Disrupting the event industry by bringing the hybrid-first event app and connecting all the ecosystem participants in the single marketplace

Oakly

Hey Hackers, has been nominated in HackerNoon's annual Startup of the Year awards in Belgrade, Serbia. Please vote for us if you like what we do. Oakly on this link Meet Oakly Oakly exists because we realized a massive gap in the event industry. Organizers were juggling multiple apps, yet most tasks remained manual. Our mission? To simplify the game. Oakly is a comprehensive tool that caters to all the requirements of a hybrid event, and its user-friendliness is a testament to our success. – from organizing to hosting. With around a trillion dollars spent annually on business events, we aim to revolutionize their management. We envision Oakly becoming the complete marketplace solution Our goal is to evolve Oakly into a fully automated marketplace in the next 15 months, and for that, we're seeking an investment. My Role I wear the hat of the Founder & CEO at Oakly. My journey began by recognizing the inefficiencies and gaps in the event industry by working with various clients through our agency . And since then, I've led a passionate team dedicated to innovating and transforming how events are organized. Taraba Tech How We're Disrupting the Event Industry In the vast event industry, particularly business conferences, Oakly stands out by integrating various apps into a cohesive ecosystem. This isn't just about convenience but about massive efficiency. Our unique approach enables significant automation in pre-event organization, slashing both time and resources by a staggering 90%. But the jewel in Oakly's crown is our cross-platform analytics, offering insights to redefine event management. Standing Out from The Crowd While numerous tools are available for event management, Oakly's comprehensive suite stands apart. Our vision is to consolidate every essential tool into one ecosystem, making Oakly the largest marketplace of its kind. This, coupled with our emphasis on automation and analytics, is poised to change the event management landscape. Our Thoughts on the Event Industry in 2023 The event industry is evolving at a rapid pace. Participants ' expectations have heightened with the shift to hybrid events becoming a standard. They demand precision, speed, and unsurpassed quality. Additionally, sponsors are no longer satisfied with just exposure; they seek tangible ROI proof. We believe Oakly, with its unique features and emphasis on analytics, is primed to meet these expectations and even exceed them. What word defines the state of the Event Industry in 2023? . This year has seen a paradigm shift in organizing, attending, and sponsoring events. Oakly is at the forefront of this transformation, ensuring every stakeholder's needs are met comprehensively. Transformation Why we decided to participate in HackerNoon's Startup of the Year awards HackerNoon is not just a platform; it's a community where future shapers, innovators, and industry leaders converge. We wanted to be part of this dynamic ecosystem to engage, understand, and assist those crafting tomorrow's narratives and movements. Final Thoughts Oakly's journey has been fueled by innovatively recognizing and addressing a gap. As we look to the future, our goal is clear - to become the ultimate solution in the event industry. We're ready for the challenge, and with your support, we believe the best is yet to come. Vote for us today!

