The Toxic Notification Bubble

After 13 years of entrepreneurship, running businesses like Nilenso (India’s first worker-owned tech company) and Endatabas (earth’s first immutable HTAP SQL database), I’m looking for full-time employment. I’ve enjoyed starting unique companies from scratch and taking them as far as I can, but now I want to help grow something larger than I...

Hello, I’m Steven! I’m a project manager and developer from Halifax. I grow teams and ensure that we build the right product. Lately, I also build, evolve, and maintain backend Rails codebases for companies and non-profits. I’ve been writing code for 30 years, but I will always sweep the floor. 🇨🇦 🇮🇳 🇺🇸 🇪🇺 I lived in India for 10 years...

I recently made two new friends: Abhinav Omprakash and Dawn Walker. Abhinav said I’m an optimist and I should write about it. Dawn said I shouldn’t try to coin any new terms. I should know better, but this essay follows Abhinav’s recommendation — and credits Dawn, in the very likely event I should have followed her advice instead. I have been...

Commercial Open Source Softare (COSS) is an only-loosely-agreed-upon term for businesses built upon selling open source products. COSS has seen two significant waves pass, with a third now emerging. The head of each wave lasts approximately a decade. The tail of each wave extends into the future indefinitely. Each wave subsumes all previous...

I am carrying a bucket of human waste. Two buckets, actually. I’m visiting an off-grid cabin in an Acadian forest where the vegetable garden is nourished by a humanure composting system. It’s my turn to take out the, uh, compost. Every visit to this forest is an opportunity to get away from Twitter, away from the noise of the city, and enjoy a...