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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Does our ads matching algorithm do substring matching? Or does YSL have an eau-de-napalm? (As in smells like freedom...)

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Some extreme geometry to start your day...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/120-cell

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"In case you missed it..."

(Seen in discover feed today)

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I hate Myers-Brigg, Colors, all that nonsense. However this framework speaks to my inner Optimizer without going full-on Holocracy.

https://www.alanna.space/fullcircle

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There's an episode of Columbo where the villain uses a photo of a face and a speed camera to establish an alibi.

Columbo enlarges the photos and finds that the shadows are inconsistent. He is able to do this because the photos are ordered by time on a single a roll.

Parallels to blockchains are pretty obvious. Each photo is directly linked to the previous/next photo and there are timestamps involved...

Images from http://columboscreenshots.blogspot.com/2014/03/columbo-58-columbo-and-murder-of-rock.html

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Unintended consequences of Google Image Search.

THE VCE exam body has been left red faced after a doctored artwork depicting a huge robot helping socialist revolutionaries during the Russian Revolution was accidentally included in this year’s year 12 history exam taken by 5700 students.

https://www.theage.com.au/education/history-transformed-in-vce-exam-20121114-29ce7.html

You heard about Young Karl Marx, but have you heard of VI Lenin Evangelion ?

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""All Tech Is Human: San Francisco is an all-day ethical tech summit with 175 technologists, academics, advocates, students, org leaders, artists, designers, policymakers, and YOU. Join us for an impactful mix of lightning talks, topical panels, strategy sessions, tech/humanity art performance, and meeting others in the thoughtful tech movement!"

https://alltechishumansanfrancisco.splashthat.com/

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I joined the http://go/johnhenry team a few weeks ago. Finally getting a chance to post about it after an exciting https://sites.google.com/corp/google.com/societalcontextsummit2019.

Excited to be team building again and really excited about the possibility of bringing systems thinking at scale into Google. Looking forward to how our first partner http://go/delavega uses our Societal Topography and Societal Context Repository to bring ML Fairness to display ads.

So much to learn and many challenges ahead.

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Bootloops? Bad Batteries? September 3rd deadline approaches..

https://www.nexus6psettlement.com

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Great Pyrenees and Maremma chilling at Flour and Water Pizzeria.

Gus is a #doogler but you'll have to see him in SF on Valencia Ave on Saturdays. Too big to sneak onto BART :)

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*** This is Happening Now ***

There will be two great talks tomorrow on the intersection of technology, society, and justice. I highly recommend catching these talks if you are able! Details below:

Livestream link:

http://go/scs-keynote-livestream

Talks:

Ruha Benjamin (9:45 - 10:30am)
Anna Lauren Hoffmann (9:45 - 10:30am)

Speaker bios:

https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/ is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founder of https://www.thejustdatalab.com/ and the author of two books, https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/peoples-science and https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/race-after-technology. Ruha teaches and speaks widely about the relationship between knowledge and power, race and citizenship, health and justice and at Princeton her main focus is on the social dimensions of science, technology, and medicine.

https://www.annaeveryday.com/about is an Assistant Professor with The Information School at the University of Washington working at the intersections of data, technology, culture and ethics. Anna has written many https://www.annaeveryday.com/publications on issues in information, data and ethics, while especially to the ways discourse, design and uses of information technology work to promote or hinder the pursuit of important human values like respect and justice.

Rooms for livestream:

DUB-1GC-1-Dracula (8)

DUB-1GC-3-Golden Grove (7)

LON-123-1-New Forest (12)

SVL-MOT1-5-Triskelion (8)

NYC-9TH-14-F-324-Uptown Training (16)

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Only 50ish versions behind on this public terminal at the vet...

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The AI for Climate Change talk mentions Jevons' Paradox, which explains why efficiency gains actually increase usage of a resource.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.12285 describes how one might use intervene. Interesting reading.

It concludes with:

Findings from the modeling highlight the need to implement
a system of interventions that can influence the strength and
direction of each of the feedback loops within the system being
intervened with, if CE are to be more reliably reduced than
they are at present. Single interventions are much less likely to
succeed and are, in fact, less efficient at producing the desired
results. Further, because the system is constantly evolving,
intervening with it requires a responsive, holistic approach, while
maintaining focus on a long-term goal.

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...then Google said "Let there be iGoogle"; and there was iGoogle. And Google saw that the javascript was good and separated the gadgets from the container origins....

Fast forward over 10 years and this serving system is still the underlying force keeping light from darkness. After a good run in Social it was exiled to an uncertain fate with the ever faithful +111756696344385606909 and other true believers keeping it alive.

Exiting the wilderness between PAs it finally found a new home with +109533200203018540387 and +111563624442337972165 into a reliability reset fueled future.

But Gapi needs your help. Please help it find an L5 so it can grow and thrive as it fully migrates to new infrastructure

https://grow.googleplex.com/jobs/b9f41ecb-c6c5-4129-af30-2e1181d645c9

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Someone's going to eventually make a Google Duplex version of this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33CIVjvYyEk

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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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One of the better public Postmortems I've seen.

Keep those SSH keys safe!

https://matrix.org/blog/2019/05/08/post-mortem-and-remediations-for-apr-11-security-incident/

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