Efficiency is the removal of redundancy.
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Efficiency is the removal of redundancy. Redundancy is a necessary element of resilient systems. The unbounded search for efficiency has one result: brittleness.
During the COVID lockdowns, and to a lesser degree when the Evergiven got stuck, we saw to how much the Just In Time invisible chains of production and distribution around us affect our lives. As climate change significantly disrupt farming throughout the world, we'll continue to see similar effects.
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During the COVID lockdowns, and to a lesser degree when the Evergiven got stuck, we saw to how much the Just In Time invisible chains of production and distribution around us affect our lives. As climate change significantly disrupt farming throughout the world, we'll continue to see similar effects.
I'm all for global chains of distribution: specialization is real and you won't ever grow bananas in Alaska (even if Iceland showed it is technically possible last century), manufacture a computer chip in Paris or produce wine in Greenland, but we as consumers have to accept and understand that having pineapple out of season anywhere in the planet is not reasonable at the prices we're used to paying. In some French super markets I've seen signs on the produce next to the price with the country of origin and helpful information of when the growing season is. I found that as an excellent nudge for the almost entirely fictional homo economicus. I'd like us to surface that information to everyone for everything. Maybe that way people would understand just how connected we are.
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I'm all for global chains of distribution: specialization is real and you won't ever grow bananas in Alaska (even if Iceland showed it is technically possible last century), manufacture a computer chip in Paris or produce wine in Greenland, but we as consumers have to accept and understand that having pineapple out of season anywhere in the planet is not reasonable at the prices we're used to paying. In some French super markets I've seen signs on the produce next to the price with the country of origin and helpful information of when the growing season is. I found that as an excellent nudge for the almost entirely fictional homo economicus. I'd like us to surface that information to everyone for everything. Maybe that way people would understand just how connected we are.
But that interconnectedness and search for "efficiency" is not only in financial or production systems, it exists in software, hardware, any kind of industry, and in governments. When we "engineer out" expertise out of government to the private sector, government then lacks that expertise entirely. When we engineer away redundancy from software, we end up with software that can fail in catastrophic ways.
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I'm all for global chains of distribution: specialization is real and you won't ever grow bananas in Alaska (even if Iceland showed it is technically possible last century), manufacture a computer chip in Paris or produce wine in Greenland, but we as consumers have to accept and understand that having pineapple out of season anywhere in the planet is not reasonable at the prices we're used to paying. In some French super markets I've seen signs on the produce next to the price with the country of origin and helpful information of when the growing season is. I found that as an excellent nudge for the almost entirely fictional homo economicus. I'd like us to surface that information to everyone for everything. Maybe that way people would understand just how connected we are.
@ekuber Yep, I like this French regulation that requires displaying all this information. We always make a deliberate choice of buying seasonal products that are produced locally, even if they're more expensive.
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But that interconnectedness and search for "efficiency" is not only in financial or production systems, it exists in software, hardware, any kind of industry, and in governments. When we "engineer out" expertise out of government to the private sector, government then lacks that expertise entirely. When we engineer away redundancy from software, we end up with software that can fail in catastrophic ways.
One thing I keep seeing is the same lessons being learned across different disciplines: pilots and doctors learning about the importance of checklists, road and industrial machine engineers learning about safe by default design, industrial and software UX designers learning about how to best make machines and humans talk to each other. We need more cross pollination. Across industries. Across borders. Across people. That's how we build a better future. And for that we need to listen.
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@ekuber Yep, I like this French regulation that requires displaying all this information. We always make a deliberate choice of buying seasonal products that are produced locally, even if they're more expensive.
@swallez so many small things that add no cost but have a material impact. I always think of the legislation forcing plastic bottle caps to remain attached by default. Such a small thing, such a large impact on both loose trash and recyclability. There are so many small changes we can do that no one would bat an eye at that would improve all our lives. So many others that people would have kneejerk reactions towards that would be beneficial to all.
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During the COVID lockdowns, and to a lesser degree when the Evergiven got stuck, we saw to how much the Just In Time invisible chains of production and distribution around us affect our lives. As climate change significantly disrupt farming throughout the world, we'll continue to see similar effects.
@ekuber i was just bringing this up in the context of all but essential-for-rail-service personnel on train stations. It’s around-water-freezing cold here and there is lots of snow and ice. It’d take a station keeper an hour tops to clean things and make usage safe, but no, we optimised that position away and now we play slip-and-slide with serious injuries for the third week running. Great system.
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Efficiency is the removal of redundancy. Redundancy is a necessary element of resilient systems. The unbounded search for efficiency has one result: brittleness.
