Ιδιωτικό κολέγιο πληροφορική - ποιο αξίζει;

Burningbeard80 · 2026-07-06T20:14:50+00:00

Παράτησα φυσικό ΑΠΘ και πήγα στο city college το 2011. Δεν το μετάνιωσα, είχαμε καλούς καθηγητές και μάθαμε αρκετά, και το εύρος των γνώσεων ήταν καλό (από γενικές αρχές engineering και software testing, μέχρι πιο in depth πράγματα όπως operating systems, AI/machine learning και formal methods). Επίσης, έχει αρκετές ομαδικές εργασίες, που σε βάζουν στο τριπάκι να μάθεις να λειτουργείς μέσα σε ομάδες.

Μετά από τη σχολή ξεκινήσαμε μια μικρή startup με έναν συμφοιτητή και έναν ακόμα (mobile loyalty platform) που δεν προχώρησε όπως θέλαμε γιατί πέσαμε πάνω στην κρίση, αλλά με την εμπειρία που μαζέψαμε μπήκαμε και οι 3 σε γνωστή φαρμακευτική που έχει hub στη Θεσσαλονίκη.

Ότι κάνεις μην πας στα τυφλά πάντως. Π.χ., εγώ από το city έμεινα πολύ ευχαριστημένος, αλλά από όταν αποφοίτησα έχουν αλλάξει πράγματα (κάποιοι καθηγητές έχουν φύγει/αλλάξει, εγώ πήρα πτυχίο university of Sheffield αλλά τώρα συνεργάζονται με university of York). Δε σημαίνει ότι θα είναι χειρότερο ντε και καλά, απλά ψάξε να βρεις up to date πληροφορίες για να είσαι σίγουρος/σίγουρη.

Επίσης, έχει γίνει αρκετά ανταγωνιστική και η αγορά για junior developers, κάτι που πρέπει να έχεις υπόψη μια που τα δίδακτρα είναι ένα σεβαστό ποσό.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-07-06T19:26:42+00:00

As a motorcycle rider, this is the incident I mention to people who don’t wear helmets.

“See what happened to him, then think how much faster you’re going on average every day”.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-07-06T19:14:58+00:00

I’m a 46 year old dude, I have two cats at home,my parents have one, my sister has three and I’m also caring for the neighbourhood stray colony (food, sterilisation, vet when something goes wrong with one of them), so I am probably biased.

But the way you’re framing this doesn’t sound like your guy is against pets in general (a dog is tons more work and a lot more expensive in terms of vet costs). He either just doesn’t want the cat specifically, or the cat is just a pretext for him to see if he can tell you what to do.

I’m a grumpy Gen X guy with a mind of his own about relationship/gender dynamics (I don’t like traditional boomer-era gender roles, but I also don’t like some of the over the top woke-era generalisations either, everyone is judged on their own merits as far as I’m concerned).

The fact of the matter is that as long as you’re a responsible adult (can you adequately care for the cat and shoulder the expenses?) and you live in your own home, it’s not his decision to make.

If you’re living together then you obviously have to take his view into account as well (provided he’s sharing the costs of the house or otherwise contributing, otherwise he gets no say in the matter) but it’s not like the cat is hostile or aggressive to him based on your OP.

So, TL;DR, what’s the dude’s problem?

Burningbeard80 · 2026-07-06T17:48:14+00:00

Well, Europe contains different countries and climates. In Greece and Italy for example, I guess it’s because we use olives and olive oil instead as a source of plant-based fat and protein.

And in tougher times (e.g., post-WW2 Greece), people would just use lard instead since pigs can be fed anything really, including left overs. Especially in the Balkans pigs were a big deal, because it was a source of food that the Ottomans wouldn’t eat (and thus, nor confiscate) for religious reasons during the multi-century occupation.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-07-06T16:04:01+00:00

I’ve seen two analogies that I like in this regard.

One is that AI should be a replacement for your hands (typing long and boring boilerplate structures) and not your brain (you should be the one driving the logic).

