Category: Responses

Liked Learn In Public (swyx.io | Learn In Public)

People notice genuine learners. They’ll want to help you. Don’t tell them, but they just became your mentors. This is very important: Pick up what they put down. Think of them as offering up quests for you to complete. When they say “Anyone willing to help with __ __?” you’re that kid in the first row with your hand already raised. These are senior engineers, some of the most in-demand people in tech. They’ll spend time with you, 1 on 1, if you help them out (p.s. and there’s always something they want help on). You can’t pay for this stuff. They’ll teach you for free. Most people don’t see what’s right in front of them. But not you.

Another interesting take on why to blog.
Who is responsible when no one is in charge? This is the question that I am currently grappling with as we work with our insurance company to work with a building company who then subcontract out various jobs. Even though we are told we are a priority customer and that they are sorry for the hassle – is that what they say to everyone – I cannot think of one situation that has gone to some sort of plan.

The problem is, who do you speak to? Clearly the phone operators are just doing there job, while the various trades are doing theirs. (Note: we have had two different trades turn up randomly on the wrong day) Do we speak with the project manager in charge? Probably, if you can get a hold of them and they are able to actually bring your job up on the computer?

Although the ‘rise of the robots’ may resolve some of this, I think it comes back to care amd customer service. It really has me considering what cover we get and how much we pay. Maybe sometimes you pay for what you get?

I am currently read (or listening to be correct) to Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway. What interests me is the idea of the future. There are many aspects of the novel that seem far beyond today, yet at the same time there is an uncanny plausibility that haunts the whole time.

I think this experience is no different to other novels set in the future as well as the fast:

The books challenge us how we live without telling us how to live.

I have lost count the amount of times that the art of making a sandwich has been used as the ultimate example of human algorithms. Although I agree it can be useful, I do not think that it provides the nuance for appreciating machine learning. For me this comes in the form of music.

I love listening to music with my daughters. One minute it might be a Disney classic, the next some pop song off the radio. What interests me is when I introduce something new to see the response. Each decision influences the next choice. This rather than sandwiches captures the challenges and complexities associated with ‘algorithms’ and ‘machine learning’.

Liked The Open Web by Nate CullNate Cull (Mastodon)

Somewhere between 2000 and 2019 the IT industry seamlessly transitioned from

“we provide precision engineering tools, your data is yours, you should not need to trust us or anyone, mathematics is your guarantee, crypto 4 ever. ”

to

“give us your data. all of it. give. no secrets. hold nothing back. in return we will… train AIs on it.. and provide unspecified ‘services’… for someone, who may be you… that can change at any time… and we are funded by, uh. Look, a unicorn!”

via Daniel Goldsmith
Bookmarked Lana Del Rey’s Recent “Fan Tracks” Reflect Some of Her Strongest Songwriting Yet (Pitchfork)

“Mariners Apartment Complex,” “Venice Bitch,” and “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but i have it” continue Lana’s lyrical hot streak. … She continues to tease the tropes that have so often been used to pigeonhole her, including femme-fatale melodrama, sadness as a form of rebellion, kitschy sexuality, and her beloved Americana imagery, all prim debutantes in pastels.

I am intrigued as to what Lana Del Rey’s album will be like. I have really enjoyed what Jack Antonoff has done with St Vincent and Lorde.
Bookmarked 27 types of blog posts by Frank Meeuwsen

The list below is far from exhaustive and exclusive. That is the beauty at the same time. Nothing has to be done, everything is possible. Take advantage of this list and of course fill in the comments.

This post from Frank Meeuwsen is a useful list of blogging ‘posts’ or ideas. It is interesting to read this against Edublogs ideas for educators and students. I still think that there is a level above defining the many faces of blogging.
Liked Spilt milk by an author

Accidents will happen. And occasionally, maybe they should. Accidents are not welcome in most schools. Children are usually told to be more careful and ‘not to do it again’ when mishaps occur. Yet accidents can often be just as important in our education as learning knowledge and skills. What’s more, they probably prepare students for a world of work where mistakes may not necessarily be a bad thing.

Bookmarked Facebook’s ’10 Year Challenge’ Is Just a Harmless Meme—Right? by an author (WIRED)

Opinion: The 2009 vs. 2019 profile picture trend may or may not have been a data collection ruse to train its facial recognition algorithm. But we can’t afford to blithely play along.

Kate O’Neill reports on the 10 year meme and wonders about the intent behind it. She suggests that we need to recognise that:

Humans are the richest data sources for most of the technology emerging in the world.

Ian O’Byrne thinks there are two possibilities on this debate:

One, Facebook (and other companies) is getting us to share/label photos for learning possibilities. I think this could definitely be used to help the machines learn.

