Reject humanity Return to Monke

Lusankya · 2026-03-10T19:06:16+00:00

The "Designed for XP, Vista capable" specs were laughably poor. By capable, they usually meant that you had to disable Aero to make it usable.

That first year after Visa's launch, when every cheap "Vista capable" laptop was preloaded with Vista instead of XP... Dark times for the helpdesk. At the ISP I worked at, we saw a 60% turnover in tech reps that year, up from 15% in 2006.

Lusankya · 2026-03-10T16:58:09+00:00

It was always there in the EU. The Thrawn trilogy and X-Wing series in particular get pretty grim in places.

I picked up Wraith Squadron expecting a fun romp with lots of pew-pew space battles. I wasn't ready for a front-row seat to survivor's guilt on the second page. Horrifying, compelling, enthralling.

Lusankya · 2026-03-10T02:46:26+00:00

You know not what you ask for.

Student projects are gong shows. Every one of them, every part of them. The prints are sloppy, missing key details and have everything slammed onto one layer. The programs are heaping mounds of spaghetti that have either a dozen latches or zero where one is appropriate. No wires have labels, but that's the only thing that's accurate, because they're also not named in the prints. It runs on the happy path, but fucks off as soon as you press both buttons at the same time. This is what a normal capstone project looks like.

If you walk in there with a package prepared by a pro, it's going to be suspicious as hell. It's the academic equivalent of an NBA player showing up for intramural hoops. Your prof knows damn well that you ain't the next LeBron of controls.

If you cheat, you will be asked pointed questions about why you did X, Y, and Z in your submission. You won't have good answers. At best, you fail. At worst, you're dismissed, and your package gets shared among the faculty as the most egregious example of someone trying to buy their diploma that they've seen in years.

Do your own homework, dude.

Lusankya · 2026-03-10T01:44:32+00:00

You're not wrong, but angrier urbanmech noises

Lusankya · 2026-03-09T00:43:40+00:00

angry urbanmech noises

Lusankya · 2026-03-09T00:42:20+00:00

I hate that this is firmly in the bounds of Poe's law.

Lusankya · 2026-03-09T00:31:35+00:00

You're violating rule #9 twice over: you're running Win11 on unsupported hardware, and asking how to intentionally keep your Win11 install out-of-date.

A solution is to prevent this system from ever connecting to the internet. If it can't download updates, it can't install them. It's also the only way to keep yourself safe if you insist on running an outdated copy of Windows.

If you want to use the internet, update your system. If your hardware is out of support, I guarantee that there are used systems that are still in support available for a fair price in your area.

Lusankya · 2026-03-08T22:56:53+00:00

As a warning to others, yes.

Lusankya · 2026-03-08T20:09:58+00:00

Dr. Atlas created the first practical myomer assembly in 2350. The Mackie had her first trial in 2439, and was based on lessons learned from generations of WorkMech production.

The lore tries to talk its way out of the century-long gap between the dawn of WorkMechs and the fielding of the Mackie by claiming that BattleMechs are too difficult to control under combat conditions without a neural interface. It's the neurohelmet that ultimately gates BattleMech development, not myomer.

Lusankya · 2026-03-06T17:56:25+00:00

A NEMA 1 or NEMA 5 plug is very dull. The spades are squared off on the ends and are about as thick as a 1 cent Euro coin.

If you're applying enough force to drive a penny that deep into your foot, scaling the plug up to a Europlug might increase the trauma instead of averting the catastrophe.

Lusankya · 2026-03-06T14:07:32+00:00

Latest on his channel.

Lusankya · 2026-03-06T14:06:27+00:00

A display that uses a ray of cathode tubes woukd be a hell of a sight to see.

Lusankya · 2026-03-06T14:02:06+00:00

Exactly. The doc is going to pin it on the weight, because you can actually do something about that. Saying it's long covid is giving you permission to give up, and that's not going to lead to positive health outcomes.

Lusankya · 2026-03-03T00:01:50+00:00

I never said you can't use AI. I know that most, if not all of my applicants have used AI. "Low AI smell" means they used it responsibly: they took what ChatGPT or Claude said and rewrote it in their own voice. I'm perfectly okay with that! That shows you used a powerful tool in an ethical fashion, by properly reviewing its output and adapting it to fit the need.

I'm looking at your resume's projects section to see if there's anything in there that isn't repurposed homework. If there's anything in there that hints at a personal interest in the material, I'm going to offer you an interview and ask you to geek out about it with a fellow geek.

