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23 years ago today, I took at job at @eff , turning down an offer from Microsoft to work as their DRM evangelist (!!!!!!).
Best professional decision I ever made.
@pluralistic @eff Just another reason why we love you both. <3
@pluralistic @eff wow, you dodged a bullet there!! 
@pluralistic @eff imagine what your books would be like in this alternate universe :D
In his new novel _Everything is Fine at Disney_, Doctorow explores a utopia where personal rights are eternally guaranteed by a digital chip implanted in the spine. But when people around him suddenly cannot hear his voice, Caesar is terrified to learn that his Rights Management Module has failed and his civil liberties are unlicensed.
But he's got a hole card to rebuild his life: a towering file cabinet of hard-copy EULAs. That's certainly not as convenient as a chip.
@aubreyjones @pluralistic I'm really fascinated by the idea of this mirror universe where (a presumably goatee-wearing) Cory Doctrow has been convincing the world to love DRM and palling around with Metallica.
@internic @aubreyjones @pluralistic OTOH, he probably has written only two books in the last thirty years and he only posts every other month. 
@Illuminatus @internic @aubreyjones @pluralistic
... but we only need the two books because the terms of use say we're not allowed to remember what's in the book unless we have it in our physical possession.
@aubreyjones @pluralistic
Having just finished Picks & Shovels in a few hours of binge reading, mostly continuous laughter mixed with rage, I would definitely read that book as well.
@aubreyjones @pluralistic
OK, but why does this read like the lead-in to "The Murderbot Diaries"?
My mind boggles at the idea of you evangelizing DRM.
@pluralistic @eff : I would definitely read that uchronia!
(in it, 15 years ago, I would accept the job offer that I received from Google)
@pluralistic @eff wow "different paths taken"
In a rare win for the Mirror Universe it seems the RIGHT path was taken!
@pluralistic @eff Which DRM was it at the time?
@pluralistic @eff It's not too late! 
@pluralistic @eff congratulations!!!!! That sounds awesome
Well, we wouldn't have words like "Enshittification" now if you had joined Microsoft.
@Brokar @pluralistic @eff Maybe we would, but it would refer to the process of open sourcing software that had previously been closed source.
Remember:
Microsoft 
@pluralistic @eff You're very fortunate to be able to say that. I reached retirement without ever having a job I could be unreservedly positive about for the long term. Job issues included moral problems with parts of the mission, to workplace-related health issues, to learning too late that I was meant to be an analyst, not a project manager.
I never did figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up.
@eff @Patrickoldhiker @pluralistic I think we in the west attach far too much meaning to work…in the US, we tend to tie our identity and self worth to it, and that’s not healthy. But if you managed to do some work you’re proud of and helped people along the way, I say that’s more than enough!
@ildiavolorosso @eff @pluralistic I did multiple things I can look back on as worthwhile, and helped field several important products, including a couple that are widely familiar. I did my best to help others do their jobs, especially because I found technical writing fairly easy. Late-diagnosed #ADHD may have explained my not staying in a single technical field.
I spend 25+ years in metro #WashingtonDC, perhaps the world's capital of work as one's identity.
@Patrickoldhiker @pluralistic @eff Very much the same. I've had exactly one job where I though "yeah this is great. I'm happy here, I never want to move".
The owner sold the business and it turned to the same shit as everywhere else.
Churn churn churn
@Patrickoldhiker @pluralistic @eff I figured it out, once I was too old to actually be able to do it.
@pluralistic @eff imagining you as a DRM evangelist and lol, lmao
@pluralistic @eff dang, you dodged a bullet there! Also, a big “thank you” for not losing your soul 
@cainaru @pluralistic @eff
The real treasure is the souls you don't lose along the way...
@pluralistic @eff I once turned down a very lucrative offer to work on the heads-up display for the F-18 fighter. It would have been the coolest project ever, but I just couldn't.
@alan @pluralistic @eff For the F-18 offer, did you already know Ada?
https://www.adacore.com/disruptive-technology-military-grade-software
I learned Ada in college (Cal Poly, Pomona, which switched to Java as the teaching language shortly after I graduated), but didn't want to work on anything military, not to mention the hassle of getting a clearance.
I was impressed that the Boeing 777 has a lot of Ada in it (C++ wasn't an option in the early 1990s).
