Human, Dustcake, Engineer
Doing my best to make the world a little better every day.
❤️ J9
news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lindner
@exk4ji+mpb4mdiCG5KVHxIMCo0as4k4/cIwRoxt3Aw4=.ed25519
www.openhub.net/accounts/plindner
dl.acm.org/profile/99659334862
New Adventures await!
My role was eliminated at Google and I have 60 days to find a new one or find a new adventure! I'm confident I'll find something new and exciting and this isn't the first time surviving this situation (the post 9-11 downturn was really scary). So do reach out if you're interested in what I have to offer. If you've been impacted, I'm also happy to offer pep talks
Traveled to the dystopia cyberpunk future where I jacked in my Google Glass and was able to stay in the moment and in character. So many magical #throughglass moments.
https://1500wordmtu.com/2022/may-i-collect-your-visual-bits
I love this. Google should offer similar bounties. And can we please spin up a Project Zero for AI Bias while we're at it?!
https://hackerone.com/twitter-algorithmic-bias?type=team
Can't believe that Google Photos still does not have a way to find photos without location/face tags. :(
You'd think we'd want this for better quality data as inputs.. People are motivated to add this data to get better maps/timelines...
https://b.corp.google.com/issues/25692898 for context..
Through some intermediaries I'm trying to help a Saudi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loujain_al-Hathloul get access to her Google accounts. It's difficult since she was jailed and tortured for three years, doesn't have access to the recovery email address or phone numbers.
Sadly the Account Recovery process is proving to be its own form of pain.
If anyone wants to further escalate case 2-0838000031065 I'd really appreciate it.. I've gone back and forth for a few days already on this.
Apparently Twitter was very proactive about getting her back on. I'd love for us to outperform their customer service!!!!!
Product Idea: Terraform for Teams using Google Calendar/GSuite.
Just let me put agendas and crontab lines in a text file and have it drive the whole thing. Right now it's all pointy-clicky and there's no way to rollback in a coordinated way.
Also would make it soooo easy to split a team into two or clone a team...
Income targeting seems.. problematic on a number of levels given the distribution of income by ethnicity and gender.. I probably don't want to know how we calculate rich vs poor traffic.
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2580383?hl=en
Google could refuse to work with Law Enforcement Agencies until they clean up their act. Minimum legal effort and that's it.
Not doing so puts people at risk.
Our time and assistance is valuable and a privilege so we should prioritize good actors over bad.
I think it would be interesting to have 'deprecated by' and 'replaced with' added to
https://toolsearch.corp.google.com/
Then create a visual tool showing the evolution of tools over time.....
Uhhh. Google Forms as critical election infrastructure?
All Internet services should have publicly disclosed headcount numbers..
https://moma.corp.google.com/team/4579863185
[.. and yes, I know that Forms relies on a wide variety of shared infrastructure...]
https://www.cnet.com/news/nevada-democrats-to-use-google-forms-based-calculator-to-track-caucus/
Might be a good idea to revisit this page every 7 or 8 years...
https://developers.google.com/talk/open_communications
What I need right now is a way to sort Google photos by image similarity. Appears that thumbnails and minor metadata updated versions were uploaded over the past years.
Or can you search by filename? Bunch of them begin with "thumb_"
Spent some time updating bugs/feature requests related to how we handle end-of-life.
The ability of Google to understand how to interact with death and dying is important as our userbase ages. Eventually we will have more deceased users than live ones.
I have suggested adding a date of birth/death to contacts and I think that should also be available for People&Pets albums that Photos generates.
If you are interested in doing something about this I would be happy to coordinate, as I have suffered a loss recently and would like to see our products handle these situations with more compassion..
A benefit for US Googlers I wasn't aware of until I was searching for advice internally:
https://sites.google.com/a/google.com/us-benefits/family/care-com-services
Title: Quantum Supremacy, An Outsider's Perspective
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11MGmTiCSBKDF0l-UxSwaxVctex5SaRkz/view
This was a good overview of the recent quantum news.
So has anyone made a poster with Udi Manbar's "It's our problem" statement?
