I called it normalization because then President Nixon was talking a lot about normalizing relations with China. I figured that if he could normalize relations, so could I.
Yet another tech market leader is going the Work From Home (WFH) route in California. This time, it's Salesforce.
The move comes a few days after they told their Seattle workforce to begin working from home. While the move is for now, just for the month of March, it does call into question what happens to the new SF HQ if the WFH approach continues. All that money sunk into what is now SF's tallest building. Perhaps it can be converted into to low income housing for the SF homeless.
They pluck your plums, your mum and dad
They eat them for their supper, too
They gobble all the fruit you had
And leave some bullshit note for you
But they were robbed blind in their day
Of damsons, prunes, and blackthorn sloes
Their breakfast treats were poached away
And justified with old-style prose
“Forgive us” both your parents moan
“They were delicious, sweet, and cold”
They wonder why I never phone
And from them my own kids withhold
I’m writing this on the train from Hasselt to Bruges in Belgium, travelling with my wife after speaking at the Open Belgium conference yesterday. My presentation on behalf of the co-op was on Open initiatives need open organizations. It’s Open Education week, so on Wednesday I presented on MoodleNet as part of an EDEN Webinar on open technologies.
We weren’t entirely sure whether our trip to Belgium would go ahead, what with all of the media coverage of the coronavirus. However, the scaremongering online and in newspapers bears no comparison to the reality on the ground when flying and visiting other countries. It’s all very well being cautious, but I don’t want to put my life on hold on the small chance that I’ll be infected. I can however, see the secret delight on my wife’s face when she (a closet germophobe) gets to disinfect all of the surfaces on trains, planes, etc. without me rolling my eyes.
A follow-up visit to the optician’s this week confirmed that the blepharitis that was affecting my right eye has pretty much gone. That means I’m back to wearing contact lenses, apart from on days that I get migraines.
For some reason I’ve had three migraines this week, which may or may not be connected to me giving up refined sugar and alcohol for Lent. I’m testing out that theory by suspending my commitment while travelling — meaning I can eat all of the waffles and chocolates, and quaff all of the Belgian beer I want. But for this weekend only, of course. I did lose almost half a stone this week, so I’m fully expecting to put all of that back on…
I wrote an article for Thought Shrapnel for the first time in three weeks, which kind of tumbled out of me. They’re the ones I enjoy writing the most: I’m struck by an idea, then I sit down to write and it all comes out in one go, with minimal editing. This one was (literally) full of questions.
Other times, it takes forever to write an article; I’ll have several ‘stubs’ on the go, and sometimes they turn into something and sometimes they don’t. Writing is a pretty mysterious process to me. People often ask me for advice, but I’m not sure I’ve got much other than ensuring you’re (a) reading a lot, and (b) writing a lot. In my experience, the more you read, the more you end up writing.
In addition to this week’s article, I provided the usual link roundup. This week it included everything from digital credentials through to survival, with a bit of panpsychism thrown in for good measure.
Given all of the coronavirus stuff, the reductions in overall travel, and the increase in the number of people working at least part of the time from home, I should probably write something about remote work.
Unrelated to the outbreak, my Moodle colleagues in Perth, Australia, had almost a month’s gap between moving out of their previous office and moving into the new one. As a result, they had a taste of what it’s like for us fully-remote workers. Holly, who leads the People & Culture team, wrote up their findings, with which I’d certainly concur.
Changes happen first slowly, and then quickly. That’s why, when I was a History teacher, I ensured students understood the long-term causes of events, and not just their short-term trigger. Remote work and home working is a long-term trend over the last decade (at least), and I think that the short-term trigger of events like the coronavirus will only serve to accelerate it.
Next week, I’ve got a couple of presentations to Moodle Partners and the Moodle User Association. They’re keen to see the progress we’ve made on MoodleNet. Other than that, I’ve got some onboarding to the work that We Are Open is doing with Greenpeace, and the usual chivvying, cajoling, and smiling-while-prodding-people that constitutes much of my working life these days.
EDITED: To include more on differentiation/integration. I had the terms all wrong. Go figure! And to add a link to a group for online facilitators considering how to support the rapid move to online meetings. Join here. I am going to share a series of blog posts over the next days about how to move … Continue reading Moving Online in Pandemic: Preamble
A new report crunched data about vulnerabilities in operating systems over the last 20 years and found that Android has had the most security vulnerabilities on a consistent annual basis for the last few years.
But, that shouldn’t freak you out.
The report was compiled by TheBestVPN using data from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a non-regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. TheBestVPN found that Android had the most vulnerabilities of any platform in 2019, 2017 and 2016. In 2018, Debian GNU/Linux claimed the top spot instead.
According to the data, Android has had a total of 2,563 vulnerabilities over its lifetime, with 414 total in 2019. However, the 414 vulnerabilities in 2019 are a decline for Android, which saw 843 in 2017 and 525 in 2016. Additionally, Debian Linux tops the list for most vulnerabilities in its lifetime at 3,067.
However, there are a few things to keep in mind here. The number of vulnerabilities on a platform doesn’t necessarily equate to it being unsafe. Open platforms like Android or Linux allow researchers to investigate and find vulnerabilities more easily than closed platforms. With Android, Google pushes out monthly security patches that fix many of these issues.
An Android spokesperson backed up that notion in a statement to Fast Company, saying:
“We’re committed to transparency and release public security bulletins monthly on issues that have been fixed in Android to harden the security of the ecosystem. We disagree with the notion that measuring the number of security issues fixed in an OS is any indication of the security of the platform. This is actually a result of the openness of the Android ecosystem working as intended.”
High number of vulnerabilities doesn’t mean it’s not safe
TheBestVPN listed Microsoft as the company with the most vulnerabilities, clocking in at 6,814 vulnerabilities since 1999. Considering how many people use Microsoft products, that certainly seems like a scary number. However, Microsoft also has a lower average vulnerability per product rating than many other companies at 12.9.
To compare, Apple has 4,512 total vulnerabilities since 1999 but a higher average of 37.9 vulnerabilities per product. Of course, there are several factors to consider here. Microsoft has more products than Apple, which would contribute to a lower overall average of vulnerabilities per product.
Google as a company also has a high average, with 4,572 total vulnerabilities since 1999 and an average of 54.4 vulnerabilities per product.
When you break things down by product, things get more interesting. For example, Mac OS X had a total of 2,212 vulnerabilities (Apple changed the branding to macOS in 2016, but it isn’t clear if TheBestVPN includes the new branding in this number). iOS, by comparison, had 1,655.
Along with Android topping the charts as the second most vulnerable OS, Google’s Chrome browser also had a high number of vulnerabilities at 1,858.
Ultimately, most platforms have a significant number of security vulnerabilities, and that number is growing as technology expands, new platforms are introduced and existing software becomes more complex. And while it can be concerning to see some platforms with high numbers of vulnerabilities, it’s worth remembering that open platforms like Android and Linux rely on communities to discover and disclose vulnerabilities and fix them. Closed platforms, on the other hand, may suffer from vulnerabilities for years without researchers discovering them because there are fewer people overall looking, and often it can be harder to perform research on those systems.
So apparently you people like stupid data visualizations.
Here's a graphic detailing one theory of why the German automotive industry hasn't single-handedly ensured the UK gets whatever it wants in every EU negotiation.
The New York Times Opinion: Coronavirus School Closings: Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late. “History teaches us that keeping children at home early in an outbreak can save lives.” By Howard Markel. “Dr. Markel studies the history of pandemics. … [He] is the director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and a professor of pediatrics.”
