Hey everyone!
My current gig might be wrapping up soon, so itโs time for me to figure out whatโs next.
If you or someone you know could use some help with software tools or systems โ architecture, implementation, deployment, operations, data pipelines, CD, DX, etc โย maybe get in touch? Iโve been doing this a while and Iโm pretty flexible.
Iโm open to short-term or long-term, part-time or full-time. Iโm US-based (NYC area) and a US citizen.
General CV: http://aviflax.com/resume/
Energy-specific CV: http://aviflax.com/resume/energy/
Thanks in advance!
TIL that just as they shamelessly copied Slack, MS also has a clone of Notion.
Well, at least theyโre consistent.
I think I murdered another plant ๐
It's June 4 today, the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre.
It's not usually on people's radar here in the West. But I think it's an important day to commemorate. It's the day that China, the PRC, the CCP, showed the world its true face.
Yet we (the US, UN, Europe) continued on the path Nixon had set us on a decade prior, recognizing the PRC politically, and integrating with it economically. Three years after the massacre Deng would revive the Reform and Opening-up program during his Southern Tour, and turn China into the world's factory. In two decades we went from injection molded plastics to iPhones.
The Chinese economic miracle fueled cheap global consumerism, and turned the PRC into the world's richest authoritarian state. And as it gained power it become more bellicose, leading to the tense geopolitical situation we live in today.
1989 was a branching point in history. Things could've gone differently in China, if more moderate voices within the party had prevailed, rather than sending in the tanks. But things could have also gone differently for the rest of the world, if more countries hadn't continued to treat the PRC as just another business partner, despite the cold blooded murder of their own citizens.
INCREDIBLE images from China's Changโe 6 lander, which landed on the far side of the moon late on June 1 and lifted off in an ascent vehicle with the first lunar samples from the far side of the moon yesterday.
Image credit: CNSA
Microsoft has no taste, exhibit one billion
TIL: a 225-mile road trip in a ~22 kWh (usable) CHAdeMO car (in the US, in May 2024) is miserable.
Yikes. Cloudflare. (ht @macdonst )
https://robindev.substack.com/p/cloudflare-took-down-our-website
For young voters and anyone claiming to be on the left while flirting with a third party candidate (or abstaining), this might be the single most important thing to consider. If Trump is elected, Alito and Thomas will almost certainly retire so that two younger justices in the MAGA mold can be appointed. These appointees would give SCOTUS a right wing chokehold on liberal democracy for the next 25-30 years, that is, until my middle school daughter enters her 40s โ @xankarn #quotes #quote #Trump #VoteBlue
I love @simonโs proposed new term for LLMs: instead of โartificial intelligenceโ, โimitation intelligenceโ
What good is AI if you don't have a planet to use it on?
Microsoft released its 2024 Sustainability Report on Wednesday, and it's mostly bad news. Last year, Microsoft's emissions went up 29%, and it used 23% more water, primarily due to "new technologies, including generative AI."
https://au.pcmag.com/news/105283/microsofts-emissions-spike-29-as-ai-gobbles-up-resources
The Great Lying Machine is eating our environment and spewing out toxic misinformation. Big Tech has become a clear and present danger to all our futures.
@simon if one wanted to maintain a mostly straightforward dataset in a GitHub repo, collaboratively with other people, potentially the public (i.e. โcrowdsourcingโ) โ would you suggest using CSV, JSON, or something else as the file format?
The behavior of business leaders with respect to #genai is distressingly lemming-like.
Itโs sad to see Google drink themselves to death on their own โAIโ (๐คข) flavored Kool-Aid but letโs be honest; theyโve been been headed in this direction for many years.
Hereโs an idea for better cities: Make owners of big SUVs & pickups pay more to park.
That's what Montreal now does -- and it's the first North American city to try it.
In Bloomberg CityLab, I explored a groundbreaking way to fight back against car bloat.
My ex had this rule, or sort of a philosophy I guess:
"Never feel bad about spending money on books."
And this made a lot of sense to me, at the time,
but this was before I actually realized
just how much money I am capable of spending on books
Ok, time for #GetFediHired!
I've got like twenty years experience with Python and Linux, a long time open source contributor, I know too much about Docker and Containers, not enough about Kuberenetes. I've done a bunch of ops and ops-adjacent stuff.
I just finished setting up the infrastructure and CI/CD for a geographically-diverse seed-stage startup.
Only accepting remote positions comfortable with vaguely Eastern time.
Just picked up tix for Furiosa in IMAX!
Software makers! If you sell a native app, *please* include documentation in the app itself, so itโll work offline!
Most native apps SHOULD work offline โ or to put it another way, all features that donโt intrinsically and necessarily depend on Internet access should work offline โ and documentation is a feature!
TIL that CSS native variables (custom properties) are widely supported โ have been for ~7 years now!
โขย https://caniuse.com/css-variables
โขย https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Using_CSS_custom_properties
I just spied (and heard) a beautiful 930 turbo in dark cherry with license plate OLD SPOOL.
Years ago, I went to Poland to see where the Powazeks came from. Dad and I took a tour of one of the camps where our family was killed. The tour guide asked us if we were Polish or Jewish. "Both," I said. "You can't be both," he said flatly. This was in the early 2000s.
This is how the Poles could kill us. Help the nazis send us to camps. Take our homes. We weren't part of "us."
Today: Republican Ron Johnson reminds us that Jews in America are also not "us."
Did you know that you can purchase an electric vehicle for as little as $1,000?
Not only that, these vehicles also:
- Can skip traffic jams
- Be parked virtually anywhere
- Get over 1,000 mpge
- Emits no harmful air pollution
- Don't require a government permit or expensive insurance
- Can easily be repaired by yourself, and don't require long waits at expensive dealerships
- Include optional exercise equipment, allowing you to choose to get exercise while in transit (if you want) and skip the gym membership
- Can be operated by people of almost any age, so your kids can now transport themselves
What is this vehicle I'm describing? Some sort of newfangled flying car? A quantum teleporter?
No: It is the humble electric bicycle.
Spread the word.
#Solarpunk #ElectricVehicles #ClimateChange #ClimateSolutions #UrbanPlanning #Biking #Cycling #UrbanTransit #Urbanism #CarFree #RightToRepair #Mobility #ElectricBikes