matdevdug

matdevdug, 4 months ago to tech

The thing about #tech #layoffs that people who haven’t been through it often don’t understand is that morale never recovers. The employees who remain will never have the same relationship with that company, bosses or peers.

Watching people you respect pack their stuff and crying on the phone with their spouses is something that never goes away. When I survived a layoff in my 20s I became a “do exactly what the ticket says” person. I stopped suggesting ideas, providing feedback, believing anything a manager told me.

If you are a company considering layoffs, especially a profitable company, you should approach it as “this department will have 100% turnover”. The second I got another job offer I left that company and six months later nobody who had been there at the time of layoffs remained.

I’ve seen that pattern play out multiple times.

matdevdug, 11 months ago to random

When I first moved to Chicago over 15 years ago, the only job I could find was basically being IT for rich people. I would go to their houses, setup backups, fix wifi, replace hard drives, that sort of thing. We were all background checked and vetted, whatever.

Coming from a farming town to Chicago I had never encountered rich like this. Rich people to me were people who bought new Toyota Camrys every 3-4 years. These were live in nanny, live in maid, chef cooks dinner 3-4 nights a week kind of rich I was working for.

For those unaware, how these households work is the wife runs the household and often has an assistant who is effectively your boss. You are warned to NEVER bother the husband EVER, that he worked “in finance” and was very tired when he got home. In practice it was never an issue, these men didn’t even seem to register my existence. I could be sitting at his desk and he would turn off the lights in the office.

I have a million stories of these people, but today I can’t get Mrs. French (not her name) out of my head. I remember her for humiliating me in a way that will always kinda linger with me. Her and her daughter used to pay my hourly fee to have me do things like “wait in line for the new phone” or go buy printer paper and put it in their printer. One day I mentioned casually to her daughter I was going to be moving kinda close to them. I had gotten a sweet deal on an apartment.

I knew I fucked up immediately. The daughter ran to the mom and they both looked upset. The next day they scheduled me again. It’s snowing, Chicago, etc. I made $25,000 a year plus a per trip fee and had zero wiggle room. I got to the house, side door and the assistant informed me I needed to wait for the owner “to be ready”.

Fine, I sit outside while snow falls. Hour 1 passes, I try again. Wait some more. Hour 2, I get insistent. “If you leave we will cancel our contract with your company.” I’ll get fired if they do that, so I sit down again. Hour 3 turns into 4 into 5.

I’m freezing out here, hands shaking. Finally the assistant comes to the door. “Oh, we forgot you were out here. You can go for today.” Then I look up and there they are. The mom and daughter are looking right at me grinning ear to ear. Everyone is staring at me.

Idk why it’s in my head today but that scene is burned into my memory.

matdevdug, 11 months ago to rust

I am baffled by how much trouble I’m having at writing #rust at a decent clip. #Golang I felt pretty good at after a few months, same with #Python and #PHP. Meanwhile I’ve been trying to write anything useful in Rust for months and it’s so incredibly slow going.

I’m shocked people are enthusiastic about adopting this for their jobs. If I had a specific part of an app that needed more speed, absolutely. But as a general purpose language? I’m not seeing it yet.

I’ll keep ramming my head against it but have not enjoyed myself thus far. If writing a proof of concept in python takes me 4 hours, rewriting that in rust clocks in easily at 12-16 hours.

matdevdug, 5 months ago to apple

I wrote about my time as an #Apple dispatch repair tech going door to door in Chicago fixing #Macs https://matduggan.com/fixing-macs-door-to-door/

matdevdug, 1 month ago to Bulgaria

I’m surprised the #EU isn’t going to allow the #meta pay or let us show you personalized ads thing. It seems like a perfectly fair compromise to me. You can either pay Meta through ad revenue or directly and preserve your privacy.

This seems like the EU saying its citizens are entitled to use Meta’s services regardless of their financial value which seems sort of bonkers. Facebook isn’t a public utility.

matdevdug, 8 months ago to Kubernetes

Whenever I see a #Kubernetes post that starts with “it’s too complicated or it doesn’t solve any problems”, I can’t help but roll my eyes a bit.

Do you need to use it? No, but if you do adopt it, it allows for effectively unlimited growth with none of the maintenance that drags down conventional infrastructure teams. No OS upgrades, no host maintenance, no writing ansible, no baking AMIs, etc.

It has a cost, but it’s baffling to say “there’s nothing of value here”. It’s a force multiplier that lets small teams grow to virtually unlimited size using identical tooling that is industry wide, making hiring and training easier.

matdevdug, 4 months ago to random

It's crazy governments still let people pay ransomware payments. Seems like an obvious law to pass to make it a crime to pay the criminals, killing it as an industry.

matdevdug, 1 month ago to fediverse

Only the #fediverse could come up with the idea that journalists wanting to get paid for their work and putting up paywalls is the actual threat to democracy.

People always paid for #news. That was central to the entire concept. We would get a newspaper delivered to all of our houses every morning and would (sometimes) read it. Then we all collectively stopped doing that because it being on the internet convinced us that the cost of the news was the paper that news was printed on.

