Category: 3-SometimeTechTalk

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Evan Henshaw-Plath, also known as Rabble, was born in Berkeley while his Mom was a student. His parents were hippies, and he grew up near Silicon Valley, which gave him access to work with startups as early as High School. He founded Odeo, which eventually became Twitter. He got the name Rabble cause it was founded by three Evan's, which didn't work - so he went with his online nickname. He has a cool track record of working not only on Twitter, but Flickr, Palm, and other big names. He lives in New Zealand, enjoying all the outdoor activities, and participates in activism in digital rights and environmentalism. Being a Vegetarian, he admits that his comfort food is Mexican cuisine, which he doesn't get a lot of in the land of the Kiwis.

Rabble was disappointed when Twitter shut down its open app capabilities. He wanted something like Twitter, but built to where someone couldn't take away his access. He started to dig into protocols, and eventually landed in San Francisco to tell his friends that he was going to make social media work like email and messaging.

This is the creation story of Rabble Labs & Verse.

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• Paddle.com
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Links

• https://www.verse-pbc.org/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/rabble/

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Condoleezza Rice is a former U.S. Secretary of State and current director of Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Rice joins Big Technology to discuss whether the United States can hold its technological edge as China races ahead in AI, batteries, and advanced manufacturing. Tune in to hear her candid take on the U.S.–China tech arms race, the ripple effects of chip export controls, and why she believes democracies are safer stewards of frontier technologies. We also cover the squeeze on university research funding, immigration-driven talent pipelines, and tuition-fueled class divides. Hit play for a data-rich, no-fluff conversation on the special sauce for the U.S. tech industry and the risks it faces in our current political environment.

Jesse Pollak grew up in Washington, DC, attending a Quaker school through graduating in high school. He played competitive soccer, which was a huge part of his life. Eventually, he moved to SoCal to attend school at Berkley. He got the bug to start a company, and only lasted 2 years at school - before he ventured out on his own. Eventually, his company got acquired by Coinbase, which opened up a whole new world for him. Outside of tech, he is married with a 4 month old boy. He doesn't drink caffeine, but daily, enjoys a decaf cappuccino.

In December 2021, Jesse and his team were wondering in the desert for a while, trying to figure out what was next on-chain. After considering what AWS and Heroic was for Web 2.0, they figured out that in order to go build the apps that companies like Coinbase had, they needed a foundational layer in the ecosystem to fuel that development.

This is the creation story of Base.

Sponsors

• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch
• Mailtrap
• .TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)

Links

• https://www.base.org/
• https://www.coinbase.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessepollak/

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Topics covered in this episode:

• * Switching to direnv, Starship, and uv*
• * rqlite - Distributed SQLite DB*
• * Some Markdown Stuff*
• Extras
• Joke

Watch on YouTube

About the show

Sponsored by PropelAuth: pythonbytes.fm/propelauth77

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• Michael: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
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Brian #1: Switching to direnv, Starship, and uv

• Last week I mentioned that I’m ready to try direnv again, but secretly, I still had some worries about the process. Thankfully, Trey has a tutorial to walk me past the troublesome parts.

• direnv - an extension for your shell. It augments existing shells with a new feature that can load and unload environment variables depending on the current directory.

• Switching from virtualenvwrapper to direnv, Starship, and uv

  - Trey Hunner**

  • Trey has solved a bunch of the problems I had when I tried direnv before

    • Show the virtual environment name in the prompt

    • Place new virtual environments in local .venv instead of in .direnv/python3.12

    • Silence all of the “loading”, “unloading” statements every time you enter a directory

    • Have a script called

      venv
      

      to create an environment, activate it, create a

      .envrc
      

      file

      • I’m more used to a create script, so I’ll stick with that name and Trey’s contents

    • A

      workon
      

      script to be able to switch around to different projects.

      • This is a carry over from “virtualenvwrapper’, but seems cool. I’ll take it.

    • Adding

      uv
      

      to the mix for creating virtual environments.

