DOGE was headhunting me late July through end of December.
Their recruiters are all anonymous when they reach out as they do not provide their names. I constantly questioned to myself and them directly if they were legit even if their email address showed as RecruitingUSDS@doge.eop.gov (their public email address seen on USDS). The first recruiter I demanded a video call with and asked him to bob and weave his head (lol). He never gave me his last name (all his emails came from that public address and they signed their emails with first name only) but I found him on Linkedin. He was late 20s to late 30s. From there I was asked to do/turned in a case study and after the govt shutdown I was invited to interview with a DOGE employee whom then her email showed her full name. I didnt make it past her as there was another step in their process which is an in person interview at USDS's office or within another govt agency DOGE working at.
I was a paying customer ($20 a month) until AI prompted a layoff in my dying field that is web design and front end design coding. Now everytime chatGPT yells at me about memory i tell it fine Im just gonna use Gemini! I bet a lot of ppl are doing the same thing as both sit at the top of the iPhone charts.
Bought my first pair of Meta glasses in Oct 2023 and overall I really enjoying using smart glasses! They are great for quickly/easily capturing life experiences. Also, while traveling or wherever asking and getting information on things your looking at - it's cool & useful. Tho Meta makes trash as my 1st pair died after 14 months of use after a software update and then my 2nd pair only lasted 4 months after some water splashes. I called Ray Ban for tech support and the lady on the phone agreed they are trash per how many calls she gets.
I don't care to take pics of strangers tho lots of people who havent adopted them are concerned about such.
Overall no more Meta glasses for me Im waiting for Apple's. They have tons of stores to get your glasses fixed and they don't manufacture trash that breaks! Also, maybe Apple will add a privacy feature so your pics and vids anonymize faces not in your personal network.
Do you have children? I frequently want to record things my daughter does but I find that my phone is not close at hand. I am curious if the latency to record is low-enough and I don't want to distract my daughter while she's doing whatever she's doing. I just want to capture the moment for later without interrupting the moment. They advertise it as this but I am curious what it's like in actuality.
I use it all the time for this use case. It's great because your hands are free and you can remain an active participant in play/safety/feeding. I find I capture more moments that I'm more actively involved in vs passively holding the phone and framing the shot.
This is the best use case for them IMHO. So many wonderful shots taken in the moment, and I don't have to see the world through a phone screen for fear of missing a cute picture.
Quality is iffy and framing is hard, but I'd rather have a OK photo taken while playing than a great photo taken while standing apart from the action trying to get the perfect shot lined up.
Are you making a counterpoint to the author's premise that smart glasses are an "intolerable intrusion?"
I'm having trouble understanding the purpose of your comment since it seems like you're just saying the ray ban glasses are bad for a different reason.
I love smart glasses they are very useful for people who wear sunglasses and use their phone to take pics & videos.
Of course with all new technology people fight against it. When I wore them on rollercoasters at Cedar Point in 2024 ride attendees said take those off and store them in a locker at the front entrance of the park (that kid / ride attendant hated them). Yet as Feb 2026 Six flags now allows smart glasses to be worn thru all its parks and 7 million have been sold.
Overall I am detailing why they are useful, why I think they will be widely adopted and like many technologies before it those who are against them will adopt them too(its a counter argument here). Sure some creeps will use them and with that in mind Apple has the possible ability to solve that privacy issue as they are a privacy company (all pics and vids taken thru APple glasses faces not in your network are randomize/anonymized).
> Of course with all new technology people fight against it.
People have been fighting against smart glasses since 2012.
Apple may end up with a feature to post-edit others out, and versions down the road from that one they may have a feature where you can register faces for a current session and then it auto-blurs others. Making its own assumptions about in-network or not and who should be blurred would be a bad user experience with all it gets wrong; more than a "privacy" company, apple spends a lot more marketing their optimized UX -- "it just works" -- for the average person
Google glass was a joke of a technology in terms of being useful. Meta's when they are working are actual a useful product especially for those who already wear sunglasses and use their phone to take pics/vids. Besides normal pic/videography you can now capture moments when your hands arent free (skiing, rollercoaster, tubing, kayaking, etc)
> Sure some creeps will use them and with that in mind Apple has the possible ability to solve that privacy issue as they are a privacy company (all pics and vids taken thru APple glasses faces not in your network are randomize/anonymized).
This is it's own distopian nightmare. No one exists in the world but those you've asserted you've met. What if you meet someone who was in the background of a picture from childhood? Can you never take your pictures from apple?
If you have an iPhone open the camera app and look under "People & Pets," to see that Apple already has those in your network and their pic matched up. As well if you are taking pic or video of people and they are smiling for the camera that's an indication your more likely with them then not.
Your proposed solution is in itself a privacy nightmare. Imagine Apple having to know your entire network of non-apple users just to not mess up your videos with friends.
You have to specifically identify and name the people in the photos, otherwise all it knows is that it's a person and throws it into that folder. And if you don't use icloud none of it leaves your device. It does the photo processing locally on the phone. It only knows what you tell it.
