Paul Lindner

Current status: detangling legacy code that uses fava extensions, modules and services wrapped in factories.

https://archive.org/details/p3telephonymanua00abbouoft

#googplus

Lots to think about today:
- Everyday uses for the Optimal Stopping problem.
- Application of Ad Algorithms for Exploit vs Explore. [1]
- Sorting algorithms for unreliable comparators
- AI Ethics: Paperclip Maximization[1] and the Repugnant Conclusion[3]

All after watching this:

http://longnow.org/seminars/02016/jun/20/algorithms-live/

And I now have yet another book to put on my reading list....

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit
[1] https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer
[2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/

http://algorithmstoliveby.com/

#googplus

#googplus

Saw this generated byline recently and it really rubbed me the wrong way. It devalues Laurie as an artist in her own right and is certainly not how people present oneself to one another.

The byline is also unnecessary, the information is listed below in a more neutral way.

Reported at http://go/bad Need to also file a bug on the inability to report feedback on this text.

#googplus

*Mightybell*: It's Ning for Mobile

About the only thing Recruiters are useful for is notifying me of the latest VC funded startups...

fyi to Steve Hardt

https://mightybell.com/

#googplus

#googplus

_...in this place it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place._

If a Google project doesn't have enough headcount to keep up with the constant churn you can bet that it will eventually go extinct.

[Also of note, suboptimization[1]; given our recent strategy with messaging clients...]

[1] http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/SUBOPTIM.html

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/REDQUEEN.html

#googplus

#googplus

*Updates* - Indieweb

And since Ade mentioned IndieWeb, here's a good writeup of what's going on in that community.

I did get to chat with Tantek a bit at the Decentralized Web conference. We bemoaned the lack of UX voices.

Fun fact: My first project at Google was supposed to be a SWAT0 implementation.

http://tantek.com/2016/190/b1/state-of-indieweb-summit

#googplus

#googplus

This is a good primer on technologies used to turn centralized into decentralized.

https://blog.mousereeve.com/technologies-of-the-decentralized-web-summit/

#googplus

#googplus

An insightful read. Interesting commentary too.

_Stripping out the “smart” aspects of a Smart Contract, it is still a contract, albeit wrapped in a new-and-improved packaging of object-orientated programming and cheap, distributed computing power. Contracts are not new. And neither are their limitations._

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/06/ethereum-and-smart-contract-unicorn-woo-woo-there-should-be-a...

#googplus

#googplus

One of my favorite terms. Assumes knowlege of ISO Networking Layers. Also for a future googledictionary.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layer_8

#googplus

#googplus

http://www.laputan.org/mud/

A classic worth revisiting occasionally...

#googplus

#googplus

*Feedburner* on the chopping block? Surprised it lasted this long.

The code is oooold, I tried upgrading it's usage of Apache Commons v2->v3 a while ago and owners were reluctant to allow even that level of cleanup....

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mwQfraSAROtYsDIq9f-JGZeocSDkObYMj1LgE_yiO8E/edit?_escaped_fragme...

#googplus

#googplus

☠ Annoying Oz Deprecation warnings coming soon. ☠

1. Gather list of build targets used outside of Oz.
2. Write witty sayings
3. Pipe targets to buildozer shell script

#!/bin/sh
while true
do
read line || exit
buildozer "set deprecation ☠\ \ Quitting\ Oz\ Now\ Greatly\ Reduces\ Risks\ to\ Your\ Code\ Health\ ☠\ "
read line || exit
buildozer "set deprecation ☠\ \ Oz\ Causes\ Code\ Bloat and May Complicate Pregnancy\ ☠\ "
read line || exit
buildozer "set deprecation ☠\ \ Oz\ contains\ Carbon\ Monoxide ☠\ "
done

#googplus

#googplus

It's been a week, so time for a writeup of what went down at DWS. The press below covers some details, but I'm going to talk about the _feels_.

tl;dr - Electric atmosphere, technology on the cusp, very unclear future.

I found out about this too late to attend the first day, but I followed along via the live stream while reading up on the underlying technologies and chatting with attendees using federation features of Slack.

I went in person for day 2 and immediately felt the deja vu. O'Reilly FOOCamp meets early Google I/O meets the original GopherCon. You had wise sages (or as Wendy Hanamura put it _Orignal Gangstas_) working side-by-side with the new blockchain Gangstas. The only thing missing was a game of werewolf.

The breakout sessions were tech heavy but the crowd didn't need their hand held to pull down git repos and run/modify code. Many quick demos were created.

Lightning talks (available online) had thoughtful live questions and were broad enough to cover both the underlying technology and the potential results of applying it to society. I appreciated the inclusivity and diversity.

