The first time I heard about this was last week when I was listening to the economic issues that the article mentions on NRK "political quarter" (NRK is the national broadcaster) with the word "waste" being thrown around a lot. This article from VG debates the cost and puts it into contrast what could have been done instead: https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/q6k3ko/skipstunnelen-er-historis... ... it's been contentious as I understand.
In my employment from the last 3 years, I saw twice that there were two migrations from internal systems to GitHub. I would think that companies are doing this for cost-cutting measures. It's not like something I am going to research but it'd be interesting that their recent issues are related to large migrations from in-house installations to github and doubly, if that is related to how large companies might be tightening up their spending in the past few years.
I know you are being facetious that there are a few that are a little bit too persnickety with old ThinkPads, but if they used a known distribution on the said 13-year old ThinkPad (that would probably be in the T430 territory), would it be better? I have a T430s and that is still a fine computer, even if my primary one is an 8 year old ThinkPad.
Maybe those same people can just prefer using OpenCode. It's at least free software, particularly if that old computer is running only free software with free firmware, and OpenCode can run free models.
While time consuming, I would gladly use my otherwise underused but decent enough handwriting to carefully write out job applications. Can get really good pens to do it too. However, given my own network, that's probably not necessary anymore either way.
My mother had insanely superb handwriting, in part because her mother pushed good penmanship on her. While I can be sloppy, it was for me a challenge when I was young to copy her perfect handwriting (not for forging signatures though!) Handwriting is influenced by which hand is dominant. I am left, she was right handed... so not exactly close :)
Whatever I might agree or disagree with, this is annoying to look at, but his stuff keeps coming up in my YouTube feed. Even it looks slightly interesting, I know it will be some rant involved about a thing not related to technology, but some developer's personal opinions on non-tech ideas. I get it - people are horrible! Sheesh!
FWIW, probably not much, he said he had a Jewish background ... in, like, the one video I watched and eventually gave up on.
I'll add that my P14s (gen 3) keyboard sticks up in one place. It's not the biggest problem, but this an odd fit problem I never saw on my older ones. Typing on it is not as great either than my other TPs or external, which at least have a longer travel. (the old layout was OK, they key feel was nice, and the T430s felt like the best laptop keyboard I had used)
I got mine just for the Trackpoint too :D I just use it on my desk though. But I am waiting in the mail for the new Shinobi. There are very few other keyboards on the market with this feature. There is the HHKB Studio, but it's much more expensive and not full-size. But, I didn't look far either. I am not obsessed with mechanical keyboards, so the only thing for me was guessing what switch to use (cherry-mx silent red, they are fine enough :) ) I just hope for no more hacking around to get a stable keyboard. It's been a nuisance.
While my projects have not touched agentic AI yet and the type of code I have been writing is produced like back in the day (read documentation, write code, read documentation, write code ...) I expect that my next project will tether me to agentic AI systems more. I still have my hobby projects, which I code the old-fashioned way. Hey! at least it costs me much less that $100/month to tinker on projects ... more like the cost and wear on running my laptop!
There are people here "I can finally get all my ideas done!" Sure, if they are really important enough, I guess. But high technology is much, much less important to me than my employer or probably others here on HN. I can only be concerned with the paycheck at this point. And at this point, they are happy that I can read documentation, write code, read documentation, write code, and don't care how it gets done. (For what I am working in though, I'd just skip the AI training step.)
With that in mind, I like to use PLs as tools to clarify thinking. There are others that think using PLs and their accompanying tools as friction to their goals, but my friction is understanding the problems I am trying to solve. So, while taking the adventure into automated tooling might be interesting, it doesn't replace the friction (just the feeling I have to read more potential garbage code.)
I appreciate all the innovations that him and his team brought to the ThinkPad, since this is my main set of laptops.
Lenovo, on the other hand, has been a hit or miss for awhile. I had a T570, which was horrible; one problem after the next. It's just a source of parts now. There are some design issues with the T480 (no center screw in the front/bottom). Also with the T480 is, what it seems to be, the slightly flaky USB-C connectors. The external keyboard (non-bluetooth), while very useful for 2 years, has always been a struggle with the flimsy micro-usb, leaving me to hack that. But now, I somehow now lost an important key on it, I just gave up and bought a nice Tex Shinobi. The only stable-ish one is the one I am on now, a T470p. It's not been perfect, but it's the best designed TP I had (my T430s is overall good, except for battery power, but the internals for those old machines are a chore to get through.) I have a P14s at work. It's OK, but nothing to write home about.
