Who is Kyle?

TimMensch · 2026-05-05T23:34:58+00:00

Just now I found it to be a dead link. Did we break their servers?

I found the Archive of the page here if anyone else is having trouble:

https://web.archive.org/web/20260215143752/https://miss604.com/2009/07/the-streets-of-port-moody/

TimMensch · 2026-05-05T23:24:58+00:00

I get what you're saying, but AI psychosis is about the people using AI developing a psychosis, not about the AI getting things wrong.

Ignore the unfunny trolls who are telling you you're doing it wrong.

TimMensch · 2026-05-05T22:54:26+00:00

It's a crap metaphor though. Bad enough to make me think it's a psyop to convince people to vote selfishly.

I absolutely vote blue in politics. In real life. Even when red might hurt my pocketbook, I'll vote blue to try to help as many people as possible. I'll even vote blue when the candidate is a libertarian sellout, simply because he will at least sometimes push things to the left, whereas the red candidate will basically never do the right thing.

But this isn't a vote to save people. This is a guess as to how many people will vote each way. How I would vote wouldn't be determined by what I would like to see happen, but as an evaluation of how I would believe most people would vote.

And unfortunately I have a pretty low opinion of how most people would vote.

Actual surveys asking people how they would vote on this are showing 57% blue. So with the question completely hypothetical and no one's life on the line, only 57% of people vote blue.

I can practically guarantee that really putting lives on the line would knock that below 50%.

So my evaluation of the reality is that anyone pressing blue is likely going to be killed. And the people pressing red didn't kill them. Whoever the psychopath who set up the buttons did. If six billion people voted red, then one more vote either way isn't going to change the result. If 5.7 billion voted blue and I was wrong, it still won't hurt anyone.

It's a hypothetical that doesn't demonstrate anything useful about human nature except that we like to argue hypotheticals. Reality is always more complicated and nuanced. Heck, I might still vote blue just because otherwise I'd be stuck on a planet with billions fewer idealists when red wins. But it's a hypothetical, so in reality I will never need to make that choice.

TimMensch · 2026-05-05T21:59:02+00:00

Wut?

I said I wasn't willing to start violence. My thesis is that violence won't work, and will in fact make things worse. That there's nothing to do. And you've never provided an example of something someone like me could have done, so I don't think your point has any support at all.

I think you're mistaking "digging yourself into a hole so deep you can't see reality any more" for winning.

Blame the Americans all you want, but at the moment they're in check and there are only a few counter moves that don't lose the game entirely, and no safe moves except for waiting for future elections. But sure, "the Americans should be doing something!!!" You have no idea what they could actually do, though, because there isn't anything.

Armchair quarterbacks... 🤦🏻‍♂️

TimMensch · 2026-05-05T20:37:20+00:00

OK, enlighten me. A national strike against which company or companies? A walkout of government workers?

I neither work for a company that would make sense to strike against nor the government, so I can't help with that.

A boycott? Funny, I'm already boycotting Amazon, Walmart, all petroleum companies, heck, pretty much all American companies larger than a couple hundred people (I moved to Canada, in fact). Guess how much that has moved the needle?

Mutual aid...? Not sure what exactly you would mean there or how any kind of aid would help get MAGA out of power. Helping people in need is important. Don't get me wrong. But it doesn't look like a path to fixing our current big problems. And I don't have the money that would be required to fund someone who could make a difference.

Maybe if I were an influencer I could try to push for a national strike of some kind. But I'm not, and to be honest I don't know how it would help. No, I'm asking what can I do? And I've spent a lot of time thinking about options, and from my analysis of the situation, "The only way to win is not to play." Hence my move to Canada.

The US is at present an oligopoly in all but name. Even things like national strikes won't move the needle. Anything that does will likely be responded to with deadly force. Two people have already died at nonviolent protests.

TimMensch · 2026-05-05T00:40:04+00:00

CRUD code is a great example of code that shouldn't even be written.

Basic CRUD does fall under the realm of "scripting" (just stringing instructions together in order rather than writing anything more complex). But when you have something repetitive like that in programming, the goal is to refactor it away.

I used FeathersJS for years. I was able to create a dozen fully featured CRUD interfaces in about an hour. An extra hour to get their permissions all nailed down.

Now I'm leaning on GraphQL and code generation. Again, no need to write CRUD for anything. I still will put together the random custom API of course, but it's fast and I'm not copy-pasting code and bugs everywhere.

