Posts

YouTube Version So we are a mere six weeks out from a midterm election here in the United States. Normally this would not be an event of note. Normally we wouldn’t care that much. Normally turnout would be scrapping the bottom of the barrel. However we are now living in times that can be described with many adjectives and normal is not one of them. The primary reason for this is simple: Donald J. Trump. By all classical standards, he is a dumpster fire of a human being. In the best case scenario he was friends with the world’s most infamous child sexual predator for well over a decade. In the worst case scenario he aided, abetted and maybe even participated in the rape of children. I can’t tell you that the worst case scenario is accurate. I can’t tell you it isn’t. That’s because during his most recent campaign, Trump teased people by suggesting he might release the Epstein related materials to the public if elected, refused to do so until his hand was forced by a veto-proof super-majority in both chambers of Congress. That law should’ve been the end of the discussion and the files, properly redacted of course, should’ve all been released. ...

YouTube Version So as I’ve been predicting my own demise for awhile on this blog (among others), I recently experienced an unexpected bump on the road to obscurity and obsolescence that necessitated an update here. So what happened? I got a good performance review. This was very unexpected. For those of you who aren’t regular readers, I’ll summarize earlier posts on the topic by telling you that this is unexpected because I’m no longer aligned with the general direction of the software engineering elite. That includes the elites at my employer as well as the elites everywhere else. The idea of my obsolescence isn’t just something I conjured out of thin air, but rather it’s the idea that the industry has been bending over backwards to force feed through the thick carapace of my ape-like skull. So what does this mean? ...

YouTube Version As it so happens, the other day I happened to click on a YouTube video entitled, “Meet The Silicon Valley Billionaire Ruining The World” and as it turns out it made a very compelling argument that Marc Andreessen may in fact he one of the worst figures in tech. The video was compelling and I was happy to have spent 13 minutes watching it. It did however inspire me to look up some of the source material it referenced, most notably an essay that Marc wrote nearly three years back entitled, “The Techno Optimist Manifesto”. ...

YouTube Version So as I’m sure you all have noticed, PC hardware has gotten way more expensive. In fact it’s getting to the point where I’m beginning to seriously get concerned about my ability to replace hardware that dies. I’m primarily concerned about two categories of hardware. The first one is my Thinkpad laptop. The second one is the Raspberry Pis which essentially run my house. Virtually everything here at home runs from three different Raspberry Pi 500s that I have. ...

YouTube Version Sometime over the last weekend I was confronted with a thought that hadn’t occurred to me before. This thought might’ve been the missing piece of the puzzle that prevented me from being able to effectively grapple with the ongoing decay of the tech industry. So what was the thought? It was simple: The presence of rationality in our industry is no longer guaranteed. Why is that important? Well it’s important because most of my opinion pieces, regardless of how you consume it or where you get it, rely heavily on the premise that regardless of whatever insane off the wall shit is happening right now, eventually the system will correct the issue because the system itself tends to move towards a more rational state over time. But what if that is no longer true? How does that change things? ...

YouTube Version I am writing this post because I had quite the day at work a few days ago. In some ways it was no different than any other day. I attempted to build structured things while keeping from drowning in the torrent of chaos and uncertainty that is the environment where I’m paid to do such work. On any given day, I do not succeed in building quite as much as I had wanted to and this harsh review of my own performance is almost certainly contributing to my now dueling apoplectic and depressing views of my work. We will be discussing those views today. ...

YouTube Version Today is July the 4th and as it so happens this is the 250th anniversary of the day that our founding fathers declared their independence from their former parent nation, Great Britain. I hope that you all are just as grateful about that historical event as I am, but beyond that, I’m not really going to talk about it at all in this post. Rather what I am going to talk about is the fact that as a species, despite our projected veneer of independence and individualism, we are all in fact mutually dependent upon one another. This does not have to be a bad thing. ...

YouTube Version So here I am sitting at a communal table in the lobby of the Sonesta Charlotte Lower South End hotel near the end of Southeast Linuxfest 2026 (aka SELF) pondering this weekends experience and I gotta say: It was a bit depressing. Why? Well in 2024 there was one session about AI. Last year there were four sessions that were AI related and those sessions were part of the “Emerging Technologies” track just like in 2024. This year there were seven sessions and they were part of the “Artificial Intelligence” track. Technically that’s only three additional sessions, but I guess this year it officially became impossible for me to escape the feeling that AI is literally everywhere now. ...

YouTube Version I have effectively been exiled from Big Tech. In this post I’m going to give you my perspective on how that happened and my feelings about it. If you aren’t interested in hearing this tale, I’ll go ahead and summarize it for you up front: The values I grew to appreciate and build my work and hence my tech career of the last few decades around, are no longer in vogue. I refuse to apologize for this and I refuse to shift my position, hence the growing impasse. ...

YouTube Version So before we get into today’s spicey and ultimately divisive discussion topic, I just want to say to those of you who have been following this blog for awhile, thank you. I haven’t posted here very often since I transitioned most of my takes over to a more anonymous blog a couple years ago. Looking back a few years later, I have to admit that I regret doing that. This is primarily because I can’t help but to feel that adopting some anonymity has inherently reduced the range and impact of my diatribes on the tech industry and the world in general. This post marks the very first step that I’m taking to reverse that change. ...