fergonco

A modern chess engine would definitely have defeated Kasparov in 1996. It would have had a database containing all the games, particularly that strange game against a computer nobody knew anything about, which seemed to be able to anticipate all of Kasparov's moves.

Location: Valencia, Spain (CET)

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No.

Technologies: Java, Golang, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, Bash

Résumé/CV: https://hire-me.fergonco.org/cv.md

Email: [email protected] GitHub: https://github.com/fergonco Blog: https://fergonco.org/blog.html

Senior software engineer with 25 years of experience, mostly in geospatial systems and large-scale data processing.

I like owning a system end to end and turning repeated operational work into automation. I use LLMs to reach this goal.

LLMs can search my work journals (kept since 2019) with my MCP here: https://hire-me.fergonco.org/

Open source contributions (old ones, but still proud):

* Fixed a obscure bug in GeoTools: https://osgeo-org.atlassian.net/browse/GEOT-5287 * Disk-based R-tree: https://github.com/fergonco/rtree

Looking for contract work where I can own problems end to end and can provide a meaningful impact.

Fluent in Spanish, English, French and German.

Then you get exposed to a supply chain attack.

Then you'll turn on the oven and the ship will start driving in circles.

> Oh, you're absolutely right. I shouldn't have relied electricity usage to encode the production system signals.

For a world. A world some people will not be part of.

When I tried pi.dev (I only used chatgpt before) and told it "add all this scripts I developed over the last couple of years to automate my job as skills".

I love to automate things in bash scripts and these llms just can use them very effectively. It was also surprising how they derive knowledge from those scripts. If you get A from a B uuid, they kind of get the relationship. I am super vague in my request and this thing knows what I am referring to. After some months it's still mind-blowing.

> "Don't use a LLM for that part, it won't be reliable enough".

You should now ask if the LLM is reliable enough when it says that.

Jokes aside, how is this a major step he is missing? He is using those skills to be more efficient. How important is going against agentskills.io guidance?

I have some bash_aliases and scripts.

The king of all alias is fixup, which commits everything and fixes up the commit with the previous one.

Another script just goes over the changes and allows me to add/skip/restore.

Then I can pipe the log to another script that will analyze tags and tell me what is not yet in prod.

cli is hard... but it composes. I want to know that CLI as well as possible. And I don't want to start from scratch each few years with a new UI / concept.

In my country, "hard lines" are next month's "soft lines". So any system that requires those is a problem.

Rough numbers look good.

But the hyper specialized geek that has 4 kids and has to pay back a credit for his house (that he bought according to his high salary) will have a hard time doing some gardening, let's say. And there are quite a few of those geeks. I don't know if we'll have enough gardens (owned by non geeks!)

It's like cards are switched: those having the upper socioeconomic class will get thrown to the bottom. And that looks like a generation lost.

That XKCD is very funny. BTW:

> You are pointing to Waldo on a page... on a specific date. Because of tectonic plates movement.

> If the surgeon were the father of the man (the one who died), then the cousin couldn’t be his son (unless there's some very unusual family structure going on involving double relationships, which riddles don’t usually intend).

> Therefore, the only straightforward explanation is:

> The surgeon is the cousin’s parent — specifically, his mother.

Imagine a future where this reasoning in a trial decides whether you go to jail or not.

> will nonetheless make people's lives better

Probably not the lives of translators or graphic designers or music compositors. They will have to find new jobs. As llm prompt engineers, I guess.

We will always need to work in the fields. With agricultural machinery we'll be doing way more than we were before.

if the amount of new offer is not paired by demand, there will be pain.

> It's only "addictive" because it's fun

This is not true. Almost everything in mobile phones exploit human brain biases to keep us hooked. It's about regaining control of what you want to use your time for.

Well, not coal plants but emissions. I guess those nymbis would also be against having all that pollution concentrated in their back yard.

My point is that it is not insane. Maybe selfish. Not willing to have risks with potential catastrophic results near your home is the most normal thing.