So don’t blame journalism for the lack of information in the upcoming election. The American people didn’t feel it was worth paying for and this is the result. We got spoiled and decided news was free even though we didn’t fund it.

matdevdug, 11 months ago to vscode

It is amazing that #VSCode has just quietly dominated the IDE world without a lot of debate. It used to be a fight between Emacs/Vim, JetBrains, Eclipse and a long list of smaller IDEs.

Now I see either VSCode or a proprietary IDE if your stack has one.

#programmer #Programming #ide #coding

matdevdug, 9 months ago to firefox

#passkeys are the worst, most user-hostile security design ever imagined in my lifetime. They're endlessly confusing for people, the sync mechanisms make no goddamn sense and their rollout has been a complete shit-show so far.

Let's start with Chrome and passkeys. I'm on a Mac and I want to use a passkey. #Firefox doesn't even support passkeys, so I can use #Safari or #Chrome. IF I USE CHROME, the passkey generated is NOT synced OR usable on the iCloud Keychain. It exists only on the Mac Keychain. So if I lose this laptop OR delete my Chrome user, that login is simply gone forever.

Ok so I'll use safari. Whoa there partner, now the passkey isn't usable on Chrome! Now I'm locked to Safari forever. Let's say I'm sick of Apple and decide to go to Android someday? All those logins are gone forever.

Jesus Christ, I'll use Windows. Nope, those passkeys don't sync ever! So if I ever lose that laptop, I'm locked out of all those accounts regardless of how I use passkeys.

None of these risks have been properly communicated to users and none of them are acceptable. I cannot believe that we are suggesting that anyone use these broken things right now. Shameful.

#security #programming

matdevdug, 10 months ago to fediverse

I love how so many people are racking their brains on why the #Fediverse isn’t very sticky. It’s the algorithm or the UI or the confusion over selecting servers or moderation issues.

We don’t have any cool #celebrities. Like there’s a reason #threads launched with famous people. It’s why #twitter and #Instagram are so popular. It’s a way for normal people to interact with and feel involved with the lives of rich famous people.

If I could pay for cool celebrities to join a mastodon server all the complaints people are fighting about wouldn’t matter at all.

matdevdug, 3 months ago to random

New post on my blog. You can read it here: https://matduggan.com/state-of-the-blog/

matdevdug, 4 months ago to apple

There is something hilariously bold about #apple both telling developers to go fuck themselves with this out of app purchase scarescreen and also effectively betting the future of #visionos on the idea that third party developers will put in a lot of time and money to make apps for a platform that currently has no users.

I’ve never seen a company bet the future of a platform on a community while in an active fight with that community. It’s a unique strategy.

matdevdug, 9 months ago to Netflix

Watching a lot of #netflix movies to try and get as much value out of a shared membership before it gets turned off.

Netflix movies are, for the most part, background noise. Never has a movie studio so consistently hired some of the best directors, writers and actors in the business only to churn out just complete white noise.

From “comedies” like The Bubble to “rom-coms” like Your Place or Mine or inspirational movies like Tall Girl, I’ve never seen such vapid nothing. Even during the height of the DVD era when movie studios just cranked out shit, at least you got the sense that someone enjoyed working on it.

These are completely joyless products where even the actors seem to lose interest halfway through. They almost seem written with the assumption you aren’t watching them but are playing on your phone, with constant reminders of the plot. “Remember we need to get to Florida!” Five minutes later: “don’t forgot about the crime boss in Florida we need to meet”.

I’m sure Netflix pays well and everyone needs to work. But these are so consistently horrible that you do have to wonder inside of Netflix if they even bother continuing to make them.

matdevdug, 11 months ago to Futurology

I know this is going to get me some hate, but I actually think the #Meta approach to the #fediverse is pretty clever from the rumors. Twitter is collapsing, so there's roughly $5 billion sitting on the table for someone to snag.

#Bluesky is still a couple years from having a platform where companies know moderation works, there are answers to how servers are going to work, etc. It's a small team and the twitter implosion happened very fast.

So Meta is going to put #Threads out there, monitor it, connect it to the Fediverse and be able to turn around and say to companies/advertisers "We're the only stable operator in this space". They have the engineering roster to build out TweetDeck alternatives quickly, they have a robust statistics platform, legal and compliance checks for integrations, etc.

Because it's built on an open platform, Meta doesn't need to worry about any sort of dark pattern debate or user lock-in regulation. The rest of the #Fediverse has zero interest in the commercial element of social media, so allowing users to interact with non-commercial servers doesn't hurt them at all.

The mistake people here are making I think is assuming Meta wants your data. I don't think they care at all about your data. I think what Meta wants is the $5 billion that Twitter was generating from a platform where their only competition are volunteers, a non-profit and a less than 20 person bluesky team.

matdevdug, 6 months ago to android

It is crazy that in the conversation around #imessage on #android with #beeper was the unspoken assumption that #apple would be happy to foot the bill for android users to use their service for free and let a third party company charge a subscription for using Apple resources.