“Schools are community gathering places where large numbers of people are in proximity to one another and respiratory infections can easily spread among young people and adults alike. Shutting them down can be a key part of slowing the spread of easily transmissible viruses so that hospitals are not overrun with sick people, and it can help to buy time to allow for the development of antiviral medications, medical treatments or a vaccine.
But policymakers working to stop the spread of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 should remember a key part of this historically informed equation: We can’t wait until it’s too late.
Communities in the United States must shut down schools before, not after, the outbreak becomes widespread here. “Widespread” is admittedly an imprecise term, but I use it to describe a situation in which there are multiple cases throughout a town or state and more cases with each passing day.”
Smart lights come in all shapes and sizes nowadays, and the Filament series of bulbs from Philips helps bring smart lighting into the past. Since these old-school filament styled lights are so popular, it’s nice to see Philips co-opting them into its popular Hue-branded smart light family.
The company offers three shapes of these lights. There’s a longer Edison styled bulb, a traditional bulb and a rounder globe-shaped option. I was only able to test the standard size, but for me, they worked phenomenally.
Upon close inspection, these lights aren’t exactly the same as regular filament bulbs, but from a distance, when they’re on you can’t really tell. The lights can be dimmed, but they only output a golden-white light.
You’ll also need to make sure that if you’re screwing the lights into an exposed light socket, that it’s black. Since these lights have Bluetooth and other types of connectivity they have a larger base that sticks out of the light socket about an inch. If a shade covers the light this won’t be a problem, but if you plan on hanging it, this is worth noting.
Just like regular Philips Hue lights these support Bluetooth, and the company’s Wi-Fi hub. If you have eight or fewer lights then you can use Bluetooth, but if you have more than eight lights then you need to use the hub.
Overall, these lights are pretty great and if you can find a cool place for them, they’re a great addition to any room. They actually start as cheap as $30 CAD, which makes them a little bit cheaper than regular Hue lights. Amazon sells basic non-colour changing Hue lights for $39.99. This means that depending on what light you get, it offers decent value.
One thing I will mention is that I can’t say for certain if these lights will last as long as regular Philips Hue bulbs. Regular hue bulbs can last well over five years in my experience. That said, I’ve had no issues so far with the lights I reviewed.
Computer software is among the most complex constructs of human creativity. Wrestling that complexity under control has occupied the attention of many smart people. Talking about technology stacks is a shorthand way of thinking about this complexity. We’ve touched on the problem of complexity. The other problem we have to address is change.
There are three core concepts from the systems design world that are worth understanding and adapting to the organizational realm. They all relate to the design question of how best to carve things up into reasonably discrete pieces. The world of software is all thought stuff. There are few external constraints to shape your designs.
Systems designers look at three concepts when they are evaluating design choices about ways to carve a big system into more manageable pieces:
information hiding
coupling
cohesion
Information hiding is the systems design equivalent of “need to know.” How do you keep what you reveal about a module to a minimum? Put another way, what secrets are useful to keep.
Coupling and cohesion are complementary concepts. Cohesion is a measure of how closely the internal details of a module fit together. Do we have a team where everyone knows their role and responsibilities or do we have a random collection of people moving in the same general direction.
Coupling measures the degree of connectivity between modules. Cars traveling the same highway are more loosely coupled than the cars making up a commuter train.
If you’re interested in digging deeper, I’ve added pointers to some of the underlying literature where these notions were worked out. Think of it as a bit of information hiding on my part. If you’re comfortable with this level of explanation, you’re done. If not, you have the path to where to go next.
Once you have a clean mental model of a stack of modules formed by applying notions of information hiding, coupling, and cohesion you have a strategy to cope with complexity with less risk of finding yourself overwhelmed. If you can get a reasonable answer to your question at the layer you see, then you’re done. If not, you work your way down to the next layer. There are few questions that will require you to dig through multiple layers to find an answer. There are fewer still that require you to keep every layer in the stack in mind to understand.
Next time we’ll see how we might translate this strategy from technology to organizations.
This is a transcription of the introduction to Jim Newman’s ‘radical non-duality’ meeting in Vienna last month. Its message will never really make ‘sense’ to the individual, but I thought it one of the most articulate statements yet about what is and is not real, beyond the illusion of separation and the self. I think, tentatively (if our modern human society doesn’t completely collapse before this is broadly understood) that this explanation of the true nature of reality will ultimately be appreciated, at least by scientists and philosophers, as the most important discovery in human history, as ‘obvious’ in its own way as the discovery, despite all appearances, of heliocentricity. Thanks to Rita Newman for posting it. The photo is from Rita’s Instagram page.
The topic of the meeting is what you would call non-dualism. The difficulty in talking about it or trying to have a meeting around non-dualism is: it’s not a thing, it’s not an object. So we can’t really say what it is, but at the same time there’s nothing that’s not it. So when we’re talking about the absolute, when we are talking about freedom, when we’re talking about the unconditional – which would all be words that would be in some ways synonymous with non-dualism – what’s being suggested is that everything is that.
Whatever’s arising, whatever’s happening — this room, these words, sitting on the bench, looking here, is absolute; rooming, sitting on a bench, looking, hearing.
Absolute isn’t a word to understand. It’s pointing to or suggesting that listening, hearing, rooming isn’t understandable. It’s immediate and all-encompassing. There’s no distance or space or separation to absolute, to what’s happening, to listening, seeing, rooming. There’s no distance there. Whatever’s happening is everything, is absolute. There is never two.
This room is absolute, appearing as a room. This body is absolute appearing as a body. Thoughts and feelings, whatever is arising, is absolute freedom or unknowing appearing, the absolute be-ing.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that there’s an absolute somewhere that sort of generates this appearance and so there’s an absolute over there and this appearance here. Or that there’s an absolute that then hears. It is literally absolute hearing. Now what that means in concrete terms is: the experience that there’s someone hearing, the experience of the room as a knowable object in relation to a central experiencer, is illusory.
To have a meeting about non-dualism or about the absolute is really absurd, and it’s ridiculous because there’d be no reason to do that. What would the reason be to talk about something that first off can’t be talked about and secondly is already everything?
So the meeting is actually a response to that experience which I was suggesting just a minute ago, that the room is knowable. Or that I’m sitting in the room and I have an experience that is separate from everything else that’s going on. That’s what this meeting is in a sense about.
And the meeting has a very simple message: that experience is an illusion. I’m talking about the experience of a contracted energy in the body that ‘knows’ where and what this is, knows what’s happening. The suggestion is that’s illusory. Illusory in the sense that it’s not happening. That experience has certain claims. It says: “I’m real, I’m in the body, what’s happening is real. I know what it is. This is my life.” That arises out of the sense that what’s happening is knowable and real. But THIS is not knowable or real. The experience of ‘knowable’ or ’real’ is illusory. This appearance is never knowable or real. It’s never solid. It’s never a part of a story that’s attached to an individual. That is illusory.
The appearance is not an illusion. These hands aren’t illusory. This body isn’t illusory. The bodies aren’t illusory. The room isn’t illusory. It’s the absolute appearing, looking like, be-ing a body, a room, words. The only absolutely illusory bit, the only bit that’s truly not happening is that this is real and knowable and happening to me. The obvious question is then what is it like, or how do I find THIS that’s not illusory and not knowable?
And there’s no way to find what THIS is or what the suggestion is because there’s no way to separate from it. It’s impossible to find because it’s impossible to lose. There is no separation.
