The Complex Creation Of Newly Needed Software Teams In The Auto Industry

Posted on March 9, 2022 by David K.

With the advent of electric and autonomous vehicles, the amount of software required has grown exponentially. That means newly formed teams must grow overnight, which has two extremes of competing difficulties.

I have watched firsthand as a Napolean-esque CEO fired great talent because the CEO’s hardware background didn’t permit comprehension of building a creative, software team. I’ve seen a frustrated director literally (and dangerously) slam a glass-top, conference table while summarily dismissing managers for being honest about the overwhelming deluge of software defects. I’ve watched dozens of corporations believe a revolving door of low-cost staff augmentation from offshore corners of the world may outperform a more-expensive-per-salary team.

Source: The Complex Creation Of Newly Needed Software Teams In The Auto Industry

Legacy transportation companies making the transition from the ECM-centered software development world to the vehicle-as-a-network-of-computers world should probably rethink their software development methodology, tools, and processes as part of the move. If you adopt a completely-new development platform, but continue to use the legacy process — and the middle management that has been running it — you will transplant 25 years of technical debt into the new paradigm, right at the start. It would seem to be the very definition of the job of “information” and “technology” officers of the company to recognize that their company’s software development systems are 25 years behind the current “meta,”  reject the entrenched power structures that have restricted progress for decades, and bring in new people who understand modern software development to setup new teams, tools, and processes.

Well, I guess, that would be the approach if you wanted the company to stay relevant for the foreseeable future. However, if your goals are otherwise, it might not make sense. For instance, if you just wanted to spend the next 10 years collecting stock options to exercise at the opportune time — say, for instance, when you know the company has slid into technical irrelevance to the point of becoming an irresistible target for acquisition by a company which has its software development act together — then your approach to the technical debt problem might be different than mine. It might look a lot like doing nothing at all. Which would hardly be surprising. I mean, look at how much companies in the US are willing to sacrifice long-term success for short-term profits, and how well rewarded such behavior is. You wouldn’t be able to fault people inside the company if they look like they are following the exact same strategy, personally.

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Cats and Dogs Living Together; Mass Hysteria

Posted on March 7, 2022 by David K.

Remember when people said that if you changed the definition of marriage, you’d have people marrying, like, robots, or whatever? And then, like, the next year, a bunch of Japanese men did just that, in a mass ceremony? This has the same energy.

This goes hand-in-hand with my prediction that school board elections are about to get super serious.

This also goes hand-in-hand with the death of comedy, because there’s nothing you can’t make fun of any more that a non-insignificant number of people actually believe, and another, larger group of people say you can’t make fun of them for.

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Top 6 Signs Your Company is Being Raided

Posted on February 26, 2022 by David K.

Despite however it’s being sold by the top brass.

U.S. truck engine maker Cummins Inc said on Tuesday it will buy auto parts maker Meritor Inc for $2.58 billion in cash, to beef up its electric and hybrid vehicle parts offerings amid a boom in demand for climate-friendly transport.

Source: Engine maker Cummins to buy Meritor for $2.6 bln in electric parts push

On the occasion of Cummins buying Meritor, I find myself reminiscing about the time when Meritor “merged” with Arvin — the other Fortune 250 that used to be headquartered in Columbus, Indiana — and then proceeded to follow the plan from the university-standard textbook on corporate raiding. I’m pretty naive, so I didn’t see it coming, but as I reflected on everything that happened in the 3 years after the “merger” — until Meritor spun the last piece of Arvin out to private equity — there were lots of moves being made that should have made it obvious that the plan sold to the employees and the public wasn’t really what the top brass was doing.

In somewhat particular order, as this was how I saw it unfold…

6. Middle management creates “integration” groups of low-level people who are supposed to decide how departments will be reorganized. The problem here is that, if top brass really cared, they wouldn’t have put low level people on the committees, and left it to people who had been at the company for mere months to decide how things should be done.

5. Senior management — division VP’s — from the “bought” company start pulling the rip cords on their golden parachutes. Fortune-500-sized public companies just can’t resist sending out company-wide emails talking about these moves, regardless of the fact that relatively few people are actually impacted by them. But, in this case, they do this quietly, and spaced out, so it’s harder to detect the pattern.

