@alda So, ok, the story-rant...
My last job was remote part-time as a coder for a NPO. I had been brought on board by their full-time developer, who knew me from fedi; she had been hired to basically rewite their web site to be more maintainable.
The org had apparently tried to do this previously via a consulting firm, and it hadn't gone well. We were constantly being reminded of how urgent this work was and how absolutely vital it was that we not miss the deadline (which was maybe 6 months off when I started) this time -- and from everything I could tell, we were on target to meet it.
...and then more or less out of the blue, we were told to stop work on the site, and I was told not to work more billable hours except for routine stuff like meetings and emergency technical issues.
...and then a week or so later, the work was re-started...
...and then halted again...
...and then they hired a consulting firm (which might have been the same one as before?) to help with certain parts of the work, but the firm ended up migrating the old site to new infra (which isn't what we'd needed), probably resulting in much larger hosting bills for the org, but I don't know because we were never given any financial details...
...and then eventually they decided (without consulting either of us) to drop the rewrite altogether and just have the consultants take over managing the old site and doing incremental improvements.
Somewhere in all this, the full-time person quit (understandably); I stayed on for whatever hours I could get because I had less to lose -- which made me, at that point, the person with the longest memory / most knowledge of I.T. operations at that org... and all along I had been putting up technically-oriented documentation, as well, so that we wouldn't keep getting stuck in these situations of "we have to fix a thing, but nobody knows how it works".
Given all that -- me being the largest chunk of institutional IT memory they had, and the one person documenting stuff to prevent future crises, and extremely flexible about hours -- I thought for sure they'd have every reason to keep me on indefinitely... but I was incorrect.
(...and keep in mind that all indications were that I got along just fine with everyone there, especially the bosslady and her number one. Whatever the motives were for not retaining someone who was doing what I was doing, they weren't personal.)
@alda I've been going on the theory that it's because the business world hasn't yet evolved into an understanding of how I.T. works. (This includes nonprofits, in my observation -- I could do a smol story/rant.)
@Xibanya Relatedly: hearing "property" as meaning things like clothes, pencils, tools, etc. "The communists want to own the shirt on your back!" or whatever.
So, yeah, the user-friendly-config software is part of what my current coding is leaning towards. (I'm currently focused on the core tasks involved in migration, i.e. verifiably copying file-trees and migrating data.)
Are you thinking that it would be useful to be able to generate a minimum hardware requirement from a list of what you plan to host? Or is it just the difficulty of finding sufficiently-powerful hardware in a ready-made package?
Indeed. I was both overworked (too busy to always be diligent about taking notes when important communications happened) and too trusting (assuming there were certain lines that wouldn't be crossed, even if we disagreed about stuff).
Beyond "buy a cheap used desktop and install Linux", what would be needed? (Asking sincerely; this overlaps with my interests and even a little bit with code I'm working on right now.)
[insert experience with people who agree to put things in writing but never actually do, and then later protest loudly that "verbal agreements are binding in the state of Georgia!" when our memories diverge over what was agreed]
TLDR: wish I'd made more of a point of doing the "here's how I understood our agreement" thing.
Spider-Man has a GoFundMe.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/08/24/support-your-friendly-neighborhood-spider-man/
@Curator We've had them on "limit" for at least a couple of years now, for hosting CISA accounts (I'm not sure which of the several meanings was intended, but I gathered they're basically cops or supporting cops in some way.) I guess when there's one red flag, others often turn up.
...and it's too bad, because there are some interesting (and probably okay?) people there. Maybe being fediblocked will light a fire under them to find a better instance.
via @sus
@ai6yr I don't understand why people in general, let alone professionals, trust LLMs more than they would trust a newly-acquired intern.
@servelan The trade-school idea actually sounds reasonable to me at first glance -- but given who it's coming from, I am now highly suspicious of it. (Maybe this is one of those "could be okay if done right, but they definitely want to do it very wrong" kinds of things?)
I feel like this parody would do well having several more verses than the original does, and hopefully I will think of them.
Also, an alternate chorus that starts "It was a lie and so blatant, blatant / It was a lie, it was so tranparent..." would work if the verse set it up properly.