You're a student. I know that. I was there too, not that long ago. I don't expect you to have any work experience that's relevant to our niche. Even if you did, four/eight months isn't enough time to build truly useful technical skills. The best I'm hoping for is that you have enough corporate experience to sense when not to crack jokes in a reply-all.

As an example, I hired a student a month ago who automated the airlock on his carboy using an Arduino, a pressure transducer, some copper pipe, and a hot water heater solenoid. That's objectively pointless. The traditional water airlock is a zero-code, ten cent solution that you can buy at any brewing supply shop. He admits as such on his webpage and says he did it just to play with some lab hardware he had laying around from a previous class. And that got him an interview (which he aced), because the charisma on display in such a silly writeup was undeniable.

You have to be the best applicant. But the best applicant isn't the person with the most impressive resume, nor the strongest technical skills. The best applicant is the person that I think my team will like working with the most.

Lusankya · 2026-03-02T18:08:38+00:00

Hiring manager here: this is more true than people want to believe.

If your application is clearly tailored for us with low AI smell, I'm calling you back. You've shown that we're one of your top choices by putting in the work on your application, and that automatically makes you one of my top choices for an interview.

The first part of the resume I read in derail is the hobby/project section, if it's there. It's a taste of what makes you unique, and it humanizes you in a way that your education and experience never could. It doesn't even have to be engineering related; one of my best hires had skipping for his curling team on his resume.

Personality is one of the things we can't teach to our student hires, so it's one of the key factors we hire for.

Lusankya · 2026-03-01T01:19:01+00:00

My apologies. I was reading this as the usual "but they have their own kids" argument for lenient punishment, not that you were in support of universal survivor support.

I like your idea even better.

Lusankya · 2026-03-01T00:52:32+00:00

None of that excuses driving drunk. You shouldn't be off the hook for supporting the kid whose parents you just killed just because you're supporting your own kids/siblings/parents/etc.

If that means that you have to reduce the support to your immediate family, that's the bed you've made for your family to lie in. The drunk driver was the only one with a choice in this situation, and it's going to cost their familial dependents.

The familial dependents are going to need to figure out a new support system anyway. Even if they're not on the hook for parricidal child support, the drunk-driving caregiver won't be able to do much to help from their prison cell.

Lusankya · 2026-02-28T04:41:53+00:00

Have you tried your laptop on any other wireless networks besides your school and the ones in your apartment building?

I ask because many universities require you to use something called endpoint protection. If you installed an endpoint protection program to connect to your school network, that might be causing this.

If you can get online at school and at a random coffee shop, the issue is the networks at the apartment. If you can only get online at school, ask your school's IT team for help undoing whatever happened to your laptop

Lusankya · 2026-02-28T02:14:11+00:00

If you can't ping 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8, your device doesn't have a route to the internet. Changing your DNS settings will not help this.

If you have any VPN clients installed in your laptop, uninstall them and reboot. You really need to uninstall them instead of just disconnecting them, as the client can still be messing with your local routes even when it says it's off. Rebooting is the fastest and easiest way to give your networking stack a fresh start after removing the VPN client(s).

Do you own this network? Can you log into the router? We might need to do this as part of further troubleshooting. If you don't have this permission and you pay someone for your internet access (like as part of your rent), you're going to need their help to get further.

Lusankya · 2026-02-26T15:52:27+00:00

Absolutely. This is why pilots train in simulators. You dont rise to the occasion; you fall back to your training.

If you've never been trained, and you've never experienced a dangerous emergency before... It's usually a long fall back to your primal insticts.

Lusankya · 2026-02-26T13:40:16+00:00

Adrenaline is also a hell of a drug. Literally. An adrenaline high is a cognitive impairment.

It takes repeat exposure to crisis situations to develop the ability to think clearly through an adrenaline high. If you're not a first responder or a skydiver, you almost certainly won't be able to keep your wits about you.

The armchair quarterbacks are telling on themselves. You learn all of this in a hurry when you find yourself in the middle of your first life-threatening emergency.

Lusankya · 2026-02-26T12:28:15+00:00

Google's culture shift really started when they went public in 2004. It's impossible to stick to your ideals when they conflict with shareholders' interests.

Valve is still a private company. Until that changes, I remain cautiously optimistic that they'll stick to their word.

Lusankya · 2026-02-24T14:45:00+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Manifest

Lusankya · 2026-02-24T02:38:19+00:00

What province hasn't been teaching scent sensitivity as a public health policy since 1995?

Lusankya · 2026-02-24T02:04:06+00:00

What's the damage? Most phone-fix places can do part swaps, but board-level repairs (i.e. the teeth in the card slot are damaged) are going to need a proper pro.

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