DHH (@dhh) — what they write about and why it works

Fable one-shotted a Rust rewrite of the TerminalTextEffects Python library in 11M tokens. Startup time went from 87ms to 2ms and rendering speed is up by 9.6x. Now zero dependencies and a 3mb single exec 🤯 t.co

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DHH@dhh

So obviously we both furiously signup for the fucking $25/month credit-check bullshit shakedown that is TransUnion. Maybe someone stole my wife’s identity? Even though we’ve verified there was nothing wrong previously. Guess what: HER CREDIT SCORE WAS HIGHER THAN MINE!!!

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DHH@dhh

Cloud marketing convinced a generation of programmers that the scariest thing in the world was to connect their own server to the internet. All so they could be sold and resold the same centralized dependencies at huge markups. t.co

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DHH@dhh

Five business books that lit a bulb 💡 - Blue Ocean Strategy: Build something novel. - Maverick: You can be different. - The Intelligent Investor: Fundamentals are eternal. - The Effective Executive: You’re wasting most moments. - Drive: How to keep going.

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DHH@dhh

Shocking difference between the 7b and 32b versions of DeekSeek R1 for programming. Asked to "build a simple ruby web app", the 7b model flunks and produces garbage. The 32b version nails it with options in both Sinatra and Rails. Can only imagine how good the full 671b hog is!

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DHH@dhh

Let’s no forget why this college admission scandal is a thing: Because so many American companies use a diploma from a brand-name university as a caste sorting system. This isn’t about “education”, it’s about gate-keeping the aristocrats.

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DHH@dhh

I think it's great that all the model providers are coming out with their own CLIs, but let's be honest, no dev is going to want to have five different CLIs installed. They're going to want to learn and use one tool with all the models. For me, that tool is OpenCode.

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DHH@dhh

And the best defense of all: THAT’S JUST HOW THE CREDIT INDUSTRY WORKS. Ehh, okay? How is that anything but the most damning charge upon Apple’s pitch with their card? Did the iPhone launch pledging to please carriers and the status quo as its modus operandi? No.

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DHH@dhh

Google is not a search engine, it’s an ad engine. You search to find stuff, they respond with a full page ad. This is so ludicrously user hostile that it’s only tenable when you operate a monopoly. Break. Them. Up.

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DHH@dhh

Found my new PC 😍. Specs on the AMD Max+ 395 chip is insane. CPU is a close match for a M4 Pro (3K/20K Geekbench 6), but it can be configured with an insane 128GB of shared RAM for less than $2,000?! That would cost $4,800 and require a Mac Studio. Will be a beast for local AI!

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DHH@dhh

The customer service experience is infuriating too. They’re quick to respond, but nobody is authorized to discuss the credit assessment process. No opportunity to present evidence. Just a “sorry, your wife is deemed to be 1/20th the credit worth you are, check again in 6 months!”

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DHH@dhh

Look, open-space offices may be necessary for some companies, if they can’t afford private offices. But don’t dress up such a compromise as “good collaboration”. Just apologize to workers for subjecting them, allow remote work to escape it, and commit to Library Rules within.

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DHH@dhh

Apple's loss in court is immediately opening up a whole new world for app developers. Entire business models were impossible under the old 30% regime. Look at this beautifully simply flow from Stripe! IAP might still have a place, but for many, taking payments on the web is 👌

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DHH@dhh

I wasn’t even pessimistic to expect this outcome, but here we are: @AppleCard just gave my wife the VIP bump to match my credit limit, but continued to be an utter fucking failure of a customer service experience. Let me explain...

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DHH@dhh

Apple exodus set to continue. This is the price of keeping a bean counter at the head for so long. Cook's legacy will not improve by dragging his own departure out any longer. Maybe he should do like Ballmer and buy a basketball team?

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DHH@dhh

The mid-life crisis gets an undeservedly bad rep. It's the first time many people face their own mortality, and accept with regret how they've squandered so much of life. It would have been better to have such a crisis earlier, but foolish to waste the opportunity none the less.

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DHH@dhh

This is the soft undermining of people’s sense of self. The algorithm might discriminate out of biased historical training data, faulty but uncorrectable inputs, programming errors, or malicious intent. You’ll never be able to know. t.co

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DHH@dhh

Great example of why you shouldn’t use abbreviations in code. Especially ones that can be so easily mistaken for another meaning! /universal and /device would have been clearer and hardly any more typing.

