November 2022 Summaries

Various individuals within the Felt community have utilized the platform to create diverse and insightful maps for projects ranging from local infrastructure to global phenomena. Notable efforts include Rahul's safety-focused biking map for East Bay, Sam's visualization of space object launches, and Chris's examination of U.S. dams threatened by climate change. Meanwhile, Jack worked on debunking the Bermuda Triangle myth through nautical casualty data, Will surveyed Hackney's cycling infrastructure, and Yoni crafted a New York City emoji map. Other projects include Angelica's exploration of Ukraine's geologic provinces, Andrew's response to the West Java earthquake, and Chris's analysis of U.S. precipitation patterns. Additionally, Duc-Quy recreated a reproductive rights map, showcasing the wide-ranging applications of Felt's mapping technology.

The text highlights various creative mapping projects using the Felt platform, showcasing a diverse range of topics such as East Bay bike route safety, cumulative space object launches, U.S. dam conditions, debunking the Bermuda Triangle myth, and cycling infrastructure in Hackney, London. Other notable maps include an emoji map of New York City, a recreation of the U.S. reproductive rights map, and visualizations of U.S. annual precipitation and Ukraine's geologic provinces. These projects illustrate how individuals and communities leverage Felt for visual storytelling and data analysis, with opportunities to share their work in a new Slack group for potential feature recognition.

Rate limiting is a crucial practice for managing client requests to a system, especially for APIs and consumer-facing applications, to prevent overloading and potential abuse. While APIs primarily use rate limiting to manage server load by restricting the number of requests a client can make, client-facing applications require a different approach due to their human interaction, often relying on IP addresses or session cookies for rate limiting. This helps prevent denial-of-service attacks and abusive behaviors such as credential stuffing or mass account creation, often seen in login or signup endpoints. Two primary algorithms—throttling and fail-to-ban—are employed to enforce rate limits, with throttling setting a cap on actions per time unit and fail-to-ban imposing longer bans after limit breaches. Implementing effective rate limits involves testing policies through historical analysis or dry runs, ensuring they balance security and user experience. The blog post illustrates Felt's use of PlugAttack in Elixir to apply these strategies, highlighting the importance of maintaining service health and security while inviting interested individuals to join their team.

Rate limiting is a critical strategy for controlling the number of requests a client can make to a system within a specified time frame, essential for both API and consumer-facing applications to prevent system overload and potential abuse. In API contexts, rate limits prevent clients from overwhelming the server, while in client-facing applications, they help mitigate abusive behaviors such as brute force attacks, credential stuffing, and spam activities. Implementing rate limits involves methods like throttling, which caps the number of requests a client can make, and fail-to-ban, which blocks clients for extended periods after reaching a threshold. Testing and fine-tuning these limits can be done through historical analysis or dry runs to ensure they are effective without adversely affecting legitimate users. At Felt, rate limiting is managed using the Elixir-based PlugAttack library, with specific policies for security-sensitive routes to enhance system security and reliability.

Starting in design work for bands, the individual transitioned into cartography and visual communications for nonprofits, driven by a passion for activism and a desire to illuminate social and political realities through mapping and data visualization. With over a decade of experience, they have worked extensively with advocacy organizations and are particularly proud of collaborating with One Breath Partnership on "The Houston Arrow," a project highlighting racial inequities in Houston's urban development. In their role with Houston in Action, they coordinate voter registration efforts across the city, using tools like Google Jamboard and maps to manage hyper-local canvassing efforts, although the process remains challenging due to the city's size and the complexity of coordinating multiple organizations.

The interviewee began their career in design, focusing initially on band-related projects before transitioning into activism and working with nonprofits for over a decade, shifting from branding to mapping and data visualization to better understand societal issues. They express pride in their collaboration with One Breath Partnership on "The Houston Arrow," a project that highlights significant racial inequities in Houston through visual data analysis. Additionally, they discuss their involvement with Houston in Action, a nonprofit that coordinates voter registration efforts across the city, emphasizing the challenges of organizing such activities in a sprawling urban area. To improve coordination, they sought more efficient mapping tools beyond the chaotic method of using Google Jamboard over screenshots, aiming to address the intricacies of hyper-local canvassing efforts.