ManMachine
@max@manmachine.me
Rise and grind
@heyheymomo I have the same coffee maker :D but mine is red
@gkrnours I love those things!
@heyheymomo it's like a morning ritual :)
Instruction I found for it say to start with hot water, so I begin by starting the electric kettle, turning hot the electric plate and grinding the coffee. Water came to a boil more or less when I've enough ground coffee. I pour hot water, coffee, close it, put it in the hot plate. I make some foamy milk in a mug, coffee and foam are ready at same time. Turn off the plate, add a grid with aluminium and a slice of bread on top. It toast while cooling down
"In a burning world we need to hold ourselves and each other to a higher standard. “Useful” is far, far from being good enough."
Although trained in physics, I worked in the computing industry with pride and purpose for over 40 years. And now I can do nothing but sit back and watch it destroy itself for no valid reason beyond hubris (if I'm being charitable).
Ineffable sadness watching something I once loved deliberately lose its soul.
@robpike while I deeply agree, “lose” feels far too passive for this. This is an industry actively trying to sell it to anyone and everyone.
I spent my time trying to make it better. Not just write code, but find better or at least different ways to do so. Simpler, cleaner, more general, more comprehensible.
What's happening today is a complete repudiation of everything I was trying to achieve.
But hey, the industry has spoken. Who am I to question it?
@robpike Voices in the industry, as in capitalism in general, are weighted by how much wealth they command, and the acquisition of wealth is largely not a merit-based process.
@robpike I'm just happy to be at the end of my career. I can't imagine having to job-hunt in a time where installing software on your phone and being interviewed by an LLM is a requirement.
No one seems to recognize that LLMs create technical debt *at scale*.
@robpike there has been a-lot of optimistic AI in the experiment / spend cycle; The total dollar cost to Industry is not so rosy.
@robpike The counter revolution is underway. Those of us who still remember how computers can be playgrounds of exploration unto themselves, and not just means to extraction and rent seeking, will have had our fill of the contradictions, doublespeak, and outright lies. The kids with their weird hair and 9front on their ThinkPads grow relentlessly restless. Those that value autonomy, joy, artistry, and craftsmanship, will ultimately win. Far too much of our collective future is at stake.
@robpike the industry will speak again once it collapses from its own hubris. But yeah they're not too big into the listening / asking questions part right now. Apparently there's only one way for them to find out.
@robpike not a complete repudiation. It might seem that way at the moment because the dumbest voices are the loudest ones
There are those of us who listened to what you said and understood it, who have taken it to heart and still try to put that philosophy into practice. I hope you know that and know that your work made a difference and is appreciated
@robpike I just got into the industry after it being my hobby since I could teach myself, I relate to this so hard. :-/
@robpike lots of us appreciate your work a great deal, and still believe in those principles, despite the folly that the wider industry has decided to chase. I feel a bit adrift in unfamiliar and hostile seas but at least it’s good to hear a familiar voice of reason over the squall
@robpike You did. There are the corners of the world that hold this spirit up. The rest will crumble in itself eventually.
@robpike I'm so sorry. I feel very similar. Just know that your own work, especially on Go, is one of the bulwarks defending us against the encroaching tide.
@robpike This is the feeling I had in the 90s dropping out of journalism school because everything had been so debased by 24 hour news channels managing to devote 20 of those hours to OJ Simpson's trial for months on end, and nearly every other news source including NPR joining the frenzy.
So then I went to become a full time computer geek and, well, you know.
@robpike after many years deliberating what mattered to me and how to attempt to live as ethically as possible under capitalism I found out that the best way was to support local artists.
And now I am afraid they're trying to scam me with the AIgen bullshit.
Problem is I've been only 5 years on this position. And 2 of those have been under unnecessary stress.
The big corpos haven really never been as burnable as today.
* buildings collapse, websites fall, forums die, qr codes deployed, bots run rampant
*Meanwhile, below, in TOR, yggdrasil and i2p.
"Can you keep it down up there?!"
@robpike I hit burnout a couple of years ago. Something changed in the way I viewed my career path. I couldn't take the corporate ladder climbing, so I climbed down and started watching this trainwreck from a distance. It really does make me sad watching the industry I worked hard within just to crumble under my feet. I do miss the work though. Perhaps someday I'll put my hat back in the ring. Until then, I guess I'll just take a bucket of popcorn and watch the madness unfold. 🍿 
@robpike From The Practice of Programming to the Byte Order Fallacy, I have been sharing your writing with junior developers as I mentor them.
