userexec's recent activity
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Comment on Longevity of tech equipment in ~tech
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Comment on Longevity of tech equipment in ~tech
userexec LinkI adore old tech. Things in my house that are still used: Texas Instruments TravelMate 486/WinDX laptop running DOS 6.2, black and white, for old-school programming, journaling, and note-taking...I adore old tech. Things in my house that are still used:
- Texas Instruments TravelMate 486/WinDX laptop running DOS 6.2, black and white, for old-school programming, journaling, and note-taking while reading in the living room
- Casio CasioWord HW-800JS thermal typewriter for typing up articles in Japanese for translation practice
- 2010 MacBook (rounded white poly) for web browsing in the living room
- Citation 486 on DOS 6.22 that I've not bothered to check the hardware on, runs a FoxPro 2.6 database of all my parts in the garage, keeps track of where I put things, what I've taken out of storage, where to put it back, etc.
- Heavily upgraded Cyrix 486/DX4-80 running Windows 3.11 with maxed out RAM, networking, Trinitron monitor, the works in my study. Used for, well, studying. Loaded up with every multimedia encyclopedia, home and garden, medical, design, cooking etc. software of its era, back when authoritative reference software was all the rage. Fantastic note-taking machine that backs up to my NAS.
- HP Jornada 540 (technically 6 of them so I have replacement parts forever). Keeps track of my calendar, gardening schedule, alarms, etc.
- X-10 home automation - not deployed everywhere in the house (I use a more modern OpenHAB setup in most places, but in particular rooms it's all X-10)
I'd say that I'm still highly reliant on modern hardware (I work remotely in a tech role, for example), but outside of work over the past 10 years I've become significantly less wrapped up in the internet and being "online." I quit social media a long time ago and have collected books and old software about topics I'm interested in, and generally look to those first with the internet as a supplement. I'm surrounded by tech, but most of it is ancient and configured to do one specific thing well, with a high bar for getting off-task.
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Comment on Is there a way to hide or otherwise opt out of always seeing votes? in ~tildes
userexec LinkIf Tildes ReExtended doesn't do exactly what you want, you can also install a plugin like Stylus that allows you to write your own CSS that gets injected on top of sites you visit. Definitely the...If Tildes ReExtended doesn't do exactly what you want, you can also install a plugin like Stylus that allows you to write your own CSS that gets injected on top of sites you visit. Definitely the more technical approach since you have to know how to figure out what you're targeting in the browser inspector, and then know the CSS to write to make the change, but it's an incredibly handy toolkit to have to customize sites you visit routinely.
As an example use case, I like to print articles from NHK News Easy, but their website doesn't format well for printing. I use Stylus and some CSS rules to remove everything but the article text and crank up the font size inside an
@media print {}rule.For hiding your comments' and topics' vote counts, you'd do something like:
article.comment.is-comment-mine .comment-votes { display: none; } article.topic.is-topic-mine .topic-voting { display: none; } -
Comment on WordPress.org’s latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin in ~tech
userexec Link ParentI'd imagine personal sites will be fine. In the near term it will be more to do with how WordPress hosting companies interact with the existing WordPress infrastructure and how confident they feel...I'd imagine personal sites will be fine. In the near term it will be more to do with how WordPress hosting companies interact with the existing WordPress infrastructure and how confident they feel in their ability to continue offering their services at the current prices.
What we've seen is that hosts can be singled out for not contributing enough back, or for making money that Automattic feels it should be making, and they can be locked out of the community and have their development efforts hijacked. A lot of companies that sell industry-specific WordPress multisite hosting customize it to their target audience, which isn't that different from the crime WP Engine has been accused of, so they're probably concerned right now about where they stand.
Basically I'd be thinking hard right now if I were offering popular plugins with a subscription model, or selling (or a user of) a tailored WordPress hosting service.
I kind of expected this to have blown over by now. A hostile takeover of one of the most popular WordPress plugins definitely wasn't on my bingo card, and I don't see a way to cleanly de-escalate from that. ACF isn't a default part of WordPress, so everyone who just had the publisher changed out from under them on that had specifically gone out and gotten that plugin, expecting it to be coming from a specific developer.
