Listening to this podcast talking about using profilers to not only carbon-optimize your site, but also Linux, and your house 🏡 pca.st/episode/6…

GitHub's Innovation Graph

Rest of World has a piece on the fastest-growing countries for software development featuring GitHub’s Innovation graph. I got a peek at this last year at the GitHub booth at the IGF2023 in Kyoto. One of my favs is Economy collaborators which represents international collaboration on projects. It is the sum of git pushes sent from one country to another. This is some real CIA Factbook or Atlas of Economic Complexity-like stuff but for software development.

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Had a call with a friend I knew from Kyoto. We went to China together in 2004. I saw him once in Oakland in 2013. We occasionally have catchup calls, but have not met in person in a long time. I have a few friends like this. They are all great and I am lucky to have them. 🥰

Blue sky in Osaka

(We are here to see the plum blossoms, but they are not quite ready yet)

Osaka castle against a cloudless sky

Leopard print 🐆 on the subway doors is 💯 🎯 Osaka

Osaka Metro subway car doors open revealing the interior. The doors on the other side have a leopard print design

Big day today: the keys 🔑 have been handed over! We moved to Osaka in October and put our Kyoto apartment up for sale. Sold in December, and the new people took possession today. An 18 year long chapter is now over.

Speaking of Dungeons & Dragons, We have a long-time group doing the Strahd campaign… the DM commissioned cute voodoo dolls of our characters!! 😍😍😍 Amazing! #DnD

5 crocheted smiling dolls with armour and swords

I know people are hatin' on AI/LLMs but they’ve improved my ritual spellcasting efficiency significantly! 🧙‍♂️😜

Chad asks GPT how much salt to make a 50ft diameter ritual circle, and GPT returns a multi-step process concluding that You would need approximately 4.6 pounds of salt to make a 50-foot diameter ritual circle with a salt line that is 1/4 inch wide and 1/8 inch high. This estimate assumes a uniform distribution and density of the salt line around the entire circumference of the circle.

A wide-ranging and thought-provoking ep about crypto, AI, VCs, ZKs, quadratic funding, democracy, anarchism… Audrey drops the inspiring line “bridging polarity to plurality” 🎯

podcasts.apple.com/au/podcas…

🙏 🥰

daverupert.com/2024/02/a…

(Attached is a fuzzy photo of a server rack in a church alcove that I took at the Internet Archive more than a decade ago)

Server rack with blinky lights in a church alcove that probably housed some religious statue a long time ago

Started reading: Global Digital Data Governance: Polycentric Perspectives by Carolina Aguerre, Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn, Jan Aart Scholte 📚 #InternetGovernance

More on Decentralization

Of course a couple days after writing my post consolidating thoughts of decentralization I found a piece by Nathan Schneider in my Omnivore called: What to do once you admit that decentralizing everything never seems to work This further makes the point that the centralization-decentralization debate is nuanced, and Schneider quotes another scholar saying we must go “beyond the centralization-centralization dichotomy.” Schneider discusses entrepreneurship, co-ops, blockchain, and more, introducing three characteristics of applying the decentralization principle:

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“Live in a small apartment rather than a big, drafty house… Fly rarely… Work less… exercise … Tax the rich… basic income… capital toward home care and nursing homes, not arms…neighborhoods dense and walkable…” etc

www.newyorker.com/books/und…

Started reading: Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell 📚

Today at lunch I popped down to Namba Yasaka ⛩️ for a bite 🦷

More pix 📸 www.flickr.com/photos/sa…

(The plum blossoms are out!)

Chad poses in front of a small building designed to look like the head of a lion dog

Just an hour left in the last day of January, so sent out my monthly personal note with a little advice that might make you feel a bit better… it’s working for me! buttondown.email/chadkoh/a…

On decentralization

I really appreciated Mark Nottingham’s memo RFC 9518 on Centralization, Decentralization, and Internet Standards. In it he provides a wide-ranging and balanced introduction to the topic in quite a short article. I have been collecting bits of arguments for decentralization (in a centralized location of course 😉) for the past couple of years, with the intention to write something round-up, but have struggled. I am so glad Mark did it, and so much better than I could!

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Spoke at Osaka Web Designer and Developer Meetup about my journey in tech. Talked about the never-ending technologies I had to learn, and the socio-economic context around each career shift. We then discussed future trends.

📸 www.flickr.com/photos/sa…

Chad standing in front of a room full of people gesticulating in front of a projects slide titled "Ye Olde Web" with icons for IE4, Netscape Navigator 4, Homepage Builder and Dreamweaver

Watched this vid yesterday arguing that El-P is the most influential white rapper. So catching up on his non-RTJ stuff while doing laundry and chores around the house (like installing a new daughterboard on my keyboard)

Chilly blue sky from under the life insurance building

A building with outward arches almost like an elongated mushroom. I am not sure what this architectural feature is called