#70: The people of the cloud and real blockchain projects

💎 Word gems

The people of the cloud (Aeon / Steven Gonzalez Monserrate)

This is a wonderful article highlighting the real, physical data centers powering the internet that are so easy to forget, and more importantly, the people managing them. The way this article describes data centers like an ocean or a giant organism is fascinating.

But less has been written about those who work inside the machinery of the cloud. Though often forgotten, this community of technicians, engineers and executives is integral to the functioning of our increasingly digitised society. They are the caretakers of the digital, the wardens of our data, and the unsung heroes working tirelessly to sustain an ever-expanding array of digital objects, including our emails, cat videos, maps, non-fungible tokens, metaverse avatars, digital twins and more. The idea of digital caretakers might conjure science fiction images of empty, towering warehouses stacked with racks of automated machines. But these workers are very much flesh and blood. The silicon milieu they’re part of is as human as it is mechanical. From their vantage, the cloud is not merely an infrastructure they maintain, but a way of life, an identity, a culture of stewardship – replete with its own norms, rituals and language.

I looked into 34 top real-world blockchain projects so you don’t have to (Niko's Blog)

This blog post found just one single real-world blockchain project.

The top #1 Google result for “blockchain production users” (and related queries) lists 34 individual “real world blockchain” projects. One would expect some actual functioning projects that have an impact on every-day consumers — outside of cryptocurrency & NFTs. Looking into all 34, I found that 13 are already dead (including one that has been killed by the SEC), 6 are only useful within the crypto & NFT ecosystems and not in the “real world” and 14 use Blockchain in a way where removing the blockchain would not impact functionality at all, or make the product better. The remaining project is Chainalysis, which has real-world impact by helping law enforcement de-anonymizing blockchain users.

💩 Cool shit

Paint with Music - A Google experiment that does what it says on the tin.

Social Capital Atlas - A fascinating data visualization map of the US using three types of social capital: economic connectedness, cohesiveness, and civic engagement.

CineTimes - A Netflix for free movies from YouTube, Archive.org and other channels. There’s some genuinely great movies here.

Subreddit User Overlap - See which subreddits overlap based on where users post and comment.

ArtButMakeItSports - A brilliant Twitter account comparing sports photos with artwork.

Not/But - Comics with wonderful reframes to everyday life challenges.

Memory Leak - I don’t really know how to describe this. Hover over the raining letters to reveal messages. It’s kind of cool.

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