      • Interestingly including --seed which, for one, installs pip in the new environment. (Some tools need it, even if you don’t)

  • Starship

    • Trey also has some setup for Starship. But I’ll get through the above first, then MAYBE try Starship again.
    • Some motivation
      • Trey’s setup is pretty simple. Maybe I was trying to get too fancy before
      • Starship config in toml files that can be loaded with direnv and be different for different projects. Neato
      • Also, Trey mentions his dotfiles repo. This is a cool idea that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.

• See also:

  • It's Terminal - Bootstrapping With Starship, Just, Direnv, and UV - Mario Munoz

Michael #2: rqlite - Distributed SQLite DB

• via themlu, thanks!
• rqlite is a lightweight, user-friendly, distributed relational database built on SQLite.
• Built on SQLite, the world’s most popular database
• Supports full-text search, Vector Search, and JSON documents
• Access controls and encryption for secure deployments

Michael #3: A Python dict that can report which keys you did not use

• by Peter Bengtsson
• Very cool for testing that a dictionary has been used as expected (e.g. all data has been sent out via an API or report).
• Note: It does NOT track d.get(), but it’s easy to just add it to the class in the post.
• Maybe someone should polish it up and put it on pypi (that person is not me :) ).

Brian #4: Some Markdown Stuff

• Textual 4.0.0

  adds Markdown.append which can be used to efficiently stream markdown content

  • The reason for the major bump is due to an interface change to Widget.anchor
  • Refreshing to see a symantic change cause a major version bump.

• html-to-markdown

  • Converts html to markdown

  • A complete rewrite fork of markdownify

  • Lots of fun features like “streaming support”
    • Curious if it can stream to Textual’s Markdown.append method. hmmm.

Joke: Vibecon is hard to attend

Realta Fusion is making fusion real and tackling today’s clean energy issues with innovative technology. Follow them on LinkedIn.

Connect with Kieran on LinkedIn. 

Shoutout to Lifeboat badge winner zathura, who was awarded the badge for answering Type of triangle in MySQL.

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Episode overview: Andrew Hall faces a unique challenge: building profitable telecommunications infrastructure across one of Africa's largest countries with one of its smallest populations. As managing director of Paratus Namibia, Hall oversees operations spanning vast distances where traditional business models struggle to pencil out. Andile Masuku probes Hall on the realities of building networks where "you'll see three fibres running next to the road" instead of shared infrastructure, why COVID accelerated their consumer business, and how recent oil discoveries are reshaping Namibia's economic landscape. Key insights: - On geographic challenges: Namibia's vast distances and sparse population create unique infrastructure economics where covering remote areas requires careful return-on-investment calculations across extended payback periods. - On competitive landscape: Operating alongside two state-owned enterprises creates complex market dynamics where regulatory considerations and different organisational mandates influence infrastructure deployment strategies. - On infrastructure sharing: Despite logical benefits, competitive dynamics often result in duplicated infrastructure: "three towers standing next to each other" rather than collaborative deployment approaches. - On consumer versus enterprise: Traditional enterprise focus (75% of business) provided stability, but consumer growth since 2016 now drives expansion, particularly accelerated during COVID-19 periods. - On technology transitions: Moving from WiMAX limitations (4-10 Mbps) to fibre required strategic timing; balancing asset sweating against customer retention as bandwidth demands increased around 2018. Notable moments: 1. Hall's description of infrastructure redundancy: "If you drive down the road, you'll see three fibres running next to the road. If you're driving from one town to the other, you'll see two or three towers standing next to each other" 2. The COVID-19 catalyst: Consumer business performed "very, very well" as people became "100% reliant, work-wise, education-wise, entertainment-wise on connectivity" 3. Recent oil discoveries creating positive economic outlook with increased foreign investment interest and improved business confidence The development question: Hall addresses the expectation that telecoms should "unlock growth economically for an entire nation" by emphasising education as the foundation. Paratus's corporate social responsibility focuses on educational sector connectivity because "for children to have access to the internet, it makes the world a lot smaller." His perspective reflects broader African infrastructure challenges: balancing commercial sustainability with development impact, managing investor expectations whilst serving diverse stakeholder needs, and building institutional capacity in environments with limited technical specialisation. "I think access to the internet plays a crucial role. And I think it starts at grass root level in the form of education... for children to have access to the internet, it makes the world a lot smaller." Image credit: Paratus Namibia