I've never took any action it just recognizes faces of those ive taken a good amount of pics with and shows them in my network including automatically naming some of them. Tho not all of them seen under People & Pets have their name automatically listed. But and again it automatically already knows whose in my network so if I take a pic of them using my Apple Glasses the glasses tech or app on iPhone could have the pic focused on them and either blur out others in public or anonmyize/randomize all other faces. This is just an idea that would help solve people's concern with smart glasses and Apple is the privacy company.
Sure yet admin vs engineering in terms of jobs ... one is now on the decline either slowly or quickly. Now it requires 1/4 to 1/2 of the engineers once employed in the profession. I dont see how that's a good thing for any economy.
Politics is always a sh!t show on both sides we humans constantly think the next one will better. It will never be better maybe unless AI destroys society and we all go back to living on the land cause money/greed/power always drives the madness!
Indeed especially compared to chatGPT running so much better on my same iPhone where siri shits the bed. Voice transcription sucks in every aspects on my iPhone except surprise chatGPT gets what I am saying 90% of the time.
Dublin's Grafton Street with it's buskers is and was so unique to this American. I wondered if anywhere else in the world matches the musicianship heard on that street and in Dublin's bars? Music is engrained in it's culture in a way I have not experienced before(tho the weird looks I received wearing my baseball cap in Dublin was off putting as I had not experienced that in Berlin, Paris, Reykjavik, Amsterdamn, etc).
Overall It's a bit sad going to American bars and not hearing the whole bar singing along to the musician up on stage. Amercia's culture I feel is way more focused on celebrity then musicianship.
Grafton St buskers at their best are really really good, but there are also some very average buskers there every day too. New Orleans is a stand-out in the US where you can find world-class jazz bands playing on the streets.
Nashville has plenty in the evenings, and then you can find hot spots in some cities. I've seen regular buskers in Boston, Seattle, Sarasota, and Boulder - usually in pedestrianized touristy quarters.
Guess it's Dublin's bar culture and vibe that really stood out to me. I've been to the French Quarter yet don't recall almost everyone in each bar there singing along to their local musicians. Musicians who are really good to great like in Dublin's bars I experienced in December.
In Dublin's best music venues, nobody is singing along because it's brand new material from brand new artists. If you're singing along to well known songs in Temple Bar then I'm afraid you're missing some of the best music the city has to offer, in venues like Whelan's, Workmans, Sin É, The Grand Social etc.
Because in America we do not appreciate local musicians as i experienced in Dublin nor do we sing alongs in majority of our bars (maybe there are a few but none ive been to throughout the US & its not apart of our culture). We are a more subdued culture in this regards and as I believe worship/appreciate celebrity musicians over local musicians.
I heard Emily Blunt say on Graham Norton, "We know your American with your baseball cap." I know that's the UK but maybe it holds true for Dublin too.
The looks were strange and from women in their 20s as I walked around Dublin. Im not much to look at yet do not receive such looks or rude behavior (one purposely did not hold the bathroom door at starbucks as I waited my turn 25 feet away waiting to get in rather she purposely pushed the door to close) at home in the DC region or my travels throughout the US and Europe. Another American mentioned a similar experience too. My friend traveling with me he was not wearing a hat & did not experience any such thing.
No, that's just Europe. First, they often pay to visit a bathroom there so the pushing the door close is just preventing you from freeloading. Second, Europe is denser than the US and so has cultures that don't have as negative a take on being rude. Some parts are worse than others.
Hmm, I'm pretty sure there was something else going on in this instance. Baseball caps are an extremely common sight in Dublin. I frequently wear one when I'm out and about here, and nobody has ever taken umbrage or passed comment.
Busking and live music is definitely still around. Especially in larger cities. I agree that the neighborhood bar scene sucks but that's more an issue that everyone has to drive home. Once you get to a place with good transportation or a downtown hub it all comes roaring back.
Just lost my UX Researcher, Designer, UI Developer and CX Support job (8 years) two weeks of ago. They said doing a great job but have to lay you off. Within a week i put my house up for sale and received an offer.
Time to downsize, "try," to stay in tech yet study to be a nurse.
My field and career of 20 years seems like a vanishing one.
But coming to this point, its absolutely unfathomable seeing the difference between these two types of things
On One hand we have cursor whose burning like 5-6 Million $ of money in trying to build a browser only for it to be riddled with bugs and literally just the money went into fire (read emsh's post and how he built better alternative)
I mean I guess I learnt something from them burning 5 million $ but I see a lot of Companies burn so much money.
My point is that all of these companies burn massive amounts of money in LLM's sometimes just for the sake of it and then some of these same companies go the other way and then fire people working.
I mean is there no way for a company to be reasonable. You worked there 8 years, You knew how things worked. Getting anyone new up and running would be hard especially given you had customer relations.
Tf they mean doing a great job but they have to lay you off? I mean, is the company doing really bad (I am considering something like tailwind happening here?) or what exactly.
