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Lex

@thelextimes.bsky.social
90 followers 446 following 51 posts

Recovering comedian turned software engineer. Build things by day, read history/humanities & walk cities. ex-Ticketmaster · ex-TaskRabbit · OS contributor · architecture nerd.

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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Do I know anyone that works on the dev team at MARTA? I opened a PR last month to harden the Python library: - Upgraded legacy API requests from HTTP to HTTPS. - Add connection and read timeouts. - Raise errors for unsuccessful HTTP responses. github.com/itsmarta/mar...
github.com
Harden MARTA API requests and credential handling by cacheflow · Pull Request #11 · itsmarta/marta-python
Improves the security and resilience of the existing MARTA client while preserving the legacy API domain, paths, and public interface. Changes Upgrade legacy API requests from HTTP to HTTPS. Pass ...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Also, there may be an issue with MARTA’s GTFS data with exposing driver names. github.com/cacheflow/at... github.com/cacheflow/at... Hopefully I get to work on this today because I barely slept last night again. I have noisy neighbors sometimes.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Greater Atlanta’s transit data is fragmented across MARTA, CobbLinc, Ride Gwinnett, Xpress, and others. I’m building open-source packages that give developers one consistent interface across them starting with MARTA and CobbLinc.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
How is everyone liking the muse model?
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
I was poking around the Connect EBT card controls page and thought it could use some light redesign improvements. The goal was to help folks see at a glance: 1. Card protection 2. Card activity 3. How to change card controls medium.com/@thelextimes...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Published 1.0.0 of my react hook that performs health checks against a provided API endpoint. npmjs.com/package/use-...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I made a small hook with the help of Claude to test API endpoint health/reachability. It's loosely based on my other react-use-is-online which checks internet connection speed and type. www.npmjs.com/package/use-...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Found an interesting quirk while using Disney+ the other day. Certain titles are not returned when you search for them on Disney+ but show up in Google search results. medium.com/@thelextimes...
medium.com
When Search Stops Being Search: A Curious Disney+ Product Decision
One of the most valuable features of any streaming service is trust.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Built a small TS client for consuming the Marta Transit API: www.npmjs.com/package/mart...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
what's everyone hacking on this season?
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Anyone know any good fintech or AML/CTF/KYC/OFAC OS projects I can contribute to? I contributed to MOOV's watchman a while back and added the US tel list with the help of Adam and looking to do more work in this area: github.com/moov-io/watc...
github.com
Fix download us tel test and update mapper and reader file by cacheflow · Pull Request #774 · moov-io/watchman
Overview This PR integrates the US State Terrorist Exclusion List (US TEL) into Watchman. It downloads, parses, indexes, displays, and provides default configs for US TEL data. 🤖 Agent Assistance T...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
yay my Python FCM PR got merged. I owe a special thanks to the maintainers for reviewing this. github.com/olucurious/P...
github.com
feat: Ensure service account file exists before initializing credentials by cacheflow · Pull Request #386 · olucurious/PyFCM
This PR adds a validation check to ensure that the service_account_file path passed to FCM exists before attempting to initialize credentials using Google OAuth. References #385.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
This must explain the Deutsche bank response. www.reuters.com/article/worl...
reuters.com
Deutsche Bank denies report it prevented Trump transactions being flagged
Deutsche Bank denied a report that said some of its executives rejected the advice of the bank's own anti-money laundering specialists and prevented some transactions involving entities controlled by ...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Anyone going to RenderATL? I'll be there. www.renderatl.com
renderatl.com
RenderATL 2026 | August 12 & 13, 2026
Render is the premier technology professional conference with a diverse lineup of technical speakers & immersive workshops featuring good vibes & great music.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Updated my portfolio site: www.builtbylex.com
builtbylex.com
Lex Alexander | Senior Software Engineer
Senior software engineer building high-scale products and infrastructure across payments, trust and safety, and developer platforms.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
I released a python version of my videoframer package. It analyzes any video you give it using your favorite LLM: Claude, OpenAI or Gemini. More to come. pypi.org/project/vide...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Disney+ hides titles during search that aren't available in your tier. But they're still available on Google for SEO purposes. I think it's detrimental to the UX. I blogged about my findings here. medium.com/@thelextimes...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Anyone know a dev or PM on one of threads teams related to statues and comments? I think I’ve found an issue with comments on web and mobile on threads that isn't consistent on other Meta products like Facebook. medium.com/@thelextimes...
medium.com
The case of disappearing buttons on Threads
The same feature, two different behaviors, and what that might reveal about the app.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Happened in my own city. You hate to see it. Wish we could stand with the Jewish community more. www.latimes.com/california/s...
latimes.com
Mural at site of Jewish temple that burned in Eaton fire vandalized with swastikas, antisemitic graffiti
Authorities are investigating a hate crime after a mural at the site of the burned Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center was vandalized with an antisemitic message and swastikas last week.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Published a new package that extracts frames from a video and analyzes them with an LLM like OpenAI, Gemini or Claude. www.npmjs.com/package/vide...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
The entire issue 8 slaps so far: harvardlawreview.org/archives/vol...
harvardlawreview.org
Volume 139 - Issue 8 - Harvard Law Review
