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theDoug

1,842 karma · joined June 19, 2010

My name is Douglas Dollars, and I am a person. I work for Google, as the Staff Program Manager of Google Cloud Platform product roadmap, which is a way to see the future. I like that we have options these days.

Please accept that my intention is that of a hopefully helpful stranger. The opinions stated here are my own, and I'm never _trying_ to be an asshole but HN brings it out in all of us, but especially you.

Three effective ways to reach me are: Twitter @yourfondestlove, personal email doug@favorite.cat, or work email douglasdollars@google.com

submissionscomments
theDoug··on MAI-Cyber 1
I do hope they also use it to that effect.
theDoug··on GitHub Public Roadmap
For the time being all public commitments, release notes, and deprecation notices can be found in one or both of:

- Release notes: https://cloud.google.com/release-notes

- GCP Blog: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp

theDoug··on GitHub Public Roadmap
Thank you! We work really hard on the GCP roadmap program, keeping it fully accountable, and pushing against interesting transparency limits.

A public GCP roadmap is also in longer plans but there's a few internal flows we want to improve first. I'm especially trying to reduce the number of sites people need to visit, and want to ultimately see it land in a common place where authenticated users also see the non-public / NDA aspects.

And seconding this advice on access. If you are a GCP customer, your account manager is able to add your account for access. My contact info is in my profile and I can reach your account team if you have difficulties.

theDoug··on GitHub Public Roadmap
Yeah. All Cloud deprecations have a minimum of a year notice, usually as an email, ahead of multiple follow up emails as the year draws close. It's in the terms.

Additionally, you can also get this information in the public release notes https://cloud.google.com/release-notes twice-monthly GCP newsletter, and for G Suite administrators in their news area. "Sigh."

theDoug··on macOS 10.16 is all about tools and maturity
Maybe it is. I feel like this is the narrative on every second cycle since 10.6 (Snow Leopard, to 10.5's Leopard), that "this" is the one where things get more reliable and nature.
theDoug··on Apple Mail randomly becomes the frontmost application in macOS
The answer is found in System Preferences > Mission Control. Uncheck the “Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use” box :)
theDoug··on Google recommends all North America employees work from home
Generally "Europe, the Middle East and Africa"
theDoug··on I feel like im talking to the borg
Poor 20-something grandfather Rafael also identifies as a nana and as a middle-aged woman.

https://mobile.twitter.com/TheKenChilds/status/1161847717397...

theDoug··on The Library Card Project: The Ease of Forming Anonymous Companies in the U.S.
> To obtain a library card in any state in the U.S., the applicant must be the person who will ultimately be controlling/using the card, and a significant amount of identifying information must be provided by the person to the state in order to obtain the library card.

This is nonsesne, or at least was here in Sunnyvale California. I walked in with a phone bill. No ID, nothing else. In hindsight it probably could have been anyone's bill, or even a fake.

theDoug··on Google's New Manager Student Workbook
This is not what Google uses, but shares many similarities, so the title of "Google's" isn't fully correct.

This is an example from https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/

theDoug··on If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault (2011)
'Major' is up to personal definition and will distract people here no doubt. Metafiter has been my long-time lighthouse for this kind of gauge, though obviously not as big as its peak.

https://www.metafilter.com/newuser.mefi

- Anyone can view the site and its content

- Very clearly putting their rules of the road up (link above) before you can 'join'

- Commenting/posting/membership is a $5, one time fee

- A one-week wait before you can post

- Paid moderation

And it works.

theDoug··on Bose headphones spy on listeners: lawsuit (2017)
In the instance of these headphones, the app allows you to adjust the level of active noise cancellation as well as choose which sources can send audio to the headphones. Neither of which are set up to be done directly via the device.
theDoug··on Google suspends some business with Huawei after Trump blacklist
Dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19954673
theDoug··on Google Fights Back
You seem fixated on the word "promise," which I've never once heard said.

Assistant calling and Duplex appointment booking were both available within the year, across most of the United States, but you claim neither work.

theDoug··on Google Will Soon Let Users Automatically Scrub Location and Web History
Great, another thing they deprecate, my own history. /s
theDoug··on Flutter desktop shells
Nah. The number of issues on any project is not an indication of project quality but community activity and imagination for improvements. This is the wrong number to point to if you're trying to make this point.
theDoug··on Your Android Phone Is a Security Key
But looking at a web page nearly made his body vomit!
theDoug··on Cloud Run beta pricing
Google Cloud? Which two?
theDoug··on Cloud Run beta pricing
It is an important question, but Google services which are largely consumer-based and no cost are a very different world from Google Cloud. People get a lot of Internet Cool Guy points these days from falsely conflating the two.

I'm not the to make commitments but our history has been solid, and our deprecation policy is embedded in our terms of service for every Cloud user.

The only product I can remember us deprecating in GCP was Prediction API in favor of the much-preferred Cloud Machine Learning Engine, and with that came communication to every single affected admin and a _year_ before cut-off.

https://cloud.google.com/terms/

theDoug··on Google Cloud Outage
Yeah, looks like 52 minutes for a routing issue in one zone in a single region. Not that downtime is fun for anyone.

Disclosure: I work for Google Cloud

theDoug··on Too much information as an impediment for action
+1

One area I've found helpful is focusing on sources of clarity. With the volume of information/data of all levels of quality becoming so abundant to the point of being overwhelming, and that volume used to influence, the more I can identify the answer to these two points with what is being shoved my way, the better I feel about what I do ultimately select:

- What supposed truth is this information trying to uphold or undermine?

- Is this information trying to make me more or less active on the previous point?

Increasingly I'm getting out of the habit of accepting "I've heard something like this a LOT lately" as a positive sign of influence or motivation toward a next step. Any idiot can buy out the podcast ad inventory to sell their buddy's brain genius pills, it doesn't make consumption wise.

(The poster linked to their own blog post, so maybe they'll add their own opinion to either, rather than summarizing two quotes from David Allen.)

theDoug··on Linux touchpad like a Macbook: progress and a call for help
Off-topic slightly but was curious- this works 'correctly' on my Pixelbook using its trackpad. Neat test/concept, though.
theDoug··on Tesla Model Y
Are there any photos of the Model Y with seven adults inside?
theDoug··on Companies may be losing millions due to emails buried in collapsed Gmail threads
Is this not just a repost of the flagged post from yesterday?
theDoug··on Life of a Pixel 2018
Google Cloud world class tech support™: Hit S for speaker notes or the gear icon for the menu item (yes, under any amount of load)
theDoug··on Google .dev domain early access
Thank you for mentioning this. Memories are increasingly short, and this is nothing new!
theDoug··on Google Docs gets an API for task automation
I've also found visiting https://calendar.google.com/calendar/b/1/r/settings

and setting date format there useful. Not sure if it's a universal setting like the previous, though.

theDoug··on Google Docs gets an API for task automation
I suspect you have tried this, but if not,

- visit https://myaccount.google.com/language

- click on (re-choose) English

- click on New Zealand as the 'sub-language'

should set your locale across the board, rather than doing it on a per-sheet basis. If it doesn't work, as a Canadian, I empathize with your troubles and apologize.

theDoug··on Google Edge TPU Devices
We do sell access to a huge variety of NVIDIA GPU via Google Cloud Platform[1], which is maybe where the poster's confusion came from. Shrug.

1: https://cloud.google.com/gpu

theDoug··on Google Edge TPU Devices
This is nonsense.
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