If you've ever suffered a large outage you've likely written a postmortem document.  Post them here.  We can learn why things break so we can build systems that don't.

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I love reading about how teams deal with and learn from failures.  Here's a github writeup that's pretty interesting.

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It's the time to reflect on the past year.  I found this article quite interesting, especially when you contrast it with this Wired article from 1993:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/jaron.html

Definitely some food for thought.

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Paul Lindner hung out with 1 person.Julie Lindner

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Two dogs and a view.

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Paul Lindner hung out with 1 person.Julie Lindner

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Mike's already picked up on the +1s bleeding through.

We have an open bug on choosing a URL from the body text.  Another possible solution -- allow posts with links to use full-bleed photos.

Originally shared by Mike Elgan

How Google+ could improve viral G+ marketing for free.

Unlike Facebook, Google+ is a great blogging platform.

Let's say you want to blog about another post somewhere. If you paste in the link, or click on the link icon, Google+ will add a thumbnail from the external post, plus a blurb. 

But this is ugly. Some of the highest-traffic bloggers on Google+ don't use that system, including me. What we do instead is add a big, appealing photograph, the paste in the link in the body of the post. 

The first method links plus-ones on the other post. In other words, when someone plus-ones a post on Google+, the original source plus-one count goes up by one. It's linked forever. If the same user comes back and un-does his plus-one, the count on the source site goes down by one. 

However, if you do the big-picture method, plus-ones on Google+ are not reflected on the external post -- the plus-ones are not linked. 

Here's an example of the problem: Yesterday I posted an item on Cult of Mac using the big-picture method. The post and its comments got well over 2,000 plus-ones. But over on the Cult of Mac site, the post got only 76 plus-ones. 

https://plus.google.com/+MikeElgan/posts/B9VLptUGikF

People always mentally compare the Facebook "Like" count with the Google+ "plus-one" count and Google+ often looks like a slacker. But the reason is that likes for the the big-picture posts on Google+ aren't counted. 

If Google+ had counted the "plus-ones" for my post, for example, the G+ count would have been much higher than the Facebook count, and people viewing the source page would have a more accurate comparison between Facebook and Google+. 

Here's my proposed solution. 

When a user pastes in a URL in Google+, and the system auto-generates the thumbnail-and-blurb thing and links the plus-ones of the two posts, the user should have the option of replacing the thumbnail-and-blurb without de-coupling the linked plus-ones. 

That way, bloggers like me could use big-picture blog posts and still have plus-ones reflected on the source page. 

Is this possible or desirable? 

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Paul Lindner hung out with 1 person.Julie Lindner

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Paul Lindner is hanging out. https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/dede4319707138a8db41fd1b7747a42fbf4534be #hangoutpost

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Paul Lindner hung out with 1 person.Julie Lindner

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The rain has let up enough for a relaxing 2 dog brunch..

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Nice to see a punk community springing up in Google+!  Here's my first pick.  Posting the play store link since they don't have many youtube videos available and since Revolution and World on Fire are my faves...

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There are almost 100k public schools in the USA.

Let's assume a police officer in each school costs $50k/year.  (And that probably doesn't include pension costs).  That's $5 billion dollars per year.

There are around 10m guns sold in the USA per year.  So to fund this we'd have to add a $500/gun tax.

I couldn't find stats on ammunition sales, but it might make even more sense to tax bullets.  Maybe based on their lethality.  BB guns are free.  Cop Killer bullets are $2000.

[left this originally as a comment Dan Gillmor's post, but I think it deserves broader sharing since I think it puts this whole thing into perspective...]

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Spotted: +1 buttons on LinkedIn.  Never thought I'd see the day...

Also this article is just so true :)

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The latest episode Bark the Herald Angels sing check it out on Disney! See what there first Christmas with Stan will be like

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We've got a browser with Strings.

Cats love strings.

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NASA swag from the 60s. Anyone want their own scale replica of a lunar lander?

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Holiday Classics and a Vibraphone, a great combination.

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You know you want to.

