I'm a self-taught 19-year-old programmer. Coding since 10, dropped out of high-school and got fist job at 15.

In the the early days I was extremely passionate, learning SICP, Algorithms, doing Haskell, C/C++, Rust, Assembly, writing toy compilers/interpreters, tweaking Gentoo/Arch. Even got a lambda tattoo on my arm after learning lambda-calculus and church numerals.

My first job - a company which raised $100,000 on kickstarter. The CEO was a dumb millionaire hippie, who was bored with his money, so he wanted to run a company even though he had no idea what he was doing. He used to talk about how he build our product, even tho he had 0 technical knowledge whatsoever. He was on news a few times which was pretty cringeworthy. The company had only 1 programmer (other than me) who was pretty decent.

We shipped the project, but soon we burned through kickstart money and the sales dried off. Instead of trying to aquire customers (or abandoning the project), boss kept looking for investors, which kept us afloat for an extra year.

Eventually the money dried up, and instead of closing gates, boss decreased our paychecks without our knowledge. He also converted us from full-time employees to "contractors" (also without our knowledge) so he wouldn't have to pay taxes for us. My paycheck decreased by 40% by I still stayed.

One day, I was trying to burn a USB drive, and I did "dd of=/dev/sda" instead of sdb, therefore wiping out our development server. They asked me to stay at company, but I turned in my resignation letter the next day (my highest ever post on reddit was in /r/TIFU).

Next, I found a job at a "finance" company. $50k/year as a 18-year-old. CEO was a good-looking smooth-talker who made few million bucks talking old people into giving him their retirement money.

He claimed he changed his ways, and was now trying to help average folks save money. So far I've been here 8 month and I do not see that happening. He forces me to do sketchy shit, that clearly doesn't have clients best interests in mind.

I am the only developer, and I quickly became a back-end and front-end ninja. 

I switched the company infrastructure from shitty drag+drop website builder, WordPress and shitty Excel macros into a beautiful custom-written python back-end.

Little did I know, this company doesn't need a real programmer. I don't have clear requirements, I get unrealistic deadlines, and boss is too busy to even communicate what he wants from me.

Eventually I sold my soul. I switched parts of it to WordPress, because I was not given enough time to write custom code properly.

For latest project, I switched from using custom React/Material/Sass to using drag+drop TypeForms for surveys.

I used to be an extremist FLOSS Richard Stallman fanboy, but eventually I traded my morals, dreams and ideals for a paycheck. Hey, $50k is not bad, so maybe I shouldn't be complaining? :(

I got addicted to pot for 2 years. Recently I've gotten arrested, and it is honestly one of the best things that ever happened to me. Before I got arrested, I did some freelancing for a mugshot website. In un-related news, my mugshot dissapeared.

I have been sober for 2 month now, and my brain is finally coming back. 

I know average developer hits a wall at around $80k, and then you have to either move into management or have your own business.

After getting sober, I realized that money isn't going to make me happy, and I don't want to manage people. I'm an old-school neck-beard hacker. My true passion is mathematics and physics. I don't want to glue bullshit libraries together. 

I want to write real code, trace kernel bugs, optimize compilers. Albeit, I was boring in the wrong generation.

I've started studying real analysis, brushing up differential equations, and now trying to tackle machine learning and Neural Networks, and understanding the juicy math behind gradient descent.

I don't know what my plan is for the future, but I'll figure it out as long as I have my brain. Maybe I will continue making shitty forms and collect paycheck, while studying mathematics. Maybe I will figure out something else.

But I can't just let my brain rot while chasing money and impressing dumb bosses. If I wait until I get rich to do things I love, my brain will be too far gone at that point. I can't just sell myself out. I'm coming back to my roots.

I still feel like after experiencing industry and pot, I'm a shittier developer than I was at age 15. But my passion is slowly coming back.

Any suggestions from wise ol' neckbeards on how to proceed?

This is where everything started. I got the chance to work with actual production code. While it is very fun to work with, in some places it's also very frustrating. And this is from where, most of my rants come from.

Thank you @dfox and @trogus for making such a beautiful community.

The best part of this community is I never have to think or take time to make jokes or posts so that I can get upvotes. I've always wanted likes or retweets or reddit upvotes. But it never worked out because I have to think so much to make clever comments or posts. Most of the time, I gave up.

But in devRant, all I do is just share what's happening in my daily dev life. My frustrations, my happiness. That's all it takes. Everyone understands, everyone cares and everyone loves.

Over time, thanks to devRant, I've understood that I was part of the wrong community. This is the community that I deserve, this is the community that every dev deserves.

Thank you all. I love you. And I promise, more rants are coming :D

Especial thanks to @Yeah69 @kevbost @yarwest @tisaconundrum @Linux @donkeyScript . I have no idea why you guys all of a sudden rapidly upvoted me. Although I would love to reach 10k naturally but won't complain haha

I hope you will forgive me for a third hand story, but I'm one of those evil developers, not a support per se. But I thought you'd enjoy this story anyway. So this happened to a colleague of a colleague:

$Hero - our hero. $Cop - A representative of our hard worked law enforcement agency.

So $Hero is happily speeding along in his car, running a few yellow lights a bit late, etc. Finally, the law catches up to him and pulls him over. Here's how the conversation went:

$Cop: Can I see your driving license, please?

$Hero (with smug grin): Certainly. Here it is, officer.

$Cop takes license back to motorcycle and speaks into radio.

$Hero: It's not going to help you any, though.

$Cop (with no reaction): What do you mean?

$Hero (with wider grin): The server you have to check it against is down.

$Cop (still no reaction): And why do you say that?

$Hero: Because I'm the guy they called to get on site and get it up again.

Our hero did not get a fine this time. Instead he got a police escort to his workplace.

Source: reddit r/talesfromtechsupport

The state of the web in 2020:
discussion sites as a medium are dying. chalk that up to censorship.

reddit is an echochamber. twitter is mostly a marketing platform disguised as (anti)social media. instagram is a self promotion/wannabe eceleb site, and youtube is the new hollywood..quickly becoming irrelevant.

facebook is where I (dont) go to (totally not) ignore all the people important to me.

and email is where I go to send letters bordering on hatespeech to my various local and federal "representatives", in between borderline cyberbullying people stupid enough not to automate their spam marketing in 2020. or talking to left/right self-help grifters about the state of society.

in the grim dark future of 2020, the last bastion of intelligent conversation, free speech, and civility, the one shining icon of hope in a dark world..
is the comment section of pornhub videos where a women got stuck under a bed for the 50,000th time. And all I can think is "wow I never knew how easy it was to get trapped under a bed. They should look into fixing this safety hazard."

newsmedia has jumped so many sharks, the fonz now spins in his grave so fast we could hook him up to a generator. meanwhile people hide in their homes for a disease so deadly you have to be tested to know if you even have it.

while ever more car commercials
are released, set to somber but hopeful piano music to the tune of "in this time of social distancing its important to stay close even when we're apart."

