Scott Boehmer

Author: Scott Boehmer

  • Ol’ Jackie and Hanse’s War

    If you don’t follow my gaming site, then this might be news. I submitted a short story and a BattleMech design to the Pirate Point fanzine. Its first issue was released earlier this week, and my entry about a jury-rigged Blackjack is in it. You can download the zine for free and read my entry plus a bunch of other short pieces of fan fiction set in the BattleTech universe.

    PIRATE POINT: Issue 1

    If you play BattleTech and want to try out the custom Blackjack, I shared a record sheet for it over on my gaming blog: Pirate Point #1 and Ol’ Jackie. You should also probably subscribe over there too if you like BattleTech.

  • The Parchment Barrier

    No document, however brilliantly conceived, can resist people who view its constraints and its needs as needling inconveniences, rather than sacred boundaries and responsibilities. Constitutional democracy is high-maintenance. It only works if the people who are meant to care, actually care – and express their investment through active stewardship. Not just when it’s convenient, not just when their side wins or loses, not just when they feel like it, but always.

    What the United States is witnessing now, what every democracy is facing in the middle of a global backslide, is the exposure of the constitutional system’s fundamental vulnerability: it cannot withstand the destructive pressure of a populace who have lost interest. Who have lost faith. Who no longer believe in the project itself. Who have simply stopped showing up.

    Joan Westenberg

    The Parchment Barrier (The Index)

  • My Career: Windows Phone

    Microsoft got into the mobile market early with Pocket PC devices. Launched in 2000, these were devices aimed at professionals who wanted mobile access to their work-related calendars and email. With dominance in enterprise software, Microsoft was well positioned to sell . Apple’s release of the iPhone in 2007 completely changed that market though.

    In order to compete with the iPhone, Microsoft decided to entirely rework Windows Mobile into Windows Phone. It would have a new touch-focused interface and an application model much closer to that offered by the iPhone.

    The Silverlight code base ended up being chosen as the basis for applications on Windows Phone. Some of the Silverlight team supported that effort for the Windows Phone 7 release. Then with Silverlight’s wind down as browser plugins became obsolete, I moved over to working on the Windows Phone development platform for Windows Phone 8 in late 2011.

    For Windows Phone 8, the big challenge was a move from being based on Windows CE to Windows NT. This brought in a lot of OS capabilities, but it also had the potential to break a lot of things. My work for the release ended up being documenting the places where app developers had taken dependencies on the ordering of events on Windows Phone 7 and then adding code to the platform so that those events would be guaranteed to have the same ordering when the apps ran on Windows Phone 8. It wasn’t particularly exciting work, but it was critical to maintaining compatibility with the existing Windows Phone app catalog.

    After Windows Phone 8 shipped, I changed roles for the Windows Phone 8.1 release. I moved from being a individual contributor to being a team lead, and I left the app platform team for the team responsible for the phone browser’s user interface. My team’s goal was to make Internet Explorer on Windows Phone feel modern. We implemented support for having more than 6 open tabs, for gesture navigation, roaming favorites and history across Windows devices, and autocomplete for the address bar. I had been an acting lead for a while during Windows Phone 8, but this was my first time officially being a manager. I thought my team was great, and we accomplished a lot for the release.

    Across this time, Windows Phone was a fun project to work on and a product that I was proud of. It had a lot of innovative features like live tiles, jump lists, kids corner, and more. Unfortunately, it was also struggling in the market. By the time Microsoft shifted from an enterprise focus to a consumer focus for smartphones, iPhone and Android were both already in the market. This meant that for app developers, it would be a third mobile OS to support. Then missteps in the move from earlier phone projects, Windows Mobile and Kin, as well as not allowing devices to update from Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8 caused frustrations amongst mobile operators, fans, app developers, and device manufacturers.

    There had also been a problem with the organization of Microsoft’s operating system teams. When the Windows 8 project started, one of its goals was to support tablets and compete with the iPad. Unfortunately, upper management on the Windows side decided that aligning with the Windows Phone application model would only hold Windows back, so they built an entirely different application model than what the Windows Phone team had been using since the release of Windows Phone 7. This meant that applications written for Windows Phone wouldn’t run on Windows tablets and vice-versa. This set the company on a path where the development platforms and app stores for both Windows and Windows Phone were weaker offerings than they otherwise could have been.

    After the relative failure of Windows 8 and 8.1 to draw fans or app developers and the continuing struggles of Windows Phone to build market share, Microsoft decided to merge the Windows and Windows Phone projects into a single team for Windows 10. The idea was that a unified platform would improve the odds of success for both, but a lot of ground had already been lost over the years of them pursuing their own directions. The idea of a unified Windows platform offered some hope internally, and at the time, I was happy to see the teams merging together.

    When the reorganization happened in 2014, I, along with most of my reports from the phone browser team, moved to a new team that was tasked with building a browser app for Windows and Windows Phone. My next career post will cover my time on that team.

  • DEI: Imperfect but Meaningful

    Charity Majors, CTO of Honeycomb, wrote a good piece on how corporate DEI programs are imperfect, but that the core ideas of diversity, equity, and inclusion are nevertheless important.

    An inclusive culture is one that sets as many people as possible up to soar and succeed, not just the narrow subset of folks who come pre-baked with all of life’s opportunities and advantages. When you get better at supporting folks and building a culture that foregrounds growth and learning, this both raises the bar for outcomes for everyone, and broadens the talent base you can draw from.

