Tim Bray Profile picture
5 May, 4 tweets, 1 min read
1/4 Here’s a #CanadaCensus protip if you’re a parent/parent/children shaped family. Because it’s easy to put the website in a bad place.
2/ We did it at the dinner table and entered the people in the order they were sitting around the table: Mom, daughter, son, Dad.
3/ Eventually the we got to the question about the relationships of the people at this address to each other. It assumed the two first entered must be the parents and offered many laughably implausible options.
4/4 So we backed all the way out and restarted in mom/dad/kid/kid order. Then all the census designers’ assumptions fell into place and we could pick the correct relationships off the list.

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More from @timbray

18 Sep 20
1/ Big news out of BP last week, but media coverage was light and mostly paywalled. If you care about the #ClimateCrisis, this is essential stuff.
Here’s their actual “Energy Outlook”: bp.com/en/global/corp…
But that’s not the best place to absorb the key message. Read on…
2/ I didn’t find the actual outlook that easy to absorb, it was a little *too* interactive and didn’t tell a story. But BP does tell the story, in two other places. First of all, here’s an overview page, not bad: bp.com/en/global/corp…
But wait, there’s more and better…
3/ The overview introduces the 3 scenarios BP uses to think about the future, which is useful. But it’s a bit of wall-of-text and I think fails to make a few key points. Fortunately…
Read 12 tweets
1 May 20
This is going to take more than one. Sometime around 1980 I was a co-op in a steel mill. There was this huge machine that pressed slabs of hot steel into thin strips. It was overheating. 1/
The machine spec said it was up to a root mean square (RMS) amperage of 400 or so. Damn, that's a lotta juice. 2/
Anyhow, the thing had an amperage data trap, so they plugged in an HP data recorder for like 12 hours. Then they needed to compute the RMS. 3/
Read 13 tweets
17 Dec 19
1/ The sad story started when my old phone began to die so I got a Pixel 4 because of the camera.
2/ It wouldn’t connect to Android Auto in my car, which was thus deprived of several essential functions. Not a flicker of recognition from either side.
3/ It wouldn’t connect to my work email (mysteriously, with baffling symptoms never previously seen by any Amazon IT person).
Read 13 tweets
16 Nov 19
1/ Discovered that many people don't know the protocol for people who travel to China on behalf of a big tech company.
2/ You do not take your laptop. Company gives you a burner laptop with VPN. (Great Firewall typically lets corporate VPNs through.) No files, please.
3/ They ask you not to open and/or power up the laptop once you’ve got onto the plane leaving China. Bring it straight to IT unopened for sanitization.
Read 6 tweets
21 Nov 18
0/ OK, my turn for #AWS #reinvent tips, and I’ll just offer one (in multiple parts).

It’s this: Meet people and talk to them!

Here’s why: I do this and I *never fail* to learn something interesting.

Here’s how:
1/ Every day, there’s a free breakfast and free lunch provided by the conference. You can probably get better food outside in a Vegas joint, but don’t, go to the conference meal. Then…
2/ Pick a table using an algorithm that tries to maximize Number of People and Just Getting Started. Then pick people at random and say “Hi! Where are in from?” and find out what they’re working on.
Read 7 tweets
2 Sep 18
0/ Thread: Facebook is actually OK if you use it correctly.
1/ Stay away from the newsfeed. It’s a torrent of vaguely ill-tasting froth. I used to watch it to find out when a friend moved cities or got pregnant or their dog died, but the cost of the mainstream Facebook bullshit is too high.
2/ People who are otherwise reasonable and nice tend to fill Facebook with self-promotion or yet another link to some cable news bobblehead echoing their politics. Not sure why FB makes good people act that way.
Read 7 tweets

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