Colin Douch
@colindou.ch
Formerly Techleading #o11y at Cloudflare, now attempting to touch computers as little as possible 💖💜💙🏳️🌈
Other countries will never know the glory of orange guy
July 28, 2026 at 4:52 PM
Other countries will never know the glory of orange guy
Last day at DuckDuckGo today. I feel a bit weird about it, even though I've got something to go to. A few weeks off first though, time enough to relax a bit
July 3, 2026 at 7:53 PM
Last day at DuckDuckGo today. I feel a bit weird about it, even though I've got something to go to. A few weeks off first though, time enough to relax a bit
Have we considered that it's actually Larry the Cat who is the reason why we keep ousting PMs? Maybe he's sneakily whispering bad political ideas into the ears of Number 10 residents while they sleep
June 25, 2026 at 10:11 AM
Have we considered that it's actually Larry the Cat who is the reason why we keep ousting PMs? Maybe he's sneakily whispering bad political ideas into the ears of Number 10 residents while they sleep
Reposted by Colin Douch
Everyone who talks like this has permanently shown who they are
Cloudflare’s CEO explains why despite over 30% revenue growth, they are laying off 20% of staff.
He argues that there are 3 types of workers; builders, sellers and measurers (middle managers, legal, HR, operations, etc).
AI makes it possible to automate the last group and he expects everyone will
He argues that there are 3 types of workers; builders, sellers and measurers (middle managers, legal, HR, operations, etc).
AI makes it possible to automate the last group and he expects everyone will
May 24, 2026 at 3:52 AM
Everyone who talks like this has permanently shown who they are
My first flight to the US in 6 years and I'm already 2 hours delayed. Good start 🙄
May 20, 2026 at 9:27 AM
My first flight to the US in 6 years and I'm already 2 hours delayed. Good start 🙄
Even a meme would do, really. But for real: working with artists isn't hard. @aliciaillustration.bsky.social has been fantastic at doing the illustrations on my slides for years now and it's made them infinitely more engaging and professional. Slop does the opposite.
I’m just a goose, sitting in front of a slide deck, asking for literally any stock photo or graphic that isn’t fucking slop
May 13, 2026 at 2:00 AM
Even a meme would do, really. But for real: working with artists isn't hard. @aliciaillustration.bsky.social has been fantastic at doing the illustrations on my slides for years now and it's made them infinitely more engaging and professional. Slop does the opposite.
New Zealand is on the forefront of end of the night drunk food innovation
April 26, 2026 at 6:18 AM
New Zealand is on the forefront of end of the night drunk food innovation
github.com/swaywm/sway/... I live to be able to achieve this level of snark
github.com
April 13, 2026 at 2:53 AM
github.com/swaywm/sway/... I live to be able to achieve this level of snark
Writing a font rasterizer for my operating system and it's like:
TTF fonts contain lines and Bezier curves - ok, fine
TTF fonts contain bytecode for a Turing complete stack based VM - wait what?
TTF fonts contain lines and Bezier curves - ok, fine
TTF fonts contain bytecode for a Turing complete stack based VM - wait what?
April 6, 2026 at 7:54 AM
Writing a font rasterizer for my operating system and it's like:
TTF fonts contain lines and Bezier curves - ok, fine
TTF fonts contain bytecode for a Turing complete stack based VM - wait what?
TTF fonts contain lines and Bezier curves - ok, fine
TTF fonts contain bytecode for a Turing complete stack based VM - wait what?
My ESTA is expiring, so the US government deemed fit to remind me that "travelling to the US has never been easier", and like, are you sure about that?
March 31, 2026 at 12:29 PM
My ESTA is expiring, so the US government deemed fit to remind me that "travelling to the US has never been easier", and like, are you sure about that?
With the sun out, I've been getting back into doing actually tangible things, like exorcising the demons from my house before building the new garden gate
March 23, 2026 at 11:20 AM
With the sun out, I've been getting back into doing actually tangible things, like exorcising the demons from my house before building the new garden gate
Reposted by Colin Douch
Hosting Debugging Distributed Systems track at #QConLondon next week; thrilled to have @hazelweakly.me, @hakshak.bsky.social, @voidmaze.bsky.social, @colindou.ch , and @palcu.net joining me. And we all want to hear your war stories at the unconference session!
Agenda: qconlondon.com/track/mar202...
Agenda: qconlondon.com/track/mar202...
March 10, 2026 at 10:00 PM
Hosting Debugging Distributed Systems track at #QConLondon next week; thrilled to have @hazelweakly.me, @hakshak.bsky.social, @voidmaze.bsky.social, @colindou.ch , and @palcu.net joining me. And we all want to hear your war stories at the unconference session!
Agenda: qconlondon.com/track/mar202...
Agenda: qconlondon.com/track/mar202...
