I had to dig up some other sources for info, but this is the case. The new plant has nothing to do with coal, but it is being built to replace the power production and local power related jobs in that area.

Sources:

• TerraPower Press Release
• World Nuclear News Article (trade publication)
• AP Article

The article is critical of GitLabs model, not celebrating it.

What GitLab does is far more open than what you’ll see elsewhere, but the formula is actually pretty near to what most companies do already: Have pay bands for positions, and then a modifier based on the region, level factors, and some other inputs. Normally this produces a range, not a straight number, and then negotiations take place within that band (which is also why this information and formula is not typically shared).

As for the idea of paying a flat salary for a position regardless of where the person works, that is simply a non-starter for most companies, and essentially creates a race to the bottom to locate the region of the world that will produce qualified workers for the lowest possible salary possible. We as a society have no problem seeing fast fashion or other manufacturing that do this as being exploitive and evil, and this model is exactly the kind of thinking that drives that behavior. If we stop caring about where a person lives and instead look only at salary vs production, we will only ever hire in the absolute lowest cost of living places in the world capable of producing acceptable workers.

We need to look at this from another angle as well - Companies are buying labor, much in the same way that they buy raw materials, property, or utilities. When buying any of these inputs to your business, how do you decide how much to pay? Certainly you do not sit down in a board room and agree on a number and then go out into the world with that number and attempt to purchase what you need. You start by looking at what the going market rate for those inputs are. People, like materials, have some wiggle room in those numbers, and sometimes paying a little more will get you better quality or more reliability, so you will need to make decisions there to determine where on the spectrum you wish to fall, but never would you pay significantly more than market rate, nor would you be able to pay significantly below.

I see this kind of discussion constantly in the last few years, and often in terms of tying inflation to annual salary increases. “If inflation was 10%, why is my annual raise only 5%?” - because overall inflation was 10%, but the inflation in the cost for a person that can do your job was only 5%. It’s truly and honestly that simple. You are a commodity item that goes to the highest bidder - act like it.

First, we should note that the term isn’t over. Major decisions on affirmative action and student debt, among others, are still to come. So it’s premature to evaluate the term before it’s complete.

Yeah, you can say that again

It’s just a PC with a touchscreen that comes with Windows installed from the store. The only thing to really worry about are the hardware drivers for the unique bits.

While there’s going to be plenty of pressure on her to recuse, there may not be any legal obligation or recourse against her.

Federal courts have repeatedly interpreted Section 455 narrowly in several crucial ways. They have emphasized that the question of whether a judge is biased must be decided “objectively: “whether an objective, disinterested, lay observer fully informed of the facts underlying the grounds on which recusal was sought would entertain a significant doubt about the judge’s impartiality.” But here’s the thing: once again, the plain language reading of this test is not reliable. One of the hazards of a black robe is a tendency to think that your views are the (only) objectively reasonable ones. The law on Section 455 reflects a set of judicial norms and values, not necessarily the norms or values of a “lay observer.”

Very fair point. The unsealed indictment paints an interesting picture that I’m still digesting into this whole tapestry (Trump and his aide successfully tricked his lawyers into attesting that all documents had been turned over through a shell game of boxes in different locations and properties). I need one of those big cork boards with pictures and red string to organize all of the parts to this mess.

I expect that in time, that’s exactly what will happen. Some instance somewhere will offer guaranteed availability and performance for a monthly fee to it’s members. That feels icky at first blush, but why should it? It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but no one is forced to use that instance to be part of the larger community, and one instance can’t hold the community hostage like a single company social media company could. They’ll have success right up until they don’t and the Fediverse will sort it out through migrations of users and communities.

I don’t know if I’d call that doubling down. For them to come out and say anything that could be construed as disparaging or even hinting that Trump is guilty here would be extremely unprofessional (they’re job is to represent the client), so this is a pretty boiler plate resignation message.

The real message is in the timing. Leaving your client hanging with just a couple of days before the hearing speaks volumes. Whatever the conflict or disagreement that existed here, it was big.

This is the part everyone keeps missing. They read the headline and jump to “well, yeah, they’re right!” and skim right past the bit where her whole accusation is coming from a fringe report (and it’s exceedingly kind to even call it a report) from a random conspiracy nut and not anything the Pentagon has actually said.

Getting people sorted into servers that are going to be able to handle the load, or even better getting them to host their own servers is going to be the way to go.

That part still worries me a smidge, and it’s somewhat related to my other concern about funding/scaling. As more of the general public discover and move over, the % of the general population willing and able to host their own instance is going to steadily decrease. Not saying that we’re all gonna die or anything, but it’s going to be a shift and we’ll have to continue to adapt.

kind of a Christopher Columbus situation. While I realize that might be a little tone-deaf it’s the best analogy I have for it.

I definitely get the sentiment. Everyone is looking for how to make this what they “need” (want) without enough consideration for what it already is and who got it there. It’s going to be a journey, that’s for sure.

Money. Tech was hot and trendy, so VCs were willing to continue pouring cash into a bottomless pit of unprofitable tech platforms, and now they’re not so everyone has to figure out how to make money off of the community. In a surprise to absolutely no one that’s been paying attention, companies filled with people that have never had to be profitable before are really bad at turning their company profitable and instead only manage to light large sections of it on fire. 🤷

That feeling makes sense, but I think everyone knows that the Fediverse wasn’t created specifically to give them a landing in this event, just like Reddit wasn’t created to catch the Digg refugees, etc. More of a “next phase in the evolution of this concept”, and while it took a catastrophe, they’re ready to consider that it’s time to move on now.

The trick is going to be walking that line between preserving what made the Fediverse great and not alienating the newcomers. I think there’s room for everyone, though, and really the big advantage of the Fediverse - we don’t have to agree to co-exist, and can even co-existing completely separately if needed.

I’m also very optimistic right now. The challenges I see are more around funding, as continued work on the code bases and hosting seem to be the largest hurdles and ultimately easier with money than without. The Fediverse feels like an incredibly natural next step for a lot of users that are coming from a Reddit or Reddit-like background. Everything else (robust collection of communities, moderation, 3rd party tooling, etc) comes with the crowd and from the community, not from the “owner”, and will only take time if we can solve for the funding/scaling challenges.