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DHH@dhh

I’ll go even more blunt: Any job where having kids is “terrible for your career” is a terrible place to work. If you’re making parents choose between advancing their career or being there for their kids, you fucking suck. Don’t do that. 40h/week is plenty. Make them count.

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DHH@dhh

If having kids is stunting your career or forcing you into 5 hours of sleep, work is doing you wrong. The world is full of companies that are supportive of parents and families. Where working 40h or less isn’t a liability or a failure.

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DHH@dhh

I love the models Anthropic are offering, but I seriously hope it's a mistake that they're blocking alternative harness providers, like @opencode, from working with their subscriptions. Seems very customer hostile. t.co

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DHH@dhh

It’s such a pleasure to be in the company of ⁦@martinfowler⁩’s Refactoring book again. Whenever you read it last, it’s time to read it again. And if you haven’t read it yet, please do before writing another line of code.

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DHH@dhh

I just hoped back on Kimi K2.7 for some work yesterday. Hadn't been using it since GPT 5.6 and Fable. But great reminder of just how good these open-weight models have gotten. For what I was doing, Kimi was faster and just as good. Excited for K3!

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DHH@dhh

Entrepreneurs who sleep more are more creative, better at evaluating new business opportunities, study finds. Amen! Nothing makes me stick to a tired model like, well, being tired! Wanna GET THAT MONEY? Then GET THAT SLEEP! A serving of 8h+ is 🏆 t.co

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DHH@dhh

Writing code for human understanding is a critical baseline, but it’s possible to strive beyond that. Writing code that’s beautiful. Eloquent. Even entertaining. Aesthetics matter. Utility, either for machines or humans, is too low of a bar.

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DHH@dhh

This is also a good one. Our apparent discrimination is a product of a proprietary algorithm. There will be no recourse, no accountability because any review of our biases and processes is an invasion of our business privileges. t.co

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DHH@dhh

Basecamp has been paying at the top 10% of San Francisco market rates for a while now (based on pay + bonus, but not stock options). That's been working great for a lot of roles, but now we've taken one step further and raised our min pay to $70K too. t.co

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DHH@dhh

The WhatsApp founder interview is fascinating. The regret is dripping. So yeah, you got rich, but you also sold the one promising rebel base to the empire. How does that feel? Unsurprisingly: Not great. t.co

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DHH@dhh

Instacart is using tips from customers to avoid paying workers a salary. One worker got paid 80 cents for 69 minutes of work because the customer tipped $10. The more you tip, the less Instacart pays. How on earth is this legal?! Also: WTF INSTACART. t.co

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DHH@dhh

Release candidate for Rails 6 is out! It includes Action Mailbox, Action Text, multi-db support, parallel testing, Webpacker-by-default, and so much more. Already running at @basecamp, @github, @shopify in production 🌟 t.co

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This is frustrating. We'd so much rather spend our money providing Basecamp for free for personal use than pay the Google tax to defend against predatory, VC-boosted ads squatting on our brand. *sigh*

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It doesn't take a data scientist to spot the fact that we launched Basecamp Personal yesterday 😂. Really happy to hear so many people are willing to give Basecamp a try for the personal or freelance projects ✌️❤️

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DHH@dhh

I've given Apple a lot of grief lately, but it brings me no pain to say that this might be the best deal I've ever seen on a laptop. PC laptops have still not caught up to the M1 on most metrics. Buying PA Semi was maybe the best tech acquisition of all time.

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DHH@dhh

This perverse obsession with keeping employees at work for the maximum number of hours per day is sick. This CEO doesn't so much need advice as they need therapy. Doesn't help that the top voted answer is "just give them a little stock", that trick works! t.co

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DHH@dhh

Most Americans would be so lucky as to have a EU-style “retirement” life. One where work stops after 40 hours, where growth isn’t uber alles, and where wealth isn’t monopolized by a tiny elite, and China isn’t used as a boogeyman to ramp up exploitation.

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DHH@dhh

I went to a specialist for a checkup on a thyroid issue here in Spain this week. It included a 45-minute consultation, an ultrasound done by the doctor in the office, and a battery of blood tests. Uninsured out-of-pocket cost: €240. What would that have cost in the US? 10x?

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DHH@dhh

“Then I started sleeping [10 hours a night] and, next thing you know, I hit 30 homers after that”. Sleep is a natural performance enhancing drug. Tragic how many people think they can get by on 7 hours or less. t.co

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DHH@dhh

I used to occasionally post pictures of our kids on the internet. I grew to regret doing so, and scrubbed them all off. Completely agree that we in the most literal sense "have no right". I'd urge parents who do post pictures of their kids to reconsider the price of those likes.

