Legends of the Sun Pig

• Charles Stross – Rule 34 A sharp and funny thriller set in 2020s Edinburgh, full of observations on the impact information technology might have on policing, politics, and our personal lives. Like many of Charlie’s books, I found the ending a bit too vague. He seems to like leaving you with questions and opportunities for you to use your imagination to fill in the details. Apart from that, brilliant.
• James Gleick – The Information A history of how we deal with, well, information: language, writing, communication. Gleick spins a thread of discoveries, inventions, and insights from pre-literacy right up to present information age. It’s the earlier chapters I found most compelling, though. The book is subtitled, “A History, a Theory, a Flood,” and once Gleick gets through Shannon and into the era of the Flood, many of the anecdotes and details feel incomplete, or drift off into unsatisying speculation. Gleick is at his best as a chronicler, but the story of the information Flood has only just begun, so it’s hard to paint a complete picture. The Information actually complements Rule 34 very nicely: together they vividly cover both the past and the future of the subject.
• Kate Griffin – A Madness of Angels Urban Fantasy didn’t used to be my cup of tea, but I’m discovering more and more hardboiled Urban Fantasy books that sit with me rather well. I’m not sure if this strictly qualifies as hardboiled, but despite a certain tendency towards overly descriptions it doesn’t have any of the goth-ish faux-noir sensibilities that I (perhaps unfairly) associate with the genre. Tough, well-drawn characters and a present-day London that is both gritty and filled with thinly disguised wonder are going to have me coming back for more.
• Harry Connolly – Game Of Cages No doubt whatsoever about the hardboiled nature of this one. I read the first book in this series, Child Of Fire a couple of months ago after having read Harry’s guest posts on Charlie Stross’s blog. Harry’s Twenty Palaces books tackle Lovecraftian horror with a very head-first American hardboiled flavour in the same way that Charlie’s Laundry books cover it with a uniquely British twist. His new book, Circle of Enemies is just out, and will be on my next Amazon order.

• Derek Landy – Skulduggery Pleasant 3: The Faceless Ones Alex got the first book in the Skulduggery Pleasant series for Christmas, and declared it “awesome”. He persuaded me to read it, and damn it, he’s right. It’s funny, and full of fast-paced action and snappy dialogue. So now I’m following behind Alex as he works his way through the whole series. (I wish he’d hurry up on book 4; I’m eager to find out what happens next!)
• Lev Grossman – The Magicians Very mixed reviews on Amazon for this one, and I can see how it might not suit everyone, but I loved it. It builds up a complex set of relationships very quickly, but it doesn’t linger lovingly on them, or tease out every nuance, because it moves through the plot at a blistering pace. It appears blatantly derivative of Narnia, Harry Potter, and The Secret History, but it blends these old and new archetypes with an insouciance I found entertaining. In fact, the multiplicity of influences is exactly what keeps it interesting: just when you think you know what the next chapter will bring, it actually turns in a different direction.

Joe Celko has a nice new article on Simple-Talk.com about how easy it is to write SQL queries that unconsciously adopt the idioms of sequential media, i.e. magnetic tape.

When you sit in a live theater, you cannot do a close-up, pan shot, zoom, dissolve or other effect that are common in movies today. Early silent films parked the camera in one position and mimicked a theater experience. This is a general systems principle that the new technology will first mimic the previous technology before it finds its own voice.

The mobile web has two immediate genetic parents: mobile apps and the desktop web. When a mobile website can tries to follow in the footsteps of either parent too closely, it feels wrong. Encountering a mobile website that locks your vertical viewport size and forces you to use a custom scrolling algorithm is just uncanny-valley weird; whereas a site full of great content and links that doesn’t enjoy the full depth and richness of the “main” site feels unsatisfying.

Remember, though, that we haven’t been using magnetic tape as a mainstream storage medium for databases for some time now, but the idioms are still ingrained. The “classic” web has been around for a scant 20 years, and is still evolving. Mobile apps, as introduced by the iPhone, are only 3 years old

The mobile web’s parents are a teen and a toddler. Is it any wonder that it hasn’t found its own feet yet? Right now, it’s an ugly duckling inside a cocoon. Some onlookers may expect to see it emerge as a swan or a butterfly, but I’m betting on something much more interesting and strange.

“Google seemingly split on pseudonymous Google+ accounts and Google Profiles – It’s okay until it isn’t” by Tateru Nino (via Dave Bell on Making Light) is another interesting look at the side effects of the rollout of Google+. It seems that Google+ and Google Profiles share some aspects of a honeypot for people with the audacity not to use their full real-world identity online so they can be more effectively marketed to.

And then there’s “Last Post” over at Cockpit Conversation (via Sylvia on Making Light), which is another tale of someone losing access to their Gmail and blog (hosted by Google) because of a date of birth issue.

