I’ve seen a few posts on this and it’s always exciting to see this mix of cultural wisdom and environmentalism.

But I’m always left wondering why we aren’t supporting these communities with some heavy equipment to do this. From the article it takes a person an entire day to dig one of these moons. Surely some construction equipment could work order(s?) of magnitude faster. I can’t help the hinting feeling that we’re offloading all of the burdens of addressing global climate change onto the communities that are already paying the steepest price.

Is it the climate? How remote the locations are? Challenges with sourcing parts? Hope someone can clarify why heavy equipment would be prohibitive.

I use a 60% for literally everything. It’s my only keyboard. If I had more keys, 99.9% of what I’m doing would be on these keys anyways.

I’m often using vim-style navigation in editors, which is designed to minimize the need to move your hands off the home row in the first place.

When I do need arrow keys, I hold a modifier key and my hjku keys become arrow keys. For gaming I can toggle the arrow keys on so I don’t need to hold another key the whole time.

I wouldn’t say I have a wildly complex setup. There are very few custom keybinds that I use regularly and need.

Okay everyone calm down. We can’t see the other side. Everyone knows that you tie one side at the top of the wheel and the other at the bottom of the wheel. When driving, the two wheels rotate at the same speed and keep the line taut.

(please don’t ever do this)

When I was interviewing (in the Bay Area initially, but the culture is similar here in TO) I was warned not to over-dress for interviews. Tech seems to foster a very meritocratic culture (for better or worse), where dressing more casually is seen as letting your work speak for itself in a way.

I’d say this outfit looks exactly right - not just “good enough”, but spot on for what is dressy enough without coming across as trying too hard or being too corporate.

The exact culture varies from company to company. As a broad stereotype, startups and burgeoning tech will lean more casual, larger companies and established tech will lean more dressy; but I think you’re in a safe place for either.

Best of luck with the interview process.

Not what I’m saying. It’s totally fine to be indecisive and skeptical, but that’s not an opinion and you shouldn’t expect people to respect it as a stance on an issue.

It’s great when you can recognize that you’re indecisive and see that as an opportunity for further investigation.

I think “gray” (or “centrist” or “nuanced”) classifiers are often used as a way to shield a position from criticism while not really engaging with it to any end. This is the “gray” position that you might see discouraged.

The “gray” that I often see encouraged engages with the entire complexity of an issue. It follows the issue to its roots and at those roots interrogates them to their conclusions, establishing for each a black or white position. In aggregate, these conclusions might not fall neatly in line with an existing black or white position.

An example might be the war in Ukraine. You may simultaneously feel like Russia is being imperialist by annexing parts of Ukraine, feel that Ukraine has a fascist sect that should be eliminated, that Ukraine is right to self-determination, that it is unfairly positioned as a proxy pawn for NATO to exercise its power, and that the war is being drawn out to force national pressure on access to oil, that the historical recognition of a regional ethnic group should be respected. Taken to their ends, these positions do not land fully in support of either side in the war in Ukraine, but each facet requires interrogation and is owed a decisive stance.

If you’re putting in the intellectual work, then gray positions (as the aggregate of more decisive positions) are fine. If you’re not, and you’re just washing your hands of engaging with issues. “centrist” positions are even more dangerous because they are not defined by beliefs, but rather relative to others’ beliefs, allowing them to shift without ever consciously forming any opinions.

tl;dr: gray fine, ignorance not fine.

I fell victim to this one on authentic “retro” N64 hardware, which has a hard plastic analog stick. Got an enormous blister right on the palm of my hand trying to win this tug of war. Of course, my young brain was able to hyperfocus on the game and completely tuned out any sense of pain in my hand. It was quite gruesome when I finally beat it and realized my hand was torn to shreds. I was at my neighbors place and I remember how shocked their mom was. She applied some cream that I think was meant for severe burns.

Nintendo would later run a campaign where they’d send you fingerless gloves for free to try to do some damage control on all the negative press when reports started popping up.

If you’re just looking to get started with 3d modeling, it’s hard to beat Blender. At the cost of free, it’s by far the most affordable way to dip your toes in some modeling tools.

For many workflows it’s world class. If you plan to do more organic forms or don’t need technical precision, then it’s very competitive or preferable to paid software.

You might find it lacking if you plan to do parametric or technical CAD-style modeling. Even then, I think Blender can be a low cost way to learn what you want in your software before investing in more specialized software. You’ll learn enough of the modeling basics to more fluently navigate what other software provides.

For those that need a translation:

“You have got to be shitting me”

“I am in fact not shitting you, my dude. It is very disappointing that this is real.”

I'd bet that they symlinked /ubuntu to the server's home root - probably for continuity with some previous file structure. It sure looks silly, but I'm sure the reasons for doing it were pretty reasonable.

I’ve been there, but over the years I’ve gotten better at avoiding being in this situation.

If you are implementing something for yourself, and merging it back upstream is just a bonus, then by all means jump straight to implementing.

However, it’s emotionally draining to implement something and arrive at something you’re proud of only to have it ignored. So do that legwork upfront. File a feature request, open a discussion, join their dev chat - whatever it is, make sure what you want to do is valued and will be welcomed into the project before you start on it. They might even nudge you in a direction that you hadn’t considered before you started.

Be a responsible dev and communicate before you do the work.

A few animal-inspired names that I think have a nice ring to them

• Dodopedia (extinct like Mastadons, similar vowel rhythm to "wiki")
• Hippopedia
• Komodopedia