this one's gonna be a bit bleak; contrary to what you may guess from the title, it is not about Current Events in US Politics. I have 3 years to entirely reorganize my life, for entirely different reasons.
see also: solderpunk's The Standard Salvaged Computing Platform.
( Read more... )
so, on Oct. 8, I broke my right wrist. happened 1 week to-the-day after my laptop crapped out (she's back, by the way). I am right dominant, so this put me out of commission for a bit! I have most of my fine motor skills back now (thumb is still pretty tight but eh), but it is non-weight-bearing atm.
the mandatory hiatus has caused a lot of problems, and for reasons I may be busier than usual (they said it couldn't be done!) for a bit.
anyways!
I wrote some fanfiction that I am actually proud of. it's short, for ducktales 2017, and very angsty. find it on my ao3.
I participated some in the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fandom_empire mahjong event this year, and will probably participate in more as time goes on. despite my complete lack of EF recently, I have had a lot of fun writing stuff for it.
I have completely fallen in love with the Tcl programming language! I haven't discussed it here but a few of my recent projects have been written in it. I have several drafts of a post discussing why I think its design is as good as it is, so look forward to that when I can put some brainpower to it!
bluesky is huge now! I have some thoughts on that that I will probably be posting sometime, but I think on a protocol level it blows activitypub out of the water in a few ways (...and falls short in others). anyways, as an exercise in both writing more Tcl and learning atproto, I wrote a bluesky feed in tcl! currently the websocket implementation is a bit broken, but the problem only appears once every N hours, so I have yet to source the cause. other than that, it is a solid reimplementation of the official bluesky template (typescript) in Tcl, with additional moderation tooling. if you play with it, let me know!
mk.aleteoryx.me died.
this was preventable, but I was recovering from a broken wrist and my VPS provider nuked things the day I finally had it in me to try and pay for shit. I had the money the whole time, my bank are just assholes about foreign transactions.
I have come to terms with it.
I also lost my bookwyrm, peertube, and owncast instances.
I have come to terms with it.
I don't have an easy way to send gravestones for any of this, and I don't plan to for now.
there's not much else to say here, it just sucks. I think I have a spare backup of mk.aleteoryx.me's database somewhere, but not the uploaded files. ultimately the lesson is to never use VPS hosts that can't autobill (like the last one), nor ones that can't bill without 15 minutes on hold with the bank. I will not be saying which company it was, as I do not want to shame them for what was ultimately more problems on my end.
still, I wish they had sent me something other than "we might delete stuff :)" followed by me having a panic attack at the login panel.
I got a rugged laptop! a Dell Latitude 5404 Something Something Something. they are cheap as shit on eBay and with a bit extra in spare parts I will have a laptop that can take a sledgehammer for ~$200. I am currently considering elementaryOS as the operating-system-of-choice for it.
( politics :) )
that's about it. I'm going to sleep now, and then I have stuff to get done tomorrow.
I've been ~aleteoryx, g'night.
Earlier today I attended a talk on the upcoming FTC non-compete clause ban at my local hackerspace, given by a Mike Disotell. Being that I found it insightful, I thought I'd give a summary of my notes, for anyone who's interested.
It should be obvious, but this isn't legal advice yadda yadda.
Non-compete clauses are legally defined as something that prohibits, penalizes, or functionally prevents a former employee from getting a new job or starting a business.
The earliest recorded example comes out of The Dyer Case, 1414, in England. A baker's apprentice was set into one for 6 months. When the apprentice went to open a bakery in town before the 6 months was up, the master sued, but ultimately missed the hearing. The judge said, with regards to the master, "By God, if the plaintiff was here, he'd be sent to prison and made to pay the King a fine."
The modern precedent was mostly set in Mitchel v. Reynolds, 1721.
Internationally, they're banned in a number of jurisdictions, while some others require some form of compensation, e.g. 50% of your salary for the duration of the non-compete in Germany. In the states, they're banned in California, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, while some other states limit them by the potential for threat, i.e. a 17 year old intern wont be leaving with your trade secrets probably.
The DOJ's main concern in this is antitrust-related. Non-compete clauses are very similar to no-poach agreements, where, for example, Google might agree not to hire any former Microsoft employees, and vice versa.
The National Labor Relations Board General Counsel has said that non-competes violate sections 7 and 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act, as they limit employee freedom to quit, and undermine employee bargaining power. There is an exception here for independent contractors.
The FTC initially proposed its non-compete ban in 2023, and Final Rule won in a 3-2 vote on April 23rd, 2024. It will go into effect on September 4th, 2024. The FTC expects an increase of 17-29,000 more patents filed annually, and a 2.7% increase in startups created annually, after it goes into effect. The ultimate goal here is promoting innovation.
The ban itself forbids entering work contracts with non-competes after the cutoff date, and enforcing existing ones, however, if a non-compete contract is violated prior to Sept. 4, "damages" from before the cutoff may still be sued for. The ban has exceptions for "senior executives", defined as anyone who makes more than $151,164 annually, and has some form of policy power in the organization. It is not clear if that number will be increased with time. There are also exceptions for certain financial institutions, such as credit unions, and the speaker mentioned these were likely due to lobbying. Fixed term agreements also have an exception, and companies may exploit this in the future by changing the terms of their contracts to fit that definition, allowing non-competes. There are also exceptions for so-called "garden leave" or "rest and vest" contracts, where one is still paid their salary, or other sum of money, as though they were working, despite ostensibly being laid off.
