Twin Cities IndieWeb - BlogFlock

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2025-11-07T16:09:01.000Z

Tesla shareholders approve $1 trillion pay package for Musk | CNN Business

A counter example to this.

Started in 2003 as an electric vehicle company. Decided it also was a clean energy company. Now wants to be a robot company. Also, a personal bank for Elon.

I give it less than a decade.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2025-11-07T16:01:39.000Z

Goodbye to the Farmer’s Almanac (1818-2026) – Boing Boing

Talking about 100 year old things still being around… Until they’re not.

What a loss!

Note: I actually began work on one. I had a Field Note I began as a draft of it (was meant to be that size). Maybe a time to revisit that idea.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2025-11-07T15:55:26.000Z

Examples of this:

IBM. Started in 1911 making adding machines for businesses. Still doing it.
Ford. Started in 1903 making automobiles. Still doing it.
Coca-Cola. Started in 1892 making soda. Still doing it.

If you’d invested a thousand in any at the start, you’d be a millionare today.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2025-11-07T15:41:37.000Z

Investing 101: Before investing in any company, ask yourself, “Will this company still be around for my grandchildren? If so, what product or service will they be providing?”

If the answer is not some form of “Pretty much the same thing as they do now.” Take your money elsewhere.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2025-11-06T20:32:30.000Z

POAP 7487921 at Things 4 Good 2025 Candle Fundraiser.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2025-11-06T16:07:15.000Z

Be open to finding out what makes another person tick. Work especially hard at this in times where you may have differences or are told by others to avoid someone. Find out why.

You will likely be pleasantly surprised as to where it leads.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2025-11-06T15:05:51.000Z

As of last night, Beatrix has applied to 10 colleges. In no particular order:

Sarah Lawrence
St. Olaf
SUNY Geneseo
Drew
Gettysburg
Connecticut College
Dickinson
Union
Lake Forest
Hartwick

She’ll complete her final two this weekend…

Wesleyan
Vassar

Then, the waiting begins.

Utah in hiking selfies - Jim Bernard

2025-11-06T03:28:27.000Z

Was all over Utah in October hiking and hanging out in fabulous locations:

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2025-11-05T12:59:18.000Z

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2025-11-05T04:17:34.000Z

The word of the day is: Shellacking!

I hope some lessons were learned tonight.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2025-11-04T13:31:37.000Z

Reminder: The best Plan A starts with having a Plan B.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2025-11-04T05:03:36.000Z

Check out how Garrick van Buren uses a Calendar in 2025

Calendars are for Commitments or How I Use a Calendar in 2025 - Garrick van Buren

2025-11-04T00:01:57.000Z

Patrick reminded us a decade ago that Everything Happens in Time, said another way: “everything happens at a time – whether deliberate or not.”

It’s been three and a half years since I wrote about my ever evolving calendaring practice. Everything I wrote about in 2022 is still true. The biggest change has been in that time is my heavy use of cal.com as a scheduling service for conversations with clients, prospects, customers of clients, friends, everyone and everything.

Heavily using a scheduling service like Cal.com is great, but I’ve found it requires a couple of non-obvious changes to my calendaring practice.

My commitments are now split across 2 calendars; “Committed” and “Tentative”. As I described in 2022, all my hard commitments – my morning run, prep & next steps for client meetings, travel time to & from in-person meetings, fixed personal commitments – whether to myself or others goes, into “Committed”. Everything else goes into “Tentative”. Cal.com integrates with “Committed”. Yes, this means stuff on “Tentative” may get over-ridden – and that’s OK. If there’s nothing on “Committed”, I’m not wondering how to make the best use of the new found time, I’ve got a plan. There’s probably a cleaner way to solve this, but at this point, it’s working fine.
Some people prefer I declare the date & time. So, if only to keep things moving, I’ve needed to create an Event Type within Cal.com for the times where I’m handle the scheduling. By scheduling it myself – rather than creating a normal calendar event and inviting the person – I still get Cal.com’s auto-population of a video conferencing URL, reminders the day before, and a rescheduling link.

