25+ yr Java/JS dev
Linux novice - running Ubuntu (no windows/mac)

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 14th, 2024

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  • This is a great question. I’m struggling myself jumping from 30 minute meeting to meeting for 6 hours in a day and I have to remember what is said in each when I haven’t internalized all of the things (so my shorthand notes are often incomplete or even unintelligible) and all the tasks and who they are assigned to so I can follow up or pass them along. And At the sane time I have to multitask during meetings to actually get my job done which means I’m often tuned out for part of the congestion. And the whole time I have to respond to messages, some of them urgent issues that need quick action.

    I do my best to capture everything in Obsidian, but the more stuff I have the harder it is to organize: does something belong in my daily notes, which is more accessible but hardest to find, or is it a quick task where once I complete it and delete it I’ve lost what was done, or is it a standalone task, or is it something that should be documented in project status? FUUUUUUUCK!

    I spend 30-60 minutes a day just organizing my notes and tasks. I have to do any actual work (including said organization) before 9-10am because that’s when the deluge of meetings start and once they are done for the day I’m just spent.




  • The internet is made up of all sorts of disparate connected actors. If you need information management, then it’s up to you to bookmark, screenshot, or even take a web archive of important sources because a web server is ephemeral. There are services that attempt to do this, but they are one server bill or legal challenge or hacking incident away from disappearing.

    But just like you didn’t painstakingly preserve your collection of funny business card pictures because, really, who cares, neither did anyone else. I’d say about 90% of my oeuvre has been lost to the landfill of dead internet (any in many cases, rightfully so). That’s my own writing, which I at least have some interest in. I’ve ready some funny posts in my life, but I didn’t archive them just in case I wanted to experience the joke again.

    So your original question — Is the www using a good information mgmt strategy? — presupposes there is any overarching strategy. There is not. There are places like Google and Amazon which have massive amounts of data redundantly stored throughout the cloud. And there are places like my little webapp I’m running on my Raspberry Pi that has no redundancy, no backup, and at some point a component will die and that will be the end of it.

    Should there be? No. That would place the internet under control of one authority, and I’m pretty certain there is no one except authoritarians who thinks that would be acceptable.



  • He is going to have some angry rants about “supposed allies” who “only supported us while we were footing the bill,” if no one comes to our rescue. I never imagined democracy would fail this hard. There was an example of this in the thirties, but my education spent only the briefest time on the lead up to WW2. “It was inevitable after the humiliating end of WW1.” Except I’m thinking it might have been really fucking evitable had reactionaries not chosen a tyrant to lead them.






  • Yes. This agrees with my personal thesis: AI is a tool experts can use to do work more efficiently, not a product to replace experts.

    I might even conceive of it as a bell curve. It allows novices to accomplish novice-level tasks they never could on their own. It allows experts to work more efficiently. But it doesn’t help mid-tier users to produce expert results and their AI assisted efforts still need to be vetted by experts.

    And expertise needs to be qualified. I’ve been developing software for thirty years, but I’ve never done video game work. I can validate such code is well structured, but I couldn’t say whether it’s doing the right things or put together in the right way.

    We are also probably going to have to think about how software is currently architected. Rich classes might have to give way to separating structure from functions. This allows an expert human to go from a more wholistic approach to thinking about composing functions and overall code structure.

    AI is pretty good if you can limit the scope and context of a given prompt. With the benefit that if AI just can’t get it, a mid-level practitioner can step in.




  • “Starting is the hardest part.”

    I’m a technical lead for my teams. We also have a technical architect, but he’s a bit newer than ME and so it falls on me to do some of the architecture because he’s laser focused on a big project.

    We worked together last week because his designs… well they were bad — so bad I was worried for the project and maybe ultimately his job. But what I found was they were very roughly the right shape and gave context for thinking and refinement, and I was able to question things and suggest all kinds of refinement. Mostly all I did was point out things like this data here seems to be in a process that doesn’t need it. Are we putting the generation of two completely different objects in the same component? That might not be good separation of concerns.

