Werd I/O

A while back, my out-of-warranty Macbook Pro's wireless antenna died. I had the card replaced; no dice. And unfortunately the antenna is in the screen, so to get working wireless back I would have had to get that replaced at a very high cost.

I went another way.

If you walk down the Networking aisle at Best Buy or Staples, which is what happens when you need a new wireless adapter in a hurry, you'll see that all the USB wireless dongles say they're for Windows only. Not a single one ships with a Mac driver, because I guess the Mac hardware is considered to be infallible or something. Maybe the cost-benefit analyses didn't show it to be worthwhile. Who knows.

Luckily, most USB wireless dongles are repackaged chipsets from other manufacturers. In particular, the Linksys AE3000 and a few other wireless-N models by manufacturers like Belkin are based on the Ralink (now Mediatek) RT3573 chip. I bought the Linksys AE3000 because of the build quality and speed capabilities.

Years ago, Ralink released some official drivers for Hackintoshes, which they've kept up-to-date. So after buying my Windows-only Linksys dongle, all I had to do was go grab the appropriate driver from their download page.

Or so I thought. You see, it turns out that the AE3000 didn't exist when the driver was written, so the installer doesn't know anything about it. You plug in your dongle, and nothing happens. What you actually have to do is install the driver and, before the final reboot after installation, go find the Info.plist file in /System/Library/Extensions/RT2870USBWirelessDriver.kext/ and add some information about the manufacturer. (After some adventures with text editors, I found that it was best to do this using sudo nano in a terminal window.)

And this kind of ridiculousness is why open source operating systems are a good idea. Nonetheless, despite the convoluted technical steps, it works: I have a working wireless-N connection via my Windows-only wireless dongle (even after an upgrade to Mavericks). I hope this helps someone else - and that manufacturers start properly supporting Mac OS X.

Some questions to ask yourself about your startup:

• Does your business aim to "lock" users into your product?
• Do you take ownership of content and/or data that your users create?
• Do you create artificial barriers for billing purposes?
• Do you sell your user data behind their backs? (Burying it in your terms & conditions counts as "behind their backs".)
• Do you refuse to allow your users to export, post or manipulate data via anything but your own end-user interfaces?
• Do you charge extra, and/or require an NDA to be signed, to access your APIs?
• Do you sell products whose primary features are to restrict user freedoms? (Example: Digital Rights Management.)
• Do you enact policies that may lead to an increased risk for vulnerable users? (For example, a "real names" policy.)
• Are your marketing materials or business practices demeaning or offensive? (eg, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, etc.)

If the answer to any of the above is "yes", you may be an oppressive service: one that makes its money by aligning itself against its users. A progressive service is one where the interests of the business, as well as the features of your service, is in line with the user's goals and best interests, and the service actively aims to empower the user in any of these areas.

Can you think of any other criteria?

The BART strike is over: at the time of writing, they're expecting Bay Area Rapid Transit trains to start rolling at 4am, with a full service up and running by sometime in the afternoon. That's great news: the roads have been gridlocked here, and it's felt like the Bay Area has been brought to a standstill.

Nonetheless, I fully supported it.

The base salary for a train operator is $56,000 - a lot in most areas, but when a one-bedroom apartment runs for almost $2,000 a month, it's a salary that doesn't stretch very far. Particularly not if you have a family. And given that BART was running on a budget surplus, and worker wages were frozen for five years, it seems very reasonable to ask for more.

A second issue was safety: workers were asking for better lighting, and better protection against attacks. This request is all the more poignant given that two workers were killed on Friday.

I'm pleased that the union and BART management have reached a deal, not least because it was inconvenient to me: BART is by far the best way to travel around the area. What I'm less pleased about is the amount of anti-union propaganda I've seen from all over Silicon Valley. From tasteless jokes to threatening to replace them all with robots, it's not been pretty.

The purpose of unions is to allow workers to collectively organize and deal in a way that they could not as individuals. A company must negotiate for its best interests, by attempting to get the best value out of workers. It makes sense that the workers should have their own ability to negotiate with similar weight. Without this ability, wages, benefits and working conditions will tend to favor the companies rather than individuals. Here in the US, the labor movement was responsible for establishing the 40-hour workweek and the concept of having the weekend off, which were only ratified in 1940.

