Erik Pukinskis:

Startups and diversity

I just watched a fun interview with some of the folks from Heroku. The interviewer at one point casually gendered all Heroku users as “he”. These things stick out to me these days. It makes me think about how it must feel to be a woman and constantly be reminded that few people imagine anyone like you when they think of developers. Which got me thinking a little about gender and race and tech startups.

Now I want to say… I like Heroku. Heroku, The Technology is an amazing piece of architecture. I think it’s a gift to developers, and I think Adam and the other folks who work there are good people. I’m using it for SproutRobot. I know Adam is committed to Free Software, and he was super nice to respond to an email I once sent him about Heroku and F/OSS.

But there’s something that sketches me out a little about Heroku, The Company, and it’s the same thing that sketches me out about AppJet, The Company, and most of the tech startups I see.

It’s pretty much all white dudes.

Now, I haven’t seen Heroku do anything as blatantly sexist as making the only woman on your About page be a sexy mannequin whose lack of development and business skills you mock. But the Heroku founders are all white men, and the only other employee I’ve seen photos of is a white man. It seems uncontroversial for me to say that they’re hiring people for specific attributes that are predominantly found only in white men… if they weren’t, they’d be more diverse*.

Which makes me wonder: what human attributes and skills and ideas are their organization lacking? What kinds of knowledge and experience are they completely blind to because whoever is making the hiring choices thinks that these specific white dude attributes are the Most Important Attributes For Our Organization To Have?

And truthfully, I don’t know the answer. I’m sure their company will succeed. Like I said, the Heroku folks are brilliant, good people, who are doing great work. Lots of companies have made fistfulls of money employing the “let’s look for attributes that predominantly only white dudes have” methodology. But what is lost?

The thing is, it’s hard to know. As white males, we have come to see certain things as “relevant” and “important”, and those values are partly formed by our whiteness and our maleness. Certainly there are values that extend across color and gender lines, but there are plenty of things that women and people of color are more likely to find important than I would.

And this is the hard part. These values that vary across color and gender lines, and I have a hard time seeing and understanding them precisely because they vary across color and gender lines. The things I undervalue because I am white and male are necessarily invisible to me because I undervalue them.

This is why I’m reticent to rely completely on my personal values to do hiring. My values are skewed because of who I am.

So my only choice is to put a premium on diversity. To put trust in people and say “I don’t fully understand all of the value in this person, or everything they can contribute to this organization, but I am going to choose them over someone whose value I can see more clearly because I know there is invisible value in diversity.”

I just have this hunch that what will come out of that will be totally freaking rad. We’ll see, I guess.

______
* I wish this would go without saying, but I know I have to say it or people will get Very Upset: obviously they’re not doing this on purpose. They didn’t sit down and think “what qualities can we look for that only white dudes will have.” They just decided that Ruby prowess, or scaling experience, and the ability to speak in a language they understand… that these are what matters to them. The fact that these are predominantly attributes of white men is a consequence of that decision that I’m sure they didn’t choose deliberately.  In a lot of ways, we’ve moved beyond what I think most people would call “deliberate” racism and sexism (although even the deliberate stuff is still sadly common).  Instead, what most of us are faced with is a more insidious, despite-our-best-intentions kind of racism and sexism.  Whether that kind of stuff is “deliberate”, and whether it’s ethically bankrupt is a very abstract, philosophical question that is, generally speaking, an inappropriate diversion for most discussions about specific race- and gender-related phenomena.  We’re biased.  It hurts people.  Let’s focus on fixing it, not on discussing endlessly whether it makes us bad people.

by erik at July 03, 2009 05:55 PM

Kristy Streefkerk:

Have I mentioned my obsession for vampires lately?

No? I didn’t think so.

Vampires:
Let me just start with the fact that True Blood season two has started – which has resumed my obsession with vampires. I blame Tim for getting me hooked on this one – it was his fault that I watched the entire first season in 2 days, and it is also his fault that I just added $20/month to my cable bill so that I can have HBO and watch the second season from the comfort of my own couch. The best part is that this obsession will keep me going till New Moon comes to theaters in November (not that I am counting)… and until then I just bought Twilight tonight so I can watch that when I need my fill of vampires.

