Linux Fest Northwest 2024 Announcement and Embarrassing Stories

After years of resistance, Mike finally surrenders to Xcode. And the secret Apple envy leaked to the public this week.

Sponsored By:

• Alderon Games: Alderon Games is looking to hire talented remote workers. They believe in the power of play and the magic of immersive worlds and are looking for passionate individuals.
• Tailscale: Tailscale is the easiest way to create a peer-to-peer network with the power of Wireguard.

Links:

• ⚡ Alby: Your Boost companion for the web — Create an Alby Account to get a lightning wallet for payments wherever you go.
• 🎉 Coder Radio on the Podcastindex.org — Boost from the Web. Once you have Alby topped off, you can Boost from our page on the Podcast Index.
• 🔌 Grab Sats with Strike Around the 🌎 — Strike is a lightning-powered app that lets you quickly and cheaply grab sats in over 36 countries.
• 📷 Boost from Fountain's Website — Use Strike, Cash App, or your favorite app with Lightning support and Boost via QR Code. No other app is needed!
• Spotify lays off 17 percent of workforce in latest round of job cuts — CEO Daniel Ek announced the cuts in a memo to employees today. They’re expected to impact around 1,500 people at the company.
• Broadcom cuts at least 2,800 VMware jobs — Broadcom's first big move is going to be layoffs: according to WARN notices filed with multiple states (catalogued here by Channel Futures), Broadcom will be laying off at least 2,837 employees across multiple states, including 1,267 at its Palo Alto campus in California.
• Gerald Pfeifer on X — "Broadcom CEO tells VMware workers to ‘get butt back to office’ after completing a $69 billion merger of the two companies"
• Apple contractors to be cut - Austin Business Journal
• Twilio Lays Off Another 5% of Staff in Third Round of Cuts — Company has shed one-third of workforce since September 2022
• Unity Layoff 3.8% Of Workforce — Videogame software provider Unity Software (U.N) will eliminate 265 jobs or 3.8% of its global workforce and end an agreement with a digital video effects company founded by the “Lord of the Rings” director as part of a “reset,” the company said on Tuesday.
• Stefan Ottenbrite on X — CBC/Radio-Canada employees will have a virtual meeting on Monday with CEO Catherine Tait. Between 600 and 700 employees are expected to be laid off across the country, 300 just in Quebec.
• LFNW2024: Ready or not — Quick on the heels of our wildly successful MiniFest this Fall, LinuxFest Northwest is proud to announce a full event: LinuxFest Northwest 2024 1 - April 26-28 2024!
• LinuxFest Northwest 2024: Call for Speakers — We invite you to submit your proposal
• Activision Blizzard had a plan — or ploy — to launch its own Android game store — Court documents show the gaming giant wanted more from mobile.
• Xbox Talking to Partners for Mobile Store, CEO Spencer Says — “It’s an important part of our strategy and something we are actively working on today not only alone, but talking to other partners who’d also like to see more choice for how they can monetize on the phone,’’ Spencer said in an interview in Sao Paulo during the CCXP comics and entertainment convention.
• Microsoft is building an Xbox mobile gaming store to take on Apple and Google — Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal is key to the company’s mobile gaming efforts. Microsoft is quietly building a mobile Xbox store that will rely on Activision and King games.
• What's new in .NET 8 — .NET 8 is the successor to .NET 7. It will be supported for three years as a long-term support (LTS) release.
• .NET Aspire overview — .NET Aspire is an opinionated, cloud ready stack for building observable, production ready, distributed applications.​ .NET Aspire is delivered through a collection of NuGet packages that handle specific cloud-native concerns.
• Google to face investigation over deleted chat history — “I’m going to get to the bottom of who is responsible,”
• OpenAI Agreed to Buy $51 Million of AI Chips From a Startup Backed by CEO Sam Altman — Documents show that OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on brain-inspired chips developed by startup Rain. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previously made a personal investment in Rain.
• @laurengoode — "Altman talked to investors in the Middle East in recent months about raising money to start a new chip company to help OpenAI and others diversify beyond their current reliance on Nvidia GPUs and specialized chips from Google, Amazon, and a few smaller suppliers, according to two people."
• Nixified AI — The goal of nixified.ai is to simplify and make available a large repository of AI executable code that would otherwise be impractical to run yourself, due to package management and complexity issues.