SCaLE 23x: Anti-Mugshot Life and the Dark Calling of the Car Fire

Mon Mar 30 2026 (E: 2026 Apr 15)

• I am now an EFF member?
• Penthouse suite party
• Arm Pulling My Leg Again
• Booths at the Expo Hall
• Sushi at GameStop
• Watching drunk dudes argue over bulls**t I don’t remember
• Open Source Career Day
• A Car Fire on the Way Back

I went to SCaLE 23x arriving for the first time on Friday night at Pasadena, an upside-down city where ‘North’ on the maps points down instead of up, to attend

• the somewhat-secret EFF speakeasy
• a vaguely described penthouse suite party at AC Pasadena

I brought more or less the same things as last time. I also got a workfriend who doesn’t use Linux and has never been to SCaLE to tag along.

I am now an EFF member?

Again? Intermittently?

At SCaLE 21x, I had bought the “illuminati” t-shirt from the EFF with cash. Even though I registered to be a member, I never received a confirmation e-mail.

At SCaLE 22x, I just bought the Stay Golden hoodie as-is and didn’t think to renew my membership because it was never made clear if I was or will be one.

Before SCaLE 23x, I received some unexpected e-mail inviting me to the EFF speakeasy, also giving me a heads up on a keynote on Saturday morning, as if I was a member this whole time.

I figured the speakeasy would be a great time to chat with EFF lawyers and activists on the newest bill from the **terrible idea factory**California State Assembly. On Friday night, I just so happened to be sitting across an EFF lawyer that doesn’t seem to want to go into detail about what he thinks of the newest terrible idea (no referrer).

I did, however, attend the keynote on Saturday. While Cindy Cohn’s was about the government attempting to ban or regulate encryption in the 90s, I can see a similar argument being made for the current terrible idea.

Penthouse suite party

This party consisted of the people I meet up with at DC858, “(city name) Underground”, and some new faces. Some nice music played that I will never know the titles to, but I did catch Crazy Frog in there.

The one very weird thing about the penthouse room at Pasadena AC is that the bathroom door was glass. It was foggy enough to obscure details, but not enough for me to want to take a piss there while a party was going.

Arm Pulling My Leg Again

What is with you and ARM?!

— concerned friend

(Answer: asking questions that cause o_o; reactions and funny responses from ARM employees.)

This year I had a tough time finding the “Arm booth”. But it turns out they sponsored a booth instead of running one themselves.

The dude (an American) at the booth was still representing Arm. Therefore, I asked him.

“When can I make my next insider trade?”

Which led up to this year’s funny:

“Well, $ARM hasn’t been doing so well since the federal government attacked Iran and— oh wait, that’s tied to my bonus.”

Booths at the Expo Hall

MICROSOFT’S FAKE COOKIE STAND DECEIVES CONVENTION OF HUNGRY NERDS

Around lunch time I was hungry and mistook Microsoft’s cafe-themed booth for a cookie stand. Also unlike most other booths in that people move away or duck their faces out, the Microsoft lady offered to pose in the photo.

Sushi at GameStop

GAMESTOP ISN’T GOING TO SERVE US SUSHI.

— workfriend internally before we showed her the most GameStop-looking sushi restaurant ever.

SushiStop featured the new menu items (“Gozen”). Without knowing what gozen actually means, this is somewhat similar to a poké bowl, but between the fish and the rice, there is a yellow like egg white edible layer that I haven’t identified. My best guess is shredded sweet bread.

Watching drunk dudes argue over bulls**t I don’t remember

SCaLE hosts game nights on Saturday night. Everyone that isn’t underage gets a beer ticket, and this year’s SCaLE was drunker than the last.

My friends and I went through the effort of finding a table close to a power outlet and setting up LAN gear. Of course, the blinky lights and wires attracted some attention, including an AI dude who hooked two of my friends into listening to him talk about AI for over an hour.

Didn’t get to play much Starcraft 1 or Diablo II, but the highlight of that night was watching drunk people argue over some unimportant topic. Later an afterparty was improvised at a bar, so I watched an overlapping group of drunkards get kicked out and migrate to another bar for even more alcohol.

Open Source Career Day

My situation hasn’t changed much from last year. But I did get one job interview since last SCaLE.

This year they didn’t have much comments on my resume. My resume reviewer made a quickly retracted comment on AI slop, mistaking a PNG for an emoji bulletpoint generated by ChatGPT. Other than that, she suggested I make aesthetic changes like put my name at the top and use more colors.

Also I already satisfied the checklist of things that help getting a job:

• have free and open source contributions in the place of internships
• run a blog documenting projects and expertise

There were, however, interesting perspectives on the job market from hiring managers.

When I put up a new opening, it used to be I’d get 9 applicants in a week, and I’d have to fight to get more. Now, I get hundreds of applications within 24 hours.

I’ve heard that it takes around 200 job applications to get an entry level job nowadays. That number might actually exceed the amount of openings in my area within a given hiring season.

A Car Fire on the Way Back