kari's recent activity

  1. Comment on Recommendations needed: Favorite “comfort” movies in ~movies

    kari
    Link
    I haven’t seen Ferris Beuller’s Day Off mentioned; I probably watched it close to a dozen times in high school and still watch it every year or so

    I haven’t seen Ferris Beuller’s Day Off mentioned; I probably watched it close to a dozen times in high school and still watch it every year or so

    1 vote

  2. Comment on Scott Adams dead: Dilbert creator was 68 in ~comics

    kari
    Link Parent
    I fell a couple years behind on BtB and my next up is the two Scott Adams episodes with Matt Lieb, which made me chuckle when I saw this news.

    I fell a couple years behind on BtB and my next up is the two Scott Adams episodes with Matt Lieb, which made me chuckle when I saw this news.

    4 votes

  3. Comment on Doppi, the nicest player for your music files in ~tech

    kari
    Link Parent
    Yeah, that's definitely a big thing. If it wasn't relatively common for Last.fm scrobbling to be supported, I probably wouldn't do it, but you (usually) just have to log in once on any music...

    between last.fm and trakt, there is nothing required from me.

    Yeah, that's definitely a big thing. If it wasn't relatively common for Last.fm scrobbling to be supported, I probably wouldn't do it, but you (usually) just have to log in once on any music player that supports it and it'll happily scrobble till the end of its days. I don't even check my stats super often, but it's fun to go in every month or so and see what I've been listening to.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Doppi, the nicest player for your music files in ~tech

    kari
    Link Parent
    I just think it's fun, to be honest :P

    i don’t ever get why anybody cares about that stuff

    I just think it's fun, to be honest :P

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Doppi, the nicest player for your music files in ~tech

    kari
    Link Parent
    But it’s ugly and doesn’t support scrobbling AFAICT

    But it’s ugly and doesn’t support scrobbling AFAICT

    1 vote

  6. Comment on Regarding travel agency exoticca.com in ~travel

    kari
    Link Parent
    For me, as an American, the Shinkansen is part of the experience travelling in Japan, tbh.

    For me, as an American, the Shinkansen is part of the experience travelling in Japan, tbh.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Regarding travel agency exoticca.com in ~travel

    kari
    Link Parent
    Japanese politeness levels are so confusing. Before I was just there, everything I saw online (mostly Instagram Reels type stuff) was people saying how "Arigatou" (on its own) is more familiar and...

    Japanese politeness levels are so confusing. Before I was just there, everything I saw online (mostly Instagram Reels type stuff) was people saying how "Arigatou" (on its own) is more familiar and some people will take it as a bit rude if you use it to them without knowing them.

    But also, as a white guy, I feel like people there assume I'm a dumbass from the get go and my attempts at Japanese are either welcome or, from people who really don't like the foreigners there, completely ignored, so I didn't stress too much. I did bust out a few 「生ビールを一つください」s though and everyone liked that :P

    5 votes

  8. Comment on Regarding travel agency exoticca.com in ~travel

    kari
    Link Parent
    I think Androids sold in the US don’t support the same protocol that Japanese IC cards use, at least, that’s how it was when I went a couple of years ago. iPhones are fine with Suica, though.

    Get a suika on your Apple/Google wallet for the metro trips.

    I think Androids sold in the US don’t support the same protocol that Japanese IC cards use, at least, that’s how it was when I went a couple of years ago. iPhones are fine with Suica, though.

    4 votes

  9. Comment on Doppi, the nicest player for your music files in ~tech

    kari
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Make sense! Sorry if I came off harsh! Haha yeah, my bad. I just saw "author" and am used to thinking about authors of software, personally, so that just popped into my head and I completely...

    Make sense! Sorry if I came off harsh!

    I'm the author of the blogpost, not the app.

    Haha yeah, my bad. I just saw "author" and am used to thinking about authors of software, personally, so that just popped into my head and I completely forgot to look who wrote the article lol. My bad!

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Regarding travel agency exoticca.com in ~travel

    kari
    Link
    I've been to Japan twice and both times I just kind of did whatever without a travel agency (well, one time I technically booked my flights through one but it was nominally a work trip and it was...

    I've been to Japan twice and both times I just kind of did whatever without a travel agency (well, one time I technically booked my flights through one but it was nominally a work trip and it was the work travel agency), so I might not be the best to answer your specific question about travel agencies but I have some (hopefully) relevant advice.

    One thing is that, before the first trip I took, I saw multiple people online suggesting things along the line of "look for tours online and just copy their itinerary yourself". So, if you're looking for a travel agency so that you can just get a good itinerary, I think that's a good alternative. I didn't end up doing this and just kind of found things I wanted to do over the course of my day-to-day time on the internet up until the trip, but worth thinking about.

    [I]s it best that I engage in the grunt work to book all the hotels ahead of time?

