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Sirius Does Not Accept Facts
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: When staff is being lied to and clients are being lied to maybe it’s time to leave the workplace, for risk of becoming complicit in those lies

SOME hours ago we shared an example of Sirius ‘Open Source’ staff being told off for stating the truth or being honest with a client. We’ve sadly come to a point, especially this year, where the company was mostly about optics (like hiding its true financial state) rather than substance. Bad decisions had been made for years and nobody took responsibility for those bad decisions; worse yet, there were lousy attempts to retroactively justify such decisions.

I left at the start of this month and now I get to tell my story. My story is probably similar to many other people’s especially in the technical domain or “IT” sector; many people may experience the same things at a current employer or maybe experienced those things in past (prior) employers.

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Sirius Treats Some Tech Staff Like Peasants
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Shortchanging technical staff seems like common practice, but some companies push that very far; As noted last night in this meme, Sirius ‘Open Source’ really does not like this series; but it was forewarned for years already about several issues (before trying to witch-hunt the messenger), including the rights of staff and the standards of pay

THE early parts of this series explained how things were in 2011 and prior to that year. Sirius had generously (or for self-promotional purposes) given money to KDE and to the FSF. It also recruited high-calibre staff which certainly received a decent salary.

When it comes to the NOC, things were different. As we shall see and show later, NOC staff was treated as disposable; no wonder staff turnover was very high there (for a position occupied by 4 or 5 people we’ve had about 20 members of staff already). When recruitment went on the official (but internal) wiki of the company compared NOC staff to “monkeys”. For the same number of hours covered I could easily earn 5 times as much in another company, so surely I’m no “monkey”… my solace was, once upon a time we did in fact support Free/libre software. It felt like an ethical job.

The salary I received in 2011 was higher (per hour) than at the time I left, in spite of being more than 11.5 years apart. How did this happen? How many employers fail or refuse to keep up with inflation (at the very least)? Set aside promotion ladders that typically come with increments in base pay.

Either way, the company really does not want me to talk about this. Last night it sent me a letter after more than 10 days of complete silence. What did the letter say? It is described in the video above, but the impression one gets is that it’s a low-grade censorship attempt. It almost looks like the company “Sirius Open Source” is trying to ‘bribe’ us, basically saying something like (not actual quote), remove all those articles and we’ll pay you for some holidays (that we never took). Well, we’re not sellouts, we won’t stop, and the Sirius ‘UK’ CEO (pretending to be based in two continents) does not seem to grasp what he’s dealing with. Paying (shall we say ‘bribing’?) while making veiled threats is legally bad and makes the company look even worse. Better to just say nothing than send frivolous letters. For sure we’ll return to this at the end of the series, probably some time next month.

Network Operations Center by Alan Levine the from United States. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

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Sirius as Just an Account
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Sirius ‘Open Source’ has turned into a virtual company; it’s just some AWS account with a bunch of people working on their personal computers (not company computers) from home; even accounting is missing in action (MIA), failing to correctly pay a salary for about a quarter and sometimes missing pension contributions — an indication of extreme negligence or gross mismanagement

THE potentially frustrating vision of “clown computing” is that all computing is centralised, even more so than in the mainframe era. Back in the golden age of mainframes the companies at least got their own mainframes, which could be maintained by locally-sourced and privately-employed staff.

Sadly, the company I left this month is almost entirely centralised — albeit not within itself but rather the opposite. There are virtually no assets left in the company, not even a server or a chair.

Video download link | md5sum b592f88498af1b6093b6cc3fffbb8a02
Why I Left My Job Today
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: One very important (and perhaps lifelong) lesson learned in my last job is that clients and agenda can change rapidly as a result of rotation in management and a loss of moral compass; it’s critical to check not only what employer one works for but who the upstream and downstream entities are (their nature can change for the worse when the employer becomes desperate and neglects ethics in pursuit of money)

IN INDUSTRY, there is a chain of suppliers and providers. Microsoft, for instance, gives “products” and provides “services” to companies, governments, militaries and so on.

In the case of the company where I worked (until today), we had provided services for companies in the private sector and many in the public sector too.

For software development firms, there are typically “users” or firms/people who purchase the software, license it etc.

What about the morality of those whom you provide for? Never mind suppliers, though that’s an important but separate subject (for firms that resell things and fund potentially unethical suppliers).

When Microsoft bought GitHub many employees left as they refused to work for Microsoft. Not too long afterwards many left GitHub (both users and employees) because of the ICE controversies (Microsoft insisted that GitHub should supply “services” to ICE). It quickly became a major crisis of brain drain (one colleague followed another, leaving GitHub with a lack of geeks, sort of like in Twitter last month) and Microsoft resorted to planted/seeded distractions in the media (“Arctic Vault”) in order to change the news cycle.

Today, a Friday, I officially left my job. The video above explains some of the background but future videos will delve into the lessons learned, not just based on personal experience. Many of the underlying issues seem rather common and they’re worth explaining in a generalised way that many people can relate to and study when assessing potential employers.

