The problem with “First World Problems”:

Having spent a fair amount of time in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Egypt, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzinia, Zanzibar, […], I can’t stress this message enough.

Third world problems are an overlapping superset of first world problems.

We may only rarely need to be concerned with the quality of our drinking water, but you know what? I’ve seen folks in rural Cambodia fighting with IOS upgrades on their iphone, and small business owners in Tanzania on hold with tech support to fix the credit card processing integration with their point of sale systems.

And pretty much everybody everywhere who has ever touched a computer has at least one shared experience: Complaining about Facebook privacy settings. I kid you not. Everyone.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/08/nasa-patch/

Four-day release with a chance to brick a system that cost 2.5 billion. That’s got to be the most nerve-wracking sysadmin job ever.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/08/nasa-patch/

Today’s non-jokey science video: a jaw-dropping video about a camera that records a trillion frames per second, fast enough to see the passing of a laser pulse through a coke bottle.  Truly staggering…I still can’t quite believe this is possible.  
Ramesh’s home page is at http://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/trillionfps/.

Ever heard the story about the guy who got into an argument with his wife, steamed off to the lab, and invented something amazing?

http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/16/3246483/room-temperature-maser-space-communication

I love transit system maps that don’t directly reflect geography.  This one somehow manages to sill represent the geography of the Boston area while also being a radial projection of the clock-time distance from place to place! Totally awesome.

http://www.stonebrowndesign.com/boston-t-time.html

This is without question the most measured, thoughtful, and powerful response to those who frame their opposition to marriage equality as an expression of their “religious freedom” that I’ve ever come across.

http://www.owldolatrous.com/?p=369

Google is recruiting for a Ganeti Software Engineer position at Google Germany. This position is specifically targeted at the Ganeti Open Source Cluster Virtualization Manager.

If you have two of: “good systems engineer background with experience in virtualization”, “good imperative coding skills”, “good functional programming experience (especially haskell)” please contact me for a referral (or apply directly, if you prefer)

http://www.google.com/about/jobs/locations/munich/engineering/swe/software-engineer-ganeti-munich.html

(resharing welcome, if you have people following you with a compatible background and you think they might be interested)

http://www.google.com/about/jobs/locations/munich/engineering/swe/software-engineer-ganeti-munich.html

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/recipes/sardines_fennel.aspx

It seems that there’s a mismatch between how I expect G+ album notifications to work, and how they actually work.  What I’m doing is uploading an album from Picasa, and sharing it with two non-public circles.

Expectation:  The album is visible to all of the people in both circles, and will show up in a post from me in their stream.

What’s happening:  Everything I expect, but in addition some (possibly all) of the people in both circles are getting Notifications.

I’d like to know what I’m doing to trigger the notifications.  This feels like a bug, but no matter what it’s causing the worst kind of social networking fail: Oversharing.  The last thing I want is to alienate friends, and while I believe that my daughter’s pictures are of Great Importance, I don’t think everyone I know should have their phone chirp every time I upload one.