2025-12-01 15:00:00
Heya!
So, in case you've noticed: It's the first day of advent today!
...And, for this advent, the gazette has prepared something special:
The grizzly gazette advent calendar!
Come, have a seat at this fireplace xaya drew for us while I explain how the calendar works!
Seated? Sorry, I can't offer you any drinks, we didn't have the budget for fictional hot chocolate. Getting this fictional fireplace installed used up all of our fictional budget. Fictionally.
Anyways!
How does our advent calendar work?
Well, it's pretty straightforward.
Every day until the 25th, one of the bloggers participating in this event will release a new post! We'll then update the advent calendar further down this page with a link to the post.
So, just check back here once a day for the rest of advent for some new, vaguely holiday themed posts!
What will they be about, exactly?
Who's participating?
Guess you'll just have to wait to find out :3
The calendar will be updated at 7am UTC every day, automatically!
Aren't I good at programming?
Welp, here's the calendar!
2025-12-01 06:04:00
I sometimes wonder if we have too uncritically accepted the marketing narrative of social media companies about how connectivity is always good and preferable, and that they as the mediators always need to be the ones facilitating it in their own way.
I’ll have to narrow it down: Of course having friends, family, a support network is good - even needed - and work connections get you further professionally, both offline and online. That’s not what I mean.
What I see critically instead are tech companies continuing to advertise their services as facilitating these connections, when they actually do so less and less in favor of more sponsored content and AI bots, and that the best way for connection to happen is to have an endless supply, and on their platform.
They were extremely successful in convincing many of us that merely having potential access to more people, and many more people having access to us directly, is an advantage and counts as “being connected” (meaning: more than the simple software connection between us). I just don’t believe that, at least for a private person who doesn’t need to win over customers or become a brand.
We can see daily that most of us are just not equipped to handle thousands or more people coming at us online. There’s good reasons why famous people used to have a more filtered access to fans via fan mail, interviews, magazines and the occasional meet and greet, plus a PR team and media training. There is a sweet spot when we have relationships to just enough people to be happy without the attention becoming a burden.
These companies have conflated a sort of passive consumption, access and surveillance with “connection” and “relationships”, using the image of keeping up with friends and family via a platform to imply that thousands consuming your posts without ever talking to you and more or less surveilling you as a stranger counts the same. They have facilitated a business model around parasocial behaviors with influencers via this exact narrative.
They also want you to believe that you need their platforms for relationship maintenance, and they have succeeded, with many claiming they would not be able to get a hold of their inner circle or know about their lives if they deleted their account… which is sad.
The idea that you cannot interact with family anymore without this platform, that you can go through millions of strangers to find your next best friend or partner or other opportunity, keeps you on it.
The exchange of posts across millions of people keeps each other on the platform too, as you’re always looking for new posts and never run out. No one would use it if it was dead, and they’d use it less if a post couldn’t generate these juicy numbers. That reinforces itself.
There’d be less posts to consume if most people limited their profiles and posts for privacy, and ragebait loses its teeth if everyone just blocks the poster or blocks each other too freely. People are also expected to make themselves available 24/7 and overshare, which helps mine additional data and creates more attractive and scandalous content round the clock for the other users to consume, as opposed to just using it for an hour a day.
All of these factors have in common that huge masses of people need to be almost constantly available, active and not walled off to each other. That means no limits via settings, friend lists, block lists, feeds that only show who you follow, friction or time constraints, because then the free flow of “content” is disrupted and people spend less time on the app. That could also mean your friends and family drop off too, so you don’t stay there either, which means less eyes on ads and less data to harvest.
So of course they’d want to counter this possible risk with the notion that the average Joe needs to open himself up to the eyes of millions because "connection is good!" and maybe you’ll even go viral and earn money.
Don’t you wanna be “connected”? Why are you isolating yourself? You’re so weak for blocking that person, and you’re missing out by privating your profile or deactivating it, and you’re antisocial by not posting!
Meta went notoriously hard on pushing its capability to be hyperconnective:
In Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, she describes again and again how Mark Zuckerberg met with lots of important authorities and key political figures to underline how the platform could connect, just to get more users 1, without taking responsibility for what their platform would enable in some of the most heated regions - even hiding their role in the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election by pushing their narrative about openness and connection2. They also disregarded the setting not to import phone contacts and implemented the "People You May Know" feature3 to make more "connection" happen, jeopardizing people's safety and privacy to do so.
In general, bringing internet to other disadvantaged and cut-off countries is a good thing, and they did launch Internet.org (now: Free Basics) to allegedly aid with that4; however, it quickly devolved into just providing rudimentary Facebook versions to these countries (Facebook Zero), becoming essentially the entirety of the internet in these places and therefore controlling it completely just to gain more users and influence5, and only pleaded with countries under the guise of connection to get unblocked, especially by China6. They even created a Connectivity Lab in 20147, invested in a Connectivity Declaration and spent over 1 Million dollars on full-page advertisements for it. They even got positive press by CNN and Reuters about pleading with the UN that connectivity over their platform could eradicate "global ills" like extreme poverty8.