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DHH@dhh

I've been happily using DDG for months now. It's really quite good. And so is this pitch for why you should try it too. Surveillance capitalism is the internet taking a wrong turn. It's still possible to back up and get on the right course.

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DHH@dhh

Anchoring salary negotiations around what someone was paid previously, so you can get away with being as little as possible, is a deceptive, abusive, and corrosive practice. A culture of fair, equal pay for equal experience and responsibilities is worth far more.

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DHH@dhh

I continue working on Basecamp because it allows me to do several of my favorite things: Write Ruby code, share lessons/experiences, and provide a great work environment to others. Not because I JUST CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT TODOS, EVENTS, MESSAGES, PROJECT MANAGEMENT.

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DHH@dhh

If the Snapdragon X Elite is the real deal, Apple could legit be in real trouble with developers. By FAR the #1 reason I've heard from people who run MacBooks but want to get out of Apple's grip is battery life. And they're quoting 20+ hours. DON'T TEASE US, QUALCOMM!!

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DHH@dhh

I'm shocked that it's legal for Tesla to promote this "after savings" bullshit number that includes an arbitrary 6-year savings on gas number. Why not price in the value of existential bliss from driving an EV? Clearly worth another $10k, so really, it's just a $14K car!

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DHH@dhh

“If I could do it over again, I’d study less”, solid conclusion of a straight-A seeker. I intentionally flunked several courses in HS, put in minimum effort with others in college. I’d be outright skeptical of hiring anyone with a 4.0 GPA at Basecamp. t.co

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DHH@dhh

We are hiring a senior programmer to our security, infrastructure & performance team at Basecamp. Come help us ensure all our apps are around until the end of the internet. This post explains everything from salary to the actual work. t.co

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DHH@dhh

Apple seriously misjudged the risk to its brand by getting into the credit business. When you tell someone they're not eligible for credit, you're literally telling them they're "not worthy". That's going to suck in all cases, but when they're then also wrong, hell's fury comes.

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DHH@dhh

Predictim‘s black-box algorithm analyzes babysitters‘ social media accounts, reducing them to a single fit score. Beyond disgusting. Downright evil. Social media algorithms prod you to be the worst/fake you can be, hiring algorithms reject you for it. t.co

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DHH@dhh

There’s no way a welfare state like Denmark could afford to sponsor $200,000-per-student educations. So they don’t! They just focus on giving students a great education at 1/20th the price AND IT WORKS! People get fine educations & anxious aristocrats don’t need to bribe anyone.

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DHH@dhh

The Omarchy 4 branch is now 30,000 lines of new code. The majority of it was written by GPT5.5. It's been so, so good at QML. You still need to review, but there's just no way this scale of a conversion would be feasible without AI in a reasonable time. t.co

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DHH@dhh

I’ve been buying almost everything from Amazon for so long that I failed to realize how good other shopping sites have gotten. In the last few days, I’ve bought direct from Awair, eero, Sonos, Nordstrom, and Cotton Bureau. All experiences were great! #LifeOutsideAmazon

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DHH@dhh

It used to be a sign of pride for the boss not to be a harried, sleep-deprived mess of a human. Someone with the spare capacity to think and ponder. Now every waken moment has to be jam-packed with bullshit. The faster they’re running, the more important they seem. Fuck that.

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DHH@dhh

Hiring pro tip: When applying for a job posted online, don't scour the internet to find a phone number for the company, just so you can call them in advance of the application deadline to talk about your submission... On a Sunday 😬

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DHH@dhh

New iPad Pro within spitting distance of the fastest Mac laptop you can buy, even on multicore. Truly astounding work by the Apple chip team. Their rate of improvement must be slowing down soon, right?! If next year is like this again, supercomputers will out of work soon!

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DHH@dhh

Action Text is coming to Rails 6! Rich text editing and display by virtue of the Trix editor. It's never been so easy to get all the pieces, complete with image galleries and uploads, working in a web app. t.co

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DHH@dhh

Maybe if you weren’t so tired all the time, you’d have time to read a book. I strongly recommend Why We Sleep. The science on sleep is clear: Continuously being deprived will make you miserable and ultimately kill you. Watching the stock market at 6am won’t counter that.