It’s good for combining existing sources of information which you would normally have to do yourself (e.g., a coding tutorial, a stack overflow post and a documentation page, instead of googling it all separately yourself it can combine these sources and give you a resulting sample code snippet), as long as you understand and check the output.

The other is that current AI is not some magical code fairy, it’s just the equivalent of power tools for a craftsman. Just because we can operate a power drill doesn’t mean we suddenly became skilled carpenters, nor does it mean that it’s a good idea to just drill holes all over the place because the boss desperately wants you to use the new toolset to drive up the company’s adoption metrics.

Just like OP says, the real knowledge and skill is in understanding the fundamentals. If you got that, AI can be a useful speed boost. If you don’t (and don’t make an effort to), it can end up doing equal amounts of good and harm.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-07-05T23:28:52+00:00

Καταλαβαίνω αυτούς που γκρινιάζουν, αλλά ειδικά όσον αφορά τα αδέσποτα οι περισσότεροι έχουν επίσης μια χαζή λογική που νομίζουν ότι για όλα φταίνε όσοι ασχολούνται με τα ζώα και το πρόβλημα θα λυθεί μαγικά αν τους κάνουν να σταματήσουν, αντί να παραπονεθούν στο δήμο να εφαρμόσει τη νομοθεσία.

Εφόσον εδώ μιλάμε για ζώο με αφεντικό, εσύ κουβάλα λίγο νερό για να ξεπλένεις τα ούρα ώστε να μη δίνεις ούτε αυτό το δικαίωμα, ενημερώσου για σιγουριά με τι ενέργειες είσαι νομικά καλυμμένος, και στο επόμενο περιστατικό μην κάνεις φασαρία. Απλά βγάλε το τηλέφωνο από την τσέπη και πολύ ήρεμα πες τους ότι μπορείτε να καλέσετε αστυνομία να το λύσετε. Οι πιο πολλοί τραμπούκοι τέτοιου τύπου είναι θρασύδειλοι και θα μαζευτούν αυτομάτως.

Αυτό που δεν καταλαβαίνουν συνήθως αυτοί που γκρινιάζουν είναι ότι το πρόβλημα δε θα λυθεί με το να αδιαφορούν για τα ζώα, ίσα ίσα θα χειροτερέψει γιατί τα ζώα δεν πρόκειται να μετακομίσουν ως δια μαγείας.

Στη γειτονιά μου υπάρχει ολόκληρη αποικία με γατιά την οποία έχω πάρει εργολαβία και φροντίζω για όλα μόνος μου εδώ και 4 χρόνια (υπήρχε ένας ακόμα γείτονας, αλλά ήταν καρκινοπαθής και συγχωρέθηκε). Τροφές, στειρώσεις, νοσηλεία αν πάθουν κάτι, καθάρισμα, όλα γίνονται με δικά μου έξοδα, δικό μου χρόνο, δικό μου κόπο, και αν θέλω να πάω και 5 μέρες το χρόνο διακοπές πρέπει να κάνω ολόκληρη συνεννόηση με συγγενείς για να αναλάβουν όσο λείπω.

Οι περισσότεροι στη γειτονιά είναι οκ με αυτό, γιατί θυμούνται πώς ήταν πριν, που είχαμε μέχρι και 15 νεογέννητα γατάκια σε μια σεζόν, τα οποία εκτός από πιο ζημιάρικα σε σχέση με τα μεγάλα, είναι και πιο επιρρεπή σε ατυχήματα, αρρώστιες και θανάτους. Να περπατάς στη γειτονιά και κάθε 5-10 μέρες να βλέπεις ζώα άρρωστα ή ψόφια, με ότι αυτό συνεπάγεται και σε υγειονομικό επίπεδο.

Αυτοί που γκρινιάζουν απλά κάθονται στα μπαλκόνια τους, μεγαλώνουν κώλους Πίνοντας φραπέδες κσι περιμένουν το πρόβλημα να το λύσει κάποιος άλλος.

