"Encryption is not security"
October 9, 2025 at 5:00 PM
"Encryption is not security"
In football, kicking a ball really hard isn't what wins games.
October 9, 2025 at 4:52 PM
In football, kicking a ball really hard isn't what wins games.
Farmers give talks at conferences talking about "artisinal hand-maintained unix servers, not serverless functions"
October 8, 2025 at 8:59 AM
Farmers give talks at conferences talking about "artisinal hand-maintained unix servers, not serverless functions"
Reposted by Brian Scanlan
Listen to @bscanlan.bsky.social talking to @quinnypig.com about how Intercom moved from AWS Aurora to @planetscale.com t.co/ZlRtVVr7Rs
https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/from-aurora-to-planetscale-intercom-s-database-evolution-with-brian-scanlan/
t.co
September 18, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Listen to @bscanlan.bsky.social talking to @quinnypig.com about how Intercom moved from AWS Aurora to @planetscale.com t.co/ZlRtVVr7Rs
Bought my sister a print of this for her birthday. Looks even better in real life.
September 21, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Bought my sister a print of this for her birthday. Looks even better in real life.
Reposted by Brian Scanlan
Plot twist: Intercom's on-call system uses VOLUNTEERS, not conscripts. @bscanlan.bsky.social explains how they compensate engineers for after-hours work instead of mandating it by team assignment.
Result? People actually want to join the rotation.
🎧 to the podcast:
Result? People actually want to join the rotation.
🎧 to the podcast:
From Aurora to PlanetScale: Intercom’s Database Evolution with Brian Scanlan
Screaming in the Cloud
www.lastweekinaws.com
September 19, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Plot twist: Intercom's on-call system uses VOLUNTEERS, not conscripts. @bscanlan.bsky.social explains how they compensate engineers for after-hours work instead of mandating it by team assignment.
Result? People actually want to join the rotation.
🎧 to the podcast:
Result? People actually want to join the rotation.
🎧 to the podcast:
Reposted by Brian Scanlan
13 Aurora clusters to a sleek move onto PlanetScale. Intercom’s database journey wasn’t just a migration, it was a rethink.
On the latest Screaming in the Cloud, @bscanlan.bsky.social (Senior Principal Engineer @ Intercom) joins Corey Quinn to talk about..
On the latest Screaming in the Cloud, @bscanlan.bsky.social (Senior Principal Engineer @ Intercom) joins Corey Quinn to talk about..
September 18, 2025 at 3:45 PM
13 Aurora clusters to a sleek move onto PlanetScale. Intercom’s database journey wasn’t just a migration, it was a rethink.
On the latest Screaming in the Cloud, @bscanlan.bsky.social (Senior Principal Engineer @ Intercom) joins Corey Quinn to talk about..
On the latest Screaming in the Cloud, @bscanlan.bsky.social (Senior Principal Engineer @ Intercom) joins Corey Quinn to talk about..
The rumours are true - I did a podcast with Corey.
Listen to @bscanlan.bsky.social talking to @quinnypig.com about how Intercom moved from AWS Aurora to @planetscale.com t.co/ZlRtVVr7Rs
https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/from-aurora-to-planetscale-intercom-s-database-evolution-with-brian-scanlan/
t.co
September 18, 2025 at 2:30 PM
The rumours are true - I did a podcast with Corey.
Doing a new talk!
♨️ Hot take: Publicly sharing your failures might feel awkward — but it's worth it.
Brian Scanlan from #Intercom is speaking at SEV0 London about why they publish public RCAs, and how it's made their teams stronger and systems more reliable.
RSVP for SEV0 here: go.incident.io/ma2b3db
#SEV02025
Brian Scanlan from #Intercom is speaking at SEV0 London about why they publish public RCAs, and how it's made their teams stronger and systems more reliable.
RSVP for SEV0 here: go.incident.io/ma2b3db
#SEV02025
August 20, 2025 at 7:09 AM
Doing a new talk!
Last year Intercom used 41.069 MTCO2e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide) in our use of AWS. This is equivalent to the electricity used by 8 average homes in the USA. The vast majority of this was produced in the Sydney region - Australia sure loves burning coal.
August 8, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Last year Intercom used 41.069 MTCO2e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide) in our use of AWS. This is equivalent to the electricity used by 8 average homes in the USA. The vast majority of this was produced in the Sydney region - Australia sure loves burning coal.
You can just own things.
I started reading The Staff Engineer’s Path by Tanya Reilly, and there’s one line I really liked — something along the lines of:
“If you find yourself saying, ‘Someone should do this,’ then you should probably do it.”
“If you find yourself saying, ‘Someone should do this,’ then you should probably do it.”
July 7, 2025 at 9:19 PM
You can just own things.
Reposted by Brian Scanlan
I started reading The Staff Engineer’s Path by Tanya Reilly, and there’s one line I really liked — something along the lines of:
“If you find yourself saying, ‘Someone should do this,’ then you should probably do it.”
“If you find yourself saying, ‘Someone should do this,’ then you should probably do it.”
July 7, 2025 at 5:24 AM
I started reading The Staff Engineer’s Path by Tanya Reilly, and there’s one line I really liked — something along the lines of:
“If you find yourself saying, ‘Someone should do this,’ then you should probably do it.”
“If you find yourself saying, ‘Someone should do this,’ then you should probably do it.”