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It's high noon for the internet and the ITU.

http://google.com/takeaction

The watch you see was from the 1998 plenipotentiary conference in Minneapolis. I implemented the RealAudio streaming for the conference back when I worked in the IT department at the ITU.

Engraved on the back of the watch is the text "Offered by SWISSCOM".

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Instead of tossing that torrent of catalogs consider using Catalog Choice to stop them at the source.  Results have been noticeable after using them for about a year.

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WTF?  Why is this snippet so awful?  Can we fix it?

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test

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Liking btrfs a lot.  This weekend I started upgrading to a 2x2T drive setup for media from a single 1T drive.  A bit of a pain, but I learned a bit.  I also found out that my current drive was probably in worse shape than I thought.

- Upgrading Seagate drive firmware using grub2 chained bootable iso was a no-go.  Will just have to live with it.

- Learned about GPT partitions and 4k sectors and gdisk.  Nice to see that drive partitioning has almost progressed beyond MBR and 4 partitions.

- Added the new drive using btrfs device add

- Converted to RAID1 using btrfs balance

- Almost freaked out when my old drive hit a patch of bad sectors.

- Deleted some unused junk on the drive.  Rebooted

- Started the balance again, success!  (btrfs also remapped a bunch of bad metadata using it's built-in redundancy! btrfs read error corrected:)

Next up, removing the old drive and adding in the 2nd 2T drive, followed by moving the root and home partitions to a new SSD.  Anyone using btrfs on their boot partition?

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Get your #musicmonday  moving with some Greek punk/grunge.

You can really hear the Nirvana-esque Steve Albini production along with shades of X, the Sex Pistols and Gossip.

I suppose Punk from disaffected youth is the only silver lining for the Greek financial mess.

h/t to Pixbear for review.

#musicmonday #gplus

test

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PRWeb also has a problem with people using them for spam.  For example the press release you see below was republished on sfgate.com.  Once published it was pushed into SFgate's Most Read list by bots.

At $159 per press release it's probably cheaper than other spam vectors..

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Clarion Alley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarion_Alley_Mural_Project

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Found lots of fall colors and conquerable  #ingress  portals in Contra Costa County today.

#ingress #gplus

Yes, I too have been playing  #ingress .  It's amazing.  You must check it out.

It really feels like one of those pivotal shifts in the way we interact with our technology.  We finally see what happens when console-quality graphics, fast networks, and huge amounts of data combine.

Add to that creativity, storytelling, great gameplay and air of mystery.  This yields a highly addictive game you can spend hours and hours playing, discovering, and communicating with new people.

No invites yet, but you can request one at the site.  (Though if I do get some they're going to people who join the beleaguered  #enlightenment  in Minnesota!)

#enlightenment #ingress #gplus

Okay, it's totally non-obvious and buried in the settings...  There is some magic that detects that it's a following circle:

https://cs.corp.google.com/#google3/java/com/google/apps/tacotown/socialgraph/client/CircleNameSugge...

Originally shared by Trey Harris

This bears repeating. Privacy is important, and Google+ has great privacy controls. But you need to know how they work to use them to best advantage.

The first rule of privacy on Google+: people don't get any access to your info without you taking action. Relationships in G+ are "asymmetric", meaning you can "follow" someone ("adding to a circle", or "circling") without their having to reciprocate by circling you back. When you circle someone, the things they share you'd already be able to see anyway — because they're shared publicly or with a circle that includes you — will appear in your streams. But if you go to their profile before and after you circle them, you won't see much difference — circling someone doesn't give you access to their info.

At the same time, when you circle someone else, you are not only asking Google+ to put that person's shares into your stream, but you're also giving them access to things you share with your circles. For instance, if you edit your profile (the circle with a profile in the buttons up top of the G+ web interface), you can give people in your circles access to your email address or your phone number. Those are people you have added to your circles, not people who have circled you. (When you edit your profile, you can change the visibility of items by clicking the little icon next to each one.)

Similarly, if you enable G+ chat, when you click the triangle to the right of your name in the chat box (in the left sidebar of your G+ stream, not in Gmail) you can choose whether "Your Circles" can chat you, or a custom selection of circles. Note that those people must have also circled you and done the same; chat is obviously one case where reciprocity matters!