From where I sit, this doesn't look all that different from a man-in-the-middle attack, except WordPress attacked itself. So then, what headline will I be reading next week?
I don't think there's any imminent danger to sites, so you're probably fine for many years yet, but projects like WordPress depend on developers to have confidence in their futures to bother investing time into them. Nothing about this has inspired confidence.
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Comment on WordPress.org’s latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin in ~tech
userexec LinkWe switched self-service site creation at our organization over to using a major field-specific WordPress host a couple of years ago (not WP Engine, but also not WordPress.com). Definitely feeling...We switched self-service site creation at our organization over to using a major field-specific WordPress host a couple of years ago (not WP Engine, but also not WordPress.com). Definitely feeling a little anxious about that move now. We've got about 1000 sites in WordPress right about when WordPress's future is looking highly questionable.
For work, sure, I'll keep supporting the install and everything, but outside of work you won't catch me doing any future-focused projects or development anywhere inside the blast radius of this.
I wonder if Matt realizes that a vast number of mid-size organizational multi-site installs go where nobodies like me say they go, and if this has spooked people like me into dipping back into the CMS market in our own time, the repercussions of this kind of boneheaded decision-making are going to continue to be felt a decade from now.
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Comment on Grokking KOReader in ~books
userexec Link ParentI genuinely thought the HTML was broken at first because the font spacing and shape was so off, like there were special characters that didn't transfer well when pasted into an editor. I popped...the font the author chose is not to my liking.
I genuinely thought the HTML was broken at first because the font spacing and shape was so off, like there were special characters that didn't transfer well when pasted into an editor. I popped open the inspector and everything before finally zooming in to a comfortable reading size and realizing it was just a font choice. The lowercase t was throwing me off hard.
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Comment on Are you a hiring manager/recruiter in tech? In this Circus Funhouse Mirror tech economy, how do candidates even get an interview? in ~tech
userexec Link ParentI wasn't entirely clear, but an online portfolio, X years experience, and proficiency with HTML and CSS are part of the required section (plus the usual UX/UI discipline requirements), and...I wasn't entirely clear, but an online portfolio, X years experience, and proficiency with HTML and CSS are part of the required section (plus the usual UX/UI discipline requirements), and experience with CSS preprocessors is stated as preferred. That screening method wasn't used on anything entry-level.
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Comment on Are you a hiring manager/recruiter in tech? In this Circus Funhouse Mirror tech economy, how do candidates even get an interview? in ~tech
userexec Link ParentYou might have better luck checking smaller field-specific job aggregators like HigherEdJobs or looking at standalone job boards for organizations that are large but made up of smaller campuses,...You might have better luck checking smaller field-specific job aggregators like HigherEdJobs or looking at standalone job boards for organizations that are large but made up of smaller campuses, like healthcare systems. A lot of times those jobs never make it to LinkedIn since they get enough interested applicants without doing so, but the candidate pool will almost always be drastically smaller as a result.
Also look for stuff within a couple hours' drive that allows remote. Remote positions always get absolutely inundated with applications, but even if the team is fully remote it does usually jump out to them that you're within range that you might be able to meet up for annual stuff or actually meet your coworkers when you happen to pass through. I don't know that it factors much into the hiring decision, but it can get the person reviewing the applications to pay a little extra attention.
Good luck out there.
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Comment on Are you a hiring manager/recruiter in tech? In this Circus Funhouse Mirror tech economy, how do candidates even get an interview? in ~tech
userexec Link ParentI get that, but in these situations I'm sitting down to stacks of 100+ candidates with practically indistinguishable resumes. I can't possibly interview them all, and I can't believe everything...I get that, but in these situations I'm sitting down to stacks of 100+ candidates with practically indistinguishable resumes. I can't possibly interview them all, and I can't believe everything they write. I routinely receive fake portfolios where multiple unrelated candidates all claimed to have worked in the same position for the same fictional company leading the same imaginary project (perhaps they went through the same bootcamp?).
Almost all of them provide a personal/portfolio website. I simply screen for which people used the skills they're claiming on their resumes while creating it. Call it a lesson learned from situations where someone claims on their resume to know HTML, then you ask them in the interview what tag makes a link and they have no idea.
