While the world was at war
Yeah, it’s been quite a time.
In the chaos, some companies have definitely risen above and beyond what was expected of them (maybe we just had low standards?). Some found a good platform to have some lighthearted fun. And some, have still not figured out how to do generics.
Where do you go from here (no pun intended)? Where do we go? Twitter (especially the entrepreneurial side) has been a mix of people giving reasonable advice and people trying to predict the next remote work unicorn.
Sigh. Yeah, I guess that’s a pretty normal Twitter week after all. Let’s take a look…
- … If the government really can’t edit video to conceal faces, it had better explain why. Teenagers, the court says, have found a way to stick cat heads in front of faces, though “we do not necessarily advocate that specific technique.”
- Okay that last one was the best sentence the court has ever said, period. I’m gonna give you some time to process it. It’s okay, take your time.
- Take your time
- Are you sure you clicked that link before proceeding?
- Just asking yo, but please make sure you did. A’ight, peace
- The Oracle vs Google fight for the future of APIs continues to rage. We’ve covered this previously as well, but in short, Google reimplemented a bunch of Java APIs for Android, Oracle (Java’s owner) sued them for it and there’s a raging legal fight now arriving to the Supreme Court (!) about copyrighting interfaces
- Dark Lang appears promising, I’d like to test it out at some point
- After killing a biker, Uber’s Christines are back for blood in the streets of San Fransisco
- Slice your tasks vertically folks
- There is no I in team, but could there be documentation without u?
- We were so preoccupied with thinking if we could…
- Quote from guy in VPN malware who sold millions of users’ data : “When you consider the relationship between these types of apps and an analytics company, it makes a lot of sense — especially considering our history as a startup.” (no, Medium does not have a puke emoji sadly)
- Oh yeah and your weekly tech drama thing
In other interesting news, I was recently in a room, listening to some people deliver feedback of a conference. Apparently a sub-theme across keynotes had been diversity in the field which most attendees praised highly! There were a few who complained that it wasn’t technical, which is an opinion I am not going to comment on or judge, after rewriting my judging comment a bunch of times. Then, a 50-something individual let us know that they found it a waste of time and that’s not really a problem. As I looked around a room with a 14:1 ratio of male to female presenting scientists I couldn’t help but concur — I didn’t really see much of this “diversity problem”
More stories? More stories!
I was recently in another room (I do that a lot, it was before COVID really became so alarming, I promise), where I was opening a bank account (yay capitalism!). After missing for approximately 10 minutes with my identification papers, which is definitely not alarming, the account manager resurfaced:
- “I’m afraid we cannot use your ID”, she said
- “But how? I have just signed up as a resident using it approximately 30 minutes ago in the town hall. I entered the country using this ID!”
- “You see, the problem is the corners, they are damaged”. She proceeds to do a demonstration of a problematic corner, actually damaging my ID card in the process
- “But clearly, you see that this is an authentic ID card”
- “Yes I do, we are not disputing that! But the software doesn’t let us enter an ID if the corners are damaged”
- “So, you cannot override this?” At this point I am actually laughing, because I know perfectly well where this is going
- “No, you see, if the software rejects an ID there is nothing we can do. I tried it 3 or 4 times, but it doesn’t let me”
I was too amused to continue, because the story I was reading up while waiting was about magic opaque algorithms humans can do nothing about. I think I just told her I was making a presentation on the topic and laughed my way out. Great day, 10/10.
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