One question a week

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The database behind the iPhone app I just put on the App Store has answers in it from 2014.

Not a copy of them. Not an export I re-imported into something new. The same rows, in the same Rails application, sitting there the whole time.

In 2014 I went to Nashville Software School to learn to build the thing I had spent the previous two years trying to get somebody else to build. I turned 35 during the program. The capstone project I handed in was called Answers to Answers, and it did one thing. Monday morning, an automated mailer sent a single question to a small group. Everybody answered on their own, either by replying to that email or on the web. Friday morning at ten, everyone’s answer was revealed to everyone else at once.

What family archives are for, now that the AI can read them

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I have three collections of letters sitting in my house.

The oldest is a stack from my great-grandparents, written between 1910 and 1913. The second is from my grandparents, written during World War II. The third is from my father, letters he wrote from the moment I was born until the moment his mother died.

Three generations, each one writing to the next, each one leaving behind something I’ve never fully read.

Family Archives on Thede Technologies

One question a week

What family archives are for, now that the AI can read them