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DHH@dhh

I know this is early, and political enthusiasm has died a thousand deaths for our exuberant optimism, but right now I’m willing to roll the dice on this one: Can we just fast forward to 2024 and see @Ocasio2018 sworn in for the top job? 🙏❤️

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DHH@dhh

It's pretty close to claiming that "the true price is just an opinion". That's some seriously galaxy-brain shit. Imagine price labels in the supermarket on fruit that discounted "amortized future health benefits". DAAAAD, this apple is actually A GIFT OF $3!!

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DHH@dhh

It reads like a fucking parody, but apparently no. This is @naval's new company. Aren't you excited to apply? Are you ready to "die inside" when a customer has a problem? To be scolded when you don't "get it the first time"? Be full of pain when "perfection" slips by?

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DHH@dhh

I love how once a decade the VC class comes to the epiphany that “actually, sustainable profits are good”, and then parade that insight around as if they’d solved some impenetrable theorem. Then as soon as the next wave of IPOs go pop it’s all “just kidding, GROWTH UBER ALLES!”

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DHH@dhh

Chat is like salt. A pinch does wonders for team cohesion, but more than that and you ruin it. Worse still, people become addicted, and don’t know how to stop, even though it’s killing their productivity (and sanity!).

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DHH@dhh

This is how it’s supposed to work! When your influence and impact grows, your obligations and responsibilities do too. An Uber running a 5-car MVP does not get or deserve the scrutiny of a $50-billon Uber. But SV has a tendency to go tribal and just think “they’re out to get us!”

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DHH@dhh

I'm not often ashamed of our work at @basecamp. But today is one such day. To be stuck in read-only mode for hours due to a failure to use bigint for our primary keys on every table is embarrassing. It's been the default in Rails since 5.1 🙈 t.co

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DHH@dhh

And, just like programming, if you’re building the same cookie cutter house over and over again, sure, it gets more predictable. But do anything custom? Yeah, it’ll take some trial and error. And it’ll be late. And it’ll be wrong for a while. Expect it!

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DHH@dhh

"Applying for a job is hard. Every time you don’t hear back, you can lose a tiny little something of yourself. So if you keep applying for unlikely-to-get jobs, you might eventually water yourself down until it’s a very thin cup of tea indeed." t.co

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DHH@dhh

Facebook may well be exceptionally nasty and it’s leadership particularly deceitful, but the whole enterprise is the natural conclusion to an ad-powered social network. Ever greater surveillance, hyper targeting, and engagement baiting is what the basic incentives demand.

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DHH@dhh

And of course, I didn’t actually pay that $10k as a student. The Danish state paid ME to attend university. Which meant that attending university without well-to-do parents or a crushing debt burden was possible. Basic societal investment in the education of the populace.

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DHH@dhh

Which of course is the conclusion of anyone who actually examines the data. Google used to be Stanford snobs until they ran the data. Conclusion: brand-name degree is not correlated with higher performance! t.co

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DHH@dhh

Venture capital is a pressure cooker. It’s neigh-on impossible to make it through that without getting your ethics boiled. The relentless drive for GROWTH UBER ALLES is the root of so much evil in tech. t.co

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DHH@dhh

Silicon Valley definition of "success" distilled: 1) Only monopolistic, exponential growth counts, 2) Be delusional, and let Musk be your guiding star, 3) Think "independently" (but not about this criteria of success), 7) Work yourself to death. t.co

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DHH@dhh

Apple ($1.18T) could buy Goldman Sachs ($77B) in an all-stock deal and still be worth a trillion dollars. Maybe then they could install some leadership that actually tries to apply the values that Apple espouse?

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DHH@dhh

"But I like relevant ads!" is a weird way of saying "I like that advertisers know where I live, what I like to eat, whether I'm pregnant, when I last went to Italy, which shitty shows I watch on TV, what creme I bought at CVS last, etc".

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DHH@dhh

Five novels I think about all the time - 1984: States crave control - The Trial: Bureaucracies eats people - The Stranger: Alienation is a vantage point - Animal Farm: Revolutions usually corrupt - Brave New World: Caste systems fence morality

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DHH@dhh

Google is slowly but surely choking the web. This is what monopoly power inevitably leads to. The noblest of founding intentions is no match for the imperative. Growth uber ales will eventually devour every last virtue until all that remains is darkness. t.co

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DHH@dhh

“If you don’t work harder, if you don’t work longer, THE COMMUNISTS WILL WIN” is such a cartoonishly exploitive pitch that you’d fail to suspend disbelief if it was a line in a bad movie. But this is just another day in Silicon Valley.

