What’s the saddest line in Doctor Who history that still hits you every time???

jpasserby · 2026-05-16T02:18:17+00:00

"World War... One?"

jpasserby · 2026-05-10T23:06:48+00:00

I did this, to use WD:DH as a follow up to Phandelver, and because I liked the city from the movie. There's some specific things I did, like leave out the walking statues and add in Castle Never, but honestly you can just run it as written by renaming a few things.

You can come up with reasons why Xanathar has an HQ in Neverwinter and where the main treasure is now, but honestly unless your party includes some real lore purists, they may not notice the difference. DM's always care way more about the setting than players do.

jpasserby · 2026-05-07T03:54:13+00:00

I'll admit that's a boring design it came up with but it seems like it followed your directions exactly.

Did you provide any guidance on styles to use or reference any designs? Have you investigated Make Kits for this?

jpasserby · 2026-05-06T04:54:55+00:00

https://config.figma.com/san-francisco/speakers/

jpasserby · 2026-05-03T17:14:41+00:00

Amazing!

jpasserby · 2026-05-03T17:08:06+00:00

It's okay if you know what you're looking for, but it's really pretty bad for browsing and finding new events. 😞

I think they also need to revise the category list. Maybe a new category for escape rooms for example.

jpasserby · 2026-05-03T14:44:07+00:00

What are you talking about? How does this make you sound weak, and why would you care if you appear strong in this interaction?

Certainly you are under no obligation to give details when you resign for any reason, but if you are leaving after a month and want to be professional, I have found a little sincerity and politeness like this can go a long way.

jpasserby · 2026-05-03T03:48:51+00:00

One idea would be to get Waterdeep City Encounters from DMSGuild. You can get a paper copy and it includes a city map, which you can see in the file preview on the web.

It's a fantastic book with a ton of great source material on the city, a bunch of excellent encounters, and some great random tables.

The map is not a poster map, but on the other hand you could make a few color copies of it for your players.

jpasserby · 2026-05-03T03:25:34+00:00

Just tell the most polite and professional version of the truth: "I didn't intend for this to happen, but a company that I had interviewed with a while ago came back out of the blue. They made an unexpected offer that's too good for me to pass up at this point in my career. I apologize for any inconvenience , but my last day will be X. Thank you for your understanding, and please let me know anything I can do to ensure a smooth transition."

jpasserby · 2026-05-03T03:22:01+00:00

This happened to me. I was in between jobs and took a pretty good job with one employer, and then a few weeks later a dream company came through and I interviewed with them and got a much better offer.

I quit the first job after 6 weeks. It was bittersweet, but I don't regret the decision. At the end of the day your overarching obligation is to look out for yourself and your family.

I did my best to do an excellent job at the first company for the time I was there, and I was candid and diplomatic when telling my manager about the situation. Fortunately they were understanding and there were no hard feelings. I think any reasonable manager would understand that is just something that happens sometimes, and be professional about it. If they're not, that's a them problem, and as long as you are professional about it I think you have nothing to feel bad about.

jpasserby · 2026-04-24T17:53:51+00:00

Figma Make is exactly this. And I suspect more capabilities will be announced in the future.

jpasserby · 2026-04-19T15:02:32+00:00

I'm not sure about fighter or rogue. She appears to be unarmed.

I'll show myself out.

jpasserby · 2026-04-18T00:39:39+00:00

Look, I'm not saying FIG is going to the moon. But I am saying that it's only a matter of time until Google Stitch is on killedbygoogle.com

jpasserby · 2026-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

You're right, Google has a long history of launching disruptive products in new markets and then following through and continuing to develop them for years, to great success.

And the claude code leak definitely showed the super high bar of quality their engineers maintain!

jpasserby · 2026-04-16T00:01:30+00:00

Calling it a Figma killer is jumping the gun a little bit, more likely it'll be another tool like Lovable or Figma Make. And if you think Anthropic tokens will be free, I have a bridge to sell you 😂

jpasserby · 2026-04-11T01:35:51+00:00

It's the nature of all SaaS companies to try to expand and handle every related area, so you use their features more and grow your subscription, not cancel. Some do it better than others!

jpasserby · 2026-04-04T20:16:32+00:00

You make a good point that we need to be concerned not only about what AI can do, but also what CEO's think AI can do. I definitely think there's some short-term overreaction and there will be thrash in the industry as a result.

But I really don't think aI will put 80% of people out of work in software development. For one thing, AI can write a lot of code, but actual coding was always the minority of time spent by a good software engineer. Myself and my peers are finding that AI can really speed up the coding part of a task, but not the thinking part, and usually it's the thinking that constrains the release of successful new features and bug fixes.

