- one architect who was there from the apps inception yen years prior, who knows all the ins and outs of the application - one project lead, who was with the project two years, who could also code in the classical sense, but was mostly the connection to the customer - a tester who could not code, but also knew the app in and out (from the user perspective) and found things or relayed and reproduced bugs reported by the customer - a technical writer who could also code (somewhat), but was more responsible to think of user behavior, undefined app behavior, edge cases, logic issues etc - and several disposable code monkeys, who were exchangeable and expendable, who did most of the tickets. I joined as one of these

The work was great, the team functioned great and we delivered what the customer wanted. But what really struck me was that software dev is not science, or engineering, or an art form, it's most akin to a trade like plumbing or carpentry. I had computer science as minor in university and pretty much none of what I learned there helped for "real" work. I learned SVN in university, but obviously the team used git. And all of the software development and programming courses I did taught me nothing of how real software is structured or how a team works.

That impression only more strongly once I had to train new hires, PhDs in comp science, who knew basically nothing about real software development.

Again, it's a trade, something you learn on the job from someone who already knows it, like a master carpenter.

I am in Germany, and school starts at 8 in Berlin, 8:05 in Wiesbaden, 7:45 in some small cities in Baden-Württemberg... And those are only the ones that I, personally, experienced. I'm sure Poland and Spain have different times, not lastly owing to timezones etc.

Please don't treat all of Europe as one single country with one set of customs.

F Droid comes close and can even auto update now (never understood why that didn't work on the past), but most apps I want or need like banking, health insurance etc aren't on F Droid.

Mad respect for that. I've donated a couple of bucks.

So while I'm still on the fence about whether you're being meta-ironic or whatever, I am very certain that I will always prefer honest, human written blog posts (including wrong idioms, phrases etc) to slop that was "improved" or downright written in full by an LLM.

It came with over 20 electronic schematics, pictograms how they were set up in the box, an explanation how they worked and a kid compatible story about a professor, a robot and I think some kids. I absolutely loved it. And I can say with absolute certainty that I wouldnt have chosen my current career and hobby trajectory had it not been for this electronics set.

I've moved cities multiple times now and the kit has disappeared over the years. You can still get them on ebay some times, but I was too cheap to buy one.

Through an incomprehensibly unlikely coincidence, someone put this exact kit on the sidewalk for grabs a fee houses and away, maybe a year ago or two. Naturally I took it, and it's complete and seems even unused.

I am now a father and I hope my daughter will find this kit just as interesting as I did 30 years ago.

But for that I still have my Bazzite or Steam Deck. I really encourage you to try Linux for gaming. It's incredible what Valve has achieved on that front.

On Mac, I've been using VoiceInk and it's even better. VoiceInk (and MacWhisper too, IIRC) use the neural engine and the delay between dictation and appearance of the typed text is almost imperceptible.

That's not a typo, I actually own this device and couldn't believe at first this thing spins with ninety thousand rpm. A lot has happened since my last 5400rpm hdd bit the dust.

The point is that I have to walk, physically move, to the corner where the plug is, push the button and be allowed to procrastinate. That is the design hurdle, not so high as to block completely, but just high enough that I don't get sucked into the endless feed each time I'm bored.

Edit: Also I want the granularity. Ads should always - without exception - be blocked. Social media should be allowed on demand and within the rules.