I used MEGA for a while and was pretty happy because their free plan is (or was back then) very generous, and they had a BSD command line client. Out of the blue, my account got blocked, and when I logged in, something along these lines appeared on the screen:

‘You are using the same password for MEGA and other services. This is a security risk and is not allowed’.

That’s one of the shadiest fucking things a cloud company could write. First, not true, second, even if that were true, how would you know it.

On the other hand, most middle managers are unable to actually understand the fact that most employees are motivated more by non-financial stuff. You spend, if you’re lucky, A FUCKING THIRD of every workday at work. The whole ‘package’ must be at least acceptable to the employee or she’ll go. It’s really that simple.

You might laugh, but the first time I made Lebanese-style yoghurt (the one with mint and cucumbers), I simply added salt in the same amount I would have added sugar for a sweet yoghurt. Needless to say, I couldn’t eat it…

Um. What? Does anyone actually identify with this? I live in one of the least friendly countries on earth, and I spent a nontrivial amount of time in children’s playgrounds in the last couple of years, and I would have very much appreciated it if anyone, ever, started a conversation there.

Sounds familiar: didn’t the AWS outage last month also nuke 3,000+ USD ‘smart beds’?

Toilet cameras. Every time I think to myself that humanity’s intellectual capacity has hit a new low, reality proves me wrong.

A (poorly written) Shell check if the process was able to write to the production database which in some, not all, cases threw the gem:

!!! SQL ERROR !!!

Er. Some country stats are as old as 1999. Not only is such data utterly meaningless in 2025 (just think about what role China had in the world stage back then and compare it to the current one), it is straight up dangerous to compare between countries like that.

I watched it as part of a German (ZDF) documentary on unsolved deaths of the famous, including Van Gogh and Monroe. The one part about Monroe prominently displays that clip. If that’s good enough for you, I’ll try to find it again!

I never believed in conspiracy theories around deaths /murders of prominent people until I watched that video. ‘as seductively as possible’ is actually an understatement, she came short of sucking the mic. If I was JFK’s wife watching that, I would definitely have given her ‘a lesson’.

Exactly. I always joke, even at work, that if I was a dictator, I would be a pretty eccentric one. Jailing political opponents? What a waste of time and energy. Repressing minorities? Couldn’t care less. Curtailing women’s rights? Nope. Centralising the economy and giving friends and family juicy government-backed contracts? Nah, that’s not me. But I WOULD make EVERYONE work from the command line lest they’re willing to die at the stake.

A command line is WAY faster than using the mouse, provided you can type fast enough. A thing I’d like to add is that, to me, all those shiny pointy-clicky interfaces are little more than a distraction: they literally slow me down and prevent me from doing real work. Of course, this last bit is a very personal opinion and YMMV.

About a year ago, I read a book called The Cluetrain Manifesto, which was originally published before the big players took over the internet. Every once in a while, I had to put the book away because it was too depressing to read their original theories on how the internet would liberate people, facilitate interactions between customers and companies, connect like-minded hobbyists without any gatekeepers involved and create meaningful relationships between stakeholders. Of course all of those things did indeed happen in one way or another, but 5 companies accounting for at least 80% of internet traffic and consumers being force-fed all that absolutely obnoxious adwords crap everytime they visit any useful website is definitely not what they, or any internet idealist for that matter, had in mind.

Totally not a bubble. At all.

…though I’d like to add that, in the original post, ‘at work’ == ‘at someone else’s company’

Good point, thanks for the insights

That’s … THE one argument that (mostly) vindicates my theory. It is a friggin’ ‘requirement’ because it makes you replaceable/disposable. If you think otherwise, I’m legit interested on why you think companies have your, not their, best interests in mind.

My point is (almost) exactly the opposite: I’d argue that any of those non-specialists can be replaced at any time with other non-specialists (best case scenario), or with bootlickers, nutjobs and yay-sayers (worst case scenario). In other words, you shouldn’t aspire to be the one your boss delegates every shitty piece of ‘work’ he can think of, rather, to be THE one everyone else in the company has to wait for if they want X or Y done.

Nothing too odd about that. For example, Bose assembles some of its most successful products (such as the Soundlink revolve) in Mexico, regardless of the target market.

I have ZERO sympathy for companies whose services are affected by this. Because seriously, fuck Amazon.