LaGrange

Don’t forget to light some candles and invoke the name of the Omnissiah while you’re at it.

Yeah, that too. Like, being old enough to get my start largely in internet cafes means I actually _had_ in-person interactions with the type of person we're talking about - and they were _not_ nicer.

Being kinda big I might even stand a chance against one - unless they had a knife, which they probably IME did - but there was always at least 5 of the "lonely lost boys," at least one carrying a baseball bat everywhere.

As a parent now (but oldest is only 5), it's stories like this which make me determined remain aware of the kind of stuff my kids get up to and continually explain that actions have consequences, even if those consequences are seemingly as trivial as making someone else feel shit about themselves.

Weird, somehow without significant parental surveillance or explicit explanation I somehow managed to _not_ do much of the awful stuff my acquaintances with much more engaged parents did.

Must have been my autism, I guess.

Yep, that. Sorry, growing up in Poland I know the amount of horrors the EU _prevented_.

Europe without EU isn’t democracy, it’s a bunch of fiefdoms.

I will keep using POST and not some weird thing that isn’t supported by a proxy living in the basement of a shoe store in Wageningen or whatever.

Frontends and relays are far closer to “quacking like an instance.” That’s where your sysop’s power lives. The PDS itself isn’t very powerful - can’t meaningfully limit who you can talk to, for example.

By 2031 the best employer in Europe will be the water gangs.

Other paper books. Or the same books but electronic or reprinted when the demand is higher. Just not the exact same pieces of highly fetishized dead wood.

Some people truly love paper books more than having people read books. It’s one of the more seemingly paradoxical ways anti-intellectualism manifests.

No we don’t. And the greatest hazard is the soul crushing disappointment that is a Dutch tomato.

It's so funny reading about how the problem with Wayland is that you have many, often incomplete, implementations while being old enough to remember the time when X11 was actually popular (and thus had many, often incomplete, implementations).

If you’re a software engineer then yes, I can and do expect you to understand all that.

I mean normal people shun LLM users so it’s no wonder it’s true for you.

I don't think we're Ukraine's "teachers," and our treatment of Ukraine was historically just as rough at times.

We were. And “hard workers” is code for “easily exploited.”

Anyway the trick to explosive growth as a country is who you trade with and how you count things. We now sell things to Germany instead of USSR, of course there’s “growth.” There’s also some very real growth, quite a bit of it - but I wouldn’t put one bit of care in a “top 20 biggest economies” ranking. NL is one of the biggest food exporters in the world because it sells mediocre tomatoes to Germany instead of selling rice to Brazil and food exports are counted in euros, not calories.

Swimming. Lakes generally don't come with a securely closed box, and even if I come with company, they usually want to swim at the same time.

Of course I don't have to actually _use_ the phone while swimming, so it goes into a waterproof pouch - but having a 2nd layer of defense is nice.

I'm an AI skeptic, but I do think that _he_ will be out-coded by AI, no problem.

Thing is, it's not how incompetent they are, but the opportunism itself. The property I mentioned pulls in opportunists regardless of their competence. So eventually if you work in a field like this, you end up surrounded by them. There's always _some_ around you, of course, everywhere - but across time different fields tended to pull so many of them they would become suffocating to anyone who isn't one. And if you think you can interview your way out of this - an opportunist will often have an easier time to pass a harsh interview process than someone who cares.

IT isn't the only one - finance and law had the issue since forever, AFAIK - but now I'd rather be in a field that's _actively repellent_ to them.

For at least the last 3 decades programming was a field that rewarded utter mediocrity with (relatively to other fields) massive remuneration. It has been filled with opportunists for as long as I remember.

Bluntly? Because working with y'all is becoming insufferable. Because I don't want to work in IT. Note this isn't "I don't want to program" or whatever. That's cool and fun. But the people in here? Oh gods.

Also I'm sick and tired of working on projects where the best social benefit from my work would be if I stopped. And IT has this talent of doing this to even most superficially useful projects. I worked on solar panel software that got turned into a scam by marketing. That takes a talent, of sort.

The best time to jump out of IT was to never get into it. The second best time is now.

As for why barista? People need food and drink and coffee is great.

That sounds quite expensive to start, to be honest. But if you can? Sounds fun.

Changing flats so it's cheaper (it's hard but still possible here), then go for an entry-level "barista" job.

It's gonna be very broke, but I'm not the first one in my friends circle to make the jump, so I have some support.

Edit: I probably will keep coding. Just... nobody else is ever going to see or use my code again.

I mean, that works for you since you're retiring. But for people still working in the industry, you adapt or die. As it's always been.

There are jobs outside of IT. They are harder, they have less benefits, they pay less. It's a whole project to switch your lifestyle so you can even afford them.

I know nobody who regrets making the jump. I hope to make it within this year. I'll be poor, but at least I won't work in IT.

But understanding the optimal work flow for what to delegate and what to do yourself is difficult.

No it's not, you can learn it in less than a day. I've done it a few times while evaluating how much the agents have progressed (despite what people keep saying, not much).

Understanding the need for precision in the language used, and learning how to elegantly phrase things that were previously just abstract thoughts is absolutely a talent that can be refined.

Some of us learned technical writing to communicate with _humans_ before, and we're sitting here alternating crying and laughing as y'all scramble to figure it out just to put all that into a hallucination machine.

You can still do creative thinking while using AI as a powerful tool at your disposal.

It remains the case that AI _erodes_ your ability to that.

So, eventually, after a few years, no, you can't.

Edit: meanwhile you're making yourself disposable. So, have fun with that.

Because adults remain children. As in, their parent’s kids and therefore property. [edit: I should mention also property of the state beyond that] It’s less explicit in US I guess but in some places that’s very blunt - if you don’t support your parents enough you can be sued for abuse. And there are situations where an adult in us has been declared too irresponsible and forced into conversion camps by parents in the US. It’s insane, yes, and if you’re lucky enough this might be entirely invisible to you. But if you’re gray or trans or autistic and get a but unlucky this can become a very harsh reality.

Protect the children refers to a type of property, not a type of human.

It’s not unlimited. The limit might be very high these days, but it’s at most bandwidth times duration. And while that sounds trivial, it does mean they aren’t selling you an infinity of a resource.

I mean, looking at it in 2026 Word 2000 looks _amazing_. How far my standards have fallen.

And yeah, I've met a lot of people who love Figma. I hate it so much, personally, getting around and finding what I need in it is so much pain.

lol that’s a line so incredibly naive it hurts.

One does not “simply” reduce spending.

It might work against people just use their Mini Mac with OpenClaw to summarize news every morning,

Good enough for me.

More centralized web ftw.

This ain't got anything to do with "centralized web," this kind of epistemological vandalism can't be shunned enough.

It was. I was differentiating between eating them (evidence unclear) and breathing them (pretty clear).