Yonatan Zunger
143,347 followers -
Distinguished Engineer on Privacy at Google
Distinguished Engineer on Privacy at Google
143,347 followers
Yonatan Zunger's interests
Yonatan Zunger's posts
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Strictly speaking, the Arctic Circle is named for the constellation Ursa Major (prominent in the Northern Hemisphere), but I'll take it. The Boreal Forest is, after all, home to an awful lot of bears.
Taxonomy, go home. You're drunk.
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This is a wonderful slide deck about failures in complex systems – specifically in Space Shuttles, which are factories of some of the most bizarre failure modes imaginable.
I mean, do you design your electronics to handle the case where a diode suddenly transforms into a capacitor? You probably don't – but that failure mode is more commonly known as "a crack perpendicular to the connectors."
I mean, do you design your electronics to handle the case where a diode suddenly transforms into a capacitor? You probably don't – but that failure mode is more commonly known as "a crack perpendicular to the connectors."
NASA has a truly terrifying collection of things that can and have gone wrong with systems (e.g. a diode transmogrifying into a capacitor); strongly worth reading.
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You may have thought that Google Glass was gone and forgotten. It turns out that isn't the case at all. While it didn't work out well as a consumer product for all sorts of reasons, it turns out to be tremendously useful if you're doing work that requires your hands and your attention while also being helped by visual input – say, if you're working in a factory, or performing surgery.
As a result, the Glass team vanished back into Google X for a while and started working on what they discovered to be a much better use for the technology: as an enterprise technology for people at work.
Today, Wired has an article about what the new system looks like, and how it's being used at a growing range of companies – and how this technology is living up to its promise at last.
As a result, the Glass team vanished back into Google X for a while and started working on what they discovered to be a much better use for the technology: as an enterprise technology for people at work.
Today, Wired has an article about what the new system looks like, and how it's being used at a growing range of companies – and how this technology is living up to its promise at last.
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This is an extremely interesting article (via @avflox) about how harassment is often part of a pattern of "versatile criminality" - that is, harassment which isn't a mistake or misunderstanding is generally not an isolated behavior, but correlated to other kinds of unethical and/or illegal activity as well. If true, this suggests better ways of investigating and dealing with harassment complaints, and ones which specifically identify and target bad actors.
I don't have time to write more about this now, but it's a pattern which seems familiar to me from other contexts as well, including fraud, online abuse, and sexual assault: a disproportionate fraction of this is done by a small number of people who do a lot of bad things, most of which go individually under the radar but which form a clear pattern when you see them all.
I don't have time to write more about this now, but it's a pattern which seems familiar to me from other contexts as well, including fraud, online abuse, and sexual assault: a disproportionate fraction of this is done by a small number of people who do a lot of bad things, most of which go individually under the radar but which form a clear pattern when you see them all.
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Ouch. Via +Jennifer Freeman.
"It appears as if their entire society was centered around creating, out of thin air, actual jobs that paid an actual living wage."
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Something for the "society" aspect of Politics, Society, and the Law - and for once, an example of society working at its best.
Via +Rugger Ducky.
Via +Rugger Ducky.
80 strangers linked arms to venture out in dangerous riptides to save 10 swimmers unable to reach the shore. Some of them couldn't even swim, but all of them heard the call for help and the battle cry for a human chain and they joined in to rescue the swimmers.
There are two sides to human nature: the light and the dark. Obvious, right?
You'd think it would be, but - at least lately - the dark side seems to be more prevalent. The good news is the lightness of love is stronger in us than we realize. It's everywhere, in all of our communities.
We need more reports of people being decent, loving, caring human beings. Especially now when so many of us are surrounded by discord and hate, we need to see more of the positive side of human nature.
#practicekindness #spreadthelove #sharethejoy #gratefulnothateful #youredoingitright
There are two sides to human nature: the light and the dark. Obvious, right?
You'd think it would be, but - at least lately - the dark side seems to be more prevalent. The good news is the lightness of love is stronger in us than we realize. It's everywhere, in all of our communities.
We need more reports of people being decent, loving, caring human beings. Especially now when so many of us are surrounded by discord and hate, we need to see more of the positive side of human nature.
#practicekindness #spreadthelove #sharethejoy #gratefulnothateful #youredoingitright
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My workload ~ my propensity to shitpost and reshare shitposting on G+.
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No comment.
New Best Friend: "Would it be bad if I did X?"
Me: "You'd get called on the plastic tarp for that."
NBF: "Plastic tarp?"
Me: "It's for when you're calling someone on the carpet, but like your carpet."
NBF: "... Does that happen often in engineering?"
Me: "About as often as people X."
Me: "You'd get called on the plastic tarp for that."
NBF: "Plastic tarp?"
Me: "It's for when you're calling someone on the carpet, but like your carpet."
NBF: "... Does that happen often in engineering?"
Me: "About as often as people X."
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I am enjoying this joke way too much. That said, when Robert says it's incredibly geeky, he means it – so if you aren't familiar with computability theory, he explains it at https://plus.google.com/+RobertHansen75/posts/3j8yRsv68Bk .
The geekiest joke ever -- and it was pulled on me. You'll need a modest bit of computational theory to understand the punchline. I'll explain the punchline in another post, but as is the case with most jokes, if you need the punchline explained then it just won't be funny to you.
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My first semester in graduate school I was taking Theory of Computation (among others). Perry sat next to me in class and capered through every problem like a gazelle. Me, I was getting by on brute force and ignorance, including on one exam turning in a four-page proof where Perry turned in a three-sentence proof.
After class Perry would sit with me in a nearby coffeeshop and help shed some light on the things I was confused about. He tutored for coffee: you can't beat that price. The coffee shop was Wild Bill's Uptown Cafe, which -- in my first semester of graduate school -- I did not know was a project of the university's school of social work, nor did I know that it gave good jobs with benefits to the downtrodden and disabled. All I knew that first week of graduate school was the barista was taking for-freaking-ever to get me two lattes and change.
When I walked over to the table where Perry was, I thunked down the coffee and the change. "I'm sorry that took so long," I told him. "Apparently, two coffees and change from a tenner is an NP problem or something..."
Perry blinked at me, then looked down at the change. He quickly counted it out, then looked back up at me. "I don't know," he said. "If the bill was $8.76, then it definitely is!"
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My first semester in graduate school I was taking Theory of Computation (among others). Perry sat next to me in class and capered through every problem like a gazelle. Me, I was getting by on brute force and ignorance, including on one exam turning in a four-page proof where Perry turned in a three-sentence proof.
After class Perry would sit with me in a nearby coffeeshop and help shed some light on the things I was confused about. He tutored for coffee: you can't beat that price. The coffee shop was Wild Bill's Uptown Cafe, which -- in my first semester of graduate school -- I did not know was a project of the university's school of social work, nor did I know that it gave good jobs with benefits to the downtrodden and disabled. All I knew that first week of graduate school was the barista was taking for-freaking-ever to get me two lattes and change.
When I walked over to the table where Perry was, I thunked down the coffee and the change. "I'm sorry that took so long," I told him. "Apparently, two coffees and change from a tenner is an NP problem or something..."
Perry blinked at me, then looked down at the change. He quickly counted it out, then looked back up at me. "I don't know," he said. "If the bill was $8.76, then it definitely is!"
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