As a Mac user at work I just close the lid and put the laptop in my back. Windows users shut down and power up again the next day.

Whenever I bring this topic up IRL people inundate me with stories about how much issues arise if they just sleep their computers.

Where I work we haven’t really shut down any projects in the last six years.

We’ve had some smaller projects which got parked due to shifting priorities, but other than that we’ve shipped everything else.

But inevitably, over a career in software there will be projects that don’t make it to production for one reason or another.

Personally I’m very pragmatic about it, but I know people who get very attached to the code they write.

I’m the kind of guy that is passionate about what I’m doing when I’m doing it, not necessarily for all eternity. I’ve written stuff that I’d be more than happy for someone to come and replace, but the thing about revenue generating systems (most people say “legacy”, but I prefer this term) is that they aren’t always easy to replace.

I know we’re not all wired that way, and some people find it harder to see an older system get retired. A consultant I use is more attached to my code than I am, for instance.

Author seems to think that starting salary for developers working for Google is representative as well. The average computer science graduate does not get a job at Google.

People who learn to code because it means job security are not the ones we look to hire. We look for people who are passionate about it, whose interest in the subject is deeper than skin deep.

Not looking for people who live and breathe code, but you need to like to solve problems and like to learn new things.

No idea where the other guy is getting his Lenovos. We’ve been buying Pi’s because of form factor and GPIO.

We had a fair share of those Lenovos in the office when I started (I think they were around $500 in our config back then), but they’ve all been replaced with laptops now.

In my department we run around with $3000 MacBook Pros, so not very budget minded at all.

eBay is not where we buy new hardware.

Pi has been ridiculously expensive and hard to get from 2020 to 2023, and we’ve had applications where we’ve been deploying them.

Think we’ve seen cost up to $200 for a complete kit.

You need power, SD-card, a case, and depending on application also a micro HDMI adapter. It all adds up.

Slight difference if you are just upgrading in place, but comparing the unit price of a bare Pi to a computer with everything that you need is not apples to apples.

Still not a reason to give Google more power.

Not OP, but “something else from another company” is the only thing that makes sense.

I mean, it’s all fine on paper.

But… how… the… fuck… do…. we… get… there???

Communism is fine on paper. Fuck. Even capitalism is fine on paper.

However; through empiric data we can learn that humanity is full of shitheads who want to be in power and have control.

Sadly, as I see it, that is incompatible with any form of utopia.

I’m from Norway and we used to be fucking close to having an utopia for a short while. Politics were civil, the differences between low income and high income were low, and we actually pooled our oil money into a pension fund so that we would be wealthy when the oil age ended.

On top of that we were rich on natural resources and had abundant renewable electricity from harnessing our mountains (read: damming up valleys and putting rivers and falls in pipes) to create hydro power.

Combine that with a socialist government (“the Scandinavian model”) with free education for the masses, affordable housing, free healthcare, some of the best employee protections in the world, great consumer protection with the law basically granting consumers 5 years warranty on everything from cars to phones or TV’s.

Sadly, since everyone was feeling so wealthy everyone stopped caring. Housing is now anything but affordable. Electricity that we paid for by destroying beautiful nature is no longer a resource for the Norwegian people, but thanks to numerous new export cables to Europe and the fact that production is sold on a fucked-up “stock market” where the most expensive bid to produce electricity for any hour of the day sets the price for everyone, we now have extremely high and volatile electricity prices affecting inflation and reducing competitiveness of Norwegian businesses.

On top of that politicians keep getting caught with their hands in the cookie-jar at an ever increasing rate, and I think it must have been 20-30 years since we had a prime minister with actual work experience.

Call me cynical, but good things don’t last if we even get them at all.

The Romans knew it; the masses simply needs to be entertained by bread and circus and you can do what you want.

Social media is the best circus so far, and when everyone is busy debating pronouns or whatever flavor of distraction there is this week the political decisions that actually affect us gets made without anyone paying any attention.

Sincerely though, best of luck with your utopian society. I hope for all of us that we get what you describe.

I sadly suspect we will keep doing what we are doing until it kills the planet.

Obviously I’m doing a poor job at getting my points through if you think I’m arguing for the current state of affairs.

It doesn’t mean I’m against copyright.

The principle of copyright is important, so is copy-left (eg. GPL).

Being for copyright doesn’t mean I am against artists being paid their fair share. These are not contradictory principles.

There are certainly huge problems with parts of copyright legislation, especially in the US, and in particular the DMCA.

