Amazing to think how far we've come from the 2003 iTunes launch.
... and they started out with only 200k tracks.
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
This looks good. Added to my to-watch list.
h/t to the creator of X-Plane, which is a pretty awesome flight simulator.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i48Pb6sTgmY
#googplus
Hi Last-minute 120ers.
Here's the pitch deck for *Google. Forever.* Still looking for UX and BD team members.
https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/presentation/d/1eP4UkcW3U4l7p13XzHPX7RXSPaNSJqrLS4nGASxgUKo/edi...
#googplus
The memo damage has been done and now we're left with the mess. Here are some ideas on how to make amends:
- Everyone ever interviewed by Damore is offered an onsite interview.
- Everyone peer-reviewed for promo is given an automatic appeal.
- Everyone peer-reviewed gets their previous calibrations revisited, and comp retroactively adjusted.
_Just move on up_
_Toward your destination_
_Though you may find, from time to time, complication_
Complicated week eh? Just remember we have each other and when we work together we can make the world a better place!
And thanks to the brave souls that communicate wisdom. (especially since I've been a bit absent from these discussions)
So decided to finish "Kill all Normies" to get my head around "what hath the internet wrought" and how technology has affected society.
The book is a little shallow, especially if you were paying attention during gamergate. Read on if you want a sickening tour of the worst that's out there.
Given Techs great power I believe it behooves us to expand our concern to the outsized level of influence we have. We all built this platform. Behold. (Including what may be the weirdest set of recommended books from Play.)
Susan from March 2017. I prefer this positive response to the corp-speak one that was sent out.
I hereby pledge to double-down efforts in this area and widen my circle of influence to to match my circle of concern.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/how-to-break-up-the-silicon-valley-boys-club-susan-wojcicki
#googplus
Want week numbers in your calendar? Read on.
Saves you a trip to http://whatweekisit.com
http://www.scottgreenstone.com/2016/01/calendar-week-numbers.html#__sid=md4
#googplus
BRB reading whitepaper. Happy that it's not yet another ethereum smart contract.
[also have you noticed that having a whitepaper is a prereq for startups these days...]
https://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf
#googplus
Now if only I could go back in time and reshoot my high school photos...
_“We’ve had high school students take their senior pictures with it and we even had someone take wedding photographs in front of it,” Horn said. “A lot of people contact me through its Facebook page (The Tardis) for scheduled photo shoots. I built it to make people happy, so we don’t charge for photographs with it.”_
So the +1 button on the web is riding off into the sunset. But you can still make good use of the data that you've collected over the years via Google Takeout! I like to keep my bookmarks in Pinboard, so here's how I did it and you can too.
1. Visit
in your browser. You'll see something like this:2. Click Select None, then click on the checkmark next to +1s.
3. Scroll to the bottom and click Next
4. The next screen has some choices for file format. Change if you want, but the defaults should be fine and will email you a link to a zip file you can download.
5. You'll receive an email with a link to the zip file. Expand the file and you'll find something like this:
Now that you have the +1s.html file you can import it to Pinboard. (Or other sites that support the Netscape Bookmark file format)
1. Pinboard 'tags' imports with the name of the file. I wanted to use the tag 'plusone' so I renamed my file from +1s.html to plusones.html
2. Next visit the Pinboard settings page, then click import (or just click on this link) You'll see something like this:
3. Click on the Choose File button, select your html file (in my case plusones.html) and click upload.
4. After a little bit of time Pinboard will have your imported bookmarks! You can then view all of them based on the tag (plusones). Click on the tag and you can browse/clean them up. Woohoo!
Once you have the exported bookmark html file you can also import to other products.
Contact me if you have more. I'll add them here!
Now playing in the G MinusOne war room. 10% 10% ! !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGrKcqcHHcE
#googplus
I read that we were going to participate in Net Neutrality protests today. I loaded up google.com to see if we were doing a home page promo. I didn't see the logo load and thought that this was a very sublime way of calling attention to content blocking. So I waited for a spinner and call to action...
haha; no. Instead it was this super heavy doodle that took forever to load over GBUS wifi.
