Category: Technology

Modern Recruiting, Thanks to LinkedIn

Big Company HR person 1: “Why aren’t we getting good candidates for our open positions? I know! Let’s buy a high-powered HR software to help us qualify applicants through a pipeline, and push them to it from LinkedIn.”

Big Company HR person 2: “That’s a great idea. Let’s take it to the CIO!”

Company spends a lot of money installing a huge system, and then base their entire hiring strategy on it. Candidates apply. System gets stuck. There is no way to contact the company from the application.

Big Company HR person 2: “Why isn’t our new, high-powered application system generating any promising leads?”

No one in HR is allowed to see metrics or logs. IT isn’t looking.

Me, mailing company rep: “Hey, guys, uh, your system is broken.”

Silence.

Me, mailing second company rep: “Guys, really, your system isn’t working.”

More silence. Big Company HR person 1: “Hmm, I guess we’ll never know.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thank you, LinkedIn, for reminding me that even here, in 2020 — where we’re all drowning in software, apps, devices, clouds, “things,” and services — more than ever before — it’s about who you know.

UPDATE: After writing this out of my frustration, I got another email bugging me about why I hadn’t finished going through the company’s four-hour application process after the first 15-minute IQ test, and I responded again that their system won’t let me proceed.

Operating System “Ecology”

Back in my days of playing AD&D, each month, Dragon Magazine would feature an “The Ecology of…” some mythical beast. The article would read like a National Geographic treatment of what the creature eats, what places they inhabited, and so on. (The one that sticks with me was about the beholder, which is a uniquely characteristic example.) I still think about the word, “ecology,” a lot, because it neatly captures the immediate surroundings of a particular thing. I suppose talking about the “ecology” of an operating system is taking things a bit too far, but hear me out.

As I type this, I’m cloning a spinning-media hard drive to a solid-state hard drive. It’s already 33% done, so I’m going to have to hurry. To do this, I searched for “clone hdd to ssd”, and read the results. The first several, including a prominent LifeHacker article, talked about using EaseUS Backup to do the job.

Fine. I download software, and install it, and try to use it. Along the way, I’m prompted five times to upgrade to the paid version. Each time, I sidestep the upsell, because LifeHacker has assured me that the free edition is all I need. When I finally get to the actual button that does the thing, I see that this is no longer true.

Fine. Times change, and they felt the need to start charging for this. I get it. I don’t begrudge them. If all else fails, I’ll find a way to do this with Linux, because it’s always possible to do things like this with Linux, and do it for free, if you’re willing to learn the flags of some arcane commands.

But I take another look at the search results, and there’s another possibility: Macrium Reflect. Ah! That’s right. I did this for another computer over a year ago, and that’s what I used, I now recall.

Fine. I download this new program. I have to sign up with an email address to get the downloader. Fine. I register. I get my email. I download the downloader. I run the downloader. I enter my email. I get the downloader running. It downloads the program, installs it, and I’m copying the drive right now. The UI is very efficient, and there’s no annoying upsell come-ons. But I’ve had to click about 25 times to get to the point of doing the thing.

People who’ve never actually lived in macOS, and think that Windows is just great (thank you very much) never see it from our side. In the ecology of Macs, if you want some software, it’s usually quite clear that what you want is either free or paid, and installing consists of downloading a file, opening it, and dragging an icon. That’s it. The difference in the two operating system “ecologies,” in terms of friction and user-hostility, is pretty stark. Window users who have never tried Mac: you have no idea how much nicer life can be.

Aaand the clone is done. Let’s see how much faster Civ V starts up now…

Students defeat new ‘Barnacle’ parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

As it turns out, to take off the Barnacle, all you need to do is run your vehicle’s windshield defroster for 15 minutes, and then use a credit card or similar thin piece of plastic to release the suction cup around the edge. Presto! You’re free from fees.

Other students shared other solutions – blocking its signal and deactivating it by covering it in aluminum, or fitting your windshield with a mock Barnacle of your own – but our fave low-tech workaround was shared by a user who found out his campus only had 12 wheel boots to go around and bought and illegally parked 12 scrapyard cars that could be “sacrificed” so everyone else could park however they wanted.

Source: Students defeat new ‘Barnacle’ parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain. – Scotty, Star Trek III, The Search For Spock

DHH on Twitter: “Gig exploitation math is very simple.”

Seems like it’s only a matter of time before word gets around that this just doesn’t work long term. Especially in a time of record employment. Of course, if the government is calling “gig jobs” employment, then we might have a problem. I guess we’ll see if word of mouth about the negative rates involved win out over the exploitation of desperately underemployed people.

Communal living concept with wellness vibe coming to San Diego

Haven Coliving houses mostly people who work in the wellness industry. There are activities like yoga and vegan cooking classes. The housing is comprised of four multi-million dollar homes that are connected to one another. “In Los Angeles, where a one bedroom in Venice would be about $3,000, our membership dues are $995,” says founder and CEO Ben Katz. Katz says that about $1,000 a month will get you a bed in a private pod in a shared room. Sheets and towels are provided and changed weekly.

