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981 results for “don_wakefield”

  1. CW: US politics, wolf cliché meme

    We're feeding the country to the first one, right now. The Republicans aren't even shy about it. They want the America with just that wolf.

    I'm frustrated because the Democratic leadership — at least — are scared of feeding the other. They're worried that El-Sayed is "underperforming", that AOC and Mamdani are "polarizing".

    I am also frustrated with people who say "America has always been evil" as if that's a conversation-stopper. It's important to acknowledge the terrible wolf, but we don't have to let it win.

    When it comes to voting, I will pick whichever candidate is less the first wolf and more the latter, even though imperfect. But this can't last. You can't feed both wolves strategically. We need a party that fully supports the hopeful vision of America.

  2. AI IS CHANGING THE GAME — BUT DEVELOPERS ARE STILL IN CONTROL.

    We are living in an era where AI can write code, debug applications, generate designs, and even build entire websites from a simple prompt.

    But here is the real question: Will AI replace software developers, or will developers who use AI replace those who don't?

    The future belongs to those who understand more than just how to write code. It belongs to people who can:

    • Build real-world solutions.
    • Think critically and solve complex problems.
    • Understand cybersecurity and protect systems.
    • Use AI to work smarter, not blindly.
    • Design scalable, reliable software.

    AI can generate code, but understanding architecture, security, performance, and the problems users actually face is what turns code into a real product.

    Don't just learn to code. Learn to build, think, and innovate.

    The future of technology is not just about who can write the most code. It is about who can solve the biggest problems.

    What do you think? Will AI make developers more powerful, or make traditional coding skills less valuable?

    ArtificialIntelligence #SoftwareEngineering #TechTrends #Cybersecurity #FutureOfTech

    #ai #career #productivity #softwareengineering #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
    AI IS CHANGING THE GAME — BUT DEVELOPERS ARE STILL IN CONTROL.

  3. 🚨 URGENT 🚨 $145 STILL NEEDED! LESS THAN 5 DAYS LEFT!

    My shared hosting renews on 30 October, and I'm running out of time to fund the VPS, migrate, and test both websites. Without sufficient funding and time to complete the migration, mutualaidspace.org may have to go offline.

    🔗 SUPPORT NOW: ko-fi.com/wrzky/goal

    🔗 Other ways to support: wrzky.com/psl

    ⏳ $200 yearly VPS hosting for mutualaidspace.org and wrzky.com: $145 STILL NEEDED!

    ✅ $80 for groceries for the rest of October: COVERED!
    Tysm to everyone who's contributed financially and amplified my request.

    This project is very dear to me, and I really don't want to take it offline.

    PLEASE CONSIDER BECOMING ONE OF THE FUNDERS OF MUTUALAIDSPACE.ORG! Any amount within your capacity, even $5 or $10, helps keep this infrastructure online.

    If financial contributions aren't possible, PLEASE BOOST AND SHARE THIS TODAY so it reaches people who can support the project before time runs out.

    Thank you, thank you 🙂‍↕️💜

    #MutualAid #MutualAidRequest #mutualaidspace #DisabilityCrowdfund #disability #activism #fedihelp #fediverse #DisabilityJustice #EmergencyCrowdfund #neurodivergence #helpfolkslive #MutualAidBoost #Internationalism #DisabledWriters #poverty #mentalhealth #healthcare #solidarity #anarchism #politics

    @mutualaidspace @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @QuyetPawz @ellespeaks @edendestroyer @frugalcoffee @povertyandinequality @activism @neurodivergent @disabledvoices

  4. How much pain must the Gazan endure to prove to the world his worthiness of life?! How much betrayal! How much disappointment and loss! Must suffering completely empty his heart of any desire for life? And can this still be called survival?! Despite everything, or perhaps we simply don't defy pain We love life the way children do, with hearts that know nothing but peace…
    chuffed.org/project/154249-isr
    #Gaza #palestine #Madtodon #feidhelp #FediGaza #help #MutualAid #HopeForAll #gazaverified

  5. "Conservative" versus "woke" economic reasoning, in a nutshell: "...we could say that, while the left would have to propose an alternative game to the one that has been exhausted, the far right simply has to assume that, when competition becomes more and more a matter of life and death, getting rid of other competitors becomes a valid option. In short: Don’t hate the player, hate the game versus Don’t hate the game, hate the other players."