4. The combined company throws away excellent, industry-recognized, practical, company-wide training for ridiculous, non-sensical, politically-correct “training” that means nothing, and has no effect on productivity. For instance, if the “training” has a session where everyone has to take off their shoes, crawl around on the floor on all fours, and complete some stupid group activity, while a coach is yelling instructions at them, all while annoying music is playing loudly on a boom box, in order to show that “communication is ‘hard’,” that training may be useless.

3. The combined company immediately sells a strategic facility that was just completed, after literally decades of everyone telling them they should build it. Bonus points if they sell the facility to a supplier, so that they are now stuck buying a critical component at a higher price.

2. The company starts selling other non-critical, yet-highly-profitable businesses. Of course, this might make sense to the business anyway, but the timing is suspect. As time passes, you will start seeing the larger, and more important divisions go, and this should really set off your alarms.

1. Both companies are majority-owned by investment banks, but the company makes a big deal about selling the idea to the public. The deal would have already been a foregone conclusion based on the backroom deals. Why bother with the song and dance?

I only learned this last one after everything else had settled, but it wouldn’t have changed anything. Turns out that all blue chip companies are majority-owned by investment banks, and there’s a whole other conversation to be had about why Wall Street banks not only run so much of the economy, but also seem to own a large portion of the “means of production” as well. I guess it’s just our modern world, but it seems like a fragility just waiting for another disaster to fall apart.

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Ask HN: Does Anyone else working in a crypto company feel this is all a scam? | Hacker News

Posted on February 26, 2022 by David K.

The biggest issue humanity faces right now isn’t “rogue AI” — it is narrowly selfish people using computer technology to exploit other people in various ways (or at least create a technosphere which does that, with extensive intrusive monitoring and attention direction).

Source: Ask HN: Does Anyone else working in a crypto company feel this is all a scam? | Hacker News

HN finally had a thread about the crypto elephant in the room. This comment contained a truth about the present situation, but the underlying problem is much broader. The mortgage crisis revealed the same structural issues. If you replace the weak phrase “narrowly selfish people” with the proper term — i.e., psychopaths — you can begin to see the general problem.

Whether it’s all the malfeasance around crypto — NFT’s, exchanges, DAO’s, etc. — or colluding to sell bad mortgages to fuel the mortgage-backed securities market, or liquidating excess capacity in your supply chain for short-term cash flow, raising prices, declaring record profits, and then giving yourself a massive bonus for your great work, while at the same time denying workers a raise to at least keep up with the inflation you’re causing, it’s all the same thing: psychopathy. That is, being fine with profiting handsomely while someone else suffers directly and visibly from the decisions you’ve made to do so.

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Hillary Clinton mocks Trump, says his followers’ conspiracy theories are getting ‘wilder’

Posted on February 18, 2022 by David K.

Hillary Clinton suggested Thursday that a desperate President Donald Trump hopes to divert attention from his deepening legal trouble by spreading ludicrous lies about her.

“It’s funny, the more trouble Trump gets into, the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get,” Clinton said, drawing laughs as she delivered the keynote speech at the New York State Democratic Convention.

Source: Hillary Clinton mocks Trump, says his followers’ conspiracy theories are getting ‘wilder’

Well that makes a lot of sense, because he learned this tactic, along with all the rest of the politicians in the US, by watching you for the last 30 years.

Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

I honestly can’t believe we’re hearing this from the very person who claimed that the accusations that her husband was a serial philanderer and the Clintons’ financial investments were fraudulent were all part of a “vast right wing conspiracy.”

And I don’t want to hear anyone point out how Trump pardoned Steve Bannon when he learned that trick by watching Bill Clinton get away with pardoning Susan McDougal.

Honestly, every dirty trick, sleight of hand, and skullduggery that Democrats accuse Republicans of doing was made possible by the Clintons, and CNN giving them political cover and running interference for them, every single time.

Believe All Women (Except the ones accusing my husband)

Truly, her political depravity knows no bounds. It’s so shameful, I almost admire it. It takes a true psychopath to be this nakedly hypocritical. And I could get over it if she would just go away, but like a sticky booger you can’t quite flick off your finger, she keeps clinging on.

 

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‘I hate this sport!’: Rage, teen tears and Olympic collapse

Posted on February 18, 2022 by David K.

BEIJING (AP) — The gold medalist said she felt empty. The silver medalist pledged never to skate again. The favorite left in tears without saying a word. After one of the most dramatic nights in their sport’s history, Russia’s trio of teenage figure skating stars each enter an uncertain future.

