Anybody even remotely invested in keeping up with current events here in America, knows that TikTok is on the verge of being banned. If you are a frequent reader, you already know that I am against that. Doubly so in this case as the US Government has yet to provide a single evidence based argument to support the move, much less addressed the fact that American tech companies engage in largely the same exact kind of behavior that TikTok does. ...
Compared to most coders I work with, I’ve been coding a long time. Specifically since my father and uncle gifted me and my siblings an Apple II in 1985 when I was six years old. We also received a book called “Computer Fun” which attempted to teach BASIC programming to children. So despite all that youthful enthusiasm why do I feel like this career may not be for me anymore? ...
Much text has been written in recent weeks on the topic of the ChatGPT chat bot, its forthcoming integration into Bing and how it will change the world as we know it. While the commentary has run the entire gamut of possible responses, most of it is definitely more hype based than anything else. Today the hype dies. So lets start off with the most basic question. What is ChatGPT? Well as it so happens, ChatGPT is capable of furnishing us with a perfectly acceptable answer (LOG-TXT / LOG-PNG): ...
I recently took a new job and my new employer gave me a choice between a Lenovo Thinkpad with Windows and an M1 Macbook Pro with MacOS. Even my least dedicated readers know that I have no love for Windows and have spent literal years trying to rid myself of it. So of course I chose the Macbook Pro. Well dear readers, I’m going to be blunt: I wish I hadn’t. The reason why is simple: MacOS is a mess of bugs, half-baked features and is clearly only being maintained because Apple obviously feels like it has to. Over ten years ago when I last used MacOS on a regular basis at work, MacOS was perfectly serviceable by the standards of the day. It was competitive and Apple was clearly still excited for it’s future prospects. It wasn’t lacking in any noticeable way. ...
I’ve spent a lot of time debating on whether or not I should even write this blog post. Truth is that I was this close to just letting the entire thing fade into oblivion but after searching out some reading material on the subject, I decided that I needed to write about this, if only to remind future Jay what he just escaped from. Future Jay has a tendency to forget important things like that. ...
There is no great way to put this without a certain segment of my readers recoiling in horror, so I’m just going to say it. I’m tired of fighting for things on the job. After over 20 years of professionally being combative when I thought the situation called for it, I have resolved to turn over a new leaf. If you’ve worked with me, you know how it can be at times. When the company, the team or the boss decided to go down a road that I strongly disagreed with, I pulled every ethical tactic out of the bag to try and reverse things. Sometimes I was right and sometimes I was wrong on a technical level. But looking back I now realize that the level of technical correctness is not particularly relevant. ...
To those who don’t already know: I will be starting a new job next week. This is notable for one reason above all others: It marks my return to a much more normal situation. You see, for the last four and a half years I have actually had two jobs with two different employers. One of the conditions of the arrangement with one of my employers was that I had to largely keep this a secret from my coworkers there. So I mostly did (excluding those I worked very closely with who needed to fully understand my availability). For over four years. That included not discussing it on this blog. ...
The point of today’s post, or diatribe if you prefer, is to push back against the notion that once you have a piece of tech integrated into a workflow, you are pretty much good to go barring any sort of critical failure. Sadly a lot of people believe this. However since the first rule of the “Set It and Forget It” club is that you don’t talk about said club, you rarely hear much about it. ...
Before I launch into this month’s diatribe I want to offer my readers a word of warning: I’ve been feeling very pessimistic about tech in general as of late and this piece will expose a large portion of that to my audience. If you are already depressed about tech, you might wanna skip this one. In any event, I have been fond of occasionally awarding various industries / institutions with the label: The new “priesthood” of society. Whereas American society likes to bandy about the veneer of religious morality, the truth is that we moved past religion being an actual difference maker in how we conduct ourselves a very long time ago. For at least 15 years now (probably longer as that timeline really just represents the first time I consciously realized this myself), I have described the Wall Street Banks and their friends at the Federal Reserve as being our new priesthood. This country and its economy are built on idea that encouraging an ever growing amount of greed benefits everybody and those groups represent the standard bearers that drive and ultimately legitimize such a belief system. ...
Well two and a half weeks ago I finally put on my big boy pants and took Annette down to the local Apple Store… and bought two iPhones. That decision came about because of years of accumulated frustration with Android, Google and Android OEMs. If you want my overall opinion on the iPhone experience, here it is: It works like it should. Which is a back handed way of saying that the wide variety of Android phones I have used over the years haven’t worked that way. At some point as a consistent Android user you get so used to endless quirks and buggy behavior that it almost becomes some sort of meta game in and of itself. ...