Personally, I take everything he says and does seriously. I advise non-citizens visiting to turn their social media to private and bring a burner phone to immigration checkpoints. For citizens, turning off your phone should be enough.

I think a lot of us outside the US will go further and simply never visit the US ever again. That certainly applies to me despite having spent quite a lot of time in the US and having ex-colleagues who I regard as friends there.

There are some amazing examples of procedural generation though, such as Minecraft terrain and the orcs from Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor.

There is no reason not to use propane or butane, they have low global warming potential and is cheap. The fire risk is overstated, no one thinks twice about carrying a lighter in their pocket.

I have some beef with the sunscreen people, mostly because of 3 things:

- Skin cancer is by far the least deadly type of cancer and nearly always just requires some low-risk skin removal.

- Getting a light tan feels amazing. Your whole body feels warmer.

- Vitamin D.

Skin cancer may be less deadly than other types of cancer, but it is still far more deadly than not having cancer. Rattlesnake bites in the US have a lower mortality rate than skin cancer, are you gonna go trying to handle rattlesnakes without protection or safety measures?

Maybe if handling rattlesnakes regularly was associated with improved mental and physical health, the way regular sun exposure is.

> Getting a light tan feels amazing. Your whole body feels warmer.

You know what feels even better? Not getting skin cancer.

> Vitamin D

Easily obtained from supplements.

One could also add positive mental health effects, and benefits of morning sunlight for maintaining a healthy circadian rhythm.

Sure, you can always come back that you can take anti-depressants, and try to use some sort of sun-mimicking light, but then we're really going to extremes to avoid the sun altogether.

So is exposure to the sun, at the right times, in moderation, with appropriate but not extreme protection okay?

> So is exposure to the sun, at the right times, in moderation, with appropriate but not extreme protection okay?

Depends on your personal risk tolerance. For majority of people, probably yes: the benefits (especially the mental ones) would outweight the small risks.

I don't know about you guys but if I started timing my sauna visits, I would get MORE stressed out.

Also you can resell Switch cartridges.

You ever hear of Dubai lamps? Apparently underdriving LEDs makes them last much longer.

This article isn't about climate change. It's about using houseplants to absorb the CO2 you exhale in your house.

Hi! I work a lot with carbon dioxide removal systems. If every person on Earth dropped everything and started making biochar, it would definitely make a huge difference. Yes, we add a lot of carbon dioxide to the air of a year, but it’s doable to remove it. Humanity has taken on much bigger challenges before and succeeded. Now that’s not to say that it’s likely. I think it’s entirely unlikely that we avert the worst impacts of climate change unless something big changes. Thankfully, we get to choose what to work on every day, and I get to choose to work on that alongside inspiring people. (and yes, this isn’t what the article is about, but it seems like it’s what everyone is responding to)

> Humanity has taken on much bigger challenges before and succeeded.

Feel free to list them, we're basically reverse terra forming ourselves out of existence at that point, I don't think we've done anything even remotely close to that scale in such time frame

During World War II, the United States spent 40% of its GDP on the war. So we can spend big on things when we decide to.

That would be the equivalent of $12 trillion per year today, and we would clean up the climate in a jiffy with that. It would be a huge opportunity for job creation, manufacturing, innovation. It’s wild as a society we’ve convinced ourselves that stabilizing the climate is a cost instead of a massive opportunity.

> During World War II, the United States spent 40% of its GDP on the war. So we can spend big on things when we decide to.

The United States wasn’t the only one spending that much on war, that’s why we were able to do so. What incentive do countries have to spend money on carbon capture? Any money spent on that is money not being invested in generating more wealth, so there is zero incentive to move first, you’ll just fall behind and become economically and potentially physically vulnerable.

If we could convince all major powers to all spend money on carbon capture, it would work great. That’s a simple ask but an almost impossible thing to negotiate.

Otherwise, there’s no incentive to act first, there’s actually great incentive to not act first.

I desperately wish the world could work together on this problem, but I don’t see why we would given the situation.

Agreed! My point is that it’s possible financially, but yes the incentives are messy.

>Anyone who cares about security

I have something hilarious to tell you about IoT apps

A Venn diagram like a 6th grade boy's graffiti of boobs.

Just as a pedantic aside, people often use Venn diagram when they mean Euler diagram. A Venn diagram always has the overlapping circles and use shading or labeling describe the set relation. Euler diagrams let the circles describe the relation so two non intersecting sets in a Venn diagram might share the left circle green, the right blue and leave the intersection blank or grey. An Euler diagram will have two disjoint circles.

A. I love a pedantic aside

B. I love that Euler is pronounced “oiler” which is North American slang for a drunk. I’ve been trying to find that constant my whole adult life.

I learned the correct pronunciation when someone laughed at me at a TeX conference in the 80s when I made a reference to the You-ler fonts. In my single semester of high school German I was either never taught or ignored the teacher when the pronunciation of eu was given (or perhaps I just never connected it with Euler).

The "S" in IoT stands for security!

That one made me giggle!

Most of these companies try to penny pinch and give task to hardware engineer. As a result there are lot of security issues with IOT devices.

> quitting my fully vested tech job to fuck off and be a cook for a while

I am also fantasizing about this and am only holding off from doing it because of the social stigma (what idiot would quit a well paid full-time job). My biggest issue with the software industry is the feverish shiny-new-thing syndrome that AI is causing (and my current company is all in on this, with "Hyper-Velocity Engineering" panels). Maybe I don't want to move at light speed and would rather stop and smell the roses.

pretty much every day I feel that tickling of “what the hell did I just do?”

but I don’t care. I put 15 years into my tech career. I am good at building software, and I will not let this ridiculous “resume gap” problem stop me from taking a break for my mental health. any tech employer that wouldn’t want me because of it is a place I wouldn’t want to work anyway.

also, to be honest, I’m writing more code now than I ever did in the last year of my tech job… working on a full CMS and custom website combo for my friends bar, such that I can copy that template over for future projects (want to help local businesses escape the bullshit machine). also building a cool web development desktop app. and more! I’m having a great time

We won't need many software developers in another few years time anyway. Cooks are nowhere close to being replaced by technology.

The French have ridiculously good microwave food, but you still need someone/something to take it out and serve it to people.

Literally the only thing a microwave can do is heat water.

Water does tend to be in everything though, so that's not like a huge gotcha.

> Maybe I don't want to move at light speed and would rather stop and smell the roses.

This really struck a chord with me. I've spent the last 15+ years building up a craftperson's skillset (IMO) akin to a carpenter's or mechanic's. Yet, people still seem surprised when I tell them I'm not willing to run a slop cannon and excrete software which is _good enough_. I actually enjoy the nuts and bolts of writing and debugging software and using AI feels like cheating (if only myself). I'm really not sure where I go from here. I wish I had a work situation like yours to complain about but I know I'd have hit the eject button the minute someone started mandating anything about my workflow, so it's kind of moot.

> Yet, people still seem surprised when I tell them I'm not willing to run a slop cannon and excrete software which is _good enough_.

Cue the usual propaganda: "Oh but that's just real life," "it's the nature of our industry," "I'll agree things aren't perfect, but {nothing must change}," "I understand, but the true problem lies with {mistake we'll gladly keep making}," "it's bad, but at least we're not {killing babies}."

It's become almost automatic to associate pondering with perfectionism, and perfectionism with flaw.