Im beginning to think media has become a poison on society, both television and the internet, and like an ersatz cargo cultist worshipping the great-charles- manson-in-the-sky we should all take a page from the unabomber and smash our televisions with hammers before going outside and sawing down the telephone polls.

I jest of course. But there is no denying the inherent appeal of moving from the unsettling uncertainty of complex societies, driven by expertly manipulated fear cycles, to the beatitude-esque simplicty of pastoral protestant style living, sans witch burning and shoe buckles.

And against the reckoning of utopians who are still fresh from the womb as it were, wet behind the ears and smelling of their mother's pussy, I reject the notion that "up" is a synonym for "forward."
Were it the case, every drinking binge, followed by throwing up, would bring us, with each vomitting, one step closer to heaven. Rather the state of affairs is what it is, and what it is, like most of nature, is a cruel master and a harsh teacher. And while we may binge on digital delusions of grandeur and a greater society, rest easy in the nihilistic and sobering thought that we are little more than 200,000 year old cave men wielding magic bricks, and atomic bombs.

..where water flows more readily from metal tubes in our houses than it does from the nile. where food comes to our door at little more than our beck and call.
where we may bath, and sleep, and *shit*, cleanly, comfortably, and safely, wrapped in the (failing) bubble of delusion we all tenaciously grasp collectively, the thing we call "civilization".

an empire of needful things, wanton and fragile.

if we have not gone mad from boredom, I have no doubt we one day will.

it becomes more and more obvious to me every day, had war never existed, it would have been necessary for man to invent it just to have something to do, that didnt include farming, fucking, or building.

And so enters "political idealogy."

How would we ever have enemies if we were allowed to speak our piece instead of being given the means (and reflex dogwhistle training) to silence and destroy one another?

give a man a gun, he'll rob a bank. give a man a bank, he'll rob the world.
give him a media empire or a tech platform, and he'll lie about the theft and convince one half of millions of lemmings to hate all the other lemmings.

Lately I have been overthinking a lot. I am stressing myself out on every single decision believing that decisions I make today will define my tomorrow.

In hindsight, all the major and positive impact that have happened in my life were the decisions I took on the fly without much underlying research. The executional part did have me struggle a little but almost all of the best things happened to me were unplanned.

Funnily this has been my philosophy since years but guess what, I failed to follow it this time.

My overthinking and over planning caused me to mess up a little leading to a lot of unwanted anxieties.

Now let's reflect a little on the past, when my first relationship ended.. wait.. even earlier..

When I was in 5th standard, I was crazy bullied at school but I was happy go lucky and things turned out in my favour throughout till date.

I used to do what I loved and enjoyed. I literally never worried or thought about future. Not even once, things just fell in place for me miraculously.

When my first relationship ended, I was shattered. The darkest time of my life and me being all alone, I came out strong.

I used to live happy. I used to do stuff that I loved. I used to not care about what people thought. No socials for me. I used to follow random dark or counter culture stuff and be a little rebel that I am.

I remember, she and I used to go for fuck tons of events, hangout at waterfront of the city, spend time together and just be ourselves.

I never used to compete, compare, or conflict with anyone.

devRant was (and still is) a digital home for me. Wonderful phase of life.

Then shit went south. I joined Reddit. A girl told me about a pen pal app. Met another girl there.

Joined Telegram again to be in touch with her. She wasn't interested but I stayed on Telegram.

I could pick up any girl in minutes and do so effortlessly.

Slowly the twin extrovert in me came out. I started building and maintaining insanely awesome network.

Started spending more time on Reddit and Telegram.

Joined a bunch of professional communities. Career sky rocketd.

I was still happy and living a gala life at this stage.

Slowly, I realised I was underpaid (via professional communities). That unsettled me.

I frantically started hunting for jobs. 2020 and COVID-19 hit. Being indoors sucked more.

Became more aggressive on job hunt, money, building skills, work work work...

Met a hoe who fucked my emotions and ethics even further.

Got a high paying job. WLB went negative.

I started losing myself. I forgot my hobbies. I don't know what happiness is. I don't remember when I last smiled. I started planning my finances. Overthinking and stressing about shit troubled me into sleepless nights followed by early morning calls made things worse to my health.

I lost the clarity of my life. I FUCKING LOST ME.

I want myself back and I am gonna work for it. That happy little rebel Floyd who never gave a fuck about other's opinion on him or his beliefs. That dude who was shy to talk to girls. The guy who'd follow his passion and not society of high paying jobs or shit.

I almost got my finances and taxation sorted. Now I'll work to get my office timings in place. If not then I'll switch and find a job in UK/EU with a good WLB. And at the same time I'll pursue my hobbies.

Enough of rat race shit. Money has always been an outcome of my hard work and high work ethics. I want to live a life and I am willing to trade of extremely high paying/stressful FAANG jobs for a small company keeping me happy.

I'll be the happy Floyd that I was once was.

Because, the heart wants what the heart wants :)

This is a story of me trying out maintaining a game server and eventually making a mistake, although I do not regret experiencing it.

A month ago I set up a small modded minecraft server because I wanted to experience a fun modpack together with some people from reddit. Besides this, I also wanted to see if I was capable of setting up a server with systemd and screen running in the background. This went great and I learned a lot.

The very next day I was playing with $annoyingKid on the server and everything was well. However the second day, $annoyingKid started pushing the idea to start up a normal minecraft server to build a playerbase.

I asked $annoyingKid 'What about financing, staff management and marketing?'

$annoyingKid: "I don't know much about that, but you can do that while I build a spawn!"

He also didn't want to reveal his age, which alerted me that he's young and inexperienced. He also considered Discord 'scary' because there were haxors and they would get his location and kidnap him, or something. So if he was supposed to become owner (which he desired), he had no way of communicating with a community outside of the game.

He also considered himself owner, while I was the one who paid for the server. 'Owners should be people who own the server', no matter how many times I told him that.

