@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

betsythemuffin

@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop

autodidactic to a fault. nolite te bastardes carborundum. technically not a Hugo award winner. she/they.

Chemical biology re-entry undergrad; into plastic valorization, soil remediation, and other cleantech. Former software engineer, for my sins. Unabashedly techno-utopian, #solarpunk, #hopepunk. Working to make partially-automated luxury anarchism more evenly distributed.

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betsythemuffin, to random
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

Software engineering friends:

-- How many times have you cautioned against premature optimization?

-- How concerned are you with datacenter-related energy consumption and e-waste generation?

-- What do you intend to do about the relationship between these things?

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@quixoticgeek Pretending that AI or crypto is the whole of the problem is an abdication of responsibility, frankly.

betsythemuffin, to random
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

Hey folks, are there any language learning apps out there that actually address grammar as a first-class concept? I know that immersion-style is fashionable now and conjugating verbs is unfashionable, but to me full-immersion-low-grammar alternates between slow and disorienting.

betsythemuffin, to random
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

One thing I struggle with, with regard to leftist/pop-leftist approaches to environmentalism, is:

Our modern medical supply chain is dependent on fossil fuels to a boggling extent. Single-use sterile items; packaging for same; pharmaceutical precursors; etc. Obviously, defossilization of these supply chains is mandated --

but it's a hard problem. There are no quick or absolute fixes. So when I hear "just shut it down," I hear "my disabled brother is an acceptable casualty."

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

More generally, it drives me nuts that sloganeering and anti-institutional sentiment become excuses for disengagement from supply chain and lifecycle analysis. Hard problems are handwaved as shit "corporations" should fix, that the revolution will magically fix --

-- but thermodynamics cares little for moral suasion, folks. Transcending modern, environment-destroying approaches' limits requires a shitton of research, development, and operationalization work. & I see folks stepping down not up.

betsythemuffin, to random
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

I've been scared to post about this for fear of jinxing it somehow, but --

I GOT INTO BERKELEY!

I'll be matriculating as a transfer Chemical Biology major this fall!

(Assuming, that is, I can tear my eyes away from the oh-so-pretty course catalogs and lab homepages for long enough to finish my CCSF semester off properly.)

danilo, to random
@danilo@hachyderm.io avatar

So the CFPB has Lambda School and Austin Allred dead to rights as scammers

Allred, noted crook, is not allowed to do anything like student lending for ten years

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-takes-action-against-coding-boot-camp-bloomtech-and-ceo-austen-allred-for-deceiving-students-and-hiding-loan-costs/

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo u love to see it

betsythemuffin, to random
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

Have such complex feelings about the smartphone mental health debate.

On the one hand, smartphones are obviously making most people's mental health worse. But on the other hand, the elite moral panic about smartphones making kids "depressed" is clearly a code for them making kids "trans," when you look at the people involved, and I'm not interested in advancing transphobes' arguments for them.

betsythemuffin, to random
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

Just discovered that a firm called Kimble Group has been shopping me around as a software developer based on my LinkedIn profile, without my awareness or consent. SO GROSS.

betsythemuffin, to random
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

From @lcamtuf, https://infosec.exchange/@lcamtuf/112182346314363746

"The real issue with a lot of small, foundational OSS libraries is just that there isn’t enough to do. They were written decades ago by a single person — and beyond bugfixes, they are not really supposed to change much."

-- When is software allowed to be done? How can software become "done"?

What if the cracks appearing aren't merely corporate greed, but rather the profound expense of the current software maintenance model being unsustainable?

betsythemuffin, to random
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

Crows and ravens both know that they are the last living dinosaurs.

What other birds do?

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo Oooh, yes. And emus too.

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo cannot stop thinking about this video.

now 100% convinced this is what theropod hatchlings looked like

danilo, to random
@danilo@hachyderm.io avatar

but we have to ban TikTok right

https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-execs-decrypt-rival-apps-usage-snap-youtube-2024-3

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo why not both?

danilo, to random
@danilo@hachyderm.io avatar

One of the uncomfortable realities tech workers need to confront is the self-defeating loathing we feel for our own industry.

Thing is, we need tech to have growth headroom and momentum if we want to keep paying for housing

In this light, it's a relief to me to see Reddit's IPO do well in its first day of trading, much as I found their 2023 posture distasteful.

Especially in light of the failed Figma deal, we need SOME path to exits for money to keep flowing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/21/technology/reddit-stock-ipo-market.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo you mean layoffs did not in fact descend from the sky in solely as a context-free obeisance to the gods of capitalism? shocking.

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo but as you also know, my basic position is "You hate software that much? Wow, I do too! That's why I stopped making it for a living. Consider your options!"

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo That requires being honest about the fact that most software devs are paid for either:

a) Giving a mature company an absurd revenue multiplier by automating other people out of jobs
b) Faffing about making a privately held company look like it might someday obtain that revenue multiplier, so that its owners can obtain private equity investment on that basis.

Which is a bit of an identity threat, especially for leftist SWE.

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo I mean I'm stating it strongly on purpose. But a few things...

A) Are "workflow automation" and "automating people out of a job" truly different? The style of SWE workflow GitHub & similar tools enable/encourage has basically eliminated QA and sysadmin as job categories, especially at the entry level.

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo

B) What's the business model of the novel substrates and the tools that enable more efficient expression? AFAICT, (generally) data sales & ad-tech for the former, and B2B to other software companies for the latter....

C) idk, man, one of my partners is job hunting right now and 80% of the places biting are some flavor of fintech. Some are sketchy and some are less sketchy. He doesn't have any fintech background.

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo

D) I don't actually think of job eating as inherently bad. Another partner works for a company that is increasing efficiency for patients and doctors in dealing with [obtaining treatment] -- or in other words, automating many medical billing and coding people out of jobs. I think that if those jobs are eliminated, it will be locally sad and societally good. Many such cases.

(So the question is how you give those folks soft landings instead.)

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo I suspect many people's actual answer here is "it's case by case," and that this creates a strong incentive to see one's personal job as one of the good cases, whether this is true or not. Easier to see the harms done by companies not paying one's rent.

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo Where I eventually landed was...

Regardless of the individual utility of any given software job, revenue multiples in software are (after being filtered through several economic/marketing laundries) pulling smart people away from fields that the world needs more than it needs software.

I think there are a number of ethically integrated responses to that conclusion -- leaving software is the one I took.

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo However, I do NOT think that "MY datacenter usage is fine and YOURS is evil, for reasons that I cannot name but are totally unconnected to my kids' college fund" rises to the level of an ethically integrated response....

danilo, to random
@danilo@hachyderm.io avatar

alongside the TikTok ban it's wild to see the government deciding that certain shit is definitely evil, but domestic companies should still get to do it

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/20/24106991/house-data-broker-foreign-adversaries-bill-passes

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo baby steps, man.

betsythemuffin,
@betsythemuffin@wandering.shop avatar

@danilo Creating enforcement mechanisms forces the government to grapple with the scale of the problem overall; and we have admitted that there is at least one circumstance where this is unacceptable.

Both make expanding the zone of legal unacceptability MUCH easier in the future.

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