It was one of the more inspiring things I had seen when I was watching old TFIFs (when we could do that..)
See the attached Noogler training deck and consider how things have changed today. (Also a reminder of go/gthink and the insight reports on https://sites.google.com/a/google.com/gthink/g/resources/analyst-insights-reports)
if users can't spell, it's our problem
if they don't know how to form the query, it's our problem
if they don't know what words to use, it's our problem
if they can't speak the language, it’s our problem
if there is not enough content on the web,
it’s our problem
if the web is too slow, it’s our problem
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZBLK7WfoLHRveZs8FiSlMvgVlkKWNKDhiEgi2Ocy4W8/edit#slide=id.i1...
tfw you get music recs from your VP.
Also, let's never let Google become ITT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jptR_YwCs3o
Curious if Google's housing efforts won't have unintended side effects. Especially given the Prop 13 continues to be a limit-to-growth.
Maybe some of the 4514$ we give to non profits can be used to repeal Prop 13.
Also would be curious if Google will put property into a land trust, and if they intend to lobby for things that will systemically fix the underlying issue like a land-value tax.
Your periodic reminder to reread 10 things. Not sure this is linked from anywhere but it still exists.
I'd like to see a required online course for history, philosophy and ethics on equal footing with "You Said What" and other legal mandated training.
https://www.google.com/about/philosophy.html
Is this even covered in Noogler training?
Happy that I was finally able to donate some vacation time. [Of course between the time I applied and the time it was used I was no longer maxed out...]
https://sites.google.com/a/google.com/us-benefits/time-off/vacation/overview--emergency-vacation-don...
How long before Javascript starts looking like Perl?
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/12/class-fields
https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/11/google-and-huawei-nexus-6p-settlement/
Notably, people who got Pixel 1XL phones will only get 0. In retrospect giving those phones out was a great investment...
A Poem for Code Red and Google+ turndown:
Here, in the melting structures of obsolete systems, is the fluid of possibility. It’s sticky with confusion, it smells like pain, & it stains the past w/ dyes of remorse. There is no blissy workshop to take to avert the discomfort. There is no formula for success. Just show up.
https://twitter.com/NoraBateson/status/1106099786791485440
Is Google doing anything special for all the works entering the Public Domain in 2019?
For example the 1923 version of this Book is now freely available.
https://books.google.com/books?id=Dnt8DwAAQBAJ
Godwin's law; but for content recommendations..
h/t to Ray Cromwell who had the movie Iron Sky recommended in Google Feed..... (which has hitler riding a dinosaur on the moon....)
Would love to see the Ads team run retro banner/video ads on April 1st.
Or offer this as an option in Google Contributor...
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-first-ever-banner-ad-on-the-web/523728/
@SarahJamieLewis The @worldbrain Memex system is working well for me. Full text index of all the pages I visit. Injects search results in Google/DuckDuckGo. Recommended. (https://t.co/7f4pklLb9M)
This is a fascinating discussion between Danah Boyd and Douglas Rushkoff. It Covers:
- "Amplification, Freedom of Speech and platform paternalism.
- Networks vs Groups/Community and how to stop tribalism.
- Why Media Literacy isn't enough to combat fake news.
- Google's Original Sin:
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/business/technology-google-and-yahoo-settle-dispute-over-search-p...
Actual interview starts around 13 minutes in.
https://teamhuman.fm/episodes/ep-102-danah-boyd/
Lotus Concept Video (2014)
Missed this one the first time..
I do have some issues with this. I agree with the goal of having technology help us be more human. However to achieve the goals of this system one would have to restructure our lives to have most activities be technology-mediated. That means conforming our norms to the technology platforms which makes us less than human.
Oh and it was a pre-Uber world....
http://go/lotusprinciples
http://go/lotusvideo
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0RwipB98dLpdDgyNElWZXlSbkM2d2t0LUlTOGZjdw/edit
*Fearless Cooperation: Giving eval() to your worst enemy for fund and profit*
_Tidbits form the Decentralized Web Conference 2018_
Brian Warner described a new Javascript Secure Execution Environment from Agoric.