Why would that ever work? What company would ever agree to that?

matdevdug, 30 days ago (edited 30 days ago) to random

New post on my blog. You can read it here: https://matduggan.com/the-worst-website-in-the-entire-world/
#vmware #broadcom #tech

matdevdug, 9 months ago to tech

My hatred for USB-C cannot be overstated. First, it's not a "universal standard for phones". You get wildly different charging speeds when you start to mix and match cables and chargers from different manufacturers. PD at least ensures every type of phone charges, but then USB PD PPS comes out and once again nothing works correctly unless you buy the same cable and charger from the people who make your phone.

On the computer side, the situation is even more grim. There's no way to tell if a USB-C cable supports high current charging or 4.0 data speeds just by looking at it. It is a mystery known only to the high priests of the USB-C world. Apparently us commoners cannot be trusted with symbols to convey that information.

Users may assume HDMI or Ethernet are supported over a USB-C port if a laptop is missing the regular ports, but that might not be the case. Even more maddening, functionality might only work on specific ports. You might have 4 ports but only one that offers the functions you want.

The only way to have a high-quality experience with USB-C on a laptop is to purchase a $200+ powered dock. This at least ensures everything works, but what a shitty experience.

Everything about the transition to USB-C, from the confusing different standards to Thunderbolt to giving consumers zero goddamn information has been a disaster. It's a lesson in how terrible technology companies are at conveying information that humans can consume.

#tech #macos #usbc #usb #consumertech

matdevdug, 10 months ago to linux

Sometimes I think about switching back to a #Linux or #Windows laptop and then I realize my M1 MacBook Pro has been unplugged all day and is at 70% battery life.

I can't go back to life like it was before, I'm sorry. This is just too convenient.

#apple #macos

matdevdug, 4 months ago to random

As someone who spent a few cold Michigan winters in a house without running the electricity to save money, let me share some quick tips to folks experiencing -17 C weather.

• set up a tent in a room connected to a bathroom and try to stay in it as much as possible. I bought a cheap 4 season tent used off Craigslist but it looks like Amazon has a ton for under $200.
• wool socks and hats are your best friends
• plastic wrap on the windows is a godsend but also hang blankets over the windows
• seal off the house as much as possible.
• get cheap tights, cut the legs off, fill them full of socks and use them to block the drafts under doors
• if you have a second floor and it’s well insulated that’s gonna be your best bet
• be very careful of any propane heater and always have a tested carbon monoxide detector in that room with you.
• get a digital thermometer. You are shooting for as close to 18 C as you can get. Below 13 and you need to run a heater for a bit
• contact the power company. I got a $300 credit for the winter that helped a lot.
• if you are having trouble hitting 18 C during daylight then older folks, kids, pets etc shouldn’t be there. Younger adults in good physical condition should be fine but consider it a warning sign.

#winter #cold #tips

matdevdug, 10 months ago to RaspberryPi

I'm working on a side-project and I wanted to save some cash. Found a good deal on a place to stick some #raspberrypi boxes for hosting in a DC with the understanding that they would be #IPv6 only. I figured "well that's not that big of a deal surely".

How wrong I was. Almost everything is broken, from pulling containers to accessing GitHub releases. I was expecting a few things to be broken, but I had no idea that almost everything was going to break when I did this. It's kind of incredible how impossible it is to have ipv6-only servers right now, even if I have a CDN handling HTTP traffic to users who can't access the content over ipv4.

Even the cloudflare tunnels are broken by default unless you go in there and tell them you are using ipv6. The client supports both but defaults to ipv4 only.

#networking #linux #hosting

matdevdug, 4 months ago to diy

So I have a mechanical keyboard, a cherry brown one I've been using for like 5+ years every day. For a long time I've been annoyed at the sound it makes, but convinced myself that it didn't make sense to fix because in order to lubricate the switches, I would need to de-solder the switches from the board.

Well as it turns out, that isn't true. If you have a cherry red, brown or blue that is nice but you really want that super smooth feeling of a more premium switch, you can absolutely lubricate it. All I did was depress the switch, put the smallest amount of Super Lube Synthetic Oil on a size 0 brush and then brush the sides of the cherry browns. I repeated this for all the switches.

After a week, it's like a new, much more expensive keyboard. It sounds totally different, more similar to the far more expensive keyboards that my coworkers have. I haven't had any reliability issues and the cost to do it was less than $10. Strongly recommend.

#diy #MechBoardCult #MechanicalkKeyboard #keyboard

matdevdug, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to random

New post on my blog. You can read it here: https://matduggan.com/why-dont-i-like-git-more/

#git #tech #programming

matdevdug, 2 months ago to random

Linux people please understand that sometimes people need to run MacOS. On occasion you need a Unix-based OS with built-in SIP where the webcam, speakers and fingerprint sensor all work. Maybe you can’t buy the one old model of ThinkPad that works perfectly with Debian stable.

matdevdug, 7 months ago to random

A 3D printer is like a boat. You don’t want to own one, you just want to know someone who does.