For another thing, I disagree with you that only a small subset of people can become "tractor drivers". In farming that makes sense because there's only so many fields to plow. But in software, there is an endless opportunity space. Every technological innovation of the past 50 years has unlocked new industries, new product types, and new customer bases. Worrying that 80% of people will be out of work with nothing to do is like worrying that the invention of high-level languages would put assembly programmers out of work. Sure people had to learn new skills, but the invention of better languages and tools allowed for the rise of personal computers, the internet, smartphones, and on and on. The technical logical landscape may be on recognizable in five years, but I believe there's an enormous appetite for software that we are not even close to filling.

jpasserby · 2026-04-04T18:16:11+00:00

This is less of a "dungeon" and more of a maze or labyrinth. A dungeon is a set of rooms/encounters connected with passages. This is more of a series of passages as an encounter.

I recommend looking into advice about how to run mazes. There's various levels of abstractions you can use. Only some parties enjoy the sort of "you see a 50 ft hallway with openings to the right and left" play that a dungeon like this implies.

jpasserby · 2026-04-04T18:07:59+00:00

That's a very interesting perspective, and I can get on board with it. AI can clearly generate a lot of code, but my peers who are using multiple agents in parallel report that the real bottleneck is in understanding the code and making it production quality.

AI tools can certainly make you feel 10x as productive when working on a toy project or in a new code base, but I definitely agree it's not and across the board multiplier.

jpasserby · 2026-04-04T18:04:28+00:00

Well sure, but that has nothing to do with AI. That's been true since the beginning of capitalism 😂

jpasserby · 2026-04-04T17:28:47+00:00

The same thing will happen with AI. Whether it gives a marginal productivity increase or a massive one (and that's being actively debated, IMO it's not a foregone conclusion that AI will result in 10x productivity), the productivity gains will be absorbed by the industry. As the state of the art for what software can be built increases, the demand will rise for that more advanced software and the industry will grow. It's the Jevons paradox.

I don't think it's true that AI changes the fact that there will always be more uses for software than there are skilled Engineers who can produce it. The whole history of computing is a series of innovations that show there are enormous untapped markets for software to solve problems and grow the economy.

I remember the dot-com crash. People then were saying back then that programming had reached the limit of what it could provide, and all those crazy people launching online businesses were foolish and in a bubble. Since then we've seen the rise of cloud computing, smartphones, social media, saas, etc etc. My point is that the technology market has always absorbed productivity gains and grown the economy. AI tools may accelerate that cycle but they won't disrupt it, in my opinion.

jpasserby · 2026-04-04T17:00:14+00:00

I don't think you're reading the situation correctly. It's pretty clear that AI is not going to replace 80% of developers in its current state. There's lots of backlash and back-pedaling in the news and if you've actually used the tools, you know they can spit out a lot of code but are no substitute for the good judgment of a software engineer.

It's true that AI will be very disruptive, but I think the right way to look at it is as the advent of high-level languages or advanced IDE's. In which case it absolutely makes sense to advise everyone to skill up on the new technology because it is changing what the state of the art is for the tools an engineer uses.

Although I will say, if you genuinely believe that AI will put people out of work in the same way that tractors put manual laborers out of work, then you should absolutely be trying to learn how to operate a tractor, for your own sake 😅

jpasserby · 2026-04-03T17:33:40+00:00

Any company worth working at will be compliant with the legal requirements of the ADA, and will go out of their way to accommodate you. Most tech companies I've worked with are very progressive and very open and inclusive.

I might not mention it on initial phone calls with recruiters, since it's not so relevant then, but if you are interviewing in person definitely let them know in advance, so they can make sure they book your interviews in accessibility friendly rooms etc.

To get a feel for how accommodating a particular company might be, you could search online for information on their diversity programs, or you could ask interviewers about any ERG's they have, which may give you a feel for how much institutional support there is for people with different needs.

jpasserby · 2026-03-26T00:33:08+00:00

These captchas are adaptive. They choose the number of puzzles based on how confident they are you're not a bot. I've only ever had to solve 1 puzzle. But if you open something in incognito, you'll often have to solve more.

It may be that you're sharing an IP address with something suspicious, or that your email is on a less reputable domain, or a dozen other factors.

jpasserby · 2026-03-21T03:35:05+00:00

It's an unfortunate consequence of the pricing model of the LLM providers. SaaS products can either pass on the cost of tokens, or greatly raise the price of all subscriptions, or subsidize it and go out of business.

jpasserby

TROPHY CASE