Weeknotes 2025 W28: Epic baby

Quick bits:

• I ended up not signing my employer’s Abwicklungsvertrag.¹¹1 Settlement agreement.  I was not entirely clear on the implications of signing it, and the safest is not to sign. That means no severance for me, unfortunately.

• My computer has been autocorrecting things wrong lately. “Week­notes” is being corrected to “weeknosucces” and “calendar” to “calenaar.” I have absolutely no idea what is going on here, except that the Gremlins are obviously back.

• LinkedIn posted on my behalf that I started a new job at the company I got laid off from. It was quite strange to receive congratulations for starting a new job when I was, in fact, laid off. What the hell, LinkedIn?

• Apple Music (the macOS app, not the service) has been replacing the album artwork of albums that I own, and it is infuriating. The new artwork is often straight up wrong.

• I ordered a robot vac/mop. First, my vacuum cleaner is getting quite old and it needs to be replaced anyway. Second, I like neither vacuuming nor mopping, and thus not do it as often as I probably should. And lastly, I’m just not very good at it, often finding spots I forgot and then being too lazy to do anything about it. Outsourcing the tedious parts of my life seems like a good idea.

It is tiring to hear that “blue” means “boy” and “pink” means “girl.” I hereby propose an alternate color scheme for babies:

• white = common baby
• green = uncommon baby
• blue = rare baby
• purple = epic baby
• orange = legendary baby

You’re welcome.

For no reason at all, I created a track name generator for Autechre and/or Plaid tracks:

Pretty close.

The job search is burning me out.

I’ve received one offer, though! If all goes well, I might have a job quite soon. Stay tuned.

It used to be the case that the regular notice period in Germany was three months. This has been the case for all companies that I worked at, except the last one.²²2 The statutory notice period, however, is (and always has been) one month. 

I know people who had a contract with a six-month notice period. It used to be the case that you had to negotiate the notice period down to something more reasonable.

But it seems that a notice period of a single month is more common now. I can’t help but feel that this correlates with a lack of trust in employees: a company that is set on retaining their employees would do well with a notice period that is longer than only one month — right?

I stumbled upon the following photo of a village near where I grew up:

You might not think of this photo as special in any way. But it captivated me for a few reasons:

• The atmosphere couldn’t be more dreary. The sad grey weather feels quintessentially — caricaturally, even — Belgian.

• Because of the cloud cover, there are no shadows, giving it a particularly spooky vibe, too.

• The church is the subject of the photo, yet the church is not centered in the photo. This gives it a slight off-kilter feeling.

• The parking in the foreground is particularly ugly. This is not a nice market square.

• Even though there are people in the photo, they don’t seem to fit in too well. Tourists, maybe? But who would visit such a dreary place?

• As a counterpoint to the pervasive sense of dread, there is a small golden car almost in the center of the photo. What a contrast.

In short: this photo is an uncanny masterpiece.

Entertainment:

• I have finished my second watch of Twin Peaks: The Return³³3 Twin Peaks: The Return, written by David Lynch and Mark Frost (Showtime Networks, Rancho Rosa Partnership, Twin Peaks Productions, 2017).  and I’ve drunk plenty of coffee during it, though not consumed any donuts.⁴⁴4 Nor did I eat a chocolate bunny. Is it about the bunny? No. It’s not about the bunny.  Something to be remedied.

• I think I am getting close to the end of Outer Wilds.⁵⁵5 Outer Wilds (Mobius Digital, 2019), published by Annapurna Interactive.  I’ve discovered the A—— T—— P—— and the V—— and now I think I know what to do. Maybe.

• I started listening to Archive 81 — the podcast, not the TV series — and had to stop because I found the voice acting bad enough to be immersion-breaking. I found this surprising, as it’s generally a highly rated podcast (and even got turned into a Netflix series which I haven’t watched).

• I picked up William Gibson’s Neuromancer.⁶⁶6 William Gibson, Neuromancer (London: Gollancz, 1984).  A classic.

Toots and tweets:

Gabriele Svelte (@gabrielesvelto@mas.to) said:

If you have an Intel Raptor Lake system and you're in the northern hemisphere, chances are that your machine is crashing more often because of the summer heat. I know because I can literally see which EU countries have been affected by heat waves by looking at the locales of Firefox crash reports coming from Raptor Lake systems.

Links:

• ArtStation - Houdini - Berlin Sidewalk Generator Part 1

• Frame of preference (Marcin Watery)

Tech links:

• new Date("wtf"): I scored 7 out of 28. Ouch.

AI links:

• Google Veo 3 fails, week 3 (David Gerard, Pivot to AI)

• The rise of Whatever (eevee)

• I’m Losing All Trust in the AI Industry (Alberto Romero)

• The Real GenAI Issue (Tim Bray)

• Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists (Adrian Holovaty)

• Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity (METR): Mind that this is just a single study and thus not necessarily representative, but it definitely tracks with my own experience.