@ekuber Preach!
By and large, the motivation for efficiency to maximize the amount that can be extracted from that step of the process; the brittleness and fragility of the machine upon which everyone's lives depend has been put in so people get rich as much as possible. (It's not even "get rich", it's "as much as possible" or maybe "as soon as possible" if you can tell those apart.)
If we want to live through the time of angry weather, we're going to agree that nobody is or gets rich.
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Efficiency is the removal of redundancy. Redundancy is a necessary element of resilient systems. The unbounded search for efficiency has one result: brittleness.
@ekuber This is a wonderfully concise phrasing of something I regularly wave my arms and froth about when talking to people about this stuff. Thank you!
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@ekuber Yep, I like this French regulation that requires displaying all this information. We always make a deliberate choice of buying seasonal products that are produced locally, even if they're more expensive.
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Efficiency is the removal of redundancy. Redundancy is a necessary element of resilient systems. The unbounded search for efficiency has one result: brittleness.
@ekuber @janl "how infrastructure works" has a great paragraph about this too https://chaos.social/@mrtazz/111844063360502168
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Efficiency is the removal of redundancy. Redundancy is a necessary element of resilient systems. The unbounded search for efficiency has one result: brittleness.
@ekuber that is so nicely framed. @wendynather
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Efficiency is the removal of redundancy. Redundancy is a necessary element of resilient systems. The unbounded search for efficiency has one result: brittleness.
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One thing I keep seeing is the same lessons being learned across different disciplines: pilots and doctors learning about the importance of checklists, road and industrial machine engineers learning about safe by default design, industrial and software UX designers learning about how to best make machines and humans talk to each other. We need more cross pollination. Across industries. Across borders. Across people. That's how we build a better future. And for that we need to listen.
@ekuber
Are you familiar with the Resilience Engineering Association? If not, I have a real treat for you. -
Efficiency is the removal of redundancy. Redundancy is a necessary element of resilient systems. The unbounded search for efficiency has one result: brittleness.
There's a book on this theme by Tom DeMarco, _Slack_. The general idea is that complete optimization causes fragility; to be robust requires slack to handle emergencies, and to innovate.
A bit old now -- from 2001 -- but we still haven't learned the lesson, so...
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One thing I keep seeing is the same lessons being learned across different disciplines: pilots and doctors learning about the importance of checklists, road and industrial machine engineers learning about safe by default design, industrial and software UX designers learning about how to best make machines and humans talk to each other. We need more cross pollination. Across industries. Across borders. Across people. That's how we build a better future. And for that we need to listen.
@ekuber
If I'd written a(nother) book it would have been called "Failure Modes". They repeat. -
One thing I keep seeing is the same lessons being learned across different disciplines: pilots and doctors learning about the importance of checklists, road and industrial machine engineers learning about safe by default design, industrial and software UX designers learning about how to best make machines and humans talk to each other. We need more cross pollination. Across industries. Across borders. Across people. That's how we build a better future. And for that we need to listen.
@ekuber Don't forget to include those in the arts. We are able to think beyond the various professional boxes to literally see bigger pictures.
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undefined oblomov@sociale.network shared this topic
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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@grabbi_it prendete e condividetene tutti
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I don't think it breaks expectations.
It's also the way most social networks work. If the OP posts privately, all the comments and replies to comments are visible to *all* the OP's followers.
This is how Facebook, Instagram, and X all work.
They let you have private conversations with people that matter to you. It's one of the best parts of those platforms.
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@dgelessus I managed to replicate this Wikipedia snippet in DDG by saying "lang:de" but uhhhh 😭
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@elly @nina_kali_nina Amazing. I didn't even know of, or hadn't ever come across Linux in High School. 😿
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@nina_kali_nina KNOPPIX was *great*. And underlines for me how much of our current computing world is a solution in search of a problem.
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@nina_kali_nina For researching things like this, it's unfortunate that no search engine lets you easily say "give me results in ALL languages, I'll figure it out, don't worry". Even DDG with the country switch off seems to filter by rough region/language based on GeoIP, at least until you reach the second page of results.
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Yes. That's equivalent to Alice setting their post followers only, and Bob setting their post public, but less confusing to the user.
(Edit: realized you hadn't said what Bob's visibility was set to. Anyway: UI quibbles aside, the answer is that you intersect the people who are able to view)
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@nina_kali_nina It's more just luck that my country speaks one of the 2 languages whose Wikipedia mentions this fact :) Here in Germany, putting "ubuntu morphix" into any search engine naturally shows this Wikipedia article as one of the top results, and at least DDG even highlights the relevant sentence in the text preview.
