My parents used to go down to Arizona. They sold their trailer back in 2018 (so just before Covid which was very lucky). They’ve done the odd trip down to the US (they sold because they wanted to go to different places) but plan to go out to Vancouver Island and other places more often now.

Family friends with a house in Palm Desert sold their place after Trump joked about Canada being the 51st state and plan to never go back down again. At least for as long as he is president.

Software engineering in Canada in the 2000s. Most of the labs in my university ran Linux, at least in the engineering, math, and science areas of campus.

Personally I ran, depending on the year, LFS (Linux from Scratch), Slackware, or Gentoo (which still lives on that laptop today but also it hasn’t been booted or connected to a network in like 10 years).

I think there was only one lab with Windows. We also had a lab of Solaris machines but I bet those are gone now.

No idea what Law, Nursing, and other faculties in the other side of campus used.

This is just going to be Berlin all over again isn’t it?

Oh absolutely having an aggressive manager and skip will help you with bonuses and promotions. But they don’t force managers to give people low scores anymore.

While the management tool had a weird slider and score system (you could give a number between 0 and 1000 IIRC), the general terminology was you could get between 0 and 200, indicative of how you compared to the average person at your level. 100 meaning you did average per-say or completed about 100% of the work an average person could complete.

While not unheard of it was basically impossible to get 200% (required at least your skip/M2 and maybe your M3 to agree).

Last I heard (keep in mind this was 2023 or so) managers got around 105% or 110% of their bonus allocated for their team. Generally that meant you could give everyone “100” if you wanted, but practically it never worked out that way.

Also there were strict rules you couldn’t take from a more junior budget to give a more senior person a higher bonus. You could however take from a more senior budget and give it to a junior.

I. E. I couldn’t give two SWE1s 80 to give a SWE2 a 120. The reverse was allowed though.

Layoffs are generally done algorithmically. I’m not kidding. They don’t want to be sued. They follow all the legal rules otherwise (can’t layoff a US citizen without laying off a Visa employee first, etc).

Source: I worked there for 11 years, I was an IC but have many friends who are managers who would tell me how the system works, and have been laid off twice. The first time I found another position within MSFT but the most recent time, in December, I opted to take some time off and find something else.

Edit/addendum: when the managers get in the room for people discussions a lot of that is around promotions. Very little is bonuses. Bonuses are determined by your manager, then go up the chain. So your manager sets and signs off on your score. Then your M2 checks it and either sends it back if they don’t agree or signs off and sends it up. Then your M3. At the M3 and higher levels I suspect they don’t look too close but just make sure everything makes sense and the budgets balance.

Microsoft got rid of that in 2014 or so, when Nadella took over.

Depending on what I needed I remember using AltaVista, AskJeeves, Dogpile, and I feel like later on MetaCrawler or something like that (would search multiple search engines for you and ordered them scored based on platform and relevancy iirc?)

Kirkland Costco, admittedly 2-3 weeks ago. Something like $9.59 for two dozen.

Something between $9 and $10 on the price tag is what I remember.

No idea what it is now.

This statement is entirely useless without also reading the Privacy Notice.

When you type in “https://lemmy.world/”, guess what? They kind of need to know where you’re going in order to process that request. They are processing that url. At least within the browser.

If you take the time to read the Privacy Notice, they point out the data that actually gets stored by them. Also they point out all the stuff that never leaves your device and is only processed within the browser on your machine. Guess what, your browsing history is one of those things that never leaves the machine.

“Mozilla collects certain data, like technical and settings data, to provide the core functionality of the Firefox browser and associated services, distinguish your device from others, remember and respect your settings, and provide you with default features such as New Tab, PDF editing, password manager and Total Cookie Protection. You can further customize your Firefox experience by adjusting your controls, buttons, and toolbars and adding features with add-ons.”

Great, if I signed in to my account in Firefox and asked it to mirror saved bookmarks and passwords across all my devices… How do you think it’s going to do that without sending data to Mozilla’s servers? Don’t turn on those features and the data doesn’t get stored. Awesome.

Okay, cool… What about stuff it doesn’t collect?

