Reposts from 17 January 2024

Ouch. A large OpenStreetMap group has been using a proprietary chat platform as a community space for ~10 yrs. Now they gotta pay a $80k/yr (or $10k??) for usage. 🤯😱😢 Slack (now Salesforce) now wants to charge @OpenStreetMapUS for all ~6k users on their server. 😢😢 Ouch. This sort of bait & switch is why open, community owned platforms (like this!) are vital! read more on the slack (while you still can??!): https://osmus.slack.com/archives/C029HV951/p1705438543546349 #OpenStreetMap #OSM #FreeSoftware #Cassandra

In the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, caused by overuse of energy, our Tech Bro magicians continue to invent technologies that not alone are not energy conserving, they are massively, massively energy consumptive. From bitcoin to AI, tech becomes greedier and greedier for energy.

Recently I've seen a few people comment on the air quality readings inside large art galleries; the results were far better than on trains, in planes and airports, in movie theatres and so on, due to the need for conservation of the artwork. It's just so strange thinking about how we apparently care more about protecting art than we do about protecting our own lives.

The secret to software engineering is to focus all of your energy as a team (and a company) on learning how to share information between each other better. Build that understanding. Build that ability to uplift and teach each other. For fuck's sake, stop worrying about over engineering and worry about under understanding the problem. The over engineering goes away the second you start putting humans first and start prioritizing understanding over an artificial roadmap built without context