Wednesday, November 30, 2022
This article was originally written for the April 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus.
I love to use native software but it feels like I’m the last of the troops that has been put on the final line of defence, guarding against the marauding ‘web apps’.
It appears that most users are more than happy to load a copy of Google Chrome and run a bunch of web apps in fullscreen mode.
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Tuesday, November 29, 2022
The Elon-gateâd Man | Jared White:
Jared White mounts a solid argument as to where we have gone wrong with big tech celebrity, and talks about how me might be able to do better in the future.
with this maturity has to come broader awareness that Big Tech canât simply act like 21st century echoes of the robber barons. Either the tech sector must demonstrate its ability to police itself and show good corporate governance and a willingness to let bottom-up creativity and entrepreneurship flourish in the marketplace of ideas, or we must call for increased regulatory scrutiny on all fronts.
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Thursday, November 24, 2022
“The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept.”
â Lieutenant General David Lindsay Morrison AO
Upon reflection, I have determined that my values are inconsistent with those of Twitter’s post-acquisition by Elon Musk.
Rather than continue to use the service - even within my safe #NBL23 bubble - I believe the correct and appropriate action is to cease use of the platform.
I am available on Mastodon @canion@social.
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Saturday, November 19, 2022
Ed Zitron has published “The Fraudulent King”, a marvellous explainer on the latest happenings at Twitter, but at the same time, outlined what a petulant, unimpressive person Elon Musk is â and how the world now knows it.
There were so many great lines in this article, it was hard to know which to highlight as an extract:
âŠwe are in the process of watching said timeline wholesale reject Elon Musk and his ideology.
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Friday, November 18, 2022
Elon Musk walked into Twitter HQ carrying a sink; in hindsight it should have been a toilet, because Twitter is now circling the bowl.
Elon Musk eases return-to-office order - The Washington Post
One Twitter staff member said the numbers of employees seeking to leave had alarmed Twitterâs managers, who had formed âwar roomsâ to determine which employees should be asked to stay on.
Resignations and departures were already taking a toll on Twitterâs service, employees said.
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Wednesday, November 16, 2022
Musk fires Twitter engineers after critical posts on Twitter and Slack:
Musk had already tweeted Monday that he had fired at least one engineer who publicly criticized him on Twitter. The latest terminations come in the wake of Muskâs decision to let go of about half of all Twitter employees in a bid to cut costs.
Some Twitter employees confirmed the layoffs on their verified accounts.
âLooks like i just got fired for s—posting too âïžâ one wrote in response to another person who said they had been let go.
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Saturday, November 12, 2022
Recently we have installed a cool basketball hoop in our front yard, ostensibly for our kids to play as they grow into their teenage and teenage years.
An unexpected benefit has been for me â Dad. I used to play basketball. You may be aware that I now host NBL Pocket Podcast, have media accreditation for NBL, and commentate games for NBL1.
When I was younger, I was an athletic guy who could slam dunk and knock down 3s.
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Thursday, November 10, 2022
Not even a day, and there’s a new item of craziness I can add to my earlier list.
Elon Musk's First Email to Twitter Staff Ends Work from Home - Bloomberg:
The new rules, which kick in immediately, will expect employees to be in the office for at least 40 hours per week⊠At least 40 hours per week? The standard working week in Australia is 38 hours. So if Twitter were an Australian firm (or perhaps for the remaining Australian Twitter staff), Musk is asking them to work in the office for more than the typical working week.
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Thursday, November 10, 2022
Update 10 November: Now Elon is requiring employees to work at least 40 hours per week in the office.
Twitter is a clown show. But I have an irrational fear of clowns, and not Twitter, so maybe it’s better described as a dumpster fire.
Anyway, let’s see if I can get this straight. In a few short days, Elon has:
Fired half the company, including ones who knew what they were doing.
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Wednesday, November 9, 2022
Are we now experiencing “the great correction” in the tech world? Meta has announced layoffs of 11,000, we just had now privately-owned Twitter reduce headcount by 7,500. Stripe let go of 14% of its people, and Sketch had to let a bunch of it’s employees go recently as well. These are just the ones I recall off the top of my head - I’m sure there are others.
Higher interest rates reduce the availability of cheap venture capital; leading to increasing pressure to run a business to deliver profit and return to shareholders; and a number of these firms are behemoths that may have reached the end of their natural growth potential.
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Wednesday, September 28, 2022
This article was originally written for the March 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus
Things break down and that causes me stress. I know that everything in the world is gradually corroding, eroding and disintegrating but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
The root cause of my problem is that I don’t like fixing things. I have zero interest in hardware, maintenance and DIY projects.
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Friday, September 16, 2022
I am in Darwin this week as the National Basketball League is holding its pre-season Blitz tournament. All 10 teams competing to win the Loggins-Bruton Cup. I am attending all the games as accredited media, representing the NBL Pocket Podcast.
These are my brief notes from Day 1.
A venue where the first NBL volunteer I meet is a friendly Darwin lawyer by day, basketball fan by night.
Plenty of NBL staff scurrying around 90 minutes before tip-off, getting score benches ready.
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Saturday, September 10, 2022
Tonight I have been noodling around on LinkedIn. It’s the curse of working in our current world, that I must maintain a LinkedIn account. The whole site feels incredibly superficial â a ‘social network’ devoid of true humanity, but full of humblebrag posts and small talk comments in something which amounts to little more than a business-suited circle jerk.
Yet there I must be. Truth be told, for the last few years I’ve mostly used it as an avenue for promoting Hemispheric Views because if there is a podcast that deserves more listeners, it is that.
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Wednesday, December 29, 2021
This post was originally written in August 2021 for Hemispheric News; subscribe at the Patreon site One Prime Plus to receive this monthly newsletter and other benefits that are linked to the Hemispheric Views podcast.
Sitting in my OmniFocus task list, and my SkedPal task list, both for two long, has been one item:
I have been intending to give myself two hours to do some new stuff with my Stream Deck that has been sitting in front of me for about a year.
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Sunday, December 26, 2021
These last two days in Perth have broken records for heat. Both Christmas Day and Boxing Day were several degrees over 40ÂșC. I am immensely thankful that this year, for the first time in my home ownership history, we have a swimming pool. With weather like this, itâs a complete game changer. A benefit of the heat is that upon emerging from the pool, it takes only minutes to be completely dry from the hot air.
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