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Anyway, just finished day one at the new job.  So far so good.

Narrator: it would only go downhill from there.   

I'm just too old for this startup shit, man.  It's not even like the old days where maybe there was stress and drama but also it was exciting and people had good scotch at their desks and the parties were legendary.  With the new generation it seems like it's even more stress but also zero fun -- worst of both worlds!  Like, case in point: a couple of weeks ago I thought "be the change you want to see in your lame-ass office culture" and offered to buy a round for my team at a nearby bar at 5pm (the company is way too cheap to ever sponsor something as frivolous as "teambuilding"), and had zero takers because nobody felt comfortable leaving their desk that "early".

I also had the eye-opening experience just yesterday of watching another engineer on my team (this is his first job out of college) work on fixing a bug -- he was typing out a description of what he was trying to do, and at first I thought it was a comment or commit message, but no, it was an AI prompt.  The AI authored some code, he ran it without looking at it, and the thing he was trying to fix was still broken, so he tried another prompt, and after three iterations of that he gave up and I said he could reassign the bug to me. 

When AI code generation started to become a thing I was worried that new grads would be frozen out of the market by execs hiring fewer junior engineers, and that would screw them out of being able to acquire the experience to become senior engineers; now I realize that the junior engineers are going to fuck themselves over by using AI as a crutch and never developing the skills that would allow them to surpass it (because I do believe there's a pretty firm ceiling on what these AI models can do, and just because they can outperform a mediocre intern now doesn't mean they're going to outperform an actual engineer five or ten or even twenty years from now).

Anyway, I'm back on the job hunt again, having learned a new round of lessons (namely: no more fucking startups, ever), and after a couple of months of submitting applications I finally have some actual interviews at a couple of places, so here's hoping.

Played BG1 at release when I was in my early 20s.  Back at it, playing whatever the latest greatest version of it is, and BG1 still delivers.  Looking forward to next playing BG2 as I never did play it.  By the time BG2 rolled out I had discovered MMOs and that was all she wrote for a bit.

cheers

New Lucas Pope game just dropped (like, an hour ago).  https://dukope.itch.io/moida-mansion

Squadron 42 still another two years away.

In perpetuity.

Squadron 42 still another two years away.

And the 1 hour PROLOGUE which consists of unskippable cutscenes, some turret shooting and some walking on rails.


And 6 or so baddies to run straight towards you and take one clip each to kill.

Squadron 42 still another two years away.

https://wccftech.com/star-citizen-expose-paints-a-fairly-bleak-picture-theres-no-actual-focus-on-getting-the-game-done/

Never fails to amuse.

I've forgotten the ending to Anathem. The Reamde was a solid ending, but the ending was basically a set piece of "libertarian country gun nuts vs. terrorists" and was bad.

If it was 25 pages shorter it probably would have been fine. It was SO. LONG.


Anyone pick up the new Stephenson yet? Bought it but haven't read it.

perhaps more of the author’s perspective coming through than intended.

That's my theory.

I just finished the fourth book and speaking of "Stephenson endings" that was not one.  Everything wrapped in a very neat bow, felt well-paced, resolves all the things you want to see resolved but also leaves openings for more stories.

I gave up looking for gender clues a third of the way into the first book; it's clearly very deliberately undefined.  Even after the crew has seen Murderbot's face they don't slip into any masculine or feminine pronouns, which means either they're all really diligent about not assuming gender (it is the future, after all) or its human features are so perfectly androgynous that it doesn't read as either.

For better or worse, this is a reason Murderbot comes across as female, based on conventions of the genre and societal expectations.  Similarly, it’s what one assumes when they find a Sci Fi author with two first initials and a last name, or a forum poster with a gender-neutral username and an anime avatar..