The experience that there’s a sense of loss or something missing or something wrong arises because this appears as something it’s not. It appears as though it’s separate. It appears as the experience, through ‘knowing’, that I have control over my life. Through knowing that I’m able to make decisions and find things that are good or bad for me.
That experience (= the person) is convinced that it’s necessary or responsible for finding the reality of what THIS is. That experience is exactly what hides the reality of what THIS is. That experience says the mystery has to be found somewhere else, and that hides the reality that there is only the mysterious. There is only unknowing.
That experience says “I need to, through my free will and choice, find the meaning and purpose to this apparent happening, this appearance”. That’s an illusion. There is no meaning and purpose, there’s nothing missing. THIS doesn’t need to be completed. It doesn’t need to become whole. It already is, and that includes the experience that it isn’t. That’s wholeness or the absolute appearing as the experience that something needs to happen for this to be okay. This is never okay or not okay. It’s simply the mystery appearing as THIS.
I've been preparing for the NICAR 2020 Data Journalism conference this week which has lead me into a flurry of activity across a plethora of different projects and plugins.
datasette-ics
NICAR publish their schedule as a CSV file. I couldn't resist loading it into a Datasette on Glitch, which inspired me to put together a plugin I've been wanting for ages: datasette-ics, a register_output_renderer() plugin that can produce a subscribable iCalendar file from an arbitrary SQL query.
It's based on datasette-atom and works in a similar way: you construct a query that outputs a required set of columns (event_name and event_dtstart as a minimum), then add the .ics extension to get back an iCalendar file.
You can optionally also include event_dtend, event_duration, event_description, event_uid and most importantly event_tz, which can contain a timezone string. Figuring out how to handle timezones was the fiddliest part of the project.
My work on Datasette Cloud is inspiring all kinds of interesting work on plugins. I released datasette-upload-csvs a while ago, but now that Datasette has official write support I've been upgrading the plugin to hopefully achieve its full potential.
In particular, I've been improving its usability. CSV files can be big - and if you're uploading 100MB of CSV it's not particularly reassuring if your browser just sits for a few minutes spinning on the status bar.
So I added two progress bars to the plugins. The first is a client-side progress bar that shows you the progress of the initial file upload. I used the XMLHttpRequest pattern (and the drag-and-drop recipe) from Joseph Zimmerman's useful article How To Make A Drag-and-Drop File Uploader With Vanilla JavaScript - fetch() doesn't reliably report upload progres just yet.
I'm using Starlette and asyncio so uploading large files doesn't tie up server resources in the same way that it would if I was using processes and threads.
The second progress bar relates to server-side processing of the file: churning through 100,000 rows of CSV data and inserting them into SQLite can take a while, and I wanted users to be able to see what was going on.
Here's an animation screenshot of how the interface looks now:
Implementing this was trickier. In the end I took advantage of the new dedicaed write thread made available by datasette.execute_write_fn() - since that thread has exclusive access to write to the database, I create a SQLite table called _csv_progress_ and write a new record to it every 10 rows. I use the number of bytes in the CSV file as the total and track how far through that file Python's CSV parser has got using file.tell().
SQLite ships with a decent implementation of full-text search. Datasette knows how to tell if a table has been configured for full-text search and adds a search box to the table page, documented here.
datasette-configure-fts is a new plugin that provides an interface for configuring search against existing SQLite tables. Under the hood it uses the sqlite-utils full-text search methods to configure the table and set up triggers to keep the index updated as data in the table changes.
It's pretty simple, but it means that users of Datasette Cloud can upload a potentially enormous CSV file and then click to set specific columns as searchable. It's a fun example of the kind of things that can be built with Datasette`s new write capabilities.
asgi-csrf
CSRF is one of my favourite web application security vulnerabilties - I first wrote about it on this blog back in 2005!
I was surprised to see that the Starlette/ASGI ecosystem doesn't yet have much in the way of CSRF prevention. The best option I could find to use the WTForms library with Starlette.
I don't need a full forms library for my purposes (at least not yet) but I needed CSRF protection for datasete-configure-fts, so I've started working on a small ASGI middleware library called asgi-csrf.
It's modelled on a subset of Django's robust CSRF prevention. The README warns people NOT to trust it yet - there are still some OWASP recommendations that it needs to apply (issue here) and I'm not yet ready to declare it robust and secure. It's a start though, and feels like exactly the kind of problem that ASGI middleware is meant to address.
Et aussi, comment faire assez peur, mais pas trop peur?
En cette période des premiers cas de COVID-19 dans le canton de Vaud, je retrouve cette question qui me préoccupe au quotidien dans la gestion de chats diabétiques: comment avoir “la bonne quantité de peur”?
La peur est un animal compliqué. Elle est utile, elle nous protège du danger. Elle nous maintient en alerte. Mais elle peut aussi nous paralyser, nous rendre incapable de penser ou de dormir.
Comment savoir où est la posture juste, entre ceux qui trouvent qu’il est ridicule d’annuler des événements et d’éviter de se serrer la main, et ceux qui dévalisent les magasins et sa calfeutrent chez eux sans oser mettre le nez dehors?
Comment avoir assez peur de l’hypoglycémie ou de l’acidocétose pour ne pas “prendre de risques inutiles” (voyez comme le serpent se mord déjà la queue), mais pas tellement peur qu’on vit dans un état de stress permanent, si on peut appeler ça vivre?
Le cerveau humain n’est pas conçu pour bien réagir face à des risques abstraits, non immédiats. La peur de tomber de l’arbre, du serpent ou de l’ours qui nous charge, ça on gère (assez) bien.
Mais comprendre qu’une mesure comme éviter de serrer la main ne va non seulement pas me garantir que je ne tomberai pas malade, mais à l’échelle de la population va simplement freiner la progression d’une propagation inéluctable du virus, qui demande au cerveau de faire de l’équilibrisme avec des notions de statistiques et de probabilités, on est très nuls.
Je trouve très difficile de faire face à ce genre d’attitude. Peut-être parce que j’ai toujours eu un “cerveau qui aime les probabilités”, et j’ai fait un peu de gestion du risque dans mes études, j’arrive pour ma part à “voir comment ça marche”. Je fais toujours un effort pour essayer de m’extraire de l’obsession de notre cerveau pour le cas particulier, l’histoire-anecdote qui nous aide à apprendre et comprendre le monde, mais qui nous dessert quand il faut penser en termes de risque.
Alors je fais ma petite cuisine de gestion du risque dans ma tête, alimentée par ce que je lis, ce qu’on me dit, à qui je fais plus ou moins confiance, et mes quelques notions générales scientifiques et médicales.
Ça vaut ce que ça vaut, évidemment.
J’essaie de ne plus serrer la main aux gens. Je ne fais plus la bise. Trois activités de groupe (grand groupe ou avec promiscuité) auxquelles j’allais participer cette semaine ont été annulées, et j’avoue que ça me soulage car je n’ai du coup pas besoin de décider si j’y vais ou pas. J’ai toujours de quoi soutenir un siège côté nourriture, donc pas de grand changement de ce côté-là, j’ai juste mis à jour mes stocks.
J’ai appris à me laver les mains correctement et acheté du savon liquide au lieu de mes pains de savon habituels. Je n’ai pas de gel désinfectant car quand je m’y suis intéressée, on était déjà en rupture de stock. Mais ça ne m’empêche pas de dormir. Je voyage en transports publics mais je me lave les mains quand j’arrive à destination. Je toussote un peu ces temps (ça date d’avant, je vous rassure), donc je prends le pli de tousser dans mon coude.
