Paul Du Bois

Founder of @appenate, the app building platform for business, IT solutions and enterprise. Software architect, consultant in previous lives. Tesla tragic.

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

💯🎯

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

Agency > Intelligence

I had this intuitively wrong for decades, I think due to a pervasive cultural veneration of intelligence, various entertainment/media, obsession with IQ etc. Agency is significantly more powerful and significantly more scarce. Are you hiring for agency? Are we educating for agency? Are you acting as if you had 10X agency?

Grok explanation is ~close:

“Agency, as a personality trait, refers to an individual's capacity to take initiative, make decisions, and exert control over their actions and environment. It’s about being proactive rather than reactive—someone with high agency doesn’t just let life happen to them; they shape it. Think of it as a blend of self-efficacy, determination, and a sense of ownership over one’s path.

People with strong agency tend to set goals and pursue them with confidence, even in the face of obstacles. They’re the type to say, “I’ll figure it out,” and then actually do it. On the flip side, someone low in agency might feel more like a passenger in their own life, waiting for external forces—like luck, other people, or circumstances—to dictate what happens next.

It’s not quite the same as assertiveness or ambition, though it can overlap. Agency is quieter, more internal—it’s the belief that you *can* act, paired with the will to follow through. Psychologists often tie it to concepts like locus of control: high-agency folks lean toward an internal locus, feeling they steer their fate, while low-agency folks might lean external, seeing life as something that happens *to* them.”

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

If you ever have the misfortune of speaking with Andrew @Qantas domestic in Brisbane, please know he will not lift a finger if you're needing to make a connection internationally.
Little wonder #Qantas has gone downhill when they have such beacons of apathy working there.

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

@pjlaurie

[Luther Lowe @lutherlowe]

“Nearly 40 years ago Reagan declared, the 9 most terrifying words in the English language were ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’. Today, for devs, it may be ‘I’m from the App Store developer support team and your app has been denied’” @linakhanFTC at #RemedyFest

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

@trawg Every other platform is similarly crap...Facebook keeps pushing 18 year bikini girls into my feed...

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

Still sceptical about @CommunityNotes, but if the ability to annotate clickbaity advertising is allowed to continue, then that's a good thing 👍

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

@trawg I still remember being pissed at this Steam thing popping up when all I wanted to do was play HL 2 #imsoold

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

@patio11 Check out intraocular contact lenses (ICLs) mate. Life changing and lower risk than LASIK.

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

48% max tax rate in AU hurts, but not so much when one has some perspective on societal benefits thereof.

[Waxy.org @waxy]

Why The Super Rich Are Inevitable: The Pudding's visual explanation of how our current economic policies inevitably created massive income inequality https://t.co/uSe7Uzj319

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

TLDR, Twitter has been a dumpster fire for years, regardless of who owned it. And yet we're (mostly) still here 🙄

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

The stuff uncovered in the Twitter whistleblower report is much crazier than anything in the "Twitter files" but it's much less politically/tribally salient so it got no attention. Going to do a thread on some of the craziest things, in no particular order.

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

@praeclarum It's definitely a new and interesting experience owning a Flip 4. Have been enjoying it so far.

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

Just...wow?!
Any veneer of sophistication that VCs like Sequoia claim to have is being blown apart by investments like FTX. What an absolute clown show.
https://t.co/Vqd47Gv10D

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

🤣🤣🤣

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

Tried the new @verge site again today after being wholly unimpressed by their redesign yesterday...
Nope, still sucks. The vertical squashed text is especially 🤢.
Very much a case of designing for design's sake - users be damned.

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

How did I not know about this site until now 😁...
https://t.co/sXQH8lhjmY

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

@trawg 🤝🤞🤲💰💸

[Christophe Pasquier 🇺🇦 @Christophepas]

Something super impressive I got shown today, how you can increase reading speed by playing on font weight:

[Paul Du Bois @pauldbau]

@trawg Blows my mind that no party has proposals to lower house prices. We should have a two speed property market...one tier for first home buyers only and other tier for the rest. Price cap FHB at $300k, min land 500m2 & 3 beds. Mandate 30% of all new estates be WHB.

[John Carmack @ID_AA_Carmack]

I wonder if any eyeglasses have been made with even a doublet or bonded lens.