but xan, LinkedIn is bone hurting juice!

I went on medical leave in March while the whole fucking world was just starting to go proper mad with AI madness and AI mandates. Knowing the fervor for AI building in my own employer, I knew that by the time I returned, a mandate would be inevitable. I was so right that an AI usage mandate would have been instituted the very day I was scheduled to return; instead, I chose to part ways because I know what a losing battle looks like.

Anyway. LinkedIn was my way of reckoning with the "why", trying to understand what would compel a person to do this. It was also my way of shouting into the void until I could build camaraderie with people who feel similarly to me. Did this work out in the long run? Yes, I suspect so. But did I catch a great deal of second hand psychological damage from the replies to many of my rants? Absolutely.

I have no particular conclusions here other than to say this: If you are in the US, stop sending job applications through ATS systems. This practice no longer serves you. Personally, I have given up on the whole endeavour of trying to prove myself worthy to lumbering entities that do not know themselves well enough to wish to understand their own candidates.

2026-04-09 12:37:05 UTC

Eccentric scientist: Gadzooks! It would appear I have invented, from first principles, a new mechanism for tracking the rate of progress and change of a sequence of events to a minute degree!

A man donning a uniform and insignia walks onto the scene.

Commander: But does it have...military applications?

Eccentric scientist: NO! IT MUST ONLY BE USED FOR PEACEFUL ENDS!

In a fit of righteous anger and compassion for fellow man, foreseeing a troubled world filled with anguish and torment, Professor Gantt destroys his chart and endeavours never to repeat his mistake.

2026-04-10 03:37:53 UTC

Old man: You there, young boy! What news have you! Boy: Sir, they've finally cracked the codex! Old man: Nonsense, boy, even Charles Babbage himself couldn't decode the mystery of software development! Boy: But it's true, a man on a place called "Linked Inn" said that the skill is about not shipping garbage, sir!

The old man, muttering to himself: By God's wounds, after all these years verging on the breach of madness, through never-ending trial and error, I could never on my own deduce the ultimate, final skill...I shall endeavour to locate the proprietor of this so-called "Linked Inn".

In the ensuing weeks, it was revealed that this genius man called Nick had saved all of humanity from its own torture.

2026-04-11 00:34:34 UTC

Dear AI people,

You win.

Oh, no, I'm not going to suddenly vibe code and enjoy it. No. Are you kidding me? I have standards.

I am simply not going to care any longer.

The valid concerns regarding the environmental impact, theft, violation of the social contract of open source, and the increased energy costs subsidised by populations don't seem to register, for expedience is the law of the land.

The appeals to humanity; how dreadful the moment feels, the immense social and economic pressure to abandon all one's hard-earned skill and callouses; do not matter. "It's not so bad."

I categorically refuse.

Before you engage, know that there is no logical argument you can lodge to change my mind. This is a thoroughly pragmatic and principled stand and I owe no further explanation.

I do not care, and you cannot make me.

2026-04-11 15:05:29 UTC

Alright. Last post on the matter of me hating LLMs. tl;dr It's not the technology, but the fervor, implementation, and resource misallocation.

When you strip LLMs down to their essence, you feed a corpus of data at training, apply matrix multiplication on inputs, receive output. I have no problem with this whatsoever; why would I? You can do this with a potato with a Coral TPU plugged in, in an afternoon.

We can even take an afternoon to train LLMs with carefully-curated data we own or have explicit permission to use for such a purpose. LLMs can be weird little guys, and that's cool.

The relentless investments, the outrageous marketing claims, and all the effort by practised hands to work around LLM limitations when less effort the traditional way would do. Feeding the machine for the sake of the machine.

I grew up with hand-me-down computers; working with constraints and doing more with less never left me. Constraints are beautiful and breed innovation. This is as true now as it was then.

My beef is with all this being done at the expense of fellow man, borrowing against our future, and the demands to conform.

Do what you will, but leave me out of it. I am in charge of my own life.

2026-04-12 17:04:51 UTC

The only reason people think email sucks is because it is the one platform-agnostic way of facilitating account signups, billing statement, sending you Jira notifications when you've stepped away from work, and marketing campaigns reminding people that your company exists in a cacophony of everybody else doing the same.

Try sending a friend an email, as though you were writing a pen pal. Ever had one of those? Make it nice, personal, and don't assign any expectations as to when to receive a reply. You might possibly want to let them know they got an email in the first place, though, since most inboxes these days are little digital cesspits of neglect.

edit: grammar

Till the soils. Do something nice. Be a little bit human.

2026-04-15 15:05:43 UTC

I am praying and holding space for everybody currently affected by the Claude Code outage. Even if you do not use LLMs, please keep these frightened, confused people in your thoughts.

2026-04-23 12:51:38 UTC

Current status: Typing code directly into my text editor like some sort of animal

2026-04-24 23:47:50 UTC

they would be nowhere without your training data

2026-04-29 14:41:33 UTC

I do not consider my works to be artisanal nor hand-crafted. Yes, I measure twice, thrice even, and cut once; I am practiced, rigorous but quick, and patient.