I wrote a quick thing on AI: blog.colindou.ch/posts/my-tho.... While AI is a semi-useful tool, we also need to acknowledge that the downsides to it are in some cases catastrophic, and no-one pushing AI does that. I miss the days when we used to laugh at Bitcoin using a countries energy supply.
My thoughts on AI
If there’s one thing that has come to define the modern era, it’s AI. From the early days of ChatGPT, to image generation, to the massive sweeping statements about how AI is going to “change the world...
blog.colindou.ch
March 5, 2026 at 5:42 PM
I wrote a quick thing on AI: blog.colindou.ch/posts/my-tho.... While AI is a semi-useful tool, we also need to acknowledge that the downsides to it are in some cases catastrophic, and no-one pushing AI does that. I miss the days when we used to laugh at Bitcoin using a countries energy supply.
Ironically, losing a bunch of subscribers for supporting the US war machine might actually be a really good business strategy for OpenAI, considering by their own admission they lose money on every subscriber
February 28, 2026 at 4:19 PM
Ironically, losing a bunch of subscribers for supporting the US war machine might actually be a really good business strategy for OpenAI, considering by their own admission they lose money on every subscriber
Always fun to travel Europe and still find home, even if all they have is Tui
January 24, 2026 at 3:47 PM
Always fun to travel Europe and still find home, even if all they have is Tui
It's fascinating reading Hacker News and seeing all the posts about how to protect yourself from the AI tools you're using. How to stop them from deleting things, how to stop them stealing your secrets, has there ever been a tool in the past that we just accept as being actively hostile to the user?
January 19, 2026 at 9:36 AM
It's fascinating reading Hacker News and seeing all the posts about how to protect yourself from the AI tools you're using. How to stop them from deleting things, how to stop them stealing your secrets, has there ever been a tool in the past that we just accept as being actively hostile to the user?
Hey Perl folks - anyone know if there's a definition of what the file that NYTProf outputs actually _is_? Or am I going spelunking into the C++ that reads it for nytprofhtml?
January 13, 2026 at 11:06 AM
Hey Perl folks - anyone know if there's a definition of what the file that NYTProf outputs actually _is_? Or am I going spelunking into the C++ that reads it for nytprofhtml?
There's so many people lauding the fact that we can produce software so much faster with AI, and so little pushback as to whether more software is even a net positive. We just do it because we can, like a software manifest destiny
January 12, 2026 at 9:30 AM
There's so many people lauding the fact that we can produce software so much faster with AI, and so little pushback as to whether more software is even a net positive. We just do it because we can, like a software manifest destiny
I've been going back and forth on posting this one, but it's nice to get back into writing. Part memoir, part technical document on my time at Cloudflare: blog.colindou.ch/posts/my-tim...
My time at Cloudflare: A Retrospective
It’s been just over a year since I left my 7 and a bit year stint at Cloudflare, and I’ve had a lot of time to mull over the experience. I have … a lot of thoughts, and I figured the best way to get t...
blog.colindou.ch
January 9, 2026 at 5:03 PM
I've been going back and forth on posting this one, but it's nice to get back into writing. Part memoir, part technical document on my time at Cloudflare: blog.colindou.ch/posts/my-tim...
Mandatory reading that should be included in the UK citizenship pack
December 9, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Mandatory reading that should be included in the UK citizenship pack
My one comment on the Cloudflare outage from yesterday is that it's ironic that it's almost exactly the same failure mode as the 2019 outage: shipping a config file worldwide without any validation steps. Bets on the 2031 outage reason?
November 19, 2025 at 8:20 AM
My one comment on the Cloudflare outage from yesterday is that it's ironic that it's almost exactly the same failure mode as the 2019 outage: shipping a config file worldwide without any validation steps. Bets on the 2031 outage reason?
In Nuremburg again for OSMC, and making my yearly pilgrimage to have a bit of a taste of home on this side of the world.
November 17, 2025 at 10:48 AM
In Nuremburg again for OSMC, and making my yearly pilgrimage to have a bit of a taste of home on this side of the world.
There's a great quote from Vonnegut in Player Piano: A step backwards, when you've taken a wrong turn is a step in the right direction. Call me a luddite, but I think about that a lot with modern tech
October 15, 2025 at 2:20 PM
There's a great quote from Vonnegut in Player Piano: A step backwards, when you've taken a wrong turn is a step in the right direction. Call me a luddite, but I think about that a lot with modern tech
Reposted by Colin Douch
Lights! Crackers! Action! It's launch week!
The Kickstarter for book 2 in mine and Johnny Schumann's CHEESE! series is launching at 10am on Thursday.
The Kickstarter for book 2 in mine and Johnny Schumann's CHEESE! series is launching at 10am on Thursday.
October 6, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Lights! Crackers! Action! It's launch week!
The Kickstarter for book 2 in mine and Johnny Schumann's CHEESE! series is launching at 10am on Thursday.
The Kickstarter for book 2 in mine and Johnny Schumann's CHEESE! series is launching at 10am on Thursday.