    …

    That’s inclusion. That’s how you build a real fucking meritocracy. You start with “do not tolerate the things that kneecap your employees in their pursuit of excellence”, and ESPECIALLY not the things that subject them to the compounding tax of being targeted for who they are. In life as in finance, it’s the compound interest that kills you, more than the occasional expensive purchase.

    …

    Anyone who talks a big game about merit, but doesn’t grapple with how to identify or counteract the effects of bias in the system, doesn’t really care about merit at all. What they actually want is what Ijeoma Oluo calls “entitlement masquerading as meritocracy” (“Mediocre”).

    Charity Majors

    Corporate “DEI” is an imperfect vehicle for deeply meaningful ideals (charity.wtf)

  • The Invention of Countries

    This is a good video from Tom Nicholas about the concept of countries and how it developed. In a world with voices calling for extreme nationalism seemingly on the rise, it is worth keeping in mind that they’re just something we made up.

    I think it is helpful to replace the somewhat vague word “country” with the slightly more technical term “nation-state”. For, the phrase “nation-state”, in all its hyphenated goodness, helps to articulate the manner in which what we often think of as a singular phenomenon – a country – is usually actually comprised of two separate phenomena.

    Tom Nicholas

    How Countries Were INVENTED (Tom Nicholas)

  • Dirty Dice

    Another song I like: Dirty Dice by Katie Melua.

  • Federal Cuts, Local Impact

    As a small, local example of the impact of how the Trump administration is recklessly cutting down the federal government, the school district my daughter attends has suddenly lost millions of dollars that helped it to attract teachers to work in the district’s highest-need schools.

    The U.S. Department of Education announced last month it was canceling $600 million worth of “divisive teacher training grants” across the country, including $11.78 million for Wake County Public Schools (WCPSS) to implement Project LEADERS (Leveraging Employee Advancement to Develop Excellence and Reach Success). 

    According to WCPSS, the grant helped hire 133 new teachers across the system’s 24 highest-need schools since January 2024, leading to a 40 percent reduction in teacher vacancies in those schools.  

    …

    The Department of Education characterized the grants it canceled as promoting critical race theory, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and anti-racism. In the case of Wake County Public Schools, the money covered $1,500 hiring bonuses, $2,500 retention bonuses, training sessions, and tuition assistance for beginning teachers.

    Chloe Courtney Bohl

    A Teacher Reflects on the Impacts of Federal Funding Cuts to Wake County Schools (Indy Week)

  • A Government against Free Speech

    Despite claiming to be defenders of free speech, the government is using control over research funding and ICE as tools to attack the practice. Its treatment of Columbia University and the students there who protested against Israel’s war against Gaza is a clear sign of how far the administration will go to punish those who say things they dislike and why universities should resist those efforts rather than trying to fight free speech on campus.

    Trump is following Putin’s, Xi’s, and Orban’s playbook. First, take over military and intelligence operations by purging career officers and substituting ones personally loyal to you.

    Next, subdue the courts by ignoring or threatening to ignore court rulings you disagree with.

    Intimidate legislators by warning that if they don’t bend to your wishes, you’ll run loyalists against them. (Make sure they also worry about what your violent supporters could do to them and their families.)

    Then focus on independent sources of information: the media and the universities. Sue media that publish critical stories and block their access to news conferences and interviews.

    Then go after the universities.

    Last week, Trump threatened in a social media post to punish any university that permits “illegal” protests. On Friday he cancelled hundreds of millions in grants and contracts with Columbia University.

    Robert Reich

    The universities are next (Robert Reich)

    Again and again, Columbia has shown a willingness to throw students, faculty, free speech, and academic freedom under the bus in acquiescence to a right-wing, pro-Israel narrative that treats support for Palestinians as an affront to Jewish safety.

    For all Columbia’s appeasement, President Donald Trump’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced last week that it would cancel $400 million in federal grants and contracts to the university.

    Natasha Lennard

    Columbia Bent Over Backward to Appease Right-Wing, Pro-Israel Attacks – And Trump Still Cut Federal Funding (The Intercept)

    This is exactly what happened to Mahmoud Khalil on Saturday night. Khalil, who graduated from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in December, has a green card. His wife, who is eight months pregnant, is an American citizen.

    Immigration agents appeared at his apartment building and told him he was being detained. He now appears to be in a detention facility in Louisiana.

    Khalil did nothing illegal. He has not been charged with a crime. He expressed his political point of view — peacefully, non-violently, non-threateningly. That’s supposed to be permitted — dare I say even encouraged? — in a democracy.

    Robert Reich

    The Trump regime will arrest some of you in the middle of the night because you spoke your mind (Robert Reich)

  • Empathy

    Empathy, the ability to understand another person’s feelings and point-of-view, is essential to civilization. We should all be very skeptical of anyone who presents it as a flaw because what they’re really asking us to do is dehumanize those they view as adversaries.

    The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.

    Elon Musk

    Elon Musk wants to save Western civilization from empathy (CNN)

  • Hallucinations in Law

    When even folks who are well-educated and held to high standards are falling for the lies of generative AI, the tech companies creating these products are clearly failing their customers. It needs to be absolutely clear to anyone using a generative AI product that none of the output from it can be trusted no matter how plausible it sounds.

    Much like a chain saw or other useful by potentially dangerous tools, one must understand the tools they are using and use those tools with caution. It should go without saying that any use of artificial intelligence must be consistent with counsel’s ethical and professional obligations. In other words, the use of artificial intelligence must be accompanied by the application of actual intelligence in its execution.

    Judge Mark J. Dinsmore

    Judges Are Fed up With Lawyers Using AI That Hallucinate Court Cases (404 Media)