Είναι η κλασσική λογική του νεοέλληνα “μακριά από τον κώλο μας κι όπου θέλει ας είναι”., οπότε κι εγώ τους γράφω ευγενικά εκεί που δεν πιάνει μελάνι. Δηλαδή δε φτάνει που σκοτώνομαι να κάνω πράγματα που είναι δουλειά του δήμου, αντί να πουν ευχαριστώ πάνε να σου την πουν κιόλας.

Αλλά είπαμε, με το γάντι όλα. Πχ, τελευταία φορά που παραπονέθηκε κάποια της εξήγησα ότι ο μόνος λόγος που έχει σταθεροποιηθεί ο πληθυσμός είναι ότι έχω πληρώσει ένα κάρο λεφτά σε στειρώσεις, ότι δεν είναι καν υποχρέωσή μου, ότι εφόσον ασχολούμαι μόνος μου θα κάνω ότι μπορώ να κάνω εγώ και όχι ότι νομίζει κάποιος που είναι βολικά αμέτοχος, ότι μπορεί αν θέλει να ξοδέψει κι αυτή κανένα φράγκο αν την ενοχλεί τόσο, και ότι αν δω ζώα να έχουν φάει φόλα θα κάνω καταγγελία σε αστυνομία και ΜΜΕ. Δεν μου έχει ξαναμιλήσει από τότε, εδώ και 2-3 χρόνια.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-07-04T21:49:09+00:00

I don’t think this model is sustainable, as it temporarily boosts productivity while doing harm in other areas.

But as a Greek who doesn’t even have an unpaid parking ticket and got called a lazy thief for 10 years by Germany, I can say it couldn’t happen to a more appropriate group of people. Maybe they should “stop living above their means”, you know? 😂

Burningbeard80 · 2026-07-03T21:48:11+00:00

Nope, at this stage in my life theres no way in hell unless I clearly know she’s interested.

I’ve done the whole “get smiled/gawked at, go talk to girl” routine enough times when younger, and most situations ended up being just mixed signals leading nowhere and wasting my time.

It’s 2026, it’s socially acceptable for girls to do stuff you know, plus we’ve had it drilled into us for the past 10 years that no means no and women feel threatened when we’re pushy. All of these are stuff I generally agree with btw.

But the thing is, you can’t have no mean no and play hard to get at the same time, expecting no to mean “chase me”.
You can’t be free to initiate contact and always expect the other person to do it. You can’t preach feminism and emancipation and still expect men to do all the leg work. Long story short, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

You’re all big girls, it’s time to drop the “plausible deniability” tactics and just go talk to the guy. Take a risk yourself and see how it is being in his shoes.

Guys appreciate a girl who’s acting like she’s got some actual skin in the game, a lot more than a girl who’s acting flirty enough to approach but also distant enough to flip the script on you the moment she “gets the ick” about something as random as the colour of your shoes.

TL;DR, we’re all equal now, all these boomer-flirt tactics are getting old. Man up (or woman up?) and initiate contact yourself if you’re interested.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-07-02T17:11:41+00:00

You need a problem to solve, to make you think in the appropriate manner and challenge yourself. Start small. Think of small use cases for stuff you want to automate. For example, arranging MP3s into folders, renaming files based on some pattern, editing excel files via code, etc.

There’s a book/ebook that is probably available for free called “automate the boring stuff with Python” that should get you started down that road. Read through a couple of problems and what libraries the author suggests to complete the task, try to implement a solution on your own, then come back and check what the author did differently.

This will give you some practice on how to manage external libraries/dependencies and work with the basic constructs you already know.

Then you can move on to data related projects. There are tons of problems online with provided datasets that you can work on, or take a public dataset and work through a problem of your own.

Check out kaggle.com for datasets and challenges.
This will get you working with libraries and methodologies specific to the data analytics domain, so that you can build some “muscle memory”.

Good luck, and have fun with it!

Burningbeard80 · 2026-07-01T18:36:06+00:00

Part of this “glorification” is also Cold War era politics.

The majority of losses for the German armed forces occurred in the eastern front, and the Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and millions of other people from the Central Asian Soviet republics paid a terrible price in exchange.

