Jae Park was laid off after 18 years at a leading tech firm – ironically after leading the internal AI taskforce. He’s trying to make a crowdsourced app in a last desperate attempt to get income going.
His story is becoming all too common in high tech as wave after wave of layoffs take jobs away, and AI reduces the need for big teams down to just 2-3 developers.
It’s worth seeing how real lives are being affected by this massive industry shift.
Fogtown is a modern TV/movie puppet show – that may soon be made into a video game. I do love a good stop-motion/puppet themed game…
I’ve written about this crazy game in development before, but their developer videos are really stepping things up a notch in realism.
Most games try to make guns sound cinematic by bringing big bass, big punch, and a big Hollywood explosion. But real guns don’t feel cinematic. They feel dangerous because in real life a gunshot isn’t just a sound but a shockwave. The first time you hear a real weapon fired near you, it’s usually terrifying.
In asking what modern games are missing, these guys made some great analysis of real gunshots and have made some interesting progress in their own version of environmental sound mapping that seeks to simulate interaction with the environment. Sound Rendering has been researched for over a decade, but there wasn’t really the compute to pull it off in modern games that were mostly focused on visuals.
This is still largely the case, but we’re starting to have more and more compute overhead – and I love how they’re not just following the crowd but trying to ask how to make something even better.
Their solution seems to have a good balance of simulating physical reality with real-time compute tradeoffs. Still – it’s great seeing people pushing the ball forward when too many games just end up playing like Call of Duty.
CBRE’s Scoring Tech Talent 2026 report, Portland now ranks 34th out of 50 top North American tech markets. This ranking represents a steady downward slide for the “Silicon Forest,” which sat at 24th place just a few years prior in 2023.
Major layoffs at Intel and Nike as well as dramatically increasing costs of doing business in Portland (taxes) have seriously impacted Portland. While Nike often goes through more regular cycles of layoffs, Intel’s major decline of nearly 40% of it’s staff is not likely to turn around anytime soon as the company continues to hemorrhage billions in losses every year.
Personally, I used to go to Portland coder and technology meetups every night of the week I wanted. Pre-covid there were multiple meetups per night every day of the week to choose from: startup talks, programming language groups, tech talks – you name it. Now, I’m lucky to find one useful one a week; with many nights have NO tech meetups.
There were tons of startups in downtown buildings. Now Big Pink’s floor of startups is almost completely empty. Small tech companies have long since left Portland’s unfriendly taxes and business climate when remote work became a thing.
Gamer’s Nexus set up their LG and started watching what it sends. Turns out – it can capture just about everything – even when unplugged and off. Samsung TVs were also just busted for recording audio and screenshots.
Basically smart TVs are full computers – with all the same kinds of vulnerabilities hackers can exploit. Most TV companies do a terrible job validating and updating their TV software. With the flood of CVE’s that have been coming out every week, it’s extremely likely your TV is vulnerable and can be turned into a remote listening and watching device.
It’s not like this is new or people haven’t been warning you about this for over a decade. But now it’s getting real. I’m curious when the next hacker will turn your TV into a bitcoin miner, spam server, or even record all your living room conversations for blackmail.
I absolutely believe that high-profile targets like politicians, actors/actresses, CEO’s, investment bankers, and other high profile people could easily become targets. TV’s and smart devices are probably the least secured devices in your home.
In the future, the billionaire’s home (because millionaires are so last year) won’t live in a smart home – they’ll have 70’s era appliances that just turn on/off with a mechanical switches and have an old tube TV with no smart features.
Track Craft is an augmented reality game in which you can build tracks around your house and then race them. Seems to be getting pretty good reviews.
It appears Microsoft is offering around 60,000 of its employees buyout offers. That is a staggering 27% of the company considering Microsoft has around 220,000 employees. I remember there were at least 2 buyout rounds at Intel shortly before they did around 40% layoffs. These are usually excellent packages to take if you’re thinking of leaving, think you’re about to be canned, or if you’re close to retirement. Which is kind of the point – help those wanting to find the door to take it.
However, buyouts are often precursors of extensive layoffs depending on how few people take them up on the offer.
When a company is willing to gladly walk 1/3 of its employees to the door with a check today – this is a company looking to offload a LOT of workers. You have to wonder when the involuntary exits (layoffs) will start.
I suspect it will be shortly after this program ends.
One correction – the location you should copy the model files you have to download manually on Windows 11 is %LOCALAPPDATA%\Comfy-Desktop\ComfyUI-Shared (or %USERPROFILE%\ComfyUI-Shared
thePOVchannel follows a group of young explorers as they do an intense 3 week rafting and climbing trip down the Grand Canyon. It reminds me of the times I would take epic trips like this – but mostly in the mountains here in the Pacific Northwest.
They do an amazing job of not only the rafting, but also climbing into narrow side canyons and exploring the different geology and archeology in these remote, untouched places.
@JerryWayneLive calls it like it is.
I really love his humor because it’s often 100% correct. I found his comment about the white truck applies to a lot of folks – like preppers or other folks that love to think they have all the toys and pet theories on how they’re prepared for anything.
This truck is prepared for everything that could happen – not the things that actually happen.
I once read through some articles written by people that actually lived through both natural and political disasters. It was fascinating the things they said. Stuff that was actually useful: tarps, trash bags, cleaning supplies, shovels, crowbars, non-electrical water purification, instant/add hot water meals, sealed snacks, work clothes, gloves and boots, toilet paper, cash in small bills, and entertainment (books, cards, frisbee, etc). Stuff that wasn’t very helpful: guns, tons of batteries, gold.
For those complete societal collapses? Better thinkers like Sarah Paine point out historically that you sure can use that generator – until the gas runs out. So maybe you get 6 more months of power? Then the rest of your life you’re like everyone else. None of your powered devices or engines work anymore. There’s no more internet. You’re going to want to start farming and hunting – not prepped for the return of Netflix.
So how about that truck owner? More likely than not he’ll have a breakdown on the road and need flares, a charged cell phone, and maybe a basic tool set/jack to change a tire or fix a belt. Certainly not a 10 foot snorkel attachment and a 5000 lb. front grill that will make it harder to push to the breakdown lane.
It’s one thing to think you’re more clever and prepared than everyone else – it’s a whole other to actually be prepared for what really happens.