How to Ensure your Software Project Fails
I can't tell you how to ensure your software project succeeds, but I can tell you several ways to make it fail.
Casting the Circle
We tried to read The Psychonaut's Field Manual today, and while I'm not sure that we actually got what the author intended out of it, I believe we ended up with a more lasting lesson. I don't know exactly how we ended up coming across this little PDF that purports to be an atheistic starter's guide to chaos magick, but already on page 5 we felt compelled to stress the importance of finding techniques that actually work for you.
Timezones in Java
Recently ran into an issue at work that we couldn't find a direct answer to anywhere on the Internet (thanks to the terrible state of search in the modern day after Search Engine Optimization and Large Language Models have screwed it over, but that's another topic...) relating to three-letter abbreviations for timezones.
Long story short, use canonical timezone names from tzdb like "America/New_York" instead of abbreviations like "ET".
Lament for the Commons
"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters." -- Antonio Gramsci
It might be slightly overblown to be quoting an Italian communist imprisoned by Mussolini to criticise the decisions made by corporate social media this past month or so, but given their contributions to fascism globally, maybe it isn't... Either way, it has been interesting to see them all seemingly competing for 'worst decision'.
Things We Read This Week
Centralization Through Decentralization
An opinion piece was recently published in Wired magazine titled "The Hidden Dangers of the Decentralized Web". It makes a lot of basic factual errors, conflates valid reasons to mistrust centralized social media with antisemitic conspiracy theories and grifts, and somehow even manages to make basic security practice out as conspiratorial. I'm not all that interested in giving it the time of day, except for one paragraph that stuck out to me.