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Circles and People still matter

So Bindu just announced that she was limiting comments to Extended Circles (again) due to trolling and creepers. -(She deleted the post after a few hours..)- It's actually there, I just missed it.. (thanks Amber!)



https://plus.google.com/115989323496360706014






 

Blast from the past..

- "Who gets to see this" was a much better way of telling people what's going on. (Even if 'Twitter' wasn't really a thing.
- Google Me? Google You?




https://drive.google.com/a/google.com/file/d/0B6u4AdjA8gX8TnVzeWFONVUybzA/view






 

Juror PII in Alameda County is at risk from POODLE, FREAK, and LOGJAM attacks.

Chrome and Firefox refuse to connect. Safari is A-OK.

Of course this blacklisting is causing IT Admins grief. Glad I don't have to admin crap products with embedded ssl stacks..

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/o3vZD-Mg2Ic



https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=ejuror.alameda.courts.ca.gov






 

Glad to see a new major tenant in Oakland. Still think it would've been a super place for Google. Alas alas..


http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Uber-will-open-East-Bay-HQ-in-Oakland-s-Sears-6523178.php






 

*Own goal*

Happy to see our passionate users take things into their own hands, but the writing is on the wall...

I guess I shouldn't be surprised we never really gave Anne Beuttenmueller and the rest of the Ingress team a reason to stay. Ingress users are super passionate G+ addicts. I don't want to lose them.



https://plus.google.com/104895861304489440774/posts/Z4hf94sn8YP






 

Nest Support Kudos

I had a support call last night and it went really well.

Thermostat displayed E24 error code. The diagnostic tool on the web site was well done. I got to the end where a support ticket was opened. Called in and went through diagnosing the faceplate. At the end it wasn't the thermostat, the furnace had a faulty safety sensor that caused the fan to run and cut the voltage to 1v.

Suggestions:
- The clunkiest part of the process was telling the rep my email address. Also the email I entered in the ticket was different than my Nest account email.
- Could we surface the diagnostic tools on the Nest App? Tried on mobile web and it wasn't working well so then I was running between my desktop and the Nest.
- There's a good opportunity to refer to HVAC repair technicians (Nest Pros?). I spent an hour calling around to find someone that would come out at 9pm in the evening. [Of course this is hard in general; Google search really failed here too. Yelp at least had an 'open now' filter on their business listings.]

In any case thanks again for the good support experience - I hope other teams can learn from it.

http://nest.com/e24

 

Googleplex

http://googleplex.com link previews now available

Googlers sharing to G+ with googleplex URLs will see much improved previews. And yes, that means you can now start a G+ Collection of favorite Memegen links .

But it also means that many other internal sites support better sharing. For example, the devsite.googpleplex.com staging site you see below allows for testing G+ web integration before a prod deploy. It also means Teams, Ariane, EasyOKRs, YAQs and more don't generate random login.corp page previews.

That said, note that not all googleplex sites are supported. The default acl for Googleplex requires a Machine Cert, which G+ doesn't have. If you want your googleplex web app to work well with this new feature you can follow the guidelines here:

https://sites.google.com/a/google.com/uberproxy/user-docs/howto/requesting-an-acl-change

Once that's done you should follow the G+ Snippet guidelines below to generates awesome preview titles/descriptions and images.

Please feel free to contact me if you have questions about this feature. Happy Sharing!

https://devsite.googleplex.com/+/web/

 

Installed the OnHub with it's quite large -wallwart- power supply.

The Airport Extreme I replaced had this built-in and had an AC power cord.

I have mixed feelings

- Wall warts are ugly and don't play well with power strips.

but...

- I can probably use a passive PoE injector/splitter to run everything over a single cable.

Anyone tried this? Especially with a teeny splitter that could squeeze into the enclosure?

[And then I just need a power strip with 12v and 5v outputs....]


https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6246478?hl=en






 

Is there an internal tool that analyzes http logs? Referers, IPs, query terms, all that?

Sure I can set up a bunch of dremel queries and contour reports. But it's gotten to the point where I'm feeling nostalgic for WebTrends. That's saying a lot since I remember that WebTrends sucked pretty bad...



https://plus.google.com/+webtrends






 

Facebook - House of Pain - TV Commercial

[Note: I dare you to find this video using Google Search. I used search.twitter.com to find this]

This is a new Facebook TV Commercial set to House of Pain's Jump Around. Of interest:

- square aspect ratio (on tv it's on a seamless white background)
- there is no opengraph markup on this page. No markup at all really.
- Except for meta tags for: https://w3c.github.io/webappsec/specs/referrer-policy/ which I did not realize existed.
- It makes me want to see if it's possible to animate our own app UI at 60fps.

https://www.facebook.com/facebook/videos/vl.515712155263726/10153943242676729/?type=1&theater

 

*An update on UrlBuilder*

It's finally gone. The effort to remove UrlBuilder started 8 years ago. I started migrating the last remaining bits in June. 43 CLs later and the task is complete.

https://wiki.corp.google.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/UrlBuilderMustDie



https://wiki.corp.google.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/UrlBuilderMustDie






 

Share Link stats - Week

50% increase in sharing actions.

https://dasnav.corp.google.com/dnlesnav/#label_id=lbas4&view=default

Share link replaced Copy Link in the Y release. The chart below shows both actions and the the combined activity.

https://plus.google.com/photos/107786897865850743842/albums/6192442805982854689/6192442808427363266?...

