Of employers who forced staff back to the office, 42% said "attrition" was higher than normal, 21% said the move had actually lost them some of their "key" staff. 29% were now "struggling" to recruit altogether. Ha ha ha. https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/29/wfh_rto_survey/
In my social circle only older employees (men > 60) rejoyce at going back to 100% on-site. The rest demands between 4-5 home office days per week and is prepared to leave the company if their employers should be stupid enough to force them back onsite full time. Meanwhile nobody I know willingly applies for jobs that demand 100% on-site because they are as old-fashioned as VHS tape in the IT sector. #Employers need to grow up and let go of the past.
I'm having a conversation with a designer about icons. Making a screenreader read "camera" or "microphone" when an icon is shown is trivial with aria-label. But screenreader users are massively outnumbered by sighted users who might be confused by the meaning of a tiny image/ icon. The mighty Paul Annett explains more:
@brucelawson Yes! Some years back I gave a talk called, "Why You Should Do Support" advocating for every person in tech to take the occasional support shift. A key part was a call I did circa 1990 with someone who had gotten their first Mac and was struggling to figure out how to plug in the monitor. I had her describe the ports she could find, and one was "dinner plate" or "place setting". It blew my mind; it was a place setting!
A while ago I was interviewing for a job. I think I got past 3 interviews and they refused to talk money. When it was time for the last interview I told them that either they told me how much they were offering beforehand or I wouldn't be attending.
They ghosted me after that so I didn't bother going.
The HR manager called later that day screaming and calling me (I quote) "fucking unprofessional".
@brucelawson Here in California, job postings must contain a salary range BY LAW. Companies and recruiters who post jobs from out of state for remote work in California must include a salary range also.
Pointing this out to said companies and recruiters is a great way to weed out those companies as they'll ghost you.
Same with telling Tata (TCS), Wipro, or other Indian recruiting firms that their contract rate isn't close to market for the role.
My modest proposal: Failing water companies should go bankrupt, their investors lose everything, their boards and C-suites be fired, and the gov should buy them for £1 and run them as national utilities. Ditto the railways and privatised energy orgs that price-gouged us last 2 winters. Then every statue of Thatcher & her ideological allies should be melted down and turned into commemorative medals to celebrate the day we free ourselves of the stupidity that saw the nations' utilities and housing stock sold to profiteering wideboys.
Here's how it will go. Water Co will got tits-up. Holding company walks away with no debt. Buys back company-in-admin for 1p, debts written off. The bills of all water users increase to cover bad debt.
@brucelawson And for some additional context: there was a time in the 1990’s, and extending into the 2000’s, when neo-liberal fever gripped Singapore.
A lot of previously-nationalised companies were privatised, and where companies were already technically privatised, their primary industries were liberalised. Telecommunications, public transit, national TV, print media - you name it, they privatised and/or liberalised it.
@brucelawson Have you ever heard the song "North Dakotachrome" by Lawsuit? On the album "Emergency Third Rail Power Trip"? In case you haven't, it is a dense, rich, catchy tune of geographic puns.
If you filled in this PWA Death Survey BEFORE TODAY please RE-DO IT. We realise there was some important supplemental data we need to gather in order to argue our case but were (frankly) too shell-shocked to ask for the first time. Soz: it's for a good cause! (please boost for reach) https://open-web-advocacy.org/apple-attempts-killing-webapps/
It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/its-official-apple-kills-web-apps-in-the-eu/ If you ship a Web App in the EU and will be impacted by this, please fill in our survey. It is critical that we gather as much evidence as possible to prevent Apple from breaking Web Apps in the EU.
@donw@brucelawson I actually haven't seen Prince of Darkness, but it's definitely high on the list! The movie the image is from is from the last 2 or 3 years. Honestly not even sure spoilers are such a bad thing for it - ending felt tacked on, but I liked the vibes.
@misc@brucelawson I phrased that badly; the second movie I was talking about was a Cruise-helmed remake of a (far superior) Spanish language movie named Abren los Ojos.
AI bots are so good at mimicking the human brain and vision that CAPTCHAs are useless https://qz.com/ai-bots-recaptcha-turing-test-websites-authenticity-1850734350
"The bots’ accuracy is up to 15% higher than that of humans" - so get rid of them from your sites; they're often an accessibility disaster for actual humans.
It looks like a work gig has fallen through or been delayed, so if you need a pre-project a11y design review, auditing or staff training, you can hire me: https://brucelawson.co.uk/hire-me/