Today's options are Run a full node. That takes days to sync and at least 1TB SSD... Run a light node. Barely works, relies on altruism from full nodes who are serving an API for free. Use a hosted node API, like Infura or Alchemy. Almost everyone uses that last option, often without even realizing it. Metamask, for example, defaults to Infura. Unfortunately, the last option is also completely…
Here's a thing that I want. A fast way host a web app, for prototyping and experiments. It has to be: Simple. One git repo containing all frontend and backend code. Reproducible. There should be zero configuration outside the git repo, aside from the domain name you register and maybe a few environment variables for secrets like API keys. Anyone can fork the repo, get their own domain, and host…
There might be a new kind of MEV emerging that will incentivize Ethereum miners and validators to mess with the block timestamp. As far as I can tell, this could cause the on-chain recorded time to fall further and further behind real time. Background Timekeeping is a tough problem in distributed systems, one that's deeply related to the problem of achieving consensus. One way of looking at…
1 minute read I am going to be off screens for two months. No laptop, no social media till 2021. I have some books, a drawing pad, and one of these bad boys for writing. I'll still post photos here, on occasion. Here are two of my tiny little 80 pound husky ❤️ He's a new soul, born in January. 2020 has been a great year for him. — Like many people, I've spent a most of my day in front of a screen.…
There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. - Jeff Bezos The same is true for attention. There are technologies made to capture as much of your attention as possible, and others designed to stay out of your way. The first category includes feed apps (Facebook, Twitter, Insta) with infinite scroll; video apps with autoplay; and apps…
People are spending huge amounts of time scrolling through feeds. I'm not talking about chat apps like Snapchat or channel apps like Twitch. Those are cool. I'm talking about algorithmic feeds of posts that scroll forever off the bottom of the page. Posts with Upvotes or Hearts or Likes. Posts with Retweets or Shares or Revines or Reblogs. The biggest offenders are Twitter and Facebook. Feeds…
Electron is excellent. There's a long history of ways to package HTML and Javascript into an installed desktop app. The result usually feels like a web app detached from the rest of the OS. Electron makes it easy to do better. Electron exposes lots of deep OS integrations thru simple Javascript APIs, so you can have a single clean codebase instead of having to code against three different C++ and…
My challenge: I'm trying to get a computer that doesn't suck Like lots of people I spend about half of my waking life on my laptop, so this really matters. However, I don't want a Mac. Apple has great design, but they sell things that are locked down, both physically and in software. You're not supposed to open them, you're not supposed to replace parts, and if they break you're supposed to take…
There’s dark and scary trend in technology. A true panopticon, where bureaucrats can plot the movements of every citizen on a map minute by minute, read every message, know at all times who's talking to whom, is technically possible today to the extent that it’s not already here. That kind of power imbalance between people and their government is a threat to freedom everywhere, both in places that…