An infographic that depicts surveillance creep under Bill C-30
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Author: Christopher Parsons
Policy wonk. Torontonian. Photographer. Not necessarily in that order.
Valve’s Handbook for New Employees has made its way to the Internet. While such handbooks are normally incredibly dull – I mean, really, who hasn’t almost fallen asleep or committed suicide to escape reading one? – Valve’s is excellent.
It lays out corporate culture, modes of engaging with other employees, identifying tasks worth doing, and how the company actually functions. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and is scattered with jokes. Valve has, effectively, created a whimsical and useful document that embraces employees. Employers could learn from what Valve has done.
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Fixing Some of Gmail’s Design Problems
I’ve used Google Apps for years and absolutely despise the new UI changes. Jason Crawford has some suggestions about undoing some of the horror. If you use Gmail, and hate the changes as I do, his walkthrough will likely be of interest.
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When lobbying government, it helps if your high-level staff were well-placed government staffers and officials
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2012.4.24
It is important to note that the SDC approach did not attempt to solve its programmer personnel problem by reducing the number of programmers it required. On the contrary, the SDC software factory strategy (or as detractors dismissively referred to it, the “Mongolian Horde” approach to software development) probably demanded more programmers than was otherwise necessary. But the programmers that SDC was interested in were not the idiosyncratic “black artists” that most employers were desperately in search of. SDC still expected to hire and train large numbers of programmers, yet it hoped that these programmers would be much easier to identify and recruit. Most of its trainees had little or no experience with computers; in fact, many managers at SDC preferred it that way.
Nathan Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise
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2012.4.23
In one inquiry it was found that a successful team of computer specialists included an ex-farmer, a former tabulating machine operator, an ex-key punch operator, a girl who had done secretarial work, a musician and a graduate in mathematics. That last was considered the least competent.
Hans Albert Rhee, Office Automation in a Social Perspective, 1968
While not related strictly to technology, Forbes has a good breakdown of why Kobe beef that is sold outside of Japan is (effectively) never the famed Kobe beef that myths are written about. It’s a good, direct, blunt piece. The kind of journalism I think we can, and want to, all support.
It (re)raises important questions that implicate technology. Wireless technologies are sometimes called “4G” but this is only true under revised ITU regulations. Originally 4G technologies were meant to be transformative – they referred predominantly to LTE and beyond – but this was revised in 2010 to refer to “3G technologies substantially better in performance and capability than earlier 3G technologies.”
Similar legal issues arise around the definition of public domain: with different international bodies possessing different copyright terms, the variance could lead to jurisdictional disputes around what is(n’t) public domain. Such disputes may lead to the removal of content if it happens to be stored or accessible in nations with the more onerous copyright terms.
These are just two areas where ‘labelling’ is important. In all three cases – beef, wireless speeds, and copyright – it’s legal terms that enable variable terminology associated with common goods. For consumers in a globalized world, who are often unable to spend the time to track down the ‘truth’ behind the labels, such labels can be incredibly confusing. We can do better, and we should do better, and find a means of rectifying confusions that arise from domestic labelling.
Bruce Schneier, talking about the social and economic threats to the Internet’s infrastructure
Brian Snow, the (now) ex Technical Director of the NSA’s Information Assurance Directorate, speaking on Cybersecurity. Actual talk begins at 2:10.
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Grope & Pillage
Visualizing TSA costs and ‘benefits’ since 9/11
Excited Pixels 