    From Anatomy of Disintegration, by Rodrigo Nunes

  6. RE: hachyderm.io/@davidculley/1172

    Winter is coming. Toddlers will freeze to death. Rain will flood tents and soak/destroy all personal belongings.

    Palestinians need to buy warm clothing, ideally ahead of time. They need to replace tents. At the prices dictated by genocide-profiteers.

    Over the coming months, Palestinians will need our support the most. Don't grow tired of supporting, don't grow indifferent to suffering, don't give in to feelings of powerlessness. If you need a break, that's okay, but do come back from your break.

    If you don't have money to donate, you can send them words of emotional support. Listen to their stories and sorrows. It matters, more than you know.

  7. However the game remains playable even without these, and that makes it a marvel of game design. It's pssible to finish the game with the first character alone (Zangetsu) but doing so turns the difficulty all the way to 11.

    Your character has a relatively modest jump and reach, which make things quite a bit harder. You don't have other characters to use as bullet sponges so you need to pace your health more carefully. However none of the shortcuts through the levels are available and you're forced to take the longest and more dangerous route every time. On top of this I realized only at the sixth level that the power-ups scattered through the levels are also inaccessible. The result is a brutal quest through 8 levels and some really tough bosses which is as hard as the hardest arcade games of yore. All of this in a game that in casual mode remains very accessible. Truly a small marvel.

  8. hey fediverse #hackerspaces #fablabs #communityspaces how do y'all lock and unlock your doors? "dumb" clonable rfid tags? does the sshkey-thing work with non-technical users? the freefare desfire implemantion is form the last century? please retweet, i kinda don't want to reinvent the wheel.

  9. "RTFM (Read the f** manual)"

    That's what people were told when they asked for help on newsgroups or forums even though their problem could be easily solved by looking it up in the documentation.

    Today, the same people still can't be bothered to read instructions. And courtesy of our #AI overlords they don't have to. The chat bot will happily answer every last one of their questions.

    So what happens to a society where no one reads instructions anymore? Where answers can be retrieved in seconds, but no one understands the underlying principles?

    Somehow this reminds me of the European Middle Ages, where religious dogma ruled all of society: "Thou shallst not doubt the machine, lest you will be left behind!"

    These days, in a strange mixture of genuine curiosity and pure spite, I find myself learning more than ever before. The questions, the confusion, being sidetracked, and finally the elation of knowing I have mastered something.

    So, yeah, #RTFM is my new middle name now.

    #noai

  10. CW: Politics, taxes

    Another election cycle and another proposal to reduce property taxes is on our ballot here in Florida--maybe on yours too.

    Remember that reducing property taxes puts money into homeowners' pockets, but your county/state still need that money to fund programs. There will be new taxes to make up the shortfall--whether they are labelled as taxes or not. Those taxes are likely to be regressive.

    Voting to reduce property taxes seems like a real "screw you, I've got mine" move. Buying property in a community implies a social contract to support, maintain, and improve that community, even if you don't see a direct benefit.

  11. COTA Grand Prix

    I have to start with my usual complaint: why are there three races in the USA? I know the answer is money, but it still annoys me that a country with little support for F1 gets 3 races while others with better circuits and bigger fan bases have to share calendar spots or don't get one at all. It also bugs me that this venue is Circuit of the Americas - there are older and better circuits in the Americas, but never let it be said that the USA lacks…

    henman.ca/2026/10/25/cota-gran

  12. This election today in Serbia shouldn't be drawn into a false parallel with Hungary's April election. The situation here is more dangerous (the contested government is murderous, with documented links to organised crime), unfair (there is too much proof of election meddling), and desperate (the opposition is inexperienced and questionably competent).

    Yet, this is an important day. If we don't vote the (mostly) united opposition in, the worst instincts of Serbian politics will likely be irredeemably cemented for decades. So, change is essential. If we do vote for change and it is not snuffed out by those we are trying to dethrone in the weeks to come, the road ahead will be filled with generational challenges, mostly of cultural nature (such as entrenched chauvinism and opposition to emancipation of various suppressed groups, corruption-enabling mentality, glorified delinquency, defeatist values, etc.).