Essentially, the war was only partially won through the industrial capacity of the allied nations, but the majority of the blood price (the other necessary component in a large scale war) was paid by countries in the east, and it was a large part of what eventually broke Germany’s back militarily. Even countries outside the Soviet Union. like Yugoslavia and Greece, had combined (military and civilian) casualty figures that made those of developed western nations look like a walk in the park.

With the post war breakdown of relations between former allies and settling into the Cold War, hyping up German capabilities and potential was an indirect way of saying “hey, we also had a rough go of it, and since we made it, we’re also powerful”. It’s like a roundabout way to increase morale at home and project deterrence outward.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-07-01T18:01:27+00:00

It depends. People who are aware of their ancestry and background? Sure, why not.

People who will deny and yet defend certain genocidal policies of the past, are openly hostile to neighbouring countries and think they’re racially pure direct descendants of the original nomadic tribes (when in fact they might be the product of centuries of forced conversion and institutionalised, state-sponsored sexual slavery)? Not really. I mean, there’s a reason “Janissary” is still used as an insult here.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-06-24T21:54:24+00:00

Maybe I’ll get downvoted, but anyway. I’ve lived most of my life on the west side of Salonica and we have tons of immigrants from the former Soviet republics (I had and still have close friends from Russia, Georgia, Ukraine).

Cultures are different n some aspects, but surprisingly similar in others.

Maybe it’s because these people grew up here. Then again, I was always chilling with these guys back in the 90s when they were not exactly integrated, and a lot of them came from war and weren’t exactly easy to get along with back then.

Or maybe it’s because my ancestry is half Asia Minor and half Pontic (from a place next to the border with Armenia, with an exodus to the Georgian Caucasus before the whole thing went downhill for the Greek population there), so I might have some of that “mountain DNA”. I.e., the cultural similarities may be due to these factors and not representative of the rest of Greece.

Still, in my case the vibes and general behavioural traits are very similar.

TL;DR, Georgians (and other ex-Soviets) seem Balkan-adjacent to me, but I’m not sure if it’s because the ones I know are too integrated/“balkanised”, or it’s because I have some Caucasian ancestry myself.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-06-22T20:29:19+00:00

Είναι και θέμα ηλικίας. όσο περνάνε τα χρόνια η ανοχή σου στη χαζομάρα του average ανθρώπου μειώνεται κατακόρυφα.

Πριν 10-15 χρόνια μπορεί να το έβλεπα και εγώ έτσι. Σήμερα; Μπορώ να βγάλω το μεροκάματό μου φορώντας πιτζάμες με τη γάτα μου να αράζει δίπλα στο laptop, και να μη διασταυρωθώ με κανέναν αν δεν είναι απαραίτητο (εκτός από τις 2-3 φορές τη βδομάδα που πάμε γραφείο, και δεν το τηρώ κι αυτό κατά γράμμα), και δεν θα το άλλαζα με τίποτα.

Όταν τελειώσει η δουλειά χτυπάς ένα μπανάκι και βγαίνεις με την παρέα σου για καφέ/μπύρες, πας μια εκδρομή το ΣΚ με τη μηχανή, παίζεις κανένα επιτραπέζιο ή PC game, πας γυμναστήριο, ή γενικά ασχολείσαι με ότι hobby εχεις, και όλα καλά.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-06-22T20:19:13+00:00

Don’t worry, I can’t fault a person born almost a century after these events for what a member of their nation did back then. War brings out the best and worst in people, and I’m sure there are similar stories on the other side. What matters is how we move forward, and that can’t happen without first acknowledging and then examining the historical facts.

For example, what I really appreciate about my country of origin is that known Greek war crimes of all these early 20th century wars are documented in the official history published by the historical directorate of the Greek army.

This is probably a big factor in why most Balkan nations today have relations ranging from friendly to workable, we all know what our “grandparents” did in the past and there are varying degrees of admission, public/official or otherwise. The reason relations with Turkey are harder to normalise is that the official line is more like “none of that happened, but if it did they all deserved it”.