I have 3 standard durations; 30min, 45min, 60min. At a certain level of clarity, every conversation can fit within a 30min or 45min block.

The great thing about Cal.com (and other scheduling tools) is setting a minimum time between bookings, I set it at 15min, and I’ve found it so helpful that I now even space my own commitments by 15min.

6 — 7 Mile Hike - Jamie Thingelstad

2025-11-03T01:16:13.000Z

Tammy and I hopped in the car for Lebanon Hills this afternoon to get out in the woods and hike a bit. Tammy always finds it a touch annoying that I want to have a route planned out and know what trails we are taking. She would rather just start walking and see where the path takes us. Today, we did it her way and just started walking. Turn left here, right there.

About 3 miles in I wasn’t really sure which way we were going and I will admit that I tried to make extra long glances at the trail maps as we passed them. But I stayed true to the task and just followed wherever Tammy was leading us. The trails seemed familiar.

After a while we got on some trails that we both thought we had never been on. There was also long stretches with no intersecting trails which isn’t common in Lebanon Hills. After what seemed like a mile we saw a parking lot and another trail map, but it wasn’t our parking lot.

Somehow with our random turns we had navigated ourselves to the completely opposite side of the park at a different parking lot. We were 4.5 miles in and I admit to considering for a moment getting a Lyft to take us to our car, but it was a nice day and off we went to return to the other side of the park.

Weekly Thing 331 / RFC, Security, Tokens - Weekly Thing

2025-11-02T12:00:00.000Z

Good morning! ☕️

At this point you might start thinking that I’m now sending these emails every other week. Nope… just had another busy weekend and wasn't able to get everything together in time. So here I am again with two weeks worth of links.

We are enjoying a lovely extended fall here in Minnesota. It is very odd to still have so many leaves on trees this late in the season. It makes for lovely walks though.

I hope you have a great weekend and see you next week! 😉

Maple tree giving us a great show of Fall colors. 🍁

October 18, 2025
Cannon Lake, MN

Notable

Claude Skills: Customize AI for your workflows Anthropic

These new "skills" for Claude create a whole new way to extend the capabilities of an LLM.

Skills are:

Composable: Skills stack together. Claude automatically identifies which skills are needed and coordinates their use.

Portable: Skills use the same format everywhere. Build once, use across Claude apps, Claude Code, and API.

Efficient: Only loads what's needed, when it's needed.

Powerful: Skills can include executable code for tasks where traditional programming is more reliable than token generation.

Think of Skills as custom onboarding materials that let you package expertise, making Claude a specialist on what matters most to you.

First with MCP, and now with Skills, we can create solutions that mix the AI non-deterministic solutions with the traditional software solutions. Simon Willison says they are are awesome, maybe a bigger deal than MCP which is saying a lot.

ChatGPT Atlas

I've spent some time playing with ChatGPT Atlas and it is pretty wild. It is notable to me that it blends Memory in with ChatGPT itself, so right out of the gate Atlas is able to contextualize the web for me with what it knows of me from my previous interactions with ChatGPT. I’m still getting used to what I can do having ChatGPT right in the web but my early tests were both compelling and wrong. I asked it to count things on web pages and it didn’t do a great job. But when I asked it to do research based on what I had been browsing it was phenomenal.

Scripts I wrote that I use all the time

I love this collection that Hahn has put together and shared with the world. He has identified a bunch of use cases I have never even considered. You can also read this just to get a feel for how customizable Unix command lines are. You really can create your own tooling to make it do exactly what you want to do.

Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region

On Monday, Oct 20, AWS had a massive failure that took many services across the Internet offline. The core issue was a failure in DNS automation.

Many of the largest AWS services rely extensively on DNS to provide seamless scale, fault isolation and recovery, low latency, and locality. Services like DynamoDB maintain hundreds of thousands of DNS records to operate a very large heterogeneous fleet of load balancers in each Region. Automation is crucial to ensuring that these DNS records are updated frequently to add additional capacity as it becomes available, to correctly handle hardware failures, and to efficiently distribute traffic to optimize customers' experience. […] The root cause of this issue was a latent race condition in the DynamoDB DNS management system that resulted in an incorrect empty DNS record for the service's regional endpoint (dynamodb.us-east-1.amazonaws.com) that the automation failed to repair.

