Adam Caudill

Trojan Source and Why It Matters

Yesterday the news hit of a new vulnerability that threatens the security of all code; dubbed Trojan Source by the researchers from the University of Cambridge. From an initial analysis, it does seem to impact just about everything, and the status of fixes is very hit or miss at this point. But the real question is, does this even matter? Is this issue worth spending your time on? Let’s look closer.

Insane Ideas: NFT the Stars

This is part of the Insane Ideas series. A group of blog posts that detail ideas, possible projects, or concepts that may be of interest. These are ideas that I don’t plan to pursue, and are thus available to any and all that would like to do something with them. I hope you find some inspiration – or at least some amusement in this. NFTs are drawing in vast amounts of money; the cryptocurrency community couldn’t be more excited unless Elon sold himself as an NFT.

Generating Content Stats for Hugo

Producing useful insight into your content

I recently became curious just how much time I had spent working on content for this site, which led me to an idea: it would be great to have a page that listed some useful data about the content, and how much effort was put into it. I had some hope that I could pull some of this directly out of Hugo, though unfortunately it didn’t expose the information I wanted (and certainly not in an efficient way).

Taking Responsibility for the Spotlight

On sharing the spotlight with those that need the opportunity more

Today, something happened that made me think carefully about my platform, my time in the spotlight, and how to best leverage my position to help others. Hopefully, you’ll find this to be thought-provoking and consider your own position and how it can be used. Your Platform & Your Responsibility As a leader, there’s an undeniable responsibility to help others. This may mean being a mentor to someone just joining the industry, or giving opportunities to someone that would otherwise not get the break they need.

Communicating With Respect

On communicating in a respectful, open, honest, and empathetic manner

Communication can be a real challenge; working across cultures, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can result in different interpretations — and this is under the best of circumstances. However, when it’s written communication, the challenge is multiplied due to the lack of feedback cues from facial expressions, body language, and the like. These challenges make it exceedingly easy to create a situation where what a person hears is entirely different from what the speaker (or writer) intended.

On Software Subscriptions

A look at why subscriptions deliver more value to users, the tools I'm in love with today, and why this shift is happening

Like many in this field, I am always looking for ways to improve my workflow, improve my productivity, achieve more. Part of this is evaluating new tools that help me get work done, tools that become critical to my process. While looking at something that could be useful, I had a startling realization — but there are a couple of things I’d like to cover first. Supporting What You Love I always try to pay for things that make my life better and support businesses that give me real value.

Hugo & Content-Based Related Content

During my Christmas vacation last year, I converted this site from WordPress to Hugo; while I’ve been happy with the change, a couple of features are missing. One of these is that there was a section with related content at the bottom of each post. I wanted to get it back. Thankfully Hugo has native support for Related Content, so while I was hoping this would be a simple task, there’s a note that made things substantially more complicated:

Win by Building for Failure

Systems fail; it doesn’t matter what the system is. Something will fail sooner or later. When you design a system, are you focused on the happy path, or are you building with the possibility of failure in mind? If you suffered a data breach tomorrow, what would the impact be? Does the system prevent loss by design, or does it just fall apart? Can you easily minimize loss and damage, or would an attacker have free rein once they get in?

Parasitic & Symbiotic Business Models

Does your business model thrive as your customer thrives, or does it drain the life from your customers? After a recent1 conversation on the impact of improved privacy tools (i.e., the eventual elimination of third-party tracking cookies), I realized that the most significant effect of these improvements would be to companies with a parasitic business model. A business model which I see no problem in disrupting. For many years, the web has existed as an advertiser’s dream2 — minimal privacy limitations, technical controls that had little impact, and a strong lobbying arm that has been able to derail many efforts to improve the situation.