Mastodawn

This is *brutal*...

"There are no more juniors. There was a funeral for their passing in 2024. Nobody came. The machine does what they do now, but cheaper. Of course, juniors weren't valuable for what they produced, they were valuable for who they would become: the senior engineer who knows where the bodies are buried. We optimized for output, and abolished apprenticeship. A few years from now, we'll wonder where all the seniors are. We shot them. Nobody will remember."

https://www.stvn.sh/writing/programming-still-sucks-fqffhyp

ETA:
This is by @stevendotjs, who absolutely nails a bunch of things I've been feeling for a while now, but had no idea how to articulate...

Programming Still Sucks. — Writing

Sorry Peter. — I'm at a birthday party, and while most people here also work in tech, there's always a Guy with a Real Job. You know, a physical job, building some or other thing people need. And this Guy always asks some variant of the same question: aren't you worried AI is taking your job? I glance around and see a few faces turning around toward us, rolling their eyes ever so slightly before returning to their previous conversation. Yes, this question again.

Ian Apr 29

Stéphane Bortzmeyer Apr 29

LLMs are only a very small part of the problem. We have a deeper issue: https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/the-slow-death-of-the-power-user/

The Slow Death of the Power User — fireborn

Ian Jan 3

Quixoticgeek Jan 3

Really, and I cannot emphasise this enough, entirely fed up with living in interesting times.

Ian Nov 5, 2025

abadidea Nov 4, 2025

Someone asked me to hand-translate a publicly posted Chinese technical report about NSA shenanigans on the Chinese Center for Time-Keeping network. It took me a while, because it turns out translating technical corporatese from your third language is very hard when chronically sleep deprived, but it is done.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gk1fDLKrN3m5jOSk7QbpGL1SBcLvrm0FTN3H-5ZJZcY/edit?usp=sharing

#nsa #fiveeyes #opsec #infosec #threatintel

translation of Chinese NSA report

Analysis Report of the Techniques Used in the American NSA’s Network Attack on the Chinese National Time-Keeping Center Original text: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XPjT0BVOJPJxSmASW0tXTA published on Oct 19, 2025 As translated by 0xabad1dea (this is a student translation, no warranty expressed or ...

Google Docs

Ian Nov 4, 2025