My last vampire point for the evening – did anyone catch the vampire themed routine on So You Think You Can Dance last night? (yet another one of my obsessions… probably because I can’t dance).

Breaking in the new house:
Last weekend, much to the dismay of my neighbours, I had some folks over to test out my new BBQ (special props to B-Rad for putting my BBQ together and extra special props to Cornholio and Mum for buying it for me). During this soiree I decided to paint my walls a new colour (cause you know, Cornholio did such a bad job painting them the first time around… I kid Cornholio – I love my walls!).

So anyway, as I was carrying a plate full of BBQ’d asparagus into kitchen, I happened to have a full glass of red wine in my other hand – (which seemed to be the theme for the night) – anyway, three steps up I tripped, and as I began to fall in slow motion I had to make a split second decision as to which object I was going to drop and which one I was going to sacrifice to the floor. The wine won, and the asparagus was dropped. However, the impact of the fall caused half of the glass of wine to soar out of the glass and paint my lovely green walls red. Nothing a little oxi clean couldn’t handle… Oh and the asparagus, yeah – I just washed that off and put it out on the table.

My brother also convinced me that I needed a new pet, when a stray kitten ventured into my house… they named it Ghetto Pussy, GP for short. GP’s stay didn’t last long in this household and since it was kicked out when the party ended it hasn’t returned.

The highlight of the night was perhaps meeting my poor neighbours – who I spent a good half hour apologizing to tonight while I was out with my BBQ. Needless to say I met one of them and tried to convince him that the people across the street from us are drug dealers… which I am pretty sure they are, but perhaps not the best ‘hi nice to meet you’ conversation.

Kmay gets married:
The morning after I attempted to paint my walls with red wine, I ventured out to the suburbs for Kmay (Kristen from work) and Piero’s wedding. Note to readers: kristy and catholic churches…. kind of like oil and water. The ceremony was beautiful and Kmay looked amazing in her dress, but I am pretty sure that their minister (is that what the Catholics call them?) was a vampire… seriously folks, I have never seen someone guzzle down the blood of christ at such a rapid pace during communion… it’s like it was going out of style or something.

The reception was an Italian 5-course meal capped off with an ice cream wedding cake… YUM and then we finished off the night with some dancing… where I decided to show my colleagues some of my sweet dance moves, you know, the shark and the sprinkler…

Attack of the birds, part 2:
Ummm, I got attacked by another bird… the second one in three months… this time it was a crown, and I know this because it was huge and I saw it swoop down and go straight for my shoulder. Leslie can vouch for this because she was with me, and it had happened to her a few weeks earlier in the exact same spot. needless to say I no longer walk past that block on my way to work in fear that I’ll have an eye poked out or something.

Hey kids, lets go swimming:
Yesterday to celebrate Canada’s birthday, Laura dragged me out to Cultus lake – okay, you don’t really have to drag me when you mention ‘beach’, ’sun’, ‘boat’, ‘BBQ’ – and we had so much fun that I am heading back out there again Saturday morning with Greg and crew to spend the weekend by the lake. And then the weekend after that I am heading up to Shuswap for another weekend of lake life… hmmm I wonder if I could convince work to open an office on the lake. Though, my arms aren’t moving very gracefully today after a ride around the lake on the tube…

The end
Okay, I think that about sums the past week and a half up… time to catch up on some sleep.

by kristy at July 03, 2009 06:11 AM

Madrid (a week and a half late)

Okay, I know I promised this blog post a while back… but then I got home and got distracted (more on that in another post).

Anyway we ended our tour of Spain in Madrid – and don’t take any of these comments the wrong way – I loved Madrid but in the grand scheme of things I loved all of the smaller cities so much more. I think its because you get the chance to soak up more of the culture at half the price… the food always seems more ‘authentic’ and you also don’t see Burger Kings on every corner.

During our two days in Madrid we managed to visit two of the museums – the Prado and the Reina Sofia. The Prado had all of the old school art in it – great stuff… not entirely my style though. I was however in love with the Reina Sofia – a modern museum with lots of Picasso to show off.

