bpchaps

17 ms·

121.
by bpchaps 8y ago
You're making a hell of a lot of assumptions there. In the end you're probably right for a population of people. I'm not talking about that, though - I'm talking about very specific people with families to feed.
122.
by bpchaps 8y ago
One thought that keeps me awake at night is that my past automation work has cost others their jobs. I understand that that's "how the world works", but it still deeply affects me that people have lost their livelihoods beca
123.
by bpchaps 8y ago
Er.. your imagination must be weak if you can't imagine that. Every state has different landlord laws with different thresholds....
124.
by bpchaps 8y ago
Sorry - should have been more clear. I'm mostly talking about local policy, which is where most of my experience with government comes from, through many FOIA requests. Federal is much more calculated (read: slow) in comparison to loca
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by bpchaps 8y ago
Sorry - edited. Still didn't answer the question, though :p
126.
by bpchaps 8y ago
Systemic, not systematic.
127.
by bpchaps 8y ago
Are you saying that zero middle ground exists?
128.
by bpchaps 8y ago
There's a middle ground. Practically no systemic analysis is done within government. At least in Chicago. Government systems are compartmentalized in ways that makes interfacing with them impossible for any worthwhile analysis. Example
129.
by bpchaps 8y ago
A list of information shared would go a long way. Assuming it's a short list (hah), it wouldn't be hard to prominently display it aside from the privacy policy. Edit: Also, turn ALL of this into a single step, and make it easier t
130.
by bpchaps 8y ago
It definitely is! Though, I've found not enough people know it well enough to make it useful in any distubutrd environment, since it just confuses everyone who's already used screen. And it gets worse because everyone who knows tm
131.
by bpchaps 8y ago
I've used tmux on a daily basis for about four years and have no idea what -t or -s do. My workflow is from a single machine, where I don't need to have multiple sessions - just different windows. For any remote sessions, I just u
132.
by bpchaps 8y ago
It is possible! For example, I recently received [1] a mysqldump of Chicago's "data dictionary" database, which is a collection of database schemas from databases throughout Chicago. That said - it's not always simple. T
133.
by bpchaps 8y ago
When I say "submit", I mean "submit a FOIA request over email with some SQL, then prey that the FOIA officer will google 'SQL' before flatout rejecting your request". :)
134.
by bpchaps 8y ago
I should clarify by "allows", I really mean "doesn't disallow". Similar, but ultimately very different.
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by bpchaps 8y ago
Yeah - that's one of the main reasons why I haven't really focused on federal FOIA that much. It just takes too damn long. You aught to try something local - you're much more likely have a more open conversation about the re
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by bpchaps 8y ago
Maybe one day. :)
137.
by bpchaps 8y ago
I just made sent one: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/chicago-169/canvas-database-sch... The idea comes from [1], where like you say, a journalist/requester can work with the government IT folk to craft a SQL qu
138.
by bpchaps 8y ago
Yep [1]! It's pretty damn impressive, but it's by no means a complete list of the data Chicago stores. Which is where FOIA comes into the picture. According to Chicago's (ex) Chief Data Officer, they also have a fairly routin
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by bpchaps 8y ago
(disclaimer: I own a non-profit for submitting requests, education, and advocating the release of digital records) I seriously recommend that everyone submit a FOIA request for information that they're interested in and make it public
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by bpchaps 8y ago
This is oddly relaxing to listen to. It's as if it's the background noise for 90% of my day to day work.
141.
A Tale About Requesting Chicago's Mayor's Office's Phone Records(mchap.io)
1 points by bpchaps 8y ago|0 comments
142.
by bpchaps 8y ago
Is any of the data used from that collection/analysis still around?
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by bpchaps 8y ago
Hm. I mean yes, but still - the guy made a legit rookie mistake by not checking the hostname of the host he rebooted before typing "reboot". Kinda 101 stuffs there. :/
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by bpchaps 8y ago
You're preaching to the choir. There's a reason the company was bought and completely gutted. For what it's worth, a billion dollars for this company, while still a lot, isn't world ending. It was probably insured, too.
145.
by bpchaps 8y ago
It was a team of five senior level linux sysadmins who oversaw about 2k servers. Lots of arguments for and against pushing blame here or there, but at the end of the day - he fucked up big time and shoulda known better.
146.
by bpchaps 8y ago
That's all I know, really. It was one of the strangest companies I've ever worked at. Another story from the same place (won't confirm nor deny if it was the same sysadmin) - someone accidentally pushed a puppet config out th
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by bpchaps 8y ago
An old coworker at a clearing firm once accidentally rebooted two very critical servers during a very critical time. From what I'm told, it ended up costing the company about a billion dollars in fees and fines. He managed to keep
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by bpchaps 8y ago
This is precisely why FOIA and its complements are so important. :)
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by bpchaps 8y ago
Let me know how it goes!
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by bpchaps 8y ago
Yep. you're right.One of the many reasons why I'm not in government contracting :)

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