Leaf

i clicked the link in the phishing test email and they're going to punish me now. fuck.

There is a design I sometimes work with called the cmu and sometimes I subconsciously read it as a typo for "cum".

I really want to start using Obsidian notes but I can't get my notes to sync across devices.

I tried to get them to sync with my google drive but no luck. DriveSync for android simply destroys my battery and also doesn't work at all, not to mention the privacy/security concerns. Neither iCloud nor Google Drive seem to have a nice consistent way to sync across devices or ecosystems.

So I subscribed to their premium sync service and that doesn't work either. Even though I'm logging into my sync account and the individual apps say my notebooks are merged, they still function as completely disjoint notebooks on each device.

People talk about a steep learning curve for using Obsidian but I'm not even there yet. I'm just trying to get the app to work, i haven't even started actually using it.

I'm going to venture a guess that basically EVERYBODY wants their notes to sync across devices so IDK why they don't make setting that up a streamlined process. I'll pay money (am paying money), I just want it to work!!

Mgmt: "Scope out the level of effort to resurrect this ancient project and spin it up again."

Me: "It's waaaaaaaaaayyyy higher now that you laid off everybody who knows anything about it."

[...continued]

• Decide if you're a better fit for big company culture or small company culture. One tends to learn way more at small companies where one's scope of responsibility is wider. Working at a small company can be a WILD RIDE. Big companies offer more stability but they're likely to pigeonhole you. Most engineers I've interviewed from huge companies like Intel don't know much outside of their tiny area of responsibility.

Advice for those who want a career in integrated circuit design:
- Learn as broadly as you can in your first professional roles. You're going to have to specialize, and the knowledge will inform your career development decisions. If you don't drive your own specialization & career growth, your employer will do it for you and you might not like it.
- Maintain a healthy work-life balance. Sometimes employer will ask too much and you must know how and when to push back.
- AI is shaking up this industry. Brace yourself, but keep it in perspective. Automation has always been the industry's bread and butter. They'll still need you but you're gonna have to do more than your predecessors did, and you may have to think at a higher level of abstraction. The complexity of your role will scale with the capabilities of the tools available.
- Learn how to code. Knowing some script-friendly languages like Python is especially helpful. Don't be one of those hardware guys who can't write programs.
[... continued]

A convo from a while back that I wish I could forget. Context was Diebold, maker of voting machines, promising to deliver the 2004 election to George W. Bush. Me: "Secret un-auditable voting machines are bad." Conservative: "Security through obscurity is the only true security." Me: "Obscurity is the opposite of security." Conservative: "Let's agree to disagree. Neither of us are hardware security experts." Me: "I'm a hardware security expert. Designing hardware for security applications is literally my career." Conservative: "I disagree anyway." I hate conservatives. :P

@tilton @keirFox My main objection with the face scan crap is that sometimes I'll pull out my phone to look at porn. It'll take a surprise photo of me if I accidentally leave the authenticator app in the foreground. I don't wanna know what it does with those photos.

@keirFox Reminds me about how to log into my work machine, I need to enter a bitlocker password, a windows password, a vpn password, a 2fa code (2x) and a face scan (2x). That's 7 security steps to get onto the normal network. Then it's more steps to access any "secure" part of the network.