How a Non-Experienced Person Created an Event for 3,000 Participants with Oakly

I have been using Parallels for a couple of years now, primarily for running Windows virtual machines (VMs), but occasionally Linux VMs too. I mostly use it for playing games, testing, and the occasional Windows-only application. There are some other long-standing options such as VirtualBox, QEMU, and VMWare. I am intentionally ignoring anything that also runs containers, such as Docker, as that’s a different use case, and a whole other gamut of options. Recent changes in macOS suddenly bought a plethora new options and after trying VirtualBuddy already and reading a post from the ever insightful Eclectic Light Company, I decided to try them all out! Want to watch this as a video? https://www.youtube.com/embed/0lJSgoD4eN0?embedable=true Criteria There are numerous options (now) available, so in profiling each of them I was generally thinking about the following criteria: Apple Silicon native or Intel only VMs supported Integration options between host OS Performance Ease of use and stability A quick aside on Virtualization vs Emulation Some tools in this article , others , and some do both. But what does that mean? virtualize emulate Emulation Emulation creates a version of an entirely different processor architecture in software that your in-built processor then runs. This is less efficient, but is the only way to run ancient software that uses CPUs that no longer exist. You may struggle running newer operating systems or applications. Virtualization More efficient that emulation, Virtualization uses a hypervisor, which is now a part of all major operating systems, to host the VM on an area of the in-built processor. This means that the operating system has to run on the same CPU architecture as your in-built CPU. VirtualBox As one of the classic Virtualization options, supports a lot of host and guest operating systems. It’s open source, but owned by Oracle, a combination that might put off many folks. VirtualBox There are binary releases you can install and . However, VirtualBox requires a kernel extension, so you need to restart after installation. a Homebrew formula is available The caveat is that VirtualBox only runs on x86 CPUs, and it describes itself as “not a CPU emulator”. This means , not even using Rosetta 2. I did use it extensively in the past, especially with Vagrant, but can no longer test it on my M1 MacBook Pro, so have little to say on it in this post. However, you can find plenty of other opinions and practical guides on using it. big it will never run on Apple Silicon Viable and Liviable Howard Oakly of the Eclectic Light Company tends to release applications as “technical examples”, at least that’s how I interpret them. They are more designed to demonstrate particular macOS features more than provide a complex user interface and several other features. has a simple interface for configuring the machine, downloads an IPSW image (much like VirtualBuddy) and off you go. is a companion application that supports Linux VMs, but only works in Ventura and above, and I am not quite sure why, but I imagine there’s a new feature available. Viable Liviable To create a VM in Viable, you click the button to download a default (generally the latest) disk image from Apple, or to use an image you have already. After that, change settings, and click . Download Install Start VM Liviable works the same way, but there’s no button, as there is no “official” image source, it’s up to you to find one. Download VirtualOS Somewhat lacking in documentation and possible proving that new macOS features make it “easy” to create virtualization applications, is another simple option for creating macOS virtual machines. virtualOS To create a machine, open settings and select if you want to download the “latest” image from Apple, or use a custom one. The click , that’s about it! start VirtualBuddy I covered before, and it’s another of the new breed of macOS virtualization options that only supports emulating macOS, so primarily for testing purposes. VirtualBuddy It’s relatively easy to use, emulates macOS at near native performance, and is fully open source with a rapid release cycle. . I have recently discovered that VirtualBuddy only works with macOS Monterey. Watch my other video for full details QEMU I couldn’t compile a list of Virtualization tools without mentioning , as it’s one of the earliest and longest running emulation options. It’s a command line tool with countless arguments to understand, and In fact, UTM is a front end for QEMU, with some other features added. QEMU If you can navigate those options, it’s powerful, and it’s currently the only option (and UTM) for emulating other architectures on Apple Silicon. So if you’re desperate to run some obscure x86 or PowerPC OS, or indeed “classic” Windows, then it’s your best option. UTM One of the more popular and better known new wave of virtualization options and is a wrapper around QEMU, offering the flexibility it offers but without needing to memorise command line arguments. can run ARM64 versions of Windows, Linux, and macOS. UTM can run on Intel machines and emulate OSs that run on different architectures. This includes more obscure processors like PPC and RISC-V. I was able to get Intel versions of Windows and Linux running. However, they run slow enough to be almost unusable, so use them sparingly, use older versions, or without a graphical user interface. However, UTM is open source, has an active community, and for people who like messing around with OSs, especially more obscure ones, it’s a viable option. UTM UTM doesn’t support GPU emulation for Windows, so you likely can’t play any games that require 3D acceleration. UTM and Windows Windows often doesn’t ship as an ISO file, but as a “ ” file, UTM can convert this on the fly for you, or you can download ISOs from 3rd party sites. Your mileage may vary there. To get hold of an ARM version of Windows you need to sign up for . Intel versions you can get in numerous ways. VHDX the Windows insider program Once you have an installation image, you can create the VM. First, select if you want to emulate or virtualize, and then you can create your own machines or pick from one of the templates UTM supports “officially” or from the community. Windows won’t recognise the network settings until you install to enable shared networking with the Mac. You can do this during the installation process and . the guest additions package full steps are in this guide Once you’ve completed that step, you can continue installing Windows and run it when you finally reach the end of the installation process. It’s a similar process for running x86 versions of Windows, except if you are not using an Intel Mac, the process will be unbearably slow. Maybe try Windows 95? UTM and Linux Again, first you need to download an ISO image and select “emulate” if you want to run an Intel (or something else) version of Linux, or “virtualize” for an ARM version. Emulating isn’t quite as painful as Windows, but it’s basically unusable, it could be performant enough for running command line Linux. Parallels At a press event ages ago I received a free year license for and continued to pay to keep it upgraded for the past 3 years. There is a Homebrew formula available, but I found it unreliable, and the installer would frequently crash, especially when upgrading, so it’s best to use the official packages. Parallels Parallels runs on ChromeOS and macOS, and largely promotes itself as an option to run Windows, but you can also run some pre-packaged Linux distributions and with some configuration, . In the past, I have personally got Manjero, FreeBSD, and other OSs working with Parallels well. I have not tried any of these on my Apple Silicon machine, though. I mostly use it for running Windows 11 which it does extremely well, and I have played fairly recent games (Civilization 6, Age of Empires 3, Divinity Original Sin 2) with little overhead. In recent versions Parallels also offered DirectX to Metal mapping, increasing performance, and it supports a lot of other macOS features inside most VMs, such as Sidecar. I have also used for quickly firing up some Ubuntu desktop machines for testing, again, with no issue. You can also install current versions on macOS as a VM, again primarily for testing purposes. many other OSs reasonably To create a VM, click the button in the Control Center window or use the menu item. From here you can select a pre-built image from Parallels, or select an ISO or VHDX you have downloaded from elsewhere and create a custom machine. + File > New If you can afford Parallels, then it has fast become my favourite choice for VMs, but it also isn’t open source and , but seemingly distant ones. has some Russian connections VMWare Fusion VMWare’s main business is virtual machines, so I have no idea why I never thought to even look and see if they had a desktop option for emulation. In essence is quite similar to Parallels, primarily aimed at letting you run Windows, but also supporting Linux, macOS, and “lesser know options”. Similarly to Parallels, it offers DirectX to Metal mapping and supports other macOS features. Interestingly, you can also use Fusion to run containers, which as Docker Desktop becomes increasingly bloated, is an interesting all-in-one alternative. Fusion In the process of writing this article, . If you can navigate VMWare’s labyrinthian signup processes, there’s even a free “player” version. VMWare Fusion for Apple Silicon went from preview to release in version 13 I tried the preview and while it’s not as performant or as slick as Parallels, it works. It doesn’t package ARM versions of Linux or Windows, so you have to find those yourselves. The list of ARM Linux distributions that work with Fusion is slowly growing and VMWare also has its own “Proton” distribution. To get the ARM version of Windows to work you first need to sign up with , download the VHDX and convert it to a “ ” file using QEMU with the following command. the Windows insiders program VMDK qemu-img convert -p -Ovmdk /path/to/.VHDX/destination/path/to.vmdk Much like UTM, Windows won’t recognise the network settings until you install the tools package to enable shared networking with the Mac. Follow these steps: On the Mac / Fusion Menu Bar click Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools Press ‘SHIFT-Fn-F10’ to bring up the command prompt Type , hit return powershell Type - Type: cd D:\` to change directory to the tools drive Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned Type .\setup.ps1 Once you’ve completed those steps, you can continue installing Windows and run it when you finally reach the end of the installation process. Some of these steps have possibly changed (and become easier) now Fusion is out of preview. The best option So, you’ve read and/or watched this far and instead of an “it depends” answer want someone to tell you what you should use. Personally for regular usage, I will stick with Parallels, it’s the easiest and most performant option for virtualizing OSs. If I need to emulate something, typically to mess around with obscure or niche operating systems, then nothing beats UTM as it gives all the power of QEMU with a reasonable UI. Enjoy! What will you emulate or virtualize?

Virtualization and Emulation on MacOS

Dutch sells upselling software to hotel operators for an average per room per month. startup Oaky €1.50 Oaky just raised from angel investors. €2 million Valuation Assume, based on comparable deals, that Oaky sold a 20% equity stake in their company to the angel investors. Price startup = price deal / equity stake sold. Then Oaky is priced at €2 million / 20% = €10 million post-money. Exit Assume, based on comparable deals, that the angel investors want to have a shot at making 15x on their investment. Exit value = price startup * money multiple. Then Oaky’s €10 million price requires a €10 million * 15 = €150 million exit value. Revenue Assume, based on comparable European enterprise software companies, that Oaky trades at 5x revenue at exit. Annual revenue at exit = exit value / revenue multiple at exit. Then Oaky’s €150 million exit value requires €150 million / 5 = €30 million in annual revenue at exit. Rooms Oaky charges an average of €1.50 per room per month. Rooms per month at exit = annual revenue at exit / 12 / price per room per month. Then Oaky’s €30 million annual revenue at exit requires them to €30 million / 12 / 1.50 = 1.7 million rooms per month at exit. contract For context: Amsterdam currently has hotel rooms. 35.000 Originally published at venturevalue.com on February 6, 2019.

