Kyle Simpson

Vella.ai

Vella.ai an assistant feed that helps you tackle information overload with intelligent tools and delightful content curation.

I'm a co-founder of Vella, leading the efforts to re-invent identity to be portable and local-first (privacy and ownership).

Co-Founder

Getify Solutions

• Authored 12 books, including "You Don't Know JS" book series (1st and 2nd editions); 300k+ copies sold; 173k github stars (https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS)
• Published Online Video Training; 10+ courses; 825k+ hours watched (https://frontendmasters.com/kyle- simpson/)
• Conference/Meetup Speaker; 150+ talks; 25+ countries
• Corporate Trainer (JS, web, algorithms); 250+ workshop days; 5k+ attendees
• Consultation on JS/web architecture, and improving Engineering Culture; Trivago, TabNine
• Open-source software development; 50+ projects (https://github.com/getify)

Human-Centric Technologist

Socket Supply Co.

• Implemented E2E encryption scheme for P2P protocol
• DevRel: 15+ podcast appearances, conference talks, blog posts
• Built 2 demo apps on Socket runtime

Principal Software Engineer

MURAL

• Technical Architect for 2 engineering teams
• Designed 5 technical interview/onboarding program modules
• Delivered 3 quarterly technical workshops
• Implemented 4 engineering culture programs (office hours, mentorship, information sharing)
• Co-organized company-sponsored MURAL Motion conference with 100+ external attendees

Distinguished Engineer

MakerSquare

• Authored and managed JS bootcamp curriculum for 4 campuses
• Mentored and oversaw 10 technical educators

Head of Curriculum

HubAustin Coworking

HubAustin Coworking is south Austin's first coworking space. I helped launch it.

Co-founder

Mozilla

Designed and built developer-tools for Mozilla Firefox

Software Engineer - DevTools

Pointserve

• UI/UX design for 20+ enterprise features
• Prototyping (HTML, CSS, JS, and Flash)
• Conducted 15+ usability testing sessions
• Designed 100+ test plans for QA

User Experience Architect

Avenue A | Razorfish

Lead 6 major client projects:

• Southwest Airlines (southwest.com)
• HEB Grocery (hebuddy.com)
• JiffyLube (jiffylube.com)
• AT&T U-Verse, Nokia, Dell

Sr. Presentation Layer Developer

Fighting for the people behind the pixels

Kyle Simpson is a web-oriented software engineer, widely acclaimed for his "You Don't Know JS" book series and nearly 1M hours viewed of his online courses. Kyle's superpower is asking better questions, who deeply believes in maximally using the minimally-necessary tools for any task. As a "human-centric technologist", he's passionate about bringing humans and technology together, evolving engineering organizations towards solving the right problems, in simpler ways. Kyle will always fight for the people behind the pixels.

Human-Centric Technologist, JS Iconoclast

* Excellence in Engineering Culture
* Intentional Knowledge Sharing
* JS Training

As part of my work at Vella.ai, specifically around creating portable "local first" identity management, I'm pleased to announce release of a new library, called "WebAuthn Local Client":

https://lnkd.in/gPyxBwMp (github)

https://lnkd.in/gGnMu2sn (npm)

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And here's a nice little demo (using this library) that Tony Dang of Vella.ai built, which showcases usage of WebAuthn but also cryptography to locally encrypt/decrypt user data:

https://vella.ai/auth/

Think of this as the first step toward a webauthn-powered identity wallet.

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If you've heard of "passkeys" (biometrics as password replacements), the WebAuthn browser API is how web apps interact and use them for login. Typically, such apps use a FIDO2 server process to generate cryptographic challenges, and store returned credentials to associate with a user account in an app.

However, this library lets you do something similar, but all FULLY ZERO SERVER, completely in the browser (works offline, etc). Someone can "register" with a passkey credential (TouchID, FaceID, etc), and then re-login with that same credential. No server required.

We believe this is key to "local first" identity. This library is a building block for a "wallet" we're designing that will let users manage their identities cross-device, cross-app, without any reliance on proprietary servers, while maintaining the security and robustness to prevent loss of data/identity. The wallet will also make it easy for apps to (optionally) encrypt/decrypt the user's app data locally on-device!

