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Charity Majors: Observability

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Charity Majors: Observability
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Charity Majors, co-founder of Honeycomb, discusses with interviewer Benat (Venkatesh Rao) how observability emerged from her and co-founder Christine's experience with Facebook's Scuba tool, defining it via control theory as understanding internal system state from outputs, and distinguishing it from traditional monitoring through high-cardinality, high-dimensionality data capture. They explore how this concept applies beyond software to protocol governance broadly, using examples like tsunami warning networks and the LEAF Coalition's use of satellite data plus chainsaw-detecting microphones to monitor Amazon deforestation compliance, with Majors emphasizing that the key is capturing enough high-cardinality data to ask novel questions later and tailoring the 'story' to the audience's capacity for action.

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durable-vs-disposable-codefeedback-loops-in-distributed-systemshigh-cardinality-dataobservability-vs-monitoringprotocol-watchingprotocolstechnologytesting-in-productiontown-hall

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