Richard Mischook @rmischook@nitech.online

#genocide again in #sudan on the march 😢😔 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/29/sudan-darfur-genocide/

When I joined Amazon in 2017, it prided itself on being a data-driven company. If you had an idea for a product or a service or a process, and could back it with credible data, you’d get support to implement it.

Andy Jassy has lost sight of that core principle. In a much-newsed temper tantrum, “Mr Jassy declined to share data that motivated his decision to require employees to return to the office. … “Mr Jassy told Amazon staff he had spoken to many other CEOs and ‘virtually all of them’ preferred having their employees back in the office.”

Oh, honey… talking to other CEOs who share your executive blinders (and lower level managers who tell you what you want to hear) is not the same as having actual data about the productivity you claim will be gained, and indeed Jassy “said it was a ‘judgement call.’”

IMO, the real drivers of the back-to-office push include:

• All that expensive commercial real estate sitting empty looks bad to shareholders.
• All those expensive homes near the office (owned by the higher echelons of the companies, who can afford them) will lose value if being near the office no longer matters.
• Executives feel that employees gained too much power during the pandemic, and are desperate to regain control — even at the cost of reneging on “forever” promises. Forcing employees to do something they don’t want to shows you’re in control.
• Managers and execs are stuck in an old worldview where being able to look over your crew of peons in person and “actively manage” them is a marker of power, regardless of what useful work those people are actually performing.
• Executives are like teenagers in their need to be part of the in crowd. The in crowd of corporate execs has now decided that a “strong leader” gets people back into the office, and they are increasingly draconian in their anxiety to catch up with their peers. Their employees are not their peers, and execs do not care what those employees think about them.

…probably you can come up with more on your own!

Happy 32nd birthday Linux. Here’s your damn cake. Go ahead and compile it yourself!

For the love of all that is holy, please Apple can you just update your Irish English dictionary in iOS to include boke, boking, and boked. I need these words to be recognised, and when I’m dealing with a boking situation I don’t want to be correcting your bullshit!

The release of Baldur's Gate 3 is honestly something of a miracle and it's sad that that's the state of the world right now.

Larian Studios went completely against the whole gaming industry meta by releasing a finished, incredibly feature-rich game ahead of the designated schedule, without any help from a major publisher, trusting their community as well as their own ability to create a fun and lasting experience to not only release the game without any DRM, but also to not restrict online play to purchased copies only.

Insane effort was put into the development and no corners were cut as far as I could see.

That takes some significant balls, something companies that cater to their investors rather than their customers no longer have.

#gaming #gamedev #games #larianstudios #baldursgate3 #bg3

Mind meld #StarTrek

"Soylent Green," or as it was known in Germany, "People Are the Wurst"

We’ve reached a level of cringe heretofore undreamt of

Remember some of the hot-button issues in tech over the last decade? People angry over the use of the word "passion". The merits of "craftsmanship". Whether the "10x developer" is a myth.

Something connects all of these debates, and nobody's really talking about it. That's why I wrote this essay: https://blog.testdouble.com/posts/2023-07-12-the-looming-demise-of-the-10x-developer/

Ernest Walton died on 25 June 1995 in Belfast. Born in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, he was a physicist and Nobel laureate for his work with John Cockcroft with “atom-smashing” experiments done at Cambridge University in the early 1930s, and so became the first person in history to artificially split the atom.

#Ireland #IrishHistory #ErnestWalton #JohnCockcroft #Physics #Dungarvan #Waterford #CambridgeUniversity #NobelPrizeInPhysics #OnThisDay

I think VisionPro is Tim Cook's response to the opposition to returning to the office. "Too hard to concentrate in the open plan office and you want to work at home? Bring up a virtual environment of your home and block out your coworkers to pretend you're not even in the office!" #wwdc2023

Seeing @lisamelton posts today reminds me of something. There is a flood of people who want to tell you that trans people only exist because of some kind of “woke” indoctrination. But, if so, why are are we seeing so many people, late in life, coming out as trans? With so much sacrifice. Could it not be that we are finally coming close to a world that will (at minimum) tolerate them?

I am cis. (F you Elon). I am straight. I am privileged. If I can be happy for Lisa, so can you. I owe Lisa for her contributions to tech. So do you.

I now have role models, friends, family, and coworkers who are not cis. WTF does anyone think this hurts me in any way?