Mastodawn

@joeltosi & I are in the final stges of copy editing Signals & Levers. We need help. There's a fictional component to the book. A character, Mark, runs Ops & carries around a mug. Currently it says "Your lack of planning is not my emergency." A reviewer said we need a new slogan. Please help us decide by voting for your fav from our ideas or commenting with your own. We need to decide soon so please boost for reach. (If we pick yours we'll find an appropriate way to thank you / credit you.)

No Heroics, No SPOFs

3.4%

Hope is Not a Runbook

51.7%

Live Below Your Error Budget

27.6%

SLO and Steady

17.2%

Poll ended at Mar 18 at 3:48pm.

Elisabeth Hendrickson Mar 11

Riley S. Faelan Mar 11

The notion of a broken clock being sometimes right is based on a gross misunderstanding of what information is.

A clock that always shows the same time is never right, even in the moments of the day when the time happens to be what it shows, because you don't gain any information about what time it is by looking at the clock.

This reasoning also applies to chatbots. If you can't tell whether what you have been given is useful information unless you alreay know the information, then you haven't been given useful information.

Elisabeth Hendrickson Mar 9

Ruth — of systems & design Feb 1

And suddenly! The next (remote) Technical Leadership workshop is next month!

March 24 and 31, 2026, 12-3PM Eastern Time (US/Canada)

Early Bird discount 🎉 (until Feb 15, or discounted seats sell out)

More info and to enroll: https://ti.to/bredemeyer/technicalleadershipmar2026

Preview material: Decisions chapbook (pdf):
https://ruthmalan.com/Leadership/TechnicalDecisions.pdf

Elisabeth Hendrickson Mar 6

I've been known to say "whoopsadoodle" when talking about mistakes. Like "I accidentally knocked my tea off the desk. Whoopsadoodle!"

Currently working in Google docs, and finding that it makes mistakes on my behalf. Henceforth I shall refer to its mistakes as "whoopsagoogles."

Elisabeth Hendrickson Mar 5

So... Anthropic is refusing to back down on a couple pretty basic guardrails in their negotiations with the US: no mass surveillance, no autonomous killing. See: https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war

Yet the US Dept of War is threatening them because of course they are.

In response, Google and OpenAI employees released a letter standing with Anthropic. https://notdivided.org/

Seems like a good thing to me. Thanks to all who signed. If you're a past or present Google / OpenAI employee you can still sign.

Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

A statement from our CEO on national security uses of AI

Elisabeth Hendrickson Mar 4

Listening to the Senate debate on the War Powers vote in the background while doing some routine work. This is, of course, a mistake. But hearing Republicans argue that the Constitution gives the power of war to the President (it doesn't) and talk about the need to bring down religious fanatics while supporting protesters is ... something. Still trying to figure out if they genuinely don't see the hypocrisy? Or think we are too stupid to see it? So confusing.

Elisabeth Hendrickson Mar 2

Read in the news that some republicans are pushing to ram DHS funding through the senate citing the war as the reason. !@#$%ing opportunistic ghouls.

So I began my week by contacting my representatives to voice my support for a war powers vote to rein in this administration, my opposition to the war, and my opposition to caving on our ICE demands. Feels insufficient but it's something.

If you're in the US, I urge you to do the same. Lots to be done and we can't let up on any of it.

Elisabeth Hendrickson Mar 2

Solution Hackeuse soon at OrangeCon Mar 2

Multiple people left my team (a Red Team in the Netherlands, in a big company understanding that security is important). They leave because of personal things (family is far, family problems, etc; of course, we wish them the best). So, we are once again hiring!
Anyone’s interested?
The team is based in Amsterdam. Relocation should be ok (They relocated me). Language is English, no need of being in perfect in English.

Minorities preferred. (Currently I’m the only technical non-man, but, maybe we’ll be more soon!)

#jobalert #job #pentest #redteam #amsterdam

EDIT: no public job offer yet, but I’ll try to keep this post updated

Elisabeth Hendrickson Mar 2

Bowie Mar 1

Hold 'em both. Keep going.

Elisabeth Hendrickson Mar 1

Stood with other protesters (probably 50 of us give or take?). The "freedom strummers" band played protest songs. Many of us sang. I held up my sign. Waved at cars. Maybe half the drivers honked. Passengers waved / gave a thumbs up. Two cars had people shaking their head in disappointment and one car had people who flipped us off. But overall there was huge community support. The cutest was a kid, maybe 4?, who gave a big thumbs up. Adorable. Good way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Website	https://curiousduck.io
Github	https://github.com/testobsessed