Notices by samir, talks too much (samir@mastodon.functional.computer)

I am seeing so many Americans post about upsetting the cat/dog/catdog by feeding them an hour later (because of DST).

(Maybe Europeans posted this stuff last weekend but I missed it.)

Have you considered just feeding the pet an hour earlier in winter time, and an hour later in summer time?

The cat doesn’t fucking care what the clock says, and it’s not like it makes your life harder. You can adjust, mate.

If you have an automated feeder, just… don’t change its clock.

I think I’d like to start a linkblog again. It’s been a very long time since my last one.

(It was powered by the Share button in Google Reader, so it stopped updating when Reader was switched off. That’s how old it is. Sadly, I don’t have an archive.)

I think feeds are wonderful, but they don’t allow us to reblog so easily. We have to implement that ourselves. I love that @adactio’s linkblog introduces me to new sites all the time. I’d like to do the same.

If you’re interested, the Wayback Machine has a copy of my old linkblog:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110727175847/http://euphoricllama.com/

Apparently the last post was on 17th July 2011.

It’s a shame the CSS wasn’t preserved. I quite liked it.

Looks like it only captured the first page, too.

Donate to the Internet Archive and help them get up and running again: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/internetarchive

@ryanc I guess we need a `====` operator.

Did you know that cats walk in “direct register”, which means that the back paws always land exactly where the front paws were? This is apparently extremely useful for stealthy hunting.

So, when you feel a cat stab its paw with extreme force into your genitals at 4:00 in the morning, remember to brace yourself: there’s another one coming.

Now, I’m off to find some ice. For no reason.

@dysfun And they fail to realise that the people who stayed are not the normal “I just want to go to Google” people.

We are the weird ones. The ones who use DDG and Signal, who turn off location tracking and notifications for everything, who read the fucking licence agreements.

They have no idea who their users are.

So, friends, as of a couple of weeks ago, I am without a job.

If you are looking for someone who will make your software dev team a lot faster, I can probably help you out. I mostly do Rust and Haskell nowadays but let's be honest, I'll probably be fixing your build system no matter what you hire me for.

There's a few more details here: https://functional.computer/

I'm in Zürich, and happy to be remote. Contract or permanent, whatever. CV's available on request. Give me a shout if you're looking!

I am once again calling for a Fedi alternative to Patreon.

In other words, a server where you pay to subscribe, which takes the money on the 1st of the month and amortises the fees across everyone you’re subscribing too.

And then you get a private feed full of goodies. Bonus, you can use your RSS reader!

I would gladly work on such a project, but I am a techie, and tech is a small part of the challenge. If anyone else is planning something and understands the problem space well, let me know.

@welshpixie Where is the button on this thing to send you Jaffa cakes

@sun I think the world has changed. It’s harder to get paid well without working on some VC-funded nonsense now.

Consolidation of money, perhaps.

@babe They used to but the EU passed a bunch of laws against them a while back. Now they can’t publish apps on Ubuntu because Tim Apple won’t let them. Absolute farce. This is why I voted for Brexit.

I consider myself left-wing.

I didn’t always. I used to think of myself as “slightly left of centre”.

I don’t think I’ve changed much. The world has. What we defined as “centrist” 20 years ago is now pretty left-wing. The window has moved right.

Vote left. It’s not even that left any more, it’s what we would have called “not totally insane” even when Reagan and Thatcher were in power.

If I could make one arbitrary, sweeping policy change, I would ban chairs in schools.

I’m completely serious. Chairs are terrible, and we teach children to use them way too early. And then we’re surprised when people grow up sedentary and with perennial backache.

Chairs are designed for a single, unchanging height. The result is people learn to sit very poorly. Too tall? You end up sitting cross-legged and destroying your ankles. Too short? Say goodbye to your posture.

Ten years ago, @mathiasverraes told me (in a room full of people), “Stand up. You can’t think when you’re sitting.” It’s so true. To think, you need to move. To pace, to gesticulate, to breathe.

Chairs are the worst.

We use chairs in school because they are tools of compliance. Children sitting in rows, unmoving, not making a fuss.

Problem is, they’re unthinking too.

Chairs stop kids from learning. But we can’t get rid of them, because we use them to control. With chairs, you can have 30 children to a single teacher. (As long as you don’t expect them to teach them anything.)

Without chairs, I can’t imagine a teacher being able to handle more than 10 kids.

We need chairs, because we under-value education.

Just realised that this whole Return To Office bollocks is the same as forcing kids into seats.

It’s not about productivity, it’s about control.

@james You are absolutely right, and I’m not trying to say JavaScript developers are to blame here, but rather the culture perpetuated by Facebook and others.

It’s more a problem with people who write posts on Medium than people who actually write JavaScript.

I am a JavaScript programmer! I love writing JavaScript! And I hate that everyone keeps telling me to install a dependency to do anything at all.

So you’re right, I was not clear, and I apologise.

It took me a long time but I finally figured out that Copilot and friends are not meant for me, they’re meant for JavaScript programmers.

One of the reasons I’m enjoying Rust is because there’s a culture of being very thoughtful about every line of code you write, and every dependency you add.

Conversely, in JS land, “just add this dependency” is now a meme.

In a land where you’re encouraged to “just” add more boilerplate (thanks, create-react-app), why wouldn’t you outsource that?

It’s a trap. More code is not your friend, it’s your enemy.

Don’t add the dependency. Don’t generate 8000 lines of JavaScript. Write more CSS. Don’t accept the digital grey goo spewed out of tools such as Copilot.

Code is a liability. Anything that helps you make more, quickly, with no effort, is leading you down a very dark path.