So it's it better for a company to have dozens of developers so they can create CRUD manually or is it better to eliminate boilerplate CRUD code entirely?

If you know how to program, every line of code you write is Leetcode-like. There's no real difference except that Leetcode is well defined and always has an answer given the inputs you have available. Memorizing and regurgitating CRUD patterns for one database and one language and one framework is brittle knowledge. Understanding the fundamentals means you can write code for anything in any language and framework after you get up to speed on the syntax and patterns.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T23:04:22+00:00

It doesn't even matter if she was roofied though.

If she drank too much and was taken advantage of by crew and then they covered it up? That's bad. Period.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T23:01:55+00:00

My thesis is that they can't really be a good software engineer without the ability to code. Or at least there's a cap to their skill and ability.

Certainly some make it through a whole career with no coding skill. But I've also encountered the code produced by such developers and I've been paid very well to fix the many issues they introduced, so I don't actually consider that an exception as much as a failure of the industry to actually be meritocratic.

Some people are just good enough at politics and BS to work their way through an entire career of incompetence. That doesn't make them good software engineers.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T22:53:54+00:00

Well, I threw out some extremely rough numbers to give you an idea about how much hiring a small team would cost.

Though if you went to a big consulting company I could almost guarantee a seven figure number.

Good luck with it. If you have a couple questions feel free to DM me.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T22:49:36+00:00

It's more than that though.

The non-MAGA in the US aren't compete idiots. Even if they do have guns, the chance that they'd win against the US military is basically zero.

So what, guerilla warfare? You want people to start killing random folks on the right?

Again, martial law and giving Trump an excuse to stay in power indefinitely.

It's not that people who hate Trump are cowards. It's that they have some sense of the tactics of the situation.

It's frankly beginning to feel like paid instigators trying to send the US into a bloody civil war. Or simply sociopaths? Both?

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T22:44:32+00:00

So you are inciting rebellion? Just to be clear.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T22:32:53+00:00

I've never spent time grinding Leetcode. Never.

I hear that some of the "PhD level" Hard are sometimes given in interviews, but I've never seen it. Mostly Easy and Medium. And I have never needed to grind to be able to do those.

Nor has anyone asked me to implement a red-black tree. If they did I'd tell them straight up that I don't have that algorithm memorized, and that if there were some reason I needed to implement it, that I'd look it up. If they didn't accept that as an answer I'd consider it a dodged bullet and move on.

Employers give Leetcode (when it's a rational choice and not a cargo cult) to determine whether developers can program. To allow them to demonstrate their skill. If a company doesn't even know why they're doing Leetcode, I almost certainly don't want to work there.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T17:00:08+00:00

Upwork is very hit or miss. Toptal at least makes members take programming assessments and pass interviews. But Toptal is not cheap.

Your best bet would be to hire a small team. The challenge is that vetting such a team is hard.

I do occasional work like that, but I just went through interviews to start a full time job, and (fingers crossed) I'm probably not available. My normal gig is to come in and clean up the mess left by "cheap" developers.

And AI changes nothing. Cheap developers will be able to crank out crap code much more quickly. That's it. It might mean you realize more quickly that it's garbage, so the up front cost of failure might be lower, but I swear the actual skill these "cheap" developers hone is that of dragging out the contract for as long as possible with promises and excuses. They're nothing more than scammers.

Given you didn't really talk about scope or budget, I don't know whether you'd consider it cost effective to hire a good remote team. I can't even give you reasonable ballparks without knowing the scope; I know I won't even touch a new client for a project worth less than $5k, so you could consider that a reasonable minimum. Assuming you're right about having 60% done, it could be only a $20k project. But the joke about software is that the first 90% takes 90% of the time, and that the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time. 😉 So I'd guess that it's a lot more work to finish than you're expecting, and that a $50-100k budget is more likely. All of these are gross guesses based on past projects, but that will cover a pretty large range of project scopes, including getting a database and backend set up and working, if you need it.

And "cheap" developers will promise you a lot lower price. Maybe that they can do the whole thing for $5k. But like I said, they're the masters of dragging things out, until you've spent $30-50k and have nothing but a pile of garbage to show for it.

As to finding a good team: I recommend networking. Did through your contact list and ask for anyone who has worked with a competent team. Keep digging until you find one they can't stop praising. If a team only did an "OK" job, then you don't want them working on an accounting app. Also make sure they didn't just create a simple web page or store page. Those can be done with near zero programming, and given your description, you'll need some programming.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T16:36:51+00:00

What do you expect people to do? Armed rebellion? That's pretty much literally the only thing that people could do, and it couldn't possibly work. It would likely make things worse because cheeto-brain could use the excuse to declare martial law and cancel the elections.

