neo [he/him]

You’ve got a back room and you’re not using it as a cool-ass hackerspace?

I have NOT tried this but according to https://massgrave.dev/change_windows_edition you can change the windows edition. I would not try it without backing up my most important files, regardless. I don’t use Windows so the opportunity for me to try it doesn’t exist, but the option is good to keep in mind.

Bazzite works pretty well and the ublue ecosystem is pretty cool, but there are unfortunately sometimes “decision-making strategies” you must employ. As an example, say you want to install yt-dlp. What’s the best path?

• rpm-ostree is not advised, such that you don’t want to modify the core system, even though Fedora keeps yt-dlp up-to-date. So this would technically work fine.
• brew installs yt-dlp but also a bunch of other stuff. Notably, you get an entirely second copy of Python.
• Distrobox/toolbox works well, but now you have a whole OS container. Just for one command?
• PIP is yet another way to install it, but using a lot of pip can lead to an insane python dependency hell (and it seems that if you want a self-deployed application pipx is the play, but you’ll have to set that up yourself)
• Manually downloading yt-dlp to avoid the drawbacks of the above, with the drawback of have to remember to update it yourself.

That said, I’m using Bazzite on my Steam Deck in particular because it allows me to have full disk encryption, which is mandatory for me because I use it as a generic computer and not just as a steam appliance. And also because with Bazzite the maintenance I personally have to do for it is about as minimal as SteamOS.

Proprietary software is a complete infringement of human dignity and freedom. Desktop Linux is also better now than it has ever been. In fact, given the direction of the latest versions of Windows and macOS, it is in many ways a better experience than those. I won’t lie and say Linux is unequivocally better in every way, though.

somehow i doubt this is remotely true outside of “some of us watched the movie between its release and now” and it’s getting clickbait spun into “they’re preparing for the real thing by watching a movie!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XXMs3FO50M

Plaquemines Superintendent Shelley Ritz said Justice Department officials still visited every year as recently as 2023 and requested data on topics including hiring and discipline. She said the paperwork was a burden for her district of fewer than 4,000 students.

“It was hours of compiling the data,” she said.

Damn, I hate doing a few hours of work as part of my superintendent job.

Recent grads, or older ones? I graduated in 2016 from a large state school and I had many very brilliant peers in the CS program. Obviously, there were still plenty of people who were, “what are you even doing here?”-tier. I assume the younger gen of grads (2020-onwards) got mega-screwed by COVID lockdowns, remote learning, etc.

One thing I’m being a bit dismissive of is for a lot of people college is just “the next step” for youngsters who get railroaded into it, without a clear vision of what they’re doing and what they want to do with their lives. By contrast, some of the bootcamp people I’ve seen are driven, focused, and self-motivated. They figured out what they want, and they know how to direct themselves to get it. Those kinds of people tend to be good at anything they apply themselves to, including software dev.

I just assume communities like that are dead, because SWE used to be an actually good job and fellow SWEs were probably on average more competent. Then the 2010s happened. Coding bootcamps, floods of people who are just coming into the field because it pays well but without a fundamental curiosity or interest in what’s technically going on, MOOCs, FreeCodeCamp… you name it.

Everyone was told to learn to code and that they could code. I think it’s even fundamentally true. I don’t want to gatekeep knowledge, but the people orchestrating this kind of thing were just trying to make today’s moment happen: make software engineer labor cheap.

Except what they did is they just attracted a lot of people into a field who are clueless, or as you said careerists, AND cheap. So now we’re in the 2020s and ChatGPT has come and just made everything that much worse for everybody. Let’s take stock of the kinds of people who became SWEs over time.

Always true: You could be very talented and self-taught. These people do exist.

before 2012: You had to pass an accredited computer science curriculum to get
into the field.
[ Up until 2012 everyone fit the above two categories. Computer science is not
an easy topic. It weeded out people who couldn't keep up with the work. This
kept the skill level relatively high. ]

2012-2021: You had to hack it in a coding bootcamp or MOOC with a basic
certificate that claims competency. More people could just claim being
self-taught than before. Especially for the web, frameworks can cover for the
harder parts of programming. Think: the NPM importer developer.
[ Now you have a lot of people joining the field with various competencies. Some
of these people are really good, but many are not. Computer science departments
expanded to accommodate more students with massive grants from places like the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, so more people are coming into these programs,
too. ]

2022-2023 (layoffs)
[ Now the situation is getting desperate for many people. People who were nicer
before are now tightening their belts because they've seen hundreds of
thousands of layoffs. Do you want to be next on the chopping block? Are you
happy with life right now? ]

2023-2025: You just ask the chatbot to give you the answer. You have no way of
assessing if it's the right answer.
[ Anyone can do this. Many people try to do this. I've spoken to very tired
recruiters who just have to sift through endless bullshit AI spam applications
and applicants. People who were bad at their job are now offloading what little
skill they used to have to this, and are therefore de-skilling themselves, too. ]

I think you want to rewind the clock, but unless you build a new community and set the rules this stuff is just dead.

JD Vance was injected with FOXDIE. First the pope, now Xi.

For me it’s the cool tanks -> cool tanks included in video games pipeline. Same with fighter jets and Ace Combat.

You don’t get a promotion for being the one to STOP the plan. You get a promotion for DELIVERING results (a make-work program for your buddies in private industry). Oh well, fuck the USA.