 

Android Police noticed.

It's launched at 100% so I'm not sure why they say it's only on for a certain users. Will investigate.


http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/09/08/google-is-testing-proper-post-sharing-to-apps-in-google-for-...






 

+1 SVG size. Now smaller.

The +1 button uses SVG to render the G+1 you see on the button. When I was adding the new logo I could tell that it was going to be much smaller. Turns out you can actually see the effects in our graphs. Over 512 bytes per response savings, which adds up at 100kqps. That's 50Mbps transit. [Can someone translate that to milliSWEs for me?]

https://plus.google.com/photos/107786897865850743842/albums/6189954277431784961/6189954277510628834?...

 

*Share all the G+ Post Links on Android*

A long time ago the deciders decided that G+ would *not* share Google+ post links the standard Android way. Instead you got a Copy Link menu item which required you to manually switch apps, often killing off the G+ app on low memory devices.

So we fixed the glitch.

As of yesterday 'Share link' replaces 'Link' when viewing a post. Share to Facebook, Twitter, Pocket, Hangouts, Flipboard or Keep. Share a link from consumer G+ to Corp G+. Or even launch Barcode reader and make a QR code. And when you're done, press the back button and you'll return to where you started.

Moral of the story: don't fight the platform. Use it. Rely on what people know instead of substituting your own custom thing. Ecosystems > Walled Gardens.



https://plus.google.com/photos/107786897865850743842/albums/6189564056792138865/6189564059411663874?...






 

Tree rings on the web

In the future web-archeologists will analyze html to identify the age of a page by the widgets they include.

Here you have a web site built circa 2012 with the very rare plusone button with a G+ on a grey background.

https://plus.google.com/photos/107786897865850743842/albums/6187004181065470801/6187004179257230690?...

 

Bay Area Funk

Today's Inspiration: Bay Area Funk Compilations

If you're a Bay Area transplant like me you owe it to yourself to learn a little of the musical history of the place you live. I bought these on CD a while back and it had very educational liner notes. I wish we could get that into digital form somehow.

Sadly volume 1 is not available on Play Music. Volume II is. Recommended.

https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Various_Artists_Bay_Area_Funk_II?id=Bfnhqeirjlpwupvqkqkilx...

And here's some details on volume 1...

_On this first volume of Bay Area Funk 16 tracks represent the best of the infamous Bay Area scene. Ranging from the boogaloo and shing-a-ling sound of Marvin Holmes and the Uptights to the psychedelic funk-jazz of P-I-R-Square. The compilation covers the period from 1967 to 1976 and is packed with music from the key originators and characters including a 12 year old Little Denice produced by blues legend Jimmy McCracklin, rhythm and blues hero Rodger Collins, KSOL radio station director "Hard Punching" Herm Henry, and Sugar Pie Desanto, former opening act for James Brown who is still pulling back-flips on-stage even in her late 60s._

https://www.ubiquityrecords.com/shop/products/BAY-AREA-FUNK.html

 

Technology Adoption Curves, then and now.

There's a fascinating out of print book called *Forecasting the Telephone* that I happen to own. It's amazing that many of the things that we use today were predicted over 100 years ago.

If you search you can find pdf excerpts. Here's the growth of telephones year over year. Note that it omits the first 20 years of growth, when phone wires needed to be 1/8" thick.

It might be interesting to chart Google Fiber deployments against this.



https://plus.google.com/photos/107786897865850743842/albums/6184877649278027425/6184877651734734818?...






 

OnHub is from Access and Energy (an Alphabet Company)

Why is it launching as on.google.com?

2nd HN comment has _ Do we trust Google not to monitor our traffic though?_

le sigh...


http://on.google.com/






 

I'm replacing myself with a very small shell script.

Things are still a little rough but I'm finding value in the reports and the cleanup CLs it helps me generate.  See the doc below if you want to play.

You can see an ugly sample report at

http://go/cargocult-oz

and here's a partial list of CLs that Cargocult generated:

https://critique.corp.google.com/#search/&q=%23cargocult&type=cl

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uGbOLN1WMY9JJf9AsGcKG3le0kNJ1fsqCkHaK8wPt04/edit?_escaped_fragme...