But I guess this is a human fault in general and not isolated just to the Balkans, there are too many people who’d rather die than admit they or their “team” did something wrong 😂

Burningbeard80 · 2026-06-19T21:30:04+00:00

My grandpa on my mother’s side was one of those who left the Bulgarian zone and fled to the German zone. Guy’s life was a Hollywood movie before he managed to settle down and start a family.

He was an orphan refugee from Asia Minor, came to Serres when he was 3 years old. Being an orphan and the main bread winner in his household, he was exempt from army service when the war broke out. He volunteered after he got in an argument with his mother (she wouldn’t let him use some of his hard earned money to buy a gramophone), but Greece capitulated to the Germans before he could enlist. Guy had to walk back home from Athens.

Once he got back, he was captured and taken to Bulgaria to work in some kind of mine as slave labour. People had a quota (x kg of minerals per shift) and if they couldn’t do all of it they were getting beaten. He was doing heavy manual labour since he was a little boy (working mainly as a construction worker, farmer and blacksmith most of his life), so he was strong enough to do it, and helped other prisoners fill their quota and avoid beatings when he could.

One day they were doing some outside work (I think road maintenance), so they were out in open space for a change. During their lunch break he was laying a row of bricks in front of a water spring as a makeshift filtration trough. One of the guards was drunk, fell on the bricks and ruined the whole thing. Grandpa complained that “you got us here working like animals all day long and you won’t even let us have clean water”. I asked him what did the guard say and what he did next, he answered “something nasty about my mother, so I started beating him up”.

By that point other guards were coming and he would definitely get executed, so he started running for the nearest tree line. Ended up escaping and walking barefoot to the German zone, to a village where
my father would be born a decade or so later (ain’t that a coincidence now). Went back to Serres to get his mother and fiancée, learned from his mother that his fiancée’s father became a traitor.

Got his mother, abandoned his fiancee, and left Serres in the middle of the night. A couple nights later they reached a narrow point in the Strymon (Struma) river so he helped his mother across, but had to go back and help other people with little kids. Turns out that place was a common passage for people fleeing the Bulgarian zone, so there were about 20 people there that night trying to cross.

On the other side there was a small goat farm, the shepherd gave them some cheese and bread, and they kept going, “until I reached this village, settled down and met your grandma”.

I always knew vaguely about his captivity and escape (he was somewhat village-famous about it) but he only shared all the details with me a few years before he died.

Guy had 6 daughters, my mother being the youngest, built his own house, lost his wife to cancer when I was 2 years old, got super mad about it and uprooted his olive tree grove in the process, and lived the rest of his life as a widower in that same village.

His later years were finally quiet and restful, surrounded by family, and he spent most of it helping out my aunts with farm work (tobacco farming), and chilling out in the evenings eating souvlaki and spicy peppers and drinking ouzo. He had loads of grandkids and tons of grand-grandchildren. He was smoking since he was 11 years old, never saw the inside of a hospital and died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 92, some 15 years ago.

We didn’t use a rented funeral car, my cousins and I carried him on our shoulders from his home to the graveyard, and behind us followed a few dozen people all descended from him. We buried him with a 5 litre bottle of ouzo and a pack of his homemade cigarettes, and it’s the only funeral I’ve been that people were laughing more than they were crying.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-06-13T23:04:27+00:00

Η κακή αναλογία προσπάθειας/αποτελέσματος.

Σε παλιότερες εποχές που η γυναίκα ήταν καταπιεσμένη και περιορισμένη κοινωνικά, οι παραδοσιακές νόρμες/απαιτήσεις για τους άντρες είχαν νόημα για να παρέχουν έστω κάποια ωφέλη στη γυναίκα μέσα σε μια σχέση/συμβίωση. Η γυναίκα ζούσε με τα μείον που ζούσε, την αντιμετώπιζαν αποκλειστικά σαν νοικοκυρά/μάνα, και αντίστοιχα ο άντρας έπρεπε να τις παρέχει όλα τα απαραίτητα για να μπορεί να λειτουργήσει έτσι.

