Asklemmy

I think that the industries based around cryptocurrencies and other blockchain technologies have always been, and have repeatedly proven themselves to be, nothing more or less than scams run and perpetuated by scam artists.

Can you please expand on this and help me out here?

I’m coming across people who are true believers in crypto and while I insist it’s a scam and it’s destroying the fucking planet, they go down the rabbit hole into places I can’t follow because I’ve literally not had the interest nor desire to read up on crypto.

They keep saying that what’s really destroying the planet is the existing financial system with all of the logistics involved with keeping it up as opposed to the cryptofarms adding to the demand on the electric grid. They say that is the goal, to replace the existing financial energy demand with crypto but again, it’s only added to it. Another talking point is that in the case of global climate catastrophe there will be pockets of electricity and cryptoservers somewhere on the planet and that while crypto will remain all the other financial systems will disappear

They also seem to somehow think it’s the fix to workplace bureaucracy somehow and everything in sight

Please impart some knowledge.

Dear Skippy,

I'm sorry to hear you're going home and leaving one of the prettiest cities in the country. I understand you were frustrated with the pacing and guardrails in place around large-scale enterprise projects where privacy and security and auditing are paramount.

I worry that it took you a long time to realize that you weren't a good fit for the job, and I worry that blaming the inability to find a decent house to buy near work - when you could have moved anywhere in the country in the WFH programme and found a place that brought you joy or just something to rent - on your decisions to move away to where your schoolchums and your parents live, may make that discovery harder to reach than ever. I'm glad if you're going somewhere you believe will make you happier, but a clear audit of this last situation needs to be done.

The truth is, you weren't a good fit. The first, last, and every word in any solution you suggested to every problem was merely a regurge of every last-5-years buzzword, and incredibly short-sighted. "Just use AI in the cloud" was neat to discuss the first time, but no solution built on such jello could pass muster by security people who were not new in their job -- which meant they were maybe old, but also VERY experienced. It's this experience that seemed to cockblock every resume-based solution you dreamt up.

I'm relieved you've landed a job at some dot-co-dot-in startup -- not because I bear you any ill-will "boy needs to learn a lesson" thing and I know that the odds are vastly against long-term employment, but because chasing the constant churn of buzzword products will get it out of your system; and in this day and age, still suffering from the loss of our mentors and gurus 20 years ago and the Lost Boys age of Tech that followed, you need to discover yourself the things you refuse to hear from people eschewing certain tech not because they're old but because they're critical of the gilded shit that likely will never survive long enough to realize a return on the investment and churn costs.

I wish you a speedy end to that slow soul-search and a placement at the company ready to receive the mature you as we hope to gain a more mature version of your astounding intellect and enthusiasm in your seat very quickly to carry on the work you should have been fucking doing.

Keep in touch, so I can witness your transformation into a focused force of nature.

Sincerely, your friend and peer,

--cg

You’re becoming an old man yelling at clouds. People sad all the same shit about websites back in the 90s. They said the same shit about personal computers in offices in general over the mainframe systems. Unless your software is going to be responsible for actual lives it’s better to get something buggy out on time then drag things out like star citizen soaking up money for no returns.

I don't get the term 'technical debt'. Most people seem to use it to say "We took shortcuts previously, so now we need to go back and do things properly".

FIrst, it's a bad metaphor. You take on debt to invest in long term things that will provide future benefits. Telling the bean counters that you need to stop working on useful features to 'pay back technical debt' is not making things clearer to them.

Second, you write software, what the heck are you talking about? Compare to civil engineering. If an area gets busier and the existing narrow wood bridge is no longer suitible, engineers don't say "Wow what idiots built this road with no eye to future growth?" It was built with the needs and resources of the time. To improve it, the bridge needs to be closed, demolished, and rebuilt with planning, labour and materials.

Instead software is empherial. You don't need to demolish what's there. No need to build temporary alternative infrastructure. No need for new materials and disposal of the old. It's just planning and labour to redo a piece of software. It always seems so whiny when people complain about technical debt, as if switching to a different build system is anywhere close to the difficulty of fixing real life; replacing lead pipes with copper for an entire city, or removing asbestos from buildings.

We should stop making software for others.

A prerequisite for reasonable tech use is understanding the amount of energy and materials you need to "burn through" for any given piece of tech to 1) exist and 2) do its useful work. Call me naive, but I really doubt that we'd be accelerating climate change this much if every person contributing to the "X thousand hours of videos uploaded to YouTube each day" was required to write their own video hosting software first. I doubt our social networks would become so captured by propagandists of every user of one had to write their own. (Obviously as an absolute this is a bit too restrictive - it's more the tone and direction that I'm trying to convey).

Instead, we should be teaching and helping others reach our knowledge /skill level.

Maybe the execs would stop pushing shitty UI dark patterns if they had to code the service themselves (and then use it afterwards!).

One^can^^dream...