1/ I build AI and digital infrastructure across the wider Caribbean and other Small Island Developing States, starting in Barbados. Search. Local knowledge. Language. Government. Culture. Here's what I'm building, and what I've learned putting it into production. 🧵

🇧🇧 As I’m stood here in my kitchen and Bajans asking me about recent software vulnerabilities and I’m trying not to think of the vast amount of personal data I had to recently hand over to Barbados Immigration dept, whose website looks like it hasn’t been updated since 1999. Drop shadows, gradients, “works in browser…” messages…. cheese on….

🇧🇧 I swear I can’t remember the last time we went for more than two weeks without a water outage in Prior Park. It has been off for at least one day every week the last 3-4 weeks. At this point I think BWA are just trying to goad me into creating a water outage tracking app.

I always find it mind blowing when I read things like this and try to work out all of the steps that had to happen for this knowledge to have been collected and preserved. Some guy crossed oceans, traversed rainforests, navigated rivers, survived predators and illnesses. And he carried a book and a pen. And he managed to write down all he saw. Managed to keep that book safe, dry, etc. and then that book made its way back (I presume) to Europe. And was stored safely. And several hundred years later it was digitised and I can read it on a device in my hand. Now, I know it is somewhat survivorship bias and no-doubt a lot of other information was lost. But I can’t even find the receipt I got last week lol

Crypto folks: Anyone had someone purporting to be from Blockworks contact you on LinkedIn about appearing on a podcast. 1st red flag: the person on LinkedIn and I have zero mutuals. They sent me a calendly link for pre-call. Then 18 mins before call they messaged me to remind me of the call. The call was on Google Meets. 2nd flag: Then they didn't join, 7 minutes late some random person joined. By now I twigged, but kept going to see how they'd try to pull this scam off. 3rd flag: Camera off. 4th flag: Stilted conversation. I left dead air they didn't fill. They explained the podcast format and showed me Blockworks website and various shows they host. 5th flag: Then they said that the host, someone apparent notable who I never heard of, was wanting a call, but they are not in direct contact, so they are inviting this person's PA on the call. 6th flag: The original person on the call drops off. 7th flag: Then a few minutes later the PA joins. They have no knowledge of specifics of the prior conversation. 8th flag: The PA says that the host is on another call and I was needing to now join that. I was expecting them to send me to some obscure podcast app, but it was what looked like another Google Meets app. 9th flag: Can't find either the 2nd or 3rd person on LinkedIn and no obvious Google results for them. OK, enough. "Sorry, I'm not participating in your scam" and hung up. Looking back I see some other flags. I remember when I looked at the calendly link they sent yesterday, today was the only date with availability. Also in the Linkedin conversation leading to the invite, they said this was a "new show" something more experimental. And yet when on the call they pointed to an existing podcast that they (or rather the real Blockworks) was running. Be careful out there folks. /cc @Blockworks

🇧🇧 Whoever produce this VS show needs to send a scout to Barbados fr.