    So please, if we do vote for change, be kind and supportive to Serbia on the road ahead. Precisely because it's harder here, we'll need more patience, resources and support. Criticise us, but constructively. I wish for Serbia to follow a path similar to Hungary's. As a citizen of both countries, I'm finally proud to be Hungarian. Now I'd love for Serbia to become a good example in future history books, one at which professors will point and say: "See, students, change for the better is possible and this is how you do it."

    #Elections #Democracy #Serbia #Srbija #Hungary

  13. I used to treat ChatGPT like a vending machine. Need a React hook? Drop a coin. Need a PR summary? Drop another. Every ask started from zero — stack, conventions, what “done” meant — and every reply drifted a little from how we actually ship.

    The waste wasn’t the tokens. It was re-explaining our frontend rules every single time, then cleaning up the same mistakes.

    So I stopped pasting one-offs and started treating prompts like code: named, versioned, and checked into the repo.

    One-off asks don’t compound


    A throwaway chat is fine for a throwaway question. Frontend work rarely is throwaway:

    • “Write a Modal” without our focus-trap / Escape / return-focus rules
    • “Add loading states” without our skeleton vs spinner convention
    • “Review this PR” without what AI should skip vs what a human owns
    • “Refactor this form” without our form library and error-message pattern

    You get something that compiles. You don’t get something that matches the last three PRs. The next person (or the next you) pays the tax again.

    What belongs in a prompt library


    I keep a small folder — prompts/frontend/ — not a novel. Each file is one job, one outcome shape.

    Mine look like this:

    prompts/frontend/
    pr-review-ai.md # what the model checks vs leaves for humans
    new-component.md # scaffold + a11y buckets + token rules
    design-token-change.md # changelog / RFC checklist before merge
    test-plan.md # real coverage vs fake green
    agent-ui-diff.md # component boundaries, no random token edits
    accessible-react.md # roles / keyboard / contrast report required

    If a prompt isn’t reused at least twice a month, it doesn’t earn a file. Sticky notes in chat stay sticky notes.

    The shape every prompt gets


    Same skeleton so humans and agents know where to look:

    # <job name>

    ## When to use
    One sentence. If it doesn’t match, don’t force it.

    ## Context to paste
    - Framework / router / form lib (or “read from repo”)
    - Design tokens source of truth
    - Related golden files (paths)

    ## Hard rules
    Bullet list the model must not violate.
    Prefer native HTML, keep tokens, no drive-by refactors, etc.

    ## Output format
    Numbered sections the reply must include.
    Missing a section = reject the turn.

    ## Done looks like
    Concrete acceptance — not “looks good.”

    The “output format” line is the whole game. Models fill schemas. They invent vibes when you don’t give one.

    From ChatGPT paste to agent / editor default


    Once the files exist, wire them where work actually happens:

    1. Cursor / Copilot / Claude project instructions — point at prompts/frontend/ or inline the two you use daily.
    2. PR bot / agent — load pr-review-ai.md as the system brief; humans still own product judgment.
    3. Slash or snippet — @new-component expands the scaffold prompt so nobody retypes it.
    4. CI-ish habit — if the agent reply skips a required section, treat it like a failed check and re-run with the same file.

    You don’t need a fancy prompt CMS. Markdown in git is enough. Review prompt changes in PRs the same way you’d review eslint config.

    A tiny migration story


    Week 1 I had twelve ChatGPT threads titled “modal again.” Week 3 I had six files and deleted half the threads.

    What changed in practice:

    • New Button / Modal / Combobox asks started from the same a11y report shape
    • Token edits stopped sneaking hex literals into components
    • AI PR comments stopped arguing about naming when the prompt said “leave naming to humans”

    Same models. Less re-prompting. The library held the team memory the chat UI kept forgetting.