For instance, do people walk into a job interview and ask who the suppliers/providers are? Or who the buyers/users are? Maybe they should. Also check if management actually understands the products/services offered. If not, that’s a big red warning sign.

In my personal case, the chain has changed profoundly. Instead of spreading Free software there was a bunch of stuff like AWS being promoted. Instead of working for public sector clients (very ethical and moral agencies whose functions service to protect the vulnerable people) we started to accept business from objectionable groups. Merely pointing out such problems was framed as the real problem. That transition led to tensions and confrontations, culminating in resignation. It had been planned for months.

“He does not possess wealth; it possesses him.”

–Benjamin Franklin

Latest official NHS figures:

Percent tested positive twice as bad as July 2021 and about 10 times worse than in July 2020!

or a while now I’ve noticed something that’s really not good. Heck, it’s very backwards, even disturbing. Years ago my wife sent a parcel and it ended up inside the recipient’s bin. It took days to get to the bottom of what had happened. It turned out, after many hours wasted, that the courier placed the parcel inside the bin. Not kidding! It was just sitting there for several days, deep inside a large garbage can!

This is part of a rather bad trend here, albeit I suspect the same has happened in other countries as well. The courier does not knock on doors, instead putting through the door a slip that says the parcel is “INSIDE THE BIN!” (Even the handwriting isn’t so legible, and not every person here can read English!)

What are the consequences of this practice? You can easily have it thrown away into a landfill. Incidentally, news reports said that Amazon had been sending returned items right into the landfills. This was seen as more “efficient” than properly handling “unwanted” but perfectly functional products, likely produced in hard-hitting sweatshops by hard-working people, maybe even kids (child labour is rampant in Indonesia for instance).

Lazy approaches of nihilists, pushed through with “cost-cutting” mindsets, are ruining the planet. And yet worse, they ruin the service! This harms both senders and recipients (I witnessed this firsthand one hour ago).

These UK couriers, who merely follow instructions from their managers, ought to understand that people’s BIN is NOT a mail box. It doesn’t specify this, either. It’s not designated a postbox. Don’t put any parcels inside bins. It’s not secure and periodically it gets emptied into garbage trucks.

People pay shipping fees for a service, not for you to dump objects of value into BINS. Worse yet, this practice will encourage petty thieves to go through your trash, making a mess in pursuit of treasures. This is the new “key under the doormat” lunacy.

Now, some cynic might say they try to knock on the door first, or try to ship to one’s neighbours. But no! They did not bother this time; all they had to do was knock on the door as both my wife and I had our headphones off for the entire day (9AM to 4PM) just in case they deliver and we need to hear knocking. These couriers love to underestimate the importance of the job. All for the sake of profit. They externalise the risk and the toll.

Today, fortunately, I only knew they came because I heard the mouth of the door opening for the slip to fall in. What if I hadn’t heard that?

With all the supposed “technological advancement” (wherein asking the client to become a till operator is considered “progress”) we only got worse. We’re worse off when Bezos et al (or in this case Royal Mail, the national courier) are playing ‘treasure hunt’ with things you already paid for.

This causes a lot of angst and anxiety. But what do they care? To them, it’s the “cost of doing business” and in case of a lost parcel you may have to spend hours chasing them before some sort of compensation gets issue at all. They’ve passed the burden and risk to the clients at both ends, the sender and the recipient.

Another rather important aspect is, bins are naturally dirty. That’s what they’re typically there for. In this case, today, Royal Mail left the parcel next to cat’s poo. And that says a lot about the quality of service. How was the delivery? Poo!

Yesterday: 100 Million New COVID Infections Could Be Just Months Away

s noted here yesterday, testing levels are falling to all-time lows in the context of COVID-19 lock-downs and mass testing. We’re meant to think everything is OK now (even though it evidently isn’t the case). Mayday and Easter (cessation of counting) were seized upon to promote this illusion that things were calming down, rather than things not being properly tracked. They have a ‘backlog’ and every now and then they’ll throw 3,000 ‘missing’ or “additional” deaths (my dog are my death certificate?) while the media pays no attention. Within less than a month there will be over 200,00 British death certificates with “COVID-19″ on them.

Earlier today the following got published in the government’s official portal:

Scotland and UK headline data now updated on Mondays and Thursdays

From 9 May 2022, Public Health Scotland moved to reporting data on Mondays and Thursdays.

This means UK headline figures are also updated on Mondays and Thursdays.

Up-to-date data for England, Wales (excluding vaccinations) and Northern Ireland are on the cases, deaths, healthcare, testing, vaccinations and postcode pages.

Screenshot as they’ll deprecate the page out of existence one day:

So over time they redefine what they measure to belittle the severity of the situation. And then they stop updating during weekends; now they lower the frequency some more…

Suffice to say, hardly anyone gets vaccinated anymore. The latest figures show well under 10,000 vaccine doses per day (both for first and second; even “boosters” aren’t pursued much anymore).

So has the problem actually been solved? Let’s see…

Oh, sorry, no information for you today (“N/A”). It’s the same in the page for deaths.

NHS/Tories: Maybe if we stop publish data, then people will stop blasting our fatally stupid policy.