Kyle Rankin @kyle@librem.one

The biggest piece of advice I'd give to colleagues who are devs, is to figure out what you will do when software dev work moves from many opportunities writing code at a large number of companies to fewer jobs managing automated systems that write code.

Sysadmin/neteng careers made that transition w/ cloud over the past decade, the remaining major cost for tech-heavy orgs are devs, which is why the industry focus is on reducing that head count with automation. Tech is not there yet, but coming.

If you were laid off recently, especially if you are taking it personally, I recommend reading The End of Loyalty. It covers the shift over the 20th century from companies providing lifelong employment (retirement watch, pension, etc) to mass layoffs at the drop of a hint.

Take home message is that the future promises not only little job security, but less *career* security. Have to be prepared to retrain/retool, and possibly even change careers multiple times during your working years.

Final update: The power came back on a bit after 5pm.

This was a good exercise to see what worked and needs improvement for an extended outage (like in a major earthquake). In summary, if I want to use solar to help charge batteries, I will likely need larger (probably permanent) panels. An additional, larger battery pack would help too.

Update 2: Power is still out. The solar panel was not providing enough energy so the battery bank ended up slowly draining. I had to fire up a portable 700W propane generator I normally keep in the camper van to charge it back up. With all that, my home server/router has stayed up the whole time.

After it was clear the outage was going to be longer than a few hours, I plugged my fridge into the larger battery bank I've been using inside to charge devices. It still has plenty of charge to go.

Update: power is still out, supposed to return this evening. The power bank was at 20% with a bit over an hour to go, but instead of firing up a small generator to charge it, I decided to try my portable solar panel setup I use when camping.

It is supplying enough power to the battery bank that there is a small surplus, so I should be able to keep the equipment running for a few more hours without resorting to a generator.

I woke up to a power outage that had been going for 30 mins so I was able to test a portion of my emergency plan. My router/home server was on a UPS and still powered, so I hooked it all up to a larger power bank from my camper van to give it a few more hours of life and actually have Internet at home.

Gas heating (simple battery-powered thermostat) and stovetop meant I was able to be warm and make coffee (equally important). So I guess I'm saying it could be worse, and so far my prep paid off.

"Flag for follow-up" is how I track emails I need to respond to, but can't right away. I never took the "INBOX zero" approach because I wanted easy searching for recent threads all in one mailbox.

The problem is when flagged messages scrolled out of view, I'd forget about them. Some were months old! At some point you feel too guilty to reply.

The solution was so simple: apply a filter that only shows unread and flagged email by default. Instant view of things that need my attention.

#email

Did Turing realize his standards for computer intelligence made incentives to develop AI that are judged first on how well they deceive?

Whether it's lying about being human, lying about the quality/correctness of your work, or creating false images/audio/video presented as real, many (most?) current applications for "AI" and their metrics for success, seem to be founded on intentional deception.

It seems risky & unethical to create intelligence where lying is the first lesson.

#AI #AiEthics

Straight Outta Cosby

#knitting #machineknitting

So I bought a set of vintage Knitking magazines from the late 1980s, early `90s so I could learn more about garment construction for my knitting machine and... wow...

#knitting #machineknitting

It was officially cold enough when I got to my office this morning (~5C) that I broke out my new fingerless mittens I made on my knitting machine a few weeks back. I did a pretty poor job stitching them together but they do the job!

#knitting #machineknitting

Just finished measuring out 600 2.5yd warp threads for my next project: a pair of hand towels woven with a doubleweave overshot pattern. In my enthusiasm I actually overshot (pun always intended) the thread count. I originally only needed 540 threads (16.75" wide towels), but now I'm just going to extend the warp to be 18" wide (576 threads) and have wider towels.

Why not use all 600 threads? My overshot pattern repeats at 18 and I don't want to figure out how to divide it. #weaving

The latest edition to my office is a vintage Warmink wall clock from the 1960s I got as a gift. Unlike the vintage alarm clock I tried in my office before, this has a quiet and slow tick, and a pleasant chime on the hour and half hour. Plus it tracks moon phases!

I will likely be spending the next few weeks adjusting the pendulum and minute hand so it keeps perfect time. #vintage #clocks

@kirschner I finally got a chance to sit down and read Ada & Zangemann and I enjoyed it! I thought it was a cute story overall, and appropriate for the age groups it is targeting.

I also appreciated how it took a traditional children's morality tale format and modernized it with practical hardware/software ethics in a relatable way, but not in a way that made you feel preached to or talked down to. Would recommend!

Thank you everyone for all of your great suggestions. It seems the consensus is to try out Tinkercad first so that's what I will do.

Hello 3D printing and CAD folks, I would like some advice:

I want to introduce my 10-year-old son to simple 3D modeling and CAD so he could design objects to send to our 3D printer. I am looking for software that is easy to use, even if functionality is limited, FOSS if possible. I have no CAD skills myself, and opening FreeCAD for the first time was pretty intimidating. I would also prefer something GUI/mouse-based, not declarative (ie not OpenSCAD).

#3dprinting

Beer Update: It's alive! The first few days the beer was perfectly still with no sign of life (the yeast were reproducing), but now a week in you can see bubbles on the top and the airlock is bubbling away. This means the yeast is alive and happily converting sugars into alcohol and CO2.

This is a lager yeast so it will hang out more at the bottom of the container compared to ale yeasts. In a few weeks they will run out of food and settle to the bottom.

#brewing #happybrewyear #beer