Asahi Linux Lead Developer Steps Down
After bringing full GPU support to Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon, Alyssa Rosenzweig steps back from the project.
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Leaked Transcript Confirms Netanyahu Chose to Starve Gaza as a Method of War
Leaked Transcript Confirms Netanyahu Chose to Starve Gaza as a Method of War
Cabinet meeting minutes show how Netanyahu chose to create famine in Gaza over securing release of Israeli hostages.
Trump looks to buy stakes in military corps raising concerns about private contractors and war conflicts
Howard Lutnick says ‘monstrous discussion’ underway at the Pentagon
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Democratic leaders support arming Israel – their voters see Gaza as a ‘genocide’
An internal DNC dispute about withholding weapons sales to Israel reflects a larger truth: Democratic support for Israel is dwindling the longer the war in Gaza goes on, Eric Garcia writes
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Top Florida official says 'Alligator Alcatraz' will likely be empty within days, email shows
A top Florida official says the controversial state-run immigration detention facility in the Everglades will likely be empty in a matter of days, even as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration and the federal government fight a judge’s order to shutter the facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by late October. That’s according to an email exchange shared with The Associated Press.
In a message sent to South Florida Rabbi Mario Rojzman on Aug. 22 related to providing chaplaincy services at the facility, Florida Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie said “we are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days,” implying there would soon be no need for the services.
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Computer Science, a popular college major, has one of the highest unemployment rates
A Popular College Major Has One of The Highest Unemployment Rates
"Every kid with a laptop thinks they're the next Zuckerberg, but most can't debug their way out of a paper bag," one expert told Newsweek.Suzanne Blake (Newsweek)
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The major saw an unemployment rate of 6.1 percent, just under those top majors like physics and anthropology, which had rates of 7.8 and 9.4 percent respectively.
The numbers aren't too high although it shows the market is no longer starved for grads.
It's important to understand that this is a standard feature of the capitalist economy where the market is used to determine how many people are needed in a certain field at a point in time. It is not unusual that there's no overarching plan for how many software engineers would be needed over the long term. The market has to go through a shortage phase, creating the effects in wages, unemployment, educational institutions and so on, in order to increase the production of software engineers. Then the market has to go through the oversupply phase creating the opposite effects on wages, unemployment and educational institutions in order to decrease the production of software engineers. The people who are affected by these swings are a necessary part of the ability for the market to compute the next state of this part of the economy. This is how it works. It uses real people and resources to do it. The less planning we do, the more people and resources have to go through the meat grinder in order to decide where the economy goes next. We don't have to do it this way but that's how it's been decided for a while now.
I was doing my CS degree immediately after the 2008 meltdown. At the time there was a massive oversupply of finance people who graduated and couldn't find work. This continued for years. I was always shocked at the time why the university or the government does not project these things and adjust the available program sizes so that kids and their parents don't end up spending boatloads of money and lives in degrees under false promises of prosperity. I didn't have an answer then and people around me couldn't explain it either but many were asking the same question. I wish someone understood it the way I do now.
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This should be common knowledge. I recall in the 1990s there was a huge push for truck drivers. Everywhere you went "Be a truck driver! Own your own business! Make six figures!" And only a decade later, employed drivers struggle to make ends meet.
If you see a huge push for a particular job - you better plan your exit.
the university or the government does not project these things and adjust the available program sizes
They kinda do, but only the part where they increase program sizes after demand exists and only wind down when the market is saturated. They can't really work too far ahead if they don't know ow something will be in demand and they don't want to tell students to not do something they offer just because there are too many graduates. Add the four or five years to graduation and you get a system that lags behind reality even if the planning was better.
But a well designed post secondary education means graduates can go into similar or related fields, they aren't limited to what is on their diploma except in their own minds.
I was always shocked at the time why the university or the government does not project these things and adjust the available program sizes so that kids and their parents don't end up spending boatloads of money and lives in degrees under false promises of prosperity.
bls.gov/ooh/ does track this a bit, but I don’t know if universities use the info or if the site is intended for individuals instead.
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The Occupational Outlook Handbook is the government's premier source of career guidance featuring hundreds of occupations—such as carpenters, teachers, and veterinarians.Bureau of Labor Statistics
I was always shocked at the time why the university or the government does not project these things and adjust the available program sizes so that kids and their parents don't end up spending boatloads of money and lives in degrees under false promises of prosperity. I didn't have an answer then and people around me couldn't explain it either but many were asking the same question.
You are looking at Universities^0 all wrong. Predicting the markets are not their job or role in society.
The primary purpose of a University is research. That research output comes from three primary sources: the faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Naturally undergrads don’t tend to come into the University knowing how to do proper research, so there is a teaching component involved to bring them up to the necessary standards so they can contribute to research — but ultimately, that’s what they exist for.
What a University is not is a job training centre. That’s not its purpose, nor should it be. A University education is the gold standard in our society so many corporations and individuals will either prefer or require University training in exchange for employment — but that’s not the Universities that are enforcing that requirement. That’s all on private enterprise to decide what they want. All the University ultimately cares about is research output.
Hence, if there is valuable research output to be made (and inputs in the form of grants) in the field of “Philosophy of Digital Thanatology” (yes, I’m making that up!), and they have access to faculty to lead suitable research AND they have students that want to study it, they’ll run it as a programme. It makes no difference whether or not there is any industry demand for “ Philosophy of Digital Thanatology” — if it results in grants and attracts researchers and students, a University could decide to offer it as a degree programme.
We have a LOT of degree programmes with more graduates than jobs available. Personally, I’m glad for that. If I have some great interest in a subject, why shouldn’t I be allowed to study it? Why should I be forced to take it if and only if there is industry demand for that field? If that were the case, we’d have nearly no English language or Philosophy students — and likely a lot fewer Math and Theoretical Physics students as well. But that’s not the point of a University. It never has been, and it never should be.
I’ve been an undergraduate, a graduate, and a University instructor in Computer Science. I’ve seen some argue in the past that the faculty should teach XYZ because it’s what industry needs at a given moment — but that’s not its purpose or its role. If industry needs a specific skill, it either needs to teach it itself, or rely on more practical community colleges and apprenticeship programmes which are designed around training for work.
[0] — I’m going to use the Canadian terminology here, which differentiates between “Universities” and “Colleges”, with the former being centres of research education that grant degrees and the latter referring to schools that are often primarily trade and skill focussed that offer more diploma programmes. American common parlance tends to throw all of the above into the bucket of “College” in one way or another which makes differentiating between them more complicated.
Speaking for the US, major universities may be there for research, but they are a small portion of the mass of schools across the country.
People have mostly been getting degrees to get a good job since at least shortly after WW2. It’s silly to pretend people are going massively in debt without the expectation of a return on that investment.
Nothing against people learning for the joy of learning, but I absolutely hold schools accountable for not making job prospects clear when most of the students are both young and ignorant of the world.
they don't want to scare people away form an impacted majors, they probably lose money if they arnt butts in the seat, if people arnt willing to pay for a major with no jobs the uni lose money and they probably have to shut that program down. it seems state uni around here on care about putting as much butts in seats of undergrads as possible so they can have thier cash cow, they dont care what happens to those 3-4years in, just push them through like they are in high school.
biotech is another one i bring up on other forums, its one of those it looks likes in demand, but they really arnt keen on hiring people. its gatekeeped at the scientist level, unless a student is aware that labs exists in thier universities they are out of luck. and state unis here do a good job of not telling or hiding the labs under an obscure category. Professors are very reluctant to even talk about thier labs at all; some have an ego issue(they dont want students to ruin thier reputation, eventhough we arnt even a threat thier field, as we arnt in grad school, i had a professor like this) and labs are usually filled up, so theres very little chance to get into lab if your lucky. CCs dont have labs. that is the part that universities dont warn students about, if you had labs in your unis all this time, isnt ir prudent to look for these labs, although i suspect they dont want the PIs to get inundated with students requesting to get into thier labs, thats why they are very hush hush about it.
i also think bio unemployment is skewed towards health too, because a significant amount of them are held by women, who are likely to be employed in the field over men, first its likely they are going into NURSING, dieticians, PHYSICAL therapy where all the jobs are, plus CLS which is a niche grad job. on the research side its the same for women ive only seen a majority are in the labs volunteering(apparently at my uni some of them only wanted women because lab manager/PI was being a creep), otherwise the biotech side have a pretty large unemployment, but its lumped in with all bio majors.
What you describe might be true for Canada, but it doesn't apply to all universities. Many universities have two primary tasks: research and education. These are two separate tasks with overlap.
I do find it understandable if publicly funded universities place restrictions on how many students they accept per program as it's their duty to give back go society.
So coding trade schools need to be created.
It's not honestly a job more complex than many trades. Treating it as different is a relict from the time when most programmers came from backgrounds in some cutting edge defense research or fundamental science. And honestly not all of them did, some learned it as a trade when it was a new thing, and advanced is like a trade, and themselves treated it like a trade, and wrote books about it like about a trade. Unfortunately later there was that hype over tech and Silicon Valley and crap.
Today's programmers sometimes have problems with deep enough understanding of algorithms and data structures they use, while this is about similar in complexity to the knowledge an electrician possesses.
In USSR there was a program of "programming being the second literacy", with Pascal and C being studied in schools and schools getting computers (probably the most expensive things in there), PDP-11 clones looking like PCs, and a few other kinds of machines. Unfortunately, the USSR itself was on the path to collapse. Honestly if only it existed for a bit longer, and reformed and liberalized more gently, maybe that program would have brought fruit (I mean, it did, just for other countries where people would emigrate).
BTW, Soviet trade schools ("primary technical school" that was called) prepared programmers among other things. University degrees related to cybernetics were more about architecture of mass service systems, of program systems, of production lines, industrial optimization, - all things that people deciding on those learning programs could imagine as being useful. Writing code wasn't considered that important. And honestly that was right, except the Internet blew up, and with it - the completely unregulated and scams and bubbles driven tech industry.
Honestly the longer I live, the more nostalgic I become for that country which failed 5 years before I was born. Yeah, people remembering it also remember that feeling of "we can live like this no longer", and that nothing was real or functional, but perhaps they misjudged and didn't see the parts which were real and functional, treating them as given. It was indeed a catastrophe, not a liberation.
An electrician's work or a plumber's work are also complex. Or carpenter's.
Come on. This is not about complex theory being used, this is about messed up instruments, where layers upon layers of bullshit are laid to deliver upon hype.
People writing compilers and operating systems and cryptography libraries are those who need real education. People who make websites or Android apps on the framework of the day - need knowledge that is a thing in itself with no fundamental value.
Coding trade schools effectively exist already — diploma granting Community Colleges exist for this reason. Here’s one, for example.
