What’s the alternative? I want to protest, but if I miss work then I might lose my job, which would cost me my health insurance and likely my house. I want to get back on social media and show people where I stand, but these MAGA people are rabid and will come after me for it. I’m ready to step up, but not while Trump has half the country behind him. I’m waiting for a numbers advantage. His approval rating is tanking, and once it gets low enough, I think people like me will be more willing to take bigger risks. Until then, we’re doing what we can while keeping our heads down.

Harris’s approach presumably would have been a continuation of Biden’s, waging an economic war of attrition against Russia for as long as Ukraine was willing to hold their ground. The whole endgame here, under the Biden/Harris strategy, was going to come down to which side blinked first. Putin must have gambled that he’d win if Trump won, which is exactly what’s playing out now. If Harris won, it’d be a continued stalemate, which of course benefits the western coalition - not Russia.

“And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”

Both quotes from Thomas Jefferson, which isn’t to say that that it’s true - only that our founders expected us to defend our liberties with violence if necessary.

A lot of people are doing work that can be automated in part by AI, and there’s a good chance that they’ll lose their jobs in the next few years if they can’t figure out how to incorporate it into their workflow. Some people are indeed out of the workforce or in industries that are safe from AI, but that doesn’t invalidate the hype for the rest of us.

This is like saying that automobiles are overhyped because they can’t drive themselves. When I code up a new algorithm at work, I’m spending an hour or two whiteboarding my ideas, then the rest of the day coding it up. AI can’t design the algorithm for me, but if I can describe it in English, it can do the tedious work of writing the code. If you’re just using AI as a Google replacement, you’re missing the bigger picture.

• Cloud providers have financial incentive to push microservice architectures
• Cloud providers give corporate consultants statistics like “microservice architectures are proven to be X% more likely to succeed than monolithic architectures”
• Cloud providers offer subscription-based tools and seminars to help companies transition to microservice architectures
• Companies invest in these tools and seminars and mandate that all new projects adopt microservice architectures

This is how it went down with Agile at my company 10 years ago, and some process certifications and database technologies before that. Based on what I’m hearing from upper management microservice are probably next.

From my perspective the corporate obsession with microservices is a natural evolution from their ongoing obsession with Agile. One of the biggest consequences of Agile adoption I’ve seen has been the expectation of working prototypes within the first few months of development, even for large projects. For architects this could mean honing in on solutions in weeks that we would have had months to settle on in the past. Microservices are attractive in this context because they buy us flexibility without holding up development. Once we’ve identified the services that we’ll need, we can get scrum teams off and running on those services while working alongside them to figure out how they all fit together. Few other architectures give us that kind of flexibility.

All this is to say that if your current silver bullet introduces a unique set of problems, you shouldn’t be surprised if the solutions to those problems start to also look like silver bullets.

Came in here to criticize the concept of a smoking ban based on comparisons to prohibition and the “war on drugs” in America, but reading through the article it actually sounds somewhat reasonable. Using regulation to reduce nicotine content sounds fantastic - no one should be forced to smoke if they don’t want to, and making tobacco less addicting might actually help to accomplish that.

Still not a fan of prohibition as a means of addressing health issues, but I suppose it’s different when your country has universal healthcare.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the unconditional support that the US has shown to Israel during this crisis. I understand why we must stand with our friends and allies. I understand that Israel has immense strategic value as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the Middle East. I understand our desire to support democracies in the region. I understand that they have a right to defend their people. I understand that our support is necessary to keep things from cascading further out of hand. But what I don’t understand is how we can provide all this support and still have no leverage to ease the suffering of innocent Palestinians. Are we even capable of applying diplomatic pressure on Israel, or has our support become something more akin to an entitlement?

I was against drilling until Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia produces 10% of the global oil supply, so we can’t really sanction them without impacting the global economy. We’ve been draining our strategic petroleum reserves since the war started, and while we might have enough saved up to get through the current crisis, I wouldn’t blame the white house for wanting to increase domestic supply as a contingency - especially if this turns out to be just the first domino in a global conflict.

It’s certainly possible that Meta has a plan to destroy the fediverse with Threads, but I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that they’re just doing this because they can. If their plan was to take over the fediverse from within, and that plan hinged on instances not defederating out of caution, then it’s off to a poor start. I might just be totally naive but this feels more like them testing the water by opening their doors to the fediverse - I don’t know if they know what happens next.

Remember when they snuck off on some escape ship to go get help for their crew in imminent danger and then decided to dick around on some horse racing casino planet? It’s like they completely forgot why they were there. I thought TLJ had some neat ideas but I don’t know how anyone can overlook that weird loss of urgency in the middle of the film. It’s like your house is on fire and your family is trapped upstairs, so you run over to a neighbor’s house to call the fire department, but you discover that they got some dog fighting thing going on in the backyard so you decide to go deal with that first, then you call the fire department but it turns out the dispatcher was in cahoots with the arsonist who started it in the first place, and then you return home with your tail between your legs and your mom didn’t even know you had left. The whole second act could have been a dream sequence and it wouldn’t have changed a thing.

If there is an opportunity to change the culture from within, you should consider that first. I’ve done some recruiting and I’ll admit the short stints don’t look great on a resume. It makes you seem like someone who is more willing to run from a problem than to try to fix it. Keep in mind that you may not need permission to do some of the things you want to do. Dress down a little - see if anyone cares enough to call you out. Set aside a few hours for innovative work. If you can’t get anywhere with that, then I’d agree - time to look for another job, and best to be honest about why you’re leaving. If you can speak to some of your efforts to improve the situation before bailing, that could definitely help to quell some concerns about your commitment.