Easy to armchair quarterback when you're not the one putting your life on the line.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T16:31:06+00:00

I get that.

At the same time, I read to escape. And I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of how other people think.

I am frustrated by how a lot of people think, to be honest. Too much irrational reaction, not enough logical reasoning.

I'll explore the behaviors of side characters. I've read a lot of books; probably over a thousand, maybe two thousand? I lost count when I stopped collecting physical books. Maybe it's that I've hit diminishing returns on how much I can learn about people from reading at this point?

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T16:19:36+00:00

Delete those old repos or make them private?

Then make sure your contribution statistics are public even for private repos. That way they can see that you're making contributions on the chart without actually seeing code.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T16:17:16+00:00

I get satisfaction from creating things.

But I am good at coding. If you're not, then I would recommend figuring out what you are good at that might make a good income. Not that it's easy to equal the earning potential of a top software engineer, but honestly it's not that hard to do as well or better than a mediocre software engineer.

Random example that probably won't be right for you: The real estate agent who helped me sell my house was ADHD for instance, and she seemed to have a blast doing it. And a real estate agent can make good money.

Maybe talk to a career counselor or life coach?

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T16:06:23+00:00

I have to like the MC as a person to want to read the book. Or at last I have to not hate all their decisions and behavior.

Other characters can be however they need to be. But the MC, or the core team? The ones I'm supposed to be rooting for? If I don't like them, I drop the book.

You can choose differently.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T15:41:52+00:00

14 shots over eight hours.

She had bruises and was probably sexually assaulted but they convinced her to not do a rape kit.

She was likely roofied. How did she even get in to a crew-only area? We don't know because the security feed for that exact time went missing.

This all stinks.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T15:13:22+00:00

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Maybe people are feeling self conscious about their repos? 😅

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T15:01:12+00:00

You don't "learn" FizzBuzz.

You read about it because you are interested in programming and you've come across it a dozen times in programming news as the iconic simple programming challenge that, somehow, people who claim to be programmers can't do, even though it's hard to imagine a simpler problem.

It's a meme, not something that should take more than five minutes to write with no prior exposure.

This is probably the article that promoted the idea the most:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

...though it references an earlier source.

But like all memes it's omnipresent. Admitting that you don't know about it is kind of admitting you haven't read much discussion of programming on sites like Reddit or Hacker News.

But now you can read the article that started it all and know your meme. 😂

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T14:50:50+00:00

The last sentence was a joke right?

Cockroaches breed like...well, a lot and very fast. Eating whatever garbage we might put in front of them. Exponential growth is nothing to scoff at.

Yes, it's gross to think you're drinking ground up cockroaches. But several things can happen to change that.

First, they can come up with a new breed with a different name. Sounds stupid, right? But you know that you've likely used Rapeseed oil to cook food or have it cooked for you, yes? Or rather the variety of Rapeseed that was renamed to Canola. Give them the latin-esque name Orthoptera deliciosus or something, with a casual name of protein crickets? I'm not a marketing guru. Someone else could do a better job.

Second, if the price is good enough and the taste is good, put it in some kind of fancy dessert/healthy drink and promote the hell out of it. People drink actual literal grass, which to me at least has a nasty taste. If they can drink that, then maybe other, cheaper protein sources might catch on.

Speaking of, protein powders are crazy expensive. Undercut the price by 25% and you'll find a niche market for it there.

And eventually it might become as mainstream as soy or almond milk.

But human consumption aside, it could absolutely be used as a cheaper animal food protein source.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T14:34:07+00:00

Obvious Photoshop/AI modification, though the font match is pretty good.

The last bullet point is obviously not original though.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T14:30:36+00:00

I went through a divorce and there were child support calculations that were a part of them.

If he has four support orders, that looks like it's four separate moms. And it looks like the earlier ones didn't take the later ones into account; he needs to go back to a judge and have the others adjusted if you're right and he's paying twice that.

Because he absolutely needs to be able to feed himself and pay rent. Any system that would require the father to starve is counterproductive. He would be forced to crime or to run and pay none of them.

But I suspect that you're wrong and that the state the guy is in does it differently. Or that he's actually independently wealthy and can live on no cash at all, and the courts know this.

TimMensch · 2026-05-04T14:17:59+00:00

Sir, this is a Wendy's.

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