What? Forcing people to return to office was never about productivity and was always about power? https://fortune.com/2024/01/13/managers-scapegoating-workers-return-to-office/

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

Pro-tip: before setting your three security questions to 36 random alphanumerics, be aware that you might have to recite them to a customer service rep instead of just copy/pasting them into the website.

Attached: 1 image I'm doing my part!

Attached: 1 image

Part of why tech workers at huge orgs like this need a union: Being compelled to relocate to a forced birthing state is violent as hell So much more to collective power than just getting paid https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/14/24037904/apple-san-diego-siri-ai-team-relocating

I am GDPR compliant (If you tell me personal info I will forget)

Instead of a game jam, how about a "play jam" where everyone plays an unplayed game from their library and writes up the session(s)?

the autistic urge to use parentheses in every sentence (because you're afraid people will misunderstand it (or interpret additional meaning into it (which has happened before (many times (with terrible consequences (and i'm not even talking about the trauma this caused))))))

the adhd urge to use parentheses in every sentence (you thought of something else that doesn't fit into the previous sentence structure you'd thought up)

"Looks like you're using an ad-blocker" Looks like you're trying to install 52 trackers on my computer.

All engineering is reverse engineering if you document things poorly enough.

Amazon not only didn’t make the list, they didn’t make the list of tech companies that didn’t make the list. As an employer they’re fast fading into cultural irrelevance. Great job with the post-employment non-compete by the way. https://qz.com/big-tech-falls-glassdoor-company-rankings-1851153542

if you rewrite a text by replacing every word with a synonym until none of the original words are left that's a ship of thesaurus

Attached: 1 image Donations aren't what they seem

𝓖𝓵𝓸𝓼𝓼𝓪𝓻𝔂 Blockchain: a slow database Crypto: an expensive slow database NFT: an expensive slow database to store URLs AI: a way to write slow and inefficient algorithms LLM: a database that stores text in a slow and inefficient way Chat GPT: an expensive imprecise query language for slow and inefficient text databases that often returns wrong results

the layoffs will continue until ~morale~unionization improves

Folks remembering #AaronSwartz today - remember that he was moving publicly-funded research out from behind a paywall. Then remember the only reason the case went forward is because federal prosecutors, specifically Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann, wanted to make an example of him. “Theft is theft, and it doesn’t matter if you use a crowbar or a computer” were Heymann’s words at the time. Notice how federal prosecutors aren’t bullying Sam Altman for the wholesale theft of content network-wide, to build a machine that spews bullshit and further destroys our ability to determine the truth? It’s because he’s doing it for private profit, while Aaron worked for the public good. Never let yourself be tricked into believing the legal system is a justice system.

"Regulation stops innovation! Companies need to be free to do whatever the fuck they want to create innovation!" My brother in Christ, if anything stops innovation, it's patents and copyright. You're less likely to die in a car crash only because Volvo engineers gracefully decided to do humanity a favor and not patent the 3-point seatbelt technology. But for example, a technology of safely stopping table saws is patented and only one company can create them, suing similar projects from other companies out of existence 🤡

I think the Substack discourse is good and that we should really be asking "why are Nazis okay but sex isn't" for nearly everything involving our society.

There’s a video posted by a Cloudflare account executive getting laid off that she recorded as she argues with the HR team. It’s painful to watch on both sides, which explains why other big techs just send an email or provide an error when you try to login. As callous as it seems to do it via email or failed account login, getting told by strangers who just treat you as another name on the list feels worse. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRcqvbnC/

Tech workers when everyone is hiring: lol, I don’t need to unionize. Look how well I negotiated for myself! Tech workers when there are layoffs everywhere: I don’t have time to unionize! I’m desperate to get a job right now! #unionize #unionStrong

Attached: 1 image The absolute gall of this question. A required question, mind you. I will likely not be getting called in for an interview, but it was totally worth it. #jobsearch #jobhunt #capitalism

I quit my job https://ellie.wtf/posts/i-quit-my-job-to-work-full-time-on-my-open-source-project I'm now focusing full time on building Atuin, and finding more ways to improve developer productivity