rosalinekarr
Joined 11 years ago
Joined 11 years ago
Let's hope the media doesn't tear her apart.
[1]: https://twitter.com/xychelsea/status/847264510247190532
[1]: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/with_replies
[2]: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/860846823229059072
[3]: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/860855087165571073
[1]: https://theintercept.com/2017/04/19/intercepted-podcast-juli...
[1]: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/860855087165571073
At my job, we meet for standup via video chat as early as we can. That's about 9am for some of us and 10am or 11am for others depending on timezones. We each say what we worked on yesterday and what we're working on now, which only takes about 5 to 10 minutes, then we enter what we call "parking lot." We call it "parking lot" because if this were an in-person meeting, this is bit where we would be talking in the parking lot on our way out to lunch. No one is expected to stick around unless there's something urgent related to what your working on that needs to be discussed. Anyone is free to hop off the call at this point.
During parking lot, we discuss impediments, anything that's going to keep someone from getting work done that day. If the problem is something complicated that's difficult to describe via text, we chat about it face to face and work out a solution together. If the problem is simple, we just agree to talk it out in either a public or private channel on Slack depending the kind of problem.
The purpose of the meeting isn't to build a big report of who's working on what or to guilt us into working harder. It's just to guarantee that we're all online at a given time each day to help each other out. Working across several timezones, we all have wildly different hours, and without standup, we would probably be waiting for days to hear back from each other about any issues we run into.
Maybe standup is a problem for other people or other companies, but for my team at least, we couldn't work without it.
Outside the western world, the situation is even worse. In the past few months, [the Turkish government has blocked thousands of websites and several DNS servers including 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4][4]. While China has always maintained strict censorship on the internet within their borders, lately they've been stepping up their efforts by [replacing major websites with state-run alternatives][5]. Further, [Russia has started following China's model with aggressive, nationwide IP blocking][6].
I know censorship has been a big challenge to free speech on the internet for a long time now, but lately, it feels as if the problems are escalating much faster. Nations are locking down their citizens access to communication, discussion is becoming ever more politicized, and partisans on all sides are cheering along the erosion of our most fundamental rights.
I know I sound like a conspiracy nut and doomsayer waving around the classic "End is Nigh" sign and wearing a tinfoil hat, but I can't help but feel like the internet is inching ever closer to dystopia. I feel like we're on the verge of something terrible, and I'm afraid that despite our best efforts, it may already be too late to stop it.
[1]: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/05/9-senator...
[2]: https://openmedia.org/en/leak-eu-commission-points-link-tax-...
[3]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/australia-passes...
[4]: https://turkeyblocks.org/
[5]: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39779088
[6]: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/0...