Notices by Dave Rahardja (drahardja@sfba.social), page 10

@pixel @thomasfuchs @danhon @amyhoy Protip: Get a Bahtinov mask to focus on stars. Cheap and reliable! https://astrobackyard.com/bahtinov-mask/

Amazing how much damage we’re doing to ourselves, while nothing has actually happened yet.

So many knee-jerk reactions.

Fediverse Speedrun to Become Desktop Linux 2023 Challenge GO!

The users. Folks. Please, focus on the users. https://alaskan.social/@seachanger/110572015006710614

@TomLarrow It’s fascinating how some in the open source community so strongly embrace Discord, a proprietary, closed platform with no easy way to export whatever people type into it.

Here’s a thought experiment: If you had a small group of skilled mobile, desktop, server, and web front-end engineers who have access to time and money, and are eager to MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE USING THEIR SKILLS (and not just spin up yet another exploitive startup) what would YOU have them do?

Be specific.

Assume cost is no object.

It’s time to stop bellyaching about how bad tech is, and start brainstorming about what good it can do.

Please repost for exposure.

EDIT: Let’s add hardware, industrial design, and UX engineers in the mix as well, to round things out.

#TechForGood #humaneInnovation #empathy #solidarity #humanity #FridayDevAdvice

Have you ever noticed that when you build an iOS app for Mac Catalyst, $PLATFORM_NAME is set to `macosx`?

When Catalyst was being hashed out, there was quite a bit of discussion around whether we were building against the *iOS* SDK on the Mac, or against a *Mac* SDK that happened to know about iOS. As you can guess in retrospect, the latter worldview prevailed: the Catalyst SDK is a “variant” of the Mac SDK. This made our builder tools folks quite happy, because the Catalyst SDK could be built alongside the Mac one, and Catalyst apps and daemons bundled with macOS could be built together with the rest of macOS.

Xcode, however, seems to continue to insist in its UI that Catalyst apps are actually *iOS* apps that happen to support the Mac.

Which worldview you choose to believe is up to you! I know which one I prefer.

#xcode #macCatalyst #ios #macOS #developers #lore

“The entire case for “AI” as a disruptive tool worth trillions of dollars is grounded in the idea that chatbots and image-generators will let bosses fire hundred of thousands or even millions of workers.

That’s it.”

Yep. Spot on. This is the fundamental reason that #AI is getting so many billions poured into it. It’s the lure of replacing *expensive* labor with automation. Corporations have endlessly squeezed blood from lower-cost labor and they are salivating at the prospect of getting rid of high-cost labor.

This is unfortunate, because AI has *actual* uses. As models get more specialized and smaller, I can see AI automating a lot of rote work away at reasonable cost. Unfortunately, the corporate hype is so strong right now it’s muddying all the conversations.

“Google’s AI Hype Circle” by @pluralistic

https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-ai-hype-circle-6158804d1299

@thomasfuchs But that would take too long and they’d miss launching on 4/20

With H1-B, a worker is tied to a specific employer while they bide enough time (5+ years) until they can apply for a green card. During that time, the worker cannot switch jobs without reapplying for the visa. Thanks to per-country caps, many people have to wait for MUCH longer than 5 years to receive their green cards, during which time their employers have them by the throat. For those workers, losing a job means having to leave the country in TWO MONTHS.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2023/02/24/temporary-visa-h1b-tech-layoffs/

Let’s face it: the #H1B visa is modern indentured servitude on a large scale. It is no longer used to bring in needed skills for short-term jobs. Rather, it’s the de facto path to employment-based immigration for most of the world, and one of the few ways foreigners are allowed to work in the US.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2023/02/24/temporary-visa-h1b-tech-layoffs/

I’m now a citizen of the USA. But I remember those years when I held an H1-B, always afraid that the next layoff will have my name on the list.

Fuck this system.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2023/02/24/temporary-visa-h1b-tech-layoffs/

We need to treat immigrant workers better. While a rich foreigner can get permanent residence by investing $1.8M in a business, the rest of us have to live on a knife’s edge, beholden to a single employer for many years, until our number comes up, always ready to abandon the life we build in 60 days whenever the company decides to terminate our employment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2023/02/24/temporary-visa-h1b-tech-layoffs/