I always recommend this TED Talk where Larry Lessig talks about the issues with DMCA, and even though it’s starting to get old now it’s still just as relevant and he is still just as on point:

https://youtu.be/7Q25-S7jzgs

However, the fact that you don’t care about how business works means you ignore the root of the problem - how business works.

I’m not going to argue for communism, but when politicians are for sale to the highest bidder the rest of us lose out.

Feel free to dive into other videos with Larry Lessig if the first one hits home.

I would particularly recommend these two:

https://youtu.be/mw2z9lV3W1g

https://youtu.be/PJy8vTu66tE

Your point of view needs corrective lenses.

Streaming (as a legal business model) is not violating copyright, but streaming changed the business model for a lot of artists negatively.

That’s because in the old days people would buy an album just to listen to a song or two. So basically you get paid up-front for an infinite amount of playbacks.

With streaming artists and copyright holders are paid after the fact, based on the amount of playbacks.

This means singles are much more important than albums, because people don’t really listen to albums like they used to, and if I really like a song and play it a lot it will take a long time before the artist makes an equivalent amount of money as to me buying an album.

It should be fairly obvious that the big record companies come out of this change of business model a lot better because they have a continuous stream of revenue across their played/consumed portfolio, but smaller labels face the same difficulty as the artists.

This has nothing to do with copyright law - which you decide to focus on.

But remove copyright law and no-one is getting paid for anything.

The problem you are complaining about is how labels are milking artists, in lack of a better analogy. A cow gets fed and cared for just enough to make sure milk production keeps going and the cow stays healthy.

A farmer doesn’t cry when a cow gets old and slaughtered, he’ll get a new cow to replace her. That’s just how the business works.

While musical artists are obviously more sentient than cows, record labels follow a fairly similar business model. Help them become creators and make money on the produce.

Obviously not a perfect analogy, but the discrepancy between what the label earns and the artist is nothing new and anyone who was around before streaming should know this.

Yup. Never meant to say bonds didn’t represent tangible value, but definitely see how it could read that way.

That said, I’m sure you can get bonds in companies doing crypto too.

Welcome to modern CV-padding.

Write a blog post about something (basic) you did.

Never mind that you just did it to have something to write about.

Go to conferences to talk about the blog post.

And the next time you change jobs you can pad your resume with all this stuff as if it makes you special.

A lot of companies actively encourage this behavior to market themselves as to better attract candidates.

And then a lot of companies indirectly encourage it through both their hiring process and possibly even their job ads.

Now, don’t take this the wrong way; there’s plenty of good talks at most conferences. There are people blogging about worthwhile software projects too, but there is a high volume of low effort content which really doesn’t add anything.

I’ve even been on both sides of the argument I’m making. Stuck listening to someone who doesn’t really know the topic, and stuck giving a talk about something I don’t really know enough about.

It’s a common misconception that blockchain gives trust. If you control a majority of nodes in a Blockchain system you decide what the truth is.

This opens the door for illicit players to manipulate things their way.

Lack of trust doesn’t replace trust.

Central, provable/accountable, trust is needed for financial systems to work.

Everything else is “Wild West”.

The biggest problem is people trying to peddle it as currency.

It isn’t currency, never will be. Much more alike to bonds.

It’s an investment object with a speculative value, and no tangible value. The only value it has is what the next guy is willing to pay for it.

While currency is deflationary by nature, crypto is entirely based on demand and supply, and sure, as long as people think it will be worth more tomorrow - sky’s the limit.

Like any pyramid scheme it pays out to get in early, and get out before it collapses.

Relying on crypto is high stakes gambling, and people being people is the only reason I can find for it not having collapsed totally already.

All technological advancements have caused changes, many have made entire professions obsolete.

One could even be allowed to imagine that science itself ought to have put priests out of a job, yet that hasn’t happened yet either.

“AI” is a generic term that’s being thrown around a lot.

There’s a huge distance from today’s AI, which at its best is generative AI based on large language models, to actual General AI that is able to learn, understand, and adapt.

Sure, you can train a language model, but it doesn’t make it “smarter” in the same instance.

Do you think Sony isn’t dangerous?

At this point I feel like Facebook and Google are like the East India and West India trading companies sailing the oceans with their own fleet of militarized ships, and X is just a Pirate Ship being piloted by Jack Sparrow from PoC4.

I believe you’re confusing it with the SE.

Also, there was a late color release for the 13 mini, IIRC.

France have nerfed old Apple products before.

My second gen iPod got volume nerfed back in the day because it was playing too loud for French regulations (with the earbuds that came with).

I’m probably one of the few that noticed because I was using a studio headset that required all that output power to play at a decent level.

35+

Never seen or used a check.

Haven’t used cash since the last time I visited the US (2017).