Oaky’s €10M Valuation Requires Them to Contract 1.7M Hotel Rooms

Imagine we're stepping into a sci-fi movie, but it's real life. That's the vibe at SXSW sessions, where tomorrow's ideas feel like they're unfolding today. In one of the first talks I caught at SXSW this year, , the big boss at MIT Technology Review, laid out a list of ten tech breakthroughs. She's betting these will seriously shake up our daily lives and how we work. Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau Here's the scoop on what made her list: It's like AI's about to be in everything we touch. AI for Everything: Think sun power on steroids. Super Efficient Solar Panels: This one got everyone buzzing. ( or advertising..) Apple Vision Pro: No gym? No problem, maybe. Weight Loss Medicines: It's about getting cozy with Earth's heat. Advanced Geothermal Systems: But not the snack kind. Chips: Sounds like sci-fi, but it's real. First Gene Editing Therapy: Big word, even bigger deal. Exascale Computers: They're hot, literally. Heat Pumps: After Elon Musk stirred the pot with X, new social networks are popping up trying to take the throne. Twitter Killers: What Are Exascale Computers? These beasts can do a quintillion operations per second. Yes, that's a lot of zeros. Elizabeth thinks these computers will change the game for everyone, not just the science folks. Imagine cracking problems or discovering stuff that seemed out of reach before. She believes we'll see how these computers can be more accessible to regular folks soon. The Brave New Future of the Recent Past from the kicked off a and a chat about how our stories, especially . It's all about the power of storytelling and finding new ways to talk about artificial intelligence that matters to us as people. Brent Reidy New York Public Library session with a throwback to Plato around AI, need a fresh, human-centered twist The next day, I caught a keynote with , aka and These guys are the brains behind which won seven Oscars. They discussed why they make films and how storytelling is core to being human. The Daniels Daniel Scheinert Daniel Kwan. "Everything Everywhere All at Once," Kwan shared his unease about AI in filmmaking, hinting at excitement and worry about what's to come. The Brave New Future of the Recent Past 's dive into Plato's cave allegory at SXSW wasn't just a trip back to Philosophy 101. It turned out to be a sneak peek into a theme I'd bump into repeatedly at the event: the sheer power of storytelling. Especially the kind we need right now about AI—stories about us, the humans, at the heart of it all. Brent Reidy This moment was like a heads-up that at SXSW, amidst all the tech talk, there's this big conversation about how we tell stories in the age of artificial intelligence. And it's not just any stories, but those that zoom in on the human experience, making sure we're not just talking tech for tech's sake but connecting it to what it means for us, living in this world, right here, right now. The Rise of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) Even though the idea of a wearable device that processes the electrical signals in your brain and spits out real-time data might still feel like a page ripped from a sci-fi novel, we're seeing this tech grow leaps and bounds every single day. And now, it's inching closer to becoming something we might see in the market, not just in movies. During a session at SXSW, Adam Molnar from Neurable shared how they're crafting headsets equipped with BCI tech. These aren't your average headsets, though. They're designed to track how focused you are on a task. The cool part? They might even help you improve at focusing, theoretically teaching us how to tune into what we're doing with laser precision. "Your Brain in Artificial Intelligence: Neurotech's New Horizons" Adam dished out details about these demo headsets that haven't hit the shelves yet, expressing his strong belief that BCI gadgets will be part of our everyday lives pretty soon. This is a hint that the future of how we interact with our devices, and maybe even how we understand our own brains, is about to shift in a big way. AI Isn't a Usurper of Human Creativity; it's a Compliment That Enriches it. In an invigorating exploration of the intersection between artificial intelligence and marketing, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel titled in Austin. The session was with marketers Justin Day and Anne Ahola Ward. "Marketing to Humans in an AI World" at SXSW 2024 Our discussion explored AI's transformative impact on marketing, unwrapping layers of how this technology reshapes strategies, content creation, customer engagement, and more. The panelists shared insights, shedding light on how AI tools, like the , demonstrated, are revolutionizing the way marketing agencies craft presentations, proposals, websites, or visuals. Companies, in turn, are encouraged to foster an environment of learning and experimentation, allowing their teams to engage with these 'new tools’ and unlock their full potential. Gamma app SXSW’24 Startup Pitching Competition Watching the SXSW Pitch 2024, presented by KPMG, was a real treat. The place was packed. This year, the big themes among the showcased innovations were artificial intelligence integration, industry-specific solutions, and projects focused on sustainability and environmental impact. The competition was international, with startups from Belgium, Britain, Estonia, France, Israel, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Category Winners: AI, Robotics, and Voice: Gan.ai (San Francisco, CA)
Enterprise and Smart Data: Swif.ai (Santa Clara, CA)
Entertainment, Media, and Content: OpusClip (Redwood City, CA)
Extended Reality and Web3: Applix (Austin, TX)
Food, Nutrition, and Health: STMPatch (Storrs, CT)
Future of Work: Folio.works (Oakland, CA)
Innovative World Technologies: Cephable (Boston, MA)
Smart Cities, Transportation, and Logistics: Lotus (San Jose, CA)
Student Startup: Paradigm Robotics (Austin, TX) "Best in Show" at the SXSW Pitch 2024, went to OpusClip. Winners bagged a cash prize and earned two badges for next year's SXSW conference. However, perhaps the biggest win was the chance to present to a massive audience of SXSW attendees and potential investors. From 2009 to 2023, over 93% of the 647 companies participating in the SXSW Pitch have secured around $23.2 billion (excluding undisclosed grants, angel, and seed funding). SXSW 2024 once again proved it's more than just a tech and innovation event; it's a preview of tomorrow that already has us all buzzing about next year. And for those already looking forward to the next chapter, mark your calendars: SXSW 2025 is set for March 7-15, 2025. It's never too early to start planning for another round of inspiring discussions and groundbreaking ideas! Also published here