Ah well. Looks like we're sending an "email" to our "listserve" (itsthe90s.gif) of committed diehards, and posting a video playlist hidden somewhere on youtube (couldn't find it, can you?)
Paul here from the Superfund Squad, where we're getting rid of the infrastructure you love to hate and paying off unfunded mandates with technical debt. And digging up the History of Google's Social Efforts in the attached collection.
I've been cranking at this social thing for almost 7 years at Google on Google+ and a long time before that at places Six Apart (home of Typepad and Livejournal), hi5 and LinkedIn. I did a lot of work on OpenSocial and other standards back then which is a big reason I'm here today.
Oh and this enterprise thing isn't my first rodeo. Way back at Critical Path we provided hosted email, calendar and tasks for Italian Telecoms, Major Universities *and* the Kiss Army. And at Red Hat we sold shrink wrap and services to all sales channels.
But I'm most proud of the work I did at the UN on telecom standards, relief efforts and publishing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 500 languages. (And the site is still standing to this day!)
And finally before that was the Internet Gopher.. Me, with Heavy Metal hair:
Beyond all this tech I enjoy life in Oakland with my fabulous wife Julie and our Great Pyrenees Gus. You'll find us exploring the parks of the East Bay, checking out obscure music or cruising the rapidly gentrifying Valencia street in the Mission. I'm also heavily interested in building software and systems that last the long term. I'm a member of the Long Now (
) and I have a 20% project called Digital Vellum ( )Happy to be here with y'all and looking forward to our next adventures!
A reminder that +1s *for web sites* are going away. You *can* export them to other places. I chose to move mine to Pinboard. One nice thing Pinboard does is archive the pages you bookmark, so now the content I +1'd is more stable long term.
In the process I found and fixed a bug where the timestamps on the plusones takeout export were wrong. It was broken for about 5 years and no one noticed :(
If you want a proper export file you can use
for now. Prod push should be sometime this week...
Never send a bill collector to do a recruiters job...
_Paul,_
_I wanted to follow up on two emails I sent over the past couple months, this will be my final attempt to connect in the best interest of our time. I came across your background and wanted to see if you'd be open to confidentially explore opportunities at Uber._
_Best,_
_Daniel_
_Director, Payments_
*Google+ vs Facebook GIFs - 2011*
So I hear that body slam GIFs are all the rage now. Of course back in 2011...
Many more cringe-worthy things here:
https://zahidlilani.com/2011/07/19/hilarious-google-plus-gif-animations/
https://plus.google.com/photos/107786897865850743842/albums/6438194510653877985/6438194508238025506?...
#googplus
SVL-MP5 has a stack of hardware in the lobby. Scary how many of these I've racked...
PowerEdge 2850, 2950
Sun Ultra 1, T1000,
Sun Storage Array
HP DL360, Procurve
Dell Powerconnect
Yikes!
There are days when I'm ashamed of the industry I work in.
Of course the medical industry should feel shame too. This is all about treating disease as a big money making opportunity. Just feels like ghouls feasting off the misfortune of others.
http://gizmodo.com/how-a-company-you-ve-never-heard-of-sends-you-letters-a-1795643539
#googplus
Launching +1 button evolving banners...
https://play.google.com/music/m/Thzqqdnh7rpdhjodtkdkricg4z4?t=Anvil_Of_Crom_From_Conan_The_Barbarian...
#googplus
Changes coming to the +1 widget you see on web sites.
Originally shared by John Nack
Making the G+1 button load more quickly
The G+1 button is shown billions of times per day on web pages around the world, so it’s important that it load as quickly and efficiently as possible. To make it easier for people to load and share the pages they’re interested in, we’ve created a simpler G+1 button sharing experience.
Beginning in a few weeks, clicking the +1 button will open a streamlined new Google+ sharing dialog, and the G+1 button will no longer display a +1 count. If you’re a publisher, you can rest assured that these +1s do not affect search ranking and the size and layout of the button will remain the same.
These changes will only affect the G+1 button outside of Google+. The +1 button within Google+ will continue to work the same way it always has.
