spit2wind

There's also the angle of encouraging a lot of people who don't know any better to rapidly build things that then need to be maintained, all under the pretense that the guy's product will avoid that inevitability...if you just buy more!

> People getting into these positions are getting in by choice, and remaining by choice.

That all sounds nice and logical, but by the same reasoning weren't Epstein's victims getting in and remaining by choice?

Gate's dad was also a lawyer. Compare Gate's behavior working with contracts against kids of the same age, say, those who played in band and signed a record deal.

Or they optimize the model for just one more hit, er, prompt. All these AI companies are backed by the same companies optimizing revenue via addiction.

So, same end result (cost exceeds hiring a new engineer), but achieved differently.

The counter, I suppose, is the managers have to deal less with engineers telling them their ideas aren't good or well thought out.

Ah yes, the ye olde "it doesn't need to be perfect" response to serious, legitimate questions.

It's always about cheaper, better, faster. And when the thing being built extends beyond a single person, and still when working alone, conflict shows up in balancing the risks between these. The Strawman of Perfection is just that.

"It doesn't need to be perfect" is incredibly dismissive of the reality of the situation. Ignoring reality seems like a poor problem solving strategy.

So, how is any of this legal? If I set up a script that breaks into the systems of a company, isn't that, like, a crime?

What you're wanting is against their philosophy. However, there is removal via shunning. There's also the query langauge to control the view. So, there's everything you need to do what you want.

Obviously that's going to take some figuring out for queries and aliases. But it seems doable to me.

Awkward, yes, but doable. AFAICT, they've provided a way to do things that go against their philosophy should anyone be inclined.

Some direct quotes are,

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

We want to put them in trauma.”

That was Russel Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget and key author or Project 2025.

Trump also said, "a whole civilization will die tonight".

Fun fact: Airbus doesn't choose the seats, the airline does. Airbus only installs them.

Free software hasn't concentrated corporate power, explicit policy to enable monopolies did. Without free software, there would still have been consolidation because that was the express objective.

Depending on the job, you can likely be fired without cause anyway. You can pretend to not poke the bear, but in a place that plays power games like that, it doesn't really matter.

Presumably performance matters above all else (although it likely doesn't in such a place). If Emacs actually makes a meaningful difference, then just use it to do your work more efficiently.

You can run a batch/shell script, right? Of course you can. Would you ask for permission to write and run a script? If not (and presumably you wouldn't because that would be silly) then you shouldn't ask to run Emacs. You "own" both and take on all the "risk". There's really no difference.

But really, truly ask yourself, is whatever cause you're working towards (that is, the mission of the company) worth sacrificing your dignity for?

Thanks for this interesting bit of history! Fun little read

I taught a remedial math class. There are thousands of books for such a topic. I was required by the university to use a specific new edition (something like 9th) from a specific publisher. I went to the university library and found the 2nd edition. The questions were more or less verbatim but in a different order. The lesson portions were more or less the same and tended to be better. I explicitly directed students to this edition, which they could purchase for something like 2$ (vs $150). In 10 years in post-highschool eduction, and 4 institutions, I never once heard or had a teacher do that. It's a choice and the majority of educators don't do it.

Tip for learners: find an early edition of a book. They're often vastly cheaper and much better written. It stands that if a book warrants a 12th edition, then the 1st edition must have been decent enough to get wide adoption. Often revisions are bloat or, when they're not, it's educational to see the difference between then and now (eg Andre Tanenbaum's OS books)