jesscanady

@jesscanady@hachyderm.io

Transfemme tech leader in Columbus, OH.

Started as a PHP (then Rails) coder and spent 11 years building CoverMyMeds from concept to 1.4B acquisition. Now I'm building and investing in startups and/or being a giant dork. They sometimes overlap.

Still a tech dork at heart, a parent of two boys, and an amateur poker and synth player. Not bad at shooting pool for someone with monocular vision.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

jesscanady, to random

Out of the blue, a colleague from the Good Old Days gave me a call. He'd heard (via old coworkers I didn't know knew) that I'd transitioned and I was now Jessica.

[on his voicemail, he'd used my old name, but he didn't know if this was confirmed or not, so I forgive him]

He only called to express his undying support. No other reason.

Maybe he moved to Colorado after The Event, years ago, and we've rarely spoken since; but you always know your real friends.

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

I know a lot of people are getting a kind of morbid joy out of the Trump situation. I don't blame them, it's a natural reaction. And I'll admit that early on I felt some similar twinges. But now it all just makes me sick. Very nearly physically sick. And that's the truth.

jesscanady,

@lauren same. It's entirely vile that he's still newsworthy and a contender for the highest office.

BlackAzizAnansi, to random
@BlackAzizAnansi@mas.to avatar

Who are your top 3 Simpsons characters?

jesscanady,

@BlackAzizAnansi Lionel Hutz, Troy McClure, and Hank Scorpio.

Albert Brooks is awesome, and we lost Phil Hartman far too early.

jesscanady, to random

Folks around here asking if anyone's ever had a ✨CRUSH✨ on someone met via Fedi.

Meanwhile my ancient bones are over here recalling my first online crush; a gorgeous redheaded girl from Texas who I was head-over-heels for, met on America Online in 1995.

jesscanady,

@tk @feld I pity folks who don't

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Remembering, as I do about once every three years, that I'm still bitter I've never got to try out BeOS.

jesscanady,

@mcc Closest I got was running BeOS R5 Personal -- it shipped as maybe a VM? You ran it from Windows line an exe and it booted you into the OS. No developer tools or codecs, so super limited.

To this day I want tabbed window titlebars and nobody does it.

jesscanady, to random

The first time I ever set foot in NYC was in Sept 2008 for the OWASP conference. One day it was a normal trip, and the next there were armed guards around the Stock Exchange and the big red "Lehman Brothers" sign turned blue and said "Barclays."

Today, there are picketers outside studios during the first joint strike of WGA and SAG-AFTRA since 1960.

Crazy.

jesscanady, to random

Just subscribed to the @testdouble blog and Obie Fernandez's blog, thanks to the 2000s Magic of RSS!

Neither TD's blog nor Medium, where Obie posts, advertise (at least on their mobile layouts) that they publish an RSS feed, but they do, and it turns out Google Reader was not the only feed reader to ever exist!

TD: https://blog.testdouble.com
Obie: https://obie.medium.com
NewsBlur: https://newsblur.com

searls, to random

My favorite thing about the Death of Twitter is that blogging is a thing again, including other people writing blog posts that are in conversation with other authors. Here's @obie's take:
https://obie.medium.com/wait-the-10x-software-developer-is-now-an-endangered-species-1efb1c723f5b

jesscanady,

@searls Shit do you remember Webmention and Pingbacks where the social network stuff was simply between blogs?

When did that stop being a thing?

feld, to random
@feld@bikeshed.party avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    jesscanady,

    @feld you 100% know The Legend Robin Williams could twerk with the best of them.

    grumpygamer, to random
    @grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

    What makes a game a RPG? Ultima, Fallout, Diablo are, but Binding of Issac, Nuclear Throne are not (IMHO). Is Zelda? If you're playing a "RPG" what do you look for? What makes it a "RPG". Is it more than just collecting weapons and bumping stats? Most game have a form of this that I would not consider a RPG.

    jesscanady,

    @grumpygamer to me: "light RPG elements" are choosing which stats to bump and the ability to complete challenges with different builds. More complete RPG systems include character customization (name, appearance, gender, etc).

    And it's all Venn Diagram-my, and there has to be a minimum number of matches to count as even a light RPG. Which is why Isaac doesn't intuitively count to me. Just bumping stats doesn't cut it.

