Paul Oppenheim @pauloppenheim@xoxo.zone

Google and Facebook releasing all these (objectively amazing) #opensource #machinelearning tools is shrewd in so many levels: Signals engineering strength, buys developer good will, trains potential employees, calms people down about the "scary AI", diverts attention from the real issue of private data feeding the algos...

I use Ubuntu and a Google-free LineageOS phone, Firefox, Ublock Origin, Pi-Hole... I was gonna set up DNS-over-HTTPS, but now I find out that T-Mobile is selling my location data anyway. At some point it feels like privacy is just impossible https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-bounty-hunter-300-dollars-located-phone-microbilt-zumigo-tmobile

(thread, 1/3) I posted something about the US Patent Office's proposed new standards (which it seems they're already using), and how it's going to expand what Google can claim as property and limit what medical procedures are in the public domain.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/software-patents-poised-to-make-a-comeback-under-new-patent-office-rules/

an anthology of outage postmortems, taxonomized: https://github.com/danluu/post-mortems dan luu's explanatory blog post: http://danluu.com/postmortem-lessons/ "I love reading postmortems. They're educational... they tell an entertaining story."

(someone should make a plain text corpus from these links and use it to generate novels)

(via https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/four-short-links-10-january-2019)

Gardening and DIY are important not just because it gives people more independence and saves them money, but because it de-alienates them from their labor. There are few types of propaganda more potent than excitedly checking your peppers several times a day and thinking to yourself, "what if all work was this fulfilling"

I'm having trouble searching for this one, so I'll ask here: have any of you collected articles about the effect of certain types of language ("rock star", "hacker") in tech job descriptions, and the effects on hiring of traditionally marginalized groups? #hiring #LazyWeb

Five morning rituals to increase productivity:

1) Face North, thrice chant "inbox zero"
2) Face South, thrice chant "bullet journal"
3) Face East, thrice chant "pomodoro"
4) Face West, thrice chant "soylent"
5) Throw your head back to the sky and roar "PRODUCTIVITY"

I confused the first Simon & Garfunkel album (Wednesday Morning, 3 AM) with the first level of the arcade game Turtles in Time (Big Apple, 3 AM) 😩

gives new meaning to "security by obscurity" :P

https://fas.org/blogs/security/2018/12/widespread-blurring-of-satellite-images-reveals-secret-facilities/

you have been visited by
woof orb

Today I learned that USB-C MacBooks can sometimes send 20V to a 5V USB-C Yubikey, releasing the magic smoke from inside. 🔥