Simon @spoltier@qoto.org

My DMs this entire week as a Meta employee.

Das Perfide am Rassismus ist, dass er sicher nicht nur bei mir dazu geführt hat, mich tatsächlich über Jahrzehnte bemüht zu haben, der "gute Ausländer" zu sein, bis ich verstand bzw. verstehen konnte, als Mensch ausreichend zu sein. Der Kanzlerkandidat der aktuell stimmenstärksten Partei hat mich und Millionen andere vor Tagen erinnert, nie richtig Deutsche*r und immer nur geduldet zu sein. Das ist nicht neu. Schmerzt deshalb aber nicht weniger.
6/7

Dis Mastodon, je m'apprête à quitter #meta, notamment #whatsapp et je cherche un lien pour expliquer clairement pourquoi fuir ce groupe à ceux qui me demanderons pourquoi je pars ?

#deleteMeta

Monday was the Oxide and Friends annual predictions episode! @bcantrill and I were joined by @simon, Mike Cafarella, @sdtuck, and Steve Klabnik to review past predictions and look into the future. Lots of optimism; some crypto. https://youtu.be/-pk6VokHpGY?si=nDF8rC7XV13pAO_9

Hey remember how for years anyone interested in or working on decentralization was told "yeah but it's not moderatable, you need centralization for that"?

Isn't it funny how the two big centralized social media websites are now both "neo-nazis-are-cool-here" websites

Isn't it just a whole barrel of laughs

My novel DEATH OF THE AUTHOR (due out January 14) is an Apple Books staff pick. Here’s their review:

Hello! I'm an author for #fantasy in multiple sub genres and #queer romance. I'd like to connect with fellow writers and readers, other queers and everybody who is fighting against the global rise of rightwing parties. Let's connect, I need to fill my time line 😁

Hear the Sun - three years of solar flares observed with the STIX instrument on board #ESA's #SolarOrbiter sonified:

▶️ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XYXAdXf5gWU&t=80s&pp=2AFQkAIB

The video shows the sun as observed
Ultraviolet Imager instrument as Solar Orbiter moves closer to & further away from the Sun on its elliptical orbit. The blue circles are flares detected by the STIX instrument.

More info:
▶️ https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2024/12/See_and_hear_three_years_of_solar_fireworks

I'm extremely happy we hired a trainee for sonification this year 😊

#astrodon #sonification #scicomm

At #CERN we mostly employ engineers, but from time to time there are job openings for #writers and #editors. CERN Courier magazine currently has a graduate opening for an Associate #Editor.

The position is open to graduates from CERN member states with a Master's degree and not more than six years' experience post-graduation. Full details below.

If your network includes people who are interested in #science #communication, please boost!

https://www.smartrecruiters.com/CERN/744000031266538-cern-courier-magazine-associate-editor-ir-eco-ce-2024-213-grap-

#joboffer #jobopening #graduate

I have now lived (nearly) as long in this millenium as the last. That seems... wrong. This is still a fresh, new millenium, right? Help me out here?

#NewYears #NewYears2025

New: Meta employees are furious about a new policy that allows users to call LGBTQ+ people "mentally ill." Some have resigned in protest. Some LGBTQ+ employees have started saying they if they are 'mentally ill' they should get leaves of absence from work

https://www.404media.co/its-total-chaos-internally-at-meta-right-now-employees-protest-zuckerbergs-anti-lgbtq-changes/

Journalists: Send us examples of your stories being censored (like this) by Meta in the last year, whether on Facebook, Instagram, or Threads.

https://www.404media.co/facebook-is-censoring-404-media-stories-about-facebooks-censorship/

I've seen a number of people confused about this, so I did some research. Here are the most important answers:
- The moose want to lick your car because it has salt on it
- It's bad for the moose to lick your car because it will become accustomed to being around humans
- To stop the moose from licking your car, drive away

The pragmatics of running schools is just beyond some people. Think about your own attention span and how much you as an adult with adult resources probably still can struggle with unstructured time. If kids struggle to teach themselves from textbooks why wouldn't they struggle with chat apps. Just ludicrous to me how little curiosity we have about the human mind

I forgot the Matrix-fan-boys (not the film). Tech-bros incoming. 🛡️

Seriously. If I can get my 82 year old parents successfully use @signalapp (incl. account creating / onboarding) successfully for a long time now, it's a WhatsApp alternative. Period. People are maybe going to install one extra IM-app (if they keep WhatsApp) on their phone. If they see that only 1 or 2 people are using an IM-app, they won't use it and because Signal already has a critical number of users, it's the only one people keep. The race for thé #WhatsApp alternative is between #Signal and #Telegram. So let's hope it will be Signal. 🙏

All other gadgets have their own use-case, but not for my old parents, the sport instructor, your new girlfriend or your irritating little nephew.

But I really hope Signal is going into the decentralization game ASAP.

Muting this thread now.

Now that we’re officially into the third year of layoffs in big tech, this does seem like the worst tech job market of this century. Worse thanthe dot com crash (2000 - 2002) and the housing crisis (2007 - 2008).

The question remains whether this is just another boom and bust cycle or whether the industry had a peak caused by ZIRP that it won’t hit again?

https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-plans-job-cuts-performance-management-2025-1