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If you haven't heard of the "local first software" movement, check out http://lofi.so and specifically the Discord community with ~2k members, all passionately pushing to re-define how software is made, to emphasize user ownership/autonomy of their identity and data, and access to those regardless of internet connectivity.

github.com • 1 min read

GitHub - mylofi/webauthn-local-client: Client-only (browser) code for locally managing WebAuthn (passkey) API

Again pleased to announce... another library developed here at Vella.ai, just released/published: "QR-Data-Sync"

github: https://lnkd.in/gJFKGtiw

npm: https://lnkd.in/gRYT7rZy

This simple library lets you transfer/synchronize data between devices via "animated QR codes" and scanning them via a device camera.

#LocalFirst

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The idea here for transferring data is to take any serializable data (JSON, etc), turn it into a string, chunk that string of data into a list of equally sized strings (with padding to ensure consistent length and thus visual consistency), generate a sequence of QR codes for each chunk, and display ("animate") the QR codes in rapid succession, in a cycle.

To receive data on the other device, you start up a camera feed and scan for QR codes... you read all of them in the cycle, re-assemble the whole string, then parse that string back to the original data.

Simple concept, yes. But super powerful for enabling #LocalFirst synchronization concepts between someone's various devices, with absolutely no servers required!

By the way, you don't *have* to have the devices local to each other (though that's common)... you can show the feed of QR codes through a video call and transfer data to others remotely. Wherever you can connect the visual feeds, you can transmit data.

GitHub - mylofi/qr-data-sync: Browser-only utils for sharing/synchronizing data using "animated" QR codes

Doomscrolling is a symptom... we're endlessly searching, without purpose or direction, for relevant meaning amongst the noise of our digital landscapes.

Some of us cope better than others, with the chore of curating our digital gardens to see more signal than noise. But almost nobody finds joy and a sense of productive accomplishment from this drudge.

Declaring "email bankruptcy" (just deleting all emails back to inbox zero) is basically the ultimate admission of how failed a human task all this digital wrestling is.

We at Vella.ai don't think you need yet another "text chatbot" to clutter your life. We don't think you are hoping for just another uncanny-valley of text spewed out in word-by-word animation as if you're sitting at a telegraph in the 1800s anticipating eagerly for each next word.

We think you need and want AI to start doing what it *can* do better than us... sifting through all this noise to find meaningful connections and relevancy, and bringing only that to the surface.

Wouldn't you like just one screen -- not an endless scroll dungeon -- that highlights what you most need to know (and take action on) right now, before you had to go looking for it?

That's what we believe the world wants and needs most from AI right now.

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We're hoping to launch the first early bits of this experience soon. Here's some teasers/hints:

* unsubscribe from all those million different public feeds (RSS, blogs, newsletters, etc), and start watching topical, narrowly curated summary feeds.

* start making sense of your email inbox, not just with filters to move emails around but with tools to help you see and connect all the hidden threads of meaning and importance.

Interested yet? Sign up on our site to be notified as these start to roll out!

And since your friends don't yet have Vella, please make sure they don't miss this post. :) 

vella.ai • 1 min read

Either chatgpt, or a porn bot, or both... getting harder to tell the difference these days.

I'm really struggling with some React Native stuff... anyone I know here knowledgeable about RN on windows (and the android emulator) that might be able to help me?

I'm trying to use a library that indicates it's for Expo but I only want to use it with RN and not Expo. I've heard this is generally possible but I can't figure out how.

I've burned many hours on RN so far.

No, I don't have any options to switch stacks. I have to make this work.

I consider myself an advocate of *autonomous digital personhood*.

Meaning: who we *are*, our being, our essence, in the digital space, is fully controlled by each person, not dictated by the designs and limitations of the technology we interact with and through.

Your digital identity is not inherently mirroring your human identity.

Digital identity is purely defined by your digital activity. It's derived from your human identity, in ways both that you have autonomy over, and implicitly no control over.

Put more simply: in the digital sense, you are what you do (and what others do on your behalf).

All attempts to pin digital identity to human identity, in the inherent existence sense, are folly and snake oil. This means, among other things: in the digital identity space, humans may be indistinguishable from machines (AI).

Any digital activity that a human can perform, so can a machine. A machine is only on parity (or surpassing) a human in digital space. Humans reign in human space (for now).

We choose which space(s) we want to exist in, through which space(s) we choose to act in. That might be the only thing (still) separating us from the machines. And that might not last if we're not intentional.

But shouldn't we all be empowered to fully own the definition our digital selves? Why do tech overlords get a say in *who* we are?

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