Sam Jewell

Software engineer @grafana, ex-@GoCardless. @GiraffeReader Creator - Helping blind people read docs with their iPhone.

[Dr. Jon Slotkin @slotkinjr]

I have a guest essay in @nytimes today about autonomous vehicle safety. I wrote it because I’m tired of seeing children die. Done right, we can eliminate car crashes as a leading cause of death in the United States

@Waymo recently released data covering nearly 100 million driverless miles. I spent weeks analyzing it because the results seemed too good to be true. 91% fewer serious-injury crashes. 92% less pedestrians hit. 96% fewer injury crashes at intersections. The list goes on.

39,000 Americans died in crashes last year. More than homicide, plane crashes, and natural disasters combined. The #2 killer of children and young adults. The #1 cause of spinal cord injury. We’ve accepted this as the price of mobility.

We don’t have to.

In medicine, when a treatment shows this level of benefit, we stop the trial early. Continuing to give patients the placebo becomes unethical. When an intervention works this clearly, you change what you do.

In driving, we’re all the control group.

Cities like DC and Boston are blocking deployment. And cities are not the only forces mobilizing to slow this progress.

It’s time we stop treating this like a tech moonshot and start treating it like a public health intervention that will save lives.

Link to article below.

👀 this video of Waymo cars evading crashes with people and vehicles. I especially note the ones that require it having a 360° view.

My sincere thanks to Alex Ellerbeck and @acsifferlin for their wisdom and sure hand in editing this piece.

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@supercoco9 @fosdem Ok nice- thanks for letting me know, it’s good to understand what’s going on. We proposed an O11y devroom- we normally get accepted I think, but this time we didn’t.

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@kryptonitelock we’ve had two bikes stolen, and each had the Avenue front and rear. We really need 4 more of the
“FRONT AND REAR LIGHT BRACKET” set. Do you have any you can send? Can’t find them to buy online, nor can I submit a customer service request for these on your website

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@expensify I want to share a pdf directly into the app, but it always says “file type not supported” I guess it only accepts images? This is a feature request- please can it also accept PDFs? Thx

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@PhilipsSonicare I'm more impressed by @spotlight_ocare Sonic Pro - it's great

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@PhilipsSonicare my toothbrush is only just outside of warranty. It’s just over two years old I think- Amazon isn’t letting me make a complaint. But it won’t charge any more. The battery light just flashes constantly, and won’t light up solid on the charger.

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@PhilipsSonicare My product is out of warranty - it's 2 years, 9 months old.
Your website says there's nothing I can do - I tried to schedule a repair. https://t.co/NptrjxqsNL

I know what warranties are. I also know customer loyalty, and you're losing a customer right now.

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@PhilipsSonicare Or maybe you need to follow me first or something?

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@PhilipsSonicare > You can no longer send messages to this person.

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@PhilipsSonicare Can I contact you off platform instead? Would that be easier?

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@PhilipsSonicare Hey team.
You gave me a link, but I can't actually send you a DM.
See this doc: https://t.co/x1jnZwsFsj

For some reason I'm not allowed to sent you a DM. I don't think you're paying enough to X to enable this feature.

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

Is there anything you can do? I’m quite disappointed- your toothbrushes are expensive.

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

A product that (almost) everyone uses from mid-sized tech companies and up but I rarely hear talked about: Grafana

In The Pragmatic Engineer 2025 survey, it had more mentions than Cursor, and dominates as the answer to "how do you turn information into graphs"

This is Grafana:

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@currenciesd referral links not working on your webapp right now

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@currenciesd getting “internal server error” when I try to log in to my personal account.

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@gopherconuk Are the 60m talks for one speaker only, or would you accept two speakers? I'm in London, so don't need travel paid. Would you pay travel from Germany? What about from Seattle? Thanks!

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@crucially loved your talk yesterday. I sat in the front row and smiled :-) appreciated the Festool cargo-trousers (pants?) and also wondered about the plasters (band aids?) on your fingers- a Festool accident?

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

@danielepolencic thanks, that was a great talk

[Sam Jewell @SOJewell]

Super-hyped to be speaking at DuckCon #6 later today, about
"How NOT to use DuckDB!"

@duckdb will be transmitting live on YouTube, so tune in at https://t.co/bwm6vqvRgp

I'm on at 16:21 UTC