I agree that it’s a huge fuck up, my comment wasn’t in defence of the post office, just a related story :)

Whenever I have delivered code for a client it has always been in a way where the client has complete ownership of the code and can maintain it themselves later (or ask a different company that isn’t us to come do it) because that’s the only sustainable approach, and all companies should absolutely demand that all work done for them is done this way.

I did consultancy work as part of renewing and replacing ancient software systems for an insurance company, and it’s amazing how little people actually know about how their own business processes are actually supposed to work.

Orgs are in the position where everyone who built a system is gone, and all the current people who work there defer to the system for how the processes work, without actually properly understanding the rules. And so the system itself becomes the arbiter of correctness.

This is obviously horrible because it ends up where nobody dares to touch the current system in case they break it in some way nobody understands.

We ended up speaking to people across the whole business to painstakingly work out what the rules really were, putting together a new system and effectively “dual running” that side-by-side with the old system, so we could compare outputs and make sure they were the same. In some case they were different, and in some of those cases it was actually because the old system was actually wrong, but nobody noticed!

It’s a mess.

My friend likes Terraria, and I like Minecraft.

This is because he enjoys gameplay where there is technical progression and objectives. Things to ‘do’ and reasons to get stronger.

I enjoy gameplay where the objectives are mostly just goals I set for myself, and I have freedom for creative expression.

In Minecraft I can spend forever working on aesthetic builds or complex redstone contraptions, whereas once my friend has exhausted all the progression in the game he finds it boring.

Conversely, although Terraria does allow for building and furnishing nice bases/homes, the 2D nature is limiting for me vs 3D and can’t satisfy my desire to build, so I’m not into it.

Or someone who is vegan.

Or someone who just likes the taste of oat milk.

Personally I’m not vegan and I do drink dairy milk, but I also love oat milk and often order my coffee that way. It adds a kind of nutty taste which I really like. Would recommend trying it sometime.

I meant no offence to your balls :) The whole photo is like that. Could just be your camera, or your lighting.

This photo has so little colour it’s almost monochrome.

In 2025, things staying the same as they are rather than getting worse counts as a ‘big win’ :|

Thanks :)

Well that would be weird because

1. Andor is not for children

2. Andor is the least star-wars-like Star Wars

3. Andor is actually good

When I am interviewing people, I always appreciate when the candidate is honest about their experience - or lack of experience.

If I ask about something and they openly say they never did that, that’s a green flag. I want to see people are honest about where they don’t have experience, because being honest about gaps is an important trait for when they are actually on the job.

On the other hand, if the candidate has something literally written on their CV/resume as a “strong skill” but then when I ask about it they struggle and try to bullshit their way through it, that’s the opposite. If someone is happy to lie to get the job, they’ll probably lie when they’re on the job too.

I can write a basic regex independently, but as soon as capture groups or positive/negative lookahead or lookbehind start popping up I’m back to the docs every time.

This is happening because all platforms are optimising for the one single metric that matters most to them - engagement.

When you consider all users as a whole, the way to get engagement is not to have a good UX that lets you tailor what you see, and search for the specific things you are interested in. The way to get it is to shove a constantly changing and brightly coloured stream of “content” right in people’s faces where they don’t have to do any thinking or make any decisions, they just mindlessly click what is offered and consume.

From Netflix’s perspective, they want someone to go from opening the app to watching a video in 10 seconds, and if they don’t achieve that, it’s a failure which they will optimise away.

The platforms have over the years systematically stripped back every control lever you have over what you see, because control means time spent thinking, and time thinking is not time engaging.

I remember reading a story a while back about someone who owned a legit CS version with a proper serial and activation.

They had to change computer, and in doing so had to reactivate Photoshop, but it wasn’t working. They contacted Adobe support and explained the situation but support basically told him nope, not a chance, we aren’t helping you. You need to subscribe to new Photoshop.

So Adobe accepted that yes, he bought a perpetual licence for Photoshop and that yes, the reason it isn’t working is the online activation, but they still refused to help.

Scumbags.

It’s common, and especially so on devices that don’t have batteries which are intended to be user-removable - which is pretty much all new phones.

Unlike laptops, many phones simply won’t turn on without a battery connected.

Centralisation makes things easy.

If it takes more than 1 minute to onboard to a new service, and especially if you have to overcome any learning barrier (such as what ‘instances’ are and how to choose one) then the vast majority of people will immediately throw that option out and won’t even consider it.

People like bluesky specifically because it gives them something almost identical to what they had before.

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Exactly! What sort of logic are they even trying to apply there? Basically saying “We put a lot of time into our tech demo, and it came out better than expected, so we’re going to charge for it!”

That’s just crazy.

The whole principle is that the intro experience is supposed to be free. It exists to get people pumped about the cool new thing they just bought and excited to play with it.

I guess Nintendo decided that - since you already bought the console - they don’t especially care if you are pumped or not. They already got your money.

As the video suggests, it’s an impending problem in many places in the world, US and UK included.

And the bitter truth is that all of us could have avoided this, if not for the insatiable greed of the 1%

If the wealth earned from economic growth was spread fairly, we could all be working half the hours we do now, with all the time for socialising and family we could want.

And the real irony is that when people have more free time, they will spend their time and money on the culturally enriching things that the government is otherwise being forced to try and subsidise and give grants to keep afloat. Visit historical sites. See a play, pick up a creative hobby, eat out at independent small restaurants.

But instead we are working longer and longer hours for less, leaving us with no time for anything, and that sends all our surplus money into the exact industries that are exploiting us. 11PM depression impulse buys from online megacorps, and food delivery through gig economy apps where the delivery person gets next to nothing and the app reaps the rewards.

People are stretched to breaking point. It’s inevitable that at some point, this is all going to collapse.

Yes, which is a big part of why, despite allowing transfers, it still sucks.