It's easy, tempting even, for us decentralisation / free software nerds to say ha! Serves you right. But most people who depend on bigtech never had any meaningful choice in the matter. A great many people are working to change that.
If you're inspired today to look for alternatives to google services, check out ethical.net.
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I hope that many people are learning an important lesson about relying on centralised services just now.
The tragedy is the people, real humans, who depend on this shit for their livelihoods. People who are paid by the row for data entry into a google spreadsheet, who need every cent from each youtube view, people who miss crucial email queries to their small business. No tech company should be so ingrained, have that much power.
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My brother came in to announce that all of Google is down, and asks "have you and your comrades finally succeeded?"
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"if a google jamboard is not a sampler of various preserves I request our Gsuite money refunded" - mrshll
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I borrowed a chromecast, but it turns out these days you need a mobile app to set it up, and the app can't proceed without allowing google access to your location.
(Last time I used one - many years ago - you just used a browser addon and the same wifi network..)
So uh.. An HDMI cable will do just fine then I guess.
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Last month my Fairphone stopped charging unless I propped it upside down at a very specific angle. I tried several cables and diagnosed the problem to be with the charging port, though I can't completely rule out the battery. Anyway, it charges if pressure is applied to the point of connection from below (assuming the phone is flat on its back) and slightly to the right. This pressure can be achieved by balancing the phone upside down (the charge port is on top) against something so it is standing on the cable, but this angle also destroys cables. I can get a connection which is slightly gentler on the cable by putting something underneath the cable, and adjusting the angle of the phone just so.
Anyway this was annoying as I can't charge on the go, but I was getting along fine until a few days ago.
Switching topics for a second, a week or two ago it started complaining of no storage space. Internal memory was full, though phone memory and the SD card have plenty of GBs. I've told every app to store everything it possibly can on phone storage or the SD card, but okay. I don't really understand the difference between phone storage and internal storage. I started hitting 'clear data' for apps I could afford to regularly, and noticed that Google Play Store, Google Play Services, and the fucking Google keyboard were immediately filling back up again after I cleared them.
The last two days, the phone has been charging veeerrry slowly, and last night it was plugged in all night (and carefully balanced to maintain the connection) and the battery level had decreased by morning (from about 50% to 12%). I had just changed the cable I was using, so I switched back to one that had been working fine previously and that didn't help.
Frustrated with the no storage space problem, this morning I disabled Google Play Services and Store completely. Gmail now refuses to work, and I keep getting other random operating system error messages, but whatever.
I have just returned to my phone three hours later, and it has fully charged (in the same physical position it was in all last night).
So... it's probably somewhat a combination of things, but I suspect a recent update to Google Play Stuff was both fucking with my phone storage and battery use. Is this a thing?
Relatedly, I've had my Fairphone 1st edition for about two years, dropped it on very unforgiving surfaces a dozen times (it has fallen out of my pocket whilst running a lot, and once I dropped it on the floor and then my Thinkpad, corner-first, followed directly onto the screen), and it just has a very wee crack on one side of the screen that appeared about two months ago, so all things considered it's doing pretty damn well. When I'm back in Europe I'll probably order a new battery.
+ http://kidehen.blogspot.cz/2015/09/what-happened-to-semantic-web.html
Amy added http://kidehen.blogspot.cz/2015/09/what-happened-to-semantic-web.html to https://rhiaro.co.uk/bookmarks/
🔁 https://twitter.com/caro/status/630856661989658628
Amy shared https://twitter.com/caro/status/630856661989658628
The best thing about the Chromebook is that whenever I open any google product, regardless of whatever else is running, everything crashes.
8th - 14th July
Semantic Web Summer School, much heat, much fun, much learning... Here's an index of my posts.
15th - 21st July
Friends visited. Progress included writing notes to myself to figure out just what my PhD outcomes really are, and why. Came up with:
1\\\\. Recommending how to usefully describe diverse amateur creative digital
content (ACDC) using an ontology.
a) What are the parts of ACDC that need to be represented? Identify and categorise properties. How do these differentiate it from other similar content?
b) What existing ontologies can be used to do this, and how do they need to be extended?
2\\\\. Building an initial set of linked data about ACDC, and providing means for
its growth and use.
a) Manual annotation of ACDC, and refinement (to test ontology).
b) Tools for automatic annotation of the parts of ACDC that it is possible to automatically annotate.
c) Tools for manual annotation by the community of content creators and consumers for the parts of ACDC that cannot be automatically annotated.
d) Tools to expose the linked data for use by third-party applications.