We also took a tour of the city – our challenge for the tour was keeping all of the kids awake. Seriously – it got to the point where we would go and sit beside the lovely youngins and poke them everytime they closed their eyes… after a while it got annoying so we chose to guilt trip them into staying awake.

Highlights of the tour: the Real Madrid stadium and the Madrid bull ring…

In Madrid we also had the chance to visit one of the local culinary schools to learn how to cook some traditional Spanish plates: paella and torta amongst other things. The end results were delicious. Even though we promptly followed up dinner with an unrelated 7 hour visit to one of the local hospitals.

And in true ‘responsible chaperon’ fashion, I continued my tradition of reading the kiddies bedtime stories from ‘texts from last night’ (a censored screening of course).

All in all the trip was amazing – the group was fun to be with – Spain is an amazing country with good food and good wine – I’m pretty sure I would go back in a heartbeat!

by kristy at July 03, 2009 05:15 AM

Christopher Soghoian:

DMCA Questions from the Copyright Office

Are you a copyright geek (preferably a lawyer) and interested in helping me (pro bono) with my reply to the Copyright Office? I can do the writing by myself, I just need help with strategy/legal questions. If so, please get in touch.

As many of my regular readers know, late last year, I (and the fantastic Berkman cyberlaw clinic) submitted a request for an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. One month ago, I testified in person to argue in support of my request.

We originally requested two exemptions. The Copyright Office has now sent us some follow up questions with regard to the second exemption.

The second exemption text was for:

Lawfully purchased sound recordings, audiovisual works, and software programs distributed commercially in digital format by online music and media stores and protected by technological measures that depend on the continued availability of authenticating servers, prior to the failure of the authenticating servers for technologists and researchers studying and documenting how the authenticating servers that effectuate the technological measures function.

The Copyright Office has asked us to:

Please provide your reaction to the following limitation: "...when the information obtained by the technologists and researchers is used only to provide access to works protected by the technological measures that depend on the continued availability of an authenticating server when [1] access is provided only to persons to whom access had been provided by the authentication server prior to its failure, [2] the authentication server has permanently ceased functioning, and [3] the provider of the service has neither made alternatives means of access to the works available nor provided a refund for the loss of access to the purchased copies of the works.

Would it be appropriate to limit the persons who would be eligible to invoke the exemption? Why? If you believe it would be appropriate to limit the persons eligible for the exemption, what criteria could be used?

Are there any other appropriate ways to properly tailor the scope of the exemption

I still haven't had much time to think about this in depth. Our reply is due on July 10th.

My plan is to try and come up with a rough draft in the next week or so, and then put it online in a wiki for people from the Internet to comment on and edit.

by noreply@blogger.com (Christopher Soghoian) at June 24, 2009 07:57 PM

Kristy Streefkerk:

48 hours of airplanes…

We left Madrid Monday morning at 9am Madrid time… so midnight Vancouver time… it’s now Tuesday 2:19pm Vancouver time and I’m still a good 6 hours from being home. I have however found things to amuse myself with… like the $7 internet I am currently using in the Dallas airport during my 8 hour layover.

I was supposed to fly from IND to CHI and CHI to DFW and DFW to YVR today… but trying to beat the system I went standby on an earlier flight from IND to DFW… SCORE! Then when I got to DFW my luck continued as the gate agent presented me with a ticket on a flight to YVR that would have gotten me home for 1pm. Then 10 minutes later she called my name, an upgrade to first class perhaps?, hahaha NO. She took my ticket away.

For some reason AA canceled the 2pm flight from DFW to YVR which bumped me off of the wait list for the 10am flight and back on my 5pm flight. Oh well, what’s another 7 hours when you’ve already been going for 40? There was however one flier who was not so happy… and proceeded to breakdown into tears over the news that she too had been bumped.

The rest of the story shows why there will be a special place in hell for me when I die.