    My own architectural designs… I have none and I’ve had much longer to do them. I need that shit version to refine. I need the brainstorming process with a partner to refine — not all of my suggestions were golden. I got push back and my own ideas fell apart sometimes. The end result is much stronger for our collaboration. But it was an expensive process. Man, I wish AI could fill that role for me.

    In fact my biggest complaint about using AI is that it rarely pushes back and pressure tests me. Even when I prompt it to do so it falls apart under the slightest argument.

    Except strangely, sometimes I have it analyze my words for teams, or email, or especially here, and provide feedback. And every once it a while it’ll fixate on something that is my style and tell me it’s bad or won’t resonate or will push away some readers and I’m like, but that’s my style. If I change that I’m not being genuinely me. And so I don’t change it, but it keeps harping on it. “I know you said you won’t change this but…”

    If only it would do that in any other context.


  • I use Suno on occasion. I enjoy writing poetry, and being able to turn it into a song is something I find fun and inspirational, driving me to write more than I have in decades. I could never, ever write a chord of music.

    I don’t share it. It’s just for personal gratification. If it’s super good maybe I’d share with some friends in discord who are super into AI. Thing is, part of a song might be super good, but I’ve never had an entire song turn or the way I want. And I’ve found no one ever thinks a song is as good or interesting as the prompter.

    AI is like the cheap consumer goods of art and thought. Cheap, but not quality or durable. It works and looks great if gently used, but as soon as it gets any real pressure or scrutiny, it falls apart.

    I think it’s likely, if we continue down that path, to be the artistic equivalent of IKEA vs a master woodworker. You can buy an end table for $30, or you can but something hand crafted from teak and mahogany for $3000. A lot of people like IKEA, but if they weren’t around a nice end table might be $600 and be heirloom quality (if not as good as the $3k one). But today that middle market doesn’t exist. Rather it does, but it’s filled with IKEA quality shit dressed up to look a bit nicer temporarily. I don’t know, maybe my analogy fell apart.

    I’m just saying that these things are fun and interesting on an individual level, but I agree they shouldn’t be commercial. We should just make it so that there are no enforceable rights granted on anything AI produces. It can be freely copied and distributed. But that doesn’t help real artists make a living. And their work should be appreciated and respected (and result in a lifestyle that affords them the ability to keep making art).



  • I pretty much only get work my accepting messages from recruiters on linked in. In 2018 might be the only time in the last 15 years I’ve applied to a job through a website, gotten an interview, and was accepted.

    That said… I’m a technical lead without a 4 year degree in a field where pretty much everyone I work with from mid-developer on up has one. It wouldn’t surprise me if that hurts me specifically in applications other than through recruiters.

    I’m also too old to go back and spend years getting a piece of paper that says I can do the job I’ve been doing for 30 years. So… I guess I’m just saying that my experience may not map well to people in a different stage of their career.


  • I hardly go to concerts any more. I know that’s not a choice everyone is willing to make but when I went to see Cosby, Stills & Nash it was under $100 for tickets. Neil Young with Crazy Horse back around '80 was probably I think sound $40-50. TSO was like $120 just a few years ago. I’m not fucking paying $1500 a seat to take my daughter to Taylor Swift.

    But… I could go see Krewella in Charlotte, NC for $31. Tickets through speakeasy, not live nation. Are they fucking epic? Maybe not, but they have a platinum album and I love their music.



  • I don’t come here for friendly debate or to enrich my worldview. It happens from time to time but there are two many bad faith actors to waste time debating with people that don’t already largely align with my priorities and morality.

    Within those boundaries I’m happy to rethink things and have nuanced conversations and debate with people I already can largely agree on foundational thinking. But frankly at this point in my life if someone comes on here with “but what if Trump is good,” I block. Like in order to get to that point, there has to be extremely little common ground to agree on. There is no hope of reasonable conversation.

    Likely some people feel the same about me.