New job, part 4: Pirates

I've written in the past about what I do for work, and no one's been any the wiser. It's hardly your fault: though they value me, my colleagues, my bosses even, often find it difficult to explain what it is I do. Recently, though, I've been given a very concrete and easily explained remit: piracy analytics. People use our software without paying for it. I need to arrange to identify and characterize those "pirates" using data and analytics so that others can reach out to them and, more or less gently, convince them to become proper customers. There, that was easy to explain.

Then there's another question: why does this matter? Because if I succeed in this the value of my Autodesk stock will allow me to save my dear barn. Well, that's what this guy thinks, anyway. He'd better be right and I'd better be successful because things around here are getting...teetery.

Charter

It seems that even on this, the most depressing of days, I have to hear about The War of the Charter, a topic as illustrative of people working against their own self interest as the election of...that. Charter schools and the CA proposition that supports them are important for this, and possibly only this reason: they provide a space to experiment within the confines of a bureaucracy. That bureaucracy--the public school system--will not otherwise do more than cautiously increment and thus can evolve at only a glacial pace. That pace is in no way well matched to the rate of change in the environment--social, business, Earth--for which the school is intended to prepare its students. It is almost certainly the case that the mainstream schooling your child is receiving is inadequate to the challenges we are facing. Change, and the experiments that drive change, is therefore sorely needed.

In business these days the inability of large organizations to innovate successfully is a simmering, sometimes boiling, concern. As one former Yahoo executive mournfully noted, "When you do innovation in a large company, the immune system will come and attack you." When I think of the history of our own long-running MAP educational experiment I observe parental T-cells in action, seeking, with less or more poisonous vigor, to destroy the alien body within. Certainly that accurately describes the narrow-minded response of the Ross Valley School District to the current Charter petition.

Education is an unsolved problem. We should be united in our desire to solve it and supportive of those who seek to explore alternatives that don't cost the student $42,100 per annum, alternatives that, if successful, will influence classrooms throughout the Valley, perhaps throughout the country. We are indeed in the midst of an educational crisis: it's at least part of what's produced the near-majority decision to spit in the face of facts, kick meritocracy in its striving ass, and elect...that. You may, in the overused argot of Facebook progressives, stand with Ross Valley Schools. In doing so, you might preserve a precious few dollars for a gym teacher or library book. Neither will help your child find a role in the coming society. A charter school, on the other hand, just might.

Surveillance self-defense

EFF's SSD logo: https://ssd.eff.org/en

A shout-out to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (I donate, do you?) and to their tireless efforts to get us all to use communications technology more sensibly. EFF provides the total overview for current best practice, but what I'd particularly encourage you to do is:

1. Use two-factor authentication wherever possible.
2. Use a non-default (no 1212!) code on your mobile device, and don't share it.
3. Communicate using using Signal (how to: Android; how to: iPhone), which provides end-to-end encryption, thereby preventing anyone from reading your messages or listening to your calls without possession of (or previous install of malware on) your device. No, your normal texting, Skype, phone, whatever does not do this: though much communications is encrypted in transit it is typically an open channel between your device and the first hop provider, which means that provider (e.g., Comcast, your phone company) has (and can and does share, either upon government request or by whoopsies) access to the content of your messages. (WhatsApp friends: though WhatsApp does provide E2E encryption Facebook now owns that app and you know better than to trust Faceboo, right?)
4. Do most of your surfing via a privacy-protecting browser (right now I use Tor on my personal desktop--how to: Windows; how to: Mac--and Ghostery on my phone; this last is less about avoiding snoops and more about throwing a stick in the spokes of the Attention Economy).

Some of this is security-related, and some of it is for the sake of anonymity. Significantly, it's not just your anonymity that is preserved by your use of encryption, proxying, and the like: the more people who behave this way the harder it becomes to deanonymize anyone. Think of it as protest or protection, as you like, but get on it.

We don't have four more years

"If Trump wins would you move back to Amsterdam?" It's not an unreasonable question: Bush's reelection really was a big part of why I decided to stay in the Netherlands as long as I did. "Four more years of that?" I thought, "Four more years for me."

My shot, Amsterdam, June 2008

Still, the first few times I was asked this I brushed off the question. Trump won't be elected, I believed, and still do, so let's not indulge in such imaginings. But yesterday, undeterred, my then-current interlocutor responded that he really didn't like Hillary, the implication being he just couldn't bring himself to vote for her. So this is what I said, more or less calmly.

I'm a one issue voter, and that issue is global warming. There's lots of things I'd like to see changed, but none of those things will matter--none of those things will exist--if we don't change our course sharply and soon. If Trump is elected, the United States government's ability to react to global warming will be crippled. It's not that he doesn't believe in global warming--Trump's beliefs are as malleable as every other part of him--it's that he's an incompetent who believes himself, with good reason, immune to consequence. Trump will have neither the skill nor the motivation to steer the ship, and without a firm hand on the tiller that ship will drift along in the same direction for four more years.

Two points here. First, it is inconceivable to me that we will meet the challenge of global warming without effective action by the US government. Not China, not the EU, not all the multinationals in the world can do what the US government can, for good or for ill. Second--and I'm sorry to say I'll write about this in more detail soon--we don't have four more years. We are already past the practical deadline for radical change required to preserve the world as we know it. We are now rapidly approaching the point in time and carbon that will determine if we face a merely disastrous situation or a runaway scenario the outcome of which is utter destruction for all higher forms of life on the planet, and a goodly portion of the low, too. We may end up in a 6+ degree world without Trump at the helm, but with him there it's 6+ for sure.

You may not like Hillary Clinton, and that's fine. You may wish we'd given Bernie a chance (I do) or you may think in terms of protest votes, unwilling to make the false choice between the lesser of two evils. But this election isn't about what you like. It isn't about making statements, or setting or avoiding precedents. It's not even about choosing between good and evil or shades thereof. This election is about whether there is going to be a United States of which to be President a century from now. You choose.

The Netherlands anew: Schiermonnikoog

And then there is Schiermonnikoog, dear, sweet, vulnerable Schier, and the dear, sweet, enduring people I've always shared it with. How I've looked forward to this! Such expectation, and such satisfaction! Here, a thousand, thousand words.