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DHH@dhh

But to choose a different path, you must first be aware that a different path exists. That you're even ALLOWED to walk that way. So that's a big part of the work: Giving the next generation of entrepreneurs permission to say fuck endless growth, fuck VC, fuck the unicorn mill.

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DHH@dhh

Hey, @tim_cook, why do you feel like Apple needs $21m in corporate welfare from the city of Austin? I'm a shareholder and I do not approve of this message. Apple doesn't need the loot. Be a better role model, please. t.co

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DHH@dhh

But what a great reminder to reminder to stay humble. I created the damn framework, and I still failed to heed such a basic warning delivered, for free, by our wonderful community. For two years. That's poor. And I'm embarrassed of myself 😢

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DHH@dhh

Five political/economics books that 🌅 🧠 - Origins of Political Order: Civilization = institutions - Political Order / Decay: Gridlock is state failure - Debt, First 5000 Years: Money != exchange - Capital In 21st Century: Who gets growth? - Wealth of Nations: Econ 101

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DHH@dhh

Safari's "Read Later" feature might as well pipe straight to trash. It's function is entirely psychological: I'm a good person because I am marking this interesting article to read later, even though I know I almost certainly won't, but hey, maybe, so that feels good 😂

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DHH@dhh

The ban on tracking and ads in games for kids can’t come soon enough. But @Apple, while you sort that out, can you at least ban games that sell No Ads upgrades and then still show ads? That’s outright fraud, and you’re sanctioning it by doing nothing. Also I want my $2.99 back!

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DHH@dhh

A common defense for venture capital is that “it’s just a tool! / Use it when you need it!”. But it’s more than that. It’s an ideology that speaks to what’s important, who is important, what success looks like, when it’s acceptable to screw over workers and customers.

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DHH@dhh

You’re a better leader when you’re calm and well rested. When you have the surplus of energy and patience to defuse situations rather than cause them. This may sound like an informercial but IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE CRAZY AT WORK!!

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DHH@dhh

“In one study of 24 employees, cognitive scores were 50% lower when the participants were exposed to 1,400ppm of CO2 compared with 550ppm during a working day”. Indoor air quality is finally getting attention it demands. Ventilate, people! t.co

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DHH@dhh

You got into technology because you liked computers and helping people use them better. Now you work for a defense contractor or your efforts are funded by the largest invasion of privacy the world has ever known. Drink up! 🥂

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DHH@dhh

“I’m really sorry I called you a pedo. You helped save those kids, and you deserve a medal, not libel. It’s not an excuse, but I haven’t been sleeping well lately. That Model 3 assembly concrete is HARD! Dreaming up mini-subs is my escape. SORRY” – A fanfic apology from Musk.

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DHH@dhh

Likewise, I don't mind seeing an ad for a new Toyota if I'm watching a show about cars on YouTube. That is not a violation of privacy! This is how the world of advertisement worked forever until very recently when targeted ads were invented.

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DHH@dhh

Working remotely takes some practice, but the majority of the lessons are a subset of HOW TO RUN ANY COMPANY WELL. Remote work is a bright flashlight in a dark room; it illuminates so much blind bullshit and ineffectiveness. Dare flip the switch. t.co

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DHH@dhh

So. Maybe at least a portion of the (justified) outrage over this college admissions scandal could be directed at the root cause: The caste system based on brand-name degrees perpetuated by American businesses.

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DHH@dhh

I ran out of free articles on @wired, and instead of just reaching instinctively for incognito mode or whatever other hack, I decided to check the price and was shocked to find it's only $5 for 6 months of access! And I could pay with Apple Pay. Sold!

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DHH@dhh

Wouldn’t it be great if all new drama series were rated on a scale of last-episode regret. Seems like the business has nailed the “intriguing first few episodes” phase, but virtually no one has figured out how to wrap up a season without getting lost in nonsense.

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DHH@dhh

This is exactly what happens when venture capital gets involved. Suddenly taking a 5% cut of hundreds of millions isn’t “sustainable”. Which is nonsense. Until you realize there’s $170m in VC sitting impatiently behind that word, demanding Patreon be worth billions.

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DHH@dhh

Sheesh. The font rendering alone may make this a short experiment. Crikey it's fugly. But I'm not letting the gut reaction dominate this. The whole point is to be a bit uncomfortable. #WindowsTheStoicChallenge

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DHH@dhh

Apple is underestimating the huge pain in the fucking ass it is to deal with Apple support. It's so painful that plenty of people would rather live with a shitty keyboard than dealing with the hassle of repairs, going without a computer, etc. This is Danger Zone territory.