People blogging about these particular problems are the visible tip of the iceberg. There must be thousands of other people who are running up against the same issues. And unfortunately, unless you know someone inside Google, the only way to ask them for help with some really scary problems is to post in an open forum. (And seriously, if you’re not a computer geek with the knowledge to figure it out, losing access to your email can be terrifying.)

Despite all the people posting on that forum about date of birth problems preventing them from accessing their accounts, so far Google’s best official response there seems to be “Google is aware that mistaken dob entries have precluded some users from entering the Google+ Project in it’s initial field trial.”

For a company whose motto is “don’t be evil,” and that is filled with engineers driven to make the internet a better place not just for Google users, but for all of us, this kind of hands-off take-it-or-leave-it approach is…disappointing.

For reference (because people have been asking), we haven’t heard anything from Google about our own particular situation, either formally or through back channels. As many people have pointed out, we could use the account recovery process to claim that we made an error, and enter a fake date of birth that shows Alex is over 13. But this is the only circumstance in which Google allows you to change the date of birth in your profile. Once it is in there, it is in there for good, and there would be no way for Alex to reset it once he is old enough. This may be problematic if he decides wants to keep using this particular Google account in the future.

Does this sound familiar?

1. Build an iPhone and Android app first.
2. Realise that there are other platforms out there.
3. Build a mobile website (aka “HTML5 app”) for the other platforms. Aim to make the mobile web site behave the just like the iPhone and Android app, “only in HTML5”.
4. Be disappointed when the mobile web site runs like crap on a Nokia, and doesn’t render at all on a Blackberry 5.
5. Starve the mobile website of resources and attention in favour of the shiny native apps that give good demo.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Don’t consider the mobile web as just something to “fill in the gaps.” iPhone owners use the web, too. Research shows that page load times matter. If an iPhone user clicks a link to your site, what do you think will make them happier?

• 3 seconds to load a nicely mobile-optimized web page, with fewer bells and whistles, but with clear calls to action and a “buy” button
• 3 minutes to hit the app store, download, install, and launch your app

Sometimes you don’t want to create a new account with a web store just to make a simple purchase. Sometimes you don’t want to download an app just to interact with a service. The mobile web is different. Play to its strengths, not its weaknesses.

The article I wrote on Sunday about Alex being cut off from Google generated quite a bit of attention and feedback. Most of it was positive, much of it was well-meaning, and some of it was dark and ugly. Unfortunately, those proportions were not reflected in the comments left here on this blog.

I shut down comments yesterday afternoon because they were turning toxic, and I don’t want to deal with that kind of negativity. I only deleted a few comments, because I didn’t want to distort the picture that appeared, or make it seem like everyone was on my side.

To everyone who expressed their sympathy, support, and understanding, thank you. We’ve had some wonderfully kind and generous messages over the last couple of days.

To everyone who thinks I’m a bad parent, a hypocrite, or just a whiner: whatever. You probably complain about parents bringing their kids on airplanes, too. I don’t have anything to say to you.

But the numerous responses from well-meaning people offering suggestions made me think a lot. I wrote the article just an hour or so after the incident, and I was feeling angry and upset. Why was I feeling that way?

First of all, it’s not not about data loss. That may seem the most obvious thing to be upset about, but we’ve got that covered. We have Alex’s email set up so that both Abi and I receive copies of everything sent to him. We can restore much of his correspondence from there. Additionally, as many people pointed out, we can just lie about his age and get his account unlocked within minutes.

I think this is why many of the responses were along the lines of, “What’s your problem? Just lie like everyone else, and use this as a lesson to teach him not to trust Google/corporations/the cloud/anyone.”

As a practical matter, I fully expect to do exactly that at some point in the next day or two. Alex will have his email back, and everything will go back to normal. But as a matter of principle, I get sick of lying every time I have to tick that “I have read and understood…” checkbox, when the language in most ToS documents — and the fact that they are generally hidden on a secondary page — is clearly designed to make sure that you don’t read or understand them. Given that this episode came about because of a ToS violation, I just reached a breaking point here. If Google is going to deny services to children under 13, they need to put a date of birth field on the sign-up forms for all of their services, even Gmail. Simple as that. (Update: nothing is ever “simple as that”. See comment.)

Secondly, it’s not about not about being cut off from email. There are plenty of other email providers out there who will allow us to provide parental consent for a child account. Finding a provider outside the US probably isn’t that hard, either. I know how to set up my own email server, but I prefer to let other people handle that for me.

We deliberately chose Gmail as Alex’s email client because it has a simple interface, and its spam filtering is the best in the business. I love Gmail, but it would be a matter of minutes to get him up and running with an alternative mail solution. So again, “What’s your problem? Just switch and move on.”

Here is the heart of the matter for me: it’s the moment of horror when you realize that something you love is gone. The sickening crash when your grandmother’s precious ornament slips out of your hands and hits the floor. The hollow dread in your stomach right after you accidentally delete the production database. The moment you come home after a long road trip, and discover that you left your favourite cuddly toy behind at a rest stop 400 miles away.

