If I were Satan, righteousness would have been my favorite invention. Nothing like it to set people against each other, or blind them to the real consequences of their actions.

Somewhat impulsively, I accomplished two things I've been procrastinating on for months:

• Upgraded my main PC from 16 to 64 GiB RAM. As neat SFX PCs are, a trivial upgrade like that required taking half of it apart, including the CPU cooler to get to the RAM slots.
• Added a shim to my main monitor arm to raise it by about 5cm. It gave me a bit more clearance to store junk under it, and also a lot more comfortable level to look at it while leaning back.

Holy Inquisition had it right when they burned books. Every time I open a book, any hope of a productive evening is gone. Worse than alcohol! Think of all the free open source labor I could have provided if not for books!

Right, what page was I on...

It occurred to me that a lot of what I've been doing at work amounts to collecting and redistributing proverbial fishing rods just so that people stop bugging me about the same thing over and over again. And if I ever want to have people stop asking me for fishing rods, I need to move into the business of teaching people to make fishing rods from materials at hand. And all I wanted was just to be left alone and write some software.

(Ignore the sound of the metaphor cracking on its seams)

A counter-intuitive observation: the more I get done at work in a given day, the more energy I have for some pet project in the evening or weekend.

Interesting... 6 years ago or so I tried the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (one their split models) at work and after some struggle abandoned it for a more traditional mechanical keyboard. Today I pulled it out of the drawer it was sitting in and gave it a go just because I was bored. Weirdly, I find it a lot more comfortable than I remember and the layout doesn't give me as much of a headache. I don't like how the key press feels, but that's kind of minor.

Maybe I should look into ergonomic keyboards again

Candidate requirements for a job in a ministry of foreign affairs. Wrong answers only.

Caffeine is just energy borrowed from your tomorrow self. Like any loan, could be a useful tool, but also a way to dig yourself into a pit

If you live in the same online bubble as me, you must have heard about the xz/liblzma backdoor, and if you haven't you can read a TL;DR here.

In its wake, a lot of folks are discussing critical open source infrastructure, sustainability, expectations that can or can not be placed on hobbyist maintainers, and whether they need to payed for their contribution. People point out various foundations that have employed high-profile maintainers so that they could work on the project full-time, and others reasonably assert that such approach can't scale to cover all of the open source.

So, here's my hot take: they only way to sustainably develop free software is to not need to be payed for it. And the only way this could be achieved at a scale software industry needs is for people not to need a paid job to have a decent, comfortable and safe living. Not just for open source maintainers, every human being on this planet. Don't want to work? That's okay, enjoy days with your family and friends. Getting bored? That's cool, do something that's interesting to you, and if your work is beneficial to the society at large - enjoy our heartfelt thank yous.

If you ask me "but who would want to work as a trash truck driver then?", my answer is "go check out how many people play Farming Simulator and similar games". Damn, I myself spent days driving virtual trucks in Euro Truck Simulator, for negative amount of money - I had to pay for the game after all. Then there's also AI, which wouldn't really mind the stink of trash cans that need to be taken out.

And while what I'm saying may sound outlandish or communist, it's actually neither. The objective is to overcome material scarcity, and historically the need for human labor has been the main obstacle for that. I firmly believe that today's technological advancement level is sufficient to achieve that at least as far as physical goods go. It'll take much longer to get to the stage where all services can be comfortably provided on volunteer basis, but it no longer seems implausible to me. We don't even have to abandon capitalism (something I have mixed feelings about, but that's a rant for another day), it'll just shift into the realm of non-material or unique goods.

Time to see what the hype was all about?..

Two beliefs I hold very strongly:

• It's okay to ask any question, even a controversial one.
• It's not okay to ask a question if you are not prepared to even consider an answer that doesn't match your own. You don't have to agree, but you must at least consider it.

AI opportunity truly beneficial for humanity: automatically navigate through the cookie consent dialogs and reject all non-essential. Pleeeeease.

There are two kinds of companies. Some hire people to solve problems. Others hire people to execute orders.

I found a perfect lazy-ass solution for the tea supply continuity problem.

It involves a larger thermos and an insulated cup (this one is nice because it keeps tea temperature consistent longer, but any insulated cup will do really).

The algorithm is as follows:

1. Wake up.
2. Boil a kettle. Optionally let it cool down a bit (80°C is fine for me, talk to your lawyer to find out if it's good for you).
3. Brew up a fuckload of tea at once, fill up the whole thermos, and the cup as well.
4. Get them over to your ~cave~ desk.
5. Congratulations, you have a day's worth supply of warm tea, just refill the cup when it runs out.