George Mari @GeorgeMari@social.cleverlibre.org

By the late 1980s, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was the largest computer firm other than IBM, with over 120,000 employees. DEC had multiple very large sites, including an utterly amazing facility built in an old mill. They ran a private helicopter service from Logan Airport in Boston (I rode it a few times when consulting for them). It seemed like they would go on forever.

But after a series of misjudgments regarding the rapidly changing computing environment, they began shrinking. Then they were absorbed into other firms. Then they faded away completely.

Much the same could happen to other firms today, even the very large ones that seem like "they would go on forever."

I'm older so I remember things. Everything you see happening today should be understood this way:

The top tax rate used to be 90% in order to prevent the really rich from destroying democracy.

The corporate tax rate was 50% because corporations exist to serve society.

AND the inheritance tax was really high to keep family dynasties from gaining power over us.

#taxes #democracy

Agardite-(Y), YCu2+6(AsO4)3(OH)6·3H2O (TL)
Bou Skour Mine, Bou Skour mining district, Agdz Cercle, Zagora Province, Drâa-Tafilalet Region, Morocco
FOV = 3.5 mm
#9232
NFS
#minerals #crystals #mineralogy #mineralcollecting #rockhounding

i was laid-off twice early in my career in very large reorgs / cost-cutting.

the thing that wld have been helpful for me to hear then was 'this is not abt you. you were a number on someone's spreadsheet. they wanted that number to go down by 1000 or 2000 or 10,000'.

so, to anyone who needs to hear that today:

it's not abt you. you did nothing wrong.

"In Memory Of Tweetbot" https://tapbots.com/tweetbot/

"Built on an open and free platform, we are proud to introduce Ivory for Mastodon. We have taken everything great about Tweetbot and used it as the starting point for the future of Ivory."

Ex-Amazon employees on the almost impressively cynical way Amazon smile started:

Inside the Controversial Sales Practices of the Nation’s Biggest Title Lender https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-sales-practices-of-biggest-title-lender-in-us

@ProPublica and The Current

This is your 15-year warning to get ready for the Y2K38 bug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

I spotted a rainbow-colored parrotfish hanging out with a sea turtle 💗

#honu
#hawaiiangreenseaturtle
#reeffish

Hey friends - my colleague Marion was impacted by the layoffs at our company this week. She is a stellar performer, and if you're looking for a great devrel or engineering manager (or program manager) you should run, not walk, to snap her up. #FediHire

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marionnehring

A very important part of IconFactory's Twitteriffic retirement announcement

This morning I was suddenly let go from my job of 2+ years in Incident Management and #SRE.

I was a critical member of the Infra/SRE team, I completely rebuilt the entire observability stack, started and ran a socio-technical program of continuous learning, and rebuilt the On-Call program. Yep they're letting me go. What can I say.

I am looking for leads quick. I am poor and need to find a new gig fast. LinkedIn being furiously updated:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcookedavis/

This is as clear a reminder as any that--as Timnit Gebru and others have been at pains to stress--what we think of as "AI" is frequently guided by humans in explicit ways, and that this invisible human labour is disproportionately done in the Global South and/or by underpaid and undervalued workers. *They* are the ghosts in the machine.

It's notable that Sama's slogan is "The Soul of AI."

(HT to @annaleen for the link)

https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/

This is now a shopping workflow review account

Maybe the real social network is the friends we convinced to move to Mastodon along the way.

Buffer’s popular social media management software can now schedule and post to Mastodon servers. Coywolf has a first look at what it's like to connect and publish posts from Buffer to Mastodon.

https://www.coywolf.news/social/buffer-adds-mastodon/