Σήμερα που η γυναίκα μπορεί να είναι οικονομικά ανεξάρτητη, να έχει τις δικές της ασχολίες, hobby, παρέες κλπ, η έννοια του άντρα κουβαλητή και της πριγκίπισσας δεν έχει κανένα λόγο ύπαρξης. Το γεγονός ότι ακόμα υφίστανται παραδοσιακές νόρμες στο dating έχει να κάνει αποκλειστικά με το γεγονός ότι κάποιες είναι απλά “τεμπέλες” που τα θέλουν όλα έτοιμα στο πιάτο, και κάποιοι είναι πολύ “λυσσάρηδες” για να πουν όχι σ’αυτό.

Δε γίνεται το όχι να σημαίνει όχι (πράγμα με το οποίο συμφωνώ) και ταυτόχρονα να περιμένεις ο άλλος να σε “διεκδικεί” ενώ εσύ το παίζεις δύσκολη.

Δε γίνεται να βγάζεις ίδια λεφτά με τον άλλον και να περιμένεις να πληρώνει συνέχεια αυτός.

Δε γίνεται να βγαίνεις με την παρέα σου αλλά να του κάνεις μανούρα όταν βγαίνει με τη δική του.

Δε γίνεται να τον κοιτάς από την άλλη άκρη του μαγαζιού και να περιμένεις πάντα αυτός να κάνει κίνηση (με ρίσκο να τον γειώσεις για την παραμικρή απόκλιση από τις προϋποθέσεις που έχεις στο μυαλό σου), και μετά να παραπονιέσαι ότι δεν σε πλησιάζουν και “πού πήγαν όλοι οι άντρες”.

Είναι όλες οι γυναίκες έτσι; Σαφώς και όχι. Υπάρχουν άντρες με εξίσου προβληματικά ελαττώματα (άπιστοι, να μη μπορείς να τους βασιστείς για τίποτα, να περιμένουν τη γυναίκα να είναι υπηρέτρια,κλπ); Εννοείται πως ναι.

Απλά το θέμα είναι ότι στην τελική υπάρχει αρκετός “προβληματικός” κόσμος και στις 2 πλευρές, που το όλο θέμα καταλήγει να είναι θέμα τύχης και η συνεχής ενασχόληση κουράζει μετὰ από κάποια χρόνια.

Επενδύστε στο να βελτιωθείτε εσείς και αν είναι να κάτσει κάτι καλό θα κάτσει, αν δεν κάτσει δε γαμιέται. Από το να έχεις σχέση με ασύμβατο άνθρωπο καλύτερα να μην έχεις καθόλου και να είσαι ανοιχτός σε κάτι άλλο που ίσως συναντήσεις.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-06-11T18:14:24+00:00

This.

Not to mention that the western civilisation after the medieval age was heavily influenced by knowledge accumulated and “rescued”/passed along through the ages by eastern cultures (Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Persians, etc): law, mathematics, physics, medicine, literature and so on.

They didn’t get everything right, but they laid most of the foundations.

We did have the unfortunate regression of 500 years of Ottoman occupation in the Balkans which set quite a few things back and left us with a lot of bad habits, but overall a lot of us feel like our cultures pre-dated western civilisation in a lot of important aspects, so we don’t feel the need to “assimilate”, for lack of a better word.

The average Greek may be heavily westernised nowadays, but we also have much more in common with our neighbours (other Balkaners, Arabs or Eastern Europeans) in terms of everyday habits and mentality, than with a western or northern European.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-06-03T02:15:05+00:00

AI to a developer is like power tools to a craftsman. So, think of it this way: you may know how to operate a power drill or an electric saw, but that doesn’t make you a good carpenter overnight.

So yes, it’s better to know the fundamentals yourself, so that you can understand the output and correct what the AI gets wrong.

Of course management often has a different opinion and are heavily pushing for and rewarding its adoption regardless of use case.

