mattboulos

There are two major challenges with building a robust analytics solution for the privacy era: architecture and privacy operations.

In terms of architecture, things that are cross-site (i.e., a script that sends a data to a service that is not yours) are getting blocked by ad blockers and browsers like Brave. This is because, even with the best of publicly stated intentions, there is no way to know what the third-party will do with the data.

Privacy operations itself is exceptionally challenging, because you need to manage consent and purpose, provide auditability, support DSAR, etc. -- unless you operate at the strict minimum (typically what falls within “legitimate interest” under the GDPR).

My company, Blotout (YC W21), approaches this with a cloud native privacy data engineering platform that lets you ingest event and ETL data into to your own lake, and provides a complete privacy operations suite. Since it’s same-site, you’re not blocked as a tracker. And because it pulls and unifies all of your data in your own infra, it’s vastly more efficient than a third-party stack and it lets you do things with you data that you can’t when it’s spread across providers.

Of course, for your personal blog this might be overkill. :)

I love the LRB, but I am looking for a science/tech focus.

This is just lovely. Clean, exactly what I need, and the on-boarding/privacy experience is best-in-class. Well done.

As the founder of a tech-driven charity and with some volunteering experience, I want to suggest another approach.

The skills that let you deploy your technical abilities are often sorely needed in this sector, particularly when an organization depends on volunteer labour.

As an example, my father is an experienced civil engineer who leads the development and refurbishment of major hydro generation facilities in his day work.

One of his primary volunteer activities, however, is hustling casseroles for a significant homeless shelter and kitchen in a large city. He is frighteningly effective because of all the skills that also make him good at his job — organization, process, people, etc. There’s often a deficit of this in volunteer efforts.

On the flip side, if you do want to use your technical chops, consider how you can do so in a sustainable way so you don’t create dependencies that put important processes at risk. I found it better to fundraise and pay professionals for important functions.

1. Now that I know enough to prepare food that tastes better than most restaurants, eating at home is a way to choose healthy ingredients, save money, and eat well.

2. Not enough. I buy meat in advance and freeze it, so that requires at least a day or two planning for thawing.

3. A broad range, but I focus on salads, meats, and grains.

4. Occasionally, I drop dairy or become vegan, but mostly I'm a happy omnivore.

5. Learn simple techniques (knife skills, cooking at different temperatures, etc.) and have the right tools. Start with a sharp knife and a good steel pot and pan, then add a cast iron skillet (none of this needs to be expensive). After that, nothing is more fun in cooking than parsing a good recipe until you understand it inside out.

I run an online service that connects teens with experienced lawyers who advise them for free (it is a labour of love).

Obviously I am biased, but I think we need more services that can help kids deal with online realities. In our experience, kids who are being bullied have no idea how to get the help they need and burrow instead. We owe it to them to change that.

I am convinced that the tech community can play a big part in that, it certainly has for my organization.