    What not to put in the library


    • Product pitches and marketing copy (keep prompts about shipping UI)
    • One-shot debug sessions that will never recur
    • Entire style guides pasted twice — link the real doc instead
    • Secrets, private URLs, or customer data as “examples”

    A prompt library is DX infrastructure. If it reads like a blog draft, move it to the blog.

    Start with three, not thirty


    Tonight, pick the three asks you keep repeating. Write each as one markdown file with When / Rules / Output / Done. Drop them in the repo. Point your editor agent at that folder.

    Next time you open a blank ChatGPT box for a frontend task, open the matching file instead. Paste once. Reuse forever. That’s the whole upgrade — from one-off asks to a library your future self (and your agents) can actually find.#frontend #ai #dx #productivity #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
    From One-Off ChatGPT Asks to a Reusable Frontend Prompt Library

  14. Canada as a nation has listened to just about 1 hour of FunHouse Radio in the past 30 days. Come on guys. You're boycotting the wrong channel. We're the good guys. If you want the good guys to stop the bad guys then don't hurt the good guys? Just a thought. Love you anyway.

  15. Influencers have taken over my city. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em | Dave Schilling
    By Dave Schilling

    I can’t say I’m enjoying my new gig as a would-be creator. But these days, I don’t have much choice

    theguardian.com/commentisfree/

    #Socialmedia #Instagram #LosAngeles #TikTok #USnews #Technology #TheGuardian #DaveSchilling

  16. @lproven coattails? Exploitation of coolness?

    Extremely unlikely, IMHO.

    facesofopensource.com/jordan-h

    linkedin.com/posts/johubbard_d five days ago (his response to a comment):

    ❮There's some context here, Scott Kamp - Omarchy is like any other desktop in a sense - you either like it or don't like it, and it's not like we didn't already have desktops going all the way back to Xcfe, KDE, Gnome, etc. The point wasn't to create "another streamlined desktop", the point was to show that the latest Buzzy Thing could be ported and wrapped up in a bow, using AI, in days instead of months. FOMO is history.❯

    #Omarchy #FreeBSD #Daemonarchy

  17. #Trump ... #MAGAs ... will fall
    It is inevitable
    hatred and stupidity are corrosive also and above all for those who use them.
    BUT
    IMPORTANT !
    It's what #Americans will do after Trump and MAGAs are back in the sewers.
    Will Americans pretend to forget about it?
    or
    > Will they sanitize the sewers ?
    because if they don't 'sanitize'
    these 'bacteria'
    remain.
    ACCOUNTABILITY is 'the' solution.

  18. Overall, I really feel that #Android calendar approach is quite broken as soon as one steps away from Google. Maybe I'm having extremely bad luck, but my phone roughly once in 3–12 months bork up #caldav sync and I need to remove subs and reattach all anew. On PC its been fine for ages, I've jumped between various calendar providers, subscribed to friends Google-based .ics, and it is fine. Android? Don't you dare to assume that if your nextcloud was restored from backup, sync will resume fully.

  19. ISOLATIONGEMEINSCHAFT + VOLCAN + ULTRAVIOLET + DARDO + PAURA DIAMANTE X SVTVRA (DJ SET)

    ask a punk, Saturday, October 31 at 09:00 PM GMT+1

    👹 Let's gather together on Hallow's Eve, listen to some nice music and shake your coffins:

    ISOLATIONGEMEINSCHAFT
    VOLCAN
    ULTRAVIOLET
    DARDO
    + PAURA DIAMANTE X SVTVRA (DJ SET)

    Invite your delicious friends. Fresh blood is always welcome.
    The three spokiest of you will get an extra bite.. 😈
    If you don't have funds, feel free to contact us.
    Looking fangward 👹🕸️

    berlin.askapunk.de/event/isola

  20. #WritersCoffeeClub 25 Oct. Tell us about inspiration from an unlikely source.

    The 2008 Global Financial Crisis! Without it, I'm pretty sure I'd never have written "Neptune's Brood", which is a space opera about financial fraud on a scale so vast the perpetrators had to colonise 200 new star systems to launder the proceeds.

    I don't think even Elon Musk is thinking that big … yet.