Lately I've been dealing with juniors that don't like to read, and I'm worried.
Last year, as I was getting close to retirement I was joking about being called back in to unf&$k systems that have been written or updated by AI - but now Im not sure I want to anymore.
@robpike come with me if you want to live, my friend 💛 https://infosec.exchange/@codinghorror/116559195759358488
@robpike - You may have come across this, but in case you havn't, a message of hope.
https://www.terrygodier.com/the-boring-internet/ascii
@robpike I'm hoping there may be an opportunity to rebuild from the ashes afterwards, because I cannot see how this is going to be sustainable once the industry finishes destroying its ability to build software that's not a complete incomprehensible disaster.
@robpike Yeah.
(While we're all still here, speaking as one of the beneficiaries of your work, thank you for everything.)
Peachy Fae [Was gonna be funny but snark is all I got and that ain't nice.] » 🌐
@mildpeach@mstdn.social
@robpike @lisamelton couldn’t have said it better.
@robpike personally, I wish I could program for fun, because I really enjoy it.
Unfortunately, I can't retire yet, so I have to use my skills to live, and that means working in this awful soulless market. I have considered changing career because the money is not that good anymore if you're not an AI maximalist, and I don't know if I have the will to go this way for survivability's sake.
My internal fight between my ethics and the job is really crushing. It is extremely sad.
I just wish an extremely fast readaptation because economy wise, it doesn't make sense. So if the people financing this hype could see how much they're gonna lose fast, that would be grand, it would maybe avoid a massive recession or a global ecological collapse.
Anyway, outside of this hellscape, I still have a project I have in mind for 23 years, and I will write it in Go with my bare hands because it is the language I really love and feel creative and productive with. So thank you for all your work on it!
for the love of fuck can just one piece of core computing infrastructure not be AI slop maintained by some weird fucker casually justifying his decision with right-wing talking points like that’s just a normal thing to do
bitter lol @ “just fork it if you’re not happy” for the motherfucking linux kernel of all things https://mastodon.social/@gamingonlinux/116924101230198934
Achievement unlocked: Brew coffee in a drip brewer by putting it into the water tank instead of the filter. Have fun cleaning up!
Every year, the HDMI Consortium meets with hardware manufacturers to plan where to place HDMI ports on monitors. Through a rigorous series of testing, they ensure that each monitor has its port locations optimized to be impossible to plug the HDMI cable in without turning the whole monitor around and eyeballing the port like some kind of spaceship docking procedure.
When they have all agreed on the best location, they go out for pizza.
Writing Perl for as little as six months will engrain this conclusion in you permanently https://studio8502.ca/@mos_8502/116914686499380319
Unfortunately then rustfmt and similar tools get angry at you for the rest of your life :(
@mcc I truly don’t understand why rustfmt considers writing it in a way easy for a human to be confident it is correct to be bad style. Those are my emotional support redundant parentheses
@0xabad1dea @mcc I have pondered this at length over many such systems and concluded that the job description attracts the type of person who thinks so highly of their own opinions that they simply cannot rest until they have formed and imposed as many of them as the grammar possibly allows.
@0xabad1dea @mcc The average programmer uses several languages, some only maybe once or twice a year. Even if they can be arsed to memorise the different operator precedence rules for all of them - and why should they?? - it's grossly unreasonable to expect everyone who's ever going to read your code, including those who've never seen that particular language before, to have memorised them too. Put the ***ing parentheses in FFS.
A good illustration of shifting baselines in #technology and perception of social networks specifically: it's been 17 years since Facebook introduced its "algorithmic" feed, gradually making the chronological one harder to toggle, and about 5 years ago Twitter repeated those steps, normalising the lack of chronological "followers" feed across popular social networks. And now plenty of people can no longer imagine having a modicum of control over what they see and for how long.
#enshittification
@max it's hard to prove and yes, this could be snark, but I keep seeing a very similar sentiment in various comment sections outside fedi and tech-savy bubbles for years now.
Also it seems like the popular discourse around attention mining keeps going in circles in a weird amnesiac "history of this platform doesn't exist" way, which feels like a marker/vibe of total normalisation.
High Pressure Differential SCSI
so if an enemy has launched large reflective satellites into orbit around your planet, how much laser power would it take to push them out of that orbit?
because surely a ground-based laser could get them to act more like a solar sail?
*styropyro joined the chat*
Like most problems in life, this one can be solved with very powerful lasers!