I have powerful machinery at my disposal, much of it built with other machines I have built in the past. Lathes, mills, routers, water jets, a CNC workbench. With these I manufacture dies to cast even more parts for machinery: Sintered gears, chassis components, chemical baths. Over decades I have perfected the art of manufacture and testing at scale, focusing on building the right things to move to the next level.

The judgement of what the next level may be requires time, experience, and alignment with my own priorities. There is no brute force, just patience in knowing what's worth building.

2026-04-29 21:36:20 UTC

I am in a privileged position. I am able to make many calls: The shots, my liquor, Tim Apple. I am truly spoiled for choice. However, I would like to announce that I am looking for opportunities to swear my filial piety to a new firm.

I would offer my fealty, but I have already given that to my hot wife one fine day in late 2018, so you'll have to get that from somebody else. What does this mean to you?

I will delete all my posts from LinkedIn that might embarrass you. All of my projects, personal or otherwise, will be financially advantageous to you. You will have an unwavering toady at your eternal beck and call, with the loyalty of a golden retriever and the commitment and principles of a master craftsman.

You are: A firm with a ten-year plan to complement your five-year plan. Patient. Calculated but not conniving. Proactive. Clear in your intent, unwavering in your follow-through. Care deeply about your product and customer experience. Not looking for a quick exit. Willing to take time to cultivate a lasting legacy of indelible excellence.

Allow me to display my elegant plumage for you.

2026-05-03 15:59:09 UTC

Any time I hear about a company who offers LLM usage as a "benefit"

2026-05-05 21:25:09 UTC

One would have thought that meaning died on the 6th of August, 1945, with the advent of postmodernism, and yet we nonetheless held on. Unlike The Manhattan Project being carried out in total secrecy, leadership in the business and political spheres (I repeat myself) are openly collaborating to remove any and all sources of friction in knowledge work. Whether this initiative could possibly succeed is immaterial: The end result is a moral death to those who found meaning in the process. The only beneficiaries are those I suspect never particularly valued the product to begin with, but rather the end result of proximity to the locus of economic power.

The atom bomb may have merely anticipated postmodernism's true denouement by about 80 years.

2026-05-11 19:29:31 UTC

In today's changing American tech landscape:

• You are encouraged to have a minimum of 15 stickers on your laptop.

• The only stickers you are allowed to put on your laptop are hexagons, all uniform in size, and from a pre-approved list.

• Computer use you!

• You must worship the Orb. His name is Harald and He watches your every flinching grimace as you genuflect in trembling awe before His Majesty. You must grovel before Him for at least five minutes per day, with a fixed gaze. Outliers are quickly identified on a leaderboard.

• As the economy dwindles due to shrinking buying power for consumer goods and services, hyperscalers pivot to provisioning four-post racks populated with "human-in-the-loop" technology, providing lucrative employment opportunities, living quarters, and nutrition for millions of desperate job seekers.

• After attention-grabbing headlines proliferated on the latest trend in FAANG hiring practices, interviewees across the industry are customarily sedated, black-bagged, and forced into special interviewing gowns to be drilled on LLM prompting whiteboard exercises.

• The Hubbard psychoelectrometer has become a commonplace tool for measuring employee sentiment and engagement.

• Performance reviews note the number of Markdown tables and rocket emoji per new GitHub project as a key performance indicator.

Adapt or be left behind.

2026-05-21 14:17:35 UTC

Hacker News before the mods have logged on for the day

2026-05-31 06:23:15 UTC

The most pernicious misconception I have held about the field of software development is that enduring quality is a worthwhile or even profitable concern. This idealistic delusion did not spontaneously manifest within me: It was drilled into me by untold numbers of seasoned developers who came before me, through blogs and exemplar works in which they were so gracious to demonstrate and document their own ideology, approach, and rigorous work ethic.

How did the idea that enduring quality mattered manifest in the workplace to begin with? I can only speculate, but zero interest rate policies likely had much to do with this. In those times, quality (and staffing to back it up) must have been positive value signals to investors, so methodology and ritual to demonstrate these were prioritised. Believers were often lauded for efforts to produce lasting quality products.

These days, speed, or rather often is the case, demonstration use of generative AI, is the positive value signal. The pretense of concern with quality began to fade with the first few rounds of post-COVID-lockdown layoffs. Shifting left, laying off Agile facilitators and QA personnel freed up capital to take advantage of lucrative deals with AI vendors and GitHub Enterprise. All the pieces quickly fell into place for a coup-de-grace.

I can recall numerous instances of resentful attitudes of managers and many developers who take issue with developers they once perceived as pretentious gatekeepers, or primadonnas who demanded to be mollycoddled. These same people say code no longer matters, or revel in the thought of their AI-objecting peers being fired. A mask has slipped and I am not sure if even the annihilation of every last datacenter or AI server would mend the rift that has formed in the past year.

