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Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

180 followers 98 following 410 posts

Father, husband, software engineer. Enthusiastic about open source, Linux, and keyboards.

Matrix: @dead10ck:dead10ck.dev

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Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

Just put together my new Corne 4.1. Decided to give the KAT profile a try, and of course, Cannon Keys has a cat-themed set with pastel colors. So I printed a case to match it.

#MechanicalsKeyboard #MechKB

June 24, 2025 at 10:00 PM

Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

I hope you enjoyed the couple of hours that that lasted

March 23, 2025 at 7:59 PM

Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

@jay.bsky.team any thoughts on Aaron Goldman's (self proclaimed architect of ATProto) story about being fired because of asking for parental leave?

Why I am not at Bluesky PBLLC.
Short version: I was fired by "Jay" Graber.
When my son was coming due, I asked to get parental leave. I also missed dwebcamp as it was at the same time as my sun was due. This set a precedent that I would put things like the birth of my first child over work. So, a week before the due date I was fired, Jay expressed regret that I was losing my health insurance immediately as I was about to have a child but that Bluesky was about to hire an additional employee and doing so would make them eligible for a number of California laws about parental leave. They had to fire me before the employee count hit 5 or it would be illegal for them to do so in response to my having a child. The concern was that with such a tiny workforce it was too hard to have a key engineer and protocol designer out on leave and then working around care for a newborn after that.
At the same time there were some technical disagreements and changes to the objectives. When I came on Twitter was planning to adopt the protocol and that meant designing integration with the existing twitter “take out my data” feature. I had extensive experience with the Twitter microservice architecture from my time on the Twitter security team. When Elon bought twitter and limited API access it was clear that there was no path to Twitter soon to be X ever working with Bluesky or AtProto in any way. So, my

The second technical change was that I was pushing for a three app initial launch of AtProto. The first was the Bluesky social network, the second was a calendar events app where the event creator put the events into a AtProto collection, and the third was a Dropbox-like file backup and sync app. Each app would force the protocol to remain somewhat generic. A repo checked out by an anonymous user would get only the public collections and a checkout by an authenticated author of the repo would also get the personal collections e.g. the file sync app. When Twitter exploded then Bluesky wanted to turn hard from a distributed publishing protocol to a single focus on the social network and becoming a competitor to Twitter faster than Twitter could be destroyed by Elon. Protocol work was suddenly much less important than traditional Application development.

They needed to build a Twitter clone immediately and could get back to the mission statement later once they had users. Jay kept telling us we are not building a Distributed database, we are making a social networking app. I kept telling her we are making a Distributed database and that “at://DID/APP/collection/path/to/object.ext” was a competitor to domain names, git, and the filesystem.

It was my opinion then as now that repositories that have URLs and are cryptographically authenticated so they can be mirrored without loss of authenticity is a bigger deal than a single social app. To me Authenticated-data Transfer PRTOocol(AtProto) was an important new kind of URL. She of course wanted to focus on bsky.app that either the app got good fast and captured the Twitter exodus or the PBLLC dies and there would be no funds to develop AtProto at all. We needed to be making money or no protocol would matter.
So I was fired, spent a few months off taking care of my newborn and then got a new job at a company that did see its mission as building a distributed database.
In the meantime, Jay hired more engineers that were focused on the social app and told the California unemployment office that I was fired for not posting to the company slack channels to the required degree. In the end I don’t recommend to any american losing your health insurance 2 hours after your child is born. While I am annoyed by Jay’s timing I still hope that AtProto has success. It is still nice to know that a protocol based on my PhD work is in use and still hope it have a future far greater then just bsky.app

January 5, 2025 at 1:06 PM

Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

I am constantly insulted on this platform

December 28, 2024 at 7:34 PM

Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

A picture of a stick figure thinking in cycles about "rearchitecting this project", unable to sleep

November 9, 2024 at 2:37 AM

Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

Only, after 24 hours, suddenly everyone who has seen it suddenly loses their shit, starts bleeding out of their eyes, screaming non-stop, and violently attacking anyone near them that has not turned.

Given what has just happened to America, I can't help but see the parallel.

November 7, 2024 at 1:41 AM

Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

I think 34 is my new favorite number.

The Sesame Street Count presenting the number 3

The Sesame Street Count presenting the number 4

May 30, 2024 at 11:10 PM

Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

How does one attain this level of "can't even"?

A French bulldog laying on the floor with its hind paws inside the rim of its bed, resting its head between its front paws and looking into the camera with a very tired look on its face

May 28, 2024 at 1:46 AM

Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

First post from my own self hosted PDS. @atproto.com you folks freaking did it! You made a decentralized social network that's actually economically practical for people to self host, and can follow them wherever they move. You folks should be enormously proud of yourselves!

#pds #selfhosted

March 16, 2024 at 4:53 AM

Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

Absolutely incredible. Head of Autopilot at Tesla "said he did not know what the term 'Operational Design Domain' means. 'I've heard those words before, but I do not recall much more than that,' he said."

If this doesn't exemplify incompetence, I don't know what does.

After the 2019 Key Largo crash, Angulo filed a lawsuit arguing that Tesla’s marketing creates a false sense of complacency for drivers, setting the stage for the crash that killed his girlfriend. The suit also accuses Tesla of negligence, including for the ability to activate the feature outside of its so-called “Operational Design Domain,” which is an industry term for the specific locations and sets of circumstances for which Autopilot is designed. It is one of about 10 such cases expected to go to trial over the next year.

In a sworn deposition last year first detailed by Reuters and obtained by The Post, Tesla’s head of Autopilot, Ashok Elluswamy, said he was unaware of any document describing limitations on where and under what conditions the feature could operate. He said he was aware of some activation conditions for Autopilot, including the presence of lane lines, and that it is safe for “anyone who is using the system appropriately.”
But he said he did not know what the term “Operational Design Domain” means. “I’ve heard those words before, but I do not recall much more than that,” he said.

December 11, 2023 at 1:25 AM

Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

Meme of a newborn baby bringing its hand to its chin, but the baby's face is overlaid with Musk's

November 22, 2023 at 11:18 PM

Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

Little did I know shaving my cats would mean my Frenchie gets extra snacks for days.

A French bulldog standing up on its hind legs with a large clump of orange cat fur sticking out of its mouth

November 21, 2023 at 11:29 PM

Skyler Hawthorne

@dead10ck.dev

Actual conversation I just had with my 5 year old:

"Does sink and wrinkle rhyme?"

"No, those words don't end the same"

"What's it called when words start the same?"

"Um I'm not sure. I think alliteration?"

"No dad, alliteration is when the letter starts the same, like 'lilly lion likes lunch'"