When is it time to move on? — When is the right time to quit and move on to something else? Setting aside the obvious practical issues like whether we can quit a thing, I’ve often seen people — especially very principled and diligent people — fall prey to a hidden obstacle that I call the “sunk benefit”…

An old-school technique for the modern world — Note: This is an advanced technique and I’m going to assume you’re fluent in Python before trying this. If the phrase “hand-rolled bytecode” makes you laugh maniacally, this article is for you. If it makes you think “this is almost certainly a terrible idea,” then you have the right level…

How can you tell a genuine red pill from a hallucinogen? — “Know that capital cases are not like monetary cases: in monetary cases, a person may pay back the money he unjustly caused someone to lose, and receive atonement; but in capital cases, the blood of the accused and the blood of his descendants are the witnesses’ responsibility until eternity. …

Tools for solving problems in a wide range of fields — There are a couple of “standard spiels” I have been giving my teams for decades at this point; I’m working on writing them down to make them more accessible. These three rules are probably the ones that I repeat the most often. I often call them rules of “design,” but…

A way to understand software architecture and its failures — There are a couple of “standard spiels” I have been giving my engineers for decades at this point. It’s about time I wrote them down and made them more widely accessible. This is the first of them! Several years ago, I was in an engineering meeting where we were trying…

How do you reintegrate someone into society after they have participated in mass violence, like war or crimes against humanity? This is not a question we often ask ourselves. When at peace, it seems impossibly distant or subject to easy answers; when at war, the question of how to reintegrate…

The meaning of International Labor Day — Today is a day to recommit ourselves to the idea that human beings have value beyond their industrial productivity, and that people’s labor has value beyond what they receive in wages. To the idea that people are more than “human resources” — an expense to be managed so that the…

The Devil is in the Details — Apple has agreed that the encryption keys for iCloud user accounts for Chinese persons will be stored in China, as Reuters reported today. If you aren’t familiar with Chinese law and the situation around this, this may seem relatively innocuous: a company is doing business in a country, and complying…