Unions have also been responsible for establishing the minimum wage, the concept of sick days, holiday pay, maternal leave, child labor laws and laws eradicating sweatshops in the United States. None of these are at all bad things, and while unions are not always a positive thing - just as company management is not always a positive thing - I'd argue that they're an important part of the fabric of working life. I have been proud to be a member of unions in the past, and if there was an appropriate tech industry union, I'd be proud to be a member of one now.

As Politico points out, a Harvard / University of Washington study showed that between a fifth and a third of the dramatic increase in income inequality in the united states (40%!) is related to the decline in union membership. While it's not the single cause, it's certainly hard to ignore, and points to a larger issue related to the evolution of workers' rights (and the perception of workers) in American society.

In January, Time noted that:

First, the fact is that when unions are stronger the economy as a whole does better. Unions restore demand to an economy by raising wages for their members and putting more purchasing power to work, enabling more hiring. [...] Second, unions lift wages for non-union members too by creating a higher prevailing wage. Even if you aren’t a member your pay is influenced by the strength or weakness of organized labor. The presence of unions sets off a wage race to the top. Their absence sets off a race to the bottom.

A victory for unionized workers, then, is a victory for all of us. Why on earth should a progressive industry like technology be against better conditions and pay for workers? I agree with Michel Hiltzik in the LA Times:

Blaming the workers for the impasse is a peculiarly one-sided interpretation of what's happening. Sure, you could say that 2,400 non-automated, human employees stand in the way of Silicon Valley's determination to "build something." But it's equally true to say that BART's nine board members and its general manager are the real obstacles to a settlement. Maybe Silicon Valley should figure out a way to automate them.

We're supposed to be making things better. As an industry, we may need to rethink what that means.

#bartstrike #labor #unions

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has a great line on his Twitter bio: "engineers first!"

Note: not sales first; not biz dev first; engineers first.

In most traditional organizations, unfortunately, engineers are not anywhere near first. Often, once you've cut through the extensive political hierarchies, layers of management, "ideas" people, and various other stakeholders, engineers come out pretty much dead last.

Of course, in technology, if your engineers are at the bottom of the heap, you will always lose.

There are a few different prongs to this problem as it arises in more traditional organizations. Not least of these is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a software engineer actually is: they're not IT support technicians, nor paint-by-numbers factory workers. They're creative knowledge workers; people whose skills allow them to create something from nothing, and who need an environment that allows those skills to be nurtured.

Related is the problem of "ideas" people, who want to claim ownership of the genesis of the product, without actually being able to do anything to create it. There are, of course, lots of different skillsets that go into making a software product, not all of which are engineering-related. However, it's undeniable that there are people in many traditional organizations who wish to claim credit for the creation of these products, to the expense of the people who actually do make them.

Finally, there are often business structures that exist solely for tradition's sake - they're there because that's how they've always be done. Because the engineering mindset is to analyze a structure and try and make something better, engineers may be less willing to play along with the politics within an organization. While I think this is an admirable quality, depending on the organization, it may be to the engineer's detriment.

Because engineers are academically-minded, smart people, they're less willing to navigate these hierarchies. It's also true that many of them may be, unfortunately, less able to navigate attempts to subjugate them, should anyone wish to. The result is terrible working environments for them, and as a direct result, sub-optimal products. Think of it this way: would you make a better product if you're constantly insecure about what you should be doing, or if you have the ability to make it your own?

The nice thing about Silicon Valley style companies is that they're often run by engineers, or people deeply understand the needs of engineers. They put the people who create the products first, and understand that the people who are actively making are the people who truly matter in the product process. Okay, so I'm biased, but this is something I really believe: fundamentally, a company boils down to its products; the products boil down to the people who make them, and the people who use them.

That's one of the reasons why engineers flock to Silicon Valley. It's not just about the gold rush, although there is the small chance you'll strike it lucky. But for everyone else, there are adequate salaries, comfortable working environments, and new kinds of companies that are reinventing the internal structures of work, and respecting the people who are building products.

There are still questions about aspects of Silicon Valley culture; I'm certainly uncomfortable with the bigotry and some of the libertarianism. Nonetheless, it's a safe space for geeks to use their creativity, intelligence and skills to create amazing things - and create incredibly high-value companies in the process. That's something you won't find as often in traditional organizations today - something they will doubtless be scrabbling to catch up with over time.

One often-seen trope in tech industry commentary is: "the geeks will inherit the earth".

It's a nice idea, which appeals to a lot of people in this ecosystem; there's even a lovely symmetry to the idea that the people who were probably bullied and ostracized in school, at least to some extent, are the same people who go on to change the world in meaningful ways. And in a lot of ways, it's true.