Reflect Orbital's satellites are 18x18 meters. Tiny for a solar sail.
I should check Atomic Rockets for the math on solar sails.
I know firing up through the atmosphere isn't gonna be great, but it's not like we have a bunch of laser satellites out there.
if we were still doing pre-craig bond movies, they'd have already done an film where an evil tech billionaire reveals his communication satellite array is actually an orbital laser system, allowing him to dominate the globe
@foone Unfortunately it seems that in today's world, the evil tech billionaire will launch an orbital laser system that is secretly a communication satellite constellation.
@foone I wouldn't be above assuming that SpaceX's practice in guiding automated spacecraft onto small target may also be applied to deorbiting satellites aggressively.
@foone SpaceX Starlink satellites launched since 2021 are in fact an orbital laser system. OK, so the lasers are communication crosslinks aimed at other Starlink satellites in the same orbital plane, but nevertheless.
@foone It doesn't have to work like a solar sail to make for a decent reflector that might allow someone with a sufficiently powerful ground-based laser to put some serious energy down on basically any spot on earth. Line up a couple reflectors in the right way and the focused energy from your GW d̶a̶t̶a̶ ̶c̶e̶n̶t̶e̶r̶ laser could end up wherever you want...
@foone you'd imagine that a satellite designed to reflect the full power of the sun without being pushed out of orbit can't be dislodged with a ground based laser. I guess one problem is you can only push up which is already the direction station keeping wants to push
@foone
I think it would be more efficient to invest in solutions to make the launcher not start or fail the mission that to try to push a fully operational battle station
Marathon 2026
| it's cool: | 13 |
| it's ok I guess: | 8 |
| it's bad: | 8 |
| who the what now?: | 99 |
Closed
@eniko no I'm still training, I might get in a half-marathon this year but I'm not ready for.... wait there's a game?
@eniko Pfft, Marathon 490 BC was absolutely groundbreaking, this remake is a joke at best and an insult at worst.
@eniko I thought it was about running.
Sony will never make back the Bungie money. What a disaster. Next time they should just pay me 1/4 of that and I won’t cost them a dime afterwards. Still cheaper.
@eniko it’s not my kind of game (I like the art, but not aggressive pvp with internet randos), but some of my friends love it
@eniko looks great, managed to feel like a horror game sometimes, feels exceptionally good. Buuuuut I wish it was PvE.
Inside of you are two wolves, wild and free.
There's also a very weary owl, a wine-drunk wombat, and a harried little hedgehog who often feels the weight of the world.
Even more excited to become a librarian now that I learned that Fox News called libraries, “drug infested, sex dungeons”.
Secret Panel HERE 🔥 https://tinyview.com/mrlovenstein/2026/04/08/ruinternet
Almost 90 boosts for this one but no ALT text. I'm not gonna add that now, cause tired. Maybe later. Someone else ? 
@MrLovenstein I am seeing your stuff on many places outside and inside the #fediverse and most of the time people are editing out your they chop away (edit out) your 'name' 😩
@MrLovenstein This author is great. I really like their work, but they could really level up their comics by adding alt text everywhere they post them.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-oil-industry-donations
Oddly enough, the fossil fuel industry's insatiable greed is to blame for both.
https://www.desmog.com/2025/12/11/the-koch-network-is-pushing-trump-to-accelerate-ai-documents-show/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/us/politics/koch-network-2024-election-trump.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/technology/saudi-arabia-ai-exporter.html
@MrLovenstein No, you have to go to the other side of town, behind the gates, where the good person is working on a pest donation. Or you can try to rough the alps and call it a good time. Just tell them you'd like to get good and become smooth at solving unnecessary problems, so you don't have to deal with not solving real ones. They'll understand. And if they ask, the code phrase is, "Wayward Soulless".
If Reform lose the election for the Greater Manchester mayor they will claim that it's because it's campaign resources had to be diverted to a by-election forced onto the Dulwich-educated ex-commodities broker bankrolled by millionaires who's been a full-time politician for three decades and has side-hustles pitching for gold bullion to make him fight The Establishment's chosen champion, some bloke with a bucket on his head.
@Stevenheywood now now, that's just wrong. Count Binface has a bin on his head. Buckethead is a legally different person... ;)
Buckethead is a legally different personWell to be fair I don't think anyone tried electing a genius guitar player, perhaps it would work better
@max https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Buckethead Who doesn't want an evil overlord who will actually tell you he _is_ an evil overlord... ;)