 

 

There are people out there that like to argue. To be pedantic. And who trot out every logical fallacy in the book while not even realizing it (or caring.)

It's gotten so bad that +116478487531429494919 proposed sending Harry Potter fanfic to such people to give them something to argue about.

However we're Google and we know that won't scale. Instead of letting these people harm our discussions I propose a new AAaS (Arguments as a Service) product that will keep these arguers busy.

- Arguers can find other arguers using a smart phone app.
- We'll match argument styles and positions. Ad Hominem vs Strawman, Android vs iPhone. You name it.
- Want to argue face-to-face? Our Uber integration will get you both to a bar of your choice where you can argue the merits of a sports team or anything else.

And coming in 2016 we'll offer AAaS Pro:
- Design your own Oxford style debates or Presidential fora.
- Adds Abuse and Hit-on-the-Head APIs.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y






 

Learned about how lifeline service operates these days.. Rep said he'd signed up 30 people today.

Lifewireless.com


https://plus.google.com/photos/107786897865850743842/albums/6179691051696948657/6179691054706701970?...






 

Everyone's posting Ben Evans blog posts these days.. I always take them with a grain of salt given his coverage of G+ over the years...

_So, my more-or-less serious theory (based on absolutely no chats with actual real Google employees) is that Google will never make a decent social product, nor any other product for which the engineering is generic and success depends on judgement calls around the UX, because Google’s culture does not appear to respect skills needed for such products._



http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/googles-failures






 

Today's Inspiration: Before there was Lindsey Stirling: *Rasputina*

Playing tonight in SF if you're into Steampunk Cello music.


https://play.google.com/music/playpreview?preview=AE9vGKoi80sjOCKwG5Sf47AD7kx6-pr_DeFUwMRSoGkQ9KEZBq...






 

Who's responsible for the screens on our GBUS fleet? I have some interesting ideas on how we could use them to good effect.

For everyone else: What would you like to see on these screens?



https://plus.google.com/photos/107786897865850743842/albums/6177704708114458817/6177704710270242274?...






 

Today 2pm, MTV-SB65:

"""Bob Gurr, retired Disney Imagineer, spent over 40 years developing more than 100 designs for attractions ranging from the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Monorails to the design of the mechanical workings of Disney’s first Audio-Animatronics human figure.

The attractions he developed still are incredible, and even more so if you consider the technology available to him at the time.""""

https://groups.google.com/a/google.com/forum/#!topic/atgoogle-mv/7W0k21E-ceo



https://groups.google.com/a/google.com/forum/#!topic/atgoogle-mv/7W0k21E-ceo






 

An old favorite from 2000

In my career every next generation (NG) software project failed. Only at Google have there been (some) counter-examples.



http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html






 

Origins of the Open Plan Office

I didn't realize that the crazy Chiat Day "virtual office" concept happened in our Google LA offices.

I'm reading  _Tog on Design_ (1996) since it contains so many eerily accurate predictions mixed in with some totally wrong ones.

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/7.02/chiat_pr.html

 

Facebook for Education?

[email protected]

heads up @101960497985958811288

---

Hey Paul – happy Friday!
I saw that you’ve been at Google for a while. With your strong CS fundamentals from U of Minnesota, I thought you would be an awesome fit here at Facebook with our new focusses this year. Facebook is currently in hyper-growth mode reaching beyond social network and has lots of interesting projects coming down the pipeline at a large scale of 1.4B user data. Whether you’d like to stay in your expertise OR would like to explore something new, our engineering managers would love to speak/meet with you depending on your interest as a lead or IC. I'm also recruiting for a team that's building out a new platform from scratch in K-12 education space. If that doesn't intrigue you, you can explore other opportunities as well. I'd love to chat in more detail - what day/time works for you this week?
Look forward to hearing from you.









 

Surprise realization: G+ has more active users than Google Now.... On Android. (Assuming 30DAU)











 

Some interesting "Getting More" #'s in this deck.

If you haven't seen it the Internal site is here:

https://grow.googleplex.com/opportunity/site/gettingmoreatgoogle

Now if only I could retroactively apply what I learned in this course...


https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1V-2wJElhwRJAb_M2J3eOGR7xT0zZj5nFX2NCwiKgs1A/edit?_escaped_fr...






 

Retro-futurism (circa 1995)

More details here: http://www.asktog.com/books/tosd_detail.html and in the non-volatile storage medium (which I've ordered)

Till then there's plenty of interesting Tog reading...

https://drive.google.com/a/google.com/file/d/0B_PwfdG5fY41cVFPR0tDTjE4d00/view?usp=sharing&_esca...

