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chadk

138 karma · joined November 26, 2010

chadk.at.hn

Generous with Likes

- About: https://chadkohalyk.com/about - Writing: https://micro.chadkohalyk.com - Fedi: https://indieweb.social/@chadkoh - BSky: https://chadkoh.com

meet.hn/city/ca-Surrey

Socials: - bsky.app/profile/chadkoh.com - @chadkoh.at.hn

Interests: Books, Climate Tech, Entrepreneurship, Open Source, Privacy, Remote Work, Social Impact, Startups, Technology, Travel, UI/UX Design, Web Development, Writing

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chadk··on Our $100M Series B
Only 30% have moved to the public cloud

https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/cloud-revenue...

chadk··on The Next User Agent
> stuck deep in the walled gardens of our various web apps, none of which talk to each other. We have to log into things twenty times a day. Everything is a subscription, or selling our data for ads. Nothing “just works”.

Can a new useragent be the way?

chadk··on Why did Silicon Valley turn right?
The "pounded progressive ally" thesis has limits

See the discussion on BSky

https://bsky.app/profile/himself.bsky.social/post/3lci4cd6tw...

chadk··on Hundred Rabbits is a small collective exploring the failability of modern tech
"seabattical" Love it!
chadk··on A Record of Old Kashgar
There is a fascinating 2019 photo essay of Kashgar that I link to in my post remembering my trip in 2004, when Kashgar looked a lot different from now (I include a few pics)

https://chadkohalyk.com/2019/04/07/kashgar-15-years-later/

chadk··on Kobo announces color e-readers
Same!
chadk··on Willow Protocol
If you are looking for more on Willow, we had gwil over for a chat at one of our tech talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx5T7Z5rHGc
chadk··on Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?
This is a great thread! So many interesting topics. Awesome to see.

For me, at the moment, it is internet governance. Kinda like getting involved in local city council politics, but at internet scale. There are so many ways to get involved it is confusing... and it often seems so abstract for an everyday dev, especially if you are just a frontender like me. I have been interested in governance for a while, but had my first participation opportunity at the UN Internet Governance Forum in Kyoto last month, and have been slowly blogging some of my learnings:

https://micro.chadkohalyk.com/2023/10/30/attending-the-inter...

It has motivated me to interact more with the IETF and W3Cs. Like local politics, this stuff actually is important... even if the entire community does not participate.

chadk··on Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?
Thanks for your honest answer. Finding purpose is a pretty good passion
chadk··on Some notes on local-first development
If anyone will be in St Louis for Strange Loop next week come out to the LoFi Unconf to talk more about local first.

https://lu.ma/localfirstswunconf-stlouis

chadk··on Cree Syllabics (2002)
Tangential comment, but considering there are many computer people here, I would highly recommend Jon Corbett's talk at Causal Islands on Indigitalization: Indigenous Computing Theory, which features a Cree-language keyboard design of his own making!

https://youtu.be/SWVLwxwcl1Q

chadk··on Ask HN: What prevents a company from hiring remote employees internationally?
We use Deel and have employees and contractors in 9 timezones. We are a fully distributed team of 23 people. Deel has been a lifesaver in terms of abstracting away a lot of the compliance and payroll issues. I am a huge proponent.

Deel owns most of its entities in its 150+ countries (it used to be less, but they have built out there network a lot in the past year or so).

$599 is not a bad rate, considering all of the overhead to setting up an entity, benefits, and hiring a regional manager than can deal with all the local stuff. You have to get to a good 15-20 people in a specific country before it makes sense to switch to your own entity.

EDIT: One thing that Deel does _not_ solve is visa sponsorships. They only do this very rarely AFAIK.

chadk··on Ask HN: Best books read in 2022?
Two communities I have joined to help me learn not only what is being worked on, but also where I might be able to put my skills, are below:

https://climateaction.tech

https://workonclimate.org

chadk··on Ask HN: Best books read in 2022?
The two best books I read this year, and have been recommending widely are:

"The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" by Graeber and Wengrow since it really shows how narrow our political imagination has been for the last 250 years, and makes me excited by people looking for new ways to organize.

