I’d even argue that if you’re bought in to AI.

The AI bros are all about “specs” and shit like that. Know how you build a spec? Carefully. Over time. Slowly.

If you’re bought in on the AI shit, you have _more_ latitude to slow down than otherwise. Since Claude or whatever the fuck can spit out lots and lots of code, you can afford to spend more time thinking, more time questioning. That’s supposed to be the point of the tool.

Is that how it gets used? Nope! Nothing has changed. Speed for speed’s sake.

You know what actually makes software ship faster?

Slowing the fuck down. That’s true no matter your toolset. You can _always_ afford to take a breath and say “is this actually what we want?”

I’m not much of a musician…and don’t even know what would go into making a remix of a song.

But I wanna learn. I think music might be one of my post-AI hobbies, and I want to start by making something…silly?

I want to make dance remixes of kids songs.

So…he mastodon, do your thing. Someone tell me where to start. The internet is useless now. I have tried and failed before, and now it feels intractable.

I’ve done both real instruments (mostly guitar), though not a lot of it, and a bit of digital creation (entirely using trackers). I’ve got a decent voice and can hold a tune (musical theatre in high school), though that’s not relevant really.

What are some good hashtags I might be able to add? I’ve got #music , obviously, but #musicCreation and #musicMaking don’t seem to have any use (I think they did on bird site a long time ago).

Any help, big or small, is appreciated.

Hey #plantstodon (is that a thing?), question for you:

Wife has this philodendron birkin which has a massive stalk. Thing is, she’s pretty sure this is supposed to be, uh, “bushier”. She doesn’t have a fedi account so I’m asking on her behalf.

She thinks she can just cut above that bottom node, and then replant the top and end up with two plants.

Problem is: well, you know. It’s impossible to actually find information unless you know where to look, and we just don’t.

Any help would be appreciated!

#plants #horticulture

I wrote a thing that I hope can help you #GetFediHired: https://write.bauxite.tech/b4ux1t3/the-system-design-interview

System design interview in five minutes. Give me advice. Make it terrible.

I think that K-pop is currently the most deserving of the term “rock and roll” in today’s music scene.

_turns volume down_

This is your periodic reminder that you don’t need permission from anyone to rock the hell out to whatever you want.

_turns kpop demon hunters back up_

Less than two hours until my tech interview.

Quick, folks, give me advice.

Bad advice only.

Yall. $95k for a senior, technical lead position. I’ve never seen anything that low. That company must be sniffing massive amounts of AI glue. They even had the gall to tell me “we think it’s very competitive”.

Know your worth folks. If wages had kept pace with inflation, McDonald’s would be paying folks 90k a year. You’re worth more than whatever you’re getting paid, I don’t care how much that is or how happy you are with your compensation. You probably deserve more.

CompTIA lives in a world where your users aren't running Mullvad and hopping regions every 20 minutes.

Tonight, I was studying for the SEC+. Not because. . .not because I need the SEC+, but because people are convinced I need it.

How did this get to be _even more of a joke_?

I have never gotten my sec+ before. Back when I did security for a living, right around when I left, some customer or another required my company have me get CASP+ and. . .I mean I passed the test literally four days after learning I needed to take it and _that it existed_.

I have installed Fortune 50 network security stacks.

I have crawled under car-jacked security portcullises and lied my way past sweet old ladies and practicing private security.

I have carried secured flash drives into active war zones to patch firewalls. (Okay, once.)

I have single-handedly rewritten entire companies' security policies, from the ground up. Physical all the way through application and straight back through into user brains.

I have zeroed the trust.

And Sec+ wants me to believe that the solution to "We have service accounts that can access more than they're supposed to on our very flat, very vanilla network" is to rearchitect the entire god-damned network, which will cost anywhere from thousands to millions of dollars, in order to enforce a concept that most people can only name?

Like, for fucks' sake, Zero Trust is just principle of least privilege. You have zero privilege. That's it. (don't. . .don't at me. I don't need to know about how Zero trust is so misunderstood, more than a buzzword, yadda yadda. . .everything is more than a buzzword until it isn't, and in practice it FUCKING ISN'T).

So like, instead of adopting some fuck-all, enterprise-scale trust model, maybe make sure you have actually done your THREAT modeling correctly.