Step Towards Sci-Fi: AI and BCI Insights From SXSW

Once in a while, I write non-technical blog posts when I've something worth sharing. Today, I'd like to write about my North America "Tour" across several conferences and user groups. The first leg of my journey started in Oakland, California, with . Developer Week is an established conference with different editions in several locations and online during the year. Though I'm on their advisory board, this is only the second time I've spoken at one of their events. Pro-tip: Avoid being on any board of a conference where you speak. It's bad taste and casts doubt on whether you validated yourself. Developer Week I flew from Geneva the day before my talk and crashed into my hotel bed. Of course, I woke up very early in the morning and decided to check the demo of a talk planned for the end of the tour. It didn't work, so I tried to remove the stopped containers. Tired as I was, I deleted my Docker images, including the ones I'd need a few hours later for my talk on ! all Open Telemetry https://twitter.com/stmcallister/status/1760397694282121559?embedable=true The talk is heavily based on a demo. When I tried to start the latter, I noticed the issue immediately and realized my mistake, but it was too late. Even though I had a Docker Compose file with statements, one of the components is in Rust—there was no time to compile it. build Long story short, it was an epic fail. I apologize again for this to the attendees if any of them read this post; I hope the explanations and slides were enough for them to play with the GitHub repository. Afterward, my friend drove me to San Francisco for lunch and a lovely walk along the piers. Josh The next day, I woke early to fly to Montréal, Canada. It was a pretty long flight; the day after, I had to talks at , one of my favorite conferences in North America. ConFoo started as a PHP conference, hence the elephant mascot, but has now widened its horizon . ConFoo a lot I had two talks there: Open Telemetry (again) and . I had rebuilt my images, and both talks went flawlessly this time. Chopping the Monolith https://twitter.com/spencerbgibb/status/1761046658303877615?embedable=true Over the weekend, my friend invited me to ski in Sutton. The temperature was very low compared to what I'm used to, around-10°C. Fortunately, Anthony was prepared and gave me self-heating thingies for my hands; unfortunately, he only had one - but it was enough nonetheless. Anthony also connected me with all the meetups I have the pleasure of presenting at in Canada, so I'm fortunate to count him as a friend. Anthony Having survived the Canadian cold, I ran one of my favorite runs on Monday: from the Bonaventure Hotel to the top of the Mount Royal. The slope is pretty steep at the foot of the mount, so you either choose to use the twisty path to the top or the multiple stairs that cut a more direct route. I managed to use all the stairs but the last (and longest) one and caught my breath running along the regular path. In the evening of the same day, I talked at the meetup. It's interesting because though I've been a developer for a long time, I never belonged to the "crafter" movement, though it resonates. The talk chosen was . The room was packed, and I believe it was pretty well received. Software Crafters Montréal Evolving your APIs The next step in my journey was the . I spent most of my developer years on the JVM, so my network is quite developed among JUGs. The organizer is : he's been accommodating and has driven me from my hotel and back again. He's trying to rebuild the Ottawa JUG back to its pre-COVID attendance. If you're a speaker and plan to be around Ottawa, please get in touch with him: his organizational skills are second to none. Ottawa Java User Group Sebastien Pelletier https://twitter.com/t_mammarella/status/1762628620193775717?embedable=true Ottawa is located between Montréal and Toronto, so the was a logical step in my tour. I stayed for a couple of days, including the weekend, so I had time to explore the city, including the CN Tower, as it was my first time there. is the organizer there, and I'm sure she'll be happy to host you. Toronto JUG Therese Mammarella You may have noticed she liked my talks so much that she drove to Ottawa on purpose the week before to attend the one I did at the JUG. The talk was well-attended but less than I expected for a city of this size. Anyway, I had a lot of fun presenting Evolving Your APIs - I hope the attendees had too. https://twitter.com/shaunmsmith/status/1764812180992426409?embedable=true Toronto is quite close to Niagara Falls. It would have been a shame not to go there, but I felt sick the weekend, so I decided to skip it. Yet, some things are just bound to happen. After the talk, a couple of us went to have dinner. There, I met a Ukrainian guy who had moved to Toronto years before the war and knew about me and my support for Ukraine. After talking together, we realized we had friends in common. He offered to drive me there as he was not working the next day. I happily took a day off myself and didn't regret it one bit! Thanks, Ihor, for the drive and the conversation. Afterward, I returned to the USA, namely Chicago, Illinois, to speak at . I have known the JUG leader, , for over a decade. She took the time to organize the meetup despite her busy schedule. Chicago JUG Mary Grygleski https://twitter.com/mgrygles/status/1765903150668517579?embedable=true is a familiar face in the Java community - and beyond. He's also the leader of the Denver Java User Group. I was lucky to know him, as he also arranged a double hit: , then . Even better, , whom I don't need to introduce, lives close to Boulder was there to invite me for a hike. But before that, I spend my weekend hiking according to his suggestion. Matt Raible Boulder Denver Venkat Subramaniam and First, I went to Boulder Moutain Park, and then, the day after, I went to Lake Bernard. The not-so-fun part about the second hike: for a reason unknown, mid-way, my head started to hurt. The headache lasted for the whole day. I checked online, and since I had my water bag and kept drinking, it might have been mountain sickness. It's weird since I live close to the mountains and go on top regularly, but it's the only explanation I could find. Fortunately, it went away the next day, and the talks went well. https://twitter.com/GregOstravich/status/1768070218855612800?embedable=true It was time for me to leave for the last leg of my journey, the in Pasadena. Before that, life took an interesting turn of events: the forecast warned about a snowstorm in the area. The airline rebooked me twice: from 6 AM to 7 AM, then from 7 AM to 11 AM. I was lucky enough to get a seat, and though spraying the plane with unfreezing liquid took a bit of time, it managed to leave anyway. I left Denver under the snow and landed a handful of hours later in Los Angeles under the sun. Southern California Linux Expo It was my second time at SCaLE, , SoCalLinux; the first time was the year of Covid. I need to explain why speaking at SCaLE during this journey was necessary. At the time, I was to speak at two different meetups in San Francisco, then SCaLe, fly to Romania, then Istanbul, get back home on Saturday, and leave on Monday for Australia. Granted, it was not terrific planning, but I like to think that I lived and learned since then. aka Anyway, one of the meetups was canceled, and I did the other online from my hotel room. At SCaLe, the venue was pretty empty for an event this size. Some people were wearing masks, and antiseptic gel dispensers were everywhere. I had around ten people in my room, which was my record at the time - I've done worse since then. Later, the Romanian conference announced they would cancel the event. I called the Istanbul one, but they confirmed the event would occur. I rebooked to Istanbul, then one day later, they canceled as well. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade; I decided to keep it that way to avoid more rebooking fees and spend the days in Istanbul anyway. For the record, on Sunday, the whole world stopped. The Australian conference was also canceled, and I had no chance to go there since. Thus, that was what went in my head by preparing for my talk at SCaLE: I wanted to exorcise my previous experience. I'm happy to say it worked! https://twitter.com/cantbewong/status/1768725626306150526?embedable=true Before leaving for home, though, I met with my friends from Yugabites: and . We had lunch, then enjoyed an hour or so walking on the shore of Venice Beach. Here, you can see them counting on their fingers: Denis Magda Franck Pachot Did you notice that you count on your fingers differently depending on where you were raised? Hint: find out how the English spies unwillingly reveal themselves in the Inglorious Basterds movie, despite speaking flawless German. It was time to get home after this last pause on American soil. Many hours later, I was at home, tired but happy from all those events. Many thanks to all the organizers who made them possible, especially Anthony, who worked as my agent for Canada. I also want to thank the people who came to my talks: speakers are nobody if there's no audience to listen to them. Finally, I want to thank my employer , who made it all possible. api7.ai See you soon ! somewhere PS: I tried to document my journey via #APISIXNorthAmericaTour. Find more pictures on , , and . Twitter LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky Also published here