    If not having to look for hotels is the only reason you want a travel agency, I'd probably just look through Booking.com to be honest. That's what I did and it took maybe 30 minutes per city for my girlfriend and I to find hotels that had a combination of affordability, location, and size/amenities/etc. You could always look at some hotels before you decide whether it's worth cancelling with this exoticaa agency.

    My last thing is, depending on how many days you want to stay in Kyoto, it may be cheaper and almost as easy to stay in Osaka the whole time and just take the train to Kyoto. It's around a 30-minute train ride each way for something like ¥1200 (around $7.50) but, at least when I was looking in October for my trip this past December, hotels in Osaka were a lot cheaper. On top of that, starting March 26th, Kyoto's nightly tourism tax for hotel stays is increasing (for cheaper hotels it's only a few dollars, for more expensive hotels it's up to around $65/night). If you want to stay more than a day or two in Kyoto, it's probably worth it to just stay in Kyoto, though, so you can go back to your hotel during the day and all that stuff.

    8 votes

  11. Comment on What's something you're "in too deep" on? in ~talk

    kari
    Link Parent
    Yeah, besides those, the only real issue I've had was the profile update last(?) year when I tried to update the profile on my desktop an hour or so after the new profiles came out and I kept...

    Yeah, besides those, the only real issue I've had was the profile update last(?) year when I tried to update the profile on my desktop an hour or so after the new profiles came out and I kept running into issues, but eventually I got that sorted. On my server, it was as easy as following the instructions (and waiting ages for the world rebuild, but with binpkgs that's not terrible).

    1 vote

  12. Comment on Feeling weird about my career with respect to AI in ~life

    kari
    Link Parent
    Oh yeah, for sure, lol. I’ve still applied to stuff that says 5 minimum anyways, but I think it’s just that, like I said, it feels like the minimum years of experience goes up every time I look at...

    That feels like a bit of a overreaction to a whopping 0.5 years lol

    Oh yeah, for sure, lol. I’ve still applied to stuff that says 5 minimum anyways, but I think it’s just that, like I said, it feels like the minimum years of experience goes up every time I look at jobs and I’m always just shy of it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    But yeah, when it says something like 6 months off I usually have still applied (and had some interviews before, but nothing so far this time of applying to jobs but also it’s been the holidays so who knows).

    2 votes

  13. Comment on What's something you're "in too deep" on? in ~talk

    kari
    Link Parent
    Gentoo home lab gang

    Although I run Gentoo Linux and that, being on the bleeding edge, gets complicated sometimes, but so far so good.

    Gentoo home lab gang

    1 vote

  14. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    kari
    Link
    At work, I'm on the data plane team for a series of enterprise IPS appliances and me and a couple of other people have started research into implementing QUIC/HTTP/3 inspection via a MITM (this...

    At work, I'm on the data plane team for a series of enterprise IPS appliances and me and a couple of other people have started research into implementing QUIC/HTTP/3 inspection via a MITM (this would be inbound/server-side only, at least to start). So far, I've mostly just been reading the QUIC RFCs, but it's been interesting to learn about. I've known of QUIC for a while and have had it enable on my home server for at least a few months, but haven't known too much about the specifics before now.

    5 votes

  15. Comment on Doppi, the nicest player for your music files in ~tech

    kari
    Link
    Definitely interested in trying this but it seems like an ad? Not sure what the policies are like on Tildes so maybe that's fine. ~rodrigo, I'm assuming you're the Rodrigo mentioned as an author?...

    Definitely interested in trying this but it seems like an ad? Not sure what the policies are like on Tildes so maybe that's fine.

    ~rodrigo, I'm assuming you're the Rodrigo mentioned as an author? Any chance you could add ListenBrainz scrobbling (if I actually end up using the app)?

    2 votes

  16. Comment on Doppi, the nicest player for your music files in ~tech

    kari
    Link Parent
    Same here, too. I might actually get a month subscription of this app to try it out. I have a couple hundred gigabytes of flac (and some mp3) on my iPhone but the app I currently use (Doppler) has...

    Same here, too. I might actually get a month subscription of this app to try it out. I have a couple hundred gigabytes of flac (and some mp3) on my iPhone but the app I currently use (Doppler) has been having a few bugs. If I like it, I'd definitely do a lifetime purchase after that.

    2 votes

  17. Comment on Feeling weird about my career with respect to AI in ~life

    kari
    Link Parent
    Thank you! I definitely try to do stuff outside of work, when I can. I usually spend more time working on my home lab so not directly programming related but it’s still something I enjoy a lot....

