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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • IMO this is why the Democrats need to start work on the next election candidate yesterday.

    When I say Democrats, I say those that want a progressive leader rather than another “safe” career politician. Find a candidate that is willing to stand, create a section of the Democrats (or back the Democratic Socialists of America), and do everything to empower this person towards running.

    I know that many will say “buh actually there won’t be more elections because Trump evil”. Trump isn’t lasting a third term, nor is he actually going to follow through on half of the shit he says he’ll do. He’s a loose cannon, and he’s already doing shit that’s pissing off the GOP that want Project 2025. Like with the last Trump presidency, the GOP think they control the White House, but in reality it’s demantia-ridden Trump.

    Focus on getting someone in that can spend eight years after fixing what Trump has done.


  • I’ve told this story a few times now, but I never get sick of it.

    Back in 2011 I left a startup that got acquired. On my last day we had a Christmas Party with our parent company, and we got to speaking to one guy that was on his own. After a few drinks, he blurted out that he had worked there for maybe 12 years, but at least 5-6 of those he was “unassigned”. When we asked what that meant, he said that his manager left and he was never assigned to a new team. He badged in every day, and after doing maybe 6 months of busy work and asking “wtf am I doing” to no answer from his department or HR he just came in to do his own stuff or play Unreal Tournament. He had yearly reviews with the head of department, and these were just high-level goal meetings where they reviewed the department, asked what he wanted, and left at that. Each year he was getting between a 2-5% pay rise, and outside of badging in he was only ever judged on his department output.

    I always wonder what happened to that guy. The company is quite large and is still going strong, so he’s probably still there. I won’t name them, but another thing I loved about them was that they didn’t really know where to put Software Engineers, so they just assigned them to Marketing and gave each engineer a marketing budget to personally use - around £10k each. The best part? Everyone in marketing knew it was bullshit, but they pushed everyone to spend it because otherwise their budget would go down. Some highlights were a trip to Toronto to buy some books, a full team trip to Amsterdam to go to a React conference and live in basically 5-star accommodation, and renting a hotel lobby to quickly burn some money on interviewing interns. I think they actually have a tech department now, but I know many people I worked with that stayed for close to a decade because the WLB and perks were just too good to ignore.


  • After close to two decades of programming, C# is still the best language I’ve used. While some of the newer features seem a bit weird, I’d say it’s one of the few languages that has never got in the way and has just let me write code that made sense. Even with all the improvements Java has made over the years it’s still nowhere near as good as what C# was like maybe 15 years ago.

    The same goes for everyone’s other “fav” language, Python. Ruby has been a better beginner scripting language than Python for many years, and while Rails is definitely a ghetto, as a language Ruby is great at teaching great programming fundamentals.


  • It absolutely fucking BAFFLES me that Brooks’ Law isn’t known by every software manager on the planet.

    I’ve quoted it so many times at work, even in engineering focused teams in at least two big tech companies. It’s not a concrete fact, but it explains why so many teams are hilariously shit at delivering software.


  • A lot of people really don’t want to hear this, sadly.

    Both Paul brothers are solid boxers, Jake especially. I’m in no way against their current plan to have weird pro matches because people of their fame would always struggle to have a legitimate amateur career. Admittedly I have little experience of amateur boxing, but in MMA the promotion around these events is often sketchy at best, critically unsafe at worst.

    IMO Jake Paul having 12-15 influencer fights is like having a bunch of amateur fights. He’ll probably only do a few and once he’s ready for a can boxer (perhaps a Tommy Fury rematch) we’ll see him retire. All in all, a fairly standard career for a professional fighter, which for a POS influencer is absolutely great.


  • Yeah, the person above isn’t being accurate at all.

    While here in the UK we rely heavily on the US for control of Trident, the US dropping NATO support would just require additional defence spending and closer alignment with Europe. If Trump is bought by Russia, Putin would see this as a Very Bad Thing, and would want to keep the US in the fold because even with the US NATO would likely steamroll Russia.

    The Trump dynamic is somewhat problematic, should it fester elsewhere in Europe. Globalisation was an important trait to maintain for the US, whereas most populist movements move towards buying local or supporting national interests above all else. Europe is largely self-sufficient, even in defence, so Trump would probably cut off huge numbers of imports/exports just to prop up Elon’s shitty cars.



  • I’m British, and I’d say that this was probably my first time acknowledging what college is like in America. We can legally drink at 18, but we’ve usually got a year or so of drinking behind us already, so university for us is basically just studying between drinking sessions at a time when it’s legal (and encouraged).