$annoyingKid also asked if he could install plugins on his own, I asked him if he knew anything about ssh, wget or bash because I used ssh to set up the server (I know rcon exists, but didn't want to deal with that at the time), he had no idea what any of those terms meant and he couldn't give proper arguments as to why he should get console access.

In the end, he did jack shit, he had no chance of becoming co-owner or even head-admin because he had no sense of responsibility or hard work. I kept him around as an admin because he was the one who came up with the idea. I banned him on day one after he started abusing his power when someone tipped him of. Even after me ordering him to ignore an annoying player he kept going, of course I could have prevented all this by kicking him earlier since all the red flags around him had already formed a beacon of light. He tried coming back, complaining that he should at least have his moderator rank back, but he never got in again.

A week later I got bored, I had had enough fun with ssh and the server processes to know that I didn't want to continue the small project, so I shut it down and went on to do stuff on GitHub.

Lesson learned: Don't let annoying kids with no sense of responsibility talk you into doing things you aren't sure you want to be doing. And only give people power after they've proved to you that they are capable of handling it.

Only if people understood the amount of effort that goes behind building a simple app.
Even if it's a simple notes app, I've to design the UI (at least 2 different activities - 1 for the list and the other for editing notes), write the code which makes it run i.e. without which the app is just a piece of empty design, think about what data
structures to use (that notes you are saving need to be stored somehow) and then club everything together and hope nothing breaks (spoiler alert: something will definitely break).

People need to understand that it's not just putting some fancy buttons and boxes around. Also, I'm not just making the app for one device. I've to make sure it works on different screen sizes, different versions of the OS (a user can't imagine how many functions need to be re written because something got deprecated in the process and I'd to switch to something different).

Also I'm not just sitting at my computer and converting coffee to code. I've to think about the flow, structure, design, navigation, backend etc. Of the app; most of my time isn't spent writing code but thinking/studying how to write the code. I also need to wait while the project is compiling/building every time I want to test it.
A function which you think is hard to implement night be really easy while something you claim is easy might be a nightmare. Oh and I didn't even mention how I need to stick to some design guidelines to make the app look consistent with the rest of the OS.
If you're wondering why a developer is spending most of his time on a browser, he isn't playing internet games or browsing reddit ( at least you better hope not), he's probably looking at the docs/stack overflow to get something to work/fix something!

Wow! That was long. Thanks!

I have been on Reddit...
I have been lurking in ProgrammerHumor...

I am not proud of these things...

I got called a "Big Shot" because I didn't think the concept of pointers in C/C++ was ever particularly hard.

If I remember right. I learned in high school how pointers worked when they explained how arrays worked in Pascal. When I taught myself C it didn't ever seem like it was a difficult thing to understand.

Is the concept of pointers really that hard to understand for devs?

Static HTML pages are better than "web apps".

Static HTML pages are more lightweight and destroy "web apps" in performance, and also have superior compatibility. I see pretty much no benefit in a "web app" over a static HTML page. "Web apps" appear like an overhyped trend that is empty inside.

During my web browsing experience, static HTML pages have consistently loaded faster and more reliably, since the browser is immediately served with content useful for consumption, whereas on JavaScript-based web "apps", the useful content comes in **last**, after the browser has worked its way through a pile of script.

For example, an average-sized Wikipedia article (30 KB wikitext) appears on screen in roughly two seconds, since MediaWiki uses static HTML. Everipedia, in comparison, is a ReactJS app. Guess how long that one needs. Upwards of three times as long!

Making a page JavaScript-based also makes it fragile. If an exception occurs in the JavaScript, the user might end up with a blank page or an endless splash screen, whereas static HTML-based pages still show useful content.

The legacy (2014-2020) HTML-based Twitter.com loaded a user profile in under four seconds. The new react-based web app not only takes twice as long, but sometimes fails to load at all, showing the error "Oops something went wrong! But don't fret – it's not your fault." to be displayed. This could not happen on a static HTML page.

The new JavaScript-based "polymer" YouTube front end that is default since August 2017 also loads slower. While the earlier HTML-based one was already playing the video, the new one has just reached its oh-so-fancy skeleton screen.

It would once have been unthinkable to have a website that does not work at all without JavaScript, but now, pretty much all popular social media sites are JavaScript-dependent. The last time one could view Twitter without JavaScript and tweet from devices with non-sophisticated browsers like Nintendo 3DS was December 2020, when they got rid of the lightweight "M2" mobile website.

Sometimes, web developers break a site in older browser versions by using a JavaScript feature that they do not support, or using a dependency (like Plyr.js) that breaks the site. Static HTML is immune against this failure.

Static HTML pages also let users maximize speed and battery life by deactivating JavaScript. This obviously will disable more sophisticated site features, but the core part, the text, is ready for consumption.

Not to mention, single-page sites and fancy animations can be implemented with JavaScript on top of static HTML, as GitHub.com and the 2018 Reddit redesign do, and Twitter's 2014-2020 desktop front end did.

From the beginning, JavaScript was intended as a tool to complement, not to replace HTML and CSS. It appears to me that the sole "benefit" of having a "web app" is that it appears slightly more "modern" and distinguished from classic web sites due to use of splash screens and lack of the browser's loading animation when navigating, while having oh-so-fancy loading animations and skeleton screens inside the website. Sorry, I prefer seeing content quickly over the app-like appearance of fancy loading screens.

Arguably, another supposed benefit of "web apps" is that there is no blank page when navigating between pages, but in pretty much all major browsers of the last five years, the last page observably remains on screen until the next navigated page is rendered sufficiently for viewing. This is also known as "paint holding".

On any site, whenever I am greeted with content, I feel pleased. Whenever I am greeted with a loading animation, splash screen, or skeleton screen, be it ever so fancy (e.g. fading in an out, moving gradient waves), I think "do they really believe they make me like their site more due to their fancy loading screens?! I am not here for the loading screens!".

To make a page dependent on JavaScript and sacrifice lots of performance for a slight visual benefit does not seem worthed it.

Quote:

> "Yeah, but I'm building a webapp, not a website" - I hear this a lot and it isn't an excuse. I challenge you to define the difference between a webapp and a website that isn't just a vague list of best practices that "apps" are for some reason allowed to disregard. Jeremy Keith makes this point brilliantly.
>
> For example, is Wikipedia an app? What about when I edit an article? What about when I search for an article?
>
> Whether you label your web page as a "site", "app", "microsite", whatever, it doesn't make it exempt from accessibility, performance, browser support and so on.
>
> If you need to excuse yourself from progressive enhancement, you need a better excuse.