But tailwind's situation was (unique?) because their business was eaten by AI itself. Not sure about your (former) company though but I hope that you can tell more specifics if possible.
Well it's a small govt contracting company. The adminstration cutting down on federal jobs, IT contracts and the tech layoffs has/is flooding the market with UX/UI folks in these parts (mid Atlantic region). Now AI is hastening the shrinking of this field.
The contracting company I worked for promotes on their LinkedIn their use of AI saying we created this prototype with AI in less then a day vs. years, months and days. In September they told us this is the way forward as all govt contractors are bidding for contracts with smaller teams using AI. Per that story they are telling they need to change to survive.
> Well it's a small govt contracting company. The adminstration cutting down on federal jobs, IT contracts and the tech layoffs has/is flooding the market with UX/UI folks in these parts (mid Atlantic region). Now AI is hastening the shrinking of this field.
> The contracting company I worked for promotes on their LinkedIn their use of AI saying we created this prototype with AI in less then a day vs. years, months and days. In September they told us this is the way forward as all govt contractors are bidding for contracts with smaller teams using AI. Per that story they are telling they need to change to survive.
Thanks for providing more context, This feels much the govt. faults than the contractor but I feel like moves like these will come to bite the govt. sooner than later.
I feel like though contracting companies also might've overhyped. Like yea sure for basic things AI's fine but AI won't be fine for govt. projects & shouldn't be fine.
Govt.'s can spends an unknown amount of money on defense with literally no accountability with billions of $ literally not knowing where they went but they will try to price squeeze thigns here only to some years down the line have catastrophic event.
I mean LLM's still hallucinate and they can be poisoned. If govt.'s use LLM the aspect of poisioning becomes really important.
Chatgpt still pulls grokipedia whose primary source is X where bots can be created and spread and a certain narrative can be established.
I am pretty sure that if we see govt.s in any capacity have AI generated websites then the idea of poisoning the whole web to negatively impact the other nation becomes a good strategy for agressions between countries.
Although I may have gotten off topic but sorry to hear this that you were in such a weird and messy chopping block due to mistakes from the govts in general.
Wishing you the best in your future that things get better for ya :hug:
It reduces the amount of engineers needed. I'd say by half and web, graphic designers and front end developers coding the designs are really no longer needed.
I was just laid off from my job of 8 years in which I was the UX Researcher, Designer, Front-End Dev and Customer UX Support. In a week I have sold my house and am downsizing significantly and in two years or less will be working as an RN(nurse). I will try to get back into my field but the current administration and the many tech layoffs has flooded the market with people like me looking for job. All the while AI is eating my career & field. It just doesnt seem wise that my career of 20 years is going to be around in the next ten years.
Also, will there be interfaces we have today in five to ten years or so? My guess is AI is the interface that does everything for us through voice (Open AI's upcoming device) or text .. now we still could have handheld AI phones or devices but where AI does everything including presents articles, games we play, etc and all from these AI devices' lock screen (websites are not visited much)
Sorry to hear your situation. As a full stack Dev, I miss the days of having a UX expert on the team. Now we are just expected to create something good enough. Also your question of will there be interfaces like today makes me more nervous than anything else.
Voice is going to become more important, but I doubt it's going to be that much of a threat to websites. I can already ask Gemini in my last generation smart watch for latest news, but I much prefer reading them myself. IMO AI will be simply integrated to smart watches and phones. Maybe you'll also have more devices like Amazon Alexa at home, but I see no demand for an entirely new kind of a device/user interface.
That said, I don't have much faith in the future of my programming career either. Unless robotics gets exponentially better, registered nurses are going to be way safer from automation (at least the ones doing physical treatment).
Sure but if Gemini starts just presenting the news and all the information either via text and or graphically from Android's locks screen ... going to websites become much less.
At the macro level shifting workers to RN makes complete sense. It is the coup de grâce of the boomer generations: tax the young’s earnings, cancel SS, force them to work as nurses.
yeah and Im not young ... started my first web design job at 33 in 2009. I thought of going for pharmacy but that's too many years. Accelerated RN programs are 18 to 24 months.
Its top pay is $20 to $30 less an hour per the top pay i was making as a Sr UX Researcher/Designer/UI Dev. But as noted the latter career is slowly vanishining and the former is in no way a vanishing career (until the robots proliferate).
Their recruiters are all anonymous when they reach out as they do not provide their names. I constantly questioned to myself and them directly if they were legit even if their email address showed as RecruitingUSDS@doge.eop.gov (their public email address seen on USDS). The first recruiter I demanded a video call with and asked him to bob and weave his head (lol). He never gave me his last name (all his emails came from that public address and they signed their emails with first name only) but I found him on Linkedin. He was late 20s to late 30s. From there I was asked to do/turned in a case study and after the govt shutdown I was invited to interview with a DOGE employee whom then her email showed her full name. I didnt make it past her as there was another step in their process which is an in person interview at USDS's office or within another govt agency DOGE working at.
reply