First heard this mentioned this week. Found this earlier reference...

https://opensource.com/article/17/2/hidden-costs-free-software

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Oh no...
https://www.whatmatters.com/stories/higher-education-college-university-okrs

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I'm curious if anyone has mapped the reliability crisis with a System Dynamics Lens. Some of the proposed actions hit some of the archetypes on the nose....

For example a one-size fits all release shepherding process takes resources away from efforts that to address the underlying reliability problem. (Fixes that Fail)

Reliability metrics operate on a delay so you get oscillation of investment and failure (shifting the burden)

If anyone would like to workshop a systems diagram for reliability I'd be interested in workout out the feedback loops.

I highly recommend the book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902-thinking-in-systems and the image below come from this pdf of https://thesystemsthinker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Systems-Archetypes-I-TRSA01_pk.pdf.

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I can think of one use for blockchains:

Create TAPchain, MPMchain, PiperChain

- For each day archive TAP results and MPM builds to long-term storage.
- Create a sorted list of hashes of that content, publish it.
- Write the location of that document and it's hash to the blockchain of your choosing.

When the next legal issue arises, we'll be ready.

The same pattern could also be used for provable data for any type of content we process. Maintain side-chain and publish to a permissionless, public blockchain.

Alternate idea is to use trillian and create a certificate transparency like system; but that's not quite as usable for something that needs to stick around for many years, vs triggering warnings/audits for bad behavior.

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Fulton pointed out that generational change, and how it is handled, is often one of the most critical moments in any organization that hopes to last more than a decade or two. In times of generational change, much of the ability for a successful transition comes from the founding DNA and governing systems that were set up at the organization’s inception.

https://medium.com/the-long-now-foundation/long-lived-institutions-205f28330f79

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In honor of the recently departed Google+ community/page here's a recent squirrel eating a strawberry from my neighbor in Montclair Oakland.

They expertly trolled the folks there with the subject "Who's stealing my strawberries!"

cc David Bresbis who I remember being a fan...

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At first I thought this was a menswear catalog and almost tossed it in the recycling bin....

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"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

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I finally made it to the Allyship Fundamentals course. Recommended.

https://sites.google.com/corp/google.com/allyship/home

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I think it's time for a Legal Deposit scheme for Games.

- Game publishers would put their games in Escrow when they publish.  
- Game Services could publish a spec on how to interpret the game contents.
- 'Orphan' games would actually be preserved.- Users that purchased the Game would then be entitled to a copy of the escrowed item, plus the design on how to run them.

This, combined with an export of user-generated data would allow for usability after Stadia or the Game Publisher sunsets the service/game.

And to be honest I'd love to see this extended to all Online "Stores" that don't let you export usable contents.

Barring that Game Services could enter a Ulysses Pact with users if they are serious about the long-haul.. 

 For each purchase a user makes put 10x in a locked escrow fund.  When the service cancels that money can be used to migrate the games to a new provider or payout back the user.

- If a Game Service gets few users it's not a lot of money to exit and actually would increase satisfaction.
- If a Game Service does get popular then there's an explicit feedback loop that reinforces the durability of the system and alignment of interests.

Evernote announced something like this, but never really followed through.   A small company called Forever actually does have a preservation fund that is purpose driven.

[crosspost from industryinfo..]

One thing we at Google could do is advocate for a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit scheme for Games.

- Game publishers would put their games in Escrow when they publish.
- Google could publish a spec on how to interpret the game contents.
- 'Orphan' games would actually be preserved.
- Users that purchased the Game would then be entitled to a copy of the escrowed item, plus the design on how to run them.

This, combined with an export of user-generated data would allow for usability after Stadia or the Game Publisher sunsets the service/game.

And TBH I'd love to see this extended to all Online "Stores" that don't let you export usable contents.

Barring something like that Google could enter a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_pact with our users if we're serious about the long-haul.. For each purchase a user makes put 10x in a locked escrow fund. When the service cancels that money can be used to migrate the games to a new provider or payout back the user.

- If Stadia gets few users it's not a lot of money to exit and actually would increase satisfaction.
- If Stadia does get popular then there's an explicit feedback loop that reinforces the durability of the system and alignment of interests.

Evernote announced something like this, but never really followed through. A small company called https://www.forever.com/guarantee actually does have a preservation fund that is purpose driven.

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And yes some of these games are lost forever...

But one good idea is the magazine to build community.

https://twitter.com/retrohistories/status/1138020709320613888

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Happy to see this project. Looking into ways to support it, because they face a steep climb.

Inspired by the folk hero John Henry....Because, despite intelligence, physical strength and an incredible will, (1) he lacked a complete understanding of the system he was challenging, (2) he struggled alone, and (3) he struggled with outdated technology.

https://sites.google.com/corp/google.com/project-john-henry/home

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https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1136341801109843968

This is at least a graduated response, wonder what changed in the last 12 hours?

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Today I attended the "Designing for At Risk Users" course. I find it incredibly galling to hear what Youtube did today given the targeted harassment and doxing.

It flies in the face of what was taught and own standards about giving targets the means to "make it stop".

https://standards.google/guidelines/google-material/usability/at-risk-users.html#user-identities

While anyone can experience a privacy or security event, at-risk users face a variety of life circumstances that might put them at unusually greater risk:

.....

Who they are: Anyone could be targeted at some point in their lives simply based on a personal characteristic such as age, gender, ethnicity, reputation, financial stability, sexual orientation, or education.

.....

Active Event

Where possible, users should be able to quickly and easily access practical guidance as they experience a privacy or security event, such as cyberstalking, online impersonation, surveillance, spear-phishing, or account hijacking. Users will likely want to understand what is happening and take steps to respond. They are likely to feel high levels of stress in this state, so easy-to-use designs will be especially helpful.

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state of denial

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Updated to latest MacOS. Yay!

Repeated prompts to "unlock keychain". oh no!

I was determined to not reset my login keychain, because then you lose the TouchID gnubby and have to reimage the whole laptop. (May only apply to santa exceptions, maybe not..)

I finally got lucky and found a way to work around it. (and yes, I've let Techstop know about it)

1) Open Keychain app.
2) Click on login item in left pane.
3) Right click on login item, select 'Change settings for Keychain "login"'
4) In my case the Lock After setting was checked and had a large number
5) Change the timeout value and save.

You'll need to enter your keychain password a few times. But once you're done the keychain will possibly be updated and uncorrupted.

To verify you can run the gcert command in your terminal. You should not be prompted to unlock the keychain and touchid should be requested.

Theory: changing the expiration setting forces the keychain app to rewrite the keychain data structures fresh.

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BRB ... bringing Enron style accounting to the resource economy...

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Interesting:

https://wicg.github.io/ad-click-attribution/index.html

Of course you have to trust your User Agent (Browser) to keep your browsing secret..

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