Read Volume 139 - Issue 8 of the Harvard Law Review, a student-run journal of legal scholarship.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Woke up at 3am and couldn’t sleep so i opened this bad boy up and was not disappointed: harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-13...
harvardlawreview.org
Exploring the Limits of Qualified Immunity Under Harlow’s Discretionary Function Test Harvard Law Review
Introduction Buried in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, the Supreme Court’s leading decision on qualified immunity, a largely overlooked phrase invokes a mostly forgotten distinction in...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
What I’m currently reading: 1. Generations by Strauss and Howe 2. Democracy in America by De Tocqueville
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
How can he even tell? I’ve seen more PRs than usual in projects and I don’t know how maintainers keep up with reviews.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Working on a react hook to interact with ActiveStorage direct uploads in Rails. github.com/cacheflow/us...
github.com
GitHub - cacheflow/useActiveStorageDirectUpload: A react hook to interact with active storage in Rails
A react hook to interact with active storage in Rails - cacheflow/useActiveStorageDirectUpload
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
It’s pretty dope. I only tried basic commands but I love the idea of using something like Claude to interact with Safari.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
With the help of ChatGPT I banged out this post on setting up signing keys on Github: I added visuals and assumed folks may forget some steps. medium.com/@thelextimes...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
def will do! ty
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
A few years ago I tried contributing to @yarnpkg.dev. My PR never got merged, but I learned a lot. Here's the story: medium.com/@thelextimes...
medium.com
How I failed to contribute to Yarn
Back in 2018, I wanted to understand how JavaScript tooling actually worked.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
I'd love to hangout with other senior devs, PMs and designers again so we can talk about the literal bulls*t we see in tech these days.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
I've released version 1.4.3 of react-use-is-online. I've updated the test suite and fixed connection state detection on non-chrome browsers like Edge, Safari and Firefox. If you find any bugs lmk! www.npmjs.com/package/reac...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
How do you prove to sites you're not an LLM? I keep getting these Cloudflare bot challenges and weird "verify your human" questions.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Getting ready to ask for help today.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Any dope open source projects out there used by the largest AI companies?
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Working on a posthog PR rn to ignore certain screens during autocapture. We used Posthog at a company I worked at and I’m glad I could open a PR. I hope this gets merged and I can continue contributing! github.com/PostHog/post...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Just released 1.4.0 of react-use-is-online. Need to fix connection detection on WebKit browsers. www.npmjs.com/package/reac...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Recommendations are broken across platforms. I think I’ve been profiled as a junior dev across event discovery platforms because I’m constantly shown newb events: medium.com/@thelextimes/w…
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
can't wait to try this out. thanks for putting me on fam
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Addressing feedback and putting up PRs in the city of brotherly love. Ain't sh*t change in these digital streets github.com/PostHog/post...
github.com
feat(react-native): allow ignoring specific screen names during autoc… by cacheflow · Pull Request #3996 · PostHog/posthog-js
Problem React Native developers using PostHog navigation autocapture need a way to prevent specific screens (such as tab containers (tabs), utility screens like +not-found, or sensitive views) from...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Getting cooked by an AI on GitHub. Cannot believe this bro.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Trying to get back into open source. github.com/PostHog/post...
github.com
Feature request: (React-Native) add allowlist/ignorelist option for screen autocapture · Issue #3702 · PostHog/posthog-js
Is your feature request related to a problem? Currently, the only way to control which screens are tracked when captureScreens: true is to use a before_send hook const TRACKED_SCREENS = new Set(['H...
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Threads has an issue medium.com/@thelextimes...
medium.com
The case of disappearing buttons on Threads
The same feature, two different behaviors, and what that might reveal about the app.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
My name is Lex. I've: - Shipped product to over 30 million users - Contributed to OS projects used by millions. Even Trump uses some of my code. Hate to say it lol. - Created over $60 million in value - Just got rate-limited by YC for applying to too many jobs This job market is wild.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Comparative Privilege A positional good whose value comes from relative advantage and functions as a protective buffer against risk or precarity.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Trying to get better at python. Been a rubyist for 10+ years. Contributed to my first python package. It’s the Firebase Cloud Messaging client in Python. github.com/olucurious/P...
github.com
GitHub - olucurious/PyFCM: Python client for FCM - Firebase Cloud Messaging (Android, iOS and Web)
Python client for FCM - Firebase Cloud Messaging (Android, iOS and Web) - olucurious/PyFCM
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Who are the most interesting companies in the AI space?
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Reposted by Lex
CherieAnne @cherieanne.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
My heart goes out to any aspiring dystopian fiction authors who keep having their ideas stolen by the Conservative Party
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
diapers are dope. if you're a nerd, you'll love this. worksinprogress.co/issue/engine...
worksinprogress.co
Engineering the disposable diaper - Works in Progress Magazine
Benjamin Spock told mothers in the mid-twentieth century to buy six dozen cloth diapers and a covered pail. Within a decade, both were obsolete.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
only 9 followers. we inside but we outside.
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Lex @thelextimes.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Is this thing on?
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