Not only that, but as many probably already know, Meta has been pushing chatbots and fake AI profiles on their platforms (especially Instagram) for a year or so now. The goal is to keep you there still, as less and less people actually talk to each other while just passively consuming content. As the net gets taken over by bots, what’s the advantage of connecting with them? Connection at all costs huh, even if there's no human involved? That is where the idea of it starts to crumble and fall apart.
Which is why the need for connectivity in the way these companies mean it and push it is a big lie just to further their financial interests and has nothing to do with how humans actually pursue, facilitate and experience true connection, and we need to question it.
Discussions around isolation and viewership online are a bit skewed for me for that reason, especially when they happen outside of the mega-platforms and are about blogging, because they apply the marketing we internalized on social media to other spaces who don’t depend on this lie.
My friend Suliman said something very sweet recently about discoverability in the indie web:
“But what's the point of a home on the internet if you're living it alone? There's a saying in Arabic that says "a Heaven without people is no Heaven" and I think it's truer in our modern day than ever. We're already so isolated, so why isolate ourselves even further?”
I think this is true for the offline context, but I am not convinced about how well it works for the online world. I am concerned this view on connection uncritically applied to online spaces is playing too much into the financial interests of Meta and others and is, at least partially, learned behavior from growing up on their platforms, and growing up in a capitalistic era that urges you to use everyone you know for professional networking, extracting favors and all to attain better work, housing, and donations.
I can only speak for myself, but the reason why I would be able to be completely alone, unread and ignored online is because I already get all the connection I need offline. Online is a bonus, or a fallback. Not to mention that it could overlap and only my offline relationships could read my blog. Would that not be enough?
Connections I have offline are people I can visit flea markets with, play board games with, we share beds and food and I can rely on them when I’m sick. Meanwhile, the online people I am supposed to crave being connected to en masse can give me an upvote, and an email - which is very appreciated, but it is just not on the same level.
Online people absolutely can become offline people, as I met my wife online and have had good internet friends. But that, as shown above, has nothing to do with the widespread passive consumption and access that is presented under the guise of connection by these giants who abuse it. I don’t feel connected by simply witnessing someone exist; neither on social media, nor around the blogosphere.
To me, saying I need people online to notice me to not be isolated is like telling me I need to go to Times Square on New Years Eve to not be lonely. All that will happen is that I’d feel lonely while surrounded by other people and noise. We should not value quantity over quality, and I don't want to pretend that the attention economy that these companies have instilled to further their own power is my way to find true connection.
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2025-12-01 04:26:00
HorusPass Send is another find while exploring Bearblog.
Herman Martinus built BearBlog, and has an inspiring projects page. There's something energizing watching someone just... keep putting cool things into the world. And Send isn't just one of those things, it's also a thoughtful application of cryptography!
Here's a little tool that lets you share a secret — a password, an API key, a confession of love — that can only be read once. After the recipient opens it, it's gone. Poof.
The server generates two tokens. Token A goes in the URL you share as a query parameter. Token B stays on the server. You need both to encrypt or decrypt. When the recipient clicks the link, the server hands over Token B — then deletes it. The browser decrypts the message.
It's kind of the same as writing your password on a sheet of paper, but ripping it in half and hiding both halves in different places. If someone finds one, you're still safe.
The thing here is that the server is writing the password, not you, and giving you one half. You have to trust it deleted the half it gave you, right?
Not quite.
Here's what you're not trusting: that the server saw your encrypted message.
Even if the server has the keys, it doesn't have the lockbox. The ciphertext passes from sender to recipient in the URL fragment: everything after the #. Browsers don't send those fragments to servers.
Why not generate both tokens in the browser and send one to the server? Then the server never sees the full key. That opens up another problem: the server would be storing data submitted by users, which opens it up to abuse — people uploading arbitrary content, not just random tokens. This could be even abused by bots, and Herman already has enough fun messing with them. Why invite more trouble.
There's more sophisticated cryptography. You can generate keys that are born split — where no single party ever holds the complete key, even at creation. The browser and server could each contribute randomness in a process cryptographers call "ceremonies" because they like to sound mysterious. Both sides random inputs combine in a way that produces key shares, and neither would ever see the full key. This is the world of threshold cryptography and multi-party computing. Pretty interesting to learn, but also more complex to build.
The beautiful thing about Herman's design: none of that is really necessary, since the ciphertext never hits the server anyway.
I wrote before about Ronan's commit-reveal games and the question he keeps asking: "Why do I need anything else?" HorusPass is the same insight.