“Firefox processes a variety of personal data in a way that does not leave your device, such as browsing history, web form data, temporary internet files, and cookies. This means the data stays on your device and is not sent to Mozilla’s servers unless it says otherwise in this Notice. If you choose to allow it, your precise location may also be processed for location-related functionality for websites like Google Maps; this data is only accessed from your device by the website(s) you choose to enable it for — it is not sent to Mozilla’s servers.”

Cool, so all the privacy things I care about… Never actually leave my device?

Awesome. Oh hey they say something about search here…

“When you perform a search in Firefox, your search query, device data and location data will be processed by your default search engine (according to their applicable Privacy Notice) to provide your search results and search suggestions.”

Well if I want Google / Bing / DuckDuckGo search results… I guess it’s gonna have to send them my search request. Makes sense.

Oh Firefox also shows it’s own search results but… Oh cool I can disable those and no data will be sent to Mozilla.

" […] Mozilla processes certain technical and interaction data, such as how many searches you perform, how many sponsored suggestions you see and whether you interact with them. Mozilla’s partners receive de-identified information about interactions with the suggestions they’ve served. You can enable or disable Search suggestions at any time."

Maybe take the time to read everything before you spread FUD.

All UK machines, phones, and servers should just remove all root certificates. Can’t trust encryption right?

X509Brexit.

Then they wouldn’t have to interact with any part of the encrypted internet.

My understanding is 32-bit PhysX games are broken.

64-bit compiled games are fine.

Childless but many of my friends have kids and seeing that top panel… Just… lol.

“this is a tool, not a toy”

How many times have I heard that said, or even said it myself, to children.

It’s not that seamless depending on the content you usually consume.

I feel like I keep seeing the same single livestream trying to sell me a phone charger, and then roughly the same 5 or 6 videos trying to sell me a specific product over and over again.

As long as I don’t report or say “I keep seeing this ad” it will show me the same ones so they are easy to skip.

Usually it’s something I started watching until I realized it was an ad, but because I started watching it one time it thinks I’m interested so it will continually show it to me.

Once you spot them they are easy to skip. (at least, until they get better at masking then and then it will get harder).

Sore arm and bit of a fever overnight. Very mild but felt like it was radiating from my arm.

Got flu and covid are the same time in the same arm.

From Alberta but not working there anymore. Found out somewhat recently, specifically in regards to Software, APEGA lost their protection on the word Engineer. Again, specifically in regards to Software.

https://www.apega.ca/news/2023/11/06/notification-of-changes-to-the-engineering-and-geoscience-professions-act-regarding-the-title-of-software-engineer

YTV is the Youth Television channel in Canada. Might need to go with YTTV for YouTube Television.

People keep correcting to anti-genocide but isn’t the word protest enough?

Protest: “the act of objecting or gesture of disapproval.”

If I protest genocide, I’m against genocide.

If I protest anti-genocide, I’m… Pro-genocide?

The original headline has so much doublespeak and mangled English to try to not say Palestine or Genocide.

This might not be super useful if you don’t write code but I always found the contest submissions fun to read and try to figure out for the https://www.underhanded-c.org/ contest.

They break down and explain the runner up and finalist for each year and how the attack works. It’s usually something very subtle that most people wouldn’t catch.

That explains why I see coupons more and more. Ty.

Uhhhh.

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+percentage+of+homes+are+over+%241+million

Apparently per Redfin 8.5% of homes in the US are 7 figures or more. We’re not talking the 1% here.

In California the median home price is almost $800,000.

I’m in a HCOL area in Washington State and regularly see 3bdrm and sometimes 2bdrm condos for over 1 million.

Not to mention sure your home is equity or net worth but most people only buy one and sell it anytime they move. Many of these people also planned on selling it / downsizing in retirement and converting it towards their retirement fund.

Remember that “afford” doesn’t mean they have a million dollars. “afford” means they saved up a down-payment and then paid interest and mortgage payments (sometimes barely scraping by) for at least 30 years. Usually many more years if they moved from smaller house or a condo to a larger house when they decided to have a family (thereby starting a new mortgage for another 30 years). Or worst case, they haven’t paid it off and now are underwater on their mortgage.

The banks are the ones making crazy money on all this.

On top of that they can import your wishlist from Steam. You can set a threshold / price on each game, and they will let you know anytime something is below that price.