  21. Is there a good solution for TLS certs for consumer LAN devices? My ISP’s router recently moved to requiring TLS, but I access it via it’s IP address and it doesn’t have a TLS cert for an IP address (is it even possible to get a TLS cert for a private IP address?) and so the main change is that my browser no longer autocompletes the admin password (for good reasons: don’t autocomplete passwords in TOS sessions with invalid certs!).

  22. #WritersCoffeeClub 25/10: Tell us about inspiration from an unlikely source.

    That's a hard question. I'm inspired by just about everything. My lockdown book, The Cliffhangers (written during lockdown, not *about* lockdown, but things creep in, you know?) has an element inspired by PE with Joe. And if you don't know what PE with Joe is I can't really help, because it was a whole cultural vibe, but you can look it up. This is just one example tho, there are literally countless others.

  23. Most businesses know how to track their Google rankings.

    But what happens when a potential customer stops searching on Google and starts asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, or another AI assistant which product they should choose?

    Your website might rank well. Your content might get traffic. Your competitors might even have fewer backlinks than you.

    Yet when a customer asks an AI assistant for recommendations, your competitors appear while your brand is nowhere to be found.

    That creates a new visibility problem: which questions are you losing in AI search?

    I'm building Aurvikon to help answer that question.

    The problem with measuring AI visibility


    Traditional SEO gives us familiar metrics:

    • Keyword rankings
    • Impressions and clicks
    • Organic traffic
    • Backlinks
    • Search performance

    These metrics remain valuable. But they don't fully explain how your brand appears inside AI-generated answers.

    Imagine someone asking an AI assistant:

    • What are the best tools for improving AI search visibility?
    • Which platforms help SaaS companies monitor their brand in AI answers?
    • Compare three alternatives for tracking brand recommendations in AI search.
    • Which tool should a startup use to understand its visibility in ChatGPT?

    Your brand might appear in one answer and disappear from the next.

    A competitor might be recommended repeatedly. Another company might be described as the category leader. Your own product might be missing entirely.

    Looking at a single AI-generated answer won't tell you the whole story.

    You need to understand visibility across the questions your potential customers actually ask.

    The shift: from keyword rankings to question-level visibility


    I'm interested in a more useful way to think about AI search visibility.

    Instead of asking only:

    "Does my brand appear in AI search?"

    Ask:

    "For which relevant buyer questions does my brand appear, where do competitors appear instead, and what can I do about it?"

    That second question leads to much more actionable work.

    Consider three possible findings from an AI visibility audit:

    1. You're missing from important questions.

    People ask questions directly related to your product category, but the AI response doesn't mention your company.

    2. Your competitors are being recommended instead.

    Your product may be relevant, but competing brands are consistently appearing in the answers you're trying to win.

    3. Your brand appears, but not in the way you want.

    An AI response might mention your company without accurately communicating its core use case, differentiator, or value.

    These are different problems. They shouldn't all receive the same recommendation to "publish more content."

    What we're building with Aurvikon


    Aurvikon is an AI visibility tool focused on helping businesses understand how their brands appear across AI answer platforms.

    The core idea is straightforward:

    Identify the questions where your brand is losing visibility, understand what appears instead, and turn those findings into an action plan.

    A practical workflow looks like this:

    Step 1: Identify the questions buyers ask


    Start with questions your target customers might ask before choosing a product.

    Don't limit the research to your brand name. Include category searches, comparisons, alternatives, use cases, and purchasing decisions.

    Step 2: Test those questions across AI platforms


    Run relevant questions across the platforms you want to monitor, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

    Treat the responses as observations to analyze, not as permanent rankings.

    Step 3: Identify where you're losing


    Look for patterns:

    • Which questions mention your brand?
    • Which questions mention competitors but not you?
    • Where are you missing from relevant comparisons?
    • Which product capabilities or use cases aren't being communicated?
    • Which questions deserve attention first?

    This is where an audit becomes more useful than a collection of screenshots.

    Step 4: Turn findings into actions


    Every visibility gap should lead to a hypothesis.

    Maybe a product page doesn't explain a use case clearly. Maybe your comparison content is weak. Maybe your product lacks supporting content for a particular buyer question.

    Investigate the evidence, make the relevant improvement, and test again.

