Notices by Terra Field (rainofterra@terra.incognita.net)

Cis people: the more of you that speak out, the better I feel that we can survive this. Please familiarize yourself with why transition related care for trans teens is so important and how it is safe, effective, and literally life saving: https://transequality.org/news/get-facts-truth-about-transition-related-care-transgender-youth #TransRights

This is who I am.

My birth certificate says I am a woman. My documents say I’m a woman. My family says I’m a woman. My parents say I’m a woman. My friends say I’m a woman. My doctors say I’m a woman.

Fuck this government if it disagrees, and fuck you if you disagree.

We exclude so many of what could be our best people because either we tell them their path isn’t a valid one or they look at the people who make it in tech, don’t see anyone like themselves, and self select out before anyone has a chance to say “actually, you could do this.”

Especially as someone who is nearly entirely self taught and who is the daughter of someone who taught shop classes, I truly believe a more equitable path forward for preparing people for work in tech is to make it a vocation and not something perceived as only for folks with degrees.

I’m only on episode 4 of “Change, Technically” with @grimalkina and @analog_ashley and I’ve already cried twice and and cheered out loud in my car a few times. If you’re in software, infrastructure, or use either professionally you should be listening to this. https://www.changetechnically.fyi/

Hey #PlatformEngineering folks (especially with Kafka experience!) - how would you like to be the new Terra at @honeycombio? They are hiring a Staff Platform Engineer to backfill for me (my last day is Friday) and you couldn’t ask for a better group of folks.

https://jobs.lever.co/honeycomb/4f2ae4a9-cb04-47f8-9590-e70cb66b30a9

OH: “we are moving all our hosts out of us-east-1b because the vibes are not immaculate*”

(This was a joke, 1b is fine)

He is coming for #trans people faster than I thought. Sorry for Twitter link but this is too important: https://fxtwitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1855073216613503228

Alright who’s ready for No NAT November???? #ipv6 #NoNATNovember

@thedoh throw away your NAT oppression! All you have to lose is your chains!*

*assuming your ISP does IPv6 right

Do FEC reporting requirements mandate a physical address be given for donations in excess of $200 or is a PO Box fine? #FEC #uspol

Lynn Conway was remarkable in a number of ways but I think the reason her death hits me so hard even though I didn’t know her personally is the most unremarkable thing about her: One of us got to live her life quietly, grow old, and be remembered fondly as herself in death.

I think that’s all I really want.

Comic via Assigned Male Comics (@sophielabelle)

#LynnConway #TransElders #trans

@grimalkina @mononcqc @CSLee I love any opportunity to point out both that:
- Even for staff/principal/etc. engineers this stuff can still feel bad/be complicated, so it’s very ok for more junior folks to feel that way.
- It doesn’t always have to be terrible, we can make it better - with science! 🧪

@grimalkina @mononcqc @CSLee yeah I feel like only very recently has there been any real guidance for folks above senior at all and we’re just on the cusp of a broader understanding of the ways it can look like. Sometimes it’s “here is this amazingly detailed technical blog post” but a lot of the time it’s going to be what used to be considered “soft skills” like “here is how I’m learning to use my seniority to be comfortable being vulnerable so I can model it for others” - and yes, the cost that comes with that.

@derekalcorn @aral the slow rolling grin across my face as I realized what was going on 😂

I forgot to post this years #daffodils. They’re my favorite flower, these were transplanted from my parents place in South Jersey, which were transplanted from my grandparents house for me to care for when I was little, which were themselves transplanted from my grandmothers childhood home in Pitman, NJ where she would sell them as a little girl (they were her favorite flower too). #BloomScrolling #PlantsOfMastodon #Plantstodon

Fallacies of Distributed Computing: Automotive Edition

So our 2016 Subaru Outback has been having horrible battery drain issues for a couple years now. We got the attached service bulletin recently that explained the issue.

It turns out that the Data Communications Module that powers Subaru's Starlink service (emergency assistance/safety/etc. service) now causes a battery drain because it is trying to talk to a 3G network that is no longer there, and it just tries its little heart out.

You can bring the car in to get the DCM reprogrammed to not do this anymore which will fix the problem, and they will also cover batteries killed by the issue.

But my favorite part about this is that this happened because they didn't account for the first Fallacy of Distributed Computing:

"The network is reliable".

A bunch of vehicle computers each connecting to a home network sure sounds like distributed computing to me. 🤷🏻♀️

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2024/MC-10251111-0001.pdf
#Subaru #DistributedComputing #Lesbaru #cars

Heritage Foundation finding out the hard way how many InfoSec people are queer/trans: https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/12/heritage-foundation-cyberattack/ #SoSad #InfoSec

Trans people in the US: Whatever you think about staying and fighting versus living to fight another day, please get an up to date passport with your correct information on it before November if you’re able to. https://transequality.org/know-your-rights/passports #USPol #trans

@chrisisgr8 @thomasfuchs let’s see if this works, I put the alt text in a gist because it was too long: https://gist.github.com/346a413c2fc2c21bf1c7f019053d05a5#chatgpt-quasar-unhinged.txt