    BlackAzizAnansi, (edited ) to random
    @BlackAzizAnansi@mas.to avatar

    Does pineapple go on Pizza?

    jesscanady,

    @BlackAzizAnansi anything can go on pizza if it makes the pizza eater happy

    256, to random
    @256@mastodon.social avatar

    Maximum Linux - October 1999 cover
    https://archive.org/details/maximum-linux-magazine-1999-10/mode/2up

    jesscanady,

    @256 Shit I think I had that issue!

    jesscanady, to Ohio

    Not like the Ohio AG's office will see it here, but seriously? URLs such as "ohio-ago.my.site.com" when registering new accounts does not inspire confidence.

    It's a Salesforce domain, but that hardly makes it better.

    jesscanady, to queer

    Shout-out to the awesome lady at the Kroger pharmacy who subtly congratulated me when I gave her the insurance card with my correct name on it.

    jesscanady, to queer

    It is the last day of Pride month, but it is absolutely not the last day of Actual Trans Pride, which I will be celebrating every goddamn day, because I finally get to be me.

    nixCraft, (edited ) to random
    @nixCraft@mastodon.social avatar

    Poll: Why do you code?

    jesscanady,

    @nixCraft
    Started as passion. Became money. That worked really well. Now it's a hobby. Can't imagine never writing software again, can super imagine never performing as labor again.

    jcrabapple, (edited ) to linux

    : What distro are you currently running?

    jesscanady,

    @jcrabapple Technically Arch, but it's a Steam Deck, so it's not as if I chose Arch specifically.

    kellogh, to random
    @kellogh@hachyderm.io avatar

    imo "teach kids how to program" is sick because it edges close to child labor, in that we're teaching kids to always produce! produce! produce! honestly, i have no problem teaching kids to program if it's about creating and tinkering and generally being a kid, but so much of the time it's deeply tied to grind culture

    jesscanady,

    @kellogh My 10yo has been doing and is now getting a bit into (which as a die-hard -ist is giving me Feels), and it's a challenge not to pull him into the same Startup Grind Life I was raised on.

    But it's so cool seeing him create random stuff that he loves, and has no purpose other than to grow his skill and delight the user (for 10yo values of "delight.")

    atomicpoet, (edited ) to random

    Actually, Internet Explorer 6 was once 97% of the browser market. That’s right, 97%—they had the browser market locked down!

    If ever there was a situation where “embrace, extend, extinguish” (EEE) should have worked, it was with the open web.

    Yet Microsoft failed. Why is that?

    First, while Microsoft initially was installed by default on every Mac, they had neglected the Mac version of Internet Explorer. So Apple took action and made their own browser—Safari. They shipped this in 2003.

    But also, Microsoft refused to build a version of Internet Explorer for Linux. This forced Linux advocates to build their own web browser engines, most prominently KHTML. Apple forked KHTML into WebKit, which was then used as Safari’s browser engine.

    Thereafter Netscape rose from the ashes as Mozilla, released Firefox. And Firefox not only caused tabs to go mainstream, but also extensions too.

    And where was Microsoft while all this was happening? Resting on their laurels, content with the belief that EEE would work. They never improved IE6. As all the other browsers came out, IE6 looked more and more worse.

    But still, they had the corporations using it, so there was no fire in Microsoft to improve IE6.

    The final nail in the coffin was Chrome. Corporations were willing to make the leap to Chrome because Google built backwards compatibility for IE6 with Chrome.

    Microsoft tried to recover with subsequent versions of Internet Explorer. But they eventually discontinued it and released a new browser called Edge.

    Nevertheless, Microsoft never achieved browser dominance again even with installing edge as the default browser on Windows.

    Microsoft failed to the open web. It wasn’t the open web that was extinguished. It was Internet Explorer.

    RE: https://mstdn.social/users/kkarhan/statuses/110596178591569135

    jesscanady,

    @atomicpoet Fantastic examples all, clearly EEE doesn't work over the long term.

    Does this mean that attempts at EEE are entirely harmless? Would browsers have evolved differently without a near-decade of Microsoft holding the dominant position, fighting open standards and stagnating the state of the art?

    atomicpoet, to random

    Another EEE myth busted. Microsoft never "EEE'd" Netscape.

    They did try to destroy Netscape by EEE'ing the web itself but they failed.

    And Netscape's demise wasn't because of Microsoft. It's because of a bunch of really bad product decisions that Netscape themselves had made regarding Communicator, their flagship product.

    RE: https://calckey.social/notes/9gcrtd7wttbmgftt

    jesscanady,

    @atomicpoet Yeah Netscape would have eventually done themselves in, but let's be fair. Microsoft using its PC OS dominance to drive the market price for web browsers to $0, destroying NSCP's main revenue line, absolutely sucked for them (to say the least.)

    esther, (edited ) to random

    I’m thinking about writing a series of articles about what I call “low level photography”: tech physical principles on which all the creative options for photographers (and videographers) are built. Things like “why and how does a low f-number actually make the background blurry? And why does it do that with these characteristic polygon shapes?” Or “why do faces look weird when shot from a short distance?”

