David Eisinger

Dispatch #30 (August 2025) (2025-08-05)

Nice to have a quieter month. We went down to Lake Norman for the Fourth, but otherwise stuck around town. Mom and Dad came down to celebrate Mom’s birthday, hit up Marbles (which Nev loved so much she snuck away and we had to organize a search party) and a Durham Bulls game.

Dispatch #29 (July 2025) (2025-07-03)

Big month: birthdays, travel, lots of music. My boy turned one – time friggin’ flies. He is on the move, talking up a storm, and getting into everything.

Dispatch #28 (June 2025) (2025-06-05)

Bamboo killing season is over, now we’re onto goddamn cockroach season. I’ve lived in the South for a quarter century but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing one of those things scurry across the floor. We went down to Lake Norman for Memorial Day weekend, spent a bunch of time on the new (to us) pontoon boat. So much fun. The kids loved it, and I look forward to many more years with them out on the water.

Dispatch #27 (May 2025) (2025-05-10)

Pollen season is over. Bamboo killing season is here. Lots to cover this month. Let’s go. Just got back from a week-long company gathering, starting in Falls Church, VA near where I grew up and heading up to River Mountain. Great to see everyone in person (and catch up with a few of my favorite former coworkers). Major thanks to my parents for taking care of the kids and animals (and also for coming down to help out while Claire took a staycation at a loft downtown).

Dispatch #26 (April 2025) (2025-03-31)

Nico received a major software upgrade this month. One day he could barely roll over, the next he’s crawling, getting into stuff, maybe even talking? (It’s a little hard to tell but I’m going with “dada” as his first word.) We finally got Nev out of the Pack ’n Play she’s been sleeping in since she moved out of our room and into a proper bed. She loves it, and it’s great that she can just get out of bed and come downstairs by herself when she’s ready to start her day.

Local Docker Best Practices (viget.com, 2022-05-05)

Here at Viget, Docker has become an indispensable tool for local development. We build and maintain a ton of apps across the team, running different stacks and versions, and being able to package up a working dev environment makes it much, much easier to switch between apps and ramp up new devs onto projects. That’s not to say that developing with Docker locally isn’t without its drawbacks¹, but they’re massively outweighed by the ease and convenience it unlocks.

“Friends” (Undirected Graph Connections) in Rails (viget.com, 2021-06-09)

No, sorry, not THOSE friends. But if you’re interested in how to do some graph stuff in a relational database, SMASH that play button and read on.

Making an Email-Powered E-Paper Picture Frame (viget.com, 2021-05-12)

Over the winter, inspired by this digital photo frame that uses email to add new photos, I built and programmed a trio of e-paper picture frames for my family, and I thought it’d be cool to walk through the process in case someone out there wants to try something similar.

Why I Still Like Ruby (and a Few Things I Don’t Like) (viget.com, 2020-08-06)

The Stack Overflow 2020 Developer Survey came out a couple months back, and while I don’t put a ton of stock in surveys like this, I was surprised to see Ruby seem to fare so poorly – most notably its rank on the “most dreaded” list. Again, who cares right, but it did make me take a step back and try to take an honest assessment of Ruby’s pros and cons, as someone who’s been using Ruby professionally for 13 years but loves playing around with other languages and paradigms. First off, some things I really like.

Butlerian Jihad Now | Defector (2025-08-28)

Imagine a piece of wearable technology that, when its wearer reaches a certain level of dehydration, stimulates in them the satisfying sensation of cool clear water running down their throat and filling their stomach. That would not actually be beneficial or helpful at all! In fact, it would be actively contrary to the user's best interests. I do not think that any thinking adult would need much convincing about the dangers of that kind of device, whatever the productivity gains it might offer t...

“It Was Horrible”: Inside Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy’s ‘Mad Max’ Feud | Vanity Fair (2025-08-26)

That scene where you see Tom with Charlize on the bike and all the Vuvalini and the Wives behind, intermingled—that scene was probably the biggest change in seeing Tom really soften to Charlize in real life. We were all unprepared for how he performed that, and then I walked off and Charlize was walking back, and I said, “Geez, Charlize, that was amazing. Did a light switch go off? He was great.” She was quite taken aback by it, too. But it was great because that’s when you can see that Max and ...

We must build AI for people; not to be a person (2025-08-22)

AI progress has been phenomenal. A few years ago, talk of conscious AI would have seemed crazy. Today it feels increasingly urgent. In this essay I want to discuss what I’ll call, “Seemingly Conscious AI” (SCAI), one that has all the hallmarks of other conscious beings and thus appears to be conscious.

What If A.I. Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This? (2025-08-13)

In the aftermath of GPT-5’s launch, it has become more difficult to take bombastic predictions about A.I. at face value, and the views of critics like Marcus seem increasingly moderate. Such voices argue that this technology is important, but not poised to drastically transform our lives. They challenge us to consider a different vision for the near-future—one in which A.I. might not get much better than this.

This website is for humans (2025-08-12)

I write the content on this website for people, not robots. I’m sharing my opinions and experiences so that you might identify with them and learn from them.

Maurice Parker - Zavala Will Always Be Free (2025-08-12)

The way I usually explain it is like this. Imagine you made furniture your whole life, but your employer only gave you pallet wood to use and half the time needed to make a piece. You were good at it and loved furniture, but were unfulfilled at your job until you retired. Now you can make furniture using walnut and take the time needed to make something you are proud of.

Son Heung-min is Tottenham. Tottenham is Son Heung-min. (2025-08-05)

Because he embodied the joy of football played well, the shared thrill as he burst past a defender, the graceful way he found the corner of the net. But also because he embodied the joy of people. He never hid his emotions on the pitch, or his love for his team-mates or colleagues or the fans who supported him.

Flounder Mode - Colossus (2025-08-01)

I asked Kelly about the tradeoffs of focusing on a single thing if you want to be great (which is what I had been getting at before). “Greatness is overrated,” he said, and I perked up. “It’s a form of extremism, and it comes with extreme vices that I have no interest in. Steve Jobs was a jerk. Bob Dylan is a jerk.”

DIYR (2025-07-30)

Celebrates the spirit of independence, creativity, and resourcefulness. The acronym DIYR stands for 'Do It Yourself Revolution', promoting reflection and new forms of production, combining simplicity and longevity, ethics and aesthetics.

Naz Hamid • Just One Good Thing (2025-07-24)

In the last year, a mindset shift and approach appeared as a very simple idea: just do one thing, that I want to do today.