BC TECH

Saved by @zmbnski

John Horton
@johnjhorton 5 years, 8 months ago 1222 views

Save to PDF Share See On Twitter

What happens when a skill you have becomes obsolete? No, this isn't a R vs. Stata thread---it's a thread about a working paper w/ @sonnytambe!
https://t.co/w6nLf1tnST

The skill we look at is Adobe Flash, which @apple decided to no longer support back in 2010, which in turn caused demand/interest to plummet, as measured on @StackOverflow and in online labor markets, one of which is our empirical context

Despite the big fall-off in Flash jobs posted, very little else appeared to change in the market for Flash skills: wages for Flash jobs didn't fall, jobs didn't become easier to fill & openings weren't inundated with out-of-work Flash programmers

What happened was that (a) new entrants stopped specializing in Flash and (b) at least some existing Flash specialists started moving to other skills. In short, the demand shock quickly became a supply shock

At the level of the individual Flash worker, using a matched sample, we find (a) no fall-off in their wages, (b) some decline on-platform hours-worked. The most-focused on Flash workers had substantial increases in application intensity and a movement towards new skills

In short, despite Flash skills being expensive to acquire, workers abandoning a skill with no perceived future create a de factor highly elastic supply curve, keeping wages "flat." We show how this is possible with a little toy model, of course.

We also conduct a survey of Flash workers affected by the decline. They confirm many of our stylized facts & give color to the adjustment process. For one, they report being highly-forward looking and market-oriented & deciding what skills to pick up

They also emphasize how critical on-the-job learning is to acquiring new skills. Sadly for us teachers, formal classroom learning gets almost no love

Anyway, lots more in the paper & thanks for reading this far- check it out! https://t.co/w6nLf1tnST Comments, feedback, suggested citations (even to/esp to your own papers) most welcome!

More from Tech

DHH
@dhh

Facebook may well be exceptionally nasty and it’s leadership particularly deceitful, but the whole enterprise is the natural conclusion to an ad-powered social network. Ever greater surveillance, hyper targeting, and engagement baiting is what the basic incentives demand.

Facebook cannot change course. The best they can do is keep dishing out empty apologies, commit to inconsequential adjustments to its algorithms, and spend more money on positive PR and negative projection. The rot is at the core of its very being.

This is why we, consumers and citizens, must make the change for Facebook. Antitrust forcing a breakup of the business, and consumer revolt driving #DeleteFacebook. Zuckerberg will never conclude that what he built has become such a net negative for the world on his own.

That’s why its so tragic that WhatsApp sold out to Facebook in particular. Finally a challenger that had a different model and different ethics. But few would say no to $19B, which is why we need antitrust enforcers to do it for them.

James Felton
@JimMFelton

Butt plugs were originally sold as a miracle cure for headaches, acne, and insanity

Thread, article here and h/t: @qikipedia :
https://t.co/Ts84xnmWKJ

For a long time, medicine was pre-occupied with the question "can this be solved by putting something in the butt?"

Take, for example, tobacco smoke enemas, in which 18th Century physicians saw drowning victims and attempted to de-deadify them by blowing tobacco smoke up their rectums with a pipe.

Despite having no medical benefit whatsoever, the practice was popular, and enema kits lined the Thames like lifebelts, ready to be used as one final humiliation for somebody who was crap at swimming.

This practice ended sometime after 1800 when it became apparent that it didn't really work, given how the anus famously isn't really connected to the lungs, but doctors weren't quite finished with having a poke around in the old anus to see what happens just yet.

Advertisement

$Antonio Garc\xeda Mart\xednez$

Antonio García Martíne...
@antoniogm

Observing the public conversation around FB, and the private ones happening among techies and ex-FBers, I think the mutual misunderstanding is worse than when I set out two years (and 500 pages) ago to (in a small way) bridge that gulf.

We're basically fucked.

The tech world has gotten so huge, self-reinforcing, and insulated from reality they can no longer even vaguely look at themselves (and their actions) as others do. They just live on a different planet than most people.