It's not because geeks are in any way better, or more intelligent, people. Instead, my theory is that it relates to being an outsider. People who don't change themselves to fit in are, almost by definition, more likely to think independently. If an effective leader is one who creates stand-out strategies and is able to creatively and intelligently react to circumstances, it makes sense that independent thinkers would fit the role more readily. The popular kids at school are much more suited to be followers - they've essentially taught themselves how to follow fashions rather than create them.

MBAs are not traditionally good at startups for similar reasons. They've been taught cookie cutter business methods, which make much more sense as management tactics in larger businesses than in the do-what-you-have-to context of getting something off the ground. Here in San Francisco, arguably tech startup central, besuited MBAs are often thought of as not bringing much to the table.

But geeks have their own popular kids now. Startup culture has created its own norms; brogrammers swarm San Francisco and cities like it, following the fashions dictated by outlets like TechCrunch and PandoDaily. Not a single one is likely to change the marketplace, let alone the world - and with them comes a pervasive culture of entitlement and even bigotry that isn't a million miles away from the cool kids.

Outliers are always going to be the people who bring about real change: people who can't easily be described, and whose actions can't easily be pattern-matched to an archetype. Often, these are people who don't take direction well. They might come across as weird, or antisocial. But their ideas are like nothing you've ever heard, and given the tools, they will create things you've never thought of.

Someone once said to me, in reference to someone who they thought was weird, "one way of looking at it is that they don't think mainstream culture is good enough for them." Damn straight. Being mainstream shouldn't be good enough for any of us. There's nothing to be gained by trying to be like everybody else, or by fitting yourself into a pre-defined pigeonhole.

Me? I like weird people, and I like working with them. I wish I was weirder myself: it's a sign of creativity, independence, and intelligence. San Francisco has a name for people who follow; they're called "normals" - or, sometimes, "consumers". It's not a label to aspire to.

In fact, none of us need to be normals or consumers. Once upon a time, we were needfully forced into demographic categories, so that products and media could be created that would broadly appeal to us. The Internet has created a world where anyone can connect to anyone else, whether it's to talk, to inform, or to sell. Fashions of all kinds are meaningless in a world where products can be viably created for an audience of one. They're an artifact of the age of broadcasting; one that's long since gone. We're in a post-demographic age, and if you're still trying to follow the crowd, you're a decade behind.

#startups #outliers

I've had a Samsung Galaxy S2 for two years, and I'm trying to decide which device to move to next.

When I moved to California a few years ago, I decided to go with T-Mobile, which has proven to be an excellent decision. Between dropping phone contacts and removing international data roaming fees, I've been very happy with their evolution, and (despite some poor coverage in various parts of the US) their service. In particular, I don't really grok why anyone would use AT&T.

But now, I find myself wondering if I need a personal phone at all. 99% of my phone use is over the Internet; I heavily use Google Hangouts, my voicemail and text messages are through Google Voice, and I've got credit on my Skype account. Particularly considering the data roaming changes, I think I could probably get away without the phone component of my device at all. After all, a telephone is a legacy device for voice communications over proprietary networks - something that is much more easily and flexibly done over the Internet. In many ways, an Internet phone number is better: it's not tethered to a single device, so I can call from whatever I have to hand, and change providers, even across countries, whenever I want to.

A MiFi, in other words, would be a smarter buy.

T-Mobile seems to be aware of this, because the only viable mobile broadband plan runs at $70 a month - which, coincidentally, is exactly what I pay for phone service with unlimited data. There's no financial incentive for me to change. And this carries on across the board: Verizon's is also $70, while AT&T is actually ten dollars cheaper for 10GB. Sprint is $80 for 12GB.

So despite not needing a phone plan, I'm forced into a position where I might as well get phone service. Because the data that comes with my $70 plan is unlimited, it's actually a better deal. That's disappointing: I was hoping to save some money by cutting out services that I don't need. But it also suggests that there's room for a data-only provider to cut through the incumbent networks and provide a service for data-only customers.

Android devices work well as mobile wifi hotspots, and T-Mobile doesn't charge extra for this these days, so it's not like I'm losing anything by buying another phone instead of a MiFi: I can still connect my iPads, laptops and other devices to my 4G service when I need to. Nonetheless, it feels odd to be be forced to buy into an old-fashioned way of doing things. I await the first consumer-oriented data-only cellphone networks eagerly.