AND PUT THE FUCKING DATA'S BACKUP IN A DIFFERENT FUCKING REGION, MMMKAY?!

This is a helpful reminder that I am actively looking for new employment. I literally can’t afford to work for this company anymore.

https://hachyderm.io/@b4ux1t3/116221909988915626

:)

I’m in a particularly anti-capitalist mood today.

Overdrafting the utilities account today because we had to pull from it for medical bills. But hey at least our owner and CEO saved a bunch of money on our new health plan, and my premiums dropped by a whole hundred dollars!

That hundred dollar a month savings has now cost me three grand. And it’s only march.

Great job boss man!

Wait what happened to the poll. There was a poll

Settle an argument between me and my wife:

Do you have a favorite spice?

(If you do, share it!)

Oh yeah, and can I get a boost, please? :) #food

My few contacts on here who know me at work now know that I’m looking for a job, so, uh, yeah, I’m looking for a new position.

I’m a stereotype. Long-time developer, perpetual polyglot (if pressed, I’m probably strongest in #dotnet, both framework and modern flavors, and favoring f#, but if you look at the list of languages in Rosetta code, you’ll see “my goal”), plenty of experience in different kinds of organizations, have a history that includes dedicated infosec work (pentesting, architecture, help desk, you name it), extensive Linux experience (admin, hacking, even building distros for appliances), and plenty of network engineering. I have mostly been in the fed/mil space and am looking to get out of that space for what I like to think are pretty obvious reasons.

I love learning, I love helping people learn, and I’m a big fan of companies that invest in that. I love giving talks, presentations, workshops, etc, and would love to talk at conferences for your company.

US only, remote greatly preferred but will commute if fairly local and will move for the right position (I have a family so I’d expect assistance with said move, but we’re not opposed to the concept).

Open to leadership roles, but only technical ones.

I’ve actually been looking since last march, though I’ve kept it on the DL since folks at work follow me on here.

I’m not in dire straits, I’m still employed, but

A. I don’t trust the direction the company is going and,
B. I’ve been pulled off of development work to do bog standard systems integration and deployment.

So I’m looking for a change.

And look, I’m not bullish on AI agentic coding (I’m not going to hide my distaste, feel free to scroll my posts), but if your company is using it I’m not going to turn down an offer. I’m nothing if not a team player.

Oh, one last thing: if your company is not lgbtqia+ friendly, it’s not “b4ux1t3 friendly” either. I make it a point to try to change organizations I am in for the better in that regard.

#dotnet #getfedihired #jobsearch #softwaredeveloper

Day just started and I’m already mad about partisan bullshit.

Sigh.

I think I need some nice, wholesome independent music to bolster the spirits.

Not angry music. Hopeful music. Music about the world we could have, music that feels out of place next to news about yet another corporate scandal.

Anyone got anything like that?

#music #independentMusic

So, I’ve been running a chat-based #TTRPG session for the past ~nine months. It’s in and off. We have long periods of time where nothing happens, interspersed with crazy shenanigans in a flurry. It’d been a a little while since I’d last gotten an update from a player, which is _weird_ because I was the last one to talk in the chat (they’re usually waiting on me to answer)

The damned chat server was offline, apparently for almost all of January so far.

So, uh, to my players, at least some of whom I know follow me on here: sorry, I’m fixing it.

People have a lot of opinions on what counts as "retro" games.

I think I've finally settled on mine:

Retro systems are ones where the performance and power of the system was a driving factor in the design of games made for it.

Retro games are games for retro systems.

This means that, for example, modern games for retro consoles are, themselves, retro games.

It also means that, for example, Grand Theft Auto V will _never_ be a retro game, no matter how old it gets; GTAV comes from a time well after developers were meaningfully limited by the hardware they are developing for when it comes to simply implementing the systems of their game.

There's my spicy take for the day.

I need to figure out a term for "non-retro games that are nonetheless quite old", like GTAV will be in a few years.

---

And look, yeah, I know, people are still trying to make photorealism a thing, and I don't minimize graphical achievements of current-gen games in any way. If that's your thing, great, but I don't think it'll ever sit in the same class in my mind as, like, Crash Bandicoot, where they had to _hack the console_ to get their game to work.