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DHH@dhh

There are so many job openings at the moment. Why shouldn't employees be able to screen companies for stuff like "proper parental leave, sane vacation policies, small-to-mid size, is profitable, allows remote?" or any other concern they care about before applying?

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DHH@dhh

(That’s before we even get into the utter recklessness of driving to work while seriously sleep deprived. You’re risking your life and that of others. Would you drive home drunk? No. So don’t drive while seriously sleep deprived either.)

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DHH@dhh

I don't think we're going to reform most of the minds infected with a GROWTH UBER ALLES ideology. But a new generation is coming up. They see what's going on. They smell something isn't right. These are the people who need our support, guidance. It doesn't have to be like this!

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DHH@dhh

But at least plumbers, electricians, painters, and other trade people rarely go around moaning about “how young our field is” and “how little we get understand”. They just expect mistakes and continue working until they’re (mostly) fixed. That’s the model.

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DHH@dhh

It's not that WeWork invented the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea of open offices, but they did, for a brief moment, make it seem like the future of work and a $47B prospect to rent a seat in one. The least they can do is take it down with them. t.co

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DHH@dhh

Apple isn't Xerox. And clearly there are many people who care deeply about the product there. But Jobs describing the failure of Xerox, based on its monopoly lock-in, and how it rots away product sensibilities, should be a warning to Apple today. t.co

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DHH@dhh

While we're going over the crimes of Apple's computer choices lately, check this out: The new $1099 iMacs include a 5400rpm hard drive. Holy shit. That's ballsy. Shipping cripplingly slow hard drives in a $1099 machine is wow. t.co

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DHH@dhh

“We want every website, whether it’s e-commerce or anything to be powered by WordPress” is a nasty, monopolistic goal. Listening to Matt muse about 85% marketshare dreams is a real downer. But $300m is a down payment on monopoly dreams. t.co

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DHH@dhh

But it's also a fair warning to the future customers of whatever health device Apex is producing: With a culture like this, rest assured you're going to get a corresponding attitude towards privacy and ethics.

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DHH@dhh

So I completely support this petition for Apple to do right by the customers who got screwed over with by the butterfly design. Give them the working computer they paid for. Almost 40K signatures already! Let's boost this to the moon. t.co

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DHH@dhh

Pretty ballsy of Dropbox to claim that I'm getting an improved plan just because the storage ceiling is raised from 1 to 2TB – even though I only use 7% of the existing! – when it's really just a +20% price increase with no grandfathering.

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DHH@dhh

Spying on users has been normalized to the point that even TV makers hardly think twice about making it part of their business model. Because there has yet to be any commercial consequences. Please show them they’re wrong and skip that Visio TV next time.

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DHH@dhh

Instacart has raised $2 billion in vulture capital. Yet they still need to steal tips from workers to make it work? The true crime here though is WHERE ARE LEGISLATORS? If billion-dollar companies can rob delivery workers of tips with impunity, something is clearly broken.

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DHH@dhh

We've handed the manuscript to It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work over to copyediting. You can keep editing, refining, and pruning forever, but at some point you gotta ship. Let us help you find the calm in your company. t.co

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DHH@dhh

I love how vc twitter is all up in arms about me throwing jabs like "zombie capital", then can't get their hands down when @jason labels the regime “this system is perfect over the arc of history”. What’s more extreme?

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DHH@dhh

Gotta say that buying one was delightfully simple compared to the shitshow that is the Apple store these days. Maybe partly because I was the only customer in the store and there were four free sales people 😂. (It looked pretty sad placed right across from 🍎 in the mall).

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

“We just need another ethical Facebook!” is an understandable but ultimately wrong answer. Yes, Zuckerberg and Sandberg are uniquely depraved, but nobody should have the power or data that Facebook holds. Whether funded by ads or otherwise. Need a paradigm shift.

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

It reminds me of the shitty, condescending question women have to deal with all the time: Why don’t you smile more? Again, fuck you. Second, because clinching my teeth soothes my mental image of punching you in the face. Third, has anyone ever thought: oh yeah, you’re right 😁

Opens with a question

DHH@dhh

The most surprising part of Sandberg's defense of the root-cert spying program is that "only 5% of the victims were minors" was considered a strong argument by Facebook's PR team. "Sure, we abused the shit out of people, but don't worry, only 5% were kids!!!".