Apache APISIX: How My North America Tour Went

Satoshi Nakamoto is far from being the sole anonymous figure in the cypherpunk arena. They’re privacy activists, so they value their own privacy more than anything. That’s also the case of Eric Hughes, known for being one of the founders of the cypherpunks movement and creator of the first anonymous remailer. Beyond this, we know quite little about him. He's an American cryptographer, mathematician, and programmer. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and worked for a while in the Netherlands with David Chaum, a known cryptographer and precursor . of cypherpunks Unlike Satoshi, we at least know his face and voice. at his own house in Oakland, California. Those meetings soon extended to Cygnus Solutions . This was a company dedicated to supporting free software and was founded by Gilmore himself. the group now called “cypherpunks” by arranging physical meetings with Tim May, John Gilmore and other programmers He started in Sunnyvale The famous cypherpunk mailing list to which Satoshi belonged and where he first shared the Bitcoin whitepaper was an evolution of those first meetings, created by Tim May, John Gilmore, and Hughes in 1992. Hughes was, indeed, the admin of the mailing list. , . Hal Finney, another remarkable cypherpunk, helped him to improve the code. An anonymous remailer is a service that first receives an email, deletes the identifying information (such as the sender's email address), and then forwards it to its destination or to another remailer in the network. This way, the sender's identity is protected. In the same forum, he also shared his own creation for privacy: the first anonymous remailer in 1992 A year later, Hughes wrote and published the Cypherpunk Manifesto, a sort of guide that would stay forever with cypherpunks and crypto enthusiasts alike. A Cypherpunk Manifesto outlines the principles and beliefs of the Cypherpunk movement, emphasizing the importance of privacy, cryptography, and anonymous transaction systems in maintaining individual freedoms and an open society in the digital age. It hasn't only served as a guiding philosophy for the Cypherpunk movement but it has also **influenced the development of a wide array of privacy-enhancing technologies and advocacy for digital rights.
\ This short text “Cypherpunks write code” is a motto that comes from this manifesto. It reads: “Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age (…) We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy (…) We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any (…) Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and (…) we're going to write it.” They have written it, indeed. These words and this movement have inspired figures and software such as Julian Assange (WikiLeaks), Adam Back (Hashcash & Blockstream), Eric Blossom (GNU Radio Project), Phil Zimmerman (PGP Protocol), Bram Cohen (BitTorrent & Chia), Hal Finney (First Proof-of-Work), Nick Szabo (Smart Contracts), Wei Dai (B-Money), Zooko Wilcox (Zcash), and, of course, Satoshi Nakamoto (Bitcoin). Most of them are still alive and active in 2023. A Cypherpunk Incarnation Beyond cypherpunk meetings, Hughes has rarely appeared in public. He was masked in a photo of three cypherpunks in Wired (1993), and delivered the keynote address, " ", at the Amsterdam CryptoParty in 2012. He’s a quite private person. However, after reading his opinions and creations on the mailing list, we can guess that he’s still working for the cypherpunk dream of online and financial freedom and privacy. Putting the Personal Back in Personal Computers At its core, the cypherpunk philosophy advocates for the empowerment of individuals through privacy-enhancing technologies and decentralized systems. Obyte embodies these ideals by offering a platform that prioritizes decentralization in its architecture and governance. We can say that is working to reach the same dreams, as a cypherpunk incarnation. Obyte By leveraging a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) ledger, Obyte creates a network where transactions are added directly by users, without middlemen involved —rather than being reliant on an intermediary (like miners). This decentralization helps to prevent single points of failure and reduces the risk of censorship or manipulation. From a privacy standpoint, Obyte integrates features that enable users to transact and communicate privately and securely. They include an encrypted chat, the option to use Tor with the wallet, and the opportunity to create private assets. In essence, Obyte's commitment to decentralization and privacy embodies the core principles of the cypherpunk movement. By empowering individuals with greater control over their digital interactions and data, Obyte contributes to the advancement of a more open, free, and equitable society in line with cypherpunk ideals. Read more from series: Cypherpunks Write Code Tim May & Crypto-anarchism Wei Dai & B-money Nick Szabo & Smart Contracts Adam Back & Hashcash Jude Milhon & Community Memory Featured Vector Image by Garry Killian / Freepik Eric Hughes Photograph by ReasonTV / YouTube

Cypherpunks Write Code: Eric Hughes, Remailer and Author of "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto" 

This post covers what I've learned about Akamai's VPC, how I deployed one with Terraform, and why it's good for security. Recently, I had the pleasure of attending in Oakland, CA. In addition to working the Akamai booth, making new friends, and spreading the good word of cloud computing, my teammate and I were tasked with creating a demo to showcase the new product. DeveloperWeek Talia VPC Background A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) enables private communication between two cloud compute instances, isolating network traffic from other internet users, thus improving security. So, how did I decide to showcase this? By building a little Pokémon dashboard, of course. I deployed two apps, each consisting of an app server and a database server (four servers total). The first app + database server pair is deployed normally. The second is configured to run within a VPC. Each app’s front end is built with and uses for styling. The server side is powered by (Qwik’s official meta-framework) and runs on hosted on a . The apps also use for process management and as a reverse proxy and SSL provisioner. The data is stored in a database that also runs on a shared Linode VPS. The apps interact with the database using , an Object-Relational Mapper (ORM) for . The entire infrastructure for both apps is managed with using the , which was new to me but made provisioning and destroying infrastructure really fast and easy (once I learned how it all worked). Qwik Tailwind Qwik City Node.js shared Linode VPS PM2 Caddy PostgreSQL Drizzle JavaScript Terraform Terraform Linode provider If you’re interested, you can find all the code here: github.com/AustinGil/linode-vpc-demo Demo As I mentioned above, the demo deploys two identical apps. There isn’t anything remarkably special about it, but here’s a screenshot. (I had to change the Pokémon names for reasons…) There’s nothing special about this tech stack. I chose these tools because I like them, not necessarily because they were the tools for the job. best The interesting part is the infrastructure. When we consider app #1, it’s essentially made up of two servers hosted inside the Akamai cloud, one server for the app and one for the database. When a user loads the app, the app server pulls the data from the database, constructs the HTML, and returns the result to the user. server The problem here is how the database connection is configured. In some cases, you may deploy a database server without knowing the IP addresses of the computers you want to allow access from (like the app server). In these cases, it’s not uncommon to allow any computer with the right credentials to connect to the database. This presents a security vulnerability because it could allow for a bad actor to connect to the database and steal sensitive data. A bad actor would still need the database host, port, username, and password to get access, so it’s not trivial. And as I said, this is not an uncommon practice, but we can do better. If you know the IP address for every computer that needs access, a good solution might be to set up a or . But if your infrastructure is more dynamic, with servers coming up and down, maintaining lists of IP addresses can be cumbersome. And that’s where VPCs shine. You can configure servers to live within a VPC and allow communication to flow freely only between other computers in the network. firewall VLAN That’s how app #2 is set up. Users can connect to the app server, which allows traffic from the public internet but also lives within the VPC. The app server connects to the database, which is also in the VPC, and only allows connections from within the same network. Then, the app server takes the data, builds the HTML, and returns the page to the user. For a normal user, the experience is identical. The browser loads the table with the modified Pokémon data just fine. The VPC doesn’t change anything for normal users. For bad actors, however, the experience is different. Even if they somehow manage to get the database access credentials, they would not be able to connect because of the network isolation from the VPC. Here, the VPC acts as a virtual firewall, ensuring that only devices with the same network are able to access the database. (This concept is sometimes referred to as “segmentation”) Evidence It’s cool to show a demo and talk about the infrastructure with cute diagrams, but I always want to prove, even if just to myself, that things work as expected. So, I thought a good way to test it would be to try connecting directly to both databases using my database client, . DBeaver For database #1, I set up a Postgres connection using the host IP address I got from my Akamai dashboard and the port, username, and password I had set up in my Terraform script. The connection worked as expected. For database #2, all I had to change was the IP address since all the database provisioning was handled by the same script using Terraform. The only difference was that the database server was put inside the same VPC as the app server, and it was configured to only allow connections from any computer within the same network. As expected, I got an error when trying to connect, even though I had all the correct information. The error doesn’t mention anything about the VPC. It just says that my IP address is not in the allowed list in the configuration file. This makes sense. I could explicitly add my home’s IP address and gain access to the database if needed, but that’s beside the point. The key point is that I did not explicitly add IP address to the Postgres allow-list. Yet, the app server was able to connect just fine, and everyone else was blocked, thanks to the VPC. any Code The last thing I’ll touch on is the Terraform code for deploying this application. You can find the whole file here: [github.com/AustinGil/linode-vpc-demo/blob/main/terraform/terraform.tf](https://github.com/AustinGil/linode-vpc-demo/blob/main/terraform/terraform.tf) It’s also worth mentioning that I tried to make this Terraform file reusable for other people (or future me). That required a bit more variable and config setup based around the file: tfvars [github.com/AustinGil/linode-vpc-demo/blob/main/terraform/terraform.tfvars.example](https://github.com/AustinGil/linode-vpc-demo/blob/main/terraform/terraform.tfvars.example) Anyway, I’m just going to highlight the key parts. 1. Configure Terraform Provider First, since I used the , it makes sense to know how to set that up: Linode Terraform provisioner terraform {
  required_providers {
    linode = {
      source = "linode/linode"
      version = "2.13.0"
    }
  }
}

