a1studmuffin

It’ll be interesting to see how this looks. The same technology was used in Alien: Romulus to revive a younger Ian Holm’s likeness for Rook, and while it was a cool tech demo, it still felt quite uncanny valley and distracting to watch. Casting another actor might have been a better choice. At least for this project the tech sounds more relevant, in that they’re deaging and aging characters within the same film.

I quite liked the concept a few years back when Apple and Google were talking about a Netflix-style subscription model for iOS/Android… a bit like Xbox Game Pass. The subscription would give you access to a bunch of games, and developers were paid royalties based on a mix of metrics like the game review score, number of downloads, average total time spent in game etc. It seemed like a good idea in that it aligned developers and players in the desire for genuinely good games, regardless of the game style or genre. It threw away the need for each game to find a way to monetize their players (which nearly always ends up in multiplayer endless cosmetic MTX nonsense).

Couples costume: Mothman and a lightbulb.

Janitor.

I remember installing a keylogger on the school library computers, then “accidentally” disconnecting the dialup internet and asking the teacher to type the login credentials again. I bet the ISP was confused when they saw so many concurrent logins after hours, all playing Quake and downloading huge files.

C/C++ still has a huge place in firmware, microcontrollers, operating systems, drivers, application development, video games, real-time systems and so on. It’s a totally different space of programming to webdev, which might explain the surprise.

It’s one of the worst feelings when you realise that social progress isn’t guaranteed, and regressions happen frequently throughout history.

Sometimes the real value of a project isn’t its proposed worth, but the schadenfreude it offers instead. I’ve backed a few failed Kickstarters that I absolutely got my money’s worth on.

It sounds like you’re in the right area by focusing on C. Have you got a GitHub profile? I’d start looking for open source projects in that space and get involved. Many of them have beginner bugs and tasks. Some projects are better than others at welcoming juniors, so check their readme to see if they have any advice.

If you’re interested in low-level languages like C and C++, I would take a look at Rust. It’s another performance-focused language that complies to assembler like C, but includes some clever design principles to prevent a lot of common C/C++ bugs from being possible at all. Even if you don’t end up using it much, it’s quite interesting to see a different way of thinking about things to achieve a similar output.

Beyond that, I’d say you need to think about the job opportunities you’re interested in and learn what tech they use.

If you’re concerned about privacy I don’t know why you’d use Tailscale over Wireguard directly. The latter is slightly more fiddly to configure, but you only do it once and there’s no cloud middleman involved, just your devices talking directly to each other.

Clearly we’re going to need regulations around personal vehicle size limits on the road. If you legitimately need a big truck for your business, get a licence for it.

I’d recommend setting up a GitHub profile and developing some personal projects on there, and try to get some experience contributing to other projects (even if they’re just simple first PRs). Make sure you include this on your resume, it’s a great talking point for juniors to show you’re passionate and have concrete examples of your code in the wild.

Also set up a LinkedIn profile (fleshed out as best you can) and start adding people at companies you’re interested in. DM them asking for advice, most people are lovely and want to help. While LinkedIn is horrible and needs to die, it’s still used heavily by the tech industry and you’ll find every tech company and recruiters on there.

You know it’s bad when we’re having to invent new words like ‘polycrisis’ to succinctly describe what’s happening.

Thanks for the words of encouragement! That’s exactly what I’ve done and recently just hit my first half century ride, but oh boy did I feel it! What a great feeling to be getting fitter though, I’m just sorry I didn’t do it sooner. Bikes are awesome.

Good god, averaging over 450km/day for 30 days straight! I’d be chuffed if I averaged a tenth of that per day for a month straight.

… or worked in a large team with juniors and members coming and going over a long period of time.

To take up a career in programming is to be professionally confused on a day-to-day basis. It’s normal to feel overwhelmed at times, but this is the advice I give younger engineers: accept that confusion, and try to channel it into curiosity instead of letting it fester into stress and anxiety.

I’m glad companies are continuing to innovate, but it feels wrong to be moving towards mechanical inventions again when we’ve finally nailed solid state tech. Have we forgotten how often printers used to break?

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