If you’d like to view all of the pages you’ve +1’d over the years, you can download a list using Google Takeout.
We hope this change makes it that much easier to check out and recommend all the interesting things you discover!
Something to keep in mind: fingerprints can be ephemeral too..
Latest _Healthy Stuff_ update: Julie only got 6 months off Pfizer's 0k/month wonder drug before progression. So we'll see if Xeloda will work next. Crazy side effects though.
Luckily there's a half dozen other treatments available and more coming.
As always props to my supportive coworkers and to our flexibility policies that make it possible to balance caregiver obligations with work obligations. And if anyone finds themselves in a similar situation I'm here for you too.
I have a mechanism that has enough crypto-theater to make me happier than just drawing numbers out of a hat and having someone pinky-swear that the process is legit
.
It uses a Random Beacon to seed a random number generator, which then chooses 5 winners from the 73 entrants. It's a silly perl script (might rewrite it in go if I
have time...)
------------------------------------------------
5 winners will be chosen on June 15th at noon Pacific Standard Time.
Read on to find out how winners will be chosen.
- Each of the 73 entrants is given a 'lot number', which is emailed to them.
- The file lot_to_username.txt maps the number to a hashed version of your username.
- You can verify that your lot is listed correctly. For example:
# Verify if your lot number is 12
sudo apt-get install apache2-tools
htpasswd -v -b /google/data/rw/users/pl/plindner/www/survey-drawing 12 lindner
- The
- The random seed will be generated by the NIST random beacon on June 15th Noon Pacific Standard time. Results will be visible here:
- The seed value will be written to seed.xml at that point and winners will be
chosen!
TECHNICAL DETAILS FOLLOW
- The original names are stored one username-per-line in names.txt
- The lot_to_username.txt file containing bcrypt hashed usernames was generated using this command:
cat -n /tmp/names.txt | xargs -n 2 htpasswd -b -B -C 20 ~/contest.file
- Note that you could brute-force the usernames with moderate compute capacity. Please be polite and don't do that.
TAMPER VERIFICATION
You can verify that the usernames, script, and contest draw date have not been modified by verifying the PGP signature of the date and sums.
You can verify this message by using keybase [email protected]
or looking up my PGP key-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256
sha256sum lot_to_username.txt
6a86aadf90310cb83b2cadcf820d3b3a0ea0bfbd175822ebcfb44a55a1fc1e0f lot_to_username.txt
bf45ed9e504d51934261610bf69153c0f0646dfbe0b58c1fe044803a90dd3ff3
Contest Seed:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
wkYEAREIABAFAllBLkYJEPhZKFJz9YBUAADv9gCgkHEiWKjs7RlfM3G5U4NsYNmK
rqUAoBpiZrhGAy/SMPUqzX+Wl/6AuQdD
=XjMK
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
*Paul* Added *Groove Thang* to *Bumper Music*
[manually constructed activity post]
Plug for my bumper music playlist[2] that you can use to spice up your meetings and give it that TGIF vibe. Suggestions welcome, description below:
----
Waiting for people to show up for your meeting? Add some Bumper Music! [1] These are instrumental tracks that can be easily faded out at any point.
Retrospective? Let's do the Time Warp!
Your "classic" weekly sync? Apache, Frankenstein, Hocus Pocus, and Green Onions have you covered.
Top Secret Project meeting? Moby's James Bond
Or just spice up your boring all hands with some electro/synth/funk.
Suggestions welcome!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_music
[2] https://play.google.com/music/playlist/AMaBXynB0Y7GSMNgd3XrzHLe5CQOatDMjcWYhS0Gn7R7ACZuOmlJLQJ9vez4G...
https://play.google.com/music/m/Tur2wrgcwhqev3aymylzwn2d2em?t=Groove_Thang_2006_-_Remaster_-_BEF
#googplus
"Heirloom" [1] - you keep using that word, I don't think you know what that means.
The sad thing is these folks are pivoting to an Alexa Task product. It tries to create a spoken story based on a set of photographs. Least compelling product ever...
At some point we're going to need to find a way to allow people to use new products without losing data.
