Content Addressing: Marvels & Magic

Dylan Herbert

VP of People, Opreto

4 minute read

The technology of Content Addressing is marvellous. It is, ex post facto, a simple and powerful concept, demonstrably elegant and the basis for many of the most interesting and powerful technologies of the past two decades. I have already written about Why I love the InterPlanetary File System, and touched on Content Addressing in my post about Installing and Running an IPFS node, but it is constantly remarkable to me that this approach underpins blockchain networks like Bitcoin, version control systems like Git, and file distribution networks like BitTorrent as well. Content Addressing has changed the way we interact with and share key data, but I don’t think it gets the recognition it deserves, as a seminal building material of the modern Internet. Luckily, there is one surefire way in 2023 to communicate just how cool something is - describing it in terms of a Dungeons & Dragons tabletop roleplaying game!

The Scaling Paradox

Xavier Spriet

VP of Technology, Opreto

7 minute read

Companies like Google, X (Twitter), Spotify, and Atlassian have created very popular and brilliant product lines, and often embody Agile, DevOps, and software architecture best practices. Yet, the quality of their products has witnessed noticeable erosion. It’s called the Scaling Paradox, and a large degree of it is an unavoidable byproduct of scale and success, but some organizations handle it much better than others.

Solve It In Software

Aaron Mavrinac

VP of Operations, Opreto

3 minute read

The philosopher Bill Rapaport identifies four great insights of computer science, culminating with the Church-Turing thesis, which says that any real-world computation can be translated into an equivalent Turing machine program. The idea of universal hardware is incredibly powerful. It substantially decouples the work of building computers, and of iterating on their efficiency, from the work of doing computations. Once the computer is built, provided it is fast enough, whatever your problem is, we can solve it in software.

Building Trust in Remote Agile Teams: Best Practices from Opreto

Alan P. Laudicina

President, Opreto

4 minute read

The heartbeat of an Agile team is its people, and trust is the rhythm that binds them. It isn’t just about believing in each other’s capabilities but about fostering a shared vision and mutual respect. At Opreto, we’ve recognized that trust is the bedrock of every successful Agile team. Whether our teams work in person or are separated by thousands of kilometers, this trust remains pivotal. Through our journey, we’ve discovered practices that nurture this bond, ensuring cohesion and drive, regardless of distance. We’re excited to share the methods that have solidified trust within our teams, leading to consistent excellence.

Agile Software Development is a Horse

Dylan Herbert

VP of People, Opreto

8 minute read

As part of the struggle of being the founding partner of a new company in the 2020s, there is the everpresent looming question of how to market yourself. This is true both of yourself as an individual - as an executive you should embody and represent at least some slice of the value of my company’s meta on LinkedIn and the whole shebang; and you need to know how to position your company in order to attract new clients and feed yourself reliably over the long term. The sales must flow.

The confluence of UX and DX for API Design

Xavier Spriet

VP of Technology, Opreto

7 minute read

Do you know what happens when a group of people connect to a Chromecast device through Spotify? Nobody knows. The outcome is evenly distributed between wiping your queue, playing something random from your device, connecting only a subset of the group to the device, moving a random group member’s queue onto your device, or establishing a group connection as expected.

Software Bloat: The Red Queen’s Race

Aaron Mavrinac

VP of Operations, Opreto

6 minute read

For decades, computers have been growing in power at a meteoric pace, and the army of programmers writing software for them is now twenty-eight million strong. So why does it feel like the applications we use every day—not even the brand new, bleeding-edge stuff, just basic things we’ve had forever, like word processors and e-mail clients—are slower and clunkier than ever?

The AI Tsunami Threatening Google

Alan P. Laudicina

President, Opreto

2 minute read

Google has always been the gateway to content visibility on the internet, making optimization for Google Search a golden rule in content creation. But today, Artificial Intelligence is changing the game, and it’s time for Google, and all of us, to sit up and take note.

Installing and Running an IPFS Node

Dylan Herbert

VP of People, Opreto

5 minute read

IPFS, the InterPlanetary File System, might evoke grand images of cosmic networking, but its true significance lies in ignoring topological boundaries altogether and making them irrelevant. While the name might come off as grandiose, it emphasizes IPFS’s capability to create a global, decentralized network where data can be stored, accessed, and shared completely independently of considerations about physical location. The underlying technology becomes secondary, as content-addressable storage takes center stage in ensuring the sanctity and robustness of the system.

Why I love the InterPlanetary File System

Dylan Herbert

VP of People, Opreto

8 minute read

IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) is a decentralized, peer-to-peer protocol that redefines how we handle data on the internet, enabling us to break free from reliance upon tech giants like Google and Amazon for hosting our data. By adopting a content-addressed storage approach and eliminating the traditional server-client model, IPFS offers a more independent and resilient solution for storing, sharing, and accessing information online.

I run a dedicated node for the InterPlanetary FileSystem, and you should too.