Metafilter

I have kids and wanted them when I had them in my early 30s. I did not feel that want at 22. But neither did I think “I never want kids.”

A lot of people’s view on this eventually crystallizes based on who they choose to spend their life with. You could meet someone who changes you and changes your view and who definitely wants kids and with whom you feel good about doing it. You could change your mind and that’s what it would look like if you did.

I have had a vasectomy and when you do it you’re supposed to tell them if you have any chance of ever changing your mind. If I were you I’d answer yes to that.

There’s no guarantee a vasectomy can ever be reversed. However they can perform the procedure in a way that leaves as much of your tubes as possible in the event that you might someday want to reconnect them. In my experience they will also make damn sure you know that there’s no guarantee. However though people lean hard on emphasizing that lack of guarantee, the fact is that many vasectomies are successfully reversed, so it is possible.

Yes I believe there’s an over-emphasis on the visual here. There’s a low limit on how many distinct objects we can perceive visually at once but that’s not entirely the same as what numbers we can grasp and comprehend.

I remind myself that news media have a vested interest in keeping me outraged and on the edge of my seat, addicted to consuming their every update.

There are definitely things worth getting outraged over. But on top of that we have an outrage industry harvesting our attention and fear for ad dollars.

So I remind myself not to spiral down the doomclick drain. If something is THAT important I’m going to hear about it. I don’t need to be checking a news app daily.

On top of this I do what I can to support change. We donate to Ukraine and Gaza relief efforts. We vote. We make our political views known to those around us to support right action in them as well (not talking about politics is what Trumpers want - they want cover for their fascist hate and violence - I make damn sure that everyone I know is aware that there’s no room for that shit in my life).

Conserve your strength. Do everything material that you can, and don’t spend yourself past that point.

But that first part is important: DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN.

It plays quite well with the “I think about things for two seconds, and mostly think with my lower intestine” crowd.

They hear “kids shouldn’t be able to access porn” and they think yeah what’s wrong with that. Then they hear “Democrats want your kids to get porn” and they hit share.

Developers having a narrower list of browsers to support is not ONLY about greed. You say it is NOT about making something that works to improve people’s lives. And I disagree with that.

You can’t build a good piece of software and try To support every client under the sun since the beginning of time. There is a reasonable point to draw some lines and prioritize.

So while greed is ONE factor, you seem to be saying it’s the only factor, and that people are stupid and broken for doing this. That’s going too far.

It’s unrealistic to expect perfection. Today people want comprehensive client support. Tomorrow they will be outraged at some bug. But few realize: you may have to pick between the two. Because having zero bugs is a lot more achievable if you can focus on a small list of current browser clients. That’s just a fact. The next day they will be upset that there are ads in the site, but it may be ad revenue that pays for developers to fix all the bugs for all browser clients under the sun.

People love to rant online about how NO you should give me EVERYTHING and do it for FREE but this is childish tantruming and has no relationship to reality. Devs are not an endless resource that just gives and gives forever. They are regular people who need to go home at night like anyone else.

the idiot desire to get more money

Yes, but we don’t have to make a total caricature out if it. We all need to prioritize our time. That isn’t evil, or broken, or wrong. That’s just life.

enormous

It isn’t though. Thats the exact point. It’s a moderate effort that would prevent infinitesimal damage. That’s just not good math. People have to prioritize their time. If you have a numbers case to make about why the damage is so enormous, make it. That’s what it will take to be convincing: numbers.

You’re correct, and I’m going to explain how this happens. I’m not justifying that it happens, just explaining it.

It isn’t that no one knows what graceful degradation is anymore. It’s that they don’t try to serve every browser that’s existed since the beginning of time.

When you develop software, you have to make some choices about what clients you’re going to support, because you then need to test for all those clients to ensure you haven’t broken their experience.

With ever-increasing demands for more and more software delivery to drive ever greater business results, developers want to serve as few clients as possible. And they know exactly what clients their audience use - this is easy to see and log.

This leads to conversations like: can we drop browser version X? It represents 0.4% of our audience but takes the same 10% of our testing effort as the top browser.”

And of course the business heads making the demands on their time say yes, because they don’t want to slow down new projects by 10% over 0.4% of TAM. The developers are happy because it’s less work for them and fewer bizarre bugs to deal with from antiquated software.

Not one person in this picture will fight for your right to turn off JavaScript just because you have some philosophy against it. It’s really no longer the “scripting language for animations and interactivity” on top of HTML like it used to be. It’s the entire application now. 🤷‍♂️

If it helps you to blame the greedy corporate masters who want to squeeze more productivity out of their engineering group, then think that. It’s true. But it’s also true that engineers don’t want to work with yesteryear’s tech or obscure client cases, because that experience isn’t valuable for their career.

Great so tell me where you live and how enforceable a written note that your job is “remote” would be, and if you would be protected from dismissal when you couldn’t come to terms with your employer about where the work needs to be done.

Don’t know? Can’t bother? Just wanted to take a shot at the US?

Well that’s for sure. But this is where their egos go big. They aren’t about optimizing just their job and leaving others alone. No, if it’s their way, it must be the best way. After all, how could anyone want or need anything other than they do? Unless something’s wrong with them! /s

I guess they don’t, I was just thinking of how their job is essentially meeting and talking with lots of people, including inside and outside the company, and this benefits from in-person interactions moreso than, say, a programmer’s job does. It would have been more accurate if I’d said a CEO’s job is easier to do well and more enjoyable when everyone is in the office.

Good. It’s soul crushing to think that actual humans deliberately made the crap in that app.

CEOs basically have to do it, and most want to. And they think “hey I’m the CEO so I must be doing something right - my way is clearly the best way.” And that’s that in their minds. Hustle culture goes all the way to the top CEOs in the world. They just use different language, like “you must be driven, you need to want it more, if you don’t move aggressively to succeed then your competitors will…” they truly believe it’s the correct and virtuous life. To force it on others, in their mind, is doing them a favor.

Having that in writing won’t help a great deal. Even if somehow you make it binding, you’re still employed at-will. Unless you’re saying to make sure you have a full employment contract in place. Which, yeah, wouldn’t that be nice?

Yes I understand that for some people out there, being a tech executive is their highest passion and true calling. But I hate it when those people turn around and expect everybody to act that way, and act like they’re just more virtuous for doing so. I have a very successful tech career but it’s a job, not my whole life. This society values money, so we keep asking rich people for life advice, as if they have tapped into something deeply human and universal. They haven’t.

You can read it two ways:

1. gee they’re so WFH friendly
2. they drive their people hard and they work nights and weekends

Couldn’t we have a good old fashioned butlerian jihad?

It looks like you just heard a swipe at Christianity out of the blue and took offense to it, but there is actually a significant amount of context here. OP’s conflict is framed very much as a Christian struggle between “being a spiritual person” according to the bible and “lusting after women.”

I don’t think we need more information from OP to label Christianity’s attitudes toward sex and even women generally, and absolutely sex workers, as toxic. You don’t have to agree with that but it’s not exactly out of the blue.

Christ, remember when NewEgg was an actual store? Now they’re just a listing service for the scum-level of retailer and drop shippers. What a shame.