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

HODL but for a democratic society that is the opposite of every crypto miner and mercenary for themselves. Bitcoin is a profoundly pessimistic and dystopian project. A fantasy where all roads lead to Mad Max, except we still have enough power to spend it all on mining rigs.

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

But either way, this change is still huge. The bulk of the revenue for most developers comes from the US market. Just wild that Apple keeps fighting this losing battle, making developers lives more cumbersome, and disadvantaging users outside the US.

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

I mean just look at this shit!! I don’t fault companies for trying to market attentional self-defense products, but if your work environment can benefit from actual fucking blinders. Well. QUIT HORSING AROUND 😂😭😩☠️

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

Amen. Reaching for microservices is like writing convoluted code because a performance bottleneck demands it. It’s not that you WANT to devolve your code to please the performance alter, but that you accept that you must. So to do this without being forced to? Self-flagellation.

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

It’s heartwarming to receive so much positive feedback on these recent job postings because we truly do pour an incredible amount of effort into them. Usually weeks of debate, refinement, critique, and improvement behind every one ❤️

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

So next time you think: hey, I should get that on Amazon, just stop for a second. Find the maker’s own site. You’ll probably get much better info and with Apple Pay the checkout is a bliss (probably because the store runs on @Shopify 😂).

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

"Once we searched Google, but now Google searches us. Once we thought of digital services as free, but now surveillance capitalists think of us as free", @shoshanazuboff is on fire in this interview about her new book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. t.co

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

Musk builds an impractical mini-sub for the Thai rescue that nobody part of the mission wants, then accuses guy who was actually part of the rescue team of being a pedophile without a shred of proof because he’s mad nobody wanted his sub. 😦 t.co

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

When we keep advocating for the debt that open-source users supposedly owe to maintainers, the door is wide open for charlatans to prey on the guilt. Python is not the only community to have been hit with this, but what a sad story none the less. t.co

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

And Google of course does nothing. We filed for trademark protection three months ago, which they granted (so ads can't use our TM in their ad text), but they simply refuse to enforce their own policy. Of course. Because they make more money doing nothing!

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

Apple is rejecting an update to the @basecamp app in part because our app include a link to web-based help pages that have information about a paid version of Basecamp 😮. Nothing changed in this app update from how that's been since forever. Now a scramble to hide help links 👌

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

I suppose an ad like that is likely to attract people who are just as delusional as the authors of this job posting: "Of course I'm a 10x engineer willing to work for half the pay of a senior Valley engineer, because I'm going to make it up on these startup options!!".

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

This is a stain on GitHub that'll be hard to wash out. When Microsoft bought the company, I dared hope that they wouldn't fuck it up. I thought they'd might do that with ads. But this is worse. For shame, @natfriedman.

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

What really sinks this turd of a defense is using charity as an indulgence. If working with ICE and not knowing what they use GitHub to build is so wonderful and patriotic, why do you need to soothe your guilt with gifts? Incredible disappointing, yet so very Microsoft.

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

Jason raised our frustrations months ago. But that doesn't really change anything. Venture capital ethics mesh perfectly with Google monopoly ethics. Both will have more money and more time than anyone in small tech could ever hope to match. t.co

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

A far more pressing problem than “how do we beat China” is “how do we fix the US”. More growth is fine, but distributing the growth we’ve already had is where the focus should be now. There’s plenty of wealth. It’s just poorly distributed.

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

Mercedes pulls back on self-driving cars due to a “newfound realization that it will be some time before self-driving vehicles can be used in urban environments”. But sure, Musk is going to have them going safely door-to-door while you sleep by next year. t.co

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

Only in Silicon Valley can you brag about being almost profitable after 13 years while recording a $40m quarterly GAAP loss. Box's non-GAAP measure doesn't count such boring expenses like depreciation, amortization, deferred commissions, or stock comp 😂

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

So WeWork has dumped their founder and CEO, but unless the super-voting shares he holds are converted into regular shares, it's kinda all just for show? He'll still have complete control over the company, and could reinstate himself at any time. t.co

Opens with a question

DHH@dhh

That’s the point I keep making with Basecamp too. The enduring achievement was a sustainable, independent business allowing us to do our best work and sell it directly to happy customers. The material gravy beyond that accomplishment is so very far down the list.

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

At Basecamp we've been accosted by government organizations wishing to purchase our product, but demanding that we sign a similar agreement committing never to supporting BDS or the like. The answer: Best of luck finding another product that fits your needs, because no.

