Paul Lindner

https://modelcards.withgoogle.com/about

#googplus

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.

#googplus

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.

#googplus

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.

#googplus

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

#googplus

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....

#googplus

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

#googplus

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.

#googplus

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/

#googplus

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/

#googplus

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

#googplus

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

#googplus

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

#googplus

Some extreme geometry to start your day...

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

#googplus

#googplus

"In case you missed it..."

(Seen in discover feed today)

#googplus

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

#googplus

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

#googplus

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 ?

#googplus

""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/

#googplus

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.

#googplus

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

https://www.nexus6psettlement.com

#googplus

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 :)

#googplus

*** 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)

#googplus

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

#googplus

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.

#googplus

...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

#googplus