J’essaie de motiver les personnes autour de moi de se protéger, de nous protéger, avec moyennement de succès. Qu’est-ce qui leur dit que “leur gestion du risque” est moins bonne que “ma gestion du risque”?
Je pense qu’on va plus ou moins tous voir des gens mourir. J’espère me tromper. J’espère vraiment me tromper. On a toutes les chances de se trouver confinés à l’intérieur deux semaines à un moment où un autre. De voir nos hôpitaux ou nos infrastructures peiner.
Voilà ce que je crois. Alors évidemment, vu que je le crois, je pense que j’ai raison. Avec un peu de chance je dramatise et je me trompe.
After 7 years at Mozilla I am now looking for a new job. 70 of us were laid off in mid-January. I tweeted about it on the day of the layoff; my tweet was quoted in the tech press and some newspapers. For a few days, this got a lot of attention. Meanwhile, also on the day of the layoffs, we started a Slack channel for mutual aid, and a spreadsheet with our names, contact info, job titles, and links to resumes or LinkedIn profiles. From the tweet getting the attention, a lot of recruiters and hiring managers looked at our spreadsheet. And, awesomely, I found out later that when Wayfair laid off 500+ people, they copied our spreadsheet format for their own organizing! This, for me, put a healthy spin on the layoff. The solidarity we expressed was and is very cheering. The story was now about our teamwork and support for each other.
Big layoffs at @Mozilla today. Anyone want a badass senior release manager, experienced in F/LOSS? Bay Area/Remote. I'm so proud of my work at Mozilla, shipping Firefox to hundreds of millions of people around the world. https://t.co/WoNGqwmmxk <3
As I looked into open release manager positions it became clear that the closest role to it was Technical Program Manager, and you can think of release management as a specialty of being a TPM.
Initially I was keeping notes on what I applied for in the Mac Notes app, but that got clunky. So, I created a project board in GitHub to manage all the applications I was sending out. Each job listing became a GitHub issue, and the project board has columns for “Interested”, “Applied”, “Interviewing”, “On-site”, and “Nope”. As my applications move through these stages I simply move its card. Within the columns, it’s also useful to me to have colored labels for “Waiting for a response”, “Scheduling in progress”, “Interview scheduled” and “Study needed”. Each issue contains the job listing, a link to the listing, names of people who I’ve talked with and their contact info. And, every interview or email I have for that job gets its own comment on the issue.
Sharing that project board didn’t work as easily as I would like. I made a generic version of the repo, with blank cards and an explanation of a way to use it, but when you fork a public repo, you can’t then make it private. The project boards also don’t fork – they have to be copied separately.
It’s very helpful to have an organized system like this — it lets you apply to many jobs at once and keep all the details readily at hand.
I am actually enjoying the interviews and studying for them. To study, I read about the company, maybe looking up all the tech in the stack they use or reading about the general space they’re in, their competitors, etc. For someone like me who enjoys diving into endless Wikipedia ratholes this is a pleasure. I try to write out what I’ve learned, sometimes more than once to synthesize the information in different ways.
Another way to study and prepare is to write out my answers to various common questions. For a program or release manager role, this seems to be focused on describing situations you’ve been in and what you’ve done. For example, describe a technically complex project you worked on and how you managed it. Describe a time when you got negative feedback and how you responded. Tell about a time when you had to balance many different projects and what tools you used and describe the result. So, here I tried to reflect on things I’d done at Mozilla that I was particularly proud of and could remember well enough to describe! Writing them out in paragraphs and then as bullet points means that I won’t get stuck for answers to questions about my own experiences.
Another type of question that needs study is the “system design” problem. So, say you are starting out on a project to create a photo sharing app. WHAT DO YOU DO. Fun! At least I think so. There’s plenty of guides on thinking through problems of this sort, some general and some specific. Here’s one I really liked, Vasanth’s System Design Cheatsheet. You can take this general structure and work through some specific situations like a photo sharing app or a messaging app.
Anyway, I miss Mozilla, and working on Firefox, but I’m learning a lot and keeping my spirits up. I have plenty of interviews. Wherever I end up I’ll learn some new skills and advance in my career. Going into Mozilla, I wanted to work as part of a large collaboration alongside many other engineers. I definitely got that — I learned so much and am grateful for all the opportunities I had there and fabulous people I got to meet.
An AV receiver serves as the backbone of a great home theater and music system, providing a level of flexibility and upgradability that you won’t get from an all-in-one option like a soundbar. While sound quality is a huge consideration in picking an AV receiver, it’s equally important to find one that has the specific features you need and is easy to operate, which is why we offer multiple recommendations for different users.
I'm less inclined to call this a bibliography, which suggests some sense of completeness, and more like a set of starting points. I'm not even sure it's just a bibliography about ungrading, beginning as it does with Alfie Kohn and running the gamut to bell hooks's Teaching to Transgress. Though that said, Stommel writes, "Ungrading works best when it's part of a more holistic pedagogical practice–when we also rethink due dates, policies, syllabi, and assignments–when we ask students to do work that has intrinsic value and authentic audiences." See also Stommel's How to Ungrade: A Workshop.
With Britain having left the EU, this week saw the beginning of the negotiations about the future terms of UK-EU trade and other relationships. That anodyne sentence ought to anger leave voters as it is not what they were assured by the Vote Leave campaign which stated that “we will negotiate the terms of a new deal before we start any legal process to leave “ (p.11 of link). Given that we are constantly told that the government is enacting what people voted for it is perfectly reasonable to continue to record that what is happening is very far from that.
The talks begin in an atmosphere of deep distrust (£). Many believe that they will collapse with no deal being done, and some believe that this is actually the government’s plan. By contrast, the respected trade expert Sam Lowe of the Centre for European Reform makes the ‘relatively’ optimistic argument that a deal is still possible. But this, he says, is “largely due the UK’s lack of ambition”. In other words, a quite limited zero tariffs, zero quotas deal is conceivable although, as Lowe notes, even this will entail compromises to be made by both sides.
Here, too, we are a long way from what was promised. Not only was a deal supposed to be easy, but it was supposedly going to be a deep and special relationship, going well beyond a basic Free Trade Agreement. The flaws in that claim have been widely remarked upon, but the more fundamental – though related - issue is, indeed, that of the distrustful atmosphere, since it is this which now makes an extensive deal so unlikely and no deal at all quite possible.
The consequences of Brexiter negativity
There was no inevitability about that. I’m not by any means someone who imagines the EU to be perfect or faultless. But very little of this is down to them. The Referendum result was greeted with sadness and some bemusement, and subject to reasonable conditions as extensive a relationship as the UK wants has been on offer. The EU has been remarkably consistent about this, and has behaved very much as the UK would have wanted it to had it been another country leaving and the UK remaining a member. It has certainly been fairly rigid in its approach, but that’s an inevitable feature of being a multilateral rules-based entity. If it were not, Brexiters would be the first to denounce it for doing shabby back-room deals without regard for the consent of its members and the rules that bind them.
Rather, it has arisen because, from the beginning, Brexiters have reacted to their victory not with happiness but with anger, and this infected first Theresa May’s approach to Brexit and now Boris Johnson’s. Immediately, there was talk of not paying the divorce settlement, suspicion about the EU’s motives, disparaging comparisons with the USSR or Nazi Germany, and bellicose sabre-rattling.
Ridiculous expectations of what the UK could have as an ex-member were held even as the red lines ruling these out became harder and harder, and as it became clear these expectations would not be met the invariable reaction was to treat this as punishment. And when agreements were made, as at the end of phase 1 of the Article 50 talks, the UK immediately repudiated them as non-binding. This has developed to the current situation where radically different claims about what the Northern Ireland Protocol means threaten to derail the negotiations entirely. Here again we should recall that this only arises because of the false claim of the Leave campaign that Brexit would have no implications at all for the Irish border.
This is not ‘remainer negativity’. It is about, precisely, ‘Brexiter negativity’. Had they approached Brexit in a confident, positive, generous even joyful fashion then the outcome might have been very different. But instead the story has been one of hostility and dog-in-the-manger resentment, stoked up by a vitriolic media. Moreover, the onus was on Britain, as the initiator of the divorce, to set a magnanimous tone. Only at brief moments, such as May’s Florence speech, has there been such a tone, and that speech sounded more like a case for Britain joining the EU than for leaving. Johnson’s passive-aggressive references to ‘our European friends’ certainly lack any such magnanimity, whilst the childishly insulting antics of Farage and other Brexit Party MEPs in the European Parliament have undoubtedly done much damage to UK-EU relations. No such discourtesy has been evident from the EU.
Brexit beyond logic and reason
So we have now arrived at a point where out of sheer, dogmatic, remorseless antipathy to anything and everything remotely connected with the EU the UK is ripping up almost every form of co-operation, regardless of the costs. Examples include the Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System programme. This is a complicated story, involving two different aspects, the first being British companies’ rights to bid for certain sorts of contracts and the second being British access to its full military capabilities. In both these respects, what was offered to Britain, as a third country, was very limited. Still, negotiations were ongoing, and there was potential scope for an agreement, but in 2018 Theresa May pulled out of the talks and announced that the UK would develop its own system at massive expense, initially estimated to be £3-4 billion. This week, it emerged (£) that this system was delayed, over-budget, and mired in disputes.
These last three examples all show a hardening of the UK’s position under Johnson even compared with May, and, along with other cases, they flow from two things. On the one hand, an almost pathological aversion to even the most minimal and peripheral roles for the ECJ. On the other hand, an idea that anything sought in the non-trade arena that is outside of a ‘Canada-style’ relationship will give the EU a negotiating advantage in the trade arena by conceding that the UK wants more from Brexit than such a relationship.
This assumes that the EU would drop its Level Playing Field (LPF) conditions for a trade deal since, on non-trade issues, the UK demonstrably ‘only wanted to be like Canada’. But that is a non sequitur, as the LPF demand is connected to the size and proximity of the UK economy to the EU – and hence to the trading relationship – and will exist quite independently of the non-trade considerations.
So, on either of these rationales, all that is achieved is a quite spectacular British cutting off of its nose to spite its face. And this is where, certainly, there is a distinction to be drawn between the EU and the UK in their approaches to Brexit. For the EU has been both rigid and, yes, ruthless in pursuit of its interests. There’s nothing wrong with that, and nothing wrong with the UK doing the same. But the UK is doing things which can in no conceivable sense be in its interests. That isn’t the same as saying that Brexit is not in the national interest – I think that is so, but clearly the government and a large part of the population disagree – it is saying that Brexit can be pursued without this attempt to totally eviscerate even the most limited and benign forms of mutually advantageous administrative cooperation.
Of course, some will say, that is because the Conservative Party is just acting in its own interests. But there are few votes in leaving the EWRS, for example. Of course, others will say, but it’s all about their shadowy hedge fund backers. But there is little money to be made from leaving the UPC, for example. And neither the EWRS nor the UPC will do much to stoke up the culture war, and are certainly not needed to do so.
In the absence of any discernible logic it’s difficult, therefore, to overstate the total insanity with which Britain is now approaching Brexit. It goes way beyond anything that is remotely necessary to ‘respect the 2016 vote’ and way beyond what any but a tiny handful of voters ever imagined Brexit to mean. It is certainly way beyond even the hard Brexit that Theresa May embraced for all that, as noted, some of it roots back to that time.
A question of loyalty
In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the conflict between the government and civil servants is intensifying, as discussed in my previous post. As if in confirmation of that analysis, almost immediately after that post came the dramatic resignation of Sir Philip Rutnam. In the post I alluded to the conflicts in the Home Office and also said that we could expect further push back from the civil service against the position in which it has been put by Brexit. These conflicts certainly shouldn’t be complacently downplayed as just the familiar fights between ministers and civil servants that have long occurred.
It is also hard to resist the conclusion that the resignation, and its manner, were part of a much wider battle in which, in the words of Sir Mark Sedwill, Head of the Civil Service, in a statement the week before, the civil service is asserting its “enduring work to protect and promote the interests of our citizens, communities and country”. The wording is crucial here, since this work is posited as something additional to (and therefore different from) serving the government and, unlike the government, is “enduring”. That is a direct contrast with the convention articulated in the 1985 Armstrong Memorandum that “the Civil Service as such has no constitutional personality or responsibility separate from the duly constituted government of the day”.
Senior civil servants use language with great precision: Sedwill’s message was clear and intended, and it makes sense precisely in the context of a significant gap opening up between serving the government and serving the national interest. It’s a complicated distinction (for who is to say what is in the national interest, and why should civil servants have any particular role in defining it), but it does differ from simply disagreeing with policy.
Perhaps it is more akin to whistle-blowing in organizational contexts. Some may condemn particular instances of it, but most will agree that, in principle, there is a point at which individual conscience and professional values take precedence over organizational loyalties and legal undertakings. We don’t nowadays think much of the ethics of those German military officers who served the Nazi regime whilst not subscribing to it, because they treated their oath of loyalty as sacred (and, no, I’m not comparing the government to the Nazis, just making a point about the principle).
Not that the issue is necessarily, at least not yet, one of a complete divergence between politicians and civil servants. But the latter clearly have to be able to tell ministers if – as seems to have happened – the work needed for Brexit cannot be done in time. There’s no disloyalty in that, nor is there even necessarily any disagreement with Brexit. The problem arises if, as discussed in my previous post, stating such facts is taken to connote such disloyalty, and arise from a lack of true faith and belief. It is the importation of the Brexiter culture war into the corridors of power, bringing with it precisely the distrust and toxicity which has infected the negotiations with the EU, not to mention the entire country.
The power of events
So that brings us back to this first week of negotiations. As they ended, Michel Barnier spoke of the “serious divergences” between the two sides, with the expected issues being named – fishing, LPF, governance – but also security. In the past, the latter might not have figured in the list, and might have been seen as a potentially less contentious area, but the UK has decided not to open this chapter of the talks yet and the reasoning must presumably be that the government sees this as an area of leverage given Britain’s greater resources in this area, especially as regards intelligence capacity.
It is clearly far too early to predict how things are going to develop, but for what it is worth I am beginning to think that the government is going to become less bellicose and more flexible in its Brexit approach than has so far been the case. The reason for this is not so much Brexit itself but that, having started office in a very gung-ho manner, thinking that its parliamentary majority and disruptor ideology would enable it to sweep all before it, the experience of governing has already been chastening. The resignation of Sajid Javid, the flooding emergency, the court judgment about Heathrow expansion, the now growing row over Priti Patel, the Flybe collapse and, especially, the developing Coronavirus crisis have all played their part.
Suddenly, this feels like a beleaguered administration. The hubris I wrote about just last week is, already, looking just a little faded. In particular, Coronavirus has forced Johnson to bow to pressure to appear in public, forced ministers to appear on shows they had been boycotting, forced politicians and the public to recognize the need for experts and technocratic planning, and demonstrated the power of unexpected events to derail economic and political plans.
This analysis may be premature and flawed – over-reacting to what may be ephemeral news - but if it is right then it could lead to a limited, partial deal being struck in Brussels, under cover of the Coronavirus causing postponement of meetings (£), and this then used to justify some extension of the transition period under a different name in order to resolve outstanding issues. There are already a few speculations to that effect, as the links given show.
That’s not to say that this would be an especially desirable outcome. It might avert a new cliff edge next January, but would mean a continued slow burn of economic damage, deferred investment and so on. And that would further bolster the denialism about the adverse effects of Brexit, as these would be more gradual and more difficult to disentangle from other factors such as, indeed, the economic impact of the Coronavirus as well as all the other expected and unexpected things which will occur. Indeed, one reason to think that this scenario might have some appeal to the government is that it would be consistent with the attempt to lose all talk of Brexit and have it merge with the wider swirl of events.
A few years ago I was part of a group for whom Translink (then still under the Liberal governent) presented their plan for the new Phibbs Exchange in the District of North Vancouver. Although everyone agreed that any change to the current godforsaken, wind-swept emptiness of a bus loop was a good thing, we also identified three significant and obvious shortcomings: no public washrooms*; no Kiss ‘n’ Ride for passenger drop-off; and no Park and Ride lot for regular commuters.
If you were to take every study of how to increase transit use it all comes down to one thing: make it easy. Sometimes making it easy is about accepting that a commuter using transit for half of her trip is still better than having her drive all of the way downtown. Sometimes it’s just easier or more practical to drive to a hub and switch to the bus or Skytrain.
Recently I’ve been studying French at the Alliance Française de Vancouver. They’re located on Cambie, just north of 49th, so from the North Shore it makes a lot of sense to take the Seabus and Skytrain for classes.
Better still for my Saturday classes was the rather amazing discovery that I could park for free right next door to the Seabus terminal. On weekends the ICBC parking garage is empty, so it is made available, for free, to anyone who wants to park in Lower Lonsdale. And by “Free” I mean no tickets, no machines, no three hour limit, just park and walk away. Which of course makes the Seabus incredibly easy.
I don’t know how long this has been in place, or how difficult it was to arrange, or who pays for it, but kudos for an incredibly simple solution to encouraging people to get out of cars (at least partly) and onto the transit system.
* Actually I’m positive that they explained that the design included space for a coffee shop, and that transit users could use their toilets!
Over the past few months, we’ve raisedconcerns about the Internet Society’s plan to sell the non-profit Public Interest Registry (PIR) to Ethos Capital. Given the important role of dot org in providing a platform for free and open speech for non-profits around the world, we believe this deal deserves close scrutiny.
In our last post on this issue, we urged ICANN to take a closer look at the dot org sale. And we called on Ethos and the Internet Society to move beyond promises of accountability by posting a clear stewardship charter for public comment. As we said in our last post:
One can imagine a charter that provides the council with broad scope, meaningful independence, and practical authority to ensure PIR continues to serve the public benefit. One that guarantees Ethos and PIR will keep their promises regarding price increases, and steer any additional revenue from higher prices back into the dot org ecosystem. One that enshrines quality service and strong rights safeguards for all dot orgs. And one that helps ensure these protections are durable, accounting for the possibility of a future resale.
These new proposals get a number of things right, but they also leave us with some open questions.
What do they get right? First, the proposed charter gives the stewardship council the veto power over any changes that PIR might want to make to the freedom of expression and personal data rules governing dot org domains. These are two of the most critical issues that we’d urged Ethos and ISOC to get specific about. Second, the proposed Public Interest Commitment provides ICANN with forward-looking oversight over dot org. It also codifies both the existence of the stewardship council and a price cap for dot org domains. We’d suggested a modification to the contract between PIR and ICANN in one of our posts. It was encouraging to see this suggestion taken on board.
Yet questions remain about whether the proposals will truly provide the level of accountability the dot org community deserves.
The biggest question: with PIR having the right to make the initial appointments and to veto future members, will the stewardship council really be independent? The fact that the council alone can nominate future members provides some level of independence, but that independence could be compromised by the fact that PIR will make all the initial nominations and board appointment veto authority. While it makes sense for PIR to have a significant role, the veto power should be cabined in some way. For example, the charter might call for the stewardship council to propose a larger slate of candidates and give the PIR board optional veto, down the number of positions to fill, should it so choose. And, to address the first challenge, maybe a long standing and trusted international non profit could nominate the initial council instead of PIR?
There is also a question about whether the council will have enough power to truly provide oversight of dot org freedom of expression and personal data policies. The charter requires that council vetoes of PIR freedom of expression and data policy changes require a supermajority — five out of seven members. Why not make it a simple majority?
Mozilla will continue to keep an eye on the sale as this unfolds, with a particular eye to ensuring that, if the deal goes ahead, the stewardship council has the independence and authority needed to protect the dot org community.
Micro-USB cables aren’t the charging cables we deserve: They charge more slowly than Lightning and USB-C, and they’re nearly impossible to plug in right-side up on the first try. But for many devices—from Bluetooth speakers to baby monitors—they’re the charging cables we need. After spending 13 hours testing 11 models, we think the best Micro-USB cable for most people is the Anker PowerLine Micro-USB (3ft) cable.
I’m home and Sheila’s home. Omni asked, earlier this week, that employees not come into the office unless necessary for a task, and I don’t miss jamming myself into the overcrowded and sneezy bus route 40 three days a week.
We’ve stocked-up on food and supplies, at least for a while. I do leave the house to go running, but I figure that’s safe.
This is something I might add to my RSS feed too. Because, just like in this posting, I always post my own remarks above the thing I am bookmarking, liking or replying to, it is sometimes confusing to readers what I am referring to in those first sentences of a post.
I do wonder how it looks in my case though, as I usually don’t add titles to bookmarks, likes and replies, and this little snippet of code adds the post type to that non-existent title. Main question is would it indeed help to reduce confusement? Added to the list of site-tweaks to do.
....But for people who subscribe (either directly or indirectly) to everything I post, I imagine it must be a little frustrating to sometimes be unable to identify the type of a post before clicking-through. So I’ve added the following code....
If you want to use electronic devices in a different country, you’re probably going to need a travel plug adapter. After spending more than 30 hours researching and testing 14 options, we found the Epicka Universal Travel Adapter to be the best one. It fits four types of outlets, and it has more USB ports than any of its competitors, so it can can charge more devices at higher speeds.
As a long time remote worker, I've watched things change, for the better. Between my local co-working membership and my Regus membership, I'm rarely trapped in the "coffee shop only" mode of finding a place to work. Having those options means I can get out of the house and work in a communal environment, or book a day office if I need some privacy.
Remote working, long a male dominated sector of the workplace world has seen changes. Back in the 00's I pioneered having women working for me from their homes on a consistent basis. One described working for Comunicano as her dream job as it gave her flexibility around her two young daughters. Over time we hired more and more people to work remotely, and some in my home. Eventually, all but one person was "remote" and that person was more of an office admin keeping track of the 20-30 people in the agency at any one time, and more importantly, looking after the business affairs as I was on the road as much as 285 days one year.
Now, as Zapier points out, working remote for women is much more commonplace, and just as we saw in the agency, more businesses are realizing how much more work they can get out of remote working women. Today, on my team at SkySwitch where I serve as the company's virtual CMO, two of my team now work from home two days a week, and have a flexible afternoon schedule that has them in the office in the morning and then going WFH from 4-6 pm to avoid traffic. In three months of working that way, productivity has been better and quality of work has only gotten better.
While some businesses resist, or just can't be virtual, having worked remotely, some or all of the time since my days in pro-sports, remote work, with the right players, can really be good for a business.
Remote Work Boosts Growth-in the hay day of Comunicano we were growing in staff and revenue, and remote work led to it as my overhead was people, not real estate. We paid better and got better.
The Environment Angle- that angle has been around forever. When we worked with SightSpeed back in the 00's the whole idea of less travel cost and less driving to and from the office was one we regularly pitched to media.
Employee Productivity-without question. We had soccer moms working while watching their kids play soccer. We had people working from beachfronts on tablets and laptops. There were people working while driving between homes in different states on mobile phones and tablets. We never saw anyone being unproductive. Clients we're happier with our approach of "always" on as we were in all 4 time zones and able to manage their work.
Freelancers-not exactly. A lot of "freelancers" only work for one company. This makes them employees. A good tax accountant (CPA) for your business will help keep you on the right path. The key is being able to have the freelancers demonstrate they have income from other sources.
Working from Where-I've worked in my houses, apartments, in WeWorks, Regus suites, Airline lounge conference rooms, hotel suites and of course cafes, wine bars and restaurants all over the world but WFH (working from home) is the easiest and always the most relaxing. Back in 1976 when I was working for the Philadelphia Flyers I had a very big and expensive answering device from Bell of Pennsylvania that I could remotely access in my bedroom so I could be attending high school hockey games and calling in the scores from others that were reported to me nightly. This continued for 14 years where I could be anywhere, and still get the games results into the newspapers. As early as 1974 (when I was 14) I was working in the Press Box of the Philadelphia Wings. Reporters worked from there covering the games. Fax machines were their way of "sending" in their stories or they "dictated" to the sports desk. Those were early examples of remote working that gave me an easy path into working that way the rest of my life.
Happiness-people who work remotely seem happier. They can be more relaxed in attire, there's no stress of a daily commute and there's less need to "look good" for others. It also gives people more of a voice and the feeling of being heard.
Flexible Work Schedule-Totally. But it's more than just flexible hours, it's the ability to work around your life. For married people with school age kids, being able to work around drop off and pick up hours means a lot to a parent. We scheduled conference calls around those hours and rarely did team members miss client calls. With UberConference in use, and before that GoToMeeting, we recorded the calls and people "caught up" by reviewing the call we uploaded to BaseCamp.
No Commuting- this is another point we made with SightSpeed way back when. But it goes farther. When people can WFH they start their day when they would have driven in to the office and work during what would have been the ride home. That earlier start allows for matters to get handled often before others are working in the office.
Collaboration, Communication and Loneliness-while tools for collaboration have improved thanks to Slack mostly, which has replaced Skype, as the virtual watercooler and bulletin board. With app integrations that we never had with Skype, Slack has become the center of the "virtual" office. Collaboration tools are getting better, but still are not there. While lots of improvements have been made with conferencing apps, the issues are still remain.
More Money By Working Remotely - without question the cost of working from home saves businesses money, but also saves worker money as well. No driving, means no gas bill. You don't have to wear business clothing so you save money on dry cleaning bills. Eating at home is cheaper than eating out.
As a proponent for remote work, and as a practitioner of it from an era that didn't have the category until today, the ability to grow the business, and to have your people grow is all about how you approach things. Remote work works.
The answer to the question is, "OER made sense as a means of sharing the effort of creating learning resources, dividing work between partners with different skills and viewpoints." But more interesting to me was this comment at the end: "I would stress that David Wiley’s ALMS framework is as important as his 5Rs (“Poor Technical Choices Make Open Content Less Open“) and highlight the interoperability of ePub in this context." The ALMS Framework suggests that we ask about the following four items: access to editing tools, level of expertise required, is it meaningful editable, and is it self-sourced (as opposed to requiring processing into a final consumer version).
“We’ll never probably be the same. People who were reticent to work remotely will find that they really thrive that way. Managers who didn’t think they could manage teams that were remote will have a different perspective. I do think we won’t go back.”
Jennifer Christie, Twitter’s head of human resources, in BuzzFeed News
It has been a challenging time around the world—from how we live our daily lives to how we keep our kids safe in schools and our family members healthy in assisted living communities and hospitals.
And then there’s how we work. Seattle (and all of King County in Washington State) is encouraging companies to have their employees work from home. Given that Automattic is already distributed, we’re receiving requests from the press and other companies about how to navigate what is turning into a massive global work-from-home experiment.
It’s not ideal on any level. Even at a remote-friendly company like Automattic, we rely on in-person team meetups and conferences to strengthen our connections and get work done. For now, we’ve canceled all work-related travel.
But as the BuzzFeed story notes, this might also offer an opportunity for many companies to finally build a culture that allows long-overdue work flexibility. Millions of people will get the chance to experience days without long commutes, or the harsh inflexibility of not being able to stay close to home when a family member is sick.
Or even when you’re sick yourself. How many people in America go into an office even when they’re feeling under the weather, because of pressure from the company or managers, or because their sick days come out of their vacation days? This might be a chance for a great reset in terms of how we work.
For those asking for tips, my Distributed Podcast has a wealth of advice and stories about how we operate. But here are four good ones to start with:
Operate as if everyone works from different time zones, because one day they might. This means more communication, likely written, that is accessible to people even if they can’t attend a specific meeting or be in a specific place. If you can minimize the number of real-time meetings, do so. Embrace asynchronous communication.
If you are hosting a real-time meeting, improve the audio (and video) quality. Don’t use conference call lines with grainy phone audio. Sign up for Zoom, which allows for crystal clear audio calls or videoconference chats. Make video participation optional unless it’s planned well in advance. Record these calls so folks who can’t attend can catch up on what they missed. Everyone must use good headphones with mics (I love Sennheiser) to minimize external noise. Krisp.ai is also cool. Need a quiet place without distractions? Try a parked car or a closet.
We use our own WordPress blogs, called P2, instead of email as our central hub of communication so people throughout the company can access every team’s long-form notes, documents, and priorities. We’re bloggers by heart, so we blog a lot. There are other similar tools, like Basecamp. Make it your new office.
We also use Slack for real-time chat, social connection, and urgent conversations. Check out Matrix for an open-source, distributed version. Use it to chat and connect with your colleagues, but don’t let it replace your long-form planning notes in No. 3. Also create an etiquette that doesn’t force people to become chained to it all day and all night. When you ask a question in DM, do not expect that person to respond immediately, and ask your question upfront. Never write “got a sec?” and let it hang there.
The truth is, there are a thousand ways to do remote work, but it starts with committing to it at all levels of the company. If you assume positive intent and place trust in your coworkers and employees—knowing that if they do great work in an office they can do great work anywhere—then you will all succeed.
A “culture of concealment”, cost cutting and “grossly insufficient” oversight led to two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircraft that claimed 346 lives, a congressional report has concluded.
The preliminary findings, issued by Democrats on the House transportation committee, conclude that Boeing “jeopardized the safety of the flying public” in its attempts to get the Max approved by regulators.
In a blistering 13-page report the committee found Boeing’s Max design “was marred by technical design failures, lack of transparency with both regulators and customers”.
According to the report, in 2011 the manufacturer was “under tremendous financial pressure” to compete with its rival Airbus’s A320neo aircraft. The speediest solution was to update its 737 fleet rather than develop a new plane.
As a result of those pressures, and in order to get the Max certified as quickly as possible, the manufacturer misled and withheld information from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and even “the very existence” of the MCAS anti-stall software system, blamed for the crashes, from pilots.
The report, based on internal documents, whistleblower testimony and public hearings, faults the FAA, too. The congressional committee cited conflicts of interest among Boeing employees who were authorized to perform certification work on behalf of the FAA and said Boeing’s influence over the FAA’s oversight had resulted in FAA management “rejecting safety concerns raised by the agency’s own technical experts at the behest of Boeing”.
The regulator’s oversight was “grossly insufficient” and it “failed in its duty” to both uncover critical problems and make sure Boeing fixed them, the committee found. “The combination of these problems doomed the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights,” the report concluded.
In one example of regulatory failure the committee reported that following the crash of a Lion Air Max, the FAA learned that Boeing had failed to fix an inoperable alert on an estimated 80% of the 737 Max fleet “and decided not to inform the FAA or its customers about the non-functioning alert for more than 14 months, which should have raised concerns about Boeing’s transparency with the FAA”.
The report says its findings “paint a disturbing picture of Boeing’s development and production of the 737 Max and the FAA’s ability to provide appropriate oversight of Boeing’s 737 Max program. These issues must be addressed by both Boeing and the FAA in order to correct poor certification practices that have emerged, faulty analytical assumptions that have surfaced, notably insufficient transparency by Boeing, and inadequate oversight of Boeing by the FAA”.
Boeing was forced to ground its entire fleet of Max airliners after the crashes of the Lion Air Max in 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines jet in 2019.
Lawmakers are now considering a range of options to combat what critics describe as failed safety culture at the company.
In a statement Boeing said: “Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the families that lost loved ones in these accidents. We have cooperated extensively for the past year with the committee’s investigation. We will review this preliminary report.”
With the 2020 outbreak of the Coronavirus, many companies are implementing work-from-home policies. If you are a team that is suddenly converted from being co-located to distributed, here are some tips on staying productive.
Team Charter
First, this might be a great time to review the team charter.
When the team becomes distributed, it can be easy to lose sight of the vision and mission of the team. Take the time to schedule a team charter review session. Is the team vision or mission old and out of date?
Now is a great time to adjust the team vision and/or mission. If you don't have a team charter, now is also a great time to establish one. The Modern Agile website has a great chartering cheat sheet.
Working Agreements
What about your working agreements? Do you have any? Teams that have working agreements are more productive, especially when the team is distributed.
Establishing working agreements among the team allows everyone to have a say in how the team operates.
Working agreements can help the team focus now that everyone is remote. For example, you can work on improving your team meetings. Consider agreeing to be more CLEAR in your meetings.
Working agreements can establish core-hours that the team agrees to work. This is important to a newly-distributed team where team members may never have experienced working from home. If you have never worked from home you may be tempted to focus on things other than work such as Facebook, Netflix, Fortnite, etc.
The team can also agree on how they will work: remote pairing, remote mobbing, or collaboration via an instant messaging platform. The team might decide to move the daily standup/scrum to an earlier time since no one has to commute.
Equipment
Working remotely works better if you invest in proper equipment.
If you are working remotely for just a day a week, using the built-in microphone and camera of your laptop is sufficient. And a few hours in a non-ergonomic chair at the local coffee shop or kitchen table is tolerable.
If you suddenly find yourself working from home every day you should invest in your equipment. Hopefully, companies will cover these expenses. Improving your equipment will ensure you have a safe environment that maximizes your productivity.
Desk/Chair
Consider replacing your desk with one that can raise/lower. Standing is one of the best things you can do while you are working as discussed in a previous post. An example of a good desk can be found at Costco. For sitting, make sure you have a good office chair. A good chair has adjustable height, arms, and lumbar support.
Internet Connection
Having a fast internet connection is crucial. Working remotely will require you to use video collaboration tools that use a lot of bandwidth. This is why working from a local coffee shop is not always recommended. Besides the noise, you are using public wifi that is probably not very fast. There is nothing more frustrating than having someone's audio or video randomly drop out.
Microphone
If you are pairing or mobbing remotely, this is a must so that everyone can understand you clearly. You need a USB microphone.
Most good microphones only pick up sounds directly in front of the microphone (a "cardioid pattern"), reducing typing noises, household noises, and the sound of passing cars.
If you are using headphones or earphones, be sure they have a built-in microphone. The headphone or earphone microphone will sound much better than the built-in laptop microphone.
Speakers
Built-in laptop speakers, headphones, or earphones generally work fine for a short time, but it is hard to wear headphones or earphones all day. Since you are going to be working remotely all week, you should invest in good speakers.
One needn't purchase audiophile-quality speakers or studio monitors; you will be primarily listening to human voices rather than cinematic soundtracks. Subwoofers are optional too.
A relatively inexpensive set of desktop speakers will be more than sufficient.
The Jabra Speak is nice because it can also be used as the speaker if you are home.
If you invest in speakers your ears will thank you.
External Monitor
Another piece of equipment to consider is an external monitor. Most of us have a dual monitor setup at our company desk. Going from multiple large monitors to just your laptop screen can be difficult and frustrating.
You can obtain a large external monitor for a very reasonable price these days. Adding an external monitor will help avoid eye strain and neck strain from your new work environment, especially if you raise the external monitor to eye level.
Just make sure that your monitor connector is compatible with your laptop. More recent Mac Book Pro computers have only USB-C connectors, in which case you may need USB-C to HDMI connectors.
Remote Pairing/Mobbing
You can do pair-programming or mob programming with your newly distributed team. Industrial Logic has coaches all over the country and has been doing remote pairing and mobbing for years with great success.
When pairing or mobbing remotely it is important to have both an audio and video presence. You want to maximize the collaboration as much as possible.
Remote pairing or mobbing works best if everyone is distributed. Having only some team members remote is not recommended. The remote teammates may miss out on side conversations, whiteboard discussions, etc. So if some members of the team are not remote, they should join as if they are remote so that everyone has the same experience.
If you were already pair or mob programming, you can continue to use the same techniques. The Pomodoro, ping-pong, driver-navigator all still apply and work well. If you are mob programming, consider a timer tool such as Mobster.
You can use a desktop sharing tool to work on one machine. Currently, Zoom works best for us. If you are using Visual Studio or VS Code, Live Share is a great option. If each person has a very unique setup, consider push-pull. Work on very small commits. Push frequently and switch the driver-navigator after each push.
Guidance
All of this may seem overwhelming. Industrial Logic is here to help. Our coaches have significant experience coaching and participating with distributed teams. Contact us if you would like some assistance.
DmitryOpines on Twitter.
Last time out we talked about the idea of a stack as a simple metaphor for organizing and thinking about underlying complexity in technology or organizations. I thought it would be worth taking a look at some of the origins of fighting complexity in the technology realm that brought us here.
The topic of the meeting is what you would call non-dualism. The difficulty in talking about it or trying to have a meeting around non-dualism is: it’s not a thing, it’s not an object. So we can’t really say what it is, but at the same time there’s nothing that’s not it. So when we’re talking about the absolute, when we are talking about freedom, when we’re talking about the unconditional – which would all be words that would be in some ways synonymous with non-dualism – what’s being suggested is that everything is that.
The Guardian.
