It's time to retire the term "text file". The inclusive term is "non-binary". 🏳️‍🌈

In other words: Allocate all your skill points to the metalearning skill tree, then spam the heck out of it. You will become unstoppable.

Why don't more people learn the "figure shit out" skill? It works on everything. It is the most useful skill there is. They teach it at school, over and over and over, yet few people retain it. All you have to do is generalize the lessons. Enable your beginner's mind and apply stimulus until you have a working model of the new domain. The process is intuitive and every single time you do it can yield a lifetime of benefits.

once again mgmt has sold a product that doesn't exist and i have to build it on a schedule that i didn't agree to. i'm sure this will go exactly as well as every other time they put me in this position. actually, I think this time it might go worse for them because their carrots and sticks don't work on me anymore.

I am being forced to use Microsoft Copilot at work. My first experience:

Me: "Here's a Sharpoint link. Search all documents for 'X'."

Copilot: "I can't access sharepoint links. Upload the files to me."

*downloads all the files one by one and tries to upload them, it takes a while*

Copilot: "You can only upload 3 files at at a time."

Me: "THAT SUCKS is there a better way."

Copilot: "Yes, you can put them all in a ZIP file and upload it."

Me: "OK" *does that*

Copilot: "I can't access ZIP files."

Me: "WTF. Then why'd you tell me to do that? This still sucks."

Copilot: "If there are too many files, you can try uploading only the files that contain 'X' and I will search those."

Me: "Finding the files that contain 'X' was my original question. So you are refusing to do the simple search task and are shifting the burden back on the user lol"

Copilot: "Yes 😂"

It gets even worse from there lol. Whatever my organization paid for this lame-ass tool, it was too much.

President addresses the nation about electron fraud.

We had a perfectly good energy barrier. Very strong barrier. Then electrons just appeared on the other side.

"Scientists" always talking about hidden variables and quantum tunnelling. They admit there's a tunnel! THESE ELECTRONS ARE RIGGED!! ⚛︎

PSA: All of your computer hardware is WAY FLAKIER than its manufacturers want you to believe. Data errors can and often do happen on read or on write, or even when data is just sitting there doing nothing.

Use a filesystem with DATA INTEGRITY and data scrubbing! And DON'T JUST DRAG-AND-DROP to copy files! Only use data copy commands that verify data integrity between the source and the destination, like rsync! If you don't, your data collection could look like this in a few decades!

Bit rot is real! Bit error on copy is real! Some modern computing platforms try to mitigate some these well-known issues but most won't validate on copy. Windows users, you most likely won't have ANY data integrity so you are hosed unless you take specific precautions. NTFS is unsuitable for long-term data storage.

I uninstalled & reinstalled the app, now it works. Maybe "nuke the whole app and restart from scratch'" should be moved up to near the top of my standard debugging steps.

Every time i try to do anything related to vault management the Obsidian program just crashes. I thought this was a professional-grade tool!! UGH

I really want to start using Obsidian notes but I can't get my notes to sync across devices.

I tried to get them to sync with my google drive but no luck. DriveSync for android simply destroys my battery and also doesn't work at all, not to mention the privacy/security concerns. Neither iCloud nor Google Drive seem to have a nice consistent way to sync across devices or ecosystems.

So I subscribed to their premium sync service and that doesn't work either. Even though I'm logging into my sync account and the individual apps say my notebooks are merged, they still function as completely disjoint notebooks on each device.

People talk about a steep learning curve for using Obsidian but I'm not even there yet. I'm just trying to get the app to work, i haven't even started actually using it.

I'm going to venture a guess that basically EVERYBODY wants their notes to sync across devices so IDK why they don't make setting that up a streamlined process. I'll pay money (am paying money), I just want it to work!!

[...continued]
- Decide if you're a better fit for big company culture or small company culture. One tends to learn way more at small companies where one's scope of responsibility is wider. Working at a small company can be a WILD RIDE. Big companies offer more stability but they're likely to pigeonhole you. Most engineers I've interviewed from huge companies like Intel don't know much outside of their tiny area of responsibility.

Advice for those who want a career in integrated circuit design:
- Learn as broadly as you can in your first professional roles. You're going to have to specialize, and the knowledge will inform your career development decisions. If you don't drive your own specialization & career growth, your employer will do it for you and you might not like it.
- Maintain a healthy work-life balance. Sometimes employer will ask too much and you must know how and when to push back.
- AI is shaking up this industry. Brace yourself, but keep it in perspective. Automation has always been the industry's bread and butter. They'll still need you but you're gonna have to do more than your predecessors did, and you may have to think at a higher level of abstraction. The complexity of your role will scale with the capabilities of the tools available.
- Learn how to code. Knowing some script-friendly languages like Python is especially helpful. Don't be one of those hardware guys who can't write programs.
[... continued]

"Regression results are in my workspace here: /proj/blah/leaf/sim/regress"

Note to self: Never share your workspace with anyone. They will leave terminals and editors open there forever, locking your files and directories and ruining your workspace. Keep it secret, keep it safe.

My old vintage computing desk. These were good lil machines.

My mortgage rate is changing! It was originally based on the London Inter-Bank (LIBOR) index, which has been shut down due to extensive manipulation and scandal, and my lender is about to tie my interest rate to a secret new index that they won't disclose. I tried to find out more but best I could find was "We're working with regulators and consumer advocacy organizations to move existing accounts from LIBOR to another index in a way that's fair and transparent." Not disclosing what index underpins my mortgage rate is opposite of transparent. They've had years to plan for this. I called an ARM specialist at my lender to ask and they said, "Derp, nobody's ever asked me that before, I dunno." The mortgage rate is the most important loan parameter next to the balance. I find it hard to believe that the lender's mortgage rate specialist doesn't know how the rate will be determined. NEVER TRUST BANKS :(

I got tricked into installing windows 11. Not saying Win 11 is bad but my computer was set up the way I liked it and now everything is different. I did not want this

"Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life."

It doesn't work like that. It's more like this:

"Do what you love and the industry will systematically destroy all joy you once found in it."