The title of this week’s edition is from the first Read in the list today. Good reminder of what really matters, though I’d argue it matters in any era. Also a few maker links this week - guess what I’ve been planning for my ever-fleeting downtime?

Reads

  • De-Bossification: Something about this piece resonated with me. I’ve never been super-focused on title or intimidation as a way to lead. Mostly just my personality, but I also believe it’s helped that I’ve had so much time at startups in between big-corp stints. Startups are centering because you have to build, you have to push yourself and everyone around you to keep learning, keep incorporating external feedback (customers, advisors, investors), and dive into hard problems.
  • A Tale of Two Sports: A question all Web3-based startups need to deal with: what’s on chain, what’s not, and how to make that make sense to users and the business model. Sorare is growing, doing really well, and has a very active marketplace. The metrics that seem to matter are traditional product & business metrics, not floor price or whatever. Imagine that. 🙃
  • Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation: I used to orienteer as a high school student. It was amazing to just get off trail and race with just a map and a compass (and a buddy, usually). I was also the navigator for my family’s road trips growing up. Yet, I traveled to LA for several years regularly, and I still don’t actually know the name of any major non-highway roads. It took doing an old school “explore the map” session or two (using Apple Maps, though, not paper), to mentally model it out. I tried to get my son to buy a paper map when we were up in Lake Placid, for the same reason. (he wasn’t interested) Comment thread on HN full of interesting little tidbits and stories.
  • AWS DeepRacer: This is old, but came up as we were talking about coding-based team games. If you haven’t looked at this before, worth trying. Can simulate things without needing to buy a car. I never did get around to building the full size track, so the car just sits on a shelf as a cool knicknack in my house. 😬
  • New Jailbreak Code for John Deere Is Here to “Liberate the Tractors”: Software is everywhere, DRM is following it, and the right-to-repair feels different when it’s a piece of equipment your entire business relies on.
  • A Dad Took Photos of His Naked Toddler for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal.: I’m generally not super-opposed to this sort of scanning, but this article changed my mind. I realized this scenario was a possibility, of course - my wife and I actually faced a similar scenario with my daughter during the pandemic and chose to avoid taking photos. The fact that Google isn’t reinstating these accounts, and seemingly has concluded they’re in the right on that is really disturbing. Good read.

Watches & Listens

  • How Video Game Economies are Designed: We’re building a video game at work, if you didn’t know, and recently we were reviewing the plan for the game economy and the Game Maker’s Toolkit channel came up. This episode is great, covers the basics really well. My son got sucked in as I watched at my desk, both to see the game play footage they used, but also because the problems (Bovine Defense Force Initiative!) were super interesting.

Code & Tools

Maker & Home Automation

  • 1U server rack mount … for Raspberry Pis: Really simple build, love it. I’ve been debating getting a small rack for my basement to house a few things. I have a lot of Raspberry Pis in my house now doing various chores, and this might tip me over the edge to buying one.
  • Bottle cap for watering plants: A simple idea with a really clever printable solution. Thoughtful about supports, etc.
  • A neat home automation closet setup: If i don’t do the rack, lots of inspiration from this guy’s little mounted solution for his HA server and related hardware.