[1]
Always good to reread the *As We May Think* essay.
Dr Bush foresaw much of our modern life. Well, except for the Taboola/Outbrain ads you'll find in the Atlantic. Pretty sure that Lovecraft predicted those...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/#article
#googplus
And here I am redacting Google+ widget logs so we don't track you across the web...
https://support.google.com/plus/answer/6320398
https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169421
#googplus
Okay, I have 72 submissions to my photo backup survey. And I promised prizes, so I need to give out prizes. But you shouldn't trust me since I might be evil. Of course I'd like to preserve the privacy of individuals, yet allow anyone to verify that I didn't give someone a prize. Help!
Some things I've thought of:
- Create 1-72 buckets.
- Use the NIST random beacon to pick random bits at a specified, agreed upon time in the future.
- Use reservoir sampling to use those random bits to pick 5 items from the 72 total.
Now the question is can we mask the participants in the survey yet have everyone know with accuracy that the above is on the up-and-up.
- I could just publish a signed document with the number->ldap mappings, but that reveals everyone who participated.
- I could send each participant their participant number. However then how would anyone know that I had awarded the prizes?
Might need to read up on secure election protocols to make this happen.
Suggestions welcome!
I didn't find my sound search within Google Play Music, but it appears that my 91 year old future self is still using GPM..
Digital Vellum is working on a project to help people store Photos for 100+ years.
That means I'm thinking about how to build a long-term, stable, resilient systems and business. I'd also love to see this applied to Google so it too can be a very very long term entity.
So I'm not an expert in this area but it seems that there are some ways that we can focus the business on long term value. Some are structural, others based on rethinking existing systems. I'm not an economist or an MBA by any stretch, but here goes:
- Sell annuities that pay out in storage/access "dividends" spread out over a long time.
- Create a wholly owned Mutual Society to manage storage and serving. Google can then become a Lloyds of London-stye "Name". [This entity could sell long-term/perpetual bonds that also have storage dividends]
- Create a customer-owned collective to manage long-term assets. Think of it as "Vanguard for Storage".
- We already store Photos for iPhone users, why not have each company back each other up and come up with coordinated storage systems with rights of survivorship.
- For the crytpocurrency angle use something like Streem ( ) or Storj ( ) Allow anyone to participate in a long-term storage system. This might be more adaptable.
And also remember to take our Photo Preservation Survey if you haven't already:
We have what, three or more internal Kanban tools? go/kanban, go/plananizer, and now go/scrumboard
None of them really do everything I want.. Trello or Jira+Grasshopper both worked better in the past, and I'm sure they're even better now.
I wish we could merge all three internal projects and then add the UI from this simple opensource sandstorm app WeKan.
Sad to see Imzy go down.. So much potential...
https://www.imzy.com/imzy/post/imzy_is_shutting_down
#googplus
I highly recommend reading the updated *ACM Code of Ethics*. You can draw a straight line from those principles to Product Excellence, Focus on the User and more.
I also wonder how many Googlers actually belong to a professional organization? Do people think of themselves more as Professionals? Artisans? Proto Plumbers?
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/5/216328-listening-to-professional-voices/fulltext
#googplus
Assumes:
- you have a jump host (existing ubiquity works fine)
- beyondcorp is disabled on laptop/jumphost
On jumphost
sudo apt-get install dtach
On laptop
ssh cloudtophost
echo
# copy the value of that environment variable
# create a new shell on your laptop and continue:
mosh --port=60000 jumphost
export SSH_AUTH_SOCK={pasted filename}
dtach -Ez -r winch -c ~/.cloudtop-session ssh cloudtophost
tmx # or screen or whatever you prefer
This setup leaves your mosh session active when putting the laptop to sleep, network changes, etc.
Every morning you will need to use go/auth-refresh to get fresh tokens.
If you have to reboot your laptop you can get back to your previous state by executing:
mosh --port=60000 jumphost
dtach -a ~/.cloudtop-session
Just put it together that you are the plinder I know from #IndieWeb IRC..not sure how I never put this together.
Greg Mcverry, Feb 13 2019 on plus.google.com