That’s how Alex felt when he realized he was locked out of his email.

No matter how quickly we reassured him that we’d find a way to get it back, that moment of shock and pain and despair still creased his face. No matter how much we hugged him and wiped away his tears, he still hurt, in that special way when you blame yourself for what happened. Alex followed the instructions in the invitation to sign up for Google+. He entered his real date of birth. And because of that, he wasn’t just denied access to the new service, he lost access to everything he had with them before.

Yes, I was at fault for confirming that I had read and understood the Terms of Service when I created Alex’s Gmail account on his behalf.

Yes, I was at fault for not supervising every moment of Alex’s online life. He surprised Abi and me both when he said he had added Abi to a Circle in Google+. We don’t use net nanny software; the computer he uses is in plain view in the living room. We may receive copies of his emails, but we don’t obsessively scrutinise every one. We talk with him a lot about online behaviour, and we try to steer him away from problem areas. We also feel that he has shown enough responsibility to deserve the independence we grant him. If that changes, we will re-evaluate. We like raising Free Range Kids; that’s one of the reasons we live in the Netherlands rather than Britain or the USA.

Yes, Google acted perfectly legally, and in accordance with their Terms of Service. As soon as they acquired Alex’s date of birth, and tied it to his overall Google identity, they were obliged to act on that knowledge. Not doing so would mean breaking the law; I understand that.

What I blame Google for, though, and what is entirely under their own control, is poor implementation and lack of empathy. Rolling out Google+ is a massive undertaking, on a scale I have never dealt with. I don’t think that “weeding out underage Gmail users” was an item on the project plan; I’m sure it’s an unintended consequence. But the failure mode is harsh, and offers no recourse for parents who would grant legal consent (within the USA-specific scope of COPPA) for their child to use the service, to actually do so. Legal and nice are perpendicular scales. You can obey the law and still be a dick. (Wil Wheaton says: Don’t be a dick.)

Alex is not going to be scarred for life, and I’m sure he’s going to learn useful lessons here. But he trusted Google, and they failed him hard. In his words, “I might even start using Yahoo for search.”

Alex is not amused

Alex is 10 years old. He has had a Gmail account since September 2009 — almost two years. He uses email to keep in touch with his grandparents, who live in California and Scotland. He is signed up to get newsletters and updates from his favourite online hangouts, like Roblox and Hyves. He has just started using Google Chat to chat with me over IM, even though I’m usually just sitting at my desk on the other side of the room.

Yesterday, he noticed that Google+ was enabled for his account. Yay! So he made himself a Google Profile, and added me and Abi to his family circle. Even Alex had heard about Google+, and he was excited to be using it.

Today, he tried to use Gmail, but found that his account was locked. A big scary message says that his account has been shut down because Google has discovered a Terms Of Service age violation. Not only is the account inaccessible, they also say that they will delete it in 29 days, unless he provides them with evidence that he is over 13 years old. All because he entered his date of birth when he created his Google Profile.

Alex was in tears. He is enormously upset about this. Google is basically just going to delete his last two years of email messages (they don’t offer any way to log in and export his messages), and plans to cut him off from his family until he turns 13.

This is a kid who lives on the computer. He types 50 words a minute, builds immense structures in Minecraft, programs in python, and has better Powerpoint skills than his teachers at school.

He has learned to live with the disappointment of not being able to have his own YouTube account, because YouTube asks for your date of birth on the sign-up page. But the Gmail sign-up page doesn’t ask you for your age. It does, of course, ask if you accept the Terms of Service. Oh right. The Terms of Service. Which apply to all Google services:

2.3 You may not use the Services and may not accept the Terms if (a) you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google, or (b) you are a person barred from receiving the Services under the laws of the United States or other countries including the country in which you are resident or from which you use the Services.

Just because no-one reads the Terms of Service, doesn’t mean that they don’t apply. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking the law. But seriously, this USA-centric age 13 bullshit is a blight on the internet. Alex has been using the web since before he could fucking read. To him, Google practically is the web. But according to these Terms of Service, he’s not even allowed to use Google Search.

You made my son cry, Google. I’m not inclined to forgive that.

Update, 4 July 2011 20:50: Comments closed because of Olympic-level asshattery. Well played, internet. Well played.

Update, 4 July 2011 23:55 I’ve posted a short update over on Making Light. Don’t even think about trolling over there.

Update, 5 July 2011 17:00 I’ve removed the link to the update mentioned above, because all the trolls decided to poison the comments over on that site, too. [Restored now that the flames have died down a bit.] If you want to express support or sympathy, thank you. Go give someone you love a nice hug. If you want to express your disapproval of me, please do so on your own blog.

Update, 5 July 2011 20:50 Or alternatively contact me at m.feedback@sunpig.com. Don’t post responses in comment threads elsewhere on this blog; I’m just deleting them immediately.

Update, 6 July 2011 01:50 I have written a follow-up article which acts as my global response to the comments that the original article generated.