By the September 4th cutoff, employers must give notice to all current and former employees who signed still-active non-competes, that their non-compete no longer applies. The FTC does provide language for this, and explicitly specifies that this may be done via, for example, a company-wide mass email.
Any illegal enforcement of non-competes after the cutoff should be reported to the FTC's Board of Competition.
Currently the state of Texas (shocker) and Pennsylvania (hooray!! that's me!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA) are litigating the Final Rule. Their primary argument is that, because the Rule would apply retroactively to existing contracts, it goes beyond the authority of the FTC. Much of this is copied from the arguments made by the 2 dissenting votes in the FTC. There are other courts whose litigation is on pause, and it is likely that all existing pushback will be merged into one federal case down the line, if it goes that far. The Texas judge has promised a verdict by July 3rd.
That being said, the speaker did not think it was likely the FTC would lose this.
The Final Rule does not ban NDAs.
"Trade Secrets" are covered generally by state law, and are still protected. It is still illegal to give your new employer access to customer records from your old one, or something like that.
"No-poaching" agreements are still iffy, but not banned outright.
If a less favorable administration gets into office, this FTC rule could be removed.
Employees should carefully review their employment contracts to see if this ban will affect the terms, and expect a memo of some sort from their employer notifying them of the non-compete's deactivation. If they do not receive it, that should be reported to the FTC.
Employers should, of course, take the steps to notify affected employees, and look into ways of stronger employee retention. It is still illegal to share trade secrets, but you should ensure that what you don't want to get out meets the legal definition of a trade secret. Some jurisdictions, for example, require actual physical protections on them, such as passwords.
...this is a huge win for workers! Software devs especially!! Good shit The Federal Trade Commission!
Anyways, I hope that was in some way insightful and helpful. It was a really informative talk and I've gotten most of the key info here. Toodles!
Vote for Kamala.
With all that being said, let's talk about lesser evils.
For years, I misunderstood the trolley problem. Rather, I did not see the significance. In one case, 5 people die, in the other case, just the 1 does. Obviously, you go with the case where only 1 dies. 5 people are saved from imminent death. What could be complicated about that?
I have since discovered that the difficulty here, for some, is one of framing. Some people cannot bear to be the one to throw the switch. To them, throwing the switch is acting to kill one person, and that makes them a murderer. To them, their inaction makes them innocent.
You may be one such individual, dear reader! You may think this way! Do know, if you are, that I am talking to you specifically when I say: You are selfish.
This framing of saving 5 people as murder only works if inaction is framed as "minding your own business". It only works if, by doing nothing, one assumes irrelevancy. That's not how it works.
There's a refrain that's been popular recently. That the solution to the trolley problem is to, "Stop that guy who keeps tying people to trolley tracks." It's clever, but it's naive. In the real world, sometimes the guy is just too good. There are times where the only way to stop the bad thing is to cause a different bad thing.
Inaction is an oxymoron. Being a physical thing in time means you are always acting. Even the ground beneath you is undergoing constant heat transfers. You can't not do something. Inaction is not "minding your own business," it is a deliberate choice to do fucking nothing. By choosing a course of action where you do not prevent something, you become a second cause for it to happen. You become a murderer of 5 instead of 1.
Obviously, were anyone really in the trolley problem, a number of complications could arise. You could freeze, hesitate, panic, etc. There are a number of ways one's behavior could be involuntarily limited in crisis. To anyone with survivor's guilt, I am not talking to you.
As for what I am talking about,
If you are not explicitly aligned with Donald J. Trump, you have a moral duty to vote for Joe Biden.
I don't like this. I dont like that this is the case. I dont like that the Best Available Option is a cop-loving israel-supporting half-senile bastard. I have even been known to hate it, but I understand the situation. There is no way to keep Trump out for 4 more years but to get someone to have more electoral votes, and there is no realistic way to do that but to back Biden.
This is not about Joe Biden.
This is not even about the Dems.
This is about praying for the death of Donald Trump to come soon and making sure he can't do shit before then. This is about keeping my rights, and the rights of my friends. The rights of my fucking mother.
How self-centered do you have to be to think of it any other way? "Ohhhh I could never vote for Biden because XYZ :/" Suck It Up. The world is shit, and you will die if you cannot bear to pick the lesser evil. If you are gay or trans or queer or bi or whatever else, you may get yourself killed. You're not choosing to not support Biden, you are choosing not to stop Trump.
If you can have that on your conscience, you need to go ask yourself why that is. Why you care so much more about your self-image than anyone else. Why you can live with being so overwhelmingly selfish and self-centered, and yet can't bear to do anything else.
Figure it out soon, and fix it.
Oh my god suck it up. Yes, Biden is senile. Suck it up. Let him get elected, at the worst chances are that Harris will 25th his ass, and at absolute worst he croaks in office. In either case, we get a black woman president and don't actually have to deal with Biden. He is bringing with him an administration that has been generally positive, especially compared to Trump. We can expect more strong anti-trust legislation, for one, even if nobody's home in Biden's head.
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zvi and dancing_serpent
