Jared White

Not downvoting because I appreciate the effort…but ChatGPT is about as opposite from the ethos of open source as you can get imho. 😄

Opt-out is bullshit, it's unethical. Unless people specifically give their consent to their content being used for training data, and are compensated if they wish to be compensated for that privilege, then it's just not morally defensible. Legally defensible? Sure, maybe so. But we don't like to support companies who are merely abiding by the letter of the law, we want them to abide by the spirit of the law and of treating their customers with respect and consideration. This is not that at all. 😕

Yeah, that's not remote, that's on-call. 😅

Ruby, absolutely. Still brings me joy with its expressiveness and flexibility.

I'm a blogger and a web developer, so IMHO:

Blog-style sites have never been as cheap to run as right now. For small-to-midsize sites run mostly as static sites, it might even be close to free.

Virtually all cost is in the human labor, and the challenge of running a sustainable business model like subscriptions off of "words" which I think are valuable but getting audiences to agree is very hard.

But we might be seeing a turnaround here. I'm hopeful!

Some things never change…

"physically easy"

Sure, because our necks, backs, and hips are all feeling so great all the time with these long hours at the desk.

"pays well"

Some tech jobs are connected with living in places with high living expenses, not to mention some tech jobs aren't at Big Tech firms so the pay is lower. Struggling with finances doesn't magically disappear because you're good at code.

"people think you're smart"

lolololol said every person ever who isn't white man passing or perhaps presenting as one of the "privileged" minority classes.

Look, do I agree tech jobs on average are appealing compared to many other professions? Sure! But minimizing—verging on gaslighting—the very real harms people may suffer while working in tech is irresponsible. Our industry has a long way to go to provide real equality, equanimity, and stability.

My daughter told me she was getting paper from the other room to draw on, and as she ran off I replied "Sounds ink-credible!"

I all for removing barriers to entry in this space, and if you're talking about self-hosting everything and wiring up all sorts of bits and bobs of various services together manually, yeah, it's very technical and daunting. But somebody can get started on Ghost, or WordPress.com, or Buttondown, or ConvertKit or whatever. Lots of ways to write early and often online. Buzzsprout is pretty rad for podcasting as well.

The problem usually boils down to distribution like Nilay said, not hosting. Fediverse seems like a real solution here. Honestly I've never been as successful at both blogging and podcasting as I am right now. This isn't merely a glimpse of some old-school internet nostalgia trip. It's a whole new world out there and it's actually better. 🤩

Oh yeah, thanks for bringing that up. And maybe we stay away from WordPress.com now with all the weird AI stuff they've been up to. 🤪

Squash merge into the main branch. It's the only way to fly. (just my 2c!)

All right, I'll correct you because you're wrong.

What bothers me is an open source tool enhancing a proprietary service which by its very nature breaks open source licensing and in face copyright protections of all sorts across the entire internet.