Now, I would have felt bad for the girl if I knew that she had a legit reason for being upset for not getting to Vancouver early. But earlier in the day I was forced to listed to her phone conversation with one of her fellow ‘Pom’ friends – over how ‘freaking stoked’ she was to ‘get her drink on’ with them tonight. (BTW did I mention that he back pack was embroidered and said ‘POM – Sarah – Captain’ and she was wearing hooker heels and a dress).

Seriously? hooker heels and a dress… at an airport…. when you have a 5 hour flight? Not my choice, but hey whatever floats your boat. Perhaps they are planning on getting their drink on at the Roxy tonight?

Needless to say I laughed, out loud, to her reaction of crying.. and as I type this I am watching the counter waiting for her to get up to the front of the line (2 people away now) to see if she gets on the 5pm flight or breaks down in another fit of crying because she will not be able to ‘get her drink on’.

Stories from Madrid to come later… once I get home, and have slept… and can remember what we did – aside from a trip to the local hospital.

by kristy at June 23, 2009 09:30 PM

Christopher Soghoian:

FOIA: Following the money trail

Sent by fax today to the Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) at the Department of Justice:

This letter constitutes a request under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. §552. I am seeking records, invoices and any other information detailing the amount of money paid by the Department of Justice to major providers of Internet based services to compensate them for the time and resources used in responding to subpoenas, warrants, pen registers, trap & trace requests and national security letters.

Background

At the recent Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference in Washington DC, Alan Davidson, Google’s Director of Government Relations and Public Policy revealed to the audience that Google routinely charges the government for the time and resources spent responding to requests by the Government for Google customers’ data.

This practice is permitted by various statutes. For example, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2518(4) states that:

Any provider of wire or electronic communication service, landlord, custodian or other person furnishing such facilities or technical assistance shall be compensated therefor by the applicant for reasonable expenses incurred in providing such facilities or assistance.

Likewise, the 2008 Protect America Act amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to state:

The Director of National Intelligence and Attorney General may direct a person to …. immediately provide the Government with all information, facilities, and assistance necessary to accomplish the acquisition … The Government shall compensate, at the prevailing rate, a person for providing information, facilities, or assistance pursuant to subsection (e).

While Google is one of the first Internet based service providers to admit to this practice, it is likely that the practice is widespread.

My request

I request all records, invoices, memos and any other information detailing the amount of money paid by the Department of Justice to major providers of Internet based services to compensate them for the time and resources used in responding to subpoenas, warrants, pen registers, trap & trace requests and national security letters.

At the very least, this request shall include documents relating to Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace, America Online, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Sprint and T-Mobile.

The scope for this request shall include all documents created between January 01, 2006 and January 01, 2009.

by noreply@blogger.com (Christopher Soghoian) at June 23, 2009 08:11 PM

Christopher Soghoian:

Do we need net neutrality at 35,000ft?

Just here for the step-by-step instructions? Click here to skip the explanation

Gogo Inflight Internet Wireless is the sole provider of in-flight Wi-Fi in the United States -- and is already installed aboard planes in the domestic fleets of Delta, American and Virgin America.

While their service is awesome -- their pricing plans currently involve some fairly horribly discriminatory pricing. "Mobile" devices including iPhones, Nokia handsets and various Windows Mobile devices pay $7.95 for flights of any length, whereas laptops pay $9.95 or $12.95 based on the length of the flight.

Metered pricing is currently a hot topic in telecom circles, primarily due to the fact that the carriers want to be able to gouge extract as much of a profit out of their customers as possible.

Gogo does not implement metered pricing. iPhones and laptops are provided with the same amount of bandwidth, and as far as I can tell, neither receives priority over the other. There are no bandwidth caps, nor any additional charges for using too much data during a single flight. Gogo simply wants to be able to charge its customers more money for watching a YouTube video on a laptop screen than an iPhone -- even though that laptop does not put any more of a burden on Gogo's network than the iPhone.

This is unfair, unreasonable, and frankly, something that the FCC should look into and prohibit.

Luckily, Gogo doesn't have any verifiable way to identify the kind of device a customer is using, and so it has opted to rely upon the self-reported User Agent string transmitted by the on-device Web browser.