Source: Communal living concept with wellness vibe coming to San Diego

This week, in “grim meathook future” news: An apartment in LA is $3,000/mo. A bunk in a flop house in San Diego is $1,000/mo, and being marketed as a “health and wellness” option.

New evidence shows that the key assumption made in the discovery of dark energy is in error

Taken at face values, the luminosity evolution of SN is significant enough to question the very existence of . When the luminosity evolution of SN is properly taken into account, the team found that the evidence for the existence of dark simply goes away (see Figure 1).

Source: New evidence shows that the key assumption made in the discovery of dark energy is in error

I don’t know what the graph is supposed to represent, but… no “dark energy.” You know, the bedrock idea that has undergirded all astronomical research for the past couple decades. You know, the thing that has never been observed or measured; only assumed, in order to make the math work. All just chucked out the window, based on some new observations.

Like whether eggs are good for you, or going to be the grisly death of you, depending on the year, maybe this will go back and forth for awhile.

Please don’t wonder why I have a hard time taking what’s reported in the news about biology (evolution), cosmology (Big Bang), or climate (death of the planet by “change”) to be gospel. Excuse me while I give such things a couple hundred years to be proven out.

My problem isn’t with the research, or the invalidation of previous results. My problem in all of this is there’s no objectivity in the papers or the reporting. So as we try to answer a fundamental question like: “Is the universe going to eventually collapse onto itself, and start the Big Bang all over again, or did it happen in a way that can never be repeated?” I wish, instead of stating, “Yes, and it will happen 13.72343 billion years from now,” papers would summarize their findings like, “We think so, and perhaps a dozen billion years from now, given these critical assumptions, and within this confidence interval.” Then I could start taking it all much more seriously.

Until then, all I can see in our current system are shocking headlines in a bid for page views, and preposterous statements in a grab for more grant money for the next study.

Linux in 2020: 27.8 million lines of code in the kernel, 1.3 million in systemd • The Register

Another point of interest is that systemd, a replacement for init that is the first process to run when Linux starts, is now approaching 1.3 million lines of code thanks to nearly 43,000 commits in 2019.

“Everybody who has ever worked at that level in the operating system has agreed that systemd is the proper solution. It solves a problem that people have. Distros have adopted it because it solves a problem for them. If you don’t want to use it, you don’t have to use it. There’s other init replacements out there. Android doesn’t use it because they use other things,” he (Greg Kroah-Hartman) said.

Source: Linux in 2020: 27.8 million lines of code in the kernel, 1.3 million in systemd • The Register

A Linux distribution is the kernel, the userspace programs, a service management system, and a package manager. I’m still not clear on everything systemd does, and that bothers me. As it continues to grow, it’s a learning process, and I’m not down in the weeds with Linux every day like I used to be. But I appreciate what they’re doing. It always bothered me that init was just a cobbled together bunch of scripts. This feels like the proper, modern approach.

The Continuing Saga of Gigabit Internet Service

So I already wrote about trying to get my old router to support my new internet speed, with no success. What I didn’t write about was that, in my frustration, I had placed an order for another, different new router (than I wrote about), which I was sure would be capable of gigabit speeds. It arrived today, and even though I had ordered an upgrade of my old router’s hardware, I couldn’t help myself, but to try it out.

Based on the enormous success I’ve had with using quite a bit of Ubiquity gear at my church, I bought an EdgeRouter Lite. I am already familiar with using these things. We had a similar model for awhile, powering our wifi, until the big upgrade with the new building. Also, I was used to running Vyatta-based routers back in my DataCave, coho-admin days. So I was sure I could get it working.

I ordered it from Amazon, with the “free, 2-day shipping” available with Prime. Except that, even though it was “Prime,” it was coming from some goofy 3rd-party, and took 3 days to arrive. Not only that, but when I got it powered up and logged into it, I saw that the firmware was six years out of date. I’m making a mental note here.

NEVER EVER ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON THAT’S NOT FULFILLED BY AMAZON, OR BEING SOLD DIRECTLY BY THE MANUFACTURER!

I should have just bought it directly from Ubiquity. I can almost guarantee that a unit bought straight from their site wouldn’t be 6 years old. It’s not that the new firmware doesn’t work. (And I really admire Ubiquity for the support.) But there may or may not have been hardware bump I’ve missed out on because of this, and it’s not worth the hassle to send back and reorder.

Besides, it’s the principle of the thing. I’m trying to not buy anything from Amazon if I don’t have to. I was there, and saw “Prime,” and if I don’t do my homework, it always bites me in the rear end. ALWAYS. Why should I have to work so hard to make sure I’m getting something in the 2 days I’m paying for? I’m just going to start spending that energy creating an account with the manufacturer’s storefront from now on.

Anyway. It took me longer to get the configuration going than I had hoped, but I think it’s finally up and running. I’m finally at a point where I can test it. Drum roll…

So far, so good. Guess I’ll try to cancel the order of the upgraded single-board computer hardware.