    Thank you! I definitely try to do stuff outside of work, when I can. I usually spend more time working on my home lab so not directly programming related but it’s still something I enjoy a lot. The big thing I’ve wanted to do is work on a Window Manager for the new rwm protocol for the River Wayland compositor, but yeah, it’s hard sometimes to have the energy to get off work and then program more haha

    4 votes

  18. Comment on Feeling weird about my career with respect to AI in ~life

    kari
    Link Parent
    I will admit, I’ve felt a lot better at my job over the past year or so than the first couple of years, but I think just looking at new jobs and everything says 5-7 years required for any higher...

    4.5 is a fair amount for software engineering - you're certainly not entry level anymore.

    I will admit, I’ve felt a lot better at my job over the past year or so than the first couple of years, but I think just looking at new jobs and everything says 5-7 years required for any higher level positions which probably batters my self-confidence a bit.

    The more you go up in level, the more your responsibilities shift from writing code to executing projects holistically.

    That’s definitely something I’ve thought about. The architect on my team has been here for like 20 years and he essentially never writes code anymore. Some of the other Sr Staff engineers who have been here a decade or more still write code, but are constantly getting pulled off to either review PRs (for humans, at least, lol) or to help with planning new projects and features. But at the same time, it still feels like they get to actually think about the code and try figure out what we need. Maybe it’s just my company going a little hellbent on AI (or the trainings from NVIDIA, Anthropic, etc., so of course they want us to use it more) but it seems like they don’t want us to really think at all for ourselves.

    I think you’re ultimately right, but I still feel weird about it (and am probably pretty terrible at expressing my feelings haha).

    In the end, if I have to use LLMs to help me, I’m okay with that, but maybe it’s just something I have to spend more time getting used to.

    2 votes

  19. Comment on Feeling weird about my career with respect to AI in ~life

    kari
    Link Parent
    Yeah, for us early last year they added some LLM PR-reviewer thing and it started off pretty crap given us suggestions that were blatantly incorrect and bad summaries, but it’s gotten better...

    We're using it fairly responsibly, with it being used to generate released documents, preliminary PRs, PR summaries, etc. Stuff that AI's really good at and is easily checked by a human. Devs also use it, but it's not mandated.

    Yeah, for us early last year they added some LLM PR-reviewer thing and it started off pretty crap given us suggestions that were blatantly incorrect and bad summaries, but it’s gotten better lately (not sure if they upgraded the model it’s using or just integrated it with our codebase better, because the whole repo is something like 70M LOC and the stuff that we actually work on day-to-day is around 1M). Even at its worst, that’s just a quick comment I have to read and can see if it’s worth exploring more, and at its best it’s helped me fix a couple of edge case bugs I missed.

    Years ago a Senior Dev warned me against using git UIs because they "make you lazy and forget the command line" and I kind of laughed it off, but he was right and I'm seeing that happen with AI. It's making me lazy and forgetful because I can just let the stupid robot do it for me.

    At first it was a huge benefit because I could use it to quickly ramp up on new projects and start making impact immediately, but those accomplishments now feel hollow and I want to just...write code myself. I want to go back to the old days of nothing but my wits and an IDE. Even if my wits let me down from time to time!

    I think this is kind of the thing for me. I actually had Claude help me figure out and fix a bug I’d been stuck on for a week or two, but the explanation it gave for the fix was just wrong/incomplete so it took me another three or four days of trying to look at it to actually be able to articulate why the fix worked to my coworkers. Yeah, it still probably sped me up, but at the same time, if I keep using Claude for every change I feel like I’d just continue getting lazier and forgetting how the whole codebase works.

    14 votes

  20. Feeling weird about my career with respect to AI

    ~life Ask
    I’m a software engineer. I graduated in 2021 so I’ve only been one for around 4.5 years and definitely still feel fairly entry-level (at least, any time I look at jobs, the number of years of...

    I’m a software engineer. I graduated in 2021 so I’ve only been one for around 4.5 years and definitely still feel fairly entry-level (at least, any time I look at jobs, the number of years of experience required for “senior” positions seems to have increased by one) and it feels like companies don’t particularly want anyone without a lot of experience anymore (and every time I do look at new jobs, the number of years required for “senior” positions seems to have increased by one). Meanwhile, I think it has its uses but I don’t actually enjoy using it. I want to solve problems and think and write code, not talk to an AI and become a full-time code-reviewer. My company is rebranding to have AI in the name shortly and, since early December, have been forcing us into 2+ hour long AI trainings once or twice a week. A lot of my coworkers seem like they’ve drank the Kool-Aid and are talking about new models and shit all the time and I just don’t get it.

    I guess I’m kind of rambling but I just feel weird about all of it. I want to program but I don’t just want to use (or be forced to use) LLMs for everything, yet it seems like companies are just trying to get rid of actually human software engineers as fast as they can. I’ll even admit, Claude is way better than I expected, but I don’t actually enjoy sitting there typing “do this for me” and then having to just spend time reviewing code. I don’t know. I don’t think this is really even me asking for advice, just a rant, but yeah, just felt like I had to get something out there, I guess.

    51 votes