This browser string is something under the control of the user (at least those a little bit tech savvy), and by manipulating this information, it is possible to connect a laptop to the Gogo Inflight Internet Wireless system for the cheaper $7.95 price normally restricted to mobile devices.

Best of all, if combined with a discount coupon (easily found online), this price can be reduced further, to a quite reasonable $3.95 for a 5+ hour flight.

Enabling fair, non-discriminatory pricing for Gogo Inflight Internet Wireless

Gogo's acceptable use policy requires that consumers not use the service in order to "engage in any fraud or misrepresentation." As a result, the following information is provided for purely educational purposes as an act of communications policy related activism. Do not follow these steps without first consulting with a lawyer.

Step 1. Download and install the User Agent Switcher Firefox add-on (this needs to be done before your flight).

Step 2. Restart Firefox.

Step 3. Select the Tools-> User Agent Switcher -> Options -> Options menu.

Step 4. Select the User Agents tab, and then click on the "Add" button to create a new user agent.

Step 5. In the "Description" field, type in "iPhone"



Step 6. Now that you have added the new user agent, you have to tell the browser to start using it. Do so by going to Tools -> User Agent Switcher, and then select the new iPhone option.



Step 7. Once you are on board a Gogo enabled flight, wait till the plane is above 10,000 ft, and connect to the open gogoinflight wireless access point.

Step 8. Type in any web site address. You will be redirected to the Gogo portal, and will be prompted to pay for wireless access.

Step 9. You should see a $7.95 option for mobile Internet access for your flight.

Should you wish to save a few more bucks, Gogo seems to regularly offer discount codes, further bringing the price down.

Step 10. After you have paid for the service, and are connected to the Internet, you can switch the user-agent string back to the default Firefox setting.

by noreply@blogger.com (Christopher Soghoian) at June 22, 2009 04:00 PM

Erik Pukinskis:

Forward

Had a very productive week. SproutRobot is coming along great. We did our first bit of usability testing today, which felt just fantastic. We got a lot of good info about what needs fixing, but I think we also got a glimpse of how great this product will be. Very excited.

A little scared about how all of this is going to work out, but feeling blessed and stoked.

by erik at June 21, 2009 08:19 AM

Erik Pukinskis:

Marginal voices

So, another tech conference presenter has taken it upon himself to include a pornified image of a woman in a talk. Fighting ensued.

Hoss, the dude who gave the talk, says:

“I would like to point out that, at the time of writing this, I have received considerably more positive feedback on my Flashbelt presentation than negative. This affirmation includes female attendees going out their way to stop me at the conference and thank me openly for my presentation.”

and

“I can be crude and my presentations can be risqué but I am neither sexist nor a misogynist. I am concerned that my presentation is being described as being loaded with both. Not guilty. I have a strong willed wife and two young daughters - I wouldn’t last two minutes with the merest hint of misogyny.”

Here’s the thing.

Tech is a community where women are marginalized. There can be as few as 1 woman out of 100 at a talk. This means that the audiences are predominantly men, and the women present are, generally speaking, women who have acclimated to men’s bullshit. You simply won’t last in most of these communities unless you have pretty well-honed defense mechanisms for dealing with crap. Generally the only women left in the room are pretty battle-hardened ladies, or they’ve adopted a pretty male gaze, or whatever. They’ve got a way to get by in a harsh environment.

Given that, the fact that most of the men and women at your talk think it is great and not at all offensive doesn’t mean much. It doesn’t mean your talk isn’t extremely alienating to a large portion of the population. It means the women who would be alienated are already alienated from the community.

You’re not pushing them out, you’re just keeping them out.

And that’s where it gets weird. If you want a marginalized group to grow, you have to start listening very carefully to marginal opinions. You can’t sit on your ass, satisfied with your 99% approval rating. You have to lose sleep about the 1%. You have to worry about the one person who had to close their browser when they read about your talk because they got flashbacks. You need to worry about that 1% because in that 1% is where you’ll find the clues to why 49% of the population didn’t come to your talk in the first place.

Or you don’t. But don’t pretend you give a shit about gender issues if you’re going to marginalize those voices.

by erik at June 20, 2009 06:04 AM