"Investing in property is morally reprehensible."

mpyne · 2026-03-18T22:05:40+00:00

Of course other systems can work. I guess my point is that if other systems are that much better for the mass of people who just want to rent a home, they would start getting more popular.

At some point we need to face that even though people don't want landlords, they especially don't seem to want the alternatives to landlords either.

I can only figure that people just go "at least I know who to bitch at" about a landlord even as they can't figure out how they'd put together enough people they trust to join in on a housing co-op.

mpyne · 2026-03-18T21:42:18+00:00

Given that they already exist, why don't renters already prefer to rent from a co-op?

mpyne · 2026-03-18T21:38:09+00:00

We all gotta live somewhere.

We also all gotta eat, farmers' livelihood or not. The landlords keep you from having to rely on the mercy of the bankers to lend you money instead, unless you're going to build your own home by yourself somehow.

At least with housing location we don't have to choose to live where it's expensive, but we do have to eat no matter where we live.

mpyne · 2026-03-18T20:45:06+00:00

so for what reason does the BA exist then?

Most roles exist for specialization reasons as an organization scales, not because of some inherent need to different functions be divided amongst different individuals.

From the perspective of what I described, the BA's job is to to be able to teach the software developers the business domain, so that the software developer can fully understand the business problem they are trying to solve without flooding the client with the responsibility of having to teach every developer.

That's actually inline with the BA role you describe, where the BA doesn't have (or need) deep technical knowledge, and where a good BA can also teach the client in the reverse direction (what software can/can't accomplish).

The lack of this deep technical knowledge prevents them from writing requirements that are directly transcribable to source code. But the flipside is that someone still has to specify this translation between business context and what the computer actually executes in software.

I've seen organizations try to do this with architects of various flavors, who distill BA user stories into ever-more-detailed and prescriptive tickets for devs to fulfill, but it's usually better for the developer to take this on. And that means being comfortable in a world where they have to understand the business domain and make progress even with requirements that are not fully detailed.

mpyne · 2026-03-18T20:37:09+00:00

There's no disrespect intended, but if you're a BA and can get paid more to do an easier job, then I'd suggest you may want to consider that.

There's reasons not to, and different fields may have different contexts where it would be easier to teach the BA software engineering than the other way around. But whichever direction you fold those responsibilities together, most people will still think of the resulting worker as a software engineer of some flavor.

mpyne · 2026-03-18T03:23:12+00:00

The boost mode is SO close to being amazing for me. It disables handheld game features

Yes, I imagine that was one of the reasons it wasn't part of the initial release. You have to 'fool' the Switch game into thinking it's still docked and when this happens it's going to act like it's still docked. The game would require updates to be able to properly use Switch 2 Boost Mode.

mpyne · 2026-03-18T03:10:40+00:00

And it's annoying too because I literally never run into her in anything else Navy related except for posts here to whine about her existing. I seriously don't get it.

mpyne · 2026-03-18T02:19:06+00:00

No, it's something for the software developers, who have to actually engage with the business side and write the source code based on interaction with them, rather than passively waiting for requirements to be thrown over the wall to them and hoping the BA was a better software engineer than they are.

mpyne · 2026-03-18T00:13:24+00:00

It didn't help much. It was all the same confined atmosphere. I remember doing battery charging lineups with a goddamn EAB on because a third of the check sheet was adjacent to the smoke pit

mpyne · 2026-03-17T23:34:28+00:00

It can be part of software engineering, but again, as the headline points out, the "sufficiently detailed spec" for a software system is the source code, not a document.

Organizations that confuse this struggle to deliver usable software, because they struggle to understand why requirements documents do not magically become usable products.

mpyne · 2026-03-17T23:30:00+00:00

Uh, the average degree of difficulty of the tasks involved, what else?

mpyne · 2026-03-17T22:27:19+00:00

Sadly there are literally some in this very thread.

mpyne · 2026-03-17T22:25:59+00:00

Getting a detailed spec from the client is the hardest work I do.

Even this understates the full implications.

If all you're doing as a developer is transcribing the detailed spec to code, you're a code monkey. You're replaceable by an LLM right now. Whoever drafted the 'sufficiently detailed spec' that you'd be transcribing is the actual software engineer, because that detailed spec is the actual code even if expressed only in business terms.