Conversely, the average tech consumer doesn't understand the technology that has slowly taken over their lives, and their designated emissaries to figure it out--politicians, pundits, regulators, journalists--understand it barely better than they do, and have their own agendas.

To say more than generalities for a moment, here's what I think is likely the core problem.

Techies take weird, improbable visions, and make them realities: some BS pitch deck to a VC, mixed with money and people, really does turn into some novel thing.

Most people work inside a legacy industry that's evolved that way over time (usually for good reasons), and they think about the future via some analogy with their present (which is a function of a long-ago past). The interruption that tech will introduce is often hard to grasp.

Digital Strada - Partn...
@DigitalStrada

🙂 Hey - have you heard of @RevolutApp Business before?

🌐 Great international transfer and 🏦 foreign #exchange rates, and various tools to manage your #business.

👉 https://t.co/dkuBrYrfMq

#banking #fintech #revolut #growth #startups
1/10

One place to manage all things business
Get more from your business account with powerful tools that give you total control over your finances.

👉 https://t.co/dkuBrYrfMq
2/10

Accept payments
online at great rates
Receive card payments from around the world with low fees and next-day settlement.

👉 https://t.co/dkuBrYrfMq
3/10

Send and receive international payments, with no hidden fees
Multi-currency accounts allow you to hold, exchange, send and receive funds in 28+ currencies - always at the real (interbank) exchange rate...

👉 https://t.co/dkuBrYrfMq
4/10

Optimise spend with smart company cards
Spend in over 150 currencies at the real (interbank) exchange rate
Stay in control – issue physical and virtual cards, track spending in real-time for your entire team...

👉 https://t.co/dkuBrYrfMq
5/10

$Thomas A. Fine \U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8$

Thomas A. Fine 🇺🇸...
@thomasafine

So is Apple's anti-theft security a wonderful boon to users?

Or is it just another evil corporation strengthening it's monopoly power?

I had the misfortune of buying a 2018 Mac Mini on ebay a few days ago. Unfortunately, it had not been wiped, and it's security defaults had never been changed.

This essentially turns it into a very shiny paperweight.

And this is where everybody jumps to blame the victim. "But everybody knows you have to make sure the seller wipes the Mac."

My how the corporate overlords have trained us to be their apologists.

To be clear, I'm a software engineer. Part of my job is supporting Mac users. Where I work, people hold on to their computers for several years generally, and the T2 chips are only a couple of years old, so I hadn't run into this situation at work.

Of course, I'd read about them, but I was confident that whatever condition the computer arrived in, I'd likely be able to deal with it.

Unfortunately I hadn't read up enough to be an expert on their T2 chip and Activation lock.

You May Also Like

Dr Catherine Pemble is...
@CatherinePemble

Right, screw it. Here's a thread on *that* FBLive by Alex Cairnie about #Govanhill. Lets do a watch-through shall we? (Mind, I'm a resident of Govanhill, and a sociologist. I'm also 5'3, and a visibly queer woman so if half his claims are true I should be living in terror)

00:30: Welcomes viewers and uses points out that his videos are only getting attention b/c they're 'horrific'. Directs folk to his Youtube page. So already clout hunting.

1:08: "I've been warned to stay out of Govanhill. I'm a marked man" (proceeds to use a beanie as a disguise)

1:30 "Laughing and joking aside, here's somebodys front garden." Proceeds to show litter and claim its thrown from windows and this is 'common'. I know a handful of streets with litter issues like this, but its neither common nor unique to #govanhill and other deprived areas.

2:10 "Don't be under any illusion I'm only showing you the bad bits" - only shows you the bad bits.

3:45: He's had offers of help, but hes said no because hes not responsible for 'anybody elses safety' Good lord.

5:01: "Its not that bad. But its not all good either" -Correct

6:00: TW: child abuse - He starts claiming to have been contacted by a health professional and told about child abuse 'in the area'. Huge ethical issues here as the 'professional' who has 'been in the game a long time' is reporting to Facebook Dude and not authorities.

