About this one-person publication

I write about what changes when technology meets production.

I have spent about twenty-five years building systems, operating them, and dealing with the parts the demo leaves out.

About me

I started building computers for local businesses when I was sixteen. Since 2008, I have moved from software testing through development and infrastructure leadership to Director of Engineering. I remain a heavy individual contributor because the clearest view of a system still comes from working on it.

That experience shapes what I look for. I care less about whether a feature works in isolation than where its authority comes from, what state it owns, what it changes nearby, and how it fails or recovers. Those questions apply equally to AI agents, CI pipelines, storage, networks, self-hosted software, and home automation.

I have used Debian on servers for roughly twenty-five years, grew up on Gentoo, and have run Arch on my workstations since about 2015. I have preferences, but I try not to turn them into universal advice. The point is to explain the constraint and its impact so a technical reader can make a different decision intelligently. A private incident only earns a public article when the method or decision rule is reusable.

What I publish

Hack Your World follows current changes in developer infrastructure, AI, software supply chains, self-hosting, networking, and home automation. Some articles examine a new announcement; others come from systems I operate. In either case, I separate vendor claims, documentation, source inspection, local testing, and production experience.

Why “Hack Your World”?

I registered the name in 2003, when “hack” comfortably meant understanding a system well enough to adapt it. A new host once sent me a terms-of-service warning before I had even pointed the domain at its servers; a person later recognized the site as articles about Asterisk and X10 home automation.

The name still fits. I am interested in the point where a clever setup becomes dependable—or where it should be retired.

Evidence and money

A tool is not evidence. I separate what I verified from what a source claims, and put important limitations where they affect the story. The site may use display advertising and disclosed affiliate links, but payment never turns an announcement into hands-on experience or changes a recommendation.

Contact

Corrections, useful disagreement, and evidence I missed are welcome at ttpears@gmail.com. The public project identity for this site is GitHub.