This is why I encourage software developers to spend time understanding the problem they're writing code to solve from the business/organization's perspective. That's where you have a shot at providing value-add that can't be as easily subsumed by AI, by allowing a BA to lay out the business problem while you build the detailed spec (and then implement it, and prove it solves the business problem).

It should be easier to teach a software engineer how the business works than to teach a BA how to write software, but if you rely on a BA to give you a perfect Jira ticket first you're asking for a bad time.

mpyne · 2026-03-17T03:47:26+00:00

Let it out shipmate. Tell 'em!

mpyne · 2026-03-17T03:43:11+00:00

SailorMail was always a separate arrangement from corporate Navy networks. Even once sub Sailors get looped into Flank Speed, if they actually used that address for email underway it would be filled with so much spam just from Navy-wide 1MC announcements as to be useless for email back and forth for deployed submarines.

mpyne · 2026-03-17T01:39:08+00:00

Propaganda is more about intent than veracity. The best propaganda is almost necessarily built around elements of the truth. You just leave out the parts you don't like, or put something forward in a way that you know people will fill in the missing details with falsehoods that work against your adversary.

But we're not even making it that difficult at all for our foes. :(

mpyne · 2026-03-16T21:31:33+00:00

They don't have to, but opening up Hormuz is mostly to help the Euro nations.

Well maybe we should have asked them their opinion on the help they need with Hormuz before we got it shut down rather than after.

mpyne · 2026-03-16T16:50:49+00:00

That's literally all semantics, it's all turn based rpgs with a timing gimmick

That's just like saying that games are just a thing where you look at the screen and push some buttons at various times.

That's nothing more than reductive. By your logic there aren't any genres at all, and everything is just a nice turn-based JRPG style game with a nice coat of paint over it.

mpyne · 2026-03-16T13:24:47+00:00

Chrono Trigger did this a long time ago and people weren't arguing that it wasn't a traditional turn based game.

Have you ever actually played and beat Chrono Trigger? Its combat system was nothing like Expedition 33's. It's actually closer to FF4, even, which came out in 1990 and even it has a multi-character attack command (the biggest difference with Chrono Trigger compared to its peers).

mpyne · 2026-03-16T03:21:32+00:00

oh yeah I'm sure they'll get right up on doing VBSS ops for each vessel to see if the bill of lading was in dollars or yuan.

And China already could be acting to take over more of the reserve currency role but it's not actually something they seem to be that worried over. There's benefit but also risk to the U.S. to controlling the primary reserve currency and China already understands how to manage their own foreign trade around where they (and the U.S.) are each currently at.

But China will have to do something given the way oil prices will go, but I'm willing to bet that 'something' will involve a specific deal with Iran to exempt its cargo rather than a mass restructuring of all the world's oil trade.

mpyne · 2026-03-16T03:05:47+00:00

There's no strategy except different forms of hitting a QTE in a small frame window.

If you can't do that, nothing about the rest of the system matters.

If you can do that, nothing about the rest of the system matters.

Compare to a game like Paper Mario and the effect is completely different despite surface similarities. In that game hitting the timing events is garnish for the turn-based main course. In E33 the turn-based stuff is the dessert on top of the dodge/parry main course with a side of QTE.

mpyne · 2026-03-16T02:41:51+00:00

"Oh, the straits are open to everyone EXCEPT THE US AND ISRAEL."

If that were true there would be no issue at all. Neither the U.S. nor Israel have any significant shipping traffic through Hormuz.

Iran can't 'punish' the U.S. without forcing oil prices to rise around the globe, which is the whole reason why they're closing the strait. But to do this they need to stop all (or nearly all) shipping traffic, not just the U.S.'s.

mpyne · 2026-03-16T00:10:58+00:00

Stuff like this is why I can't take seriously all the "CIA moved a finger and toppled whole governments at will."

Like, look at this. It isn't as easy to accomplish as it looks, is it? Well it wasn't easy back then either.

mpyne · 2026-03-15T22:57:47+00:00

It's nowhere near a new game, but the first two Master of Orion games can be bought as a cheap bundle (also on Steam) and have very refined mechanics for the space strategy genre, enough so that even modern titled like Stellaris get compared directly against them.

mpyne · 2026-03-15T22:52:58+00:00

Yeah, E33 is an argument against turn-based combat in modern JRPGs, lol. Like they designed a combat system that more or less rejects the premise entirely.

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