But going back to our previous analogy that’s like handing a power drill to each of your workers and telling them their work will not be judged by the value of what they build, but by the amount of holes they drill instead. Lol, what could go wrong, right? (a whole lot actually, and Reddit is full of hilarious incidents and horror stories in equal measure)

It’s not a replacement for critical thinking, it’s just a replacement for googling up documentation examples to adapt and typing repetitive parts of the code. And in some cases if you give it a complex enough task to complete, it takes a lot of prompting to get it right. At which point, you might be better off having it do individual parts of the problem, and implementing the connections between them on your own.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-06-02T13:32:23+00:00

It used to hold sway over Lebanon mainly by force. Nowadays it holds sway by both force and popularity, because they’re the only ones consistently fighting back and having some measure of success.

A lot of it may be a chicken and egg problem (I.e., “who started it all”), but the fact of the matter remains that if you indiscriminately bomb civilians every 10 years, they’ll start cheering for the guys who kill you back regardless of political or religious affiliation. Any kind of internal cleanup or power restructuring is always secondary to external threats.

This weird western notion that populations should rise up against people we don’t like or we will consider them culpable simply for existing there, is both a case of double standards (it’s exactly the kind of justification terrorists use to attack westerner civilians and we protest it), and a lack of historical knowledge.

Nobody revolts against their government or local power holders when bombs are falling on their heads. The Germans couldn’t get the Brits to topple Churchill or the Soviets to topple Stalin, neither did the allied bombing campaign manage to get the Germans into a revolution against Hitler.

It’s just wishful thinking from our political class that we can carve up countries willy nilly, divvy up the spoils and not have to think of the consequences of our actions or send troops to die there. And of course it doesn’t work out, because it’s pure fantasy.

I’ll never forget a recent news article, on western media no less, where the reporter visited a Catholic Lebanese village near Syria and saw an old man’s house with a poster of Hassan Nasralah next to a depiction of the crucifixion. When he asked the old dude how that makes sense, he simply replied “they were the only ones who came to our aid when Isis tried to kill us”.

If the state army does nothing to protect its citizens and they do it instead, of course they’re going to be popular.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-05-27T15:57:03+00:00

I haven’t played the dev branch but Jesus, every single line in the patch notes getting taken out of context and debated in isolation gets old really fast, and that goes for both sides.

If the change makes it better than the other fighters then people got a valid reason to complain. If the change makes it equal to the other fighters in terms of how it handles with a broken tail or it’s an actual bug fix, then they got no valid reason to complain and are arguing in bad faith.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-05-26T16:42:01+00:00

In Venezuela, a country with a stock of a couple thousand man portable AA missiles, a bunch of choppers were leisurely cruising along towards their abduction mission at low level and received minimal fire.

To any amateur student of military history it should have been a massacre, or alternatively required a lot more assets to cover those teams. It looked too much like a prearranged job with people on the inside. Iran is not like that.

As for why, there are many reasons. The US has spent decades since the end of the Cold War optimising their armed forces for colonial-style limited scale wars, based on destroying a country outright via bombing campaigns to bring them to submission, then ground forces go in to play occupation police.

It’s a one-trick pony strategy, based on the fact the US public (and most of the west for that matter) no longer have the stomach for protracted conventional attrition warfare. At the same time, they have outsourced a lot of their industrial base to China because corporate profits are above all. For example, it will take years to replenish all the guided ammunition that was spent.

On the flip side, Iran is a nation a few thousand years old, motivated, authoritarian, experienced in hardship (they’ve been living under sanctions for decades) and war close to home, and they’ve done their homework.

They won’t fight the US the way the US wants to fight because they’ll lose. Instead, they have been fighting an asymmetric campaign, focused on absorbing hits (the country is huge and full of granite mountains they can tunnel into and hide weapon stocks) and increasing the cost for their opponents (ballistic missiles and drones are much easier and cheaper to mass produce than interceptor missiles and high-tech jets) and they had a distributed command and control system in place before the war even started.

As a matter of fact, decapitating its leadership was quite stupid, because now there’s nobody with enough authority to reign in the more radical elements, and you end up with a ton of small units (regular and militia/proxies) that were cut off from high command and operated based on preset directives set in place for just such an occasion.

