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

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  • The Gordon Ramsay anecdote is actually really good, in that in my experience VC’s get a LOT of say in what your business ultimately becomes.

    I worked with someone that was, in all fairness, absolutely clueless about what they wanted, and wanted some VC alongside their rich parents money. The VC took a huge chunk of the business, and ultimately their business launched as something that was completely different to what they thought it would be - because that’s what the VC believed would give them some return. The business went bust in less than a year and launched for maybe 2 months?

    Much like how Ramsay says “your Jamaican restaurant is shit, I’ve remade it into an Italian restaurant because there aren’t any nearby”, taking a lot of VC money almost certainly means they’ll want an equivalent say in your business. It’s not free money, and it absolutely fucks a lot of people up when they take that money and realise that their dream isn’t theirs any more.


  • I’ll die on this hill.

    If you want an easy language for beginners, Ruby is a much better alternative. It’s like a simpler Python, and aside from a crazy loop syntax teaches clean programming principles better than most languages.

    With that said, Rails IS a ghetto, and many of the kinds of companies that use Ruby as their main language are stuck in the past or are full of the biggest toolbags you’ll ever meet. DHH, in particular, built a reputation on being a programming contrarian, so much so that there’s a golden rule where if he says something, the opposite is probably the correct choice.


  • You will never be able to block them from viewing stuff they want to see. They’ll either do it through their friends devices, on other WiFi connections, or at school where networks are hilariously open or easy to bypass.

    The best thing, and frankly the only thing you can do as a parent is to be engaged with them. Make them think critically on subjects, and if something they parrot back is nonsense, call them out on it. Cast that seed of doubt in their mind. If they choose to continue to watch stupid shit, that’s their choice, and it’s only worth stepping in if it’s actively dangerous.







  • In my opinion, country-based immigration paired with needs-based works really well.

    Ultimately, many of the best parts of the culture of a place are because of what people brought with them years ago. Some of the best restaurants are because someone in India moved to the UK, and then moved to the US and brought the culture of Curry Mile or Brick Lane with them, or because a community of Greek railroad workers decided to set up bakeries using their known recipes that all the locals love.

    The same often goes for business. Look at the rise of Aldi and Lidl, and how cheap produce and great workers rights will suddenly make local supermarkets look in bewilderment at how markets they once dominated are being torn away from them.

    IMO, if you have skills to offer, you should be welcome. I’m currently in the process of moving to the US on a high-skilled visa, and it is mad how one country will require thousands in legal fees and 24+ month waits while a country next door will say “Shit, you can teach?! Come join us! If you want to stay permanently that’s fine!”




  • Several reasons:

    • Mastodon is REALLY unfriendly from a UX perspective. To many, federation is a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist for them. In their mind, the early model of federation is like email, a problem that was “solved” years ago by having one corporate product that was much better than others (Gmail).
    • Reiterating, why should people care about the fediverse?
    • The fediverse is lacking the user numbers, and those that do post don’t really interact with others. Spend some time with the newhere tag and you’ll see a lot of people that make the occasional post, send a lot of replies, and end up leaving because that engagement ends up with maybe 2 followers. It’s rather clique-y.
    • Some fediverse sites (e.g. Lemmy) have bad reputations, and Mastodon partly suffers from this. Outside of tech, where people argue with each other all the time anyway, there isn’t really anything worthwhile being posted.

    Generally speaking, how is Mastodon any better than Bluesky? How is Lemmy any better than Reddit? If you can’t answer that in a way the average person gives a fuck about, what’s the argument for using them?


  • I had a chat with someone that is a Senior Staff Engineer at a huge company a while ago, on what I’d say is a pretty big service that millions use.

    They don’t write much code any more, but they debug a lot of issues. The way they described the workflow to mastery is:

    • If you know nothing, ask someone that knows something
    • If you know something, Google, and there will be answer from an expert
    • If you’re an expert and Google doesn’t work, read the docs and specs from the masters
    • If you’re a master, start writing the specs, and offer addendums for when the spec needs to change.

    IMO, Googling gets you 99% of the way there in many situations, but if you know nothing the answer might be in front of you and you wouldn’t know it.




  • I’m really sorry to hear this.

    On your last point, this would largely depend on the country. I say this as someone that has worked with charities that cater to those that are less able, albeit usually with children or young adults that have moved with family. I know first-hand that it is possible - at least to the UK as I had worked on HCI for accessible online resources. Obviously, every case is unique, and it sounds like if you cannot travel this wouldn’t work for you. Most countries have specific rules for those with disabilities, and it would ultimately depend on if you’re alone or if you have family that can support you. It’s complex enough that you’d probably need to speak to a lawyer and not a random software engineer on Lemmy to see what your options are. Hell, if prison is a viable option for you, it may be worth seeing (free) legal advice for your options, or perhaps speaking to whoever your local representative is to see if they can support someone struggling this much.

    It sucks to say, but the reason I mentioned an amount is because people set up GoFundMe for things that are less severe than your situation. If you are at a point where you’re seriously considering prison as a way to survive, I’m sure the fediverse could rally to help in some way, even if it’s just enough to ensure you can afford some more food for the next few months.




  • They’re absolutely not. Where most people on Lemmy are wrong is in saying that most LLM’s just parrot back trained text. The reality is that a LLM action plan will likely contain expert API’s to provide valuable context. All a LLM is nowadays is an orchestrator platform, where it will pass ambiguities to an expert system that knows how to answer or give clarification.

    We’re decades away from “AGI”, if at all. LLM’s aren’t even new, it’s just that big tech has decided that the price of hallucinations and burning several rainforests a month’s to power the fuckers is worth it.