Dusting up the Linotype...
In which we learn that Stefano's public writing itch is back and what to expect from this newsletter.
I had a blog for many years. It’s gone now, in 404 land. Although if you’re crafty, you can still find pieces of it lying around in the Internet Archive.
The reason why it disappeared is that I became a father and started working at Google. The combination of parental refocus and the concern of inadvertently leaking sensitive information dried up my public writing desires.
Now my kids are older, the risk of sensitive leakage feel manageable (given that I work on) and the pandemic shook a lot of things loose inside of me. The itch to write some of my random thoughts down came back.
So, what is this newsletter about?
Over the years I worked on many things which stand out in retrospect: I helped the Apache Software Foundation become what it is and remain sustainable. I helped establish the Apache Harmony project which helped open sourcing Java and bootstrap Android. I helped build and scale Google’s Knowledge Graph. I helped making Federated Learning and Federated Analytics a thing.
But I won’t be writing about those things, at least not directly. I will be writing about the stuff that I find curious, intriguing, visible at the edge of my periphery but beyond the reach of my capacity.
Find a quiet corner, you’ll need it.