Without DNS no system knows how to find any other systems. Additionally AWS automation for many other services relies on DynamoDB. This was a particularly bad failure state.

Measuring Engineering Productivity - Off By One

The "measuring" in the title here is misleading since it really isn't about quantification. I'd say this is "managing" productivity and is spot on with what I've seen nearly all high performing teams do. There is a cadence and structure to engineering operations and this captures it well.

RFCs: Blueprints of the Internet | Broadcast

It has been a long-time since I've thought about RFCs but this article brought the memory back. RFC, or request for comments", were documents shared online to help form consensus and input on how protocols should work. They are what the Internet Engineering Taskforce create. TCP, IP, UDP, SMTP, HTTP, DNS — these were all created via RFC. I linked every one of those examples to their actually RFC. I love that the pages are simple text files. Every email you have ever received, every web page you have ever visited, every interaction you have ever had on your phone with some service works only because these RFCs exist.

I wish we still had this in our culture. Imagine if there was an active RFC process for Agents or MCP. I love that there is an RFC 8700 - Fifty Years of RFCs .

Agents 2.0: From Shallow Loops to Deep Agents

Agent "architecture" is a quickly moving topic and the state of the art is changing quick, but this approach to making more complex agents is a good example.

Moving from Shallow Agents to Deep Agents (Agent 1.0 to Agent 2.0) isn't just about connecting an LLM to more tools. It is a shift from reactive loops to proactive architecture. It is about better engineering around the model.

Implementing explicit planning, hierarchical delegation via sub-agents, and persistent memory, allow us to control the context and by controlling the context, we control the complexity, unlocking the ability to solve problems that take hours or days, not just seconds.

This space will see a ton of experimentation.

Roc Camera

It used to be hard to make fake images and now anybody can make images that are impossible to prove if they are real or fake. This camera is using a combination of hardware and software to create images that are proven to be real.

By combining attested sensor data, zero-knowledge proofs, and a tamper-proof environment, we've built Roc Camera to capture verifiably real photos.

A lot of cryptography work being done in here. This camera seems like a project not a product but I think it is cool to see the approach. Adobe and a bunch of existing companies are working on C2PA which is intended to solve this same problem and solves the whole workflow through image editing as well.

Why I code as a CTO

I get asked this question from time to time and I generally say no, a CTO should not be for their job. There is a lot more nuance to that question though for the folks that are really in it. My more specific answer is assuming you have a technology team that is more than a dozen or so people, then no, your CTO should not be taking sprint points. Notice I didn’t say coding, I said taking sprint points. This article was a good read because the author essentially highlights that he focuses on coding tasks that are not sprint points. He's working around the periphery of the code or on other efforts entirely.

Perhaps a better way to approach this whole question is to say Should CTOs practice their craft? The answer to that is a 100% yes, and in fact isn't really optional. I can’t imagine how a CTO could drive an AI strategy without using it deeply. Your craft is critical to leading. Yes, you should do that. And if your particular craft is coding, then you should do that in some capacity that doesn't mess up your team, like taking sprint points would.

toon: 🎒 Token-Oriented Object Notation – JSON for LLMs at half the token cost

Developers everywhere use JSON as the default way of handing data around including to LLMs. If you want proof of that take a look at the APIs for LLMs where you will find API methods to force the return message from the LLM to be JSON. This project was born out of a desire to be efficient with tokens and realized that you could format the data using a different style and get equally good results to JSON with approximately a 50% reduction in token consumption. Super interesting and for projects at scale could be a big deal.

More friends, more division: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

I’m a big believer in Dunbar's number and I think it shows up all over the place in society. I particularly think the intersection of social media and the limits suggested by Dunbar's number are something we've ignored to our detriment.

This article caught my eye in a big way because it is talking about similar concepts — count of friends in certain levels. It suggests that our "close friends" number has risen, and that changes dynamics in notable ways.

