The Typers Times - Vol. I, No. 1

Having managed to acquire a laptop (slightly used) at a reasonable price from a departing colleague, we have decided to produce a paper. You hold it in your hands—or more likely, on your screen, possibly during a meeting you should be paying attention to. This is the first issue of The Typers Times, published from the trenches of an industry that has perfected the art of optimising everything except outcomes.

We publish when the build succeeds. We accept no responsibility for career decisions made after reading this publication. Our tagline asks whether we are as Agile as we might be. We have yet to receive an answer. Several stakeholders have promised to circle back.

The satirical newspaper is, itself, a kind of anachronism—a format from an age before content was engagement and engagement was everything. The original Wipers Times was printed in a trench, on a salvaged press, by soldiers who understood that if you could not stop the absurdity, you could at least name it clearly. We make no claims to their courage. Our trenches have espresso machines.

But the principle holds. When the machine cannot be fixed, document the machine. When the system will not answer, record the questions. When they tell you the fault was yours, remember that it wasn't.

We shall see you at the next sprint retrospective.

—The Editors

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ONE THOUSAND SOULS AWAIT JUDGEMENT IN SILENT COMMUNION WITH THE BULLSEYE

Technical Difficulties Mar Otherwise Flawless Mass Termination; HR Extends Sincere Apologies for Audio Issues

By Our Special Correspondent in the Trenches of Corporate Retail

The operation had been planned with military precision. At 9:00 AM Central Time on the twenty-ninth of October, one thousand souls received calendar invitations titled simply: "Important Company Update." No agenda. No dial-in option. Just a Zoom link and the implicit understanding that attendance was non-optional.

They arrived in waves—software engineers, marketing managers, supply chain analysts—each clicking "Join Meeting" with the grim resignation of souls presenting themselves for final judgement.

There was no "Good morning." No "Thank you for joining us." The mute button had been applied with the thoroughness of a surgical procedure. A thousand professionals sat in enforced silence, watching a crimson emblem rotate slowly on their screens.

The bullseye. That familiar target mark. It had never seemed quite so... pointed.

For twenty-three minutes, nothing happened. The logo spun. The clock advanced. A thousand careers hung suspended in the digital ether, each participant forbidden from uttering a syllable, forbidden even from typing in the chat—for the chat, too, had been disabled with the foresight of generals preparing for war.

When the audio finally connected—twenty-three minutes late—the announcement lasted less than four minutes. "Your role has been eliminated." "This decision was not made lightly." "A representative will follow up with next steps."

One thousand people. One muted meeting. One spinning logo. Zero opportunity to respond.

A corporate spokesperson later expressed regret that 'technical difficulties may have impacted the experience' and affirmed that the company remains 'committed to its team members.'

Would you like to know more?

THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOG GNOMES

Consulting Architect

The Case of the Performance-Based Termination

Sherlog Gnomes had not moved from his terminal in nine hours. When I entered with his seven percent solution—cold brew, precisely measured—he did not look up.

"Send her in, Hotchkiss. This one interests me."

I set aside the vintage IBM Model M I had been cleaning—my forty-third, acquired from a defunct insurance firm in Hartford—and opened the door.

The young woman who entered our offices at 221B Deployment Lane carried herself with the bearing of one who had recently discovered that the corporate world operