Brian Beach has moved @bwbeach@qoto.org

Concerning CrowdStrike:

We are now at t+26h. Please compare how much we knew about the xz-attack after less than a day with what we know about the chain of events of giant outage yesterday.

If something similar had been caused by an OSS component, we would see congress discussing a ban on open software in critical infrastructure already.

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.” Ursula le Guin was always ahead of the curve.
#leGuin

Any sufficiently bad software update is indistinguishable from a cyberattack…

I've been doing a little reading on Gladys West. If you aren't sure who that is:

Gladys Mae West is an American mathematician known for her contributions to the mathematical modeling of the shape of the Earth, and her work on the development of the satellite geodesy models that were eventually incorporated into the Global Positioning System (GPS).

She's uhhh...kind of a big deal. Anyway, this little tidbit I read was fascinating to me, because it tells you how important accessibility is:

Before being hired, West initially turned down the job due to its location and the requirement to interview. West did not have a car and could not find Dahlgren on a map, and she believed that they would reject her after the interview because of her race.

Meanwhile, NYT is running with strongman stuff and how fortunate Trump is. It’s not subtle.

The RNC has been the most racist/hate-filled convention of my lifetime and I watched quite a few in history class from before I was born. Most of the media are fawning over this horror show, and don’t even realize they are the “them” these maniacs are speaking of with their signs and slogans or think they’ll be safe from the regime.

1/2

The CrowdStrike fix must be deployed manually on a per-machine basis.

Hugops to, well, everyone.

https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-windows-outage-crowdstrike-global-it-probems/

But it just doesn't make any sense they said; it's a useless old relic they said; you should simply switch to our centrally-managed solution fully protected by CrowdStrike they said

quick question what part organizing the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful is this

https://developers.googleblog.com/en/google-url-shortener-links-will-no-longer-be-available/

You have to hand it to her, she's really good at this. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-harris-campaigns-in-north-carolina-while-biden-isolates-with-covid-19

I like to think that every time someone sees a lone masker (me obviously) on the ferry, it's a little tiny deposit in their "masking is ok actually" savings account, ready for a future withdrawal. After all, "masks when sick" is a big win compared to "never masks."

I’m a cis white male American Sign Language interpreter. I go into a lot of places and am nearly always welcomed and treated well. Mostly, I think it’s because of my work, but I’m aware my race and gender play a part too. That said, there are few places I feel my privilege more keenly than in courthouses. More than half the time, I’m waved past the metal detectors. I can walk past the bar in courtrooms without being stopped by bailiffs. When court staff learn who I am, I’m often greeted with friendliness, even deference sometimes, as there aren’t many people who do what I do.

When I see how others who don’t look or dress like me are treated while in the same spaces, I’m forcefully reminded that there are still two Americas. There is still so much work to do in the US, and I’m committed to that work.

In terms of equality and personal freedoms, this November is going to be the most critical and consequential election I’ve ever witnessed in my (not so short) lifetime. Please, please, please vote for democracy and against totalitarianism - because that’s what this vote will be. I’m more convinced of that than ever.

Buy Art From People Who Are Alive

@futurebird @stevegis_ssg I honestly like that aspect of alt text.

I have to tell people what I wanted them to see.

What's the point of including that graph?

It really helps people understand. I like that a lot.

It's really not limited to sight impairments.

This research has come up several times at a big climate conference: A huge majority of people are worried about climate change and want governments to do more to control the crisis. BUT they think they are in a tiny minority and nobody else cares. Everybody (almost) cares! You are not alone https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-actions-are-far-more-popular-than-people-in-u-s-realize/

I've already encountered several comments from people stating that to develop and maintain a browser you only need a handful of "talented engineers". That's a remarkable underestimate, but more importantly it ignores the fact that you also need a lot of people with skills outside of the technical domain, and that includes humanities.

I know that techbroism *hates* humanities, but it turns out you also need them when dealing with something as complex as a browser.

Make The Onion Satire Again

So I wrote a rant about Lean in software development on Twitter years ago. At the time I was diving into the background of Lean since I was confused about the implementations in software dev.

Anyway, Lean, as most people know, grew out of Just In Time Production at Toyota factories. In those factories it has a lot of fascinating, and very reasonable, implications.

This process was then copied to a lot of industries. But they tend to either misapply (as in software dev) or apply too rigidly. The last goes against the entire process, which is designed to be purposefully flexible and malleable. Based in people and learning.

Anyhow, when the chip shortage hit the auto industry after the pandemic, it took much longer to hit Toyota. Because they had a chip stockpile. Why? That seems to go against the process. But after Fukushima Toyota had realized that this was one of their vulnerabilities, and so they adapted.