I’m not a New Yorker. I’ve only visited New York once for a week 4 years ago. But I think this oped by Jerry Seinfeld So You Think New York Is ‘Dead’: (It isn't) is spot on - New York isn't going anywhere.

Yes, Remote everything is becoming the norm, people are moving away from world class cities, but it won't be forever. The cities won't vanish, they'll do what they always do: change.

There is an energy in the big cities that you can't find anywhere else and can't replicate remotely. While I've been nearly 100% remote working for the last 7 or 8 years, I always felt recharged by my trips into the cities. And when this is all over, I look forward getting back in the mix of things.

• Saw this tweet about how the size of a highway interchange in in Houston is the same size as the city center of Siena, Italy (population 30k). Everything's bigger in Texas, but some things are jut ridiculous.


• I tried Yakisoba bread for the first time in all my years in Japan. I remembering seeing it for the first time in Nagoya in 2006 at the 7-11 near the language school I was studying at, but never thought to try it. It's pretty good - but since it's carbs on carbs, you still want some protein to fill you up.


• I wrote an article about how to build environmentally sustainable digital products. There's a lot more about this topic that I want to talk about and explore. It's also something that most software engineers probably don't think much about in their daily work, as energy efficiency is seen as a hardware issue.


• Thinking about sustainability, I love the efforts like these off-grid solar powered websites. That might be offline part of the time goes against our fast-food-fast-fashion-always-on culture is so refreshing (albeit disappointing if it's down when you want to access it). It's like the Slow movement for micro-computers.


• I saw this article about the results of Finland's experiment with Universal Basic Income and it's good to see that UBI doesn't effect the willingness to work, as many detractors say.


• Although it's due to extenuating circumstances, Covid-cash is not dissimilar to an UBI experiment. While we are fortunate enough to have not been effected by the economic blowback (yet, who knows what the future brings 🤞🏻), it did bring a sense of security much like UBI.

Felt like drinking coffee, not running. But made it a solid 5km. Being 24 outside helped matters quite a bit.

朝スタバ

Good run. Roosters crowing, rice fields green, a little cool as the sun wasn’t up.

I'm reading Designing for Sustainability: A Guide to Building Greener Digital Products & Services and am about midway through. There's a lot that goes into building a sustainable product and as digital makers, we often don't consider sustainability. Rather we think "hey, I'm saving paper, so this must be more sustainable.", an we're wrong.

The name of the game for digital product sustainability is energy consumption, both to consume and distribute. Improving sustainability isn't just a single task, though some will have a larger impact than others.

What are some ways to improve the sustainability and reduce the environmental impact of your digital products?

Use Renewable Energy

Host with a provider who uses 100% renewable energy. This is getting easier, but is still hard.

This site and Airbot are hosted with Digital Ocean in their NYC1 data center. Within Digital Ocean (or any provider), the power source depends on the data center. This forum post has compiled the power-source information for the datacenters Digital Ocean uses where possible. NYC1 is "light green", which means while the energy from the grid isn't renewable, they are buying green energy credits. Sticking with DO, moving to my hosting to Amsterdam, Frankfurt, or London would reduce the environmental impact of my projects, as they're all powered by 100% renewable energy.

It seems I may have a couple of server migrations in my near future.

Control Content Size

Sustainable digital products are those that can use the least energy. Part of that is hosting, another part is the content itself.

Is your content providing value to your users? Or is it wasting their time, causing them to use their devices longer and consume more energy.

How heavy is your content? How much energy is consumed to get what you've made to your users? Are your sites heavier than they need to be, causing users to transfer more data than necessary.

Don't make a video when a blog post will suffice. Don't say in 5 minutes what can be said in 3.

File size matters. The smaller the file, the less time it takes to transfer, the less energy to deliver it to your users (quite possibly wirelessly), less space to store (thus fewer hard drives, fewer servers) - it all compounds.

That video you made where you're mostly talking? You don't need stereo - mono will suffice, you'll reduce the file size, transfer time, and your users won't notice.

Improve Your Information Architecture

How efficiently can users complete tasks? How much time are users wasting in your product / on your site trying to complete what they're doing. As makers, a sustainable product is one that users can get in, get out, and get off.

• Get In - Your product should be quick to load and easy for users to access.


• Get Out - Helping your users find what they're looking for and accomplish their tasks get out of your product.


• Get Off - Build your product so that it respects your users and doesn't try to suck them in to spending countless hours in your product. More time in your digital product increases needless energy consumption.

Making your digital product sustainable isn't a one time task, but rather an on-going process, much like security, and deserves regular auditing. And just like security audits improve products for the users and business alike, sustainability audits should result in faster, less resource intensive applications, saving money for businesses and happy users.

While many developers don't think of sustainability as applicable to their work today, I hope that more developers realize it is, and that we can make a difference.

Getting some sweets.

*** seeking_shade245 has joined the chat
🏃🥵🙌🏻

A bit slower, but still made it out.