Periodic reminder that our blog/newsletter has its own presence on the Fediverse thanks to the WordPress ActivityPub plugin. You can follow it at @systemsapproach.org
(We were just reminded of this because it started blasting out posts when we went back to edit some old ones. Perhaps we should check the configuration.)

This is exactly what the internet is for.

It seems some people are interested to hear more about my typewriter and how I use it?

Back in 2022, Atsuko wrote a post about repairing this typewriter - https://web.archive.org/web/20221128010027/https://tilde.gay/~yottatsa/site/olympia.html - so this time I will show you all the neat office functions it has!

🧵 more pictures and videos in the thread

A positive review of our latest Systems Approach book in Diginomica: https://diginomica.com/lessons-system-engineering-internet-and-why-it-matters-today

A fondness for em dashes is one of the things that binds the authors of the Systems Approach books together
https://aus.social/@Drbruced/114793249476752617

New badge just added to our README https://notbyai.fyi

ask for my network: do you love teaching intricate topics to humans? know a friend who does?

I'm hiring an empathetic, creative, and collaborative Technical Marketing Engineer to join my product team at Fastly @fastlydevs : https://www.fastly.com/about/jobs/apply?gh_jid=6968413

you'll be hands-on with technical tooling in service of teaching our field teams about our security products -- a time for your Terraform skills (and curiosity) to shine ✨

you'll also gain ample opportunities for speaking (both virtual + in-person) and other forms of thought leadership around the world 🎙️ 🌍

please join us in our mission to deliver modern security products that make software engineering teams feel resilient and make cyberattackers cry ⚡ don't be shy, pls apply!

A lot of this will come down to what resources and skills you can bring to the table. What we have tried to illustrate is that there is a large range of options between "everything in someone else's cloud" and total DIY. Distinguishing between outsourcing resources, outsourcing data, and outsourcing control is a good place to start.

Full article:

https://systemsapproach.org/2025/06/30/towards-digital-sovereignty/

/FIN

The decision of whose infrastructure supports your applications is not an all-or nothing thing either. For example, we used Jenkins (open source, self-hosted) for some continuous integration tasks and GitHub actions (proprietary cloud service) for others. These sort of choices can reduce the work you do youself (by outsourcing some work to someone else's cloud) while incurring the risk that the cloud provider will change or drop their service, or do something you didn't intend with the data you've entrusted to them.

5/n

A side effect of this was the rise of programming enviroments such as kubernetes and serverless computing as *de facto* standards for modern applications. But just because you want to run modern apps, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to hand over control to a hyperscaler cloud. It's entirely feasible to operate the underlying cloud infrastructure yourself, should you choose, as we outline in the book.

4/n

In the early days of the Internet (yes, we are old) there was no need to talk about "digital sovereignty” because it was the default. Every organization ran its own computing infrastructure, with minimal dependencies on other organizations other than a set of standards for interoperability. Of course that changed with the emergence of cloud computing and the swing towards outsourcing various bits of technology, from email to computing and storage.

3/n

We just finished an update to our Edge Cloud Operations book, first published 3 years ago, which lays out the sequence of technology choices we made to build a multi-site, open source cloud delivering private 5G services. The choices we made represent only one possibility in a broad set of options, but serve to highlight some of the decisions and tradeoffs that need to be made. The book is available online:
https://systemsapproach.org/books/#opsbook
2/n

There is plenty of interest in Digital Sovereignty these days (which sometimes means "I would like an alternative to the US-dominated big tech offerings"). As people who have been building edge clouds powered by open source software for a while, we have thoughts, which we share in this week's newsletter: https://systemsapproach.org/2025/06/30/towards-digital-sovereignty/
🧵 1/n

✨ New blog post: “Back to the Old Internet: A Personal Reboot”
Switching to Linux. Self-hosting. Fossifying my phone.
I thought the old internet was gone — turns out, it just needed a reboot.
https://laurahargreaves.com/the-old-internet/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=autopost

#OldInternet #OpenWeb #FOSS #Linux #DigitalReboot

Reposting this for a colleague of mine from Edinburgh, who I know pretty well - he hosted me for 3 days in 2023 and I was impressed with him and his group. (They even took me for a walk over Arthur's Seat to a pub dinner.) 22-year-old me took an opportunity like this to study in Edinburgh and I think it worked out well.
𝗠𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗵𝗗 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘃𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗘𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗯𝘂𝗿𝗴𝗵.

Current openings include:
- 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲 (deadline: 𝗧𝘂𝗲, 𝟴𝘁𝗵 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝘆)
- 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁/𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿 (deadline: 𝗧𝘂𝗲, 𝟴𝘁𝗵 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝘆)
- 𝗣𝗵𝗗 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 (deadline: 𝗧𝗵𝘂, 𝟯𝟭𝘀𝘁 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝘆)

Postdoc and Research Engineer positions are broadly aimed at the design and evaluation of systems/methods for next-generation wireless access networks and intelligent edge infrastructure. These positions are initially for a 1-year period but with the possibility of extension for additional years, subject to performance and funding.

The focus of the PhD Studentship (in collaboration with BT) is on optimizing energy efficiency of cloud-native mobile networking systems and the integration of AI with RAN. Note that 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 “𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗲𝗲” 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀. Eligible and interested candidates are encouraged to first reach out by email to **mahesh@ed.ac.uk** with their CV and a summary of relevant background/experience.

𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗹𝘆, 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝘁 https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/mmarina/

Website/device age verification is a privacy and security nightmare and everyone who tells you that this is a solved problem is lying to you.

https://gizmodo.com/supreme-court-says-age-verification-laws-for-porn-sites-are-constitutional-2000621265

Remember, the main reason so many firms push you to use their apps when you can do the same stuff via their websites is that apps typically give them far more insight into your activities on your phone, even often unrelated to that app. So when you can use the websites, it's often best to say NO to the apps.

wanderer - #Strava meets the #Fediverse. A self-hosted trail database built on #ActivityPub. "Save your adventures!"

https://wanderer.to/
https://github.com/flomp/wanderer

Who is calling OCaml obscure? The Economist, no less:

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/26/jane-streets-sneaky-retention-tactic