"Imagine if you could have safely executable json"
This is based on early Caja work done at Google by many folks. Looks pretty interesting:
https://github.com/Agoric/Jessie
Looks like Mark Miller left Google to work there too...
Can Google Duplex do two phase commit?
Just had the worst experience getting two medical schedulers to get a series of events coordinated. Total disaster.
Ended up getting everyone on a conference call to work out the details, would be hard pressed to see an AI accomplish that...
#til hangouts chat web UI is responsive if you narrow the window.
.. that combined with running in a chromeless window is much better than the native app, since you don't have to re-auth in two places all the time:
/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --app=https://chat.google.com
Bye Bye Bluefin
Today I removed the last remnants of the Google+ mobile basic frontend, aka Bluefin (see http://go/bluefin)
And congratulations to the team for leaving me some traps:
- Removing protos lead to global js compile errors. Turns out that a bunch of random code relied on mobile basic soy_globals.
- To calculate a URL path the following was done:
- Execute a java method.
- ... that instantiates a soy template *places.soy*
- ... that executes {mbPlaceUrl(....) }
- ... which is provided by a soy plugin
- ... that runs some other java code!
Well played, well played indeed.
cc +107239907223614146058 +115243107530846780027 +114418285744011589781 +105287604880515191722 +115114058966008692727 +105016019269323464412
https://j.gifs.com/7aNxzY.gif
*Wildfire* was quite the system back in the 90s, seems like the Android Dialer or Google Voice could easily implement the best features today.
Some tidbits:
- When summoned Wildfire says "I'm here"
- Whispering in your ear could be done on phone, but also in real life if you had, say Google Glass.
More details from an old Fortune article:
http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/07/08/214362/index.htm
_For now, Wildfire is only for those willing to shell out big bucks. A business with a dedicated server pays an average of ,400 per user to get set up. Independent subscribers who buy the service from authorized service providers generally pay monthly charges of between 50 and 00. Lowering prices is the company's top priority. Competition is looming, but to date no one else has as sophisticated a product on the market._
Because social networks are what we do, you should understand how the bonds Google+ creates can spread contagions (both the good and bad kinds...)
http://ncase.me/crowds/
In an alternate timeline Google Gadgets survived and iGoogle evolved into ARCS.
But seriously, go read this and think about how the world might be different if we could split up the data hosting (into Google Cloud) and the Application Serving. What kind of world would we have then?
Once you've digested that read the User Sovereignty doc
http://go/user-sovereignty
I think efforts like this are key if we want Google to grow even larger than it's current size without being regulated to death.
A strong argument for the recent changes to promo. I wonder if we'd had this in the past this person would have gotten promoted?
Also one of these days I'm going to write a "Why I stay at Google" post.
https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/
...a stronger take on decentralization.
Instead of the Chris Dixon post just read the essays here. Most are well thought out and timely. The blockchain/crypto essay by Rachel O’Dwyer specifically calls out crypto fallacies:
- We can replace time-consuming social processes with elegant technical solutions.
- The technical can instantiate new social or political processes.
Decentralization is really about People, Power and Agency.
And I believe that we at Google can give more power and agency to the creators, developers and consumers that rely on our platforms.
http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/ours-to-hack-and-to-own/
Curious if anyone uses something to replace paper notebooks?
As Google becomes more heavily regulated I wonder if we'll have to start using software like this? We do run many "Experiments" after all...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ELN_software_packages
Yegge's post was weird. He chastises Google for me-too-ism, but then goes on to talk about a war with Uber.
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc0be84
#googplus
WebSub/ActivityPub are now both W3C standards.
https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/REC-websub-20180123/
https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/REC-activitypub-20180123/
I find it really weird that no-one at Google actually was involved with this since it's in our interests for web crawl, publisher support etal..
https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/REC-websub-20180123/
#googplus
Even the Economist is piling on the #techlash of 2018...
I didn't have time to write up my 2018 predictions, but this is right in line with what I was expecting this year. Expect more payback for excessive hubris.
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21735021-dominance-google-facebook-and-amazon-bad-consumers-a...
#googplus