Christopher Masto

The tech market is shrinking rapidly and permanently. Sounds like you’re still pretty young, so if you have the time to change careers, I think you should.

I spent some time contemplating my life choices and I realized that if I had it to do over again, I’d like to have stuck with computers as a hobby, not a profession.

Exactly the same here.

Plus, some people are really sensitive to tastes and textures. When we’re not them, we call them picky eaters. When I was a child, I couldn’t stand the taste of water, and there were other foods I found repulsive. Even a different brand of ingredient from the one I was used to made me gag.

Somehow, I completely grew out of that and I’m now very adventurous when it comes to food. But it did leave me with empathy when I encounter someone who has a limited palate, which is pretty common among my nerd-spectrum peer group.

When you think about it, eating the wrong thing is a quick path to sickness or death, so it makes sense that food can trigger extreme reactions of disgust. If you ever ate something and got sick afterward, even if the two were unrelated, it’s very hard to un-make that connection.

This plays in my head every time I hear the phrase “weed whacker”. It’s called a whacker, for weeds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMghq58gvFo&t=106

Putting the food in the John McCain memorial hot box.

Sorry I took forever to answer this.

None of my previous jobs (including Google) checked references at all. They may have done a criminal background check, I don’t remember.

This latest one outsources their background check to a company that I’m sure charges them tons of money to do very little. I was disappointed to see from their web site that they are selling their use of AI to screen people. So that’s great.

But anyway, yes, what happened was that I had to fill out a form on the third party web site and give them a bunch of information - driver’s license, SSN, but also education, previous employers, job titles, manager’s names, etc. Then a few days later I got an email from the HR person at my new job telling me the third party company was unable to verify any of the information, so could I please send them a copy of my diploma, a letter from my former employer, etc. Basically I had to do all the legwork that they paid for, apart from checking a few databases to confirm I’m not a felon.

I just started a new job and I had to dig up a copy of my high school diploma as part of the background check. Ridiculous? Yes. But also, they just outsource to a third party company to verify everything. And that company doesn’t seem to actually do what they’re paid for and they just kicked back all of the work to me.

In any case, I agree with the comments that you shouldn’t need a degree. I’ve been a manager in tech for a long time, including 10 years at Google, and have a lot of experience hiring. I don’t have a college degree. And once someone had work experience, I never paid any attention to their education. Lying about it is only going to risk getting caught.

I can’t pick a single favorite, they all have different uses. Cholula or Valentina go with a lot of things, but obviously and especially Mexican food. Frank’s Red Hot is pretty much only for making Buffalo sauce, but I also like it on mac & cheese, and on steak (this is a weird thing I got from my dad). My favorite chili crisp is Fly By Jing. It makes Chinese takeout worth eating. Calabrian chili paste goes great on sandwiches and in tomato sauces. I’m not big on sriracha, but keep a bottle of Underwood Ranches on hand to make spicy ketchup or add to a sandwich or burger, ramen, etc. Speaking of Underwood Ranches, their chili garlic sauce is perfect on eggs. I also have a bottle of Secret Aardvark habanero sauce for chili and hot dogs and most importantly, chili dogs. The last one that comes to mind is the only obscure one that you get in those mall stores where 99% of their business is from frat boy joke labels: “Sauce Bitch”. Despite the stupid name, this one is unique and delicious. It’s fruity and dark and goes amazingly well with pork dishes as well as eggs. I stumbled on it in a restaurant and now I have to order it direct from the manufacturer because I haven’t found anything else quite like it.

It was the dawn of the third age of mankind

This is a skill I do not have, and apparently I may be one of two people in the world who can’t do it.

“Exploiting” means what, exactly? And what evidence do you have for it?

The content of your email is not used for targeting or profiling, it’s not being sold. Clear enough? The qualifier is because some “well ackshually” will point out that they have to scan it for spam filtering, virus detecting, adding calendar events, etc. These are features of the product, and I think labeling them exploitation would be a bit rich.

Google does not use the content of Gmail messages for ad targeting. Lots of misinformation here.

I don’t believe the producers had the whole story arc planned regardless of what they say. I think you can tell when there’s a mystery box situation. But now that they moved the island and it has settled down into an allegory for Scientology, I’m hoping they’ll stop introducing polar bears and keep focusing on the story.

Spoiler here:

I think there is a huge corner they’re backed into when it comes to neatly wrapping things up. If severance is stopped, the innies have to die. Even reintegration means giving up their identities and personalities and becoming just a memory. So it’ll be pretty messy to try to write their way out of that.

All the honey I’ve ever bought has crystallized before I could get through the small bottle. Yeah, you can heat it, it’s a pain to have to deal with when I just want to use it. I’d rather buy what I need fresh.

I think you missed the point.

Why is that safer/better? That binary can do anything a shell script can, and it’s a lot harder to inspect.

How Flint is doing is irrelevant to what I said, the same as me picking on a polluted city in Canada doesn’t change the fact that Canada generally has safe drinking water.

The comment I responded to made it sound like US tap water is mostly not safe to drink. That’s demonstrably untrue. I’m not defending the horrors of industrial capitalism or condoning environmental destruction, I’m merely pointing out that the US does in fact have standards, regulation, and enforcement for drinking water quality. This does not mean it’s perfect, but it does mean that in general you can drink the water out of the tap, like I do every day.

I hate that we live in a world where only extreme viewpoints are allowed. Either the USA is the greatest country in the world or it’s a complete shithole, anything else is just shouted down. I still make the stupid mistake of caring about what’s real rather than what makes a good soundbite on social media.

“Drinking water quality in the United States is generally safe. In 2016, over 90 percent of the nation’s community water systems were in compliance with all published U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) standards. Over 286 million Americans get their tap water from a community water system. Eight percent of the community water systems—large municipal water systems—provide water to 82 percent of the US population.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_water_quality_in_the_United_States

I don’t know where you got that idea, but public tap water is federally regulated in the US (at least for now). Bottled water is popular because of marketing, not because tap water is unsafe.

Admitting you were wrong/made a mistake/can’t do something.

Related: changing your mind. The one thing that can still destroy any politician is the dreaded “flip-flop”. Yet the thing we most need them to do is to revise their position in the face of new information.

I think most of the problems in the world come down to some sort of bullshit posturing that (especially male) humans seem to be compelled to engage in.

There’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed over the past few years where people refuse to read anything longer than a handful of words. In fact, it’s often lobbied as an insult toward the writer: “not gonna read that, bro” has a similar connotation as “what have you got there, nerd, a math book?” combined with “I guess I triggered you so bad you had to provide supporting detail for your ideas, ha ha!”

I think there’s a self reinforcing loop where we’ve all moved to mobile devices where it’s tedious and annoying to type anything, so we’ve gotten more used to shorter and shorter messages, making anything longer look old fashioned and out of touch. People who grew up with phones now feel like it’s tedious and annoying to even read a full paragraph (or watch a non-short video), let alone expend the extra energy required to decode handwriting and figure out a scribbled word from context. It’s easier just to say “not gonna read ur wall”, and reinforce that it’s now shameful to write a comment as long as this one.

Just saw another one this morning.

Maybe Pac-Man. Wandering around a maze eating all day isn’t that different from my current life.

A return is what you file. The money you get back for overpayment is a refund.

Sorry, pet peeve of mine that comes up every tax season.