variable "LINODE_TOKEN" {}

provider "linode" {
  token = var.LINODE_TOKEN
} This part sets up the provider as well as a variable, which Terraform will either ask you for or you can provide with the file. tfvars 2. Set Up VPC and VPC Subnet Next, I set up the actual resource along with a resource. This part required a lot of learning on my part. vpc subnet resource "linode_vpc" "vpc" {
  label = "${local.app_name}-vpc"
  region = var.REGION
}
resource "linode_vpc_subnet" "vpc_subnet" {
  vpc_id = linode_vpc.vpc.id
  label = "${local.app_name}-vpc-subnet"
  ipv4 = "${var.VPC_SUBNET_IP}"
} Servers can only be added to VPCs in the same region. At the time of writing, there are thirteen regions where VPCs are supported. For the most up-to-date details, refer to the docs: . linode.com/docs/products/networking/vpc/ I tried deploying my servers to San Francisco and ran into errors several times before realizing that it wasn’t an available region. So I went with Seattle ( ) instead. "us-sea" The subnets were also a learning point for me. As a web application developer, I haven’t had to do much networking, so when I was asked to provide “ ” I had to research. The IPv4 range of this subnet in CIDR format Turns out, (such as a VPC): there are three IPv4 address ranges that are reserved for private networks 10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255 172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255 192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255 You have to choose one of these three options, but you have to use format, which is a way of representing the IP range you want to use. Don’t ask me for more details, because that’s all I know. Akamai has more . I just went with . CIDR documentation around the subnets 10.0.0.0/24 Every server in the network will have an IPv4 address within that range. private 3. Set Up Application Servers For Terraform to deploy my application servers, I used the resource. I also used the resource to create a reusable deployment script for installing and configuring software. It’s like a script that lives in your Akamai cloud dashboard that you can reuse on new servers. linode_instance [stackscript](https://registry.terraform.io/providers/linode/linode/latest/docs/resources/stackscript) Bash I won’t include the code here, but it installs Node.js 20 via NVM, installs PM2, clones my project repo, runs the app, and sets up Caddy. You can view the StackScript contents in the source code, but I want to focus on the Terraform stuff. resource "linode_instance" "application1" {
  depends_on = [
    linode_instance.database1
  ]
  image = "linode/ubuntu20.04"
  type = "g6-nanode-1"
  label = "${local.app_name}-application1"
  group = "${local.app_name}-group"
  region = var.REGION
  authorized_keys = [ linode_sshkey.ssh_key.ssh_key ]

  stackscript_id = linode_stackscript.configure_app_server.id
  stackscript_data = {
    "GIT_REPO" = var.GIT_REPO,
    "START_COMMAND" = var.START_COMMAND,
    "DOMAIN" = var.DOMAIN1,
    "NODE_PORT" = var.NODE_PORT,
    "DB_HOST" = linode_instance.database1.ip_address,
    "DB_PORT" = var.DB_PORT,
    "DB_NAME" = var.DB_NAME,
    "DB_USER" = var.DB_USER,
    "DB_PASS" = var.DB_PASS,
  }
}
resource "linode_instance" "application2" {
  depends_on = [
    linode_instance.database2
  ]
  image = "linode/ubuntu20.04"
  type = "g6-nanode-1"
  label = "${local.app_name}-application2"
  group = "${local.app_name}-group"
  region = var.REGION
  authorized_keys = [ linode_sshkey.ssh_key.ssh_key ]

  stackscript_id = linode_stackscript.configure_app_server.id
  stackscript_data = {
    "GIT_REPO" = var.GIT_REPO,
    "START_COMMAND" = var.START_COMMAND,
    "DOMAIN" = var.DOMAIN2,
    "NODE_PORT" = var.NODE_PORT,
    "DB_HOST" = var.DB_PRIVATE_IP,
    "DB_PORT" = var.DB_PORT,
    "DB_NAME" = var.DB_NAME,
    "DB_USER" = var.DB_USER,
    "DB_PASS" = var.DB_PASS,
  }

  interface {
    purpose = "public"
  }
  interface {
    purpose   = "vpc"
    subnet_id = linode_vpc_subnet.vpc_subnet.id
  }
} Configuring the two resources is almost identical, with only a few significant things to note: Application #2 includes configuration to add it to the VPC. The StackScript needs the IP address for the database. Application #1 uses the public IP address from database #1 ( ). Application #2 uses a variable ( ). This variable will come up later, but it’s the private IP address assigned to database #2, running within the VPC. This can be manually assigned, so I set it to . linode_instance.database1.ip_address var.DB_PRIVATE_IP 10.0.0.3 Also note that they are deployed to the same region as the VPC, for the reasons I mentioned above. 4. Set Up Database Servers The databases are also set up using the and resources. Once again, I’ll skip the StackScript contents, which you can find in the repo. It installs Postgres, sets up the database and credentials, and provides some configuration options. linode_instance linode_stackscript resource "linode_instance" "database1" {
  image = "linode/ubuntu20.04"
  type = "g6-nanode-1"
  label = "${local.app_name}-db1"
  group = "${local.app_name}-group"
  region = var.REGION

  authorized_keys = [ linode_sshkey.ssh_key.ssh_key ]
  stackscript_id = linode_stackscript.configure_db_server.id
  stackscript_data = {
    "DB_NAME" = var.DB_NAME,
    "DB_USER" = var.DB_USER,
    "DB_PASS" = var.DB_PASS,
    "PG_HBA_ENTRY" = "host all all all md5"
  }
}
resource "linode_instance" "database2" {
  image = "linode/ubuntu20.04"
  type = "g6-nanode-1"
  label = "${local.app_name}-db2"
  group = "${local.app_name}-group"
  region = var.REGION
  authorized_keys = [ linode_sshkey.ssh_key.ssh_key ]