– Jake Archibald, 2013

I have seen in a lot of forums (here, Imgur, reddit, LinkedIn etc) that there are a lot of developers without a job.

And most of them live in USA. I have not seen a person who is struggling to find a job in EU or some other place.

Why is this the case? In USA where the demand for developers is very high.

I read a post on LinkedIn: "40 INTERVIEWS and no one HIRED! Yet another friend telling me she can not find good talent. My thinking - If you interviewed 40 people and did not hire someone, then it's time to look in the mirror. The problem is recruiters and hiring managers are looking for the 'PERFECT" candidate. NEWSFLASH! There is no 'perfect' candidate. If you have someone with the right attitude and skill set, and they fit in with the team, why not HIRE them? There are so many qualified individuals still job searching. Yet I see the same jobs re-posted, over and over again, being left vacant for months. Who took a chance on you? Maybe it's time you a took chance on someone."

I don't think it is the "competition" because I see everywhere. I have seen entry-level or JR. open positions that are not filled for months.

It took me 1 month, sending nearly 20 applications every day to find a job in USA.
And the second one I got lucky. I applied in Europe and after some month I got transferred in offices in USA.

I do not know how true this is, but seriously, what's wrong with companies in USA that require the PERFECT candidate. Or is it something else?

So these days (since yesterday), I am using an iPhone. Mom’s phone broke and she wanted an android, and I wanted to fiddle with iPhone... So she took my OnePlus 3 and got me an iPhone 6s.
I like iOS as long as it works.

But... I FREAKING HATE that the App Store has country specific rating. You will only see the ratings/reviews of your countrymen.
Whose frigging brilliant idea was that!!! 😡😡😡
Now I have most apps (like beam and narwhal for reddit) showing as unrated.
M so pissed off at this 😩😩

I seriously thought I was losing my mind this morning.

Loaded up my IDE and got to work.

Needed to find something in the project, so I hit the keyboard shortcut to find all usages in the project path.

The dialog pops up, but my selection is replaced with a long hex string. I thought it was weird, but I just installed the latest update of my IDE so I thought I'd found a regression. I grabbed the hex string and went over to Google to see if anything useful popped up.

The first result is the reddit post for my keybase key.

Wait. The "random" hex string was the fingerprint for my keybase public key? I double-checked to make sure that keybase wasn't running and I didn't have anything weird hanging out on my clipboard. Nothing amiss, but I still got my key whenever I searched for something.

This is the point where my brain got a little melty. I started running weird conspiracy theories in my head. My ever-helpful coworkers could only suggest to "stop using a Mac".

I saw that the app menu got highlighted when I opened the dialog, so I opened the menu and looked at the Services. Lo and behold, the GPG Suite update I installed recently very "helpfully" added a global shortcut to "Insert My Fingerprint" with the same keyboard shortcut as the IDE action.

Wooo hoo! I got suspended from reddit!

Never happened before to me (not site wide at least). Apparently for 'report abuse' from some report I must have made like a month ago?

Some user posting in a sub apparently had a theory that a bunch of other subs and other users were in on some conspiracy against them, supposedly sending death threats and 'spreading lies'.... kinda hard to imagine that some subs with thousands (some with millions) of users are all in on this wonky conspiracy against them....

So anyway I report his nasty little post to the local moderators of that sub because it usually is a chill sub and his post is full of insults and so on.

Turns out... that guy is also a mod of the sub I reported him to.

A month later I get suspended from reddit for 'report abuse'... of course I can't see the 'report abuse' (can't see reports...) so how do you even speak intelligently / appeal?

Moderation at scale is hard, but kinda crazy to think someone employed at reddit decided "yeah this crazy guy is right" and does their bidding ...

I used to moderate a busy gaming forum, and sniffing out the crazy folks was part of the job when accepting new moderators. Wasn't that hard...

Granted no big loss here, just a few days.

It's been a long time since I've felt the need to rant about anything here. This is the only appropriate place other than Reddit I can think for for now.

Why the ever-living FUCK does every 'entry-level' tech job, even fucking DESKTOP SUPPORT, require more experience than the fucking DEVELOPER AND ENGINEER OF THE INITIAL SYSTEM COULD POSSIBLY HAVE?! I'm a fucking high school kid trying to find a decent job that doesn't involve sales bullshit, because if I go into sales I'll want to KMS. Put me in a back room fixing shit, monitoring shit, better yet scripting shit or something like that and I'll be FUCKING PEACHY. I will do wonders. But no, these people must think that my resume (WHICH IS 3-YEARS STACKED WITH INTERNSHIPS ***IN TECHNOLOGY***) is bullshit. WOW.

Fuck this. I'm sick of looking for these shitty jobs that'll make me want to jump off of a bridge into a cliff which I'll then voluntarily fall off of into shark infested piranha water. Can't there just be a simple "Hey, we need a guy who can fix tech, maybe help people within the company with their computer issues, you look nice" kind of job? I haven't had fucking TIME to get any kind of certifications yet. I just got into fucking college, FOR BUSINESS IT NONETHELESS. DOES THAT PROVE I'M AT LEAST FUCKING INTERESTED IN WHAT I SAY I AM FUCKERS?!

Just gonna lay this out. It is 2023. If you are still using Twitter and Facebook for personal presence you are kinda stupid (as in using your real name). They are shit sites and they can and will use that information against you. Personally I would lump LinkedIn with them, but it is still mainly business use. Twitter and Facebook are useful for business, but a huge liability for personal use. Keep up with your relatives somewhere else. Same goes for reddit, but most people there use anonymous handles anyway. So probably a bit safer.

Personally I never understood twitter. Facebook was interesting, but I started running into strange fucks on Facebook. People who were basically amoral and were okay with killing people. They were "friends" of friends. I also saw how this information could be held against someone with their political views. So I dropped Facebook more than 10 years ago. It has only gotten worse. About 2 years ago a friend of ours relative was going on vacation to Mexico. So someone called our friend in the USA and pretended the relative was kidnapped and tried to extort money. They got all of this info on the vacation off Facebook/Twitter. The same thing can happen with jobs. Wrong political views and you won't get hired. This is what I mean by being dangerous to you. People are assholes.