If all these TPs die, and Framework has a trackpoint version + delivers to my country, I would like to get that instead.
Everything I see on this topic involves gaming. The last game I played in a long while was Cities Skylines on my laptop (which was taxing, but ran it fine). I used to use Macs, but for a long time, until up to 2013, I decided that since I look at mostly text editors, terminals and a web browser and some other common things, I'd rather spend less for equipment and get used to some desktop UI on a Linux. I have had reliable ThinkPads (procured used) for years as a result. While there were bumps, it's been fine. Since I am in the vicinity of financial applications, I have to use Windows about 30% of the time, and I hate it every time. Can someone be the Steam for Excel, please? :)
Technical:
- Just anything more programming-specific stuff at work. When I get to do something, it's a stress-relief, because the typical day involves dealing with meetings, people, etc. and I can't have that much anymore, now with my health. Even when I can just focus, I want to shake the worry of other people's issues. The programming I do mostly is handling precise reporting requests, but since that is going to be offshored, I can move to something else at least. I am hoping that I can take on anything outside of Java or .NET. I work at a consultancy and those projects do pop up.
- Recreational programming: graphics programming, something to support my odd project (a "recreation" of the bad software from "a company" "I worked for"). I already wrote a hacky command language that is intentionally tedious to use :) Next is the user interface!
- I have a plan also to go through Wirth's Oberon Compiler Construction and his Algorithm text using Oberon. If there is a project in it, I want to maybe bootstrap a simple Oberon compiler in Pascal then rewrite in Oberon (without caps!)
Non-technical:
- I want in the future to expand my range of project options from my employer, so I want to rev-up my mind again in this country's language and go through the thickets of folk's heavy dialects.
- Eat better. If I can help to avoid my gut issues at this point, I need to.
- Do more presentations, particularly in the more topics I have embraced (Pascal, compilers, etc.) as something pedagogical for others in my company of consultants.
I have read HN for years ... on my profile it says my account was made 11 years ago but I followed it much longer than that. It has been a continual resource of things that I would have never thought of looking into or spark interest in things that I haven't looked at in a long time. As an example, a post on a Lazarus/FP release triggered my multi-month long interest in Pascal again for me.
I do like there is a level of civility and this site is not juiced up with advertising and algorithmic personalization. Sometimes though, I feel like this site has some conversations similar to that I had in real life. I would say something and someone, would say 'but!' with a long explanation on why someone I'm wrong, rinse and repeat. It gets annoying to read, but I can at least not bother, because most issues are simple not hills to die on. I will leave it to others here to elucidate this point in other ways, which I dutifully upvoted.
"I still love my Framework, despite its flaws. I will just keep it plugged in so that it’s ready to go when I want to use it."
That sounds like a plan!
I suppose that if I was distant from an outlet for a long enough time, the battery life would be great, but I'm rarely if ever. It's nice not to be tethered to a wire, but it's not bad really overall.
Used KDE for years now. It is stable and just works.
It's not important enough, but I wish there was a function like in macOS that switches between applications fully on Alt-Tab, where all windows would show (I have it half-way there, "show one icon per application" in System Settings). macOS's function I think reflects old Classic macOS functionality.
I started to think that these type of articles posted on Hacker News are a bit excessive. This and the AI stuff. This is one American company (high-profile, for sure) that might or might not be having retention issues. It's up to them to decide that, individual employees of the said company to decide if this arrangement is still right for them and shareholders if this will be a worthy investment in the next years. I think a lot of people are none of these. In the meantime, these "top tech talent" probably make way more than I can ever possibly can, and have the mental acuity to keep up with the demands that their employer requires from them while continuing to have a higher ceiling on the type of employment benefits than I could ever have.
I know I will have an argument over this which I won't both participating in, so please just downvote me.
You want to know about my own employer's policy, and employer you might have never heard of? It's not like Amazon. Amazon is not a bellweather for the wider industry as I see it.
They might as well load the rest of Windows at startup if that is the magic bullet of how many performance issues their OS and software has. It still shocks me that my cheap 8-year old laptop with Fedora on it feels all around snappier and a relief to work with than the computer handed to me at work. That computer would fly with a decent operating system.