Notes for Week 28, 2024

Song of the week:

Notes

  • Intuit laid off over 1000 people last week, which is bad enough. But they then had the gaul to claim most of them were laid off due to underperformance. Which, first off, is slander. And second, is absolutely abhorrent behaviour. The company laid people off and then made it incredibly difficult for them to enter the jobs market. Red flag for any company.
  • I had a bunch of tabs ready to go this week relating to the insane media double-standard applied to Biden over Trump. Biden has had several public gaffes that clearly show him not being quite 'all there' or coherent. He is old, no doubt about it. So is Trump. But Trump, rather than flustering and forgetting where he is in a sentence, has the old-man fever of just flailing around and saying whatever comes to mind. He's not better or more coherent, he can just appear so because his old man energy is different.
    • But as I get ready to hit deploy on this week's blog, I had to take pause. An attempt was made on Trump's life. Perhaps more oddly by someone in his own camp (that is to say, a registered Republican wearing some looney-tunes apparel from a right wing think tank). I won't get into the details as you already have them, but this is a dangerous turning point for America and the West. The whole thing has been ridiculous to-date. But this is a new level we've not witnessed in our lifetimes. The gig is up and there's no going back.
  • This week I read an interesting rant from a dev who maintains (solo) an open source repository. It doesn't even matter what the repo does. Or did, because he shut it down due to a lack of engagement, money and time. But then suddenly, a large multi-billion dollar organisation came knocking, saying his lack of support has caused issues in their stack. Not his fault at all, and it's interesting that their entire stack was held up by this guy, without them ever crediting or paying him. He wasn't even asking for huge sums, just donations that give him enough to cover the time spent. What I liked was the end of the story wasn't him bending-over-backwards for the company, but instead shrugging and letting them go figure it out, as angry as they would be.
  • I had the kids solo this week as my wife was away for a work-related trip. And it was good, but also predictably manic. I had a bit of an illness (no doubt a creche-born thing), a mouse entered the house (dealt with) and we had a bunch of mad activities to fill space that lead directly to naps and long sleeps at night. Most notably running our new RC car around (noted last week) and going to a huge truck festival at Mondello Park (a race track about an hour from us). And today, going to a model trains exhibition.
  • This week I also got to go behind closed doors to kick the tyres on the new Porsche Macan 4, which is an EV. A €100,000 EV, no less. I spec'd it up based on the features of the Tesla Model Y I already own, which brought it a little over the €100k mark over whatever the list price is. And while it's pricey, I can knock 50% off it with the sale of my Model Y (which I own outright). What's driving this decision? Frankly a yearning to own a Porsche, but a steely determination to only have an EV for the family car. And Musk being such an absolute bag of piss that I'd rather not drive a car that he had a hand in creating. A big turn-around given both of the Tesla's I've owned have been the first 10 or so to roll onto Irish roads.

via flickr

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Published on: 14th July, 2024

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