    The goal isn't to manufacture mentions. It's to make your brand easier to understand, evaluate, and recommend when it genuinely fits the user's needs.

    The difficult part isn't generating an AI visibility report


    AI answers change. Results can vary by wording, location, model version, and time.

    That means a report saying "your brand was mentioned" is only a starting point.

    A useful system should help you move from observation to diagnosis:

    Buyer question → AI response → competitor comparison → visibility gap → action → retest.

    That repeatable workflow is the problem space we're focused on at Aurvikon.

    We're especially interested in making the results useful to founders and marketing teams who need to decide what to fix next, rather than simply collecting another dashboard of numbers.

    What this means for SaaS founders


    If you're building a SaaS company, think about the questions someone would ask immediately before buying your product.

    Not just:

    "What is [your brand]?"

    But:

    • What is the best alternative to [competitor]?
    • Which tools solve [specific customer problem]?
    • Compare products that offer [important capability].
    • What should a small business use for [desired outcome]?
    • Which platform is best for [specific use case]?

    These questions reveal how AI assistants represent your category and which products they surface for potential buyers.

    They can also reveal gaps in your positioning and content strategy.

    AI visibility isn't a replacement for SEO. It's an additional area to measure as customers discover products through AI-generated answers.

    I'm building Aurvikon around one practical question


    I believe the most useful starting point for AI visibility isn't another generic score.

    It's knowing which valuable questions your company is losing, which competitors show up instead, and what you should investigate next.

    That's the problem we're working on with Aurvikon.

    I'd love to hear from other founders, SEO professionals, and SaaS marketers:

    If you could see every important buyer question where AI assistants recommend your competitors instead of you, what would you want the tool to tell you first?

    Would you prioritize the competing brands, the missing content, the sources behind the answers, or the specific actions most likely to improve visibility?

    I'm interested in how people are approaching this problem in practice.#ai #seo #startup #showdev #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
    Your Brand Can Rank on Google and Still Be Invisible in AI Search

  24. Half the power of a nightmare is not knowing, it's from a film but I'm not going to say which. You can just fear that it might come visit you at some point* 😈

    I've used a sensitive as when I'd done the final correction to the eyes at the end it creeped me out 😅

    Alt text 47 words

    *If you know, please don't say, as it'll spoil it for others if they watch the film in the future 🙏

    #Cosmictober #KittyDraws #Mastoart #KleineKunstKlasse

  25. #WritersCoffeeClub 25/10: Tell us about inspiration from an unlikely source.
    This is a cunningly disguised variation on the dreaded ‘where do you get your ideas from’, isn’t it?
    Since I rarely, if ever, know what my ‘inspiration’ is, I don’t know how to answer either question. I think my brain is some sort of fermenter, so what comes out is not easily traceable to what went in.
    #books #writing #writersofmastodon

  26. I wonder if populists know that their policies are bad.

    Wealth is very difficult and even humiliating to measure. It would be better to tax specific assets. It should be obvious why a one-time tax is irresponsible.

    Public grocery stores are a really stupid idea because it’s expensive and not targeted. Just send the money to the people who need it and they can use it to shop where they want.

    My sentiment toward Emily Lowan isn’t negative cause shes young (only 4 years older than me!) and its the Green party. Also I was impressed with her debate performance. Also her outfits are pretty cool.

    But it’s weird that there are all these party leaders who either don’t care that their ideas are bad or don’t care enough to find out that they are bad. Cause factually they are bad (alternatives exist that accomplish the same goals better) and it reduces the quality of debate to have them proposed.

  27. The Hubster isn’t a big chicken fan like I am but he really loved this dish and the taste totally reminded us of our lives in Japan. 🪭❤️

    I only used 2/3rds of a Tbsp of sugar and it was plenty sweet. More would have overpowered the dish.

    Since we don’t have cheap sake here I used Korean Clear One soju and it turned out perfect. 😋

    Oyakodon (chicken & egg over rice)

    #recipes
    #cooking
    #japanesefood
    #japaneserecipes

    justonecookbook.com/oyakodon/#

  28. They were stranded. The tsunami had just engulfed their craft, and having been tossed aside like so much flotsam, the engines were flooded.