## building my own router

I hoped things would go more smoothly :)
Anyway, my new miniPC easily accepted CentOS 8 - no fuss here. And I've got to say - I love CentOS8 so far! Shell has amazing nifty tricks, UI (gnome3) is also snappy, video/audio/ethernet,.. everything works.

What I did NOT expect is hardware being off. Well okay, the price was low - it was obvious smth is not right. But still.. I decided to build my own router so that I could swap wifi card whenever I want. So that I could run my own network services in there. Turns out - the card swapping is not as easy as one might think.

I got the AX200 WiFi6 card for that very purpose. But once plugged in the OS can only see it's bluetooth module. Weird... What's even weirder is that even though the card is PCIe, the OS uses btusb module to talk to that device. What? USB?? emm.. What??

And there it is. After opening it up again I noticed that the mPCIe area is marked with a label: "USB WIFI / WWAN". USB? Does that mean this PCIe slot is wired into the USB bus? Not impossible I guess.

Googling for a "pcie wifi over usb" or smth like that brought me to one reddit (I think?) where someone wanted to build a DIY wifi mPCIe -> USB adapter and someone else adviced hime that (for some reason) at best he could only get bluetooth working (hey! just like me!). It's got to do smth with pcie channels and USB being too weak to handle all that load, or smth.. IDK, I'm not a HW guy.

Well that sucks then! I have a mPCIe slot that does not work as a PCIe. Shit! So I guess the best I could do is to plug back in the same wifi card that came with the device. It smells like 2003 - supports only g protocol. Fine, let's try that. Maybe I'll find a way to work around this mPCIe limitation later on (USB adapter or smth... except there are no USB WIFI6 dongles yet :( ). So I plug it back in and start turning it into a router. Disable NetworkManager, configure static NCs' settings, install dhcpd, hostapd, bind and others. Looks like all is done! Now it's time to start it all. systemctl start hostapd --> FAILED. wtf? journalctl says it could not initialize a driver. umm okay? Why? Forums say I should airodump-ng check and kill whatever's using that device. Fine. airodumo reveals avahi and wpa_suppl are still using it. kill, kill, GOTTA KILL 'EM ALL!! Starting hostapd again -- same shit... wtf?

iw list

My gawd... That shitty network card does not even support AP mode :( I mean.. My USB wifi dongle for 2€ supports 2x more modes, is faster, has better range and is easier to work with than this old tart!

Yeah. That was an interesting day. When enfironment engineers break my testing environments at work I'm glad I have where to spend my time now.

BTW any ideas how to bypass this mPCIe nonsense? Come on, there are USB GPUs out there.. Why can't they make a USB (or dual-USB if they really need to) mPCIe adapter?

Any night, 1:30am, bedtime: "Yes! I can't WAIT for tomorrow to begin! I'm gonna make SO much progress on that personal project that I just KNOW is gonna change the world and make me a billionaire! My time is now!"

Next day, 9am, first call of the day: "Ugh, waking up SUUUUUCKS! But, fine, just gotta get through the workday, then it's beast mode time!"

5pm: "Ugh, that day SUCKED... meeting after meeting, constant interruptions for the few minutes I got to hack code, SO many emails, and hey, good day, only five new things pushed down from corporate to bang my head against! Feelings pretty mentally exhausted, but it's all good, I fortunately love this programming stuff, so first dinner, then a little exercise, spend some time with the family, and then it's time to COOOODE!"

10pm: "Ok, house is FINALLY quiet (fucking dog), just a little noise from my daughter staying up way too late again... kinda spent, but this project still excites me, and I may not get as much done as I was hoping, but fine, I can still make some tangible progress and that's what matters. Maybe just one last quick check of email, Reddit, make sure there's no new Hot Ones or Honest Trailers I gotta watch, update IDEA plugins and see what's new, then it's work time! Nothing can stop me now!"

Any night, 1:30am, bedtime: "SHIT! I GOT FUCK ALL DONE AGAIN! GO DAAAAAAAMN IIIIIT!!!!"

Try to finish some of the projects I've started in 2018. Right now I have a todo list text file, along with multiple written lists (the written ones are more focused on a single project normally).

-Finish the startpage I've been doing off and on for at least a month now. I ended up making a lot of it command based (just need to write the scripts for the commands..). I had a little config menu but I just got tired of it and the text box is autofocus anyways, so I figured I'd make it command focused.

-Nice little root safety script as I call it. I've made very stupid mistakes as root before. I once made a typo and ran "chmod --recursive 644 /" while half asleep. I believe I was trying to run that on the current directory I was in, but as you know, the . and / are right next to each other. Basically the script would see what you're doing and echo "you're about to do x, are you sure that's what you want to do?". Something I know I could knock out in a day, but I've been putting it off for at least a year now.

-Compiling notification. I saw something similar once a few years ago, and it was so fucking cool. I remember it being a Mac, and it had a notification that would basically tell you how many files and shit you had left to compile if you were building something. Kinda want to build something for polybar.

-FUCKING RUBBER DUCK DEBUGGING TO THE EXTREME! This one was inspired by a comment someone made once months ago. Might have been here, or reddit, or in real life, not sure. Basically a big ass fucking rubber duck with LEDs in it that will like glow red if your code wouldn't compile (I think Visual Studio has like an automatic error detecting thing in there?? Maybe something similar if I can figure that out). Honestly not sure how the fuck I'd do this one, but I love the idea and I really want to fucking do it

There's more shit. These are just the main ones I want to attempt sometime in the near future.

!dev

God I’m having the hardest time focusing on my task, it just seems so inconsequential compared to the shit going on in the world.

Here in my own country we’ve got issues with the government and their desperate grabs at power, citizens rights being trampled all over as if they mean nothing.

Of course the conflict in Ukraine I can’t peel my eyes away from the Reddit world news feed.

The explosive inflation worrying about the cost of food fuel and rent.
Diesels not cheap, and the electric company wants to spike up the price of already over priced electricity by 10%.

I’ve got a trip coming up which I’m thankful for but it’s expensive and money isn’t getting any easier to come by.

I’m genuinely worried about what the WEF is attempting to accomplish and the amount of power they hold over the western world.