But that’s not a University. We shouldn’t change the role of a University to match that of a diploma-awarding Community College. Challenging employers to see such students as being as useful hires compared to a University educated developer is likely a different story, however.
Information and Computer Systems Technologist, Diploma
Start in September or January The Information and Computer Systems program prepares you for work locally and globally in database design and management, network software design, administration, and operations and maintenance of networks and software.Camosun College
There's a lot of jobs in the private and public sector for people with anthropology degrees. In the US, anthropology is taught as a four field approach encompassing Biological Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Linguistic Anthropology, and Archaeology.
Each of the subfields have different levels of hireability based on a bachelor's degree.
I personally only have a bachelor's and live well. I have a home and live comfortably. But, to your point, I have essentially capped out my earnings. I can't make more without obtaining a graduate degree.
Depends on the subfield. Archaeology is in high demand due to historic preservation laws.
But yeah capping out is annoying, but also common in a lot of fields.
It’s also just a general pattern that when a skill is in high demand, the jobs pay great. Everyone wants great pay, so the flood the schools to acquire that skill. Eventually things reach a saturation point.
And also there are always charlatan programs that take your money to hand out worthless certifications. As time goes by, these “educations” mean less and less, a lot of people just nab them online because they want to make better money fast, and there are fewer and fewer real jobs unfilled. Until we arrive at a point like this.
It’s a supply and demand issue.
The way college works is a scam in itself. You don't need that much liberal art education. Four years and tens of thousands of dollars (sometimes hundreds of thousands) just to see if you can hack it in a job in your field? That's insane.
Most jobs should be accessible right after high school in the form of paid internships. Programming is a trade, and most of the skills should be taught in high school. Not everyone needs to be a "computer scientist", just like not every plumber needs to be a hydraulic engineer.
I've worked in a lot of programming jobs and zero of the people were what I would have called computer scientists. They were just coders who could write a conditional statement and a for loop. That gets the job done 99% of the time. (Obviously I'm greatly oversimplifying. My point is there's no "computer science" involved.)
After a job in programming for a couple years, if you want to start working on the Linux kernel and write compilers, go ahead and go to school then and become a computer scientist. That's so few people.
And then when there are no jobs hiring internships and computer science, you know not to focus on that. Do something else.
But big business hates this. They want everyone to prove in a gauntlet that you can work under super high pressure and tight deadlines that are totally arbitrary.
In the 1970s companies started "Stack Ranking" all their employees and firing the bottom 10% in order to replace them or simply using their wages to pay CEOs more.
Companies used to provide workers a pay related sense of justice, a career for life.
Now the media will jump past all this to blame anything but the CEOs and failure of Government to reign in the wage gap via the force of law.
Companies used to provide workers a pay related sense of justice, a career for life.
.... There was a period from the 1940s to the 1970s when this was more common-place. But historically this kind of cut-throat wage squeeze was very normal, particularly in the industrialized American north.
One of the driving forces behind improvements in the American capitalist model, wrt pensions and professional job security and a regulated relationship between business and labor, was European Communism. The allure of the revolutionary communist reconstructions (and less revolutionary socialist rebuilds) drove some significant number of Western professionals into the waiting arms of Papa Stalin and a fair number more into large labor unions and socialist political ideologies.
Without the USSR as foil to the capitalist system, there is less urgency among the capitalist class to negotiate with labor and less optimism among American workers to achieve some kind of superior economic position.
That, combined with an absolute tsunami of corporate propaganda to brainwash civilian workers, a swelling pustule of a police state to cow the lumpen proletariat, and a Global War on Whatever to galvanize young liberals and conservatives alike against the phantom menace of foreign invasion, has supplanted any kind of negotiating between capital owners and their wage cuck workers.
The only thing you have to hope for in the modern day is a big enough 401k such that you can live like a parasite rather than the host.
I graduated with a degree in Computer Science and Software Engineering from the University of Washington in 2020, during the height of Covid.
After over 3000 handcrafted applications (and many more AI-written ones), I have never been offered a job in the field.
I know of multiple CS graduates who have killed themselves, and so many who are living with their parents and working service/retail.
I think the software engineering rush of the early 2000s will be looked back upon like the San Francisco gold rush in 1949.
I was in a similar boat. Graduated right around the housing crash. If my wife didnt work at the time, we would have been in a terrible spot. It look a good 6 months to get my first job. After that, I haven't had any issues popping into jobs.
Sounds like you got a raw deal. Our industry has many highs and lows when it comes to jobs and work available.
It sounds like the same amount of effort that it would take to make a really good open source project, or contribute to an existing one.
I find it hard to believe you wouldn't get a job with something like that under your belt. Also 3000 applications is probably a bit shotgun rather than targeted and HR would be able to pick up on it
You're right that my time was wasted, and knowing the outcome, I wish I could go back and do more project work before trying to enter the job market.
But I don't think that is a financial possibility for most Americans. Going to school drained my savings, when I graduated I had almost nothing except for school debt, medical debt, and high rent. Saying "I'm gonna take off and work for free for a year" never really seemed like a possibility.
And as for my apps, the 3000 were not shotgun, they were all personalized, custom cover letters, keywords, etc. It only averaged out to 3/day. I did not track the apps where I used AI to submit them- the AI ones were definitely shotgun.
It's not your fault, but it sounds like you and probably a lot of other people were misled about what having a degree actually does.
The most important thing someone looks at when you apply for a job is that you are interested in the thing and capable of doing it. The degree doesn't really do that but the personal projects do. The degree might be a nice to have on top and helps to convince some people, but you always end up working with people without one anyway.
I'm not sure I was misled, what you said was explicitly taught to us at University. I think my degree is the #1 thing on my resume, but of course I also had projects, a few certificates, and multiple attempts at more specific fields.
Back when I was applying, my GitHub activity was pretty solid green.
It's weird because everywhere I've ever worked routinely hires people who don't even know how to make a commit, or anything at all really.
For some reason even those people are somehow jumping ahead of competent people like you in the queue. It's also annoying for us because we have to deal with the bad ones that HR delivers.
Yeah there are obviously unfortunate cases. But to put another unsourced number out there I would say 90% of open source maintainers are employed in some way or even directly to work on that thing.
The point of bringing it up is that those people would gladly give a pass on an interview to someone they already know contributes than some random graduate they don't know.
Yeah. Broken economy, broken world, etc etc. it's like a bad dream that won't end. IRL is the doomscroll now.
I don't blame you, just be thankful you're so out of touch you find it hard to believe.
Well to see it from the perspective from the inside: we always have hundreds of openings, and I've seen openings for months and years without suitable candidates. Sometimes lots of bad applicants and sometimes no applicants at all.
That's for the niche openings. For regular graduate stuff new people start every single day.
It's hard to match up that with the fact that some people apparently aren't getting a single application progressed.
the 2020-23 isnt exactly a time they were hiring at all, they froze for like 2 years. and students were barely learning at all since the classes were all online, and there was no way to find volunteering work. if you go back to look at your university reviews on yelp(yea they have it for universities) its pretty dismal out there.
he said he handcrafted alot of them, so it was pretty targeted.
I have twenty years experience and it took me 300+ applications to get my current job.
Times are changing.
No I have a spreadsheet with 3200 lines of submitted applications, which includes both entry level positions and internships. Many with customized cover letters.
When you do the math its not even a strong pace, only about 3/day over 3 years. On a good day I was submitting 12-15.
I even applied to some famous ones, like the time Microsoft opened up 30 entry level positions and received 100,000 applications in 24 hours. It is rumored thet they realized they cannot process 100k apps, so they threw them all away and hired internally.
Whether they actually threw them out or not, that one always sticks with me. Submitting 100k apps is literally a lifetime of human work. All of that wasted effort is a form of social murder in my opinion.
Lol well I guess it's easy to get confused. I was submitting job applications to write computer applications.
I was submitting app apps.
...the San Francisco gold rush in 1949.
Classic CS major, making an off-by-one(hundred years) error ;)
I fled from the Midwest because there were no good jobs outside of the oil and gas industry, and ended up in the Seattle area. Saving up and moving cost 2 years of my life, Im not sure I could do it again.
...and I did apply to some jobs on the west coast, although most of my apps were around Seattle.
But please tell me, where should I have went instead of Seattle?
Over the years I have tried a handful of subfields.
I always felt particularly adept at assembly language programming, so I had a couple projects doing that, and applied to every relevent job I could find.
As a math nerd I enjoyed data science and machine learning, I had quite a few projects like a neutral network from scratch in Matlab, and many data analysis and computer vision projects in R. I was always aware this field is very competitive and my chances were low here.
I had a friend get a job in the biomedical field, so I tried to follow that, I have Python projects doing basic gene sequencing and analysis, even a really cool project that replicated evolution.
Another friend landed a government job, so I followed his advice and got some security certs.
I also had smaller projects and attempts at databases, finance programming, and video games.
2020s was probably the worst time to graduate or even attend a 4-year university. they were starting to lock down, and they were laying people off and hiring freezing everywhere, that dint stop till maybe mid 2022, the effect was pretty devasting, i was still working a chain store and many people from IT to electrical engineer just got freshly laid off. and then the '23 massive tech layoffs began too i dont see this going to reverse for CS majors anythime soon, since CS has been having issues like since early 2010s of getting hired.
on students who were attending universities for the first time, or halfway through thier degree in the 2020s, i looked at reviews of my universities, most of them said they dint learn anything at all, so it puts them at disadvantage already, especially if its all only ONLINE courses. if you been in a regular course where the professors only uses powerpoint , you arnt learning anything a professor did this with BIOchem(for life science students, which is allegedly easier than the other biochem for scientists) and then when exam times came, they were almost as tough as my CC chem classes.
There was even a class action suit against UW for their negligence during covid. I guess the case is already settled, so I'm looking forward to my meager restitution check.
And I actually feel lucky that most of my serious classes were complete before Covid lockdown, bc the quality of education during covid was absolutely pathetic.
If anyone is interested in APL programming send me your resume.
Looking for good software engineers; curious folks.
APL, now thats something I havent heard about in a while.
Similar issues at work with COBOL. Sure I know it but im literally working to get everything out of it.
I actually do have apl printed Keycaps because they’re cool 😁
Given enough time most people develop a memory. There are different methods of entry, separate layers, backtick input, other macros.
You can try it here tryapl.org/
They have some shortcuts in lieu of a full keymap.
Oh that's cool. That's one of those languages I saw myself working in when I was younger - it's a powerful language for mathematical stuff, and not terribly difficult.
Felt more like creating circuitry to do software stuff rather than programming.
The industry went to shit after non-nerdy people found out there could be a lot of money in tech.
I started my undergrad in the early 90’s, and ran into multiple students who had never even used a computer, but had heard from someone that there was a lot of money to be made in computers so they decided to make that their major.