    "Let it drain, Cooper. It'll need an hour," stated the flat voice of TARS from the centre console.

    "How much is this going to cost us, Brand?" demanded Cooper as he paced in agitation. Her reply, as she sat dejected on the floor: "A lot. Decades."

    "Wait," Cooper realised. "It's the last Sunday of October back on Earth. Is there any way we can, I don't know, change our clocks on the European schedule, gain back the years?"

    Amelia Brand stood and walked over to a side panel. "It could work. Let me edit the ship's timezone real quick..."

    A confirmatory beep sounded out from the panel. "Ok, we're now on London time. How're the engines looking, TARS?"

    "All clear, Dr Brand; we're good to go."

    #microfiction #dst

  29. I spent a long time thinking follow-ups were rude. Sending a second email to someone who hadn't replied felt like nagging — like I was the person who double-texts and then wonders why nobody answers.

    Then I started running outreach for a one-person content operation, and I learned the opposite: most non-replies aren't rejections. They're just lost in someone else's inbox.

    The inbox is not a verdict


    Editors, site owners, and collaborators get dozens of pitches a week. Mine was landing somewhere between a newsletter, a PR blast, and an invoice reminder. If it didn't get opened in the first day, it sank — not because it was bad, but because inboxes don't resurface things on their own.

    Once I accepted that, follow-ups stopped feeling like pressure and started feeling like a second chance for the first email to be seen at all.

    One follow-up, then I move on


    My rule now is simple: one polite follow-up, about a week later, and then I drop it and move on.

    The follow-up is short — shorter than the original pitch. It restates the idea in one line, adds nothing new to argue about, and ends with an easy out: "No worries at all if it's not a fit." That last line matters more than it looks. It gives the other person permission to say no quickly, which is the only kind of no that doesn't linger.

    What I don't do: a second follow-up, a "just bumping this to the top of your inbox" third email, or a follow-up that pretends the first one never happened. One is professional. Two starts to feel like a funnel.

    Rejection is data, silence usually isn't


    The replies I actually learned from were the no's. A short "not right for us right now" told me more about fit than a month of silence ever did. Silence, on the other hand, taught me almost nothing — the same pitch that got no reply from one editor got an enthusiastic yes from another.

    So I stopped rewriting pitches based on silence. If an idea gets no reply twice, from two different people, that's a signal about the idea. If it gets no reply once, that's a signal about timing, workload, or a Tuesday afternoon inbox. Those are very different problems, and only one of them is worth fixing.

    The spreadsheet that made it bearable


    The unglamorous part: I track every outreach in one sheet — who, when, what I pitched, and whether I followed up. Without it, I either forgot to follow up entirely or, worse, followed up with someone I'd already pitched twice.

    The sheet also quietly changed my attitude. When you can see forty pitches and twelve replies in one place, a single silence stops feeling personal. It's just a row in a table. That distance is what lets a solo operator keep pitching without burning out on it.

    What I'd tell another solo operator


    Follow up once, politely, and then let it go. Treat silence as inbox physics, not judgement. And keep a record, because your memory will either catastrophise the silence or forget the follow-up — and both cost you more than the email itself.

    If you run outreach solo, I'm curious: what's your follow-up rule? One and done, or do you have a number that works for you?#career #writing #productivity #discuss #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
    What Running a One-Person Outreach Operation Taught Me About Follow-Ups

  30. Here's a proof point most training vendors can't offer: Chinese state channels have flagged EPCYBER as a threat.

    Sit with that. If the methods didn't work — if this were the same recycled OSINT everyone else teaches — no one on that side would bother watching. You don't flag a course that scratches the surface. You flag the one that reaches past it.

    That's the tradecraft inside China OSINT Advanced. The same methods trusted by government, defense, and intelligence teams who can't afford to get it wrong, taught until you can run a complete China investigation on your own — past the DPI, +86, geo, and linguistic walls that stop everyone else.

    The full discipline, end to end, on real targets, updated for 2026. If it weren't real, no one would be watching. Corporate verification required, 120 days of access, exam and certificate.

    epcyber.com/china-osint-advanc

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