Tolerance plays a central role. "If I have two friends, I do everything I can to keep them--I am very tolerant towards them. But if I have five and things become difficult with one of them, it's easier to end that friendship because I still have 'backups.' I no longer need to be as tolerant," explains Thurner.

Super interesting theory.

Easy 6502

Most developers work at very high layers of abstraction built on frameworks and APIs that are themselves already abstract. I often comment that most Python developers have no idea what is happening in memory when they use a Dictionary. One way to go at that is to gain an appreciation for how the CPU is really working by doing some Assembly code. This is a great way to learn about it right in the browser.

Claude Code: What It Is, How It's Different, and Why Non-Technical People Should Use It

This is a wonderful article that goes through in detail a complicated analysis and shows how you can use Claude Code to bring AI to the task. I've used Claude Code many times but only for programming efforts and looking at source code repositories. This article shows a completely novel way to use Claude Code for a project, not programming, and how you can build extra powers into that project. Torres is keeping this simple and approachable so she doesn't extend that doing the work the way she describes also has many other versions like sharing and version control.

Anyway, if you are not a programming but curious to use Claude Code for a more complex analysis this is a great approach.

Journal

Oct 18, 2025 at 7:38 AM

Writing blog posts backdated a couple of days to when the thing actually happened is the most extreme form of not writing for the timeline. It is a gift to my future self when scanning my on this day page to have things show up in the right spots.

Oct 18, 2025 at 9:00 AM

I’ve been using a Libre 3 Plus continuous glucose monitor and paying more attention to the specific foods that cause blood sugar spikes for me. By making tweaks to what I’m eating, when, and the order of foods I’ve lowered by baseline from 90 to closer to 70 with less spikes.

Oct 18, 2025 at 4:22 PM

Driveway markers are in. Let it snow! 😊

Oct 18, 2025 at 5:49 PM

Tammy led the way while we all helped and the shed is in better shape than it ever has been! I didn't get a before picture -- but you could not see any of the floor before.

Oct 18, 2025 at 5:49 PM

Triple smash burgers tonight! 🍔

Oct 25, 2025 at 3:32 PM

Figured out some support for these double wicks in the XL candles.

Oct 25, 2025 at 3:32 PM

Started with 8 gallons of wax and 60 candles later…

Oct 26, 2025 at 1:58 PM

Making Things 4 Good candles!

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Briefly

🎁 Gift article. Article about one of our favorite musicians as she gets ready to release a new album this week. See also list of Brandi Carlile shows. → Brandi Carlile Climbed Music’s Peak. Then She Had to Start Over. - The New York Times

This is a smart move by Google to bring their market leadership in Maps to Gemini and open up a whole bunch of use cases that could be created with that rich dataset. Question is will this MCP-like tool capability be made available to any other models? Hmmm… → Grounding for Google Maps now available in the Gemini API

I’m an F1 TV Premium subscriber and think it is great. Early read on this is that we will still have all those capabilities. I’m wondering if I may get to watch the driver view from my Vision Pro next year? 🤩 → Apple is the exclusive new broadcast partner for Formula 1® in the U.S. - Apple

Using the blockchain to store immutable assets to be distributed via malware is innovative and probably highly effective. → North Korean Hackers Use Blockchain to Hide Crypto-Stealing Malware | eSecurity Planet

Why in the world would you send data back and forth between satellites unencrypted? This seems bonkers to me. → 🛰️ SATCOM Security

Non-linear gauge to drive the outcome that is best. Delightful example. → When design drives behavior

I highlighted Sky in Weekly Thing 321. Their product was gobbled up by OpenAI before it was even launched. → OpenAI acquires Software Applications Incorporated, maker of Sky | OpenAI

New feature makes a ton of sense and opens up some more interesitng AI use cases for enterprises. This kind of capability is for sure the direction we will go with AI in companies, and how you'll get to a point where all meetings and interactions get recorded so that data doesn't leak out and lost. → Work smarter with your company knowledge in ChatGPT | OpenAI