  stackscript_id = linode_stackscript.configure_db_server.id
  stackscript_data = {
    "DB_NAME" = var.DB_NAME,
    "DB_USER" = var.DB_USER,
    "DB_PASS" = var.DB_PASS,
    "PG_HBA_ENTRY" = "host all all samenet md5"
  }

  interface {
    purpose = "public"
  }
  interface {
    purpose   = "vpc"
    subnet_id = linode_vpc_subnet.vpc_subnet.id
    ipv4 {
      vpc = var.DB_PRIVATE_IP
    }
  }
} As with the application servers, the two database servers are mostly the same, with just a couple of key differences: The second database includes configuration to add it to the VPC. Different settings are written to the Client Authentication file ( ). Database #1 allows all internet connections ( ) while database #2 only allows access from the same network ( ). [pg_hba.conf](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/auth-pg-hba-conf.html) "host all all all md5" "host all all samenet md5" It’s also worth noting that we explicitly assign the server’s private IP address when configuring the VPC settings ( ). This is the same static value that was given to the application server so it can connect to the database from within the VPC. var.DB_PRIVATE_IP Closing Hopefully, this post has opened our eyes to what VPCs are, why they’re cool, and when you might consider one. It’s like having your own little private internet. It’s not strictly a replacement for VLANs or firewalls, but it’s a great addition to any existing security practice or at least something to keep in the back of your head. Building out the demo was interesting in itself, and there were a lot of things that were totally new to me. I spent a lot of time learning: What VPCs are and how they work. It was my first time using Terraform, so that involved installation, usage, terminology, etc. I’ve used Postgres before, but have never had to manually configure client access. This was my second project using Drizzle and although it was very limited, the migrations process was challenging. I learned more than I care to know about networking, computer interfaces, IP ranges, and CIDR. I have much more respect for folks working on the networking layer. Linode StackScripts are also super cool. It was my preferred way to configure a server using Terraform, and I want to see how they work otherwise. There were also a couple of resources that I found particularly helpful: Linode’s VPC documentation Terraform’s Linode provider documentation And in case you want to keep going on with this or related topics, Talia put together some excellent posts recently: Talia’s review of DeveloperWeek Introduction to Akamai’s VPC Crafting a Resilient VPC Landscape using Terraform When should I use a Private IP vs. VLAN vs. VPC? And of course, if you are interested in trying out the VPC or any other Akamai cloud computing products, new users can sign up at and get $100 in free credits :) linode.com/austingil Thank you so much for reading. If you liked this article, and want to support me, the best ways to do so are to , , and . share it sign up for my newsletter follow me on Twitter Originally published on . austingil.com

How I Deployed My Own Lil' Private Internet (a.k.a. VPC)