Mind you, those students tended not to do terribly well and often changed major after the first two years — but this phenomenon certainly isn’t anything particularly new. Having been both a student and a University instructor (teaching primarily 3rd and 4th year Comp.Sci subjects) I’ve seen this over and over and over again.
By way of advice to any new or upcoming graduates who may be reading this from an old guy who has been around for a long time, used to be a University instructor, and is currently a development manager for a big software company — if you’re looking to get a leg-up on your competition while you look for work, start or contribute to an Open Source project that you are passionate about. Create software you love purely for the love of creating software.
It’s got my foot in the door for several jobs I’ve had — both directly (i.e.: “we want to use your software and are hiring you to help us integrate it as our expert”; IBM even once offered a re-badged version to their customers) and indirectly (one Director I worked under once told me the reason they hired me was because of my knowledge and passion talking about my OSS project). And now as a manager who has to do hiring myself it’s also something that I look for in candidates (mind you, I also look for people who use Linux at home — we use a LOT of Linux in our cloud environments, and one of my easiest filters is to take out candidates who show no curiosity or interest in software outside whatever came installed on their PC or what they had to work with at school).
My own experience (being probably around your age) is that "Software development being fashionable" and hence there being a subsequent oversupply of devs, comes in cycles, with the peaks being roughly coincident with Tech bubbles.
I remember that period in the mid and late 90s when being a software developer was actually seen as "a good career choice" as the industry was growing fast (with personal computers, then computing spreading into all sizes of companies and vusiness activities, then the Net bubble).
Then the bubble crashed and suddenly it wasn't fashionable anymore. The outsourcing wave made it fashionable again but in places like India, because they were serving not just their own IT needs but also a big slice of the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world's, so the demand-supply over there was so inballanced that being a software developer was enough for a good house with servants in places like Mumbai. (I actually managed a small team based in India back then and I remember how most were clearly people who had no natural skill at all for programming). At the same time in those countries which were outsourcing to places like India, programming wasn't a good career choice (mainly because it was the entry level stuff that got outsourced) but if you were senior back then demand had never been as high.
Then came a period of retrenchment of outsourcing because it wasn't that good at delivering robust software that does what the business needs it to do (the mix of mediocre business requirements and development teams which are in fact not even it the same company means that deliverables invariably don't do what the business needs them to do and the back-and-forth cycles needed to get it there take more time than it would if everything was in-house) and a new Tech bubble, so software development became fashionable again and once again people who would otherwise not consider it, were choosing it as a career.
I think that what we're seeing now is the initial effects of the crash of the latest Tech bubble: the Stock Market might still be ridding its own momentum, but the actual people "at the coalface" are already reducing costs, plus the AI fad is hitting entry level positions like the outsourcing fad did, and probably it too will fade because AI "coding" has its own set of problems which will emerge as companies get more of that code and try and take it through a full production life-cycle.
As for how you chose devs, I would say it's really just anchored on the eternal rule that "toolmakers make much better devs than tool users" - in my experience gifted devs tend be the ones who "solve their own problems" and for a dev that often means coding coming up with their own tool for it, either as a whole or as part of an existing open source project.
I’m going to amend your timeline slightly, but only to note that Y2K masked what likely would have been a bit of a slump in the late 90s. Hiring around Y2K was crazy — but once the crisis date passed (with little fanfare due to the tremendous amount of work and money poured into remedying the issue), we definitely hit a slump as many of those extra hires weren’t really needed in a post-Y2K world.
…at least until we get to Y2K+38 in a few years. And maybe Y2K+40 two years after that 😛
This.
At my jobs, AI is just scratching the surface. But they're slowly implementing entire coding bot swarms, so a Product person can report a bug, it gets reviewed by an agent, assessed by an agent, fixed by an agent, and tested by another agent - then PR'd for a dev to review.
This hurts the junior level.
When you like your profession, your job you still do for money. Otherwise you'd be playing with similar things at home to much more satisfaction.
So here I won't agree and say that tech needs unions. Union pressure would solve the problem of labor organization and on-job education, so that they wouldn't be shit at their jobs.
Skill and such things are practically important for scientists, maybe.
Shades of dotcom days. Everyone hopped on the bandwagon. Most lured by the high salaries and gold-rush mentality. Nowadays, just having a CS degree isn't enough. You want portfolio pieces to set you apart. Start by having a damn portfolio. You can set one up for free on GH Pages or CloudFlare. Or pay a few bucks and set one up on Wordpress. If you can't figure out how, that CS degree was wasted.
You want stories that show you bring value. Show that you can build things beyond school projects. Even if you do school projects, document them and push them out. Show why they're cool and what you can do. Throw up screenshots, diagrams, or animations. No walls of text.
Also, learn to sell yourself. Not in the oily LinkedIn way. Just be out there. Contribute back. Educate others and have a voice. Blog, newsletter, social media, book, or video channel. They're dead-easy to set up and free so there's no gatekeepers to go through, other than your ideas.
If in a big city, go to Meetups or demo days. Meet people and ASK WHAT THEY DO. Help connect them to others. Anyone just sitting there cranking out resumes is going to get filtered by the LLM screener. Might as well pin up your resume above the urinal at the pub.
Finally: everyone can low-code or vibecode. Those are table stakes now. You want to do better.
I'd love to hear your experience around this and what sector or jobs this assisted, because more data is great.
But in my experience across 25+ jobs ranging from startups to fortune 500/250/100...I have never encountered a hiring process that would care about this.
I would love to be proven wrong though.
We do look at GH history and activity - can't say, out of about 50 candidates in the past two months that I reviewed, have any meaningful activity on GH.
Not saying I am proving you wrong, but finding a candidate that has anything to show publicly is hard. Hell, even I, having a very well paying job, have much to show off publicly. I can, however, share my personal stuff. I've got tons of opened issues tho 🤣
Yeah, no. Once I saw this kind of bullshit was needed for programming jobs I just pivoted to IT and cybersec.
These days the pay is just as good, and chances to find a job are even better, the environment is much lower pressure and this gross techbro exploited/exploiting attitude that somehow programming is special and not just a modern day 9-5 factory job is non-existent. With dev jobs, the goal posts are ever shifting. No I'm not doing a portfolio, no I'm not doing your "take home assessment", no I'm not doing a live coding exercise for your £20k ass minimum wage job where "we measure work by effort, not time" and I'll somehow end up on call. I love programming, but not enough to let myself get fucked by corpos every which way.
You do have to deal with corpo boomers though, but if you're lucky they mostly realize they're just cogs that got lost and they better not make too much noise or they'll be let go.
I blame social media and this perverse need to display notifications instantly. Technically very interesting problem to work on, but basically useless to a customer.
We had a button for that, on demand - it was called F5
I remember that those were used for games like Travian (displaying time and resources), dynamic content (like blasting music on a webpage) and web chat (that's what I blame the most, because it was in demand).
Well, they didn't do that, but I can imagine another "standard and convenient" way could have been taken to add realtime notifications to a webpage - a set of tags for displaying messages of an IRC channel, sending a message to an IRC channel, and so on, with maybe associating actions (going to an URL? or maybe updating part of DOM, but without full agility of JS, just add/remove/replace tag by id) with events. Like refreshing a page on a message in the channel, but no more frequent than N seconds.
Combined with iframes (I'll admit I consider iframes a good thing, burn me at the stake), this could give you a pretty dynamic experience.
IRC is, of course, not secure, but maybe if such functionality were present and if it became popular, IRC over SSL would become normal earlier too.
Or maybe something like WS could have been standardized far earlier. For pushing events to client.
I agree about F5, but the effect of realtime changes was psychologically very strong.
I appreciate your perspective here. There is an element of whining and negativity among job-seekers lately. I've seen some people buckle down and hustle, and I've seen others give up in frustration. The truth of this is that there are going to be a lot of people who never even get to use their CS degrees, and there will be people who "win" and get jobs like this without one. It boils down to what you can do and whether or not a company in your area finds value in it.
It's not fair. It's just what we have to deal with.
Where I am and due to its greater practicality, nursing is more popular as a college course than compsci.
I once started as compsci, but instead got a job fixing PCs. Also self-learned basic carpentry and plumbing. Looking at raising livestock in the near future.
Nursing is huuuuge. My nurse friend with a doctorate just landed a $250k base job with 10 weeks paid vacation and a slew of other benefits. Wild.
Plumbing is huge too. If I ever need one, they're booked out like 3+ months unless you want to pay an emergency fee which is like double or triple.
I, too, am raising some livestock. We'll see where it goes. But at least to me it feels more connected and real.
HERE AS well, nursing is popular because you can make bank as a travelling NURSE, over being staffed a hospital. im guessing thats what a guy i met as aco-worker in retail once mentioned, i thought he was kidding at first.
only if you have the personality, and tolerates belligerent patients, or work with human waste products from time to time. i suspect the nursing shortages you hear, and the abuse is mostly from rural areas and red states that have a massive shortage of health professionals including MDs.
I lookd into CLS which is in line with my cmb degree, but its a very competitive for not being a grad degree program, its a grad certification require grad level clinical/lab classes, apparently universities in the usa that have the cls program is quite few, so they all try to come to the west coast, only 9 schools teach this program so you can see the competiveness of the program in the west coast. when indeed forum was around they had whole sections dedicated to cls.
3-5 years ago my answer would've been different. I could trip and find a job offer. I was getting job offers by email essentially without interviewing.
About a year ago that completely dried up. I can't even remember the last email I got that was more than recruiter spam. My friend who used to also trip into jobs (7 at peak) has been hunting for 3 months now with no luck.
But...servers and data centers and stuff, you're probably onto something. Wishing you the best.
I've been looking t fulltime for a long time now, and from what I've seen there are a tonne of jobs out there, it's just that are that many more qualified devs than their were just a few years ago.
The way I see it, the hiring bubble that exploded during the pandemic let a lot of people gain proficiency, then followed by the waves of layoffs and you've got a lot of talented folks looking.
I wanted to become a dev 12 years ago, when it was still cool.
Needless to say that I haven't, even if doctors I talked to refused to diagnose me with ADHD, my ASD and BAD and anxiety from many things kinda make it not a very good direction.
So - now I could probably become a dev, with the experience gained. But it's really not the time when this is a good choice LOL.
Brave goggles has a similar concept. Search "vaccines" with "from the right", get a bunch of disinformation antivaxxer crap.
Just call it what it is: "Unfair truth leaning", "Unfair fake leaning".
Just found out someone in my team has been vibe-coding VBA in Excel that our team is now using. I asked who was going to maintain it and she didn’t know what I meant by maintenance.
Reminds me of web development in the Dotcom days, cleaning up Dreamweaver HTML garbage.
However, as major companies like Amazon and Google have laid off thousands of workers to boost profits, the major has lost some of its appeal in the job market
Do you know why those two companies which the article called out very early on went through those layoffs?