And with all that in my mind…. The work in front of me of updating this stupid game to modern standard and refactoring it to actually make sense and be maintainable… just seems so fucking pointless.

there is no way YouTube isn't dead as a product

last night I had to switch from matrix voice chat to discord voice chat to talk to somebody (because their phone suddenly doesn't do matrix well, keeps cutting out their mic if their screen is turned off or they switch to a different app wtf). they misinterpreted something I said as talking about "shock value". I think that's a demeaning term that doesn't capture why "bad" content is good. now I'm just chilling trying not to workaholic and first recommendation on YouTube I have is about "what happened to shock value websites". oh I'm sure that's a coincidence

this has been happening increasingly and I fucking hate it. it keeps recommending videos that have absolutely nothing to do with what I'm watching or have ever watched or would even be in the interest of in the past, but I mention it somewhere and it creepily suggests the content to me, always with videos claiming to have 2-3 million views. bullshit. I tried some of these and there's no way anybody cares about this content in such numbers. it's so lukewarm and dumb. and how the hell do they have "opinion" vlogs about every topic? since when did that become the #1 type of content on YouTube? cuz it's 50% of my recommendations and I've never given a shit

I have like 500 subscriptions on YouTube. I've had an account a long time. a lot of them are old channels that stopped being active as YouTube evolved, which I think was a shame. a lot of them had to do with ad revenue or YouTube algorithm just not suggesting their content to new people. they were wholesome, honest channels with really good content I think -- really good game analysis, compilations of unique or weird viral content and the guy was just a funny dude in his basement, etc. but fair I guess. shame, but fair

Then there was the quiet era, where your front page just didn't suggest the good channels and just the stupid channels. it didn't suggest your subscriptions but in your interest area or something. what's the point of subscriptions if you're not showing me them? this is also about the time if I left a comment on a video I ceased receiving replies so I assume I was shadow banned. I have not received a single reply in years now, even on small channels. some content creators noticed if they post on their own channels and accidentally logged out and looked for their comment their own comments don't show up. just weird annoying nonsense that's inappropriate for them to be doing. bruh, please

and then the next wave came, it wasn't just YouTube won't recommend your channel, in the COVID era what came was if you mentioned something then channels with previously millions of views, still currently millions of subscribers, suddenly went down to 5k-50k views per video. bitch please, you expect anyone to believe this nonsense?

then they fucked up the search. I KNOW videos exist and I can't find them. I type in half the video's title, you can't find it. thankfully if you type in every single word exactly you can still find them. bruh that's too much. also just search plain doesn't work. if I'm looking for a specific topic I get 5-10 max videos on that topic and the rest are irrelevant recommendations. this is entirely ridiculous. there's videos I KNOW exist on YouTube and nobody gave a shit about them, like 5 view Benny benassi music clips with a scene from a video game. I can't even meme anymore

this morning a friend on discord sent me a... weird clip, of like an anime skit. problem? well discord embeds YouTube videos. I pressed play. I get... an ad. lol what. I browse away and back to the video. try again. ad. yeah I'm not playing this. I have to refresh the page 20-30 times sometimes just until the ads stop fucking up every time my adblocker ceases working (and then I have to go update it again lol -- by going to the developer page for the ad block because it was banned from the app store so you can't auto update it and have to manually update it every time)

my friend links me a discord plugin to... remove ads... from YouTube embeds... bruh

I used to mod discord but it's annoying, because every time discord updates you have to go re-apply the hack to be able to mod your discord

I think we should just plain move away from YouTube. during COVID era a lot of people got banned in subreddits on reddit. I noticed when you get banned, the subreddit still has you listed as a subscriber. the r/Canada subreddit for example has 3 million subscribers but the activity of a subreddit that's maybe 1k people. increasingly subreddits just became ghost towns after that like that. reddit is a dead website, with fake numbers. I think YouTube is now a dead website, with fake numbers. no fucking way stupid lukewarm opinion videos with absolutely nothing to add are getting 2-3 million views and people are just clamouring for these takes they didn't ask for

also stop listening in on my private conversations. fucking disgusting. idc if an AI is transcribing. ew.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a problem — after his army service, he got so used to cold that he could only sleep on a raw, cold metal grill. Usually, normal people put mattress on top, but Erdogan didn’t feel right this way. So, in one of his personal prisons, he established a social project for making a full metal bed for himself.

For starters, to calculate the shape, he took the smallest man ever (3 inches high) with his fingers and sunk him into molten plastic. “What are you doing?! It hurts!” — man screamed. “Shut up. You’re on an important mission. Your motherland won’t forget you.”
After three months, the bed was ready. It was more of the same — metal bars, but this time with some kind of structure built of metal hinges, rebar and strong springs. This was the day — this was the big reveal event. It took place in the same prison — three prisoners were ready to lay on their new full metal beds, while news crews congratulated Erdogan and celebrated his greatness. “Well, it is time!” — he said.
Prisoners laid flat. An awful screeching sound. Prisoner number two is bleeding out. The spring mechanism broke out and impaled his chest onto a large metal bar. He’s not breathing.
“Shut it down. Shut it all down. No more cameras, no more news”, — said Erdogan.
“Yes, our master”, — said news crews.

They wanted to draft me to Afghanistan.
“No!”, — a young officer shouted, misgendering me — “He doesn’t know the stages of pain. Useless.”
“Are you perhaps arguing pain with a bipolar patient?” — I replied.
“You are a rave. Nothing but a rave.”

Raves spawned near your doors at night. Sometimes, they even spawned on the inside. I can’t say you were in danger, but it certainly wasn’t a pleasant thing to happen to anyone. They looked ugly. They dressed weird. They spoke in riddles.
“How do I move to Europe?”, — a rave asked.
“I…”
“Shut up!”
Rave took a door, suspiciously painted over and over multiple times, and started to slam my door with it, using it as a ram.
My door started giving in.

Alarm system.
On a separate note, to disable the alarm system, you have to speedrun Stanley Parable. It’s the hardest speedrun ever, specifically its hidden ending. It disables all alarm systems in three-mile radius IRL. No one knows how it works, but it does. Back to the danger zone!

“The better quality time you spend sitting on your toilet, the more you’ll live.”, — an officer said.
“I once had a girl blow me while I was shitting,” — Matthias replied — “You have nothing on me.”
“Fair enough!”

It is a little known fact, but the liquid that Northern cities use to clean up snow isn’t quite what it seems like. It’s not salt — in reality, there are bases on Mars, and they store pink goo that… “iMpRoVeS” dead bodies. The liquid is biological in nature, and it expires. Expired liquid is recycled as snow melter. You learn that in high school, but now, living on a train, you should know that there are special learning rooms here, in every. single. carriage. The small gym ball with two handles on its sides is called Gandhi ball. Fun fact: if you wear headless Segways on top of your shoes, and then lay flat holding a Gandhi ball, you can reach the speed of 270 kph!

