I think talent is probably overrated.

Talent is fixed mindset. You’re born with it, it’s in your genes, it’s a gift.

Practice is growth mindset. Anyone can learn, put in the work, practice hard, and get better. It takes drive, and some people start out with advantages, but talent isn’t required.

Talent exists, sure. Some people are naturals. But we overestimate its impact. I think much of what we see as talent is actually motivation. When you want something so much that you work day and night at it, that’s hugely powerful, more than anything in your genes. (And maybe that is in your genes!)

Whenever I need to optimize and I think I know where to start, I’m wrong. Not always, but close enough.

Measure first. Then optimize. Every time.

(background)

Japanese proverb: 二兎を追う者は一兎をも得ず

(“He who chases after two rabbits will catch neither.”)

Hi all! Time for another regular (ish) Bridgy Fed status update, with big news: we’re bridging web sites to Bluesky!

We’ve supported this on the fediverse for a while, and we’re now doing it for Bluesky too. You can use Bridgy Fed to automatically generate a Bluesky presence for your web site, and you can follow any site that has microformats2 or an RSS or Atom feed. Bridgy Fed extracts profile info, converts blog posts to Bluesky posts, etc.

As examples, check out Nature and Electrek. To get started, enter a web site here.

Beyond that, lots more happened over the last few weeks: Continue reading →

Counted tests just now while working on Bridgy Fed, it currently has 814. Expanding to include the whole stack, including granary, arroba, lexrpc, etc, there are 2669 total. (Nice.)

Bridgy Fed’s bridging has been down some today. Apologies, all! I’m on vacation with limited access right now, so the downtime has been longer than it would be otherwise. I’m working on it as best I can. Not sure if it will be back up soon or tomorrow, but I’ll keep you posted.

It’s been a month since the last Bridgy Fed status update, so it’s time for a new one! I’ve spent a lot of time over the last month on user-visible improvements and bug fixes, notably more complex post types and links, as well as underlying infrastructure. Details below. Continue reading →

Finally got around to reading Geoff Huston’s comprehensive, heartbreaking eulogy for DNSSEC. He takes the thought-provoking position that TLS has largely subsumed the need for DNSSEC – not perfectly, and with a somewhat different threat model, but still. Great networking neckbeard reading, as always.

My daughter just informed me that my name is now Carl. 🤔