Paul Lindner

brb, closing my Tumblr account instead of clicking 320 checkboxes...

Tumblr tried to sneak in data collection under the radar. After a few taps, you can get a list of who they're sharing data with.

The list takes 19 screenshots to see all the names on my phone.

NINETEEN.

https://social.wxcafe.net/@skiant/100085744884670249

*Incognito by Default*

Redesign all of our systems to operate without direct access to user data while maintaining quality.

This is my dream after reading https://sites.google.com/corp/google.com/quirk/ and filing data retention plans for the past month....

Ambitious enough?

#googplus

_"The web is being used for engineering society"_
_"Browser vendors cannot avoid taking a side"_
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZg1vIpno6I

#googplus

Finally watched that Selfish Ledger video...

I didn't find it "unsettling", to me I found it to be your basic tone-deaf techno-utopianism.

Especially given the ugly fact that the research of Hamilton and Dawkins supports eugenics.

I'm curious if +102251792736752917169 is aware of _All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (ep3)_?

https://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/

Treating humans as programmable computers is a dangerous path to go down. We're already seeing the negative externalities of this today. Filter bubbles, Facebook Ads, Deep Fakes and more show the non-altruistic version of the ideas presented in this concept video.

That said, the user-data story for Fuchsia (which this was an input to) is a good one. And I suspect we won't be breaking out virtual brain calipers any time soon.

#googplus

_Tracking the illustration style of choice in our tech dystopia_

Warning: once you see this you'll notice this design pattern almost everywhere you look.

#googplus

Thought provoking presentation on how Information Architecture impacts user behavior. Also a great anecdote about how Open Plan offices were intended to _"give the company’s clerical workers a sense of community and nobility."_

Strong finish with this call to action:

_"Are the things that I’m designing creating conceptual structures, distinctions in the world, that are viable? Are the systems that I’m working with respectful of the broader context that they’re in? And are they sustainable, economically, socially, and ecologically?"_

http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/living-in-information/

#googplus

Had a Slacker Shuttle May Day treat.

Here's a Google Shuttle Bus patiently waiting for the ILWU Drill Team and Parade to proceed from the docks to downtown Oakland.

#googplus

At my desk you can read the paper version of "The Best of Creative Computing" v1/v2. What's really eye-opening is the large amount of privacy related articles that were published in the mid 70s, post Watergate era.

Here's one about logs processing. Maybe we can use this for the next BYCTWD...

Stop by or you can read volume 1 here:

https://archive.org/details/Best_of_Creative_Computing_Vol_1_1978_Creative_Computing_Press

#googplus

Added "Zot Protocol" from Hubzilla to my reading list.

cc Brad Fitzpatrick for the webfinger ref.

Zot is a JSON-based web framework for implementing secure decentralised communications and services. In order to provide this functionality, Zot creates a decentralised globally unique identifier for each hub on the network. This global identifier is not linked inextricably to DNS, providing the requisite mobility. Many existing decentralised communications frameworks provide the communication aspect, but do not provide remote access control and authentication. Additionally most of these are based on 'webfinger', which still binds identity to domain names and cannot support nomadic identity.

The primary issues Zot addresses are

- completely decentralised communications
- independence from DNS-based identity
- node mobility
- seamless remote authentication
- high performance

Self-redacting your messages on Hangouts Chat? think again....

A message was edited in Hangouts Chat, view the updated message on (https://chat.google.com).

While not strictly social, this did use the underlying Shindig code based used for social gadgets. It also allowed for Cooperating Gadgets in the browser via gadgets.pubsub and distributed Prefs system using gadgets.prefs

In fact one of the use cases was 'add the Google Gadget to your container' so your other gadgets could have enhanced functionality. The only thing missing is a user-owned, portable data store. We're seeing a return to this model in ARCS and Fuchsia.

#googplus

It was a blistering July day in Las Vegas, with temps hitting 109.  Inside the SIGGRAPH 91 convention hall Yello's Rubberbandman looped on the speakers. On each chair: a red/green paddle.

I was a student volunteer, stamping the finest hands in Computer Graphics.  Those hands (and my own) each controlled those paddles.  Then 5000 people looked up and saw a Pong Game appear on the screen.

And then..  the machine started playing us.

In response to visual stimuli we changed the color of our paddle.  The ball moved left, then right.  The crowd shouting "red red red", "green!" and cheering as the game played on.

The rules of the game and the feedback loops directed our actions.  It was a complex adaptive system with emergent behavior.

And luckily there is some footage of this moment.  Watch this excerpt from "Machines of Loving Grace" that talks about this moment in history:

Loren Carpenter Experiment at SIGGRAPH '91 from Zachary Murray on Vimeo.

Loren Carpenter cofounded Pixar.  Check out the TurboGopher appearance at the 5:00 minute mark.

Today the simple pong game is now the multilayered technological environment we interact with on a daily basis. Instead of red/green paddles with 1 bit of data we carry phones that generate a wealth more.  These devices also provide the aural/visual and haptic stimuli.    With that our collective actions power all kinds of "games" today:

• Aggregated location data and movement speed generates traffic data in maps.
• Aggregated search queries and click data deliver better search results.
• Aggregated likes, views and interactions with content power trending data and even news and politics.

As technologists we need to remember that by controlling the game, we are indirectly controlling the players.  The choices we allow (and forbid) define the behavior.  The game "plays" the player.  And often the only way to be free is to not play at all.

Except that is if maybe, just maybe, the people start playing a different game than the one we designed.  In the giddy demonstration it was assumed that people wanted to win at Pong.  But we didn't play long enough for abuse or scheming.  It would have only taken a few people to cross over to sabotage the other side, or for trolls to have changed the outcome.

Finally this level of power and control demands great responsibility.  The only thing worse than control used for malicious purposes is control wielded without thought, without thinking of the consequences.  So the next time you're designing a product think about the whole system and all the inputs and ask "who's really in control?".

h/t to the General Intellect Unit podcast and their Machines of Loving Grace episode for reminding me of this unsung moment in history.

This.. this is good stuff.

One guest, after spending time at Dynamicland, held up his smartphone and shouted, “This thing is a prison!”

https://dynamicland.org/

#googplus

Nice roundup of alternative networks. In RFC form.

_This content is best viewed with lynx_

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7962

#googplus

This is good. Read and/or watch it.

http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/programming-forgetting-new-hacker-ethic/

Build systems that forget less. Use that as a metric...

Of course the cybernetician in me wants to say:
- Forgetting is really Variety Attenuation[1]
- The Good Regulator theorem applies [2]. To effectively regulate a system your model needs to be as complex as the system itself.

[[Oh and http://opentranscripts.org is such a great project. It's something that Google could do at scale, especially for educational materials, lectures etc. It also... *increases variety* by making video content more accessible]]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(cybernetics)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_regulator

#googplus

Still early days -- only 2300 artists on 296 labels so far; but growing. It fits somewhere between Soundcloud, Bandcamp and Spotify.

https://resonate.is/in-the-details/status/

Bandcamp is good if you know what you want and they do pay out really, really well.

If you want a streaming service more like Spotify you might also check out Resonate Cooperative https://resonate.is/ which has a stream-to-own model.

Discovering new music is low cost, repeated listens double until the ninth, upon which you own the track outright. You can then download or stream that track for free.

Still ramping up but I'm excited about their prospects.