That said the ghosts of breathless tech conferences past were all there:

*Mobile* No real demos on phones. Many talks started with 'enter this on the command line'. That said most of the p2p systems on display have really good mobile properties: eventual consistency. offline sync, etc.

*UX* Little to no focus on UI/Usability problems. There was some discussion on the "Why PGP failed" talk, and passing references here and there. But very little about how this tech would be better for users.

*Economics* This new tech is competing with dirt-cheap VPS hosts out there and a generation of software designed for centralized client-server. Privacy and long-term effects on the ecosystem are low on users feature list. With the fintech bubble about to pop, who's going to fund the development; let alone the ongoing governance. Will new bitcoin funding models be the solution? Will the incumbents embrace or reject?

*Complexity* writing cryptographic serverless code is difficult and it's easy to make mistakes. libp2p is a good start, but the tooling isn't there yet.

Despite these serious issues this is the most excited I've been about our technology space in a long time. The electricity and optimism about what might emerge from this soup of technologies was palpable. I have hope that people won't want to repeat past mistakes, and that the new stack can achieve some 10x gains. Here's some initial thoughts:

- What if your phone could pull down entire sites for use offline and have deltas propagated when connected?
- How about having all of your physical devices syncing between themselves instead of up and down to the cloud.
- How about a better UI for managing your identity public/private keys?
- What about your OnHub being your persistent home on the network?
- What about being able to archive and 'play back' entire web sites like you would a git repo?
- How about having easy micropayments as a way to break free from our current ad-supported mess?
- How about Android APKs that travel from device to device with the security of knowing that you're running the exact same code as everyone else.

... more to come.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/telecom/internet/the-fathers-of-the-internet-revolutio...

#googplus

#googplus

Go ahead and load up http://webtorrent.io/ and amaze at what WebRTC in the browser enables.

Paul Kinlan's article shows how you can roll your own serverless podcast site using WebTorrent. Of course there are serious privacy, legal, and wipeout issues involved to consider. Will talk about those in future Policy posts.

https://paul.kinlan.me/serverless-sync-in-web-apps/

#googplus

#googplus

Highly recommended watching.

Hyperbolic discounting of future costs and Ulysses pacts are apropos to many situations. For example, technical debt.

#gplus

Comcast called me. Said I was running UDP portmapper on my external IP. Oops.

This was leftover from an experiment running NFSv4 across the net. [it sucked, used sshfs instead]

Also for those who've never experienced a reflection attack it's NASTY. Attacker sends forged source-address UDP packets so all responses go to the victim host. In the past NTP and DNS provided the vectors. Back in 2006 it was PharmaMaster and Blue Security:

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11392

http://blog.level3.com/security/a-new-ddos-reflection-attack-portmapper-an-early-warning-to-the-indu...

#googplus

#googplus

So here's my small request to all Googlers, watch this. Then think about all the benefits that you're discounting hyperbolically[1].

For example, technical debt is hyperbolically discounted compared to immediate features/launches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_discounting

http://boingboing.net/2016/06/09/how-will-we-keep-the-decentral.html

#googplus

#googplus

This feels like something Google would have created back in the day. Impressive.

- Cross Platform
- Interoperable
- Clients on Web/iOS/Android

Wow.

https://vector.im/

#googplus

#googplus

Attending day 2 of the Decentralized Web Summit. Hope to see some familiar and new faces.

#gplus

Attending the Decentralized Web Summit day 2. Hope to see some familiar and new faces.

http://www.decentralizedweb.net/

#googplus

• 
  Paul Lindner

  Jun 9, 2016

  equates Mexican drug lords and banks.

   
   
• 
  Paul Lindner

  Jun 9, 2016

  archivelab.org - Archive Labs up next.
  

  Archive Labs

  archivelab.org

   
   
• 
  Paul Lindner

  Jun 9, 2016

  ipfs demo, iiif demo showing interoperable images, webtorrents, census, hash-archive.org - Hash Archive Stronglink again.
  
  Fellowships avaialble. Make the web great again.
  

  Hash Archive

  hash-archive.org

   
   

  
• 
  Paul Lindner

  Jun 9, 2016

  Hall & Oates - - Can't go for that... oof

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/your-friendly-neighborhood-video-game-museum/4...

#googplus

#googplus

#nottheonion

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/02/further-future-festival-burning-man-tech-elite-eric-...

#googplus

#googplus

Want to know who owns your code?

cs -l -local "case:yes f:my/google3/path/.*/OWNERS\$" \
  | xargs -n 1 g4 owners \
  | sed -e 's/ included.*$//' -e 's/,$//' \
  | grep -v '^//' \
  | grep -v piper-group-eng \
  | egrep my/google3/path \
  | sort | uniq

Sample output

https://x20web.corp.google.com/~plindner/cargocult-oz/owners_all.txt

#googplus