But if you've been paying attention, you'll notice that you circle someone for two different reasons: one, to see their shares in your stream, and two, to give them access to your info and/or chat. This makes sense most of the time; people you know are the people you want to hear from. But sometimes the two don't align, and when they don't, you need to know a couple of more advanced tricks, which I've taken screenshots of below.

First, not all circles are created equal. Some circles are ones you may use for celebrities or people you don't know but who publicly share interesting stuff. (A lot of people use the "Following" circle for that.) Maybe you want to get their stuff in your stream, but you don't want to give them any access to your info. No problem: go to https://www.google.com/settings/plus and click "Customize" under "Your circles" (first screenshot). Then make sure only the circles you want to share with have the checkbox clicked (second screenshot). Now, when you see "Your circles", you know that really means "all my circles but the ones I unchecked here", and you're safe to add whoever you want to "just follow" to those unchecked circles without giving them visibility to things you want to share in a limited fashion.

What about the reverse case? Maybe you have business associates or acquaintances who post stuff you don't care to read, but you do want them to have the "always up to date" contact information in your profile (especially useful if they have an Android phone or use Gmail!) and/or access to chat you. In that case, put such people together in a new circle (I call mine "Contacts", because that's how I think of them). Make sure the circle is checked in the "Your circles" setting we just saw. Then go to your stream and click that circle's name in the lefthand sidebar (third screenshot). Now, at the top, you'll see a slider. Drag it all the way to the left (fourth screenshot), so it says "Show nothing from this stream in my main stream" (fifth screenshot).

Now you won't see this circle's shares unless you specifically go to this stream again, but since this circle is part of "Your Circles", they'll have access to the things you want to share with them.

(One final note: when you enable chat in G+, you have your choice between allowing chat from "Your Circles" and a custom set you select. This gives you even a bit more control. Maybe you don't want to be chatted by that guy you're following with the interesting but weird political opinions, but you'd just love it if your favorite celebrity were to respond to your insightful comment with a chat. It's your choice.)

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So my Nexus4 order was backordered.  So here's the next best thing.  I was able to get the following since I've been with T-Mobile for over 10 years:

- $199 with $50 mail in rebate.

- Waived the overnight shipping fee of $24.99 (as a credit to my bill)

- You do need a data plan of >$35/month on the line and a 2 year contract extension, however the standard plan comes with 400 text messages so I was able to consolidate a text message bundle with the data bundle and end up at $0 change.

- Retain the rest of my FamilyTime,@Home service and the G1 data plan on the other line.

And it will arrive tomorrow...

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Have to love the low tech doodles that the Missouri Lounge does for their advertisements in the East Bay Express. 

Check them out at 

https://plus.google.com/115477316230066484040

West Berkeley’s longest running dive bar, keeping people hip since 1953.

Now does anyone have a nerd walks into a bar... jokes?

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This looks incredibly useful for people with MacOS and Android.  No more wasting phone and laptop batteries using wifi tethering.

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This new camera lockscreen thing might take some getting used-to...

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I guess Die Young was a bad association for your new smartphone?

I never understood why Nokia bothers putting their phones in music videos.  It all looks so staged.  That said the Ke$ha video is pretty weird.  I can understand why they wanted to remove it.

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Since you missed this before...

Originally shared by Theodore Ts'o

Phoronix, alas, has perpetrated another example of irresponsible journalism.   I won't dignify said article with a web link, since I don't want to reward them with more ad hits.  So I'll link to the original Ubuntu Launchpad report, and include the comment I just made there:

Those specific fsck corrections --- fixing the number of free blocks and the number of free inodes --- is completely normal and is purely a cosmetic issue. There is nothing to worry about here.