Source: ‘I hate this sport!’: Rage, teen tears and Olympic collapse

Good. Sorry for all the athletes (and “athletes”) involved, but everything that made the Olympics cool when I was a kid is gone. It’s just another big business now, and a machine that uses and abuses vulnerable people, for a music-label-like shot at fame.

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Joe Rogan’s use of the n-word is another January 6 moment – CNN

Posted on February 13, 2022 by David K.

But what Rogan and those that defend him have done since video clips of him using the n-word surfaced on social media is arguably just as dangerous as what a mob did when they stormed the US Capitol on January 6 last year.

Source: Joe Rogan’s use of the n-word is another January 6 moment – CNN

It’s bad enough to call what happened on January 6th an actual insurrection. Do I think what happened was illegal? No question. Do I think it was serious? Yes. Do I support it? No. Do I think it was an actual attempt to overthrow the government? No. I think it was a poorly thought-out protest gone wrong, despite whatever involvement Trump or his administration might have had to do with it.

After 30 years of the network media warning us that the wingnut contingent was absurdly-armed and poorly-socialized, I would think that if a right-wing group had wanted to occupy the Capitol and prevent the Electoral College vote count, they could have easily overwhelmed the local LEO presence there and done just that. Whatever it was, the people who need to go to jail surely will, even if I think those sentences are overloaded, and trying to send a message. Which, to be fair, they probably should. Anyway, I note that even Jon Blake doesn’t have the guts to put a name to whatever it was. He assumes his readers will fill in the blank for him.

But, then, on top of this house of cards, he calls the utterance of a word to be the same thing as whatever the reader thinks January 6th was. So if you think CNN’s editorial idea of what happened on that day is specious, then you’re not going to make the logical turn here. Again, you can say that it’s rude to say the N-word. You can consider it an act which should remove you from polite society. But at the end of the day, it’s just a word, and it’s a word that’s still in widespread use by a lot of people. And while I won’t say the word, I detest this double standard. The media is not going to make me stop detesting this situation because they tell me that I should be ok with it. Sorry, Jon Blake, but you  just don’t have that kind of influence on my life.

So, in effect, this “article” is a dog whistle of a dog whistle to the true-believing Left, written only to further inflame racial and political tensions, and pressure Spotify to censor Rogan in the name of Wokeness. CNN wants me to consider them to be a serious news organization, which doesn’t stoop to “Faux News” levels of jingoism. Uh huh. Dry that one out and you can use it to fertilize the lawn.

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Monopolize All The Things

Posted on February 13, 2022 by David K.
Trying to capture the housing market

This is a perfect, illustrated example of venture capital squeezing out individuals, cornering a market, and trying to extract ALL the profits from it. This sort of behavior is why housing prices have shot up nationwide. Home ownership was already under siege from underemployment, inflation, and educational loan burdens. Now we have the malfeasance of big companies trying to capture the low-hanging fruit in the housing market, which will only serve to further erode the American dream of the middle class, to the benefit of the already-wealthy. Zillow may have over-leveraged their algorithm here, but, rest assured, there are people out there doing this on a wide scale.

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Sideloading Bill Would Allow ‘Malware, Scams and Data-Exploitation to Proliferate,’ Says Apple – MacRumors

Posted on February 3, 2022 by David K.

Sideloading would enable bad actors to evade Apple’s privacy and security protections by distributing apps without critical privacy and security checks. These provisions would allow malware, scams and data-exploitation to proliferate.

Source: Sideloading Bill Would Allow ‘Malware, Scams and Data-Exploitation to Proliferate,’ Says Apple – MacRumors

As if malware, scams, and data-exploitation apps don’t already exist in the App Store. I would argue the opposite of what Apple is claiming, in fact. If some scammer was tricking people into installing a sideloaded app that stole all your data, word would get around, and the traffic pointing to that app would eventually die off. Instead, what we have are lots of crummy apps in the App Store, doing specious things, with Apple’s implicit blessing, with an overwhelmingly-spammed review score. And these things are stubborn.

This guy has made waves pointing out how widespread the problem is.

Apple’s recalcitrance around their walled garden smells funny to me. I get it. I mean, when there is literally no other option for people, you get to act as a middleman on every transaction. But how much money is enough for a company which vies to be the world largest market cap from month to month? Whatever that figure might be, they surely flew past it a long time ago.