Make a server in your basement feel like it is a robust platform that you can easily push projects to. Very cool! → Disco - Self-hosting that doesn't feel like self-hosting

Cool collection of space-related logos. → Space Exploration Logo Archive

e-bike's are generally pretty awesome and they just keep getting better. This take from Rivian breaks some assumptions — notably the pedals aren't even connected to the drivetrain! → Rivian’s Also e-bike is like nothing you’ve ever seen before | The Verge

This looks like a fun game. It reminds me of the early days of SimCity before it was layered with so many features (enshittified!) that it became stupid and overly complex. Building some subways could be a really fun simulation game. → Subway Builder

I think Apple should stop anything and everything they do with advertising. They aren't any good at it and it is completely damaging to their brand. Just stop. ✋ → Daring Fireball: Gurman Reports That Apple Is Preparing to Sell Ads in Maps Starting in 2026

Lovely article that is super fun about how your computer actually gets itself running. Some stuff in here I had never thought of myself — like what happens before the BIOS itself is actually loaded. I dig these kind of walk throughs. → The Linux Boot Process: From Power Button to Kernel | 0xkato

Hosted option for storing bookmarks. Every link you read in the Weekly Thing I manage using Pinboard which is a similar service. This one has a lot of features I wouldn't need but some may like. → Linkwarden - Bookmarks, Evolved

I could bang on for days about how much I love RSS and algorithm-free feed readers. Here is yet another open source and self-hosted option. I love seeing continued diversity in this ecosystem. → srssly: Minimalistic RSS server and ui

A bunch of different tools to do things with maps. → GeoUtil — Free Online Map & Geography Tools

Simple and pretty easy to read way to filter through JSON data. → JSON Query - a small, flexible, and expandable JSON query language

One of the leading local SaaS companies goes private. → Francisco Partners to buy Jamf in $2.2 billion take-private deal | Reuters

A haiku to leave you with…

Tokens cut in half,
JSON's light for LLM—
Savings in each byte. 💡

Would you like to discuss the topics in the Weekly Thing further? Check out the Weekly Thing on Reddit. 👋

Want to share this issue with others? The link is…

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Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2025-11-01T20:33:23.000Z

Reviewing in order to make sure I finish strong in the remaining two months of the year.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2025-11-01T19:46:28.000Z

Making more candles for the Things 4 Good Candle Fundraiser for next week! I got the labels a little faster so we can put those on before pouring making it a bit more efficient. ⏱️

No Socials November - Barry Hess

2025-11-01T15:55:23.000Z

November seems to be a ripe month for challenges. Some people grow facial hair. Some people write many words daily hoping to come out with a novel on the other side. I’m sure there are five other such efforts that I’m not aware of.

For me, I’m going to continue my push away from social networks. I’ve logged out of all personal accounts, set my YouTube to stop suggesting to me via algorithm, and even found myself logged out of Reddit yesterday. I’m set to have a no socials November!

Maybe some of you reading my blog are also finding yourself overly pulled by the lure of social networking and tempted to take a break? Perhaps join me and see how it feels? Log out, delete the apps from your phone, and start the challenging process of breaking that muscle memory today. I believe in a week you’ll feel pretty good about the decision.

No pressure to stay off socials after November is over. You may decide you want to go back to your same relationship with social networking in December. You may decide you want to go back, but differently. You may decide you want to stay away.

I might try to blog more. I might not. We’ll see! If you’d like to try blogging as an alternative, I recommend my good friend, Pika. In solidarity with #nosocialsnovember, there’s even a NOSOCIALSNOVEMBER coupon code for 15% off your first year of the service.

If you have any thoughts to share about stepping away from socials, email me via the link below. And if you’re blogging, let me know! I’d love to follow what you’re writing.

Reply by email

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2025-10-31T21:21:12.000Z

I know it is anecdotal but I’m stymied by the number of people – mainly men in their 30s 40s and 50s are having or dying from heart attacks post pandemic is deeply unsettling. Another one today which follows another just a couple of days ago.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2025-10-31T15:31:08.000Z

An important reminder from Manton Reece. Everyone is going through something.