Now I'm writing code for avionics boxes for civilian airliners, all in C and C++.
@jhamby @pluralistic @eff I had written very little Ada code, but I was on the committee responsible for approving (i.e. rubber stamping) Ada as a standard for Canada.
I figure someone just assumed that this made me an expert. Not that I couldn't have held my own had I taken the job. At that point it was Just Another Language.
@alan @pluralistic @eff It's funny because Ada used to be seen as a relatively huge and difficult language to learn, and it was definitely a challenge for compiler writers, especially for features like tasking (threads + message passing) and exceptions.
These days, I think Ada is probably on par with Rust in terms of difficulty, while C++ has grown so much that I have to just accept only having the most useful 90% of it in my head at any given time.
@jhamby @pluralistic @eff All languages are like that. I started with PHP when it was a hacky scripting language on my first ISP (RIP io.org), and the primary reason why I've stuck with it is the absolutely huge body of knowledge I've accumulated in terms of libraries and packages I can pull in to get the job done.
Would I rather be coding in C++ or Rust? Absolutely! But the weeks it would take to get up to even a useful speed mean I reach for PHP (or in some cases Python) instead, even if the solution is basically gross.
Although I have to say at the same time PHP has evolved well beyond it's well-earned reputation as a not-serious language.
@jhamby @pluralistic @eff Also, at the time I came from a multi-threaded, event-driven, message-passing background using small kernels that I wrote in assembly. I sometimes wonder if one I wrote for a payphone prototype survived to see the production version, and thus deployment in hundreds of thousands of locations, processing billions of calls...
@wyatt @pluralistic @eff @alan
I'm imagining you ducking behind the Pizza Hut counter when the Raytheon Dragoon Squad comes around, hauling people into black vans for dire fates coding Ada.
@alan @pluralistic @eff Yep, I was offered a job at Murdoch's News Corp (twice: different departments) for nearly double my current wage (which was quite generous as it was), but ethics...
@rbairwell @pluralistic @eff Today, I would consider that job for the sole purpose of seeing how deeply I could ingrain myself before doing as much damage as possible.
@alan @rbairwell @eff @pluralistic I like the way you think 
@rbairwell @alan @pluralistic @eff
Well done. You can either be a journalist or you can have taken Murdoch money.
The two are mutually incompatible.
@Thebratdragon @rbairwell @pluralistic @eff Except he's an IT person, where malicious compliance can do some real damage.
Clearly no actual journalist should work for them, possibly with the irritating exclusion where access is exclusive, as in F1 racing.
@alan @rbairwell @pluralistic @eff
Especially then, if no one will cover F1 for them, the rights will move.
@rbairwell @alan @pluralistic @eff Glad you didn't take either job. If you have ethics, you won't fit in there.
@alan @pluralistic @eff I'm glad to have a similar one. The agent "it's a cool job testing missile guidance systems,"
I realised that the very best outcome from that job is knowing that you helped the intended person die. Worst outcome if pretty unthinkable.
I didn't take it
@pluralistic I remember around 2007-ish you did a steel-man role-reversal presentation at a tech conference here in San Diego — you argued for DRM and a Microsoft rep argued against it.
@mitchw That was Peter Biddle, inventor of Palladium - MSFT's trusted computing initiative
@pluralistic Sounds familiar. I don't remember much about the event but I remember thinking you both did a good job of steel-man-ing the opposing side.
@pluralistic @eff Before EFF was even founded I applied at Microsoft, but did not follow up with their interview request because I had gotten an apartment in NYC and a job in New Jersey writing docs and programming in C and FORTRAN. Decades later while living in Prague I ended up at MSFT due to Skype acquisition.
@Nimbius666 Ha! Wasn’t it filled with emojis? Pasting code into Skype at Skype was a rookie mistake.
@__BRH__ @Nimbius666 on the other hand I wrote a bot using Skype that was really good. It was running in an Xvnc on a Linux box under my desk and rock solid. Nice Python API for doing stuff. 2010? It was the first IM chat bot we had; now every web page inside is flogging their AI chat capabilities.
@pluralistic @eff having read your work I cannot imagine you being a DRM evangelist except to secretly sabotage their plans.
@pluralistic @eff what kind of things have you done at EFF?
@pluralistic @eff We are all the better for it. Thank you for all you do.