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SCaLE 23x

Mon Mar 30 2026 (E: 2026 Mar 30)

I went to SCaLE 23x with more or less the same things as last time. This time, I arrived on Friday to attend

I also brought a workfriend (bio/chem/med field) who doesn’t use Linux and has never been to SCaLE.

Convention center front.

I have the swag bag.

Pasadena, a nice city.

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’s 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.

This year’s EFF hoodie is Motherboard featuring Ada Lovelace.

I have two hoodies and a t-shirt from the EFF.

‘CODE IS SPEECH’ @ the keynote.

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. 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.

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 we (the federal government) attacked Iran and— oh wait, that’s tied to my bonus.”

He noted that Arm has to sell a bunch of data centers for the stock price to go back up.

Booths at the Expo Hall

Lutris has Crysis running on ARM. Somehow.

Someone from OpenSUSE loves Donkey Kong games.

I threw my resume at these people (post-lunch energy).

Little meshtastic radios for sale at heltec.

Around lunch time I was hungry and mistook Microsoft’s cafe-themed booth for a cookie stand. Also unlike most other booths in that other 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

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

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.

WIP

SCaLE happened at the beginning of March. Now it’s the end of March and I still haven’t gotten this blog done. Will