Dr Laura James's writings

Labour was a theme cutting across sessions at Maintainers III. There was one specific session exploring it, which turned out to be quite data-driven (but also US-specific).  Data about labour is often missing, for various reasons. Half the workers in the US are paid by the hour, so their overall wage is unknown and with unpredictable work schedules statistics struggle to paint a realistic picture. Many people have two or three or more jobs; perhaps 40% have some sort of 'side hustle'.  Some forms of intangible labour, such as that of graduate students in universities, are hard to track (that's on top of the unpaid labour in care, in the home and so on). This is perhaps unsurprising given people are generally happy not to know about the poverty and precarity of others. Quite a few sessions discussed unions and labour organising, including mention of the Tech Worker Coalition as well as more traditional unionisation. In the US, collective bargaining was developed in a w...

It’s been two weeks of intensive thinking about maintenance. First we held the second Festival of Maintenance in Liverpool on the 28th September; then I travelled to Washington DC for Maintainers III last week. You can find a summary of the 2019 Festival (and where it came from) over on the Maker Assembly blog . Many thanks for the support over the last two years, Maker Assembly! 2019 was my first Maintainers event, made possible by a Fellowship from the Software Sustainability Institute . Sitting down to write up MIII is quite an intimidating task, as there was so much material covered and a great richness to the ideas we explored. Both events brought together diverse people and communities around a sense of a shared ideal - that there is great value in maintenance that we are not recognising sufficiently today. It was good to be at an event with clear goals. Andy Russell managed to pull together three themes for his closing summary at MIII - a tough task, with two and a ...

Starting with a perceptive and interesting idea from incredible women: https://twitter.com/CassieRobinson/status/1181139137212174336 Doteveryone released a report on Better care in the age of automation . It's a stonker - lots of really insightful points (and worth reading the detail)  Superflux produced an accompanying video which illustrates one possible care future. It doesn't go where you'd expect the story to end up.  Recommended. ( Find out more about the film. ) There's a short video featuring some of the experts involved in the report - including carers and those receiving care. Dan Hon looks into StreetScore as an example of machine learning, the way papers are published and new projects started. His title says it all: Streetscore, or: how I learned to stop worrying and love machine learning. I am just not sure that it is responsible to create a dataset for 21 cities, based on 3,000 images from two cities, while simultaneously admitting that t...

NationBuilder - a nice example of how legally connecting bits and bobs gets you targeted advertising not for products, but for politics . Fascinating notes from a Harvard workshop about public interest internet - politics, standards and infrastructure. Thanks Niels ten Oever. PwC’s recent Responsible AI Diagnostic Survey of more than 750 senior business executives through September 2019 found that only 34 percent think their use of AI is in line with their organisation’s values . UN entities are not subject to GDPR , it turns out. Cybersecurity for cars is a huge industry - growing to $2.3b in 2025 ! Maybe car companies should have spent money upfront on securing their designs, rather than paying startups to fix problems later. (via Beau Woods ). Cybersecurity for shipping. A fascinating tale of investigating how vulnerable systems are. An investigation into how Boeing's financialisation links to the 737 MAX crashes . An article from early this year by Deb Chachr...

The latest and third edition of the Fairphone was announced . Looks like another solid Android phone, as Fairphone 2 was. Nothing fancy in terms of 'conventional' specs - screen resolution, camera, some processors - although the dual SIM and replaceable battery are nice features. You buy Fairphones for other specs - fairly traded minerals, decent working conditions, repairability - and in this edition, recycled materials, too. I plan to replace my Fairphone 2 - it's given good service, but has also seen heavy use and is starting to show some signs that it may be wearing out. A lifetime of 3.5 years seems quite respectable, for all that it's far less than one might hope for. Fairphone 3 should be maintainable for 5-7 years - if this seems short, you'll be horrified by how electronics manufacturing works . There are p ositive effects to going green - it's not about what you give up , but what you get, as a person.  It's not so clear cut for companies - some ...

Last Friday was the Festival day at Wuthering Bytes , and for the third time I was the compere. Andrew Back did an excellent job curating a great range of speakers as ever. I've written up a few notes on what struck me as most interesting below. The diverse talks managed to weave together several common threads. Community came up in many talks - communities around local projects, building guitars, designing satellites. Some communities are made of citizen scientists measuring air quality, tracking satellites, and even testing genetically modified seeds. Technology in our homes, in our local areas, in our societies and the control we have over it, and the purposes for which it is used. Another theme seemed to be technologies and ideas arising in perhaps less likely places - past and present - in the Calder valley, in catering businesses; nuclear physics in gardening and medical care. Wuthering Bytes 2019 badge JP Rangaswami opened the day with a keynote about the ...

A highlight from this year's Wilderness Festival was Arcadia Spectacular - a small portion of the show was Lords of Lightning . Lords of Lightning - Musical Tesla from Arcadia Spectacular on Vimeo . Looking forward to more Tesla coil action at Wuthering Bytes festival day in a couple of weeks - as ever, a stunning line up of talks on all kinds of science, tech and culture topics. Grab a ticket now and join us in Hebden Bridge for the most authentic tech festival in the UK! An interview with Martin Kleppmann, on formal verification and distributed systems . Formal verification is one of the bits of computer science I think is least well known in the wider 'digital' world; this is regrettable, as it is one approach to tackling some of the problems people encounter with computer systems. It's been great to work slightly with Martin whilst at the Computer Lab in Cambridge. A study finds "older drivers aged 55-75 removed their eyes and attention from the ...

Doteveryone has published our "definition of done". What does it mean to finish a piece of work?  What does good advocacy, protest or resistance work look like now? It turns out clear communication is important. Don Norman on replacing "Yes, and" with "Yes, but, and" - Note that the “but” anticipating the “and” is essential. In order to build on your idea, your colleague does not just add a new improved proposal. First, she provides a critique, which enables you to receive precious and specific information, see weaknesses in your half-backed idea you couldn’t spot yourself, and therefore learn. You and the entire team will then be ready to dive deeper into the next iteration. It is the combination of “but” and “and” that creates real progress, enabling the team to see both positive and negative components and allowing each iteration to go even deeper into the analysis. Research from the Collective Impact Forum on funding for 'backbone' wor...