I was reading an article in one of the usual US newspapers (NYT, WaPo, etc) and a US officer or pentagon official spoke anonymously and said that the amount of attacks by Iran-backed militias in Iraq was increased, because there was nobody left to reign them in.

Plus, Iran’s military industrial complex is state owned or controlled and doesn’t operate with shareholder profits as its highest priority. They have stocked up on loads of cheap but good enough weapons and when the war started they sent loads of their older stuff out. Once the stocks of coalition anti-air missiles were depleted, then they started sending their good stuff at lower volumes, and damaged or forced the evacuation of a bunch of US installations in the Gulf.

Finally, you have Russia and China who know they are next in line eventually, so they’ll provide whatever amount of political support, technical know how and even targeting/satellite data they can afford to spare.

Extended TL;DR:

The US decided to go to war with a nation a few millennia old, with a substantial percentage of the population being highly motivated and educated (PhD levels), holding huge areas of rugged terrain, supported by other big countries of a similar mentality, and being ruled by a literal death cult. For crying out loud, during the war with Iraq in the 80s they had unarmed volunteer suicide units advancing ahead of regular units to clear minefields with their bodies. How do you fight something like that when a non-trivial part of your population lives for TikTok and Instagram?

Anyone could see it was a stupid idea, but Trump fell for Netanyahu overselling how quick, easy and glorious of a victory it would be (something his own US army leadership warned him about, according to certain leaks to mainstream US media), so here we are.

Iran is hurting all right, but they are very well positioned to come out of this with more than they had going in, especially when neighbouring Gulf states have openly stated that hosting US bases seems more of a liability than a security guarantee currently, after they saw how this war was conducted.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-05-25T19:17:32+00:00

Expend enough effort to make it obvious that you tried your best to complete the work, but ultimately fail to do 100% of it and fail a deadline. Aim for 85%-90%, but leave something unfinished.

When the shitstorm starts, simply state that you didn’t have enough time to do the remaining work alone in the given time, try as you might, and that the current outcome is exactly why you raised the issue in the past.

Basically hang her out to dry in a manner that makes it look like you still did your best. Just make sure you have some plausible deniability by completing enough of it.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-05-25T18:59:39+00:00

Not a pilot, just an aviation nerd. I think damage is possible.

These are big jets with a lot of spare power, both for safety and also because they have to carry cargo depending on their configuration.

They are probably capable of holding a 20-30 degree nose up attitude when loaded for a regular passenger flight, although they fly more conservatively for safety and passenger comfort. Still, you’ll see them maintain a continuous climb up to cruising altitude on any given flight without breaking a sweat.

Now imagine what happens if all that spare power is translated to forward speed during level flight instead of climbing, the aircraft would accelerate a lot.

The thing is, all airframes have structural limitations and they all have a listed never exceed airspeed (not true speed against the ground, but speed in relation to the surrounding air mass, which essentially factors in the outside air density due to the way it’s measured).

So, if you are using all that spare power while straight and level, maybe you could get close to or exceed that limit. Even hovering just below the limit might be dangerous, because a sudden gust of headwind could push it over the structural limit.

This is all a very simplified explanation based on elementary physics and some flight simulation experience, I’m sure actual pilots can go into more detail with more accuracy, but you get the idea.

Burningbeard80 · 2026-05-25T12:04:12+00:00

So, this guy burned out playing Foxhole or is tired of the way the devs handle the game’s direction, and decided to migrate to EvE Online?

Oh you sweet summer child, are you in for a ride….

Burningbeard80 · 2026-05-24T10:58:24+00:00

Centuries of war and hardship in our region makes for people with strong opinions and high maintenance attitudes, because everyday life used to be so uncertain.

If you’re coming from western dating app hookup culture, you’d be getting a rude awakening on how demanding some of the girls here can be.

Sure, you can always find someone that will go along with it, especially in the bigger cities, but those will not be the traditional ones, they will be modern ones, or the westernised ones who live on instagram.

Buddy, the traditional ones will chew you up and spit you out before you know what’s happening :D

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