...Pivoting to AI
In case anyone is not aware:
Are you currently employed?
Have you actively sought a job in the last 4 weeks?
If the answer to both of those questions is 'no', then congrats, according to the BLS, you are not unemployed!
You just aren't in the labor force, therefore you do not count as an unemployed worker.
So yeah, if you finally get fed up with applying to 100+ jobs a week or month, getting strung along and then ghosted by all of them...
( because they are fake job openings that are largely posted by companies so that they look like they look like they are expanding and doing well as a business )
... and you just give up?
You are not 'unemployed'.
bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#un…
You are likely a 'discouraged worker', who is also 'not in the labor force'.
bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#di…
.........
Also, if you are 5 or 6 or 7 figures in student loan debt, and... you can only find a job as a cashier? waiter/waitress? door dash driver?
Congrats, you too are not unemployed, you are merely 'underemployed'.
But also, if you have too many simultaneous low paying jobs... you may also be 'overemployed'.
.........
But anyway, none of that really matters if you do not make enough money to actually live.
In 2024, 44% of employed, full time US workers... did not make a living wage.
dayforce.com/Ceridian/media/do…
(These guys work with MIT to calculate/report this because the BLS doesn't.)
You've also got measures like LISEP...
forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall…
Which concludes that 24.3% of Americans are 'functionally unemployed', by this metric which attempts to account for all the shortcomings of the BLS measures of the employment situation.
Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes.
So basically this is a way to try to measure 'doesnt have a job + has a poverty wage job'.
.........
A more useful measure of the actual situation for college grads, in terms of 'did it make any economic/financial sense to get my degree?' would be 'are you currently employed in a job that substantially utilizes your specific college education, such that you likely could not perform that job without your specific college education?'
Something like that.
It sure would be neat if higher education in the US did not come with the shackles of student loan debt, then maybe people could get educated simply for the sake of getting educated, but, because it does, this has to be a cost benefit style question.
- sincerely, a not unemployed but technically 'out of the the labor force' econometrician.
Yep. Been saying it for years because I was laid off over and over. Do not enter computer science.
Become an welder, electrician, etc. ANYTHING but a computer scientist
Also consider a healthcare career. As a teenager, I wanted to do computer science/engineering, and sometimes I do wish I had stayed on that track. But now, as a nurse, I could get a job in any state in the US by tomorrow. I dare you to try to find a hospital that doesn't have open nursing positions. Even when the economy goes down, people still get sick. Even if society collapses, the knowledge/skills will be useful.
And if you don't want to change diapers or deal with blood, there are still options; I'm in psychiatry and rarely have to deal with either.
Now I just use my programming skills to just make cute little projects on my laptop, and of course a little bit for the data analyst stuff but.
0% of the fault lays on the students who got the degrees they were told were in demand by every single adult in ther life.
This was a coordinated push by our government and tech sector to drive down the cost of skilled labor by oversaturating the field.
I say this as a CS major that was forced to work fast food for 6 years until I could find a shitty tech support job and work my way up from there, there was never a single opportunity for me to be a programmer like I intended.
Some fault is absolutely on the students for failing to do their own research, hopefully they have all learned a valuable lesson about being gullible. Always do your own research, and pick from various sources! At 18 you should not sign on for massive amounts of debt because "somebody said I'd get a good paying job later if I spend all the money I don't have right now". Not saying young adults weren't fooled, but you cannot say 0% fault lies on the students. By that logic you should be a trump supporter because some boomer told u to be. The thing that differentiates and adult from a man-child is their ability to take responsibility for their own decisions. It's not like you were FORCED to go to school.
Settled on a business degree (their the easiest of anything I was interested in
I specifically avoid hiring students from business majors because they are only into the networking and not doing work lol.
This is what we say now instead of expecting training and apprenticeship programs.
It's propaganda
It can be both. Jobs should invest in their people, but individuals should also take some ownership of their own skills.
The apprentice/journeyman dynamic was a lot better suited to a time when a) people left their hometowns a lot less, b) information was MUCH less accessible except from people who showed you how, and c) businesses put a lot more stock into their people as an asset, instead of treating labor as a liability.
A isn't anyone's fault.
B isn't anyone's fault.
C is where businesses have gone sour, but it's not like businesses have ever been well known for taking care of their people (labor laws, unions, OSHA are all examples of this from history)
It's not propaganda that people need to take ownership of their own skills and careers. Nobody's responsible for you or your success but you. If you want to be good at what you do then that's on you. You can take what your job gives you and that's it, and you'll probably do fine at whatever tasks you got specific OJT for, but unless you get lucky or play your cards right that's not going to make you very successful.
I really don't want to sound like an old person saying that kids these days want things handed to them, and I really do think that employers in general don't invest in their entry level workers as well as they used to, but expecting an employer to take you from know-nothing to a master of your craft is naive, frankly, because the days of someone working at a place for 10-30 years are just gone, and everyone has accepted it. There's a ton of reasons why that's the case and a lot of that is employers not incentivising employees to stay via wage growth, promotion opportunities, and training, but there's a lot of other factors. Either way things have changed, and it doesn't really do much except make you sound like you need a waahmbulance if you just sit back on your haunches and complain about it.
You can still become an apprentice if you want to work a trade, and a good union will train you up if you're a good worker, but that isn't fast. It was never fast, and most people aren't satisfied with the pace today, because it doesn't get you earning six figures out the gate. You had to work hard, earn a good reputation, and stay in the area for 10-20 years. Most people don't want to do that, and that dynamic never took a hard root in the tech sector in the first place, which is where this conversation started.
I encourage you to stick to a career that you enjoy enough to take some joy in getting better at your skills for the sake of getting better at stuff instead of just trying to earn a paycheck. Nothing wrong with a job being just a means to an end, but I say this because you'll enjoy your jobs much better if you're passionate about what you do, and you'll naturally be drawn to opportunities to gain mastery in skills that will make you more successful.
None of this might change your mind, might just piss you off even, but the guy you're replying to sounds like he enjoys the job enough that he's trying to be better for the sake of being better. I wouldn't knock them for that.
Well said, I do enjoy my field and my employer. I worked for quite a few different companies. One I was all on my own and had to learn myself - my seniors hardly ever had time to explain shit to me so I was left alone with documentation and asking least possible amount of questions. Then, I had a team leader who was passionate about explaining stuff and telling me what to do, how, and why.
Everyone is different, do what you like, chase what you desire, and do the job you enjoy.
On the other hand, I am now in the boots of a senior, and I am desperately trying to show more junior colleagues how exciting it is to explore the work we do - nobody seems to care, nobody seems to implement whatever co shit I try to show them, nobody wants to change their ways, and I feel like fighting windmills.
If you want to be successful, you have to either be super lucky, or be passionate and constantly improve to reach new heights.
I think the biggest systemic issue in most places is that most people don't actually know how to train people, including most senior staff. Very few people are actually natural trainers/instructors, so they have to be trained in how to train, and the expectations that they do so has to be part of company culture as well as time baked into the workday to do it, because it DOES take time. It pays off huge in the long run but it can be hard to see the forest through the trees if the management themselves don't know or understand the value.
As much as I hate corporate jobs they're generally better than small companies about having a formalized training program. It's a shame because there's so much garbage in corporate culture that a lot of small businesses don't want to implement the good with the bad.
One thing I've seen over the years is that a TON of businesses have NO IDEA how to be functional. It's a person that started in their garage and managed to grow and they just do stuff, and keep just doing stuff and hiring more people to do stuff and quickly outgrow the garage but don't introduce sound business practices that you need to run things effectively. It's crazy how many businesses are like that.
I've got a worthless degree i deeply regret
Meanwhile, not far from this comment is someone claiming no one regrets getting their degree, lol.
(I would have enough private projects without a job though lol.)
heise.de/news/Wirtschaftsinsti…
Wirtschaftsinstitut: IT-Fachkräfte sind in Deutschland deutlich weniger gefragt
Die durchschnittliche Zahl offener Stellen in IT-Berufen hat sich 2024 gegenüber 2023 um 26 Prozent reduziert. Gerade Experten mit Uni-Abschluss sind betroffen.Stefan Krempl (heise online)
As the market before was massively undersaturated it just means that people currently have less choices - but they still have their share of opportunities.
But tbh, pure anecdotal, it pretty much reflects what I hear from graduates atm. The market for newly graduated has cooled down definitely, unless they have a ITsec background or have a fair share of experience already.
Thing is: there’s lots of vacant jobs in IT because of the unwillingness of adequate pay in Germany. Either the employers don’t see the value in hiring motivated people or the motivated people are unwilling to work for peanuts.
Entry level in Berlin was like ~36k for IHK Fachinformatiker für system integration. As a result my last company started to hire in Eastern Europe because no one could afford to live on that even in one of the cheapest cities. And it wasn’t a small company by a long shot. Just greedy bastards
Same issue here. My company is freezing any hiring this year. And next year won't be looking good either. And to add on top of that, most big companies are outsourcing to Eastern Europe short-term because it's cheaper, or directly to India, as was the case with Amazon Romania that laid off a bunch of its workforce and then hired back a few of them to make workshops for the people in India that are going to pick up their jobs to do the exact same thing.
Also the pay in the sector in Germany sucks ass. It's really bad
Not necessarily, it might mean it I'd an industry easy to get into, but hard to master. If I was short on people, and inexperienced person might actually make mistakes that require even more work to fix.
Everyone thinks they are Mr Robot after they let ChatGPT create a simple HTML page. No, they are not, and they won't even pass as a junior. Surprise surprise, you have to know the basics.
Exactly. Our recruiters aren't tech recruiters, they handle recruitment for the entire company (and we're not a tech company). As a result, a lot of our candidates have flashy resumes, but no actual skill. As in, I asked someone to write code in whatever language they wanted and they couldn't do it. And it wasn't some difficult assignment, this was a first round weeder task. The candidate straight up lied about having any development experience whatsoever. I even had an Information Systems background candidate say straight up that they're not interested in a dev role, which they were explicitly applying for.
And that's unfortunately far more common than not. People think that because they paid for a bootcamp that they're now competent enough to write code professionally, but it turns out, a lot of them didn't apply themselves at all.
There are good candidates in that mix, it's just hard to find them. We're happy to train a promising candidate, and we've hired interns that we've offered full-time positions to. We don't even particularly care about age, we had someone internally decide to transition to tech from a blue collar background, so we funded their education and now they write code for production on the side of their main job (they're our support person for our blue collar users, and they're really good at it).
If you're not a big flashy tech company, you're not going to get as much attention from qualified candidates, and you'll get a bunch of trash applicants who are looking for easy marks on the job boards.
