It’s that time of the year when fans are sold out and the national sport of complaining about the weather gets to peak levels, we’re ready for the gold medal. The London sauna brings fresh news, in September I’ll start a new job.

Given the news and that we’re on a summer break, I’m planning to take a few breaks from the newsletter here and there until September. The idea is to almost stop until the end of September (Friday 27th), since I’ll be going to Spain for a few weeks and start the job in the middle of the month. I’ll take a break next week, write for the 16th of August, and then go with the flow, meaning that you might get a random newsletter before September.

As a software developer, never underestimate how having a good setup that works most of the time matters. I had to go back to my old but trusty Windows PC with WSL, after working with an M1 Mac for the last year, and I felt a lot of friction. Things weren’t working the way I wanted them.

For example, when I cloned the dungeon crawler game I’m using to learn Rust, it wasn’t working with WSL for some reason. I didn’t want to “pollute” Windows with coding stuff, as Linux is my go-to system. Also, the configuration wasn’t up to my liking, and had to spend some time getting it to an OK point. In the end, I caved in and installed Fedora, having to spend some time once more configuring everything (terminal, languages, etc.), and the game still doesn’t work, crashing the system, and I suspect is because of Nvidia and Wayland incompatibilities or that it’s time to buy a new PC or maybe a Mac.

Interesting links

• Don’t make “data-driven product decisions”—build a data-driven semantic environment (Pavel Samsonov). “It’s really easy to be data-driven if all you want to do is justify what you wanted to do in the first place. But data alone cannot drive change.“

• Bungie CEO criticised for spending millions on classic cars, as calls for leadership changes escalate. Only one thing to say: disgusting.

• I want a system just like that (Maaret Pyhäjärvi). “Success comes from communication and collaboration, and deepening that understanding on both sides of the table. Or maybe removing the sides.”