We used to have good, strong open source tools made out of C (which is a lot like steel - it can only be worked by blue collar computer nerds with muscly brains). Now that steel core is corroding because of the influence of hackers and other white collar computer sorts with their creative problem solving, and unintended uses of memory.

That new corrosion is called rust, and it eventually appears on every C project that’s left outside, unless someone comes along to brush it off occasionally.

I’ve worked more than one place that did constant phishing testing, and also corporate creatures would send out links to websites we’ve never used before that everyone was required to click, so the only way to tell whether this was in the “get fired for clicking” or the “get fired for not clicking” bucket was that phishing test header. They never understood why this was a problematic combination, and never stopped doing both.

Pretty sure stones have to weigh 14 pounds…

You’re right, I want thinking of the manager thermals as counting as another person for the purposes of “alone with”, but provided they can move back and forth simultaneously with their employee (or they’re always counted as part of the new team) then the puzzle is possible.

You may be a paid agent, but not for long. I’m reporting screenshots of this straight to DOGE.

It’s not, the way it’s written, the asshole cannot coexist with either the bore or the idiot, which is pretty accurate.

Ideas can only be patented, not copyrighted. If a company designs something novel enough to qualify for a patent, and so good that people willingly pay for the feature, that’s impressive, and arguably still a good thing. If instead they design a better user experience, or an improvement in performance, the ideas can be used in open source, even when the code cannot be.

That’s my favorite kind of conservation.

They don’t do the math for this in the article. A recipe I found says it takes 2.5 cups of almonds to make a gallon of almond milk. Another source says there are 92 almonds average in a cup. With the figure given in the article, 3.2 gallons of water to grow one almond, that means each gallon of California grown almond milk requires use of 736 gallons of water.

They mention it takes 30-50 gallons of water to sustain a cow, but don’t mention that much of that is water required by growing grass, which is water that cannot readily be put to other uses. They also fail to mention the average milk production of a cow: 7.5 gallons per day in the US, so that’s only (roughly) 7 gallons of water per gallon of cow’s milk produced.

I’m under the impression other plant based milks are radically more water efficient, but aren’t as profitable as almonds.

A very long sidenote: I was curious about the water consumption of almond trees. I found that a typical tree will produce roughly a ton of almonds over a 30 year lifespan. They will also produce about 7 times that much mass of shells around the almonds. The tree will weigh between half and a full ton by the end of that 30 years. I couldn’t find a number I trust for how much leaf matter is discarded by a typical orchard tree in 30 years of growing, but I expect that to be substantial also. Overall, it seems that a typical orchard almond tree needs 20-25 thousand gallons of water per year, versus 6-8 thousand for other trees of a similar size.

I’m bragging when I say this: A decade ago, I rewrote an indecipherable mess of code into an elegant and transparent procedure, nestled comfortably inside every sanity/insanity check I could think of for the situation. Today, that code (aside from an update for a vulnerable dependency) is still running just the way I wrote it.

Releases should be fast and rare.

My situation might be unique there (and I realize describing this that calling them “my meetings” might be deceptively inaccurate). I support tools used by multiple teams, so when they’re upgrading or planning, I should be there, but the rest of the time I have nothing to add to their efforts. The result is I’m invited to roughly 20 hours of meetings per week, and attend closer to 8.

I’m super unproductive when I work remote. I don’t attend all my meetings, I average about 0.4 MRs per day, and probably only 10 lines of code. I make lazy post-development tickets just to check the box. I sometimes take hours to respond to messages, and I frequently end my day at only 5-7 hours worked.

Mysteriously, none of those things is a good way to measure productivity for software development, and mandating that everyone look like they’re working hard does not ensure optimal creative problem solving.

According to my brief googling, there are 131.43 million households in America, and either 79 or 80 million American households own dishwashers. I could not find a breakdown by state, but I suspect they’re predominantly popular in wealthier areas, and less popular in poorer areas.

I felt it was not immediately obvious that 314159 is a prime number, and wanted to remind people. It’s also a twin prime, but as the good twin… I try not to bring up 314161, unless there’s a compelling reason.

They only came out 10 years ago. If we optimize now, how will we integrate an AI chat agent feature next year?

Delete Ass Master volume 7 to make room - that one wasn’t any good anyways.

I’m fortunate to work at a place that offers some leave for paternity, but with the option of being “flexible” about it. I’ve seen most of my coworkers take off for 2-4 weeks (out of 6), then return to work half time or so once things start settling. Two have taken all 6 weeks, one for medical reasons (baby needed follow up), and one purely to spend more time with baby/wife.

I haven’t needed paternity leave, so I don’t know how much more money you get for returning to work early, but I think I’m inclined towards taking 3 weeks, then coming back to work unless there’s something wrong. There’s a bunch to admire about prioritizing your time bonding over money, and I don’t want to take anything away from that - it’s just not me.

They’re vaccers because they suck.

Same sex marriage was such a good example of democracy working. MA stood alone, defiant and proud, for years. Then some of the neighboring states went “You know what? They didn’t get smote with fire and brimstone. Maybe I can do that too.”

Only 10 years after Massachusetts took the first step, it was growing past the recently blue states as voters came around to accepting it, and if it had another 5 years, we would’ve been taking would-be holdouts like Texas.

That process was cut short, but I haven’t seen any polling that suggests we’re not still collectively sliding that direction, so even if the supreme court reverses Obergefell v. Hodges, I don’t think there’s popular support for bans this time.

Anyone born to an American citizen is an American citizen, regardless of where it happens. Most foreign countries don’t grant citizenship based on place of birth the way the US does, so if you go to Afroeurasia expecting to get a dual citizenship for your child, it’s likely to fail, but they would still be an American.