I have a friend who has a budget where she spends as much individually on AI-as-a-service tokens as I make in a year. And it's acknowledged that the system misbehaves, needs to be monitored closely like a junior engineer, etc.
So why not hire some junior engineers if you're an org that has that equivalent cash to spend? Companies that are in such a position: you've never had a better market chance to get a sweet deal on young talent
If politicians gave a shit about children, the schools would feature:
- HVAC systems that cleaned viruses out of the air
- at least two child psychologists on staff
- age-appropriate lessons to help children identify abuse
- funding for well-paid staff in numbers sufficient for a buddy system to reduce the chances of abuse
- arts education and after-school clubs to provide third spaces for kids
- massive, safe playgrounds
- protected biking and walking infrastructure from the school to residential neighborhoods
Instead we get “parents’ rights”, funding cuts, book bans, and car-centric infrastructure that kills pedestrians and bikers.
If social media is bad for kids, THEY NEED ALTERNATIVES.
@dsalo one "mental prybar" that has been somewhat useful of late:
ask people to imagine a world where everyone gets followed by their own personal cop. the cop doesn't pull you over unless you break a law; they just follow at a distance. watching. always watching. writing down what you do in a log.
then, just prompt with questions: would that make YOU safer? would that make you FEEL safer? feel good about going to a protest? feel good about meeting up with a trans friend when their cop and your cop start exchanging notes? can you understand why surveillance would make people who are targeted by police abuses worried?
tends to make the nature of ubiquitous surveillance more crispy clear; clarifies how it differs from police surveillance 30 years ago; and has also helped a few times to crack open "normal" folks' heads who consider American policing and post-Patriot Act surveillance not problematic
can also extend it to ask "now that cop is using AI to write up their logs, and 5% of the time it is wildly incorrect"
Following California implementing a law raising its minimum wage to $20 for more than 500,000 fast-food workers in the state in 2024,
Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of research firm Beacon Economics, offered a warning about the state raising its minimum wage.
“California’s well-intended push to reduce income inequality via wage floors is beginning to have a significant negative impact on some of our most vulnerable workers
—our youth, particularly those from lower-income households,”
he wrote earlier this year.
His concerns echoed those of fast-food franchise owners, one of whom told Fortunein 2024 that higher wages would be unsustainable for smaller chains with slim margins.
But nearly two years after the law’s passage, economists are seeing very different results than what was initially feared.
A working paper from University of California at Berkeley released this month found the policy increased average weekly wages for eligible workers by 11% and did not reduce employment.
Prices increased modestly, about 1.5%, or the equivalent of about six cents for a $4 item.
“The results are nowhere as dire as predicted,”
Michael Reich, the study author and chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at UC Berkeley, told Fortune
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/economists-warned-california-not-raise-110500084.html?guccounter=1
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116415341865050721
I’ll stick to old school development, thanks.
You know, actually delivering working software.
I ran this poll 2 years ago and 90% of the correspondents on mastodon told me there were no required AI usage at their workplace.
I would like to ask the same question again in 2026:
“Does your workplace have any AI related requirements, either as major project goal, in performance review, or with usage analytics tracking, against your own will?”
Boost welcomed.
| Yes | |
| No | |
| Yes, but I use them voluntarily | |
| No, but I use them voluntarily |
"Assumptions are the termites of relationships." — Henry Winkler
Most team friction isn't a people problem. It's a contracting problem.
New on psychsafety.com by Jade Garratt
Contracting and recontracting A lot of relationship friction comes from faulty assumptions: two (or more) people each operating on their own mental model of what was agreed, who’s responsible for what, and what counts as acceptable, without ever actually comparing […]
The entire software industry is being consumed by short-term thinking.
The equity class seems to have finally found a way to convince everyone that works for them to stop bothering them about safety, quality, security, and sustainability, and instead just barrel forward at top speed to the nearest payoff.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Wren Reilly
D. G. Fitch
Chuck Darwin
Chris Pitts
kim_harding ✅
David Frank
tom_geraghty
Chris Ammerman
Natasha 
🇪🇺