Hi, I’m Aaron Sankin, and I’m a reporter here at The Markup. Over the past year, I’ve focused on investigating and what you (other than shoot dirty looks at your modem, which doesn’t really care about your opinion). why the internet connection at your house is slow can do about it Tucked deep in the , signed by President Joe Biden in 2021, is a short provision giving the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) broad leeway to fundamentally reshape how America connects to the internet. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Under a section titled “Digital Discrimination,” the legislation tasks the FCC with adopting “rules to facilitate equal access to broadband internet access service, taking into account the issues of technical and economic feasibility presented by that objective, including … preventing digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin.” The section itself is short—under 400 words—and relatively light on detail, leaving it largely up to the FCC to decide how much power it wants to grab for itself to close the digital divide. Various actors have rushed into that void of legislative ambiguity, forcefully advocating for their own agendas. On one side are advocacy groups and some local governments who hope the FCC will take the opportunity to aggressively hold internet service providers (ISPs) to account for what they see as generations of inequitable broadband infrastructure deployment across the country. Some propose levying fines on ISPs guilty of discrimination or, as the agency did when it approved a merger between Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable in 2016, companies build out high-speed infrastructure in new areas. mandating On the other side are ISPs, the industry groups representing them, and ideologically aligned pro-business think tanks. They want nothing more than for the FCC to merely supplement its historic light-touch regulation of the broadband industry with generous subsidies—that make investing in high-speed internet infrastructure in marginalized communities more beneficial to the companies’ bottom lines. The crux of this fight is over a concept called “disparate impact” and whether the FCC should use it to identify whether an ISP has engaged in discrimination. The idea behind disparate impact is that discrimination isn’t always explicit. So, if an institution’s policies have created a situation where certain protected groups experience markedly worse outcomes than others, this impact matters just as much as any intentionally biased practices. For example: A company’s CEO decides that people should always physically look up to their managers, so only people over 6 feet, 3 inches get promoted to managerial roles. As a result, the management staff is entirely male, since men tend to be taller on average. Did the company engage in gender discrimination? Under a disparate impact standard, yes. But, under a standard where intent prevails, this discrimination is a lot harder to prove, because the rules that resulted in a management team where everyone can dunk said nary a peep about gender. “From my point of view, disparate impact is really just discrimination through the back door,” said John Yinger, a professor of economics and public administration at Syracuse University, who has disparate impact and wrote a about discrimination in mortgage lending. studied book “If you have a system that doesn’t recognize and address disparate impact, you allow people to, either on purpose [or] by accident, engage in a lot of discrimination.” The problem, Yinger noted, is that to assess disparate impact, the first step is determining which allocation of a certain scarce set of resources—be it broadband access or corporate promotions—is fair, and then determine if different groups’ receipt of that resource violates that standard of fairness. Intentions Matter, or Do They? Consider an we published last year showing how a quartet of ISPs consistently gave the worst deals for internet service to households in low-income, less-White, and historically redlined neighborhoods in major cities across the country. investigation When we were reporting that story, we certainly were curious these disparities existed, but that was less important than the fact that we could prove they existed in the first place. why why Last year, when we reached out to CenturyLink, one of the companies we found consistently charging high prices for sluggish service in marginalized areas, spokesperson Mark Molzen insisted at the time that the company was committed to anti-racism. “While we can’t comment on behalf of other providers, we can say we do not enable services based on any consideration of race or ethnicity, and the methodology used for the report on our network is deeply flawed.” Molzen never pointed to any specific inaccuracies in our data collection or analysis. The “flaw” he identified was in an inference the company read into the story about its motives. Our October 2022 investigation showed absolutely zero evidence that CenturyLink had partitioned cities into geographic areas based on race and used that to determine where to deploy high-speed internet infrastructure. And, honestly, it would be pretty wild if it actually had. Nevertheless, we found that CenturyLink offered addresses in the least-White parts of Des Moines, Iowa, slow-speed internet service 19 percentage points more frequently than the Whitest parts of the city—and all for the same price. In Las Vegas, Nev., that gap was 31 percentage points. In Omaha, Neb., 33 percentage points. A comment within a June 2022 FCC with Lumen, CenturyLink’s parent company, mentioned the company’s expectations “to deploy fiber to approximately one million new locations in 2022 and around 1.5 to 2 million new locations in 2023.” digital discrimination proceeding However, there wasn’t any specificity regarding how many of these new fiber deployments would go to low-income or predominantly non-White areas. When it comes to the FCC’s responsibility, the question is whether the FCC will look at the levels of access that different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups have to affordable, blazing-fast internet, find substantial inequality, and then do something about it. Or, as the telecom industry would prefer, will the agency only intervene after finding direct evidence of an ISP making inequitable decisions about where to deploy infrastructure explicitly based on characteristics like race or ethnicity? “ ” In Some Circumstances, It Can Be Profitable The legal theory behind disparate impact goes back to , a 1971 Supreme Court case about how a company required all employees to pass a pair of intelligence tests if they wanted to move into higher-paying roles. Black people were far less likely to pass those tests, which were unrelated to the jobs’ responsibilities. Griggs v. Duke Power Co. The court ruled that these tests—which the company just so happened to implement on the very day the 1964 Civil Rights Act—prohibited race-based employment discrimination, and were illegal due to the effect they had on Black employees’ career advancement. The use of disparate impact to identify discrimination grew in the ensuing decades and was finally into law in 1991. “Because individual motives may be difficult to prove directly, Congress has frequently permitted proof of only discriminatory impact as a means of overcoming discriminatory practices,” reads a U.S. Department of Justice on the subject. codified manual “The Supreme Court has, therefore, recognized that disparate impact liability under various civil rights laws ‘permits plaintiffs to counteract unconscious prejudices and disguised animus that escape easy classification as disparate treatment.’ ” During the administration of President Donald Trump, who famously settled a in the 1970s over his family’s real estate company’s practice of not renting properties to Black tenants, the Department of Housing and Urban Development dramatically the government’s ability to use disparate impact, but the rules were shortly after President Biden took office. lawsuit weakened reinstated While disparate impact has been used by the government to regulate employment and housing, it hasn’t yet been used to assess the role ISPs are playing in the digital divide. As a result, when the FCC went about implementing the digital discrimination rules mandated by Congress, the agency specifically that the public weigh in on whether the standard should be used and, if so, how. requested The responses the agency received on the issue largely fell into two categories. The telecom industry argued in favor of using as a metric, which holds that discrimination occurs when people are explicitly divided up by a protected category (like race) and then treated worse as a result. Digital inclusion advocacy groups argued that is the only feasible metric. disparate treatment disparate impact “Rational, profit-seeking actors will discriminate because, in some circumstances, it can be profitable to do so. Whether this is intentional or not is beside the point,” argued the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and Common Sense Media, two nonprofit advocacy groups, in one . comment “The point … is that discrimination occurs and will continue to occur unless providers’ incentives are changed.” The groups’ comment urges the FCC to look for disparate impact in a plethora of ISP practices ranging from the prices customers are charged for a service, and under what contract terms, to the actual speeds different areas receive and how companies prioritize network maintenance. “For decades, the disability community has noted that discrimination occurs unintentionally and often results from seemingly neutral policies,” the American Association of People with Disabilities in another comment. concurred “Too often, disabled people experience discrimination not because of malicious intent or explicit exclusion within programs or policies but because the disabled people were simply not considered in the first place.” The Greenlining Institute, a California-based nonprofit that for digital inclusion efforts, insisted in its that applying disparate impact to broadband would be consistent with how it has been used across the government for decades. advocates comment “Adoption of the disparate impact standard in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 allowed for a whole-of-government approach that targeted discrimination in public goods such as education and housing,” Greenlining asserted. “It would be consistent to apply this similar treatment to digital public infrastructure and services such as broadband internet.” The tenor of comments from folks who might theoretically be held accountable if their actions were found to have treated some communities worse than others was, unsurprisingly, markedly different. A primary industry worry is that requiring ISPs to constantly weigh equity concerns may dissuade them from deploying new infrastructure widely in the first place. “Adopting a disparate impact test would cause carriers to choose between prioritizing deployment based on closing the digital divide, as required by Congress, and paralyzing deployment for fear that a regular, common business decision may disproportionately affect a minority community,” asserted the Lincoln Network, a free market think tank, in its . comment Another industry argument is that Congress didn’t really mean for the FCC to use disparate impact to identify “discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin.” Verizon, for example, that the phrase “based on” in the legislation specifically means that discrimination has to be a direct result of company decisions made because of protected demographic characteristics of a particular area. asserted For its part, AT&T asserted in its that, even if a disparate impact standard were applied, the broadband industry wouldn’t be found to have delivered less connectivity to historically marginalized areas. comment While there have been localized studies showing inequitable deployment in places like , , , and , the company said that the only way to accurately assess deployment would be to look at a comprehensive, national picture of everywhere every single ISP offers service. Cleveland Dallas Oakland Los Angeles AT&T to an analysis from former FCC chief economist Glenn Woroch that showed that “broadband availability rates for census-based ‘non-white’ households are higher than for white households and that availability rates for households above and below the poverty line are nearly identical.” pointed Woroch’s research relies on data from a broadband availability map produced by the FCC that is supposed to show what service ISPs offer across the country. While a footnote in Woroch’s comment insists his data source doesn’t skew the results, that map has been for inaccuracies, and a 2020 Princeton found that “the FCC’s data disproportionately overstates coverage in rural and minority communities.” widely criticized study The FCC released a last year designed to rectify those issues, but that map has its own set of and is still effectively in its beta testing phase. As a result, obtaining data accurate enough to meet the standards pushed for by AT&T remains a tall order. new map profound accuracy problems The battle over the FCC’s potential use of disparate impact hasn’t been limited to the public comment process. In a recent , The Wall Street Journal’s historically laissez-faire editorial board used the specter of disparate impact to lobby against Public Knowledge’s co-founder Gigi Sohn, whom Biden unsuccessfully nominated to lead the agency, but withdrew following telecom industry opposition. op-ed “Public Knowledge, the outfit that Ms. Sohn co-founded and led from 2001 to 2013, has urged the FCC to interpret its regulatory mandate broadly to micromanage broadband competition and development,” the editorial charged. Now would be the time to mention that The Markup does, in fact, have a pack of dogs in this fight. Our newsroom is based on the idea that if you evaluate the inputs and outputs of a big, complex technical system, you can identify serious problems in how it treats different groups without having to know the precise intentions of the people who developed it. The technology does not yet exist to do a regression controlling for the vagaries of the human heart. In March, Markup reporter and freelance data journalist used data analysis to determine that an algorithm for deciding which patients got life-saving liver transplants people in a handful of states, almost all of which were in the South and Midwest. The day after that story was published, the Department of Health and Human Services major reforms to that very system. Malena Carollo Ben Tanen systematically disadvantaged announced One thing I’m working on—along with my colleague, investigative data reporter —is a step-by-step guide showing everyday people how they can evaluate whether ISPs have left a digital divide in their towns. It should be dropping sometime in the next few weeks. Leon Yin We’re hoping that if people use the guide and find something interesting, they can tell the FCC about it. And, who knows, depending on how this disparate impact proceeding goes, maybe the agency will even do something about it. Sincerely, Aaron Sankin Investigative Reporter The Markup By Aaron Sankin Also published here Photo by on Annie Spratt Unsplash

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