    When I learned these things many years ago they were often explained in weird ways that skipped over a lot and used unintuitive metaphors as if photographers couldn’t handle some physics. I believe these things can be properly explained without requiring much pre-existing knowledge, and I believe they can be very helpful to make more effective choices towards a creative goal.

    Would there be interest in such a series?

    jesscanady,

    @esther Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

    atomicpoet, (edited ) to internet

    People are asking me what I think about joining the Fediverse. To review what I've said elsewhere, it's important to acknowledge five important realities:

    1. Meta can use ActivityPub, and nothing can be done about it. Fediblock doesn't prevent Meta from using ActivityPub because ActivityPub is an open protocol.

    2. A mass Fediblock (Gab style) is not happening. The big servers aren't doing it. And if the big servers aren't doing it, the medium and little servers don't have the power to enforce a mass Fediblock.

    3. The majority of people on the Fediverse don't care -- and many of them even want to connect with Meta. I know, this might surprise you. But based on my observations, most people won't be leaving mastodon.social because it federates with Meta.

    4. Even if the majority of Fediverse servers blocked Meta, that would still mean that certain unsavoury servers (which shall be unnamed) will likely connect with Meta -- and I certainly don't want those servers to be the face of the Fediverse for people who use

    5. Even if Meta pulled a Truth Social and didn't connect to the Fediverse, that does not prevent them from sucking up all that data from ActivityPub -- seeing how that data is, in fact, public.

    Am I saying there's no value in blocking Meta? Not at all. Yes, block them if you don't want to send and receive messages to P92. Will that prevent Meta from seeing your messages? As I said, no, not at all. But at least that's data you haven't directly given to Meta (unless you're allowing RSS on your server). And it will also mean you won't receive messages from Meta -- if that's your purpose, blocking is good.

    Now I've come to believe that when Meta joins the Fediverse, the Fediverse will largely be divided into three factions:

    Faction 1: Servers that federate with Meta
    Faction 2: Servers that don't federated with Meta, but federate with servers that federate with Meta
    Faction 3: Servers that don't federate with Meta, and don't federate with any server that federates with Meta

    Factions 1 and 2 will probably go on their merry way. It's Faction 3 that I believe will die because it's ultimately unfeasible.

    "But Chris!" some might say, "There's that pact!"

    Unless all those servers in that pact are only federating via white labeled servers who've signed that pact, the pact is useless. Such white labeling would mean that every server that federates must be manually reviewed. And it means that every new server that joins the Fediverse will be federated with Faction 1 and Faction 2 before they're federated with Faction 3.

    Which ultimately means that Faction 3 gets tinier and tinier, especially as churn occurs, and those users don't get replaced by newcomers.

    In the end, what will federation via white label achieve? Not a whole lot, except make certain people believe they have done something substantial to fight Meta when they haven't.

    At a certain point, we have to accept reality: Meta will use ActivityPub, and most people using the Fediverse will talk to them.

    So am I waving the white flag?

    Not at all. What's important to acknowledge here is that it's not we, the Fediverse, who have conceded. It's Meta.

    It's Meta who have given up ownership of their own corporate-owned network effect in order to join the Fediverse.

    Despite this concession from Meta, I'm not happy about them joining the Fediverse.

    However, there's another consideration: for people who use Meta. it's an incremental improvement over what they had before -- which was no federation. Again, less worse is better than worse. If the world is slightly better -- even if it's not ideal -- it's still better.

    Do I want people to use Meta-owned social networks? Not at all.

    Here's where I disagree with 99% of people panicking about Meta: I believe ActivityPub will ultimately be Meta's own undoing.

    And I want to hasten this undoing 😊

    jesscanady,

    @atomicpoet Lovely and rational post! I'm still concerned about Microsoft- and Google-style Embrace/Extend/Extinguish, which may not destroy ActivityPub but certainly would harm its adoption in favor of proprietary networks.

    searls, to random

    Very proud to report that I have more commits that contain the word "upgrayyed" on GitHub than anyone else in the world. https://github.com/search?q=%22upgrayyed%22&type=commits

    jesscanady,

    @searls https://youtu.be/Ve-ecBexIuI

    aeva, (edited ) to random
    @aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

    you are making a game. the mouse cursor is...

    jesscanady,

    @aeva
    Setting-specific! Horror might be a knife, or high fantasy might rock an elvish staff deal.

    I love it when folks go extra on the UI stuff!

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