Second, Facebook (and other companies) are getting us to play “remember when” as user attitudes and trust are making us question the business/organization. They’re hoping to have users emote and connect to strengthen bonds as they’re fraying.

Replied to Live the Mission – Will Richardson (Will Richardson)

Just having a clear mission isn’t enough; that mission must drive the work in every part of the school down to the support staff, maintenance crew, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers.

We often talk about ‘moonshots’ but the problem is that this was a mission that captured a nation. Is it possible to have such a mission at a school level that also captures all the external pressures that exist within the system?
I got caught in another discussion about ‘lookup tables‘ today. There are some people I work with who get really caught up with what they are and how they work. Another colleague pointed out to me afterwards that most applications have lookup tables it is just that our application actually allows users to easily edit the various tables.

This had me wondering if a way of thinking about ‘lookup tables’ is the collection of ideas and values that we reference each and every day? As with different applications, maybe there are those whose foundations are more visible and obvious that others? As Ben Werdmuller suggests,

We’ve all got red lines. They’re ours alone to draw.

Bookmarked Why Reputation? by an author (Hapgood)

I have a reputation, which is the trace of past events and current relationships in a social system. But that reputation isn’t really separate from the techniques others use to decode and utilize my reputation for decision-making.

This relationship is synergistic.

Responding to Xiao Mina’s reflection on dissensus, Mike Caulfield discusses the challenge of reputation.
Replied to Windchimes by an author

This is a generative piece I built just before my daughter was born. I envisioned something that would soothe a baby, like a mobile but with sound. Like wind chimes but smoother. As it turns out, once she was born I forgot about most everything, including this project. Much later I rediscovered it and found it soothing myself!

Chris, this reminds me of Brian Eno’s iOS app Bloom.
Filed an Issue dshanske/parse-this (GitHub)

Parse This Parsing Library for WordPress- Can Act as a Standalone Plugin – dshanske/parse-this

For the last week or so I have been having issues with parsing sites. Where I was getting some information in the past, I am not getting very little.

For example:

https://wiobyrne.com/the-case-for-anonymity-online/ produces
{“type”:”entry”,”syndication”:”https:\/\/medium.com\/@wiobyrne\/how-to-respond-to-trolling-behaviors-c27d269330e4″,”post-type”:”note”}

Organizational Agility
{“type”:”feed”,”uid”:”https:\/\/dculberh.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/13\/organizational-agility\/#page”}

Weeknote 02/2019


{“category”:[“weeknotes”,”weeknote”,”work”],”type”:”entry”,”post-type”:”note”}

I have this strange feeling that it is not Parse This that is the problem, but it is where I am noticing the issue.

Liked The case for anonymity online by an author

Morio & Buchholz (2009) separated this into three levels (visual anonymity, disassociation with real and online identities, and lack of identifiability.

  • Visual anonymity – When individuals communicate without seeing each other. A good example of that is using text-based chatting programs over the Internet. People’s physical appearances are obscured in that scenario.
  • Dissociation of real and online identities – A single individual can create more than one online identity using more than one screen name & avatars. Individuals then have the ability to become more than one person with dissimilar personalities. They also have the ability to adopt new genders & races.
  • Lack of identifiability – This is the level closest to true anonymity online. When individuals cannot be identified, their behaviors are not distinguishable from others. An example would be an online forum in which people can post anonymous comments without attaching usernames to that post.
Liked The Mapping of Massacres (The New Yorker)

Place names can be damning evidence of colonial history. On a map of Australia, you’ll see Murderers Flat, Massacre Inlet, Haunted Creek, and Slaughterhouse Gully.

Colonial Frontier Massacres in Eastern Australia 1788-1872 – A project by Lyndall Ryan and her team at Newcastle University are digitally documenting the frontier massacres that occurred in the settlement of Australia. There have been calls to have these conflicts recognised in the War Memorial in Canberra as an example of frontier warfare. The Guardian have used this dataset to create an interactive map as a way of telling stories long silenced. For a history of maps themselves, Clive Thompson’s has written a post for the Smithsonian.
Bookmarked Disruption for Thee, But Not for Me by an author (Locus Mag)

And Uber and Lyft’s apps are encrypted on your phone, so to reverse-engineer them, you’d have to decrypt them (probably by capturing an image of their decrypted code while it was running in a virtual phone simulated on a desktop computer). Decrypting an app without permission is “bypassing an effective means of access control” for a copyrighted work (the app is made up of copyrighted code).

Uber and Lyft can use DMCA 1201 to stop you from figuring out how to use them to locate co-op drivers, and they can use the CFAA to stop you from flipping your booking from Uber to Meta-Uber.

This reminds me of the conversation between Douglas Rushkoff and Nathan Schneider on platform cooperatives.