Immigration died due to COVID-19 so Aussie tech companies want IT apprenticeships to train locals instead
US news outlets want Apple to give them the same sweet App Store deal given to Amazon’s Prime Video service
People are losing years of photos due to a bug in Lightroom for iOS
We have an explanation for why a 212 storey building appeared in Microsoft Flight Simulator’s render of suburban Melbourne
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A group of Australian-based IT companies like Iress, Catapult, MYOB, REA Group, Seek, and Slack, along with the Australian Computing Society, are trying to get the federal government to develop an IT apprenticeship scheme. The Iress CEO said that "At the moment the only pathway [in Australia] to become a software engineer is through a tertiary qualification but what we’re seeing amongst our peers is that's not a requirement for getting the job done". Instead of a 3-4 year degree, an apprenticeship setup would see someone paid to work (subsidised by the government) and learn on the job - like a plumber or mechanic. The only reason they're saying this now is because overseas migration is fucked due to COVID so they can’t rort the visa system, but at least they're saying it. I would be very, very tempted to get back in the IT game and get some formal skills if I could get paid to do it.
Unlike everyone else in the App Store, Amazon only has to give Apple a 15% cut when someone signs up via an iOS in-app purchase and when confronted about this in the recent US Congress antitrust hearings, Tim Cook said that Apple is open to negotiating similar terms with others. I assume The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal hit a wall with Apple because they've published an open letter begging Apple to give them the same deal they gave Amazon. If Apple give these media outlets a special deal, you'll get everyone asking for the same treatment then complaining when they don't get it. If Apple don't give the news outlets a special deal, Apple looks even more like a bunch of crooks. Apple could give everyone on the store the same 15% rate, but then they'd be giving in to Epic who they just shitcanned from all their platforms! Oh to be a fly on the wall in Tim Cook's office.
Adobe stuffed up an update to Lightroom for iOS that resulted in user photos and presets getting blown away permanently. A statement from Adobe says that "the issue specifically affected Lightroom mobile users without an Adobe cloud subscription, as well as subscribers with photos and presets that hadn’t been synced to the Adobe cloud at the time of the update". If you upgraded the Lightroom app (which happens automatically by default) and were not syncing your data to Adobe's cloud service, your local data got nuked. Folks, once again let me impart on you the importance of backing up your shit. You never know when an app will stab you in the back like this.
Melbourne has gathered a small amount of infamy for players of the new fancy Microsoft Flight Simulator. The new version of the long running game series uses real-world data (satellite imagery, maps, etc) to automatically generate lifelike terrain, it's quite amazing how detailed the scenery looks. Virtual aviators have been buzzing around Melbourne and noticed an enormous 212-storey obelisk poking out into the sky from Melbourne's northern suburbs. There is no such thing as a 212-storey building in Melbourne's northern suburbs, so how did it get there? The good samaritan who added the building to Open Street Map mistakenly entered 212 instead of 2 in the additional metadata for this building, Flight Simulator took it as gospel and hilarity ensued.
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