding assistance on practical everyday projects.threads.netHarper Reed (@harperreed) on ThreadsI wrote up how I am using LLMs to help me code. It has been a lot of fun and quite mad. I really like it. Let me know your workflow! https://harper.blog/2025/02/16/my-llm-codegen-workflow-atm/ 010
Reposted by James BayerLuke Knox @lukeknox.me · 06/02/2025this haptic display absolutely rocks. basketball is for everyone. 244211876784
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 06/02/2025I finished this book about how the FBI created their own encrypted messaging app called Anom and tons of criminals world-wide to use it giving them full access to their messages. Really has made me ponder the foundations of trust. 110
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 05/02/2025A friend reached out frustrated getting Gemini to parse table data out of a PDF spread out over 7 pages and put it into a Sheet. I tried it with ChatGPT and it worked like a charm. I used screenshots, but probably could have tried giving it the full PDF. Big time-saver for stuff like this. 000
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 05/02/2025I've often thought conceptually about this, pretty cool to see that someone formed a company called EchoMark that can uniquely identify the source of leaked sensitive information.fastcompany.com 000
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 05/02/2025Interesting study showing that physicians using Chat GPT-4 were scored slightly better than those that used conventional only sources (6.5% better, using about 2min more per patient) to diagnose conditions that were incrementally revealed. 100
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 05/02/2025Tried the new iCloud Invites service and it works well. www.icloud.com/invites In a few moments I created an invite with an image and got a publicly accessible invite link to give out. Not a promising development for evite.com 010
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 04/02/2025. @evanphx.dev is one of the most talented engineers I worked with at @hashicorp.com and this new company with @aphoenix.bsky.social is an ambitious vision towards better development and deployment. Keep your 👀 on this! 020
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 04/02/2025I typically really enjoy rooting against the Celtics and Lakers, but seeing Luka take this challenge on will probably make me root for him, and I guess that means the Lakers too. youtu.be/_Js-i-KYz1syoutu.beYour browser is up to dateYou can use YouTube's latest features! 000
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 02/02/2025Google Flights is a fantastic way to compare flight options. I love the way they show the $ cost directly in the calendar dates. I suspect this will be the main way I explore flights going forward. 000
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 31/01/2025I've been trying Safari as my primary browser, primarily because of iCloud Private Relay, but I keep encountering little rough edges that I don't like such as tab navigation and difficult rendering animated gifs on serious web pages (not just memes). 100
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 27/01/2025Starting that crappy cycle with Xfinity Internet where they do a price-raise and it frustrates me enough to shop around. Really impressed with the FTC template for doing plan comparisons. The government made things better here for sure. Much easier to compare providers than prior. 110
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 26/01/2025So impressed with Jen Easterly, the outgoing Director of CISA. If you're involved or interested in CyberSecurity, this is a valuable 1/2hr talking about topics like Secure By Design and recent China hacking like Volt Typhoonwired.comJen Easterly On The Future of Cybersecurity and Her Agency's SurvivalOutgoing Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Jen Easterly sits down with WIRED Senior Writer Lily Newman to discuss the challenges on the horizon for U.S.… 031
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 26/01/2025Wanted to create an icon (a signature) for slides. I found the OSS Inkscape.org program which creates SVGs. This YouTube tutorial that I skimmed through helped. Got a passable icon really fast (had to convert to png to use in Google Slides). youtu.be/eOd1RYjZXxg?si=wJZ1Q4Mw-66… 020
Reposted by James BayerSandra Newman @sannewman.bsky.social · 26/01/2025"A stranger is just a meal you've never eaten." (Cannibal proverb) 27110
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 26/01/2025Pretty cool to see the advances in Nuclear Fusion. This latest milestone came out of China, but at the end of the article they discuss how the US, France and others are also part of an international cooperation to work on Fusion. www.newsweek.com/energy-clean-unlim……newsweek.comChina's artificial sun could usher in unlimited clean energyScientists have succeeded in maintaining an "artificial sun" here on Earth for a whopping 17 minutes and 46 seconds. 021
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 26/01/2025Funny, I just deleted Audible from my phone yesterday because I find no utility in having it on my phone. There probably are some books I'd rather listen to than read, but there is no pricing competition for Audible, so it's a relatively bad deal for content creators. www.linkedin.com/posts…linkedin.comGergely Orosz on LinkedIn: Signs that Audible operates like a cushy monopoly - and that it's "Day 2"…Signs that Audible operates like a cushy monopoly - and that it's "Day 2" at this part of Amazon: - Has the highest take rate (75% of what customers pay for an audiobook is Audible's to keep. This is… 000
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 24/01/2025I’m super excited to dig into the “Dark Wire” book by Joseph Cox about the true crime story of how the FBI infiltrated a private messaging app to go after criminals. 000
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 23/01/2025Just watched the videos of the new OpenAI Agent Operator. It's impressive. $200/month ensures it isn't a mass-market thing yet, but if DeepSeek model progress is any indicator of how fast prices lower, this is right around the corner of affordability & everyday UX. openai.com/index/introduc…openai.comOperator Announcement 110
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 23/01/2025The auto-manufacturers connected car applications do NOT have good security and privacy protections in-place. This example is Subaru, but there have been multiple examples from other manufacturers too. 051
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 23/01/2025Security researchers discover that a Flipper Zero (cheap widely available security tool) is enough to manipulate significant parts of the German electrical grid. 000
James Bayer @jambay.bsky.social · 23/01/2025Really loved this description from Scott Belsky www.scottbelsky.com of the importance of the "1st mile experience" when building products. It's both important initially and essential to long-term have ongoing investment into it.buff.lyScott Belsky, Building Adobe & the Future of DesignScott Belsky, Adobe’s Chief Strategy Officer & EVP of Design & Emerging Products (and previous Co-founder at Behance), joined us in NYC. Find out why Scott b... 010