Leadership
The Museum of Meaningless Metrics
I came across a cartoon on LinkedIn this week. A small museum gallery, four glass cases on plinths. Lines of Code, with a tall stack of fanfold paper inside. Story Points, with a Fibonacci sequence of...
M
Matthew Gamble
Reflections by Matthew Gamble
ai
Are AI Models the New Firearms?
"Last week" (https://mgamble.ca/p/sovereign-ai-is-the-new-space-race-canada-just-brought-a-sparkler) I argued that sovereign AI was the new space race and that Canada was bringing a sparkler to the...
3d-printing
Building an LED Sports Scoreboard: Power Bugs, Permission Traps, and Other Joys
A few months into life as an "executive" in my day job, I have noticed something. The further up the org chart you climb, the less actual building you get to do. Meetings get longer. Decks get...
iot
Give Me Hard Mode
You never know what you are going to find in a comment section. Most days, the answer is nothing useful. Every once in a while you stumble into a thread that sends you down a different path...
ai
Sovereign AI is the New Space Race. Canada Just Brought a Sparkler.
Earlier today the Prime Minister stood up in Toronto and "launched AI for All" (https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/06/04/prime-minister-carney-launches-ai-all-canadas-new-national-artific...
dns
It's Just DNS With Extra Steps
Lou over at louwrentius.com "recently published a thoughtful piece" (https://louwrentius.com/dns-is-for-people-not-for-it-infrastructure.html) arguing that DNS, while useful for public-facing...
microsoft
Thanks, Joan: Why My Email Address Has My Name in It Twice
If you have ever sent me an email, you have probably noticed that my address is "[email protected]". The local part is my name. The domain is my name. Combined, they say my name twice. Most people...
ai
I Spent a Decade Running the M6. Then I Met It Again.
Google Drive sent me one of those notifications a couple of weeks ago. Storage full. Time to clean up. So I started poking through the corners of my drive looking for things to delete, and that is how...
Hard Conversations
Won't Someone Please Think of the Children, Microwave Edition
I was visiting a friend recently who had just bought a new microwave. I went to open it to reheat a coffee, and I could not. I pulled the handle. Nothing. I pulled harder, in case the thing was just...
Hard Conversations
Some Days Should Belong to Everyone
Thirty years ago I worked in a movie theatre. The schedule went up on a clipboard in the back office every Friday for the following week, and I learned very quickly that there were two kinds of yes...
ai
AI Won't Fix Your Broken Process. It Will Just Make It Faster.
A while back I watched a mid-size company announce, with great fanfare, that AI was going to take their vendor onboarding process from twelve weeks to four. For those not familiar with vendor...
Reflections
Sometimes I'm an Idiot
Apparently my brain hears what it wants to hear, and I rarely ask follow-up questions. This blog is usually pretty serious. AI taking over the world, governments regulating the internet, the...
ai
It's Not the Pricing, It's the Opacity
The New York Times reported this week that Maryland became the first US state to ban AI-driven price increases at grocery stores. The law takes effect in October. It prohibits grocery stores and...
ai
It's Not an AI Problem, It's an Access Problem
«"NEVER F**KING GUESS, and that's exactly what I did. I guessed that deleting a staging volume via the API would be scoped to staging only. I didn't verify. I didn't check if the volume ID was shared...
crtc
Click to Cancel Comes to Canada (And I Have Some Thanking to Do)
Back in November of 2025, I wrote a post called "Click to Cancel: Why Canada Needs to Catch Up" (https://mgamble.ca/p/click-to-cancel-why-canada-needs-to-catch-up). I griped about the 20 minutes I...
Hard Conversations
The Ice Cream Invitation Problem
Earlier this week I was at the mall with my friend "Dave" (not his real name), shoe shopping. The reason we were at the mall isn't important, but it sets the scene. We left the shoe store, Dave turned...
ai
Did I Just Talk to a Person?
Over the weekend I had to call a plumbing service. Tenant had a broken toilet, bad timing, the usual Saturday night special. Like most after-hours services, I didn't get connected to a plumber. I got...
ai
The AI Divide: A New Fault Line Opening Before We Finished Closing the Old One
Earlier this week I had the privilege of moderating a panel at Digital Access Day, the Canadian Internet Society's annual gathering of thoughtleaders working on the issues shaping our networks and our...
3d-printing
California's 3D Printing Bill Won't Stop Gun Violence, But It Will Create a New Class of Criminals
Earlier this year I wrote about "New York's attempt to mandate filtering software on 3D printers" (https://mgamble.ca/p/new-yorks-3d-printer-bill-wont-stop-ghost-guns-but-it-will-stop-you-from-fixing)...
net neutrality
Spain Just Proved Why ISPs Can't Be the Internet's Content Police
Earlier this year, I wrote about "Bill S-209" (https://mgamble.ca/p/bill-s-209-protecting-kids-at-the-cost-of-the-internet) and its deeply flawed premise: that we can protect kids from pornography by...