Deafening silence

Published 2026-03-04

tag(s): #failures

Yesterday and earlier today

The problem with having a public website with your name in the URL is that there are things you just can't say.
Like, I can't say "thank heavens I can at least chat with Copilot, because our group chat on MS Teams was silent for over an hour after I brought up a minor design issue I was wrestling with".
I really like those small predicaments because, since the scope is small, they are as easy to explain as they are to discuss and weigh the alternatives.

Lessons learned: first, the fact that something is easy to discuss, doesn't mean anyone else cares. Second, I can't help but caring, even if no one else does.[1]
Lesson three, Copilot is a good rubber duck, even if some of its suggestions are quite outlandish. So, there you go.[2]

Giving IRC a try. In 2026.

SourceHut provides a hosted IRC bouncer for paying customers. I spent a lot of time in chat rooms in my mid-teens. Like...a lot.
So naturally, I was curious to give it a go. In 2026.

IRC is a shadow of what it was, although to be fair I am treating it like a novelty and not spending hours conversing with a group of strangers. So the fact that most channels I am in don't have much traffic is actually good.
But if I am being sincere, most of them are pretty dead.

Not unlike other chats, sadly.

Footnotes
  1. I've known this for a long time, being honest. But sometimes I am reminded in stark ways.
  2. Does this mean that I now enjoy working with an AI, or is it just another symptom of my need to make coding a collaborative, consensus-based endeavour, and then I resort to this as a desperate move ...?

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