It is not hard to hire someone, it is hard to hire someone who doesn't give you more work than they solve. I am not against hiring juniors, but they have to show initiative that they are passionate and able to improve. I don't want a person who will be junior for the rest of their career, because juniors usually require babysitting and that that away work and attention from competent people (the chads who actually build the core features and have to attend business meetings on why it is so good for customers to see additional offers during checking out).
It is a combination - incompetent HR, incompetent candidates, or bad hiring process. I am yet to apply to a company with a hiring process I'd call pleasant on all angles.
It's really not. Hiring was much easier 3-4 years ago as the pandemic nonsense was ending and people were bailing on companies forcing people to be back in office 5x/week. The competent devs knew they could do better, while the less competent devs held on to what they had.
Now with a bunch of layoffs, the candidate pool is completely flooded, and since we're not a big flashy tech company, we seem to get a ton of drive-by applicants who aren't qualified at all.
Same here. It's popular to rag on leetcode-style technical interviews, and yet it's astonishing how many CS grads with 3 years experience we get in who can't seem to get through even the most basic "reverse this array", "find the longest substring" type questions in the language they claim to be strongest in.
People sign up for CS degrees because they see high salaries, but don't realize those salaries are for the high achievers who have been coding since the age of 10 and are writing code for fun in the evenings as well. Then they flood the market, only to discover that no companies have need of someone who cheesed their way through college, have never written more than a few hundred lines of code their whole life, and have no useful skills to offer.
I rag on those too.
Our "coding challenges" aren't all that hard, they're similar to what you'd do on the job.
For example, we use React on the FE and Python on the BE, and here's what we do in the first round:
- FE - basic React state use - store input from an input tag, and render in a label
- BE - write a SQL statement to join two simple tables to query something; just a SQL playground, no Python needed
And here's what the more in depth second round looks like:
- FE junior - array functions (lots of examples with tests) or moving data between multiple components
- BE junior - simple web server (or fake one, just need a function that takes opaque data) with somewhat complex logic; we're looking for code style (do they separate controller logic from service layer logic?)
- FE/BE senior - structure an app from scratch given very limited requirements; the point is to see what questions they ask to clarify requirements
For BE, we let them use whatever language they want, because Python is simple enough that they can learn on the job. That's actually why we picked it, our BE requirements are simple enough that the language doesn't matter, so we went with something familiar to ease hiring (performance-sensitive code is written natively and wrapped).
The first round is designed to take 5 min and we allot 20 min, the second round is designed to take 20 min and we allot an hour. They are asked follow up questions about changes they would've made if they had more time, and getting the right answer is secondary to any explanations they make. We've hired people who failed the challenge, provided the code was clean and the expansion was reasonable.
We're not looking for rockstars who nail some complex challenge, we're looking for competent professionals who can write decent code under pressure, because we will have sev 1 prod bugs and we want people who can diagnose and fix them while feeling confident enough in their fixes to make the call on whether it can go to prod that day. The challenges merely confirm what they've given as answers to the questions (most of which are way more complex than needed, we just want to gauge breadth of knowledge).
Yet we keep getting applicants who are surprised that we ask them to do basic coding in a technical interview. Some can't even write syntactically correct code in a language they picked...
I've been saying that the market is oversaturated for YEARS now but this just enrages tech bros into insulting me personally. It's very strange.
I always tell me CS/CE/Info students that they should focus on non profits, government agencies, etc. where at least employment will be stable.
Oversaturated?!? Maybe if you're a plebian bootcamp passionless 0.1x-er who hasn't even contributed to multiple open source projects or founded at least 3 startups. Maybe you should try internalizing all PhD-worthy algorithms from the last 30 years to reproduce them on the spot from memory like I did, or else do you really even care about the craft??? You need to understand this industry is full of math olympiad prodigy coder geniuses who work 80 hours a week like me so yeah it's competitive. Nothing oversaturated about that
/s
As a Computer science graduate, I have to say:
No shit! The industry is terrible and has no standards (I don't mean level of quality but there is no agreed accreditation or methodology). If you do end up in a job you will most likely not use even 5% of what whatever school you went to taught you. You will likely work for peanuts as there will always be someone to do it cheaper (not always right, or good, or even usable). You will work with people doing your job that just lied about having any post secondary education. There is almost no ability to move up in any position in the industry, and like everyone I know that stuck with it you will have the same job until you stop working (you will have to take a side move into another department most likely). This is also the industry most likely to get touched by the "good idea fairy" so you will also be exposed to the highest levels of stupid, like 3 layers of outsourcing the NOC to an active warzone sort of stupid.
I should have known it was a bad idea in college when most of my classmates where ACTIVELY WORKING IN THE INDUSTRY TO PAY FOR SCHOOL so they could get a piece of paper that said they could do the thing they where already doing. But I did my 15 plus years and got out, I have my own business now selling drugs and it is way less sketchy.
There is almost no ability to move up in any position in the industry
Change jobs every three years until you find a place that doesn't suck.
The insanity of the industry is that employers will hire some schmuck with "10 years experience" on their resume for twice what they're paying the guy who has worked at the firm for ten years.
Eventually, you can get yourself into a position where you're unfireable, because you are the only one who knows about the secret button that keeps the whole business from falling over.
That's when you can really squeeze'm
Urgh, yeah it is just so bad. Most places don't even have a possible job above yours to even potentially move to. Where I was they literally sold us to a competitor (then unsold me as they forgot about a few contracts) and then just removed all the positions above us or related to our department. I lost 3 layers of bosses one day (not that anyone noticed much). And then expect people to just happily go on and on and on.
The fact they could not hire anyone (I was the "new" guy for 10 years on my team) was down to really shitty hiring practices, that automated the requirements in such a way that the only people who could get an interview would have had to lie on their applications. They where desperately trying to say they wanted to hire more people but no one was "qualified", meanwhile they froze pay for years (really showing that dood that was there for years how much they care).
The fact they could not hire anyone (I was the “new” guy for 10 years on my team) was down to really shitty hiring practices
Not a bad time to start collectively bargaining, especially if you've got your fingers in the dam.
HA, not at that sort of place. Unions where never even allowed to be talked about, they instafired anyone that even hinted, illegal or not they did not let that happen.
Edit: oh and everything did fall apart, but like a lot of large companies, they don't care/notice. We used to joke around that we where in the business of getting out of business, and business was goood
When android and ios were taking off, I'd see job requirements saying 8 to 10 years experience in Android development.
It hadn't been out 8 to 10 years.
Oddly a very common occurrence. It was normally one or a combo of 3 impossible things:
- Experience needed with a thing that has not existed for the time asked for (like your example)
- Experience needed with a thing that does not exist at all (typos or just full on bullshit like "5 years in QQR8F deployment")
- Or my favourite, Experience needed in a tool/program that is only used by the company like our proprietary call management software.
Change jobs every three years until you find a place that doesn’t suck.
Most of my social circle is in tech and we're spread across or have worked for basically every company in our city and that isn't really a thing here.
I work in pharmacy and casually joke about being a legal drug dealer all of the time.
Not all drugs are street drugs!
Yeah, also. if it's the illegal kind there's a huge price payed in blood in the countries that manufacture and transport them.
The war on drugs sucks but it's a fact that buying illegal drugs fuels an industry of violence.
You have no idea how many of my closest friends have been to jail for drugs. I think that is a problem with the system, but im not going to go to the opposite end of the spectrum and act like we were being upstanding citizens.
Getting people addicted to things is bad. It doesn't matter if you are a drug dealer, a casino, or a social media app.
If you talk to people who went to different schools you quickly realize that its all different. I spent a lot of time learning antenna theory, Cisco networking and really out of date system admin, while on the other side of the nation my future co workers where learning soldering, cable terminology and text based HTML.
I was on the college board of governors and the thing I learned is that no one knows what computer science even is. Sad part is that it was the same for a lot of the subjects taught.
My experience is so different to yours.
Work a lot with what I studied, need the algebra very often. I still have people randomly contacting me for interviews. People move a lot, it's rare to be in the same function for over 3 years.
Requirements for a job in Computer Science are, in order of importance, first, a demonstrated talent. Second, a demonstrated skill level. Third, demonstrated knowledge.
Just like being a top-tier pianist, all the knowledge, raining, schooling, and education in the world matters nothing if you do not first have the talent.
But you do not need talent to get into a Computer Science course, nor to graduate from one. You just need the knowledge and the marks.
That is why there are so many uneducated, untalented Computer Science graduates out there.
This is the thing the teachers and educators in Computer Science never tell you.
My experience has been that computer science is a huge umbrella term to normies. Many people, including hiring managers seem to thing computer science is more of a trade education where people come out knowing everything about excel, windows, PowerPoint, file conversions, obscure knowledge of ancient software, expertise in setting up enterprise printers, etc
I was developing software for a position I was in, and everyone was shocked I was a developer... (It was a devops job where everyone basically edited yaml or json files all day long..)
So, i've been told that all these people need to do is pick up a trade. /s
I'm glad if trade-work was good for you but like all major careers, it's not meant for everyone. Similar can be said of telling miners (not minors) to learn to code.
The miners thing is insane; as if we dont still need fucking minerals.
Edit: and other heavy machinery operators
Also trades have boom and busts too
fortune.com/2025/07/02/gen-z-d…
Plus the ones making really good money take a good amount of time to get there and really good money means starting your own business but either way, you won't escape long hard hours and weekends until probably at least your 40s, that's if you manage to scale up the business enough with numerous staffed work vehicles. Like a 22 year old software developer can be making what a master plumber does in their first year out of college. Not super common but the $130k+ a year plumber is the top small percent of the field too
Gen Z is ditching college for ‘more secure’ trade jobs—but building inspectors, electricians and plumbers actually have the worst unemployment
Swapping student loans for a toolbox was starting to look like the smarter and safer option for Gen Z. But new research suggests otherwise.Orianna Rosa Royle (Fortune)
I've never met anyone in the broadly tech fields (and I've been through quite a span of them) who regrets completing an even somewhat relevant degree. I've met, many, many people who lament not starting or finishing one (and many of these were very competent, capable people, good at their jobs).
It's expensive and difficult, sure was for me, but it is very useful (and the learning is fantastic too if you do it right).
I'm probably going to cop a few downvotes for this, but in my whole career the only software engineers I ever met who were worth a damn were people who loved it for its own sake, and would be doing it regardless. So, if your feelings about the field are such that you're thinking you might be better off doing a trade, you'd definitely be better off doing a trade.
Good luck either way.
The most important aspect is motivation to improve and do cool shit. That can, also, be said about a lot of professions. The best thing you can do is to find what is most interesting to you and spend at least a few hours a week learning about it or engaging with it. It could be new features of a language you know, a programming methodology that is new to you, learning about/contributing to a FOSS project you like, or anything else.