What I really like: Herman's explanation on the site is fast and clear. Four bullet points and you understand what's happening. No jargon, no mystique. He wants you to see how it works.
That's a breath of fresh air for me. And it's the same ethos as the tool itself — serving a clear need using regular cryptographic primitives in a practical way. Just like writing your password across two sheets of paper.
The smart way is often the simple way.
2025-12-01 02:54:00
Everyone knows the saying that “what gets measured gets managed”. But the choice of what to measure makes all the difference.
The obvious metrics to measure are the ones that describe outcomes: revenue, subscribers, stock price. These are output metrics. They’re easy to choose because they’re unambiguous and important to know. But they’re terrible at telling you what to do. If your revenue is too low, knowing that doesn’t help you raise it.
The metrics that actually help are hiding upstream. They’re harder to define because they’re not sitting in financial statements. You have to work backwards from the outcome you want and figure out what causes it. These are input metrics.
The best technique I know for finding them is to think in terms of flywheels. This idea comes from Jim Collins, but the most famous example is probably the napkin sketch Jeff Bezos drew in 2001.
You start with an output metric, like growth, and really spend time thinking through what drives it. Ideally you’ll end up with a flywheel where each thing drives the next thing, all in support of the output metric.
You can then think through the metrics for each element in the flywheel, and these become levers for change that will drive the flywheel faster.
Let’s use the Amazon example. We’ll start with customer experience. An input metric here could be, say, speed of shipment. If you make that better, more people show up. More people attract more sellers, who broaden the selection, which improves the experience again. When the company grows, its costs drop, which pushes prices down, which improves the experience yet again.
This isn’t only for product businesses either. My focus right now is on consulting, so here’s what a flywheel might look like for a consulting firm. We’ll use growth as the output metric again, here meaning revenue.
The flywheel might look like this: better talent produces better work, which makes clients happier, which generates more case studies and referrals, which attracts better talent. The increase in revenue means we can continue investing in talent.
Pick any point in that loop and you can improve it. Suppose you pick “better work”. You can break that down into input metrics like: percentage of engagements that start with clear, measurable success criteria, how quickly blockers get removed etc. These are things you can influence directly, and if you improve them, the flywheel will pick up speed.
It’s hard creating input metrics. It’ll take all your experience and it’ll be an iterative process discovering what works and what doesn’t. But once you find them, you have something that can actually drive action.
Most firms don’t do this work. They stick with the obvious output metrics and just proclaim: work harder. But if you can identify the real inputs and get people focused on them, the outputs will take care of themselves.
Working Backwards, Colin Bryar & Bill Carr
Good to Great, Jim Collins
2025-11-30 06:46:00
LeetCode pattern matching.
Incomplete specs, debugging, data processing, often inside an existing codebase. Hard to prepare for because they’re extensive. ALWAYS ask the recruiter for prep material, and make sure you have at least two full weeks before the interview. These are some of the hardest interviews due to their novelty.
Covers basic coding ability. Can be prepped as part of the classic prep loop.
There’s not much time to think, classic interviews expect smooth execution. You have to memorize patterns and be fast at implementing them.
unittest.main(verbosity=2, exit=False) to run them.A nice thing about the leetcode and coderpad editor is you can configure vim/emacs keybindings in them, they are clunky but better than nothing.
I liked using this timer↩
2025-11-30 04:01:00
You want a constant stream of opportunities coming in, and it takes time:
Do now: Get LinkedIn Premium1 for a couple of months. Check who’s viewing your profile, which searches you appear in, and how your impressions trend. Use your favorite chatbot to improve your headline and summary, make small changes, and do light A/B testing to see what increases views and recruiter hits.
Recruiters will often push for a call, pitching a "rocket ship company" with hundreds of millions in funding and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Always ask upfront for the name of the company and the specific role they think is a good fit for you. Many of these roles won’t align with your goals, it’s perfectly fine to say no early, instead of spending hours triaging it over live calls.
Every call is a chance to pitch yourself. You need a crisp, repeatable narrative (use chatbots to refine), and you should adjust it to who you’re speaking with.
Goal: help them route you correctly and keep the process alive, some of the conversation died down because I didn’t get to talk to the right people.
This stage can easily derail your process if you’re misrouted. Be explicit:
Goal: examples of tech work and leadership
Goal: tech depth.
Many challenges big-tech faces aren’t technical, they’re cultural or organizational. Avoid those topics unless you’re interviewing for a pure leadership role at another big tech company. Instead, focus on the technical difficulty that comes from scale, and craft stories that highlight why the problems were hard from an engineering perspective.
Not every call will go well. That’s normal. Treat it as a loop: chat, observe what landed, refine, repeat.
This is not an endorsement, you can consider other options, but this seemed to work well for me during the month of October 2025.↩