Don’t feel stupid. It’s bad enough that all of IT is one giant impostor-syndrome support group. There’s literally too much for any one person to know, and it’s been that way for a very long time. Just give it your all, and memorize how to reliably search and look things up; take notes for the really important stuff. The rest will filter into your memory with practice.

Also: anyone that holds this kind of thing over your head is attempting to distract from how much they don’t know. Most people in this industry understand and don’t judge.

As for the ^ thing, I recall seeing that as far back as the 1990’s. I want to say Microsoft actually popularized it, but it could easily be OS2 (IBM) or Apple. In hindsight, it’s kind of wild to have a TUI (terminal user interface) hold your hand like this. Nano (and Pico) are kind of in a special category like that.

That was my immediate thought. There were many that came before RCT, but it has the distinction of being (possibly) one of the last in an industry that had already moved on to higher-level languages to do merely half as much.

They also hated their local sysadmin. BOFH still holds up in a few key ways.

Huh? Isn’t it like right there at the bottom of the screen?

I guess not knowing that ^X means Control+X could be the issue, but still…

From the charging hole.

Can do, boss! Not sure what this means though.

How would you describe the level of trust you have for IT systems, and IT security in general?

Basically, I’m the guy from the meme that keeps a loaded gun next to his printer. I also keep my media backed up in a fire-safe, offsite.

Was recently ejected from a job along with a whole lot of other ship subsystems. Something about “downsizing operations in engineering”? Starfleet meatbags can never make up their minds.

Anyway, “has seen some shit” could easily sum up huge swaths of my CV.

Nazi punks dealerships fuck off.

Now I’m wondering if there such a thing as a decentralized private company?

I’ve been thinking about this all week. I have no idea if that exists or not. A few things sprang to mind though:

• It might be possible to have lightweight companies that all adopt the same incorporation boilerplate, not unlike a computer operating system. That, in turn, would be developed by a distinct entity and would publish updates to improve said OS over time. So, open-source but for legal docs that matter. This would make companies unified in principle, but ultimately, distinct.

• It’s possible for companies to operate “at arm’s length” but still share useful information or coordinate towards similar goals. One must be well-versed in anti-trust law to do this though.

• A franchise is the only existing model I can think of that comes even close. But that’s still centralized. I suppose a non-profit parent company and for/non-profit franchise operations might come closer.

i did not know what all those bins of tiny electronic hobby parts were for, but I desperately wanted to learn.

From what I understand, prior to the personal computer boom of the 1980’s, HAM radio was kind of a big deal with nerds. The parts were there for all manner of electronics tinkering, but a big mainstay was building and modifying radios. Yeah, you had people tinkering with computers in the 1970’s too, but it was more niche (until it wasn’t).

I agree. The environment in which this must function is corrosive to the very idea, hence why I’m asking it openly here. It’s a pretty dense minefield.

I’m no lawyer, but I’ve mused a lot about some kind of legal “dead man switch” that somehow renders the company value-less if it deviated from the intended path. Something built into the company’s charter and founding documents, not unlike some kind of constitution.

Real question here: is it possible to walk all this back from the edge with more ethical companies? I’m thinking co-ops, Mondragon corps, union shops, etc. Basically build businesses that have motivations other than deepening the pockets of VC’s and the like, yet have some kind of growth trajectory (or federate with other corps) to gradually subsume the market.

I get that massive funding makes certain things possible, like disrupting the market, or aggressively buying your competitors. And yes, the company charter would have to be bulletproof against hostile takeover, buyouts, and enshitification, in order to go the distance. But is that really all it takes, or am I missing something huge here?

Yup. Consider the role of NORAD and the missile defense shield. USA is not only a poorly run meth lab, but it also provides armed security for the whole building.

sue the government?

About that. One frequently looks to the Executive branch to enforce laws, rulings, and other things of legal import. Exactly how does this work if that arm of the government is found guilty of a crime?

How? Asynchronous communication is better for a lot of people. And now that we have really good choices for that, it’s hard to ignore.

A phone call demands that you drop everything in that moment and pay close attention to the person on the other end. If they ramble, deviate, breathe heavily, have a lot of background noise, etc, you’re stuck with that experience for the duration. Also, recording without consent is illegal in a lot of places, so you have to be able to write things down in order to refer back to the conversation if it contains any important information.

In contrast, everything else is self-documenting, can be read through multiple times, and can be handled when there is time to focus on that task. As a bonus: most people can read and understand text faster than they can listen. So it’s just more efficient.

What troubles me the most is that sounds like a very deeply abused person. It’s a kind of person that has problems introspecting and managing their emotions. Is that what we’re really up against? Is it all just mental illness?

When I mentioned that all this went down for a mere fraction of what everyone else paid, her immediate reaction was: “Well, isn’t that what China does with just about everything?”

It’s an interesting assertion, which caused me to ask a question here: How are we defining “independent”, exactly?

Because if it’s merely “not a member of a major political party”, it pretty much explains everything.

As someone who just picked through the Zig docs (take this with a mountain of salt), Zig has a few things going for it:

• spec is simple and closer to C in scope
• modern language design, toolchain, and overall ergonomics
• Go-like struct & interface system
• 1st-class C interoperability

Go foists co-routines on you and the runtime, and Rust has the borrow checker. Both of these things deeply impact language design, standard libraries, and the overall developer experience. So Zig might actually be a “more modern C” in many ways which makes it a contender. That said, it’s not a 1:1 comparsion since it lacks everything else that C++ does: you’d have to re-envision your software designs as something other than OOP if that’s what you’re used to.