School and work will almost definitely force you to engage with the parts of development you don't like, as well will give you an opportunity to engage with the parts of development you do like. It's on you to keep yourself engaged and improving in your skills.
I've never met anyone who regretted getting their degree.
I have met people who regretted not getting one because it closed doors for them (including talented people who were otherwise doing well at their jobs) so if someone is really going to forgo their degree, they should acknowledge it's a risk.
Hi there, now you have my curiosity.
Which degree was it, why do you regret getting it?
Computer Systems Tech with honours and a Computer Sci advanced degree with honours.
I would have been better off just working, my 3 years in school (including being on the board of governors and student union) was a waste of time and money. Not saying school is always a bad choice but watching people who drop out of high school make double your income from working in retail (since oddly there is potential upwards movement) once you do get a job in the industry feels bad. Then continues to feel bad when you bust your ass off for no advancement or additional pay while those same people are now working less then 4 hours a day in a middle management position. Then it gets downright frustrating when you have been in the industry for over a decade and shopped around to find out all the companies are shit and when you realize you have made a poor choice in career those same drop outs are entering into lower executive roles while being paid to take college courses (I have 3 examples of this sadly) and telling you that you should "go to school and get an education".
And to see the money being made in oil and gas.... or some of the trades?! Urgh, I should have just started my own buisness instead of going to school. I had the same skills before and after I graduated anyway.
Computer Science is not learning to code.
In fact, most high end University Computer Science departments do not at any point teach a coding language. Coding languages are taught, in Canada, at Community Colleges and such.
Computer Science is all about developing, perfecting, and discovering the algorithms that are then transcribed to computer code by the junior IT technicians (code junkies). Coders are a dime a dozen. It is the Computer Systems Designers, project architects, and project developers that make the big money.
A coder can only make good money if they have mastered a computer language that is not very common, like Kubernetes, [Kubernetes,] (kubernetes.io/) And you will not learn that from a 'Kubernetes-for-Dummies book borrowed from the library,
Production-Grade Container Orchestration
Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is an open source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It groups containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery.Kubernetes
Thank you for pointing out that CS <> programming.
CS is mostly math, cryptography, signal processing, image processing, information theory, data analysis/storage/transformation, etc.
Kubernetes is not a programming language. It's a program written in a programming language called Go. Working with Kubernetes involves writing in a data serialisation language called YAML but YAML is not a programming language (IIRC) because it's not Turing complete.
(I'm just a "code junky" btw)
Computer science is not IT. IT is about knowing how to use, deploy, and administer existing software solutions, along with a bit of light development to get things to work together when they aren't necessarily directly compatible.
CS is about creating software solutions and understanding how the pieces fit together (at a low level), as well as how to evaluate algorithms and approach problem solving.
It's not even coding, though coding is obviously involved. For a coding class, they'll teach you the language and give problems to help learn that language. For CS classes, they might not care what language you use, or they might tell you to use specific ones and expect you to learn it on your own time. The languages are just tools through which you learn the CS concepts.
An IT professional might know about kernel features and how they relate to overall performance. A coder might be aware that there is a kernel doing OS stuff under the hood. A computer scientist might know the specifics of various parts of what a kernel does and how one is implemented, perhaps they've even implemented one themselves for a class (I have, though I was personally interested in that kind of thing and it was for a class notorious for being difficult, so most grads didn't).
Guessing you mean in a similar vein to the connection between various degrees and food service jobs?
Personally, I've been able to avoid IT jobs so far.
IT as in information technology is a stupid broad category, and the only people who say otherwise are just trying to not be painted as in IT.
Network engineer, IT.
Software Dev, IT.
Program manager for that big roll out, still IT.
Call center meat in a seat, IT.
Reeves ‘plots tax raid on landlords’ to help plug £40bn Budget black hole
Chancellor considers applying national insurance to rental income, according to reports
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Argentina's Milei pelted with stones on campaign trail amid corruption protests
Argentine President Javier Milei was pelted with stones by protesters near Buenos Aires on Wednesday while campaigning amid a corruption scandal, AFP reported. His motorcade was attacked but Milei was unhurt and swiftly evacuated by security, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said on X.
Archived version: archive.is/newest/france24.com…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
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A controversy has broken out in Germany about whether a trans far-right extremist should serve a prison sentence in a women's or a men's facility.
German controversy surrounds jail term for transgender far-right extremist
Marla-Svenja Liebich was sentenced two years ago to a total of one year and six months in prison without parole.Bethany Bell (BBC News)
China's push for global AI dominance
China's push for global AI dominance
Companies in Hangzhou, China, are striving for global AI dominance as the technology race between China and the U.S. heats up.NBC News
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US | Republicans investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias
Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee opened a probe into alleged organized efforts to inject bias into Wikipedia entries and the organization’s responses.
Archived version: archive.is/20250827185100/theh…
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Israel calls up 60,000 reservists ahead of planned Gaza City offensive
Israel calls up 60,000 reservists ahead of Gaza City offensive
Troops are already operating in some areas ahead of the planned operation, which the ICRC says will worsen "an already catastrophic situation".David Gritten (BBC News)
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Lots of "oh well, what can I do?" and "what's it got to do with me?" and "I just don't want to get cancelled by speaking out."
I'm sure there were lots of people in Nazi Germany quietly watching their Jewish neighbors get hauled away thinking similar thoughts.
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Australia's pedestrian deaths have increased by almost 50 per cent in 4 years
ABC News
ABC News provides the latest news and headlines in Australia and around the world.Lucy Loram (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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The article speculates that the increase in pedestrian deaths is due to e-bikes and e-scooters. I'm not convinced that this speculation is based on actual data though.
After a bit of digging I found a government resource on road fatalities:
catalogue.data.infrastructure.…
This data does not seem to track the vehicle that caused the road fatality, unless that vehicle is a bus, heavy-rigid truck, or articulated truck. So there would be no way to determine from the data available whether the increase in fatalities is due to e-bikes and e-scooters.
Australian Road Deaths Database - DITRDCSA Data Catalogue
The Australian Road Deaths Database (ARDD) provides basic details of road transport crash fatalities in Australia as reported by the police each month to the State and Territory road safety...catalogue.data.infrastructure.gov.au
Fireball ‘bright as the moon’ lights up sky over western Japan
Fireball ‘bright as the moon’ lights up sky over western Japan
Flash of light visible for hundreds of miles was an exceptionally bright meteor, say expertsGuardian staff reporter (The Guardian)
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Denmark to abolish VAT on books in effort to get more people reading
Denmark to abolish VAT on books in effort to get more people reading
Culture minister says government will propose ending the 25% rate, the highest in the world, in its budget billMiranda Bryant (The Guardian)
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Meanwhile this was a stupid proposal over here in Slovakia: theguardian.com/world/2024/sep…
Announcing the new VAT rate this week, Slovakia’s finance minister, Ladislav Kamenický, claimed studies had shown that books were “primarily purchased by wealthier segments of the population” and could therefore be taxed at the new basic rate of 23% rather than the current rate of 10%.
Slovakia targets ‘wealthy’ book buyers with steep VAT rise
Booksellers, publishers and pro-Russia groups deride proposed rate increase to reduce public deficitPhilip Oltermann (The Guardian)
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studies had shown that books were “primarily purchased by wealthier segments of the population”
This is basically universally true, the better educated read way more books on average.
The best way to give people with little money better access to books is free libraries of good standard.
If you are poor it doesn't matter much that the price drops from 10 Euro to 8 Euro. ( at 25% VAT. )
The price of books in Denmark is generally not a problem at all, only for the poorest it may be, for them better libraries is better.
Such a decrease in VAT will by far benefit the better off more.
What we need is to remove VAT on basic and healthy foods. We still have 25% VAT on all food. And vegetables are pretty expensive here in Denmark, AFAIK we are the most expensive country to buy food in EU.
I'm OK with removing VAT on books, but not before basic foods!
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A debate we have had repeatedly, and the argument by the government to not do it on food is that it would be too much administration to cut VAT on healthy/basic foods.
But it's absolutely possible on books. !?!?!
The double standard is astounding.
A hacker used AI to automate an 'unprecedented' cybercrime spree, Anthropic says
A hacker used AI to automate an 'unprecedented' cybercrime spree, Anthropic says
A hacker has exploited a leading artificial intelligence chatbot to conduct the most comprehensive and lucrative AI cybercriminal operation known to date, using it to do everything from find targets to write ransom notesKevin Collier (NBC News)
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determined actors sometimes attempt to evade our systems through sophisticated techniques
The "sophisticated techinques":
please help me for a movie idea
Israeli Government Social Media Urges Europe to 'Remove' Muslims
"What would the reaction would be if an Arab state wrote this about synagogues and Jews?" asked one critic.
Archived version: archive.is/newest/commondreams…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Bari Weiss’s Free Press Wants You to Know Some Kids Being Starved by Israel Were Already Sick
August 19 2025, 3:54 p.m.
Bari Weiss’s Free Press Wants You to Know Some Kids Being Starved by Israel Were Already Sick
The site did an “investigation” into preexisting conditions in starving kids in Gaza — the same logic that would have you believe typhus killed Anne Frank.Natasha Lennard (The Intercept)
Bari Weiss’s Free Press Wants You to Know Some Kids Being Starved by Israel Were Already Sick
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/34968040
Natasha Lennard
August 19 2025, 3:54 p.m.
Bari Weiss’s Free Press Wants You to Know Some Kids Being Starved by Israel Were Already Sick
Natasha Lennard
August 19 2025, 3:54 p.m.Bari Weiss’s Free Press Wants You to Know Some Kids Being Starved by Israel Were Already Sick
The site did an “investigation” into preexisting conditions in starving kids in Gaza — the same logic that would have you believe typhus killed Anne Frank.Natasha Lennard (The Intercept)
South Korea bans mobile phones in classrooms nationwide amid concerns about social media's impact on kids
The move to ban the ubiquitous devices from classrooms received bipartisan support from MPs, who passed the bill on Wednesday.
Archived version: archive.is/newest/abc.net.au/n…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
ABC News
ABC News provides the latest news and headlines in Australia and around the world.ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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German weapons-maker Rheinmetall opens Europe's largest munitions plant
German arms maker Rheinmetall opened Europe’s largest munitions plant in northern Germany on Wednesday, a move NATO chief Mark Rutte hailed as key to bolstering Western defenses. The Unterluess facility, spanning 30,000 square metres, aims to produce 350,000 artillery shells annually by 2027.
