Seeing https://zarf.dev and it struck me: are “airgapped systems” just government sneakernets?

It’s also my sincere belief that once you hit a certain baseline of technical ability, you tend to be able to swap between sub-fields with relative ease.

Build systems are like compilers, are like databases, are like operating systems. PL combines logic and HCI. Front-end programming has a lot in common with distributed systems and embedded programming. And so on.

It’s not all exactly the same. But close enough that concepts tend to translate, and you can always pick up what you don’t know.

I think people might disagree with this one, but hear me out: I don’t feel like people should be able to advance beyond what is now considered “senior” on technical merit alone.

Anything beyond “senior” in tech companies are broadly generally leadership positions. I don’t believe that you should need to re-spec into people management or project management to advance. But I do believe everyone above senior should be able to manage people and projects in a pinch and not do a terrible job.

I think I’ve said this before, but I genuinely believe that broadly speaking communication and other “soft” skills are more important than what are considered “technical” ability. And that becomes increasingly more true as people gain in seniority.

Like, it’s absolutely not an all-or-nothing type of deal. But it’s more that if you can’t effectively work in a group setting, the importance of someone’s individual technical ability increasingly begins rounding to irrelevance.

Wait hold on, being checked for bomb residue at airports is apparently some racial profiling thing??

It happens to me on like, probably half of my flights. Nearly 100% when I’m flying alone. Is it true that that’s not normal?

@noracodes Yeah exactly!

I like to think of AP kind of like HTTP: it’s not hard to think of things that are wrong with it. But for a large part it’s working as intended and is actually being used!

“No but like, Bluesky’s protocol is good! Even better than ActivityPub.”

Sure, I have no doubt. Talented people have worked on it. But what does it mean when the money people come knocking?

Absolutely nothing. Just because a company published docs online on how to access their API for free provides no guarantee they’ll keep granting you access to their API free of charge in the future.

Twitter once had a public API. So did Reddit*. Both wanted to make more money. Now they no longer do.

@marshray @dysfun

? this line of reasoning only makes sense if you believe the status quo is the best things could possibly be.

@dysfun

Impossible is nothing. But likely? Not when you owe VC firms millions.

No no Yosh, you’ve got it all wrong you see. Bluesky is a “public benefit corporation” that means that they’re not just out for money. Instead they’ve got to, uh,

…

umm,, let’s check Wikipedia:

Benefit corporation - Wikipedia

(en.wikipedia.org)

> “Their activities may or may not differ much from traditional corporations.”

…oh.

The obvious answer here of course will be ads. It usually tends to be ads.

Or maybe since Bluesky was originally founded by a shitty crypto person and just took on more debt from shitty crypto people it’ll be some new revolutionary conical-shaped money scheme.

Who knows. I don’t care enough to find out.

Headline: “Wow, Bluesky managed to get $8 million in funding”

What you should be reading:

“Bluesky took on an additional $8 million in debt, which they will need to be pay back with interest one way or another”

How are they going to be doing that, you wonder? Well reader, certainly not just by selling domain names at a slight markup.

Regular reminder that Bluesky is a VC-funded company which inevitably is headed for the same fate shared by all VC-funded companies. It must maintain hypergrowth until it either:

- folds
- sells
- IPOs

Maybe tuning into another re-run of the social media VC show is appealing to some, but it certainly isn’t for me.

What EDC influencers claim you need to have on you at all times:

- emergency knife
- fire starting equipment
- various wrenches and screwdrivers

What I actually need to have on me:

- water bottle
- chapstick
- umbrella

@mauve I feel like something in your explainer doesn’t quite sound right?

I don't know what you’re doing exactly, but the way I'd phrase it is: Rust’s borrowing rules require that each reference must be either mutable XOR shared. `Arc<Mutex<T>>` allows you to break that limitation and have a reference which is mutable AND shared.

idk, does that match the way you were thinking about it?

Pet theory: learning a 36-key keyboard layout is not harder than learning a standard 100-key layout. It’s just different enough that if you learn one it takes a while to get used to the other.

In other news: I broke 60wpm using the Canary layout the other day! This is the third week I'm daily driving my new keyboard, and I'm slooooowly starting to feel like I can actually get work done at a reasonable speed on this.

Conveniently: I've also had zero RSI or shoulder issues during these last three weeks. But it’s hard to say whether that’s been because the changes are actually helping, or whether being forced to slow down is what's actually helped.

@noracodes pretty!!