What is going on is that ext4 no longer updates the superblock after every block and inode allocation; that causes a wasteful write cycle to the superblock at every single journal commit, and it also is a SMP scalability bottleneck for larger servers (i.e., with 32 or 64 CPU's). To fix this, we no longer update these values in the superblock every time we allocate a block or an inode. Instead, we only update these values when we unmount the file system, mainly for cosmetic purposes so that dumpe2fs shoes the correct number of free inodes and blocks, and at mount time we calculate the total number of free blocks and inodes in the file system by summing the the free blocks/inodes statistics for each block group. So in fact, ext4 does not depend on the correctness of the values in the superblock, but it does try to update them on a clean unmount.

In e2fsprogs commit id 2788cc879bbe6, which is in e2fsprogs 1.42. 3 and newer, we changed things so that e2fsck -n would not display this as something "wrong". However, we still do show this as something that we "fix" when running e2fsck -y or -p, since in fact it is a change to the file systems. See: http://git.kernel.org/?p=fs/ext2/e2fsprogs.git;a=commit;h=2788cc879bbe667d28277e1d660b7e56514e5b30

No one else has complained or noticed up until now, because other distro's apparently are capable of doing a clean shutdown allowing the file system to be unmounted cleanly. Ubuntu, unfortunately, is incapable of reliably doing a clean shutdown even when users request it, which is why Ubuntu users are seeing this behavior much more frequently, and apparently some people have panicked as a result. Sigh....

----

I will say that it is extremely irresponsible of Phoronix to make a big deal about this this before giving anyone knowledgeable (which unfortunately  does not include any Ubuntu kernel engineers, since as far as I know they don't have any file system specialists on staff) to comment on the bug.  No one from Phoronix even bothered to contact me to tell me they were posting this story, or to ask me for a comment.  I had to find out about it when someone asked me to comment on Google+.

However, from the perspective of trying to send as many ad clicks as possible to their web site, they are doing a heckuva job....

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Here they are..

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Following along here on my evening commute...

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Another great mural in San Francisco's Mission district.

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1313 Mockingbird Lane was much better than I expected.  Worth it for the visuals alone, including the Victorian house with the Golden Gate view, the clothes and the interiors.  But that's to be expected from the creator of Pushing Daisies 

** Not for kids though -- very dark.  

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Looks like I'm not the only one to have seen a bright meteor/shooting star just now in the Oakland Hills.

There was a loud rumble afterwards too -- wonder if something hit? 

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Forget about chewing gum -- Can you walk and code at the same time?

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Anyone want a leaky washer drain pump?

I'm a bit surprised at the so-so construction of the guts of my mid-range front-loading washing machine.  The drain filter is basically a cup with holes -- which means that debris can get into the plastic pump easily.  Oh and getting to these parts requires removing 18 screws and three rubber retaining clamps which means no-one ever cleans the filter.

At least I replaced the spring-clamps with proper hose clamps on the new pump.

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A new album by Mark Mallman, very catchy.  If you don't know his work read this review:

 Frankly, Double Silhouette, his latest, is the album the Killers were trying to make with Battle Born – an epic, gorgeous pop album filled with arena-ready choruses. But he does it in a way that doesn’t make him sound pompous (sorry, Killers).

http://www.letoilemagazine.com/2012/10/02/we-will-rock-you-local-reviews-part-deux-mark-mallman-and-...

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Oakland vs Swiss style referendum posters.  Which one would you frame?

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#badjokes  from the DNA Lounge newsletter:

Skrillex walks into a bar, sits down on a stool, and falls on his ass because the base was too wobbly.

#badjokes #gplus

The unnatural offspring of the Economist and Mondo 2000?

Came across issue 1.2 of Wired recently at home.  After 19 years it shows how far we've come and yet how far we have to go.  Archived here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/ but you really need to hold it in your hands with the orignal inventive page layout (and all the original advertisements!) 

Topics included:

  - The Cypherpunk movement.

  - 3DO!

  - Jaron - (who coined VR)

Gadgetry?

 - Early 3D printers

 - VR glasses

 - DCC  or Minidisc?

Pull Quotes

  "The Naked Truth is that Pink makes the Macintosh and OS/2 Obsolete"

 _"Interactive TV is doomed, it's a dead end"_

 _"If Privacy is outlawed only outlaws will have Privacy"_

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