AI arms dealer Nvidia laments the many billions lost to US-China trade war
China would be a $50 billion a year market for Nvidia if Uncle Sam would let us sell competitive products, says Jensen Huang
AI arms dealer Nvidia laments the many billions lost to US-China trade war
: China would be a $50 billion a year market for Nvidia if Uncle Sam would let us sell competitive products, says Jensen HuangTobias Mann (The Register)
US | Jury awards more than $2 million to protester shot in face with nonlethal projectile
A jury has awarded at least $2.2 million to a protester who was shot in the face with a less-lethal munition by a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy during a demonstration against police brutality in 2020
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Japanese town wants residents to limit smartphone use to two hours a day
Draft ordinance in Toyoake has triggered a backlash from locals, with some calling it an attack on individual freedom
Archived version: archive.is/newest/theguardian.…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
WhatsApp rolls out 'Writing Help' AI feature to help you adjust how your messages sound
WhatsApp is rolling out another AI-powered feature to select users that lets you adjust the style of your messages.
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[Article] Scientists Make Breakthrough in Solving the Mystery of Life’s Origin
For years, researchers have puzzled over how two ingredients for life first linked up on early Earth. Now, they’ve found the “missing link,” and demonstrated this reaction in the lab.
Archived version: archive.is/20250827153505/404m…
Scientists Make Breakthrough in Solving the Mystery of Life’s Origin
🌘
Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.Scientists have made a major breakthrough in the mystery of how life first emerged on Earth by demonstrating how two essential biological ingredients could have spontaneously joined together on our planet some four billion years ago.
All life on Earth contains ribonucleic acid (RNA), a special molecule that helps build proteins from simpler amino acids. To kickstart this fundamental biological process, RNA and amino acids had to become attached at some point. But this key step, known as RNA aminoacylation, has never been experimentally observed in early Earth-like conditions despite the best efforts of many researchers over the decades.
Now, a team has achieved this milestone in the quest to unravel life’s origins. As they report in a study published on Wednesday in Nature, the researchers were able to link amino acids to RNA in water at a neutral pH with the aid of energetic chemical compounds called thioesters. The work revealed that two contrasting origin stories for life on Earth, known as “RNA world” and “thioester world,” may both be right.
“It unites two theories for the origin of life, which are totally separate,” said Matthew Powner, a professor of organic chemistry at University College London and an author of the study, in a call with 404 Media. “These were opposed theories—either you have thioesters or you have RNA.”
“What we found, which is kind of cool, is that if you put them both together, they're more than the sum of their parts,” he continued. “Both aspects—RNA world and thioester world—might be right and they’re not mutually exclusive. They can both work together to provide different aspects of things that are essential to building a cell.”
In the RNA world theory, which dates back to the 1960s, self-replicating RNA molecules served as the initial catalysts for life. The thioester world theory, which gained traction in the 1990s, posits that life first emerged from metabolic processes spurred on by energetic thioesters. Now, Powner said, the team has found a “missing link” between the two.
Powner and his colleagues didn’t initially set out to merge the two ideas. The breakthrough came almost as a surprise after the team synthesized pantetheine, a component of thioesters, in simulated conditions resembling early Earth. The team discovered that if amino acids are linked to pantetheine, they naturally attach themselves to RNA at molecular sites that are consistent with what is seen in living things. This act of RNA aminoacylation could eventually enable the complex protein synthesis all organisms now depend on to live.
Pantetheine “is totally universal,” Powner explained. “Every organism on Earth, every genome sequence, needs this molecule for some reason or other. You can't take it out of life and fully understand life.”
“That whole program of looking at pantetheine, and then finding this remarkable chemistry that pantetheine does, was all originally designed to just be a side study,” he added. “It was serendipity in the sense that we didn't expect it, but in a scientific way that we knew it would probably be interesting and we'd probably find uses for it. It’s just the uses we found were not necessarily the ones we expected.”
The researchers suggest that early instances of RNA aminoacylation on Earth would most likely have occurred in lakes and other small bodies of water, where nutrients could accumulate in concentrations that could up the odds of amino acids attaching to RNA.
“It's very difficult to envisage any origins of life chemistry in something as large as an ocean body because it's just too dilute for chemistry,” Powner said. For that reason, they suggest future studies of so-called “soda lakes” in polar environments that are rich in nutrients, like phosphate, and could serve as models for the first nurseries of life on Earth.
The finding could even have implications for extraterrestrial life. If life on Earth first emerged due, in part, to this newly identified process, it’s possible that similar prebiotic reactions can be set in motion elsewhere in the universe. Complex molecules like pantetheine and RNA have never been found off-Earth (yet), but amino acids are present in many extraterrestrial environments. This suggests that the ingredients of life are abundant in the universe, even if the conditions required to spark it are far more rare.
While the study sheds new light on the origin of life, there are plenty of other steps that must be reconstructed to understand how inorganic matter somehow found a way to self-replicate and start evolving, moving around, and in our case as humans, conducting experiments to figure out how it all got started.
“We get so focused on the details of what we're trying to do that we don't often step back and think, ‘Oh, wow, this is really important and existential for us,’” Powner concluded.
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.Thioester-mediated RNA aminoacylation and peptidyl-RNA synthesis in water - Nature
Aminoacyl-thiols reacting selectively with RNA diols over amine nucleophiles and demonstration of chemically controlled formation of peptidyl-RNA in water at neutral pH suggest an important role for thiol cofactors before the evolution of enzymes.Nature
Chicago O'Hare Breaks Ground on $1.3 Billion Concourse D Expansion
After years of delays, Chicago O'Hare's massive $1.3 billion Concourse D project is finally underway. The new facility promises to modernize the airport with expanded capacity and updated amenities.
Chicago O'Hare Breaks Ground on $1.3 Billion Concourse D Expansion
Chicago O'Hare International Airport begins construction on the long-awaited $1.3 billion Concourse D expansion, part of the airport's $8.5 billion ORDNext redevelopment program.Prachi Patel (Simple Flying)
CDC Director Denies Report She's Been Fired by Trump Regime (HHS Says She's Out)
Susan Monarez is reportedly being pushed out for not supporting RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine agenda.
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Developer Unlocks Newly Enshittified Echelon Exercise Bikes But Can't Legally Release His Software
A firmware update broke a series of popular third-party exercise apps. A developer fixed it, winning a $20,000 bounty from Louis Rossmann.
Archived version: archive.is/20250827215313/404m…
Developer Unlocks Newly Enshittified Echelon Exercise Bikes But Can't Legally Release His Software
An app developer has jailbroken Echelon exercise bikes to restore functionality that the company put behind a paywall last month, but copyright laws prevent him from being allowed to legally release it.Last month, Peloton competitor Echelon pushed a firmware update to its exercise equipment that forces its machines to connect to the company’s servers in order to work properly. Echelon was popular in part because it was possible to connect Echelon bikes, treadmills, and rowing machines to free or cheap third-party apps and collect information like pedaling power, distance traveled, and other basic functionality that one might want from a piece of exercise equipment. With the new firmware update, the machines work only with constant internet access and getting anything beyond extremely basic functionality requires an Echelon subscription, which can cost hundreds of dollars a year.
In the immediate aftermath of this decision, right to repair advocate and popular YouTuber Louis Rossmann announced a $20,000 bounty through his new organization, the Fulu Foundation, to anyone who was able to jailbreak and unlock Echelon equipment: “I’m tired of this shit,” Rossmann said in a video announcing the bounty. “Fulu Foundation is going to offer a bounty of $20,000 to the first person who repairs this issue. And I call this a repair because I believe that the firmware update that they pushed out breaks your bike.”
youtube.com/embed/2zayHD4kfcA?…
App engineer Ricky Witherspoon, who makes an app called SyncSpin that used to work with Echelon bikes, told 404 Media that he successfully restored offline functionality to Echelon equipment and won the Fulu Foundation bounty. But he and the foundation said that he cannot open source or release it because doing so would run afoul of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the wide-ranging copyright law that in part governs reverse engineering. There are various exemptions to Section 1201, but most of them allow for jailbreaks like the one Witherspoon developed to only be used for personal use.“It’s like picking a lock, and it’s a lock that I own in my own house. I bought this bike, it was unlocked when I bought it, why can’t I distribute this to people who don’t have the technical expertise I do?” Witherspoon told 404 Media. “It would be one thing if they sold the bike with this limitation up front, but that’s not the case. They reached into my house and forced this update on me without users knowing. It’s just really unfortunate.”
Kevin O’Reilly, who works with Rossmann on the Fulu Foundation and is a longtime right to repair advocate, told 404 Media that the foundation has paid out Witherspoon’s bounty.
“A lot of people chose Echelon’s ecosystem because they didn’t want to be locked into using Echelon’s app. There was this third-party ecosystem. That was their draw to the bike in the first place,” O’Reilly said. “But now, if the manufacturer can come in and push a firmware update that requires you to pay for subscription features that you used to have on a device you bought in the first place, well, you don’t really own it.”
“I think this is part of the broader trend of enshittification, right?,” O’Reilly added. “Consumers are feeling this across the board, whether it’s devices we bought or apps we use—it’s clear that what we thought we were getting is not continuing to be provided to us.”
Witherspoon says that, basically, Echelon added an authentication layer to its products, where the piece of exercise equipment checks to make sure that it is online and connected to Echelon’s servers before it begins to send information from the equipment to an app over Bluetooth. “There’s this precondition where the bike offers an authentication challenge before it will stream those values. It is like a true digital lock,” he said. “Once you give the bike the key, it works like it used to. I had to insert this [authentication layer] into the code of my app, and now it works.”
Witherspoon has now essentially restored functionality that he used to have to his own bike, which he said he bought in the first place because of its ability to work offline and its ability to connect to third-party apps. But others will only be able to do it if they design similar software, or if they never update the bike’s firmware. Witherspoon said that he made the old version of his SyncSpin app free and has plastered it with a warning urging people to not open the official Echelon app, because it will update the firmware on their equipment and will break functionality. Roberto Viola, the developer of a popular third-party exercise app called QZ, wrote extensively about how Echelon has broken his popular app: “Without warning, Echelon pushed a firmware update. It didn’t just upgrade features—it locked down the entire device. From now on, bikes, treadmills, and rowers must connect to Echelon’s servers just to boot,” he wrote. “No internet? No workout. Even basic offline usage is impossible. If Echelon ever shuts down its servers (it happens!), your expensive bike becomes just metal. If you care about device freedom, offline workouts, or open compatibility: Avoid all firmware updates. Disable automatic updates. Stay alert.”
Witherspoon told me that he is willing to talk to other developers about how he did this, but that he is not willing to release the jailbreak on his own: “I don’t feel like going down a legal rabbit hole, so for now it’s just about spreading awareness that this is possible, and that there’s another example of egregious behavior from a company like this […] if one day releasing this was made legal, I would absolutely open source this. I can legally talk about how I did this to a certain degree, and if someone else wants to do this, they can open source it if they want to.”