    Van Wilder seemed absolutely wild to me, especially the idea of dorms outside of a first year, and all the events that US colleges have for people. The basketball scene especially is wild, because university sports are (again) an excuse to drink with people that like playing basketball. It kinda seemed amazing to me, but yeah, being an older guy around students would be my idea of hell nowadays…


  • EnderMB@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.worldGoogle AI nails it again
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    6 days ago

    I say this as someone in big tech, AI is pushed because it’s an easy lie to keep big companies viewed as innovating to shareholders. I say this knowing that Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon have contributed significantly to AI research in the last few years alongside the obvious contributions of OpenAI - the goal isn’t groundbreaking AI work, but to act as a smoke-screen to show that nothing else has been delivered.

    Google has lost ground in advertising, and is losing customers on many of their services. Amazon is losing ground in cloud computing and in retail. Apple has stagnated with recent poor releases. Microsoft has made ground in cloud, but has struggled in advertising, Xbox, Office, and Windows. They use GenAI to keep their stock price high, otherwise they’d drop like a sack of shit because shareholders would say “what the fuck have you even done in the last half a decade?”


  • Why strike when you can unionize?

    Start building small unions for blue collar roles that focus primarily on employment protection, rather than pushing salaries high. From there, as the cost of living increases, push for a percentage increase that aligns, and strike fully if those demands aren’t met.

    If Trump wants to block migration, then forming unions would be the defining legacy of a Trump administration. He can’t go for cheap foreign labour, and he can’t remove domestic…


  • I work with several Indian people, and sadly this sentiment is very common.

    Many of them transferred from India to the US, and some were lucky enough for their employer to sponsor a green card before the tariffs became insane for people from India.

    Many of them, including those that cannot vote and those that don’t have green cards, love Trump. They actively want to ensure that people from other countries have no route to the US, despite many of them flipping entirely when something happens that jeopardises their ability to stay. Lately, several were celebrating a Trump win because it meant that the stock prices on their RSU’s would rise. If it means layoffs, they’ll criticise Trump or the Dems for their current leadership.

    It’s basically the same as what happens here in the UK. People will either vote for what immediately benefits them only, or they’ll vote for immediate damage for what may be long-term benefits for their beliefs. Very few view the big picture, and many that are directly affected consider themselves to be outliers - the genius that got through.




  • I don’t mean this in a horrible way, but a lot of people on here are extremely entitled when it comes to immigration.The US is an incredibly hard place to move to, even if you are a skilled worker. While it often is easier to move into Europe or Canada, it’s not a given that you can just walk into any of these countries and expect to live there. Immigration is hard!


  • It’s quite simple, and aligns with why he got in in the first place.

    The economy and cost of living is still in the toilet. Trump is a protest vote because competent public servants have failed to even acknowledge that everything costs 2-3x what it did a decade ago. Sad to say, but most people don’t give a fuck about LGBTQIA+ rights, Israel, Ukraine, or anything outside of this.

    Call it apathy if you want, but it’s ultimately a failure of moderates to acknowledge a better social net for people (I.e. left policies) or propping an economy by improving lives for regular people so their money goes further.


  • Go to your Democratic party and demand change.

    Find a candidate that will stand on the basis of free healthcare, equal rights, the right to union, enforcing a higher minimum wage, enforcing paid sick leave and a minimum of 20 days holiday a year, and committing to lowering the cost of living.

    Once someone stands up for this, push them to the moon for the next four years. Tell anyone else NOT on this platform to fuck off.

    Essentially, America needs a Project 2029.


  • EnderMB@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldWhelp
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    9 days ago

    I agree with the sentiment. There are so many “democracy is dead” posts that make me want to scream “motherfucker, it’s dead in America, not worldwide”. The US is one country out of over a hundred. Many of us are just glad that you’ll finally shut the fuck up about your election.

    With that said, from a climate perspective it fucks everyone over. From a business perspective the economy tanking will affect markets worldwide. For Ukrainians and Palestinians, there’s a huge shift towards Russia and Israel that will be problematic for decades.




  • Source: I was a mod on /r/soccer for a while.

    You won’t win this “battle”, no matter what you do. Being a mod is a thankless job, and you’ll piss people off regardless of which side you take. The only thing you can do is be fair and balanced. List your rules out, enforce mostly to the rules, but add common sense, and regularly check in with the community to get feedback.