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Comment on Are you a hiring manager/recruiter in tech? In this Circus Funhouse Mirror tech economy, how do candidates even get an interview? in ~tech
userexec LinkSo I can't speak to tech hiring in general, but I've screened an absurd number of applicants for UX/UI positions for web over the years, and I'd say 95% of them don't get more than 30 seconds of...So I can't speak to tech hiring in general, but I've screened an absurd number of applicants for UX/UI positions for web over the years, and I'd say 95% of them don't get more than 30 seconds of consideration. What gets people through the initial screening with us is a demonstration that the person can build their own website.
I basically work my way down this list, tossing any applicants who didn't meet each point:
- Provided a URL to a personal website
- Didn't use an "easy" site builder like Wix, Squarespace, Framer, UXfolio etc. or use some wildly obtuse method to create something that only looks like a website
- Has edited or commented something in their site's source code, or has made choices somewhere instead of just deploying someone else's template wholesale (e.g. if they're using some theme someone else made, did they customize it in any way or add/remove anything?)
Only at that point do I start actually looking at their talent in UX/UI as demonstrated by the site and the work they're showcasing in it. It's at that point I trust that if they create a new UI for something they have adequate background knowledge on its level of difficulty or feasibility.
Think of it like this: I'm hiring people to design beautiful wedding cakes--but I need to know they've actually tried baking things at some point and have some understanding of what an oven is and how batter and frosting work, otherwise they're going to drive the bakers insane. They don't have to be good at baking--I don't actually need them to bake--they just need to convince me they're familiar enough with how cakes work to actually design cakes.
Very few candidates make it through that, and at that point I still haven't even read their resumes. Only at this point do I even start looking at where they've worked, their education and certifications, etc., and honestly that stuff doesn't matter too much. It will determine the salary range HR eventually offers them, but rarely do I put much weight into any of it when choosing who to interview. Resumes and LinkedIn I've found are mostly just a measure of how much a candidate can puff themselves up and cosplay, and unless they're just atrocious tend to be an unreliable signal.
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Comment on IT staffing agency traps tech workers in their jobs, US federal lawsuit alleges in ~life
userexec LinkFun fact: This is exactly how (US) trucking works. Never go into trucking unless you have the money up-front to pay your own way through an independent CDL school. It's expensive, but the...Fun fact: This is exactly how (US) trucking works.
Never go into trucking unless you have the money up-front to pay your own way through an independent CDL school. It's expensive, but the alternative is the companies hiring new drivers will train you for CDL themselves on company credit for whatever price they want to charge, which you'll then be on the hook to pay back to them through a portion of your wages. Quit before your minimum time with them is up? Lump sum's due.
I don't know exact stats, but based on what I observed about a decade ago, the majority of new drivers are in debt to the company they're driving for for at least their first year or two.
And then there are the predatory lease programs where you "own your own business" a.k.a. assume all of the company's risk and operating expenses for the promise of higher pay, except the company controls what jobs you can take and it would be great if you happened to default on your lease toward the end of it so they can take their equipment back and lease it to the next person. In a class of about 20 incoming drivers I was literally the only one who refused the lease--they pushed it so hard it was like a cult.
Some of these businesses are absurdly predatory and extremely creative.
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Comment on Do you get bored? in ~talk
userexec (edited )LinkActually yes, frequently, and almost always at the same time. I get extremely bored from mid-afternoon to early evening almost every day, and not for lack of things to do, but mostly for lack of...Actually yes, frequently, and almost always at the same time. I get extremely bored from mid-afternoon to early evening almost every day, and not for lack of things to do, but mostly for lack of motivation to do anything. There are plenty of things around the house I could do, plenty of projects to work on, plenty of things to get around to fixing, plenty of games I could be playing, and I have people I could talk to, but during that time of day most days I'm just motivationally exhausted and don't have it in me to actually do anything. I get bored, but usually can't push myself to start anything until evening proper, so I just sit there and mostly space out or take a nap, or maybe find some long video recommended on youtube and half pay attention to it.
I'd imagine it's to do with my energy level. I usually have plenty of energy in the morning and plenty at night, but mid-day I tend to run out.
(For context, late 30s, sedentary job that I enjoy, and reasonable diet with daily exercise. Not really in shape or out of shape. I pay some reasonable level of attention to my health but wouldn't call myself a gym rat or anything. No social media use, closest I get is Tildes and YouTube.)