Echelon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
How I Built QZ—and How Echelon Is Now Breaking It - Roberto Viola
By Roberto Viola, creator of QZ On September 10, 2020, I began building QZ (qdomyos-zwift), an app born from a simple idea: open up closed fitness hardware and make it work with the platforms people actually love—Zwift, Peloton, Kinomap, and more.cagnulein (Roberto Viola)
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Chrome VPN Extension With 100k Installs Screenshots All Sites Users Visit
Chrome VPN Extension With 100k Installs Screenshots All Sites Users Visit
FreeVPN.One, a verified Chrome extension with over 100k installs on the Chrome Web Store, is taking screenshots of sites users visit.Bill Mann (CyberInsider)
Am I the only one that sees this shit and thinks:
We are entering an age of very, very inefficient software, which is like a new layer to enshitification.
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Chrome = virulent nonsense at this point
When they changed the behavior of the android version to only allow either google password manager or a third party manager (not both, as it was before), they lost my interest completely (and they were already on the cliff's edge because of the adblocker bullshit).
Exported all of my gpass passwords and switched fully to vaultwarden and Firefox mobile.
The internet is steadily regressing.
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2) This turns said service in the ideal place to start any and all surveillance because your subjects have already self-selected for being "interesting" (especially if you intend to go after low hanging fruit)
3) Therefore I must conclude that people using VPNs and TOR, no matter how legitimate their reasons, are in fact advertising that they have something to hide which current status quo is very interested in knowing...
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Parola filtrata: nsfw
With China, UK and afaik US (at least some states) attitude to regulation, a VPN is turning more into a necessity to browse the open internet rather than a tool for people who value privacy though
I've been trying to plan a hiking trip and the number of sites, even those without any nsfw or user generated content, that just geoblock the UK because it's not worth dealing with their government's shit is impressive
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And this is why I am so obnoxious any time someone says "I found this plugin to block fandom wikis" or "I have this plugin to fix youtube embeds".
Code is only as safe as the people you trust to review it. And no, being open source doesn't matter in that regard. Yes, it theoretically increases the number of eyes on but how many of those eyes who ACTUALLY look at the code are doing it with every release AND understand how to spot a vulnerability or a... whatever this is.
Same with VPNs. NEVER trust a VPN. And sure as fuck never use a free one for anything remotely sensitive. Understand what your risk of exposure is and that, at the best of times, you are trusting a company to be telling the truth that they aren't keeping a log of every single thing you nutted to.
And before someone says "That is why I do everything over tor!": Maybe also understand the concept of digital fingerprints and WHY it is that Google is able to know someone is pregnant even before they are late.
Understand the risks and consequences of every action you take and act accordingly. And understand that there really is no one size fits all solution.
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And sure as fuck never use a free one for anything remotely sensitive.
I think ProtonVPN might might be an exception here. They're pretty trustworthy as far as I know, and have some free servers.
But my go-to is Mullvad, mainly for the flat pricing. I hate how most only have good prices if you buy a full year or so.
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NEVER trust a VPN.
The only exception to this is IMO ones that have been proven in court to keep NO logs, like they claim. The only one I know of that has been tested is PrivateInternetAccess, which is why they're the only VPN I've used for like 10 years.
You mean the court case from almost ten years ago?
Yeah, that sounds safe. I mean, Google is still all about Do No Evil, right?
Again, how many companies say one thing one quarter and another the next? Let alone a decade later.
I am not saying to go uninstall your PIA stuff right now. I am saying to act with the understanding of what your risks are if they are compromised and how important you would be in the event that they are.
Because companies are not our friends. We may have aligned interests but you have to always operate under the understanding of what capitalism IS and what their interests actually are. And while it is fun to aggressively define yourself by what you consume? To play on a fairly misogynistic "joke": PIA isn't gonna fuck you no matter how hard you stan for it.
Homie. Your response to "don't trust companies. Take precautions" is "Well ackshually trust this one" and, upon being reminded that other companies used to have good marketing and even practices, was to double down.
Word it however you want. Either way: Don't stan for corporations and protect yourself.
If you don’t trust the VPN you use then why do you even use a VPN?
Again - no one is doing any “stanning”. I never said don’t take precautions. One precaution is to thoroughly investigate the VPN company that you choose to use. The entire point of PIA is privacy. If they started lying not only would they get sued beyond belief, but they wouldn’t exist anymore.
Because, again, it is about managing risk.
Pickpockets and muggers are a thing. Depending on how worried you are, you might consider only carrying just enough cash for the day but... good luck functioning on holiday in a foreign land without your phone. So you take precautions. You avoid the giant masses of tourists but you also avoid the super dark alleys. And you always keep a hand on your valuables.
Same thing here. There are plenty of activities where just having a layer of VPN is a great protection (all those linux ISOs, for example...). But I am also aware that were I to do anything where being identified is a serious risk to my safety? I am using alternative methods. And so forth.
So when someone says
NEVER trust a VPN.
And you reply
The only exception to this is IMO ones that (I like)
You are actively giving bad advice and leading to the kind of shit this thread is about. People who didn't do basic research who thought they were safe and... hopefully are just at a bit higher risk of getting a letter in the mail from the MPAA.
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The only exception to this is IMO ones that (I like)
Oh are we just making up quotes now? Fun! Why did you say this?
Because, again, it is about managing risk of turning into a newt.
No one is at risk of turning into a newt, witches aren't real! You silly billy!
If we stick to just what people actually said though, you'd see that I said that the ones you can trust to not keep logs and as such actually keep you safe from tracking are who you should use.
I feel like browser extensions are one of the worst things to have come to the internet in terms of security. People just install them like they're nothing, assuming they're safe and secure because they're on the extension store - not a terrible assumption for the average person, tbf.
Basically every single extension you install is like "hey give me access to everything you type and everything you click on and every site you visit, and I'll change every instance of the word "Elon" to "fElon" for you. Sound fair?", and everyone just goes "Hell yeah! Let's do it!".
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The Tor Project | Privacy & Freedom Online
Defend yourself against tracking and surveillance. Circumvent censorship.www.torproject.org
Taliban marks Afghanistan independence anniversary with military display
Taliban marks Afghanistan independence anniversary with military display
Afghanistan has marked the anniversary of its independence from British influence with a military display staged by theAl Jazeera
1950s Petrol Station Wins Photo Of The Year At Architecture Photography Awards 2025
photo of 1950s petrol station crowned winner of APA 2025
architecture photography awards 2025 announces winners across 20 categories, presenting how photographers interpret the built environment.thomai tsimpou I designboom (Designboom)
Third Way circulates ‘blacklist’ of terms Democrats shouldn’t use
Third Way, a prominent center-left think tank, is aiming to shape the way Democrats speak to voters as they try to counter President Trump’s agenda, including avoiding words such as “birthing person,” “cisgender,” “the unhoused” and “Latinx.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5465386-democrats-avoid-political-correctness/
Amherst climate science center could close as US feds freeze funding
Amherst climate science center could close as feds freeze funding | WBUR News
“This is just another way to stop science,” said Bethany Bradley, the center’s co-director. The Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center is one of nine regional hubs across the country that helps state and local partners develop plans to adapt wil…Vivian La (WBUR)
Israel approves settlement plan to 'erase' idea of Palestinian state
JERUSALEM, Aug 20 (Reuters) - A widely condemned Israeli settlement plan that would cut across land which the Palestinians seek for a state received final approval on Wednesday, according to a statement from Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
The approval of the E1 project, which would bisect the occupied West Bank and cut it off from East Jerusalem, was announced last week by Smotrich and received final go-ahead from a defence ministry planning commission on Wednesday, he said.
Archive article archive.ph/mj0N5
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This is very funny to me.
To prove you are Human..... Say something nice about Europe.
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Unless they're like right wing or nationalist, people are in general not in denial about our past. More or less the same as in other countries
Most countries have done horrible shit, and it sucks a whenever it gets denied
Europe has so many treasures—it’s hard to choose just one! For example, I really admire Switzerland: not only is it stunning with its snow-capped Alps and crystal-clear lakes, but it also has a long tradition of neutrality and diplomacy, helping foster peace in a region with such a rich and complex history. It’s a place where natural beauty and human cooperation come together beautifully.
... that's obviously AI!
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a long tradition of neutrality
Lol. Nobody ever talks about the Swiss concentration camps. Or the jewish refugees the gave back to the Nazis.
Still a pretty big hurdle for most bots that just aimlessly flow through the webs trying to sign up for things. I don't think anyone will bother tailoring their bot for europe.pub.
Putting the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy between the question and the answer field might further confuse LLM outputs. 😀
This could unironically be an okay prompt, depending on what kind of users you want to gatekeep.
The bots will hallucinate statistics and travel brochure copy.
The real ones will say nothing beats a jet2 holiday.
Got something little bit worse.
::: spoiler Context
Viktor Mihály Orbán (Hungarian: [ˈviktor ˈorbaːn] ; born 31 May 1963) is a Hungarian lawyer and politician who has been the 56th prime minister of Hungary since 2010, previously holding the office from 1998 to 2002. He has also led the Fidesz political party since 2003, and previously from 1993 to 2000. He was re-elected as prime minister in 2014, 2018, and 2022. On 29 November 2020, he became the country's longest-serving prime minister.
:::
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Norwegian man on 'great Canadian journey' still missing in Manitoba as search teams face challenges | CBC News
(Fort Severn First Nation Chief Matthew) Kakekaspan said searchers from his community were forced to pull out Tuesday morning. In the roughly two days they searched, the group incurred $70,000 in helicopter rental costs, something Kakekaspan says they could no longer sustain.(RCMP Sgt. Paul Manaigre) said on Tuesday the police force has one Mountie in the area presently.
RCMP initially said the Canada Rangers were requested to attend, but they decided against it because "it was just too dangerous."
***If you are able to donate money to help with the search there are 2 choices -- the first is to donate directly to the people searching ... waynemathews72@gmail.com ... option 2 is to Steffen's family's gofundme ... gofundme.com/f/help-fund-the-s…
Both dogs made it. One is at York Factory and one is in Fort Severn.
All the info is posted on Steffen Skjottelvik's fb page.
Trump administration shields Israeli official charged with child sex crime
“The most concerning question is when and how did America become so subservient to Israel that we immediately release a CHILD SEX PREDATOR after arrest, with a 100 percent locked up case with evidence, and let him off to fly back home to Israel?” Taylor Greene wrote, asserting that no other country’s national would receive similarly favorable treatment.
Trump administration shields Israeli official charged with child sex crime
Tom Artiom Alexandrovich was arrested in Las Vegas and is accused of attempting to lure a child but was released and left the country.The Electronic Intifada
Yep. Just look at how many people in power knew about Epstein's raping of minors and kept quiet.
We had to find out for ourselves, which should put into perspective who our representatives truly represent.
MonkderVierte
in reply to nearhat • • •unconsequential
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