Talofa reader,

It’s been a busy several days, so apologies for the late edition.

Last week, I looked at the state of the Pasifika community in terms of the picture painted by the latest census data. I also examined a specific "solution" to one of those problems, considering possible second and third-order effects that could lead to positive outcomes for my community.

I was viewing these topics from a third-person perspective, standing outside and observing both aspects. This made me think about how these subjects come together in the present context which intersects quite conveniently with the role I currently hold in the Pacific Islands for a big tech company.

(I thought a series of questions would organise my train of thought better, hence the following interview of myself 😂 — enjoy.)

Talofa reader,

This last week, I haven't read anything super interesting. My newsletter and RSS feeds provided the usual tech industry topics, such as systems design, big data, and more ChatGPT. However, the most interesting topic that stood out this week for me was from the Pasifika Tech Network Discord, and it wasn't me asking the questions this time!

One of our members asked a simple question:"What is your why? And what are you passionate about?"

I thought on it for a bit - I have different why's for different things - but the “why” I chose to respond to was “why I use my free time to help Pasifika learn more about and see themselves in Big Tech”?

Note: this week’s edition is a lot less “reading astutely” and more shooting from the hip 😂.

Talofa reader,

There's been a lot more AI activity this past week after the announcement ofGPT4by OpenAI. There's been a lot of discussion and activity in my Pasifika Tech Network discord as well as the developers have been playing with creating slack and discord bots that use the OpenAI API.

But there's one topic that I can't recall how it came to my attention this week; it crossed my mind early one morning after studying for my AWS certification - Data Sovereignty. It's a topic I frequently deal with, given that I work at AWS and my job involves discussing cloud technology with all sovereign nations in the Pacific. Since it's a pretty important topic in the Pacific, I wondered what my network's understanding of it was, so I asked in the channel.

"Morning team- this is always an interesting question when I come across it at work (in NZ and in the Islands) so keen to hear everyone's thoughts - What do you know/understand about Data Sovereignty? And what do you think about the issue of where our (Pasifika/Indigenous) data is stored?"

I got back some really thoughtful answers, and interesting to note was that the people that responded were all senior level technical folks. They mentioned things like physical location of the data and the governance and applicable laws of that location i.e. country. It was interesting to also see talk about trust between allied countries and data residency agreements and what they mean for NZ for people working specifically with NZ data.

Now, no surprises here - I’m not an expert on this topic by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve just done some reading, and combined that knowledge with my experience and understanding of the topic gained over the last 8 months of working in the field.

I will leave links to all readings and resources I read to understand any of this, below.

Disclaimer​

Obviously, I'm going to have some bias on this subject. I work at Amazon Web Services as a Solution Architect, and most of the data relevant to the work I do resides on AWS infrastructure. However, I believe the crux of this entire topic is that the geographical location of the data and the ownership of the infrastructure are only the beginning of what this subject is effectively about. For the record, I do not speak for or on behalf of my employer. All opinions expressed here are my own.

Talofa reader,

I went down a rabbit hole of ChatGPT and AI this week. It’s been a hot topic for a short while now since ChatGPT’s release in November, 2022 and there’s no shortage of articles about it in myReadwisefeed.

There’s been a lot of takes, some pro, some con. My friend DZ’snewslettergot me thinking about the darker side of AI and so I thought I’d read up on it this past week and write some stuff down.

It’s a bit of a read so if you don’t mind a bit of profanity and bad punctuation, enjoy.

Talofa reader,

Allow me to provide a bit of background for all future tech rants...

Well, I think we're all aware by this point, I'm Ron. A NZ born Samoan, Tuvalu and Chinese guy who works in tech (in a nutshell). And I think it's relevant because it helps to know who the person is saying a bunch of stuff in a newsletter and get an idea and some context around why they might look at the world a certain way, and say the things they might say.

I'm the second eldest in a family of five boys (no biological sisters). Both my parents immigrated from Samoa in the 70's. Dad worked as a land surveyor and Mum worked at the Post Office. Dad eventually went on to study to become a Presbyterian Minister at Knox College and dragged us down to Otago until he graduated after which we then headed off to Pleasant Point, South Canterbury for his first church assignment. We were the only Samoan family in a small farming town of about 1500 people, pretty much all palagi's (Pākehā). We spent 5 years behind enemy lines.. kidding, we all got along (eventually), and I actually look back fondly at that period in my life. After Pleasant Point, Dad accepted a new assignment in Glen Eden, West Auckland and we were off again. We went from an all palagi environment, to an almost all Pasifika one in a matter of months transitioning from the South Island to Auckland.

“TheCoconet TV” did ashort documentaryabout my family on their series about Pastor’s kids.

And Auckland is where we stayed until the end of high school.

Talofa reader,

Let’s start at the beginning...​

This isn’t my first rodeo, or newsletter. I started a newsletter back in 2018 and ran it for several editions before it got lost somewhere and came to it’s inevitable end.

It’s always hard starting something back up again, but if experience has taught me anything, it’s that once it’s up and running it’s not that bad.

Like going to the gym. The first few weeks are probably going to be painful, but if you stick at it, eventually it sucks a little less each time.

Why am I starting a newsletter?​

Believe it or not, it’s not to be a writer.