Reposted by Brian Scanlan
I just released my edit of "In Praise of 'Normal' Engineers": why the best engineering orgs in the world are the ones where ✨normal engineers✨ can consistently move fast, ship code, fix shit, help their users, and move the business forward...a little more, every day.
charity.wtf/2025/06/19/i...
charity.wtf/2025/06/19/i...
In Praise of “Normal” Engineers
This article was originally commissioned by Luca Rossi (paywalled) for refactoring.fm, on February 11th, 2025. Luca edited a version of it that emphasized the importance of building “10x engi…
charity.wtf
June 19, 2025 at 5:22 PM
I just released my edit of "In Praise of 'Normal' Engineers": why the best engineering orgs in the world are the ones where ✨normal engineers✨ can consistently move fast, ship code, fix shit, help their users, and move the business forward...a little more, every day.
charity.wtf/2025/06/19/i...
charity.wtf/2025/06/19/i...
CVE-2025-6031 - Insecure device pairing in end-of-life Amazon Cloud Cam
aws.amazon.com
June 13, 2025 at 6:33 PM
I managed to tear my MCL on my left leg (grade 2) going down the outside waterslide in Center Parcs.
What's the stupidest way you've hurt yourself?
Oh I'm so glad you asked! I knocked myself out with a frozen bag of omelettes.
Oh I'm so glad you asked! I knocked myself out with a frozen bag of omelettes.
May 20, 2025 at 5:26 PM
I managed to tear my MCL on my left leg (grade 2) going down the outside waterslide in Center Parcs.
I still don't know how to pronounce JWT, but this is a really compelling replacement for how Intercom has been authenticating users until now. Great to see it in beta - obviously we already use it ourselves.
www.intercom.com/help/en/arti...
www.intercom.com/help/en/arti...
Authenticating users in the Messenger with JSON web tokens (JWTs) | Intercom Help
How to protect your Messenger and user sessions against cross-user impersonation, session theft and more.
www.intercom.com
April 2, 2025 at 1:28 PM
I still don't know how to pronounce JWT, but this is a really compelling replacement for how Intercom has been authenticating users until now. Great to see it in beta - obviously we already use it ourselves.
www.intercom.com/help/en/arti...
www.intercom.com/help/en/arti...
I wrote up what happened the other day when Intercom broke: www.intercomstatus.com/us-hosting/i...
Problems with our APIs in all regions. - US Hosting Status
This issue should now be resolved and all services are restored to normal functionality.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to team@intercom.io: mailto:team@intercom.io if you have any further quest...
www.intercomstatus.com
April 2, 2025 at 1:26 PM
I wrote up what happened the other day when Intercom broke: www.intercomstatus.com/us-hosting/i...
I can't believe that there's popular songs celebrating unvetted military age economic migrants: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSxX...
Na Buachaillí Álainn (Remastered 2021)
YouTube video by Clannad - Topic
www.youtube.com
March 19, 2025 at 9:24 PM
I can't believe that there's popular songs celebrating unvetted military age economic migrants: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSxX...
March 18, 2025 at 1:03 PM
I wrote up an Intercom outage that happened this week: www.intercomstatus.com/us-hosting/i...
Increased Error Rates & Latencies for Intercom users - US Hosting Status
Between 1429 UTC and 1511 UTC, customers using Intercom would have experienced periods of elevated error rates and high latency. We have taking mitigating action and this incident is now resolved.
Pl...
www.intercomstatus.com
February 28, 2025 at 10:05 AM
I wrote up an Intercom outage that happened this week: www.intercomstatus.com/us-hosting/i...
Reposted by Brian Scanlan
Reading Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" fascicles as they came out was incredibly key to discovering the Shuffle Sharding pattern, but I don't think I've ever written about it before ...
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4297...
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4297...
Back in 2010 when we were building Amazon Route 53, we had a really big problem ... | Hacker News
news.ycombinator.com
February 7, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Reading Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" fascicles as they came out was incredibly key to discovering the Shuffle Sharding pattern, but I don't think I've ever written about it before ...
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4297...
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4297...
My fave talks from re:Invent:
Eric talks about network defence: www.youtube.com/watch?v=65mX...
Marc talks about metastability etc.:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvHd...
colmmacc talks about networking: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzpz...
Eric talks about network defence: www.youtube.com/watch?v=65mX...
Marc talks about metastability etc.:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvHd...
colmmacc talks about networking: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzpz...
December 18, 2024 at 10:53 PM
My fave talks from re:Invent:
Eric talks about network defence: www.youtube.com/watch?v=65mX...
Marc talks about metastability etc.:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvHd...
colmmacc talks about networking: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzpz...
Eric talks about network defence: www.youtube.com/watch?v=65mX...
Marc talks about metastability etc.:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvHd...
colmmacc talks about networking: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzpz...
First 🤯 of re:Invent - AWS are using "hollow core fibre" to allow availability zone buildings to be further away from each other without breaking their intra-AZ latency requirements.
December 2, 2024 at 11:58 PM
First 🤯 of re:Invent - AWS are using "hollow core fibre" to allow availability zone buildings to be further away from each other without breaking their intra-AZ latency requirements.
1000 days of Wordle.
November 27, 2024 at 8:25 AM
1000 days of Wordle.
That was stressful. Hopefully they'll play more than one show.
November 26, 2024 at 10:34 AM
That was stressful. Hopefully they'll play more than one show.