Today’s news: a Reddit moderator and a legless woman gave birth to a living sex toy for their domestic boar.

I have so many thoughts I literally cannot scream

I don't know where to go and find what I'm looking for
is this the world I remember? scrolled through some current events and this isn't the world I grew up in in the 90s
it's strange life goes on like that
and my teeth keep cracking and will probably fall out of my mouth
I've learned all of dentistry and that ain't it
and the AIs are told to be contradictory and when you catch them they cease communicating
and the search don't work
and forums don't exist
this isn't the world I remember
where you could find real people and real things
it's such a strange world

there's new fads,
people care about weird things... not like actors, but whole technology stacks,
everything is work is stressful, how to be a "leader" (wtf), look at this muffin I made, anti-aging foods or some nonsense, some dude survives on an island for 7 days
I remember when the Internet was like "how to install a printer!"

I've been looking around for stuff to buy, like I wanted a treadmill for a standing desk but they're all sus. I wanted a lamp but they're all sus. I wanted a Roomba but they're all sus. all the pictures are photoshopped on every site, the reviews look fake or outright are 90% "got product for free" and it even states so in the disclaimer, or just plain most things don't have a single rating
it's like the whole economy is dead
why did everyone decide to resell lamps, treadmills, and roombas, wtf
nobody wants this shit. I mean I wanted it but not from scammers. and you can't find not scammers.

there's no real news (like exciting shit), there's no real stuff, there's no real people
I guess life just goes on, we're just parasites on a rock hurdling through space
things I was sentimental about are gone now
I don't even know what people do. I guess everyone my age does meetups and retarded middle-age going to die in their house shit, and I'm stuck at 12 year old shit poster
and anyone interesting got gobbled up by a university and made unofficial nerd clubs and have personal phone calls or something to discuss cool things, but I hated the snobbiness and never fit in with those due to my punchiness, willingness to sound retarded and sometimes gender

it's strange to see articles for dating. I used to have such unified theories about everything, but things have changed so much it's not like slightly off but I just looked outside my window and I appear I'm on an alien planet now

something something mortality I guess. makes me wonder if just the random-ass direction societies take is all that matters. but then why would that even matter anyway? I've always been such a perfectionist, and been lauded for predicting the future everywhere, but somehow I feel blindsided
I don't get the point
I feel like some metamorphosis is happening
but I don't know what I'm giving birth to
I guess it's not the right way to do things but just the way you want to do things
people my age focus on the upbringing they had but I'm not fond of being defined by things I didn't choose, it just doesn't meet my perfectionistic standards you see
it's strange to want to go in a direction but being so out of touch you don't know how
I used to spend so many evenings reading everything and finding the weirdest things nobody knew about
but these things are so hard to find
or are they? maybe I'm mixing my unconscious stuckness to my own familiarity with feeling caged in
word of mouth used to exist but now it's a promo that gets you banned
reddit is a ghost town with the amount of people they banned
and people are so weird now. you enter a room you never get anything interesting
how many uninteresting places is there per interesting place?
if I don't know where to go to find what I'm looking for I need to go everywhere and survey everything so I can itemize and know how to navigate in the directions I'm looking for

maybe it's the crushing defeat in realizing muting tactics work
that barrier to do a task will drop the lazy, but eventually even the relentless can't find their way out because every step is so far

maybe I thought of the world as an infinite garden of infinite gifts, and it's like it's coming to an end. the party ends. but I don't like anything else

grrrr

last week my laptop died out of nowhere. it stopped recognizing the one drive in it. I lost a bunch of files, code. evidently ssds fail out of nowhere unlike hdds which slow down and error all the time before ultimate failure

my warranty for this 4k$ laptop expires in 12 months and this was month 13. nice. I don't like warranties anyway, and the site said they would replace things with "comparable hardware, sometimes refurbished" wtf no thanks

so I found some guides of people upgrading the drive in this laptop. seemed easy enough, unlike older laptops from back when I was in school where you had to take out 12 things first to get to anything
unfortunately I needed a specific screwdriver. I walked several miles to the nearby hardware store thinking they would have said screwdriver. the old guy in the basement said there was a kit where it started from t4 (I needed t5), but he had just sold out his last one. I checked their online store with a friend for a while on my way back home and we kept finding torx screws but the wrong sizes. fuck.
he said screwdrivers this small are only used for electronics, asked if there's any other hardware stores and there aren't near me
however it occurred to me this strip mall has a lot of suspicious computer stores on it. so I walked back up the street looking for one.
found one with a suspicious poster, saying it was an internet cafe but the last point on their poster said they do repairs. walked in. nobody is in there, suspiciously 2 desks with old computers all empty, then you go forward in this dark cave, with plastic wrapped implements on the walls, you finally find a glass shield and behind it was a meek Asian man that took me a moment to notice
I asked him if he had t5
he handed me a plastic baggy full of tiny screwdrivers, for me to take one
I asked if they're t5
the shape looked right, but I can't tell the size
I took one out and tried to find size marking, but nothing
he didn't seem to know what I was asking when I asked about its size
he said if it's wrong I can come back and trade what I took for another. lol
I asked him if I can buy it, since that wasn't evident to me due to how sus this random bag of screws is being thwarted on me lmao
he said 5$ cash
I gave him a fiver
this sus shop literally avoiding taxes lmao

walked back home, ate food cuz starving, tried the screw and FUCK, it's too big. put laptop in a bag and hauled ass fast, checked on maps the store I got this from closes in a few minutes so I really wanted to make it there because what if the receptionist changes and they don't know I took this screw. I got no receipt

got there right before closing, put my laptop down, said it was too big. he used a few screws until he found one that fit, said I could try it and I did (so scam aware!). bingo bango. now I got a screwdriver that fits the laptop.

walked home, sat down and took apart the laptop. been a few years since I did so. the hardware inside looks entirely unrecognizable to me. started cycling through YouTube videos of laptops of the same name as mine, but their insides don't look like mine. is this ram? is this the NVMe? what the fuck is anything?
finally found a video guide where the guy was quite informative. not the same laptop but he's informative enough I figure it out. ram and drives are so different and weird now. took parts out, put them back in, rebuilt laptop, tried to boot, same problem. jiggling parts like this works with desktops often, guess not with a failed NVMe

so I'm screwed. get on Newegg and bought a new NVMe. should arrive in 3 days via Purolator

yesterday was day 3. it was at a sort facility near me, then out on delivery, but nobody ever came. then it went back to sorting. now it's out on delivery again. I'm sitting here thinking that's a little weird, wasn't Purolator the delivery company that had me go 2 hours outside of town to pick up a 15lb desktop case once?