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Comment on Crunchyroll announces the removal of its comment section across all platforms to 'reduce harmful content' in ~tech
userexec LinkI totally get why people are upset by this and respect that. To provide the opposite perspective though, I've used Crunchyroll for many years and don't think I've ever used the comment section....I totally get why people are upset by this and respect that. To provide the opposite perspective though, I've used Crunchyroll for many years and don't think I've ever used the comment section. I'm not aware of there being any sort of real community features, so I'd expect it to just be episode-by-episode shitposting, memes, flame wars, spam, and review bombing.
Even if it didn't save any money I'd absolutely make the same call just to reduce technical scope and reallocate staff to less stressful marketing or communications roles with higher returns. It seems like a whole lot of work for very little payoff.
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Comment on Japan's mini kei truck sales surge in US despite safety concerns in ~transport
userexec Link ParentPopping in for more fun. I currently daily a restored 1987 Civic wagon (last generation with CVCC head) that's a hair over 2000 lbs and has 76 whole horsepower. It easily cruises at 70 on the...Popping in for more fun. I currently daily a restored 1987 Civic wagon (last generation with CVCC head) that's a hair over 2000 lbs and has 76 whole horsepower. It easily cruises at 70 on the interstate and accelerates with traffic no problem. Such a fun and straightforward vehicle (at least, after a carb swap--original Honda Keihin carb is a brilliant nightmare).
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Comment on Honest Question: What benefits can I hope to achieve by switching from jquery to react? in ~comp
userexec (edited )Link ParentThis is kind of where I'm at with it. I learned Vue but am rusty at it now because there's just not been any project I felt was complex enough to call for it. Likely the most complex one recently...This is kind of where I'm at with it. I learned Vue but am rusty at it now because there's just not been any project I felt was complex enough to call for it. Likely the most complex one recently was creating an Amazon-like search/filter/count adjustable-length paginated listing of arbitrary data with arbitrary CSS (for use in listing large quantities of people, services, directory info, etc.). Vanilla modular JS with an event bus and classes that defined the DOM output and behavior of UI elements in consistent ways and standard JSDoc documentation inlined took care of it no problem. Everything's nicely organized, nothing about how it works is complicated, it's got thorough docs, zero dependencies, and weighs practically nothing. Plus it doesn't blow up if you're using a text browser or screen reader, so that's a plus. You just take absolutely any repeating DOM elements filled with whatever data you like and styled however you like, pop some data-attributes on them for filtering, and give the library the CSS selector to find them and it does the rest. To develop on it you just need to know vanilla JS.
It rarely gets more complicated than that at work. I've used frameworks in some personal projects and it was neat, but even there I often felt like I was using them just to use them, and cleanly-written vanilla JS would have done the trick just as well. I think the cutoff would have been if there were a significant number of UI pieces that users were generating/moving with their own input versus just a UI with only a few changing spots that I already had all the data for and knew exactly how it would be presented. Or perhaps if I was working with people I couldn't trust to write/edit vanilla JS in a safe, performant, and standard manner.
Edit: I guess technically it has dev dependencies like JSDoc, Gulp, gulp-minify, gulp-prepend, and gulp-rollup, but those are really just to bundle up the modular JS (which still works fine without rolling it into one file, but who wants to make all those requests), slap an incrementing version number on it, and spit out a nice documentation package.
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Comment on Is Nebula worth it? in ~tech
userexec LinkI have it, but admittedly I haven't gotten much use out of it. I mostly keep it around because I like the idea of it and want to help give it a little longer to grow into something. I'd say my...I have it, but admittedly I haven't gotten much use out of it. I mostly keep it around because I like the idea of it and want to help give it a little longer to grow into something.
I'd say my main complaint is a counter-intuitive one: The content leans very high quality video essay from professional creators, to the point where I'm not sure at a glance if it's cool for random people to upload useful mundane stuff. I'd say half my use of YouTube is "how do I" kind of things where someone shows how to use a program or change a bearing or grout tile or something, and Nebula doesn't seem like a place where that content fits in right now. It's possible my watching habits just aren't a good fit for it.