"The Ministry for the Future" by KSR, which has further radicalized me and challenged me to spend more of my time fighting the climate crisis.

[edited for formatting]

chadk··on Ask HN: Best books read in 2022?
+1 to How Asia Works!
chadk··on The Great Green Wall
I really wish them well. Dr Nakamura Tetsu worked for 30 years in Afghanistan and was able to make huge changes there, so I know it is possible.

https://chadkohalyk.com/2021/03/24/nakamura-tetsu/

The one thing my pessimist outlook (and something that might be reflected in other takes here on HN) is that Nakamura was adamant about focusing on local needs. He gave short shrift to global programs and NGOs. What made him different, and what I think made him successful, was that he _listened_ to the people.

chadk··on Horses and Sparrows: The myth of 'trickle down' economics
https://foundationaleconomy.com/introduction/
chadk··on My Second Brain – Zettelkasten
1Writer has totally worked for me. It isn't a clone of Obsidian, but it is good enough for me to work on notes, do my daily journaling, and link things together. Also, the fact that you can have multiple windows stacked on iPad helps.
chadk··on Ask HN: How do you manage your bookmarks?
Pinner works fine on iOS.
chadk··on Firefox 65.0 released
yeah it is like everything bolded... not just in the menubar, but I think the rendering of webpages is affected too. I feel like I am on a Windows machine. ️
chadk··on FoldingText – Plain text productivity for Mac users
Love it. Use it daily. I even use it with iA Writer and nvAlt.
chadk··on Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?
Plus you are ignoring the social aspects of learning.

Straight book-learning is not a fit for everyone.

chadk··on Why Your Best Thinking Is in the Shower (2014)
I've been using dive slates in the shower for years:

https://chadkohalyk.com/2013/12/07/dive-slates/

chadk··on Funding the Web with Brendan Eich [audio]
Totally would use!
chadk··on Marie Kondo and the Ruthless War on Stuff
For the interested, I finally wrote up a description of one of the core concepts we use in figuring out our homebrew methodology of downsizing/minimalism:

https://chadkohalyk.com/2016/07/19/danshari-thinking-about-s...

chadk··on Marie Kondo and the Ruthless War on Stuff
Sorry, I forgot to mention the concept: 物の哀れ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_no_aware

Oh, and as an addendum... neither I, nor my wife, have even read any of KonMari's books. We are more influenced by minimalism and the Japanese concepts of "mottainai" etc.

chadk··on Marie Kondo and the Ruthless War on Stuff
Early in our relationship, I was a little surprised when my wife held a pair of old socks up to her face, within pressed palms, and whispered 「ありがとうございます」before throwing them in the trash.

This is YEARS before KonMari.

So, I think you might have something to your observations. ;-)

chadk··on Marie Kondo and the Ruthless War on Stuff
My family of four solved that by just HANGING everything.

We use one of these http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00578QVGC in my kids room. On the top bar is the out of season clothes, and on the bottom bar, which is at an accessible height to my girls (4 and 6), we put the in-season clothes.

This works really well since little kids are way better hangers than folders. So when I take laundry out of the dryer, I basically make a pile for the kids clothes and then yell at them to hang everything up. They love it and it saves me lots of folding time. Plus, no wrinkles!

We got rid of our space-stealing dresser and just have a little plastic set of drawers for socks and underwear, which probably could just be in stuffer bags hanging off the clothesrod now that I think about it...

chadk··on Marie Kondo and the Ruthless War on Stuff
Thank you!
chadk··on Marie Kondo and the Ruthless War on Stuff
Necessity is certainly is the mother of invention. The question that downsizers, minimalists and KonMari would ask though is: do you even _need_ that box of souvenirs? ;-)

But good on you for living lean. It is admirable. I isn't that I think North Americans CANNOT do it... I think the post-war culture has made us forget that it IS possible and we can be perfectly happy living small. There needs to be a cultural change beyond the bachelor apartments of NYC. But I might be taking this conversation off track... so I will just stop here.

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