Joshua James
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blackswanfarming.com
Joshua James
@blackswanfarming.com
Engineer. Always Learning.
Writes occasionally at BlackSwanFarming.com
Or, a platform is a curated experience for AI agents, who will increasingly be the primary users of the “platform”.
June 25, 2025 at 6:25 AM
A feature for @gruber.foo
June 12, 2025 at 5:30 AM
Wondering how this small hill with the very long name made it onto Apple Maps as a place to highlight?
May 26, 2025 at 6:37 AM
If only people knew how fragile essential services are.
www.bbc.com/news/article...
How power outage in Spain and Portugal unfolded - minute-by-minute
Residents stuck on trains, phones not working, checkouts off: How a massive power cut caused chaos.
www.bbc.com
April 28, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Slate.auto is the accessory for your phone that I wish Apple had made. Is this one of those innovative "Black Swans" that will seem obvious in hindsight? I hope so.
SLATE
SLATE Auto | The Customizable EV That Works for You
Slate.auto
April 27, 2025 at 9:31 PM
#CostOfDelay is not the same as Opportunity Cost. I see Product Development folks confuse the two often.
April 19, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Gotta admit, @economist.com pretty much nailed this in Oct 2023.
April 9, 2025 at 9:50 AM
The most important aspect of product development is how to force the *nonsense* out of the picture. How do you strip away all of the “wrong”?
April 5, 2025 at 7:57 PM
Reposted by Joshua James
This letter appeared in the Bloomsburg PA Press Enterprise this morning. I am assured the writer is who he purports to be, an Air Force veteran.
March 11, 2025 at 10:04 PM
New baby kiwi “Manawa” born in Rotorua. Too cute.
March 2, 2025 at 11:55 PM
Reposted by Joshua James
Nicole Forsgren (@nicolefv.bsky.social) is the brains behind DORA, lead author SPACE, and the co-author of Accelerate. Hardly a better person to share how to think about, measure and improve developer productivity!

Stream the full episode:

• YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wufj...

(cont'd)
February 19, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Increasingly, Customer Experience (CX) will be a function of Developer Experience (DX), which will be a function of Agent Experience (AX).
January 30, 2025 at 5:43 AM
Damn it, Lumon design and iconography is so good, it’s so confusing.

Good reminder though: good design is NOT exclusive to good organisations.
January 27, 2025 at 9:03 AM
Reference to the Agile Manifesto or the people present as some sort of appeal to authority is a sign of weakness. The most useful concepts in technology and product development have no trouble standing on their own two feet worth of evidence. The thought process of their originators isn't relevant.
January 15, 2025 at 11:17 PM
In which New Zealand is so far away and safe that it’s somehow considered the escape plan for when everything turns to shit.
💯 "You will have to learn Russian in 4-5 years or go to New Zealand, if you do not allocate significantly more money for military needs than the current 2% of GDP," — NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in a speech to European Parliament.
January 13, 2025 at 8:14 PM
As sad as I am that Wordpress is going through this craziness… if it means we diversify the CMS space with 2-3 bigger players, that would probably be A Good Thing™️
January 10, 2025 at 7:21 AM
Been trying to figure out where the new Sonos App moved the “Alarms” to for weeks. Finally figure it out. (Not at all intuitive.)
December 23, 2024 at 10:16 AM
The future is already here, Home Battery Edition. #AMA
December 4, 2024 at 8:12 AM
The best thing about tech is that it’s constantly evolving, improving, pushing forward.

The worst thing about tech is the organisations who are stuck in a 20-years-ago time warp.
December 4, 2024 at 5:07 AM
WIMPs are fading and PBHs are in the ascendancy in the hunt for an explanation for all the missing mass in the Universe.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark...
Dark Matter Black Holes Could Fly through the Solar System Once a Decade
The universe’s hidden mass may be made of black holes, which could wobble the planets of the solar system when they pass by
www.scientificamerican.com
November 24, 2024 at 7:27 PM
My rule of thumb for CapEx of software development is quite simple:
If you can’t show me the code in a repo that we control, there is NO asset being created.

www.reseller.co.nz/article/1294...
NZX companies forced to write off millions of dollars of cloud investment
Fletcher Building reported up to $75 million of intangible assets across 599 cloud computing projects could be affected.
www.reseller.co.nz
November 20, 2024 at 8:12 PM
Oh, yay. Another SAP car crash. When will we learn?

www.reseller.co.nz/article/1298...
'Traumatising' SAP rollout sends Mitre 10 NZ deeper into the red
Hardware chain has negotiated a temporary change in its debt covenants with banker BNZ.
www.reseller.co.nz
November 20, 2024 at 8:09 PM
Always interesting to see the Jobs to be Done that a new product focuses on.

www.amazon.com/dp/B0CDWWS12...
www.amazon.com
November 20, 2024 at 5:31 PM
“It’s hard to measure almost, because almost doesn’t matter”
November 19, 2024 at 1:48 AM