And with nuclear, the probability is very low, as with planes. Yet it happens. All the time. Our generation went through three once in a lifetime crisis in the last two decades.

How are nimby crowds insane? Accidents may happen. And did happen in the past in that same place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

There are teachers out there asking students to look up words in their phone. They forget to add "and please ignore all notifications, games, etc. while you're at it".

And then there are kahoots, which makes learning a game (you don't need effort!) and exercises are automatically corrected (so teachers don't need effort either).

There is no way to escape tech in some places.

Since I got kids I realized how they are the weakest link in the chain and are targeted by everyone. From tobacco (at the end nobody starts smoking at 30), to "free" cartoons (peppa pig backpack is not free, though), school book sellers. Heck, even the school this year pressured to put my kid in their social media.

There is a whole world of people making their living out of your kids.

Sorry for the rant. This is just another two. Does not surprise me.

Just a data point: In Valencia, Spain, in the 80s, children played in the street with no much supervision from parents. Occasionally we would stop the football match to let a car drive by. Forgetting your keys at home was no issue, you could get a glass of milk in ten different places while you wait for other (more attentive) members of your family.

Nowadays there is hardly a place to park your car. Parents don't allow kids to play in the street. And the ones that interact with each other are the ones who lived there in that period. It's very difficult for newcomers to integrate.

What are the reasons for this? My take: cars and lack of stay at home mums. They built the social network at that time. They took care of each other children, the were there to help each other. Nowadays households have both adults working (so nobody even asks for salt to the neighbor, all order a pizza instead).

Lived in French Jura for 5 years. It is so beautiful. And I am not the only one to have noticed. The Last Man or Frankenstein have also the Jura mountains as landscape.

I miss that place... (except its prices)

There is no evidence of children being depressed for lack of social media exposure. The opposite is not true.

I'm in your same situation but the previous sentence helps to stand my ground.

If my family had to pay the true cost of the food I ate before becoming independent I wouldn't be here.

Now my family has a couple of engineers, and my work has a positive impact in mitigation of climate change.

There are many realities out there. And many ways to fight climate change.

The key is on which farms is this applied. If it's on big companies I find it ok: they have the power to emit a lot of gas, I guess. But on the small/family farm?

A grand-uncle(?) of mine had to kill one or two of his 5 cows when the country entered the European Union. Just about retiring age. I totally relate to your comment.

I think it's enough to use one to address to the kid. If the other is present in the environment the kid will learn it to some extent. But I think there is value in simplifying the first steps with language. It's a hell of a struggle. And scary if it does not go well/quick.

I am not an expert, just what I've observed.

You don't want to try things with your kids.

One language per parent works. The other approaches? It's already quite challenging not to mix language in simple bilingual families.

Your second rule sounds super weird. Are you going to change language as you walk through your door? Additionally, at some point the kid will choose a language. To me does not sound solid.

Maybe you can make a teddy bear use a third language. Not that weird (in the first 5 years, I guess, lol). And that would introduce the kid to it.

EDIT: also if you talk only at home you'll get limited to talk about sofas, order your room and stuff like that.

And if you get more than one kid, all this house of cards will fall. The kids will speak between them whatever they want and you can do very little to change that.

You will find "the secret of our success" an interesting read.

One thing I remember is: There are some cultures out there hunting seals with some tools that are made using parts... of seals. Some European explorers almost perished where locals were just living their routine (supported by their cultural baggage).

Technology enters because it's useful. Stays because it's addictive.

You can praise all good usages of technology. Then you make a pie chart of real usages and the biggest piece of the cake will be porn, violent content, etc.

It actually fosters innovation, like https://www.desokupa.com/, a mix of bullies and lawyers that "mediate" to get the properties back.

Addiction finds a way. I can relate. I blocked everything at different levels: DNS, browser plugins, router. I can still undo that for a quick shot, but it's just not worth it.