One of the sessions I went to at Foo camp was about being a jerk. It seems we in software development land have a real habit of being jerks to each other and to our customers. The question the session discussed was - does it have to be so? I think the answer is actually, given how we run companies, probably. So let’s change things!
Read More Thali and Foo Camp – Silicon Valley doesn’t like it, but the rest of the world will
Zooko’s triangle – I don’t think it’s solved in the real world
Zooko’s triangle proposes that a global naming system can be human meaningful, distributed or impersonation proof - pick 2. Below I look at Pet Names, the traditional way of handling Zooko’s triangle. Then I look at proposals that claim to actually solve Zooko’s triangle and show several attacks that these systems don’t appear to solve and so argue that Zooko’s triangle still stands.
Read More Manging group knowledge – you aren’t doing it wrong because it can’t be done right
My group at work is supposed to grow fast and there is a real concern that we will fragment and knowledge will be lost. I argue below that this is inevitable and largely unavoidable. But, more to the point, it’s probably not worth avoiding. And when it is worth avoiding? Know that you will need to pay someone on an ongoing basis to fix it. Data does not self organize.
Read More Why Google’s support of PGP Mail might not be such a brilliant idea – Or, why I don’t like digital signatures for social networking and how Thali addresses this
Google announced that they may (the code is not officially supported yet) support PGP Mail in GMail. This might seem like an unabashed win for user privacy since it would make it impossible for Google to read their user’s mail. This article points out a number of problems with Google’s actions (I still think Google should be commended for doing this work) but I’d like to focus on a different issue than covered in the article - why digital signatures are a bad idea in general for social networking/email and how Thali deals with this problem.
Read More Sygic Sucks (and so does Google)
In this article I explain the multiple issues I've had with Sygic that make me strongly recommend that people avoid it if at all possible. I actually wanted to post this as a review on Google's app store but you can't do that if you don't have a Google+ account. Apparently having a Google App store account with both a credit card and mobile phone associated with it isn't good enough. Well screw that! So I'm posting my review here.
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