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

And would you look at this: The @wsj subscriber hostage team KNOWS THEIR TACTICS ARE ILLEGAL IN CALIFORNIA, BUT JUST TAUNTS EVERYONE ELSE WITH THEIR LACK OF PROTECTION. How utterly fucked up is this 🤯

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

“But this is all semantic tap-dancing, meant to distract from the core problem: Instacart & DoorDash, two Silicon Valley giants that could afford to pay workers a fair wage, have figured out a clever way to use customer tips to lower their labor expenses” t.co

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

The charge of being “not a team player” because you don’t want to partake in the stupidity of overwork or exhaustion games is so toxic. Hope @migueldeicaza can help spread his team’s sentiments to the rest of Microsoft. If you work there, have you felt pressured to 40h+?

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

Holding a living wage as a hostage under the magnificent grace of a customer’s whim is so royalist fucking bullshit. What if we only started paying doctors or lawyers or programmers if they “truly delight us; go above and beyond in service”. Fuck that.

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

Basecamp isn't hiring very often, so rather than asking interested candidates to refresh an empty page for months (or years!), we thought why not just tell people who'd like to know when there's something to know? Sign up for the open positions email list. t.co

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

“Companies bought by private equity are 10x more likely than comparable companies to go bankrupt. The goal in PE isn’t to create or to make a company more efficient, it is to find legal loopholes that allow organizers of the fund to maximize their return” t.co

Opens with a number

DHH@dhh

Elon: Fuck it. Just close all the stores. BOOM *drops mic named genius* Staff: But what about... Elon: Just Do It! ... Elon: What?! We have $1.6b in long term leases? Why didn’t anyone risk getting fired telling me that before I decreed the closures?! t.co

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

We reviewed 2,200 applications for the two open positions in customer service last we had openings. That was hard work, but oh so worth it. Outsourcing that process to an algorithm would have erased all their humanity. That’s not HR. t.co

Opens with a number

DHH@dhh

This is what's so sad about the outcome of many venture capital deals. Meetup was profitable, but insufficiently so for the VCs, so a sale to WeWork was arranged. Now it's going down the tube along the rest of WeWork with desperate, extractive pricing. Could Zebras save it?

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

“The biggest complaint most developers have with Stadia is the fear that Google is just going to cancel it”, what? Google cancel a service that might reach popularity but not hyper growth??! 😂 #RipGoogleReader #RipEveryGoogleMessagingAppEver t.co

Opens with a question

DHH@dhh

If we break our back giving too much away for free, then at least it will have gone to a good cause! The world desperately needs alternatives to Big Tech and VC-funded unicorns. It’s not a level playing field, but where still in the game, twenty years after starting ✌️❤️.

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

It's not just enough to tell users to use password managers, turn on 2FA, and then wash your hands of the inevitable consequences when many don't. Today we took a big step for security at @basecamp by accepted what WE can do to deal with other's breaches. t.co

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

“Work harder and longer so the same tiny elite of connected entrepreneurs and financiers can continue to reap the lion’s share of that growth. You will get the crumbs! Aren’t we merciful? Now hate and fear that enemy we designated. It’s you or them!!!”

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

Allowing work to happen at work during normal work hours is the cornerstone of how we get so much done at Basecamp. How we can get by with 50-some employees while others need 3-5x that to service the same number of customers. It’s a productivity secret hiding in plain sight.

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

Sinclair’s principle: It’s difficult for a tech worker to understand something, when their stock options depend on them not understanding it. Facebook is bad for the world. The company’s dropping stock price is finally making this clear to its employees too.

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

The US has already seen tremendous growth in the past three decades. But just about all of it went to a tiny sliver of society that didn’t need any more wealth to begin with. The funny thing is the US would do well to let some collective/communist ideas “win” 😂

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

And another one: “You are highly accomplished, but your interview on CNBC just now struck me as objectionable in its tone and manner.” Thank you, good sir! Now we must joust!

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

Tragic. Reddit had that spark of independent hope for so long. Now they’ll surely be doubling down on the same extractive targeted-ads bullshit that’s haunting every other VC-fueled media company. @alexisohanian, you let this one get away 😢

Opens with an observation

DHH@dhh

It’s also a cautionary tale for sleep deprivation, mindless overwork, delusions of The Mission, petty management, hockey-stick growth pressures, running-fast-and-dangerously-deceiving-customers, and so many more golden nuggets of Silicon Valley lore.

Opens with an observation

Every post of theirs in the library

DHH

What they write about

How they open

Every post of theirs in the library