My recent posts
You can find some of what I post on medium.com/@alexthiel.
We are not worried about the meme situation.
Hi, I'm Alexander Thiel.
Since I was a kid I love how code lets you create anything imaginable.
I'm committed, resilient, skilled, in love with technology, ambitious and sociable.
I worked in many startups and my goal is to positively impact culture and technology of the people around me.
I've cofounded and scaled startups. Today I build Imagine Zero, a platform for nonprofit ventures to make climate action fun and accessible.
Imagine Zero
We make climate action fun and accessible by incubating nonprofit ventures.
Imagine-Zero.org
KnowledgeBits.io
A collection of patterns, realizations, best practices and reads during my work as a tech manager in startups.
knowledgeBits.io
Interview on Changemaker
Interview about climate change, startups, activism, decision-making and playfullness.
Changemaker Podcast
Aura
A little anti-censorship side project that allows sharing ideas anonymously with nearby people. It works without SIM or internet.
getAura.io
“Patterns for Reactive Microservices”
@ code.talks 2017
“Reactive node.js Microservices”
@ jsunconf
Jsunconf is my favorite (un)conference so far, the level is high, conversations are
meaningful and everybody's a potential speaker.
Slides
“Migrating to Reactive Microservices”
@ Google DG
Startup Weekend 2014
A 3min short report on German TV about our team at Startup weekend 2014.
Proposal for safer hyperlocal social networking
2017-04-20
tl;dr Aura. A new kind of social network that uses Bluetooth low energy to project a user's digital self around him without using the internet. It works on Mars, on planes and requires no SIM card.
I waited for a long time to write this post. In summer of 2015 I tried out FireChat. It is a hyperlocal chat app that used Apple's multi-peer connectivity framework to transmit chat messages without the need for internet and more importantly without the need for devices to pair.
Electrified with the idea of direct mesh communication without the need to pair, I developed the idea of allowing people to have a kind of social profile projected to the outside world using this technology. Eventually this could even become a hyperlocal mesh network.
Some immediate field tests with the iPad and iPhone of a friend yielded promising results. Data could be transmitted without pairing devices across 95m when no obstacles were present.
Back then there was no reliable way of transmitting data cross-os and I found out that on iOS there was no way of reliably keeping an app running in the background. Although that is something users are right to not want it is absolutely necessary to make such an app usable. On android on the other hand there was no such thing as the multi-peer connectivity framework.
In addition I joined StyleLounge as a CTO in the summer of 2015. Taking over the team and contributing to a quick change of course towards agility, modern technologies and a scalable architecture was one of the bigger challenges of my life. The idea went dormant.
In late spring of 2016 I became aware that thanks to BLE (Bluetooth low energy) the thing was about to become feasible on mainstream mobile devices. I started peeking around technologies and a friend and former colleague, André König, helped me greatly to set up an app skeleton using the newest front end technologies (react/redux, electron, web app). I highly value the discussions and his input on the idea we had during that time. Being a second priority after StyleLounge I put many weekends and evenings into it for the months to come.
Today, Aura, as I came to call it is still not finished. This post is a way of increasing the pressure on myself to finally get shit done :)
Check out the (equally unfinished) page I set up at auraapp.io.
My prototype can exchange data as intended, uses end-to-end encryption and allows editing of the profile
What's left - as the time of writing - some minor design finishes and getting the thing into the stores. #pressure #musthappen
How to quickly travel to the stars without defying the laws of physics
tl;dr Digitalized, pausable humans crewing a self-repairing star ship travelling at a space shuttle's speed can visit thousands of stars within a lifetime.
Ingredients
- Human consciousness can be digitalized
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with robot avatars. 🤖 Alternatively nanobots can preserve and repair the body forever and are able to instantly pause and unpause the mind.
- Self-repairing star ships remain functional for thousands of years
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The second ingredient is self-repairing interstellar star ships that can replenish their resources using asteroids and solar energy. They would have to carry sufficient energy to remain functional (although potentially in hibernation) while travelling between solar systems.
- You live to see these star ships
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Let's - for the beauty of the idea - assume that above requirements will become possible within only one or two centuries (It's not unimaginable with today's tech). The tricky part for humans living in 2020 is to stay alive to see that day. I have the hope that digitalizing consciousness becomes a possibility within the 21st century. As in the last century the fallback would be the freezer. 😜
Time is Relative
With today's propulsion technology it would take the star ship thousands of years. The star ship's speed doesn't really matter because
- It's crew sleeps/pauses during travel between stars
- The ship is self-repairing
How does it feel?
- The star ship is populated by a crew of said digital people.
- While en route the people are paused.
- From the crew's perspective no time passes between destinations.
- The crew can check out thousands of suns, planets, moons, nebula and go where no one has gone before.
- The downside is that contact with earth is probably futile because earth develops (for the better or worse) while these star ships travel the galaxy.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How to deal with incidents?
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Unpause the crew, let people deal with the incidents, put them back to pause. #skiptheboringpart.