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The Crushing Weight of Knowing What You’re Doing

Posted on February 2, 2022 by David K.

“Who are you and why are you here?” –Dave Cutler (DaveC)

Source: 012. I Shipped, Therefore I Am

Steven Sinofsky, once a huge wheel at Microsoft, for a very long time, is writing a series of articles chronicling the halcyon days of the early PC business at Substack. I can’t quite bring myself to subscribe, because most of it is free already. Plus, there aren’t many surprises for me, since I was living it during that time.

When Windows NT was introduced, I was quick to jump on board. I was already experimenting with Linux towards the end of ’94. But then I saw a disc of NT 3.5 (not even 3.51 yet) on someone’s bookshelf. He said he wasn’t using it, so I snapped it up and installed it. For the next 20 years, I would dual boot my PC’s between Windows NT and Linux. I only used Windows for gaming, but for that use, it was obstinate. I tried every incarnation of Wine and Crossover and PlayOnLinux and everything else. Nothing ever let me run Windows games on Linux well enough to warrant getting rid of a native partition.

The content of the slide above is of no consequence, as is pretty much the case with all presentation slides. What’s interesting to me is the little toolbar on the top, left side. It’s from the early Office XP days, back when Microsoft was new and cool. “Before the dark times. Before the empire.” Seeing it evoked a visceral response. As a computer nerd, those really were interesting and exciting times to live through. From the article, that screencap is from 1992. Competing against giants like IBM, HP, and Sun, Microsoft’s eventual dominance was anything but sure at that time. And that’s what’s prompted me to write this anecdote.

In 1995, my Fortune 250 company didn’t even have an internet connection yet. I was using a phone line, and a modem that I conned my boss into letting me get. It was over this modem that I downloaded all 54 floppy drive images of Slackware Linux, on a computer running Windows 3.11 with Trumpet Winsock, connecting to a free SLIP dialup bank in California.

At first, I was much more into NT than Linux. I skipped Windows 95 entirely. I don’t think I ever had a computer that ran it.

I remember how easy it was to setup a dialup connection in NT. By 1996, I was running a dual Pentium Pro with 384 MB of RAM, SCSI hard drives, and a $2,500 video card to do FEA work. The total cost was about $10,000. A coworker got a SGI Indy to do the same sort of work, to the tune of $80,000. The company still didn’t have an internet connection, so he also got an external modem, and hired a local ISP to come set it up. The guy came and screwed around with the connection for 4 hours. I kind of razzed him, by pointing out that it took me all of 15 minutes to configure the same thing on NT. That’s how smug I was about NT versus Unix at the time.

The best part was still to come.

For the next week, the ISP guy still couldn’t get that Indy on the internet. Every time it would connect, the kernel would segfault, and the machine would crash.

But that’s not the best part.

The ISP guy worked with SGI to patch IRIX to fix the modem driver, and finally got it working. My coworker left it connected to the internet all the time to get his email. Things worked fine for a few weeks.

Then the company got a T1 internet connection, and then connected our facility to the main office via a SONET ring. I was really looking forward to not needing my dialup connection any more. But, the first morning, no one could access the internet. Complaints were made. Investigations were performed. Our internal IT would fix the problem, and the next day, it would come back.

Here comes the best part.

Finally, someone realized that computers inside our facility were getting the wrong gateway address to get to the internet. They realized that they were picking up the IP address of my workmate’s Indy, which was advertising itself as a route to the internet, and since the number of hops from computers in the office to the Indy were less than skipping over to the central office, they were preferring its modem, and the Indy’s phone line would choke from the load.

I recall very clearly that there was a simple checkbox in the dialog for setting up a dialup connection in Windows NT for advertising the connection to the LAN as a route to wherever you were connecting. It was on by default, but when I was running through the process, I quickly realized that this was NOT what I wanted, and un-ticked it.

And I felt pretty smug about being serious about NT at the time.

I stuck with NT as my primary interest until some time around 1998 or so. Then Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza released Ximian Desktop for Linux, which made Linux on the desktop really pleasant to use. I wasn’t doing analysis work any more. I had transferred to become the system admin of all the Unix machines in the advanced engineering group, so running Linux was a perfect fit. After that, it was pretty much all Linux, all the time, until switching to Macs just a few years ago.

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