"Outcomes." "Don't focus on the code." "If you don't use AI to develop your product, your competitor will get there faster and leave you behind." "Embrace change."

When you examine the attitudes behind such messaging, this seems less like good career advice and more like a declaration of vengeance and retribution: That your stodgy whims no longer need be entertained.

I have no interest in sticking around people who feel like now is their "moment". Nothing good will come of this.

It is my hope that, by continuing to interact on this platform, I will have found enough like-minded people who care about providing durable, high-quality goods and services to customers, that maybe I and others can demonstrate to the rest of the industry that a better way is not only possible, but profitable.

This post is less about generative AI and more about seeking opportunities to simply care about something that others also care about deeply.

2026-05-31 07:41:26 UTC

lol. lmao, even (email to Cloudflare staff)

2026-06-01 18:59:20 UTC

Value and embrace artists.

Respect their craft and ingenuity.

Celebrate their beautiful insights and heed their warnings.

The humanities are not an ancillary concern to be ignored in pursuit of progress.

They are neither holy nor inconvenient. They are simply an important part of our perpetual tapestry.

Abuse them and appropriate and distill their works at the peril of your own humanity.

2026-06-02 15:29:11 UTC

"stop talking about AI"

not until all your apes are gone, pal

2026-06-18 17:53:35 UTC

I'm looking for a new enterprise to join forces with that is aligned with my insatiable desire to deliver tangible value to users: That is to say, users who are also the target consumer, and not merely the end product. Such a firm:

• Feels a sense of urgency, but not at the cost of rigour
• Is not simply looking to be an acqui-hire target
• Is not in a portfolio among another hundred
• Cares deeply about an enduring legacy
• Values certainty over velocity
• Seeks sustaining partnerships
• Is curious about new technologies, but does not bet their futures on them without damned good, justified reasons
• Does not make usage of generative AI compulsory
• Operates on a bedrock of mutual trust
• Wishes to be a good citizen in the community and the world

What I offer:

• 20+ years professional experience creating software in various domains
• Willingness and ability to learn new and interesting business domains
• A steady track record of making maintainable software that just...works
• Empathy for the end user balanced with concern for the business
• Deep low-level knowledge
• Hardware know-how; EDA, 3D CAD, experience in the digital domain
• A record of follow-through on ambitious ideas to completion; programming languages, networking stacks, web server frameworks, bespoke tooling

If these descriptions resonate with you, I think we should be in touch.

2026-06-20 21:42:07 UTC

all my apes gone

2026-06-25 14:29:19 UTC

I have created a new kind of loop: The "infinite loop". The conditional predicate always evaluates to be true. For all of you in my replies going on about "determinism", you can shove it.

I am very smart, and my peers say my idea is valued at billions. Please pay me $6b at your earliest convenience.

2026-06-27 22:01:01 UTC

People enforcing AI mandates: What metrics do you have to demonstrate lost profits based on somebody abstaining from LLM usage?

2026-06-28 15:33:40 UTC

Resistance to datacenters is peak NIMBYism. When the Combine built their massive Citadel in the heart of Sofia, Bulgaria (later renamed City 17), nobody complained. Why? Because their Benefactors brought a new way of life to Citizens.

Meaningful employment with the Citizen Patrol. Suppression of our genetic imperatives. Protection from invasive species from the Xen borderworld, by the gentle, vigilant hand of the Overwatch. Nutrient rations. Opportunities for off-world reassignment. A shot at immortality.

You can resist progress; just know that Resistance will be met with swift reprisal by the hand of Elite soldiers.

2026-07-15 22:27:47 UTC

Do not, my friends, become addicted to tokens. They will take hold of you, and you will resent their absence.

2026-07-25 23:23:18 UTC

Nobody's scared of AI taking their jobs. I am, however, angry that AI usage mandates are a thing at all.

I'm angry that there's little to no deference to the decades of experience cultivated by developers. I'm angry that "outcomes" no longer means a quality product, but the most rapid entry to market. I'm angry that business have long since abandoned good fundamentals in favour of a bet on technologies with a hyper-inflated value due to burst any day, as though this whole thing were a foregone conclusion.

I'm angry at the complete lack of care for quality and customer experience. I'm angry at the race towards metrics that quantify the wrong things. And most of all, I'm angry at the people who remain silent and keep their heads down as they suffer the worst morale since the dot com bubble, and I am angry at the people who cheer all of this on uncritically.

2026-07-28 17:39:52 UTC

I have lost all hope.

Is there any reason to be hopeful to have a job as a software developer that does not require me to use, consider using, or otherwise enjoy LLMs? I cannot pretend to enjoy things I do not like for any amount of money.

2026-07-28 17:44:49 UTC

The bill for extreme cost externalisation will invariably come due. Are you prepared to deal with the consequences head on, or is this just another thing we sweep under the rug as we scramble to continue meeting insatiable investor demand?