 

Quite happy that all the old data from the Zoltan checklist was migrated into

https://noogler.corp.google.com




https://noogler.corp.google.com






 

Remember Soderbergh?

http://go/soderbergh

So much awesomeness that never saw the light of day... @103615931922153151429


https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/file/d/0BxVGGK_Vco3LMDB4QzZRZW56Y00/edit?_escaped_fragment_=






 

 

New project christened Project Zikzak

I did a random hallway sample and only 2 people knew what I was talking about.  What about you?


EOFshpub note --category=googplus --syndication=https://plus.google.com/107786897865850743842/posts/caKd48QT7PU --published="Wed Jun 24 10:31:33 AM PDT 2015" --name="" - <<EOF
This looks fun...

*Glen Keane & Rebecca Ussai | The Principles of UX Choreography*

6/24/15 at 14:00 PT
MTV-43-2-Tunis Tech Talk (200) VC

Any questions, please contact: kevincburke
This talk will not be recorded

The Principles of UX Choreography w/ Glen Keane & Rebecca Ussai







 

Proposal:  replace OWNERS with GUILD

format:
ldap skill-level

where skill-level is one of apprentice, crafter, journeyer,  master and grandmaster

optionally allow 'retired' in front of the above.

And we could have languge-related GUILDs too, though I wouldn't call my readability review CL a _masterpiece_.....


https://plus.google.com/photos/107786897865850743842/albums/6163691072404617057/6163691072815330002?...






 

 

Autoawesome CLs

*Autoawesome CLs* - Project Cargocult

I'm going to formalize/automate all the dirty hacks I use to generate hundreds of CLs.  Wish me luck, and I'd love suggestions/feedback.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uGbOLN1WMY9JJf9AsGcKG3le0kNJ1fsqCkHaK8wPt04/edit?_escaped_fragme...

 

Inbox actions have been around for a while and Notifications have not implemented them in generated emails.  Anyone on this?

If we remove iframe'd gmail access to posts it can make up for some of the lost traffic.


https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/






 

 

Google -Hospice- -Upstate Farm- Pasture Service

Hallway conversation with @104255968520200310944 and @101824307711135795640:  wouldn't it be great if there was a way to export a dead service's data into an sstable and allow for deletion/takeout?  That way you could turn down the service more easily and get rid of zombie code.

As you can see the naming quickly went to the morbid side.









 

 

Thought I'd go all meta and post the ripples for the ripples deprecation post...


https://plus.google.com/photos/107786897865850743842/albums/6151421247823702833/6151421246109492834?...






 

 

A Design Doc for your Illness

Just got the final Second Opinion report and I'm quite impressed.  [See http://go/secondopinion - it's a great perk]  I liked that they chose people that are advancing in their careers and researching the specific field.  You get a clear, well written summary of your medical record, actionable data, and citations for specific background information.  There's pragmatism and optimism, including this quote:

_Finally, if one can outpace the innovations in cancer that are taking place right now, survival may actually be substantially better._

If you're considering this service please let me know.  We're happy to share our report, just ask.  For everyone else here's an outline of what's included.

Expert Selection Process 2
Letter from Physician Case Manager 3
Summary of Clinical History 4
Questions to the Expert 20
Report by Vijayakrishna K. Gadi, MD, PhD 21
Report by Komal Jhaveri, MD 28
Curriculum Vitae for Vijayakrishna K. Gadi, MD, PhD 33
Curriculum Vitae for Komal Jhaveri, MD 37
Legal Terms 40

https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?continue=https%3A%2F%2Fappengine.google.com%2F_ah%2Fconflog...

 

Rank your top 5..

Another product roadmap from Comcast.  Heads up to Nest, Jetstream, Drive, and Fiber teams.

Probably pretty accurate since the last survey was asking about Solar, and lo and behold, they're doing that..


https://plus.google.com/photos/107786897865850743842/albums/6147710232253884145/6147710234524435826?...






 

CDs are dying

Not sure what's more annoying -- waiting 1.5h for Kaiser to burn radiology CDs or realizing that I actually didn't have a working CD *reader* at home.

Managed to get something working:

Parts:
- 1 SATA<->PATA converter from old server
- old ATX power supply
- my trusty Rackable home server, w/ internal AHCI adapter
- An ancient Sony CD drive.  [Broken]
- A CD drive pulled from an old AMD K6 tower [working]

And of course 1 of the CDs is defective and I'll have to get that again. oof..  CDs deserve to die.

https://plus.google.com/photos/107786897865850743842/albums/6145005531617143713/6145005532518278594?...

 

hospital wifi sucks more than shuttle wifi

--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
50 packets transmitted, 34 packets received, 32.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 20.109/59.697/251.879/55.778 ms


http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/