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WPWeekly Episode 361 – Introduction to the IndieWeb With David Shanske

This should be a really interesting listen about getting started with the IndieWeb with David, I'd recommend it.

But in an even cooler turn of events, it was very cool to see that my article Why I Have a Website and You Should Too ( https://www.jvt.me/posts/2019/07/22/why-website/ ) discussed at roughly 39:00.

Recommended read: WPWeekly Episode 361 – Introduction to the IndieWeb With David Shanske https://wptavern.com/wpweekly-episode-361-introduction-to-the-indieweb-with-david-shanske

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Don’t Put Your Work Email on Your Personal Phone

This is a really interest post about the dangers of installing work apps (such as email) on your personal device. This is something I've spent a lot of effort avoiding in the last couple of jobs, as well as going out of my way to not use any personal services (i.e. social media, email) on my work devices, as there is most likely traffic inspection or they are Man-in-the-Middle'ing the traffic, and will therefore be able to glean passwords. Although this seems paranoid, I feel it's a good mindset to have.

This is especially useful because it has a great way of enforcing the separation between home and work. However, there are still ways that this can break down - for instance, I have a work phone which is provided so I can be out of hours on call. However, I have things like email and Slack which allow me to use it throughout the day and reply to messages when I'm not necessarily with my laptop. But that's an issue because that phone goes home with me, even when I'm not on call. I'll find I'm catching up on work on the bus on the way to work, as well as keep in the mindset of work when I'm physically out of the building.

This makes it quite difficult because I'm not really switching off, even though I've said above that I'm trying to keep work and home separate. So what I've been doing for the last few months is leave my work phone at work (as long as I'm not on call!) which means if I've left the office, I'm no longer able to action anything, even if I think about it.

Recommended read: Don’t Put Your Work Email on Your Personal Phone https://onezero.medium.com/dont-put-your-work-email-on-your-personal-phone-ef7fef956c2f

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Manual Work is a Bug

This is another interesting article about automation, and how it slowly incurs time costs by waiting for the right time to properly tackle the automation, rather than piece-by-piece.

Recommended read: Manual Work is a Bug https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3197520

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Do-nothing scripting: the key to gradual automation

This is a really interesting way of approaching automation in a gradual way - make the documentation in code, then take that code and slowly iterate over it until you have a fully automated solution. I like it - obviously we always want to have the final product, but it's a good way to get there slowly

Recommended read: Do-nothing scripting: the key to gradual automation https://blog.danslimmon.com/2019/07/15/do-nothing-scripting-the-key-to-gradual-automation/

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Re-framing how we think about production incidents

This is a great post by Shubheksha and talking about the right way to talk about production issues.

Having a blameless culture makes it easier for new/junior engineers getting started with working on production systems, and makes everyone more comfortable working on things where they know they won't get the blame pointed at them.

I've found that, at work, diagnosing issues in our staging environment has given me such a great experience - it's been great to practice dealing with production-like issues in a non-production environment, as it gives you that time to breath, experiment and learn, as well as giving me much greater understanding of the end-to-end system.

Recommended read: Re-framing how we think about production incidents https://shubheksha.com/posts/2019/04/re-framing-how-we-think-about-production-incidents/

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How we respond to incidents

As I've said before, I'm a big fan of how Monzo handles their production incidents because it's quite polished and transparent

Recommended read: How we respond to incidents https://monzo.com/blog/2019/07/08/how-we-respond-to-incidents

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Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career

This is a really interesting post. Only the other day, Anna and I had been talking about how it'd be interesting to work 4 days a week, or even part time. It sounds like it'd be a great opportunity if you're able to financially cover it

Recommended read: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career https://www.joshuahu.io/blog/quitting/

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The PGP Problem

This is a really interesting article about the flaws in PGP - I don't have enough security backing and understanding to argue it, but it sounds legitimate. It's a surprise this isn't being talked about more if it is as bad as it is

Recommended read: The PGP Problem https://latacora.micro.blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem.html