Novid Houellebecq (Tha...
@GarouGothic

Ok, here is a thread for you.
What happens when you have:
Netflix
Apple
Amazon
WarnerMedia +
Disney+
SonyCrackle (Reboot)
Verizon All Access (after they buy CBS/Viacom)
UniversalSkyMedia
By 2021
Answer? Internet Slows To A Craw and Dies.
Why?
Bandwidth.

Netflix's gets 35% of all internet traffic.
Now we all know Apple Coming to Netflix Corner.
We know that WarnerMedia Planning One
We Know about Disney+
Now how will the net handle 8 Streaming Platforms all at once?
Answer - IT CANT.

But Novid, the speed, the 4K the all everything?
NOOOOO BUDDY.
Even if you could do it and even if AWS ran six million clouds, The Net Will still slow to a crawl. 35%, goes to nearly 90% if any of the 8 or all of the 8 eat at netflix's numbers.

Oh, they wouldn't be running at once.
FOOL. You forget how bad things were when game of thrones season premieres came around. HBO SERVERS FALL DOWN GO BOOM!

Now see if a season like 2021 come around and they air shows on a same day. It gets crazy. AT&T and others gonna realize they cant build out forever. Something will give and it might be your entertainment consumption big time.

Advertisement

Pulp Librarian
@PulpLibrarian

Many readers have asked me "why do so many pulp covers feature women in ripped red blouses standing in swamps while a man fights off an unusual animal attack?"

The answer is artist Will Hulsey...

Will Hulsey was the undisputed king of the animal attack pulp cover. You name it, he'd paint it attacking you in a pool of stagnant water.

Very little is known about Will Hulsey, but he worked on a number of men's pulp magazines in the 1950s and early 1960s including Man's Life, True Men, Guilty, Trapped and Peril.

Their audience was ex-GIs: during WWII the US Council of Books in Wartime had given away over 122 million books to American servicemen to read; this led to a post-war surge in paperback and magazine sales amongst these newly enthusiastic readers.

As a result the 1950s saw a raft of men's pulp magazines being published to tap into this market - almost 200 different titles!

GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg

Life is crazy. Today is a good day to stop and reflect

10 simple questions that CHANGED my life

(startup life, personal life)

Here they are:

Q: Can you really control that?

Smart people know what they can and cannot control

If you're living in the past, you're nostalgic
If you're living in the future, you're anxious
If you're living in the present, you're at peace

Q: Did you start today with a victory?

Starting every day with a victory sets you up to win

I don't care what it is:

- Make your bed
- Make a wonderful coffee
- Hug your wife or children

No such thing as a small win. It's a win!

You'll win more, if you start winning early

Q: What are you optimizing for?

#MFSA
1. Money
2. Freedom
3. Stability
4. Ability

The world rewards those who are focused

Perfectly prioritize

Are you being optimistic?

Guaranteed: more luck when you're optimistic

Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1

SRI KALAHASTI KSHETRAM, CHITTOOR (AP)
#bharatmandir

Panchbhootasthalam representing vayu element, also called Dakshin Kailasha.
As per Shiva’s boon, Vayu is incarnated here as Shiva and worshipped as Kalahasteeswara.
The kshetram is also associated with Rahu and Ketu.

The Kshetram is named after 3 devotees of Shiva- a snake, spider and elephant who worshipped a lingam in the forest. Elephant did jal abhishek with water from its trunk, spider protected it from dust by weaving a web on it and snake adorned it with his jewel.
@GunduHuDuGa

Once, the web and jewel got washed away when elephant sprayed water on the lingam. Angered snake entered elephant’s trunk and bit him but died in the process. The agitated elephant trampled the spider accidentally. Shiva gave moksha to all three.

Hence the name-Sri for Spider, kaal for snake n hasti for elephant.

Shiv bhakt Kanappa is said to have plucked his own eye to put it on the lingam here when he saw blood oozing from the eye on the lingam
This place is the ultimate location for Rahu Kethu Sarpa Dosha Nivarana.