3\\\\. Create and test an example service which uses the linked data to benefit
content creators and/or consumers.
eg. Unobtrusive recommendations for collaborative partners (most likely); content recommendation; content consumption analysis (like tracking viral content); community building / knowledge sharing in this domain; ... .
22nd - 28th July
Brainstormed with Ewan about stage 3 (above), and came up with the idea of an interface that allows content creators to allocate varying degrees of credit for roles played by different people when collaborating on a project. This would serve to both gather collaborative bibliographic data, learn things about how different segments of the community allocate credit, and provide a potentially useful tool for content creators. With the future value that, if we can learn enough to estimate role inputs from different people, it could be used for things like automatic revenue sharing.
Then spent the rest of the week in London, frolicking amongst the YouTubers (including attending a meeting at Google about secret YouTube-y stuff), and annotated some ACDC. Write-up coming soon.
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As expected, the first week flew by, with lots of small projects coming my way as well as meetings scheduled about some bigger ones. I also finally got to meet the rest of my team, who had been in Zurich at the Anita Borg Scholarship Retreat.
Google Calendar has become a tool impossible to live without. Whilst I'd never previously used it with any seriousness, after two days at Google I can't imagine ever planning my time without it again.
Similarly the Tasks feature in Gmail has become invaluble, and I've started to use it to remind myself about menial things to do in my personal life as well. The trick is to write down something you have to do the minute you're asked or emailed to do it. The list quickly became bottomless, but you can move things up and down by dragging - so it's easy to prioritise, and of course there's the satisfaction of a big tick and a strike-through when a task is done.
It also surprises me how quickly having meetings with people in other countries has become normal. Video conferencing is seamlessly integrated into the normal workflow, so you can either make a call from your desk for a quick chat, or book a room (for the person you're calling, as well as yourself) for a longer meeting. I've met the members of my team in Zurich and Vienna in this way. (Still hoping I get to head out to visit them in person some time though!)
Other particularly memorable highlights of the week included hiding under a desk, behind a giant red ball, waving toys in the air like puppets in the background of a short video... For like, seven takes. Not in my job description, but definitely fun. Plus the chocolate fountain the canteen. Everyone seemed amazed at this, so I guess it doesn't happen often. There were mini jam doughnuts to dip. I do love working here.
But not just because of the food (although that is quite a contributing factor. Seriously, the vegetarian chilli - twice - was awesome). I also love how well interns are treated, and how I feel that the projects I'll be getting started with next week actually have some sort of impact. I've made friends with a group of other interns (mostly engineering ones) and I'm pretty sure they all feel the same. We don't just get menial tasks to keep us out of trouble, but hefty pieces of work that keep us interested and thinking.
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I have my own desk, my own @google.com email address and a shiny shiny MacBook Pro. I also have a million and one things to remember, three floors to learn my way around and a ton of name/face/job combinations I've almost certainly forgotten already. The important thing is, I know where the canteen is. In fact, I'm still in the office right now (the rest of the team having gone home almost an hour ago) purely because I'm waiting for the canteen to re-open for dinner.
Already I have meetings scheduled and an event to attend. I spent a lot of today learning the ropes of the intranet. There are all these delightful extra things within the regular Google products you know and love... Things that aren't available to the public, and that I can't even talk about. Keeping the excitement inside is painful, but if I breathe a word, there will probably be a contract on my head. Not really, that would be evil. But I'd be in trouble.
So while I wait for my second free meal of the day, I'm signing up to internal mailing lists... Things like... the daily menu for the canteen.
Oh, some of you may be interested... I'm entitled to bring two people per month to the canteen for lunch. That's six people in total. Let me know if you're interested, although three to four spots are probably already taken by default.
Now, I hear plates clanking in the distance... Time to go!
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Having finally found somewhere to live in London, I'm now looking forward to returning to Google's amazingly brightly coloured office in Belgrave House. The few hours I spent there during my interview left me with impressions of comfy chairs, excitable people, and rubber ducks stuck upside down to the ceiling. I also got a fleeting glimpse of the legendary canteen, which I'm sure I will become very familiar with over the coming weeks.
For those of you who don't know, my role as University Programmes Intern will involve supporting the University Programmes team as they forge links between Google Engineering and the academic world, throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa (read more about it here). It's a non- technical role, but I'm hoping my technical background will be helpful in relating to the technical people (students and academics) the team will be working with.
Here's to hoping I'm up for the task!
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Worked on internal administration tools for recruiting, awards, and managing outreach events to universities, and trained non-technical staff to use them. Ate a lot.