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Comment on Zilog discontinues production of original Z80 processor after forty-eight years in ~tech
userexec LinkWhat an unbelievable run it's had! The first time I learned what a Z80 was, it was in a Texas Instruments TI-83+ graphing calculator. I adored that thing and spent who knows how many hours in my...What an unbelievable run it's had! The first time I learned what a Z80 was, it was in a Texas Instruments TI-83+ graphing calculator. I adored that thing and spent who knows how many hours in my teenage years writing programs in TI-BASIC to make games, cheat on assignments, and what have you. It was the first device that really made it click in my head that technology could do just about whatever you instructed it to, and I was hooked. It got me looking into what other devices had Z80s, and what a fascinating world that is. Maybe I'll pull it back out today and play around in assembly a bit.
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Comment on The internet used to be ✨fun✨ in ~tech
userexec LinkI always tell my interns that if they really want to get hired somewhere, start a blog. Write about your personal projects. It may seem like ancient internet, but it works in a way new internet...I always tell my interns that if they really want to get hired somewhere, start a blog. Write about your personal projects. It may seem like ancient internet, but it works in a way new internet doesn't.
Having a social media presence is fine, and having a github is even good if you're wanting to get into a field that uses that, but as someone who hires nothing is a surer way to the top of a stack of similar applications than a blog. It shows your work and personality in a way that no other format (save for maybe a long-format YouTube channel) does.
What sorts of things interest this person? How do they approach problems? How do they communicate? What's their personality like? If there's a link to a blog on the resume, I have pretty good answers to all of these questions before even starting the interview.
The trouble with the resume is they're practically meaningless: You can get someone who can barely create anything listing 100 different skills that they saw in a book one time and have used for all of 30 seconds, and they're up against others who list only a tiny handful of skills that they're insanely competent in, and whose pride won't allow them to list things they see as merely intermediate skills. The education and experience sections can somewhat legitimize those, but I've seen plenty of people with long lists of impressive-sounding titles who can't actually do what their title says.
A blog skips right past all of that and proves it, and does so with an air of legitimacy and depth that social media is just lacking in most cases.
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Comment on You're wrong about Aptera's car. It's ridiculously efficient (and solar powered). in ~transport
userexec Link ParentReminds me of the whole Elio thing. I would have loved to have one of those, and they did make some serious moves toward production, but it kept being a thing long, long after anyone could see it...Reminds me of the whole Elio thing. I would have loved to have one of those, and they did make some serious moves toward production, but it kept being a thing long, long after anyone could see it wasn't going to happen. Hopefully this doesn't follow the same trajectory.
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Comment on AI IT project management in ~tech
userexec Link ParentI find that Copilot in coding sometimes helps and sometimes it's just a distraction showing me tab completions I don't want. At work I'd say it's a wash--I save about as much time not typing a...I find that Copilot in coding sometimes helps and sometimes it's just a distraction showing me tab completions I don't want. At work I'd say it's a wash--I save about as much time not typing a line I didn't need to as I spend hitting tab on something that's almost correct, but then backing through it and editing while realizing it would have been quicker to just type it myself.
On some personal projects it's an enormous time-saver, though. One thing I'm working on requires making a large number of quite predictable derivations of a base sentence in a foreign language with some metadata interpolated at predictable points. Doing it by hand would be theoretically simple but incredibly painful and boring. Copilot is great at picking up the pattern such that I need only write the first one and then usually tab-complete all the derivations without editing.
FoxPro is actually great for the interface part. It's a database, but it's also a visual form builder/program builder. Think like those old POS systems you'd see in shops or video rental stores or something where they'd have a custom interface on an old amber screen. Many of those business-specific interfaces were likely designed with and ran on FoxPro. The setup in my garage is just the old machine in the corner, CRT, old grimy keyboard basically.
As for the disk drives, I use CF cards for those. Just simple 3.5" IDE to CF adapters running Transcend Industrial CF cards that get detected as regular IDE drives. I do have a fair number of working era-appropriate drives, but don't feel like trusting (or listening to) those. The 2.5" for the TI laptop in particular is just plain loud and power-hungry, so giving it a CF card makes it operate silently and last for way longer on its (still functional!) Ni-Cd batteries.