Post ASHGm7ZlE5XMwjzuIS by shawnbrown@mstdn.social
(DIR) More posts by shawnbrown@mstdn.social
(DIR) Post #ASH6E5lOSWk3wDZcg4 by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-02T16:38:49Z
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I often find myself wanting to use a metaphor based on the 1997 John Woo film Face/Off to explain my worries about decisions made inside organizationsIf you haven't seen it this likely won't make much sense to you, but my mental model of a "Face/Off situation" is when the last person inside an organization who understands the rationale for a particular decision has left, leaving a gap in institutional knowledge that results in terrible decisions being made(Yes this is about the bird site)
(DIR) Post #ASH7B36hyiWqmkekqG by zubakskees@mastodon.social
2023-02-02T16:49:14Z
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@simon Sometimes the decision is why they leave.
(DIR) Post #ASH81ak0AqDE9n5cm0 by winnie@sunny.garden
2023-02-02T16:58:49Z
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@simon lol particularly relevant when somebody has come in and burned down the entire lab with everybody who knew inside. also still talking about the birdsite.
(DIR) Post #ASH8X7uCv10DzZtsbQ by hmans@norden.social
2023-02-02T17:04:12Z
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@simon I admit it's been a while since I last saw that movie, but I literally have no idea what part of it you're referring to :p
(DIR) Post #ASH9IapLCsmzIjG36m by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-02T17:08:03Z
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@hmans only the surgeons who performed the top secret face transplant operation could confirm that the FBI guy with the terrorist's face worked for the FBI, and this happened https://sunny.garden/@winnie/109796204818003283
(DIR) Post #ASH9acFAg89WuIvwwq by WatchingTVnFilm@mastodon.social
2023-02-02T17:14:13Z
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@simon Like 'last person to leave should turn off the lights.' But there's still people in there...
(DIR) Post #ASH9p4q1A80ve341mC by sil@mastodon.social
2023-02-02T17:15:21Z
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@simon I find it hard to believe that the decision to kill third party Twitter clients was made because the knowledge of why this is bad has been lost, rather than because the reasons why they were good are no longer important to the management
(DIR) Post #ASHA6cBuPSOw0ifMJM by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-02T17:16:59Z
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@sil did you see they've decided to kill off ALL free access to the Twitter API now as well? With a week's notice?A million fun and entertaining bots cried out in unison and were permanently silenced
(DIR) Post #ASHAaJ8ho8jFbuKIPg by sil@mastodon.social
2023-02-02T17:25:50Z
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@simon yeah. Because they no longer care about what third-party clients or fun and entertaining bots bring to the platform; everything that those things enabled is no longer of interest to those remaining making decisions at Twitter. Sic transit gloria mundi.
(DIR) Post #ASHB3ILFqtVrXD1BxY by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-02T17:33:14Z
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@sil the first hint of that was the whole verified thing, where they decided they wanted to charge money to the people who were the biggest content producers that drew others to the siteAbundantly clear that the "chief twit" really doesn't understand anything about how the thing he bought actually worked
(DIR) Post #ASHCTRehwjHTu79OVs by dvogel@mastodon.social
2023-02-02T17:48:58Z
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@simon this reminds me of a great talk by @bcantrill: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4PaWFYm0kEwWhen I left Crowd Compass I was the last in a long string of longer-tenured engineers to leave. I was concerned about this very thing so I spent my last two days writing down the entire history of the development of the product as it had been told to me when I started, up and through my time there. I've often wondered if/how that material was ever useful to anyone left maintaining the product.
(DIR) Post #ASHGVz2tAp3nrCvXE0 by philsherry@home.social
2023-02-02T18:34:22Z
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@simon You can’t mention that without an obligatory Statham reference. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3079380/quotes?item=qt2631499
(DIR) Post #ASHGm7ZlE5XMwjzuIS by shawnbrown@mstdn.social
2023-02-02T18:35:39Z
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@simon I haven't seen Face/Off since the late '90s but this also sounds like "Chesterton's Fence":* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton's_fence* https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/
(DIR) Post #ASHHbyOEclc9W0KbBY by shawnbrown@mstdn.social
2023-02-02T18:46:05Z
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@simon From Wikipedia...
(DIR) Post #ASHJD2A5fBljskx1rU by noname@norcal.social
2023-02-02T19:04:22Z
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@simon now I am curious why that kind of situation (reasoning gap) reminds you a Face/Off movie? I watched it a while back, but I wouldn’t recognize the metaphor. Probably should rewatch the movie.
(DIR) Post #ASHNJUa7JOPXZwSZge by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-02T19:50:51Z
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@noname It's the bit where everyone who knows about the face swapping is killed in the lab explosion, so there's no one who can confirm that John Travolta (now looking like Nicolas Cage) is actually an undercover FBI agent
(DIR) Post #ASKOZw8LKBHN5jknLc by josephholsten@mstdn.social
2023-02-04T06:49:12Z
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@simon I always get that one confused with Broken Arrow. But I’ll absolutely be using this term from now on.