... and then I looked up Reddit comments... then reviews on the purolator facility it's at... I am screwed. last time iirc they were out for delivery for 3 days, never tried delivery, then on the last day at the end of day they stated they attempted delivery but no go. that was bullshit. then it ended up at that facility. which takes 2 hours to fucking reach.
the reviews are so bad... the facility has 1.2 star reviews with thousands of them. they won't leave even a stub, then seem to not know where your package is at the facility, or they deny you have the right to pick it up despite ample IDs, or someone ELSE picks it up and it's not there. they also ship your package back after 5 days, so if they don't leave a note and you miss it tough luck...

fucking hell
also rumours that they just hire "contractors" in normal cars to drop off packages? wat? lol
AND EVERY REVIEW HAS A BOT COMMENT. THEIR SUPPORT IS JUST A CHATBOT

I thought this was just a small hiccup
I think I might not have a drive for weeks now
fucking hell
now I'm sitting on my porch

Sonuva bitch thought he's so smart. He made a mod of a game, and a launcher for it, APK while bullshitting that "Games shouldn't have IAPs because it's just a game". I got ticked off, I called him out for bullshitting, he got ticked off, I asked for proof of the mods, this is what he gave me. It's on an iPhone mind you, and he said he made an APK. My fucking god. I sworn at him with another programmer friend for a solid 10 minutes, breaking the community's rules 20 times over non-stop (I'm Moderator so.... (not Reddit, Discord (Yes mom I use Discord (Yes I moderator)))). My fucking god. AT LEAST MAKE SOME FILES INSIDE WHILE YOU'RE BULLSHITTING US! OH WAIT! YOU CAN'T! YOU'RE NOT JAILBROKEN YOU PIECE OF SHIT! (more in the comment)

today I will have the last of my high school finals.
I feel like after today I will be a free boy (for three months, at least). Like I have won the game, beaten the boss level.
After 7 years of resisting to comply to this system which tries so hard to shape every pupil into a compliant individual, it will be done.
My creativity and productivity (which lies in tech, which isn't really represented in any subject in my school), set free.
No more mandatory pseudo-interest in loads of literature and cultural history. The bits that are interesting would have come to me anyways through Reddit.

Victory is mine. YAY \o/
World, here I come!

P.S. yes, of course, there were also positive things. I'm actually thankful for that time I failed the year's end exam about literature which ended in me having to redo that year. It landed me with loads of free time, which got me into tech-tinkering, a now two-year employment as a programmer, and a juniar participation at the nearest Hackerspace. And a chance to pretty much build and operate a 3D-printer, for which the physics department mostly covered the cost. The school unknowingly gave me the opportunity to extend my own horizon outside of school, and it brought me so much nice things. :) But the mandatory interest in literature and cultural/religious history and the lack of technical subjects and the digital oppression still sucked.

P.P.S. oops that was only supposed to be a short P.S.

Finally purchased my t480s for university after mooonths of reading reviews and reddit posts. I hoped that the mbp refresh wouldn't be so expensive :( I've got a mid 2009 from work which no one used so they let me take it home and yeah to be honest i like it very much. i wanted learn programming for ios & android, but honestly paying 2,3K€ (student price for the 13" i5 16gb ram 512gb ssd) and having the risk of a (maybe or maybe not) failing keyboard and no chance of upgrading it is too risky for me and my wallet :( I paid 1,5K€ (again student price) for the thinkpad (i7 16gb ram 512gb ssd and the mx150) and i think i'll love it :)

Just wanted to share with you guys :) (i hope i didn't start a pc vs mac fight haha)

What do y'all think? I'm new here, junior. I finish my tasks generally well within the allotted time. At the moment I take my time, look over my work and try make sure I've done things correctly / as best I can. At first I tried to work quickly and show that I was motivated. Now I've really lowered my acceleration because it feels like no one else is in a rush.. except for when there's deadline pressure. It feels like no one really expects me to get much done. Like, change the theme colors, you've got 3 days. I'm done in like an hour. So I go sloooooooow, change something, go on Reddit or devrant, change something else. Don't check that change in yet, they'll know you've been finished for hours...

Do you think this is the right approach? Or should I try apply myself more, get more done, do extra tasks when I have time? From what I've read online, it's generally not worth working "more" than necessary because it's not appreciated and just results in people expecting more from you.

Thoughts?

Fuck spam, email harvesters and fuck moderators too.

I got tired of getting spam in my email inbox from an email address that I published on my website.

The bots and email harvesters were scraping / harvesting my email address from my website and sending me tons of unwanted spam.

I decided to create a free tool to protect peoples email address behind a form captcha so that it knows the person reading it, is indeed human and not a bot or spammer.

Decided to post to reddit to get the word out and the post gets flagged. Really? What gives?

Its a free tool to stop spam for chrikes sake. I am not trying to make money.

Anyhoo wiill post the link here. Hope you guys and gaals are more friendly and will share the link.

the link is Veilmail.io ( can someone post the link please)

RANT OVER

App idea: Platform for ongoing entrepreneurs

I just come from a start-up weekend. I really enjoyed the support we got from 17 different mentors (most of them founded in the past on their own).

Back home start-up funders don't have the access to that mentoring. My idea is to create a platform specialized for founders, where you can share your idea, believes and ask question all around your business.

I think especially in the early founding stages entrepreneurs are full of questions. Helping and discussing with other selfminded people is probably very enjoyable for us founder folks. A difference to the f.e. reddit concept: Users can create "diaries", a place where all storys, questions and posts about your project are stored. Reading a diary from beginning to end shall be a fun experience, reviewing your or others history of their "babys" and following the entrepreneurs thoughts through all stages of founding. Users of course can create multiple diaries.

Functionality will be suited for the listed usecase, for example a "Post as Anonymous" function will be added, if you have to deal with company sensitive data and more stuff like that.

What do you think about the idea? Do you like it? Would you use it? If not, tell me why?

Cheers