Paul Lindner

Pretty sure I was aware of good ol' Bobby Tables back then too.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/263814.263853

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I wanted to use the Richard Brautigan poem I posted last week, so I sought out the rights-holder to get permission. Turns out it's his daughter Ianthe. We've been exchanging emails. What a fabulous person.

If you don't know about Richard Brautigan he was a popular SF writer. If you haven't already please scroll down and read his 1967 poem All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. It's over fifty years later and it still resonates, especially as we enter the realm of automation, AI and a completely technology-mediated world.

This poem is one of the first uses of a copyleft license. You can copy it, but only if you give it away for free.. More info at Wikipedia

All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

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It is with sadness that I am officially retiring the _Healthy Stuff Collection_. It was a good place to post without [CW: cancer] before collections were deprecated. Thank you to everyone for their kindness and support for these past four and half years.

I do hope that my experience can inform others. If you are going through something similar please realize that:

- you can be vulnerable.
- you must take time for caregiving.
- you can get support.
- and you should take the time to cherish the ones you love.

Finally, metastatic breast cancer is really tough. It may have Julie's life, but it could only take her hair for a short period. It regrew more beautiful than ever and always reminded me of her fave Brautigan poem:

I want your hair
to cover me with maps
of new places,

so everywhere I go
will be as beautiful
as your hair

–Richard Brautigan

If you want to honor her memory a donation to your local animal rescue group or one of Julie's preferred charities (METAVivor.org or bcaction.org) would be welcome.

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If there's one thing you do over the upcoming break consider archiving your precious and mundane moments with the ones you love. You'll thank me in a few decades.

Right now I'm reading passages aloud from an mbox file from 1992. Reliving a courtship, engagement and marriage that happened all over 2000 emails. A whirlwind of bands, poetry readings, witty .sigs and much more as the end approaches.

Oh and if you're a designer make sure your products can easily archive. (Hey I'm looking at you Android Messages)

Also lament the content that never made the jump from tape to digital. Let's not fuck up Youtube's essential role in preserving this. For example this one is not available on CD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=374ffZWa0L8

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I almost wish I had not invested in Nest cams so much. I was able to use a Chromebook as the source in the hospital room since it handles captive portals..

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Love this definition from the original paper:

... any program is a model of a model within a theory of a model of an abstraction of some portion of the world or of some universe of discourse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehman%27s_laws_of_software_evolution

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CW: health issues

It's 2:30am 4:00am and I've just spent an hour talking and consoling my wife through a manic episode caused by brain metastasis. I sit down, exhausted and peer through the rain spattered window. I see the homeless encampment in Mosswood park with dozens of ramshackle tents.

It is with gratitude that I have the benefits as a Googler to spend time caregiving through four recent hospitalizations in the last month.

I still feel the guilt of being so less productive at work. I still feel sad that those below likely won't get the same level of care.

Care for and support those close to you and everywhere around you.

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Used up my FSA and hit my out-of-pocket max on the same day.

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Not sure where to file feedback about things, but my Pixel 2XL screen started to fail so got a Pixel 3 XL (want to keep fingerprint sensor, plus way discounted and pink!)

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Location Kaiser Oakland

Caption: Large white great Pyrenees with a hospital bed in the background.

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https://modelcards.withgoogle.com/about

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A reminder that the thing with two arrows is TAB.

Oh and this is an EKG, so yeah, nothing life-or-death about confusing software.

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Looking for a break? Want to improve fairness for Google products? Have a supportive manager? Then check out this short-term opportunity on the John Henry Team:

https://grow.googleplex.com/opportunity/job/2000000070880

So what exactly would you be doing you might ask...

- Work with a system that pulls all the term lists used for blocking through Google and properly categorize them based on identity facets.
- Work with research/product partners to apply this merged, vetted Societal Context dataset. Help remove bias from underlying systems and ML algorithms
- Build tools that will help us develop System Dynamics as a common practice in policy making and the product design process.
- Have fun!

Our environment is Java+Spanner with a goal of migrating to GraphStore in 2020.

Happy to chat about this opportunity or the project as a whole.

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There's a JFK quote that goes like this:

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Now substitute internal dissent above and think about the changes that have happened in the past year. Paradoxically increasing the domination of communication channels doesn't remove the dissent, it only displaces it into channels where it is much harder to control.

This follows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(cybernetics)#Law_of_requisite_variety which states that a stable control mechanism contains as many states as the system being controlled. Recent moves like removing live questions, less TGIFs reduces the variety of the control system. Sadly it appears that to make that work we are reducing variety of the system being controlled by pushing out "troublemakers".

My suggestion? Embrace dissent. Make peaceful revolution possible. Recognize and absorb that variety instead of shunting it aside.

A really simple way is having a strong Ombudsman or employee representative. This provides a mechanism to peacefully handle the dissent and channel it towards solutions instead of revolt.

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Foone had a great article about the https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1190784395356950535 device. So I made a joke that today they'd have your allowance on the blockchain, with an Alexa "CleanRoom" Oracle that rewarded you with "ChoreCoin".

Turns out someone beat me to it....

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tech.sweetcandy.chorecoin&hl=en_US

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Hey fellow commoners. Ostrom in meme form has arrived.

If you start thinking of many of our ecosystems as commons you can also consider using these principles as a diagnostic tool. There's also our own workplace commons too....

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A few days late but Happy Ada Lovelace Day to one and all.

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Wow, multi-day outage for temp badges.

I came in. Said I needed a badge. Wrote my username on a post-it and was given an E badge. I now have to tailgate (!) or ask people to badge me in.

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This is an amazing history of technology in Minnesota. The rise and decline can be traced directly to military expenditures.

It also goes into the fascinating connection between the declining streetcar industry and how those engineers created the first disk drives using electric motors and spinning wheels.

Also tune-in for the coverage of Oregon Trail and of course Internet Gopher....

https://www.tpt.org/solid-state/video/solid-state-minnesotas-high-tech-history-35848/

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An interesting read on the rise of SV and the role that the military-industrial-complex played in that.

Who can deny that today’s commercial Internet has largely fulfilled this cyberpunk nightmare? Someone should ask Gore what he thinks.

https://www.thenation.com/article/silicon-valley-history-book-review/

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2 months notice for the death of Yahoo Groups. Google Group folks take notice, this is not acceptable for preserving the history of the internet.

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN31010.html

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This is a lot of history crammed into an hour. Goes from the early code-breaking work and the development of Drum Memory at Engineering Research Associates.

ERA merged with Sperry/Univac/Remington and then begat Control Data, Cray, Unisys and many others.

Also tune in for some history of the Oregon Trail by Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) and how that ties into the rise of Internet Gopher.

Oh and disclaimer: former Gopher Dude here.

A few hiccups but finally have something that's stable..

Power Sources:
- Battery: B Class with 36kWh battery and 400W Inverter
- Sun: Solar with up to 1500W
- UPS: 1500W, 900Wh APC

Devices
- Refrigerator ~100-150W while running 250W peak
- Internet: 15W ONT+Router
- Electric Blanket 60W
- LED Lamps ~15W
- Laptop w/85W or 45W charger
- cords, lots of cords

I charge the car battery @1000W during the day with other loads. Using Inverter at night.

The APC UPS was supposed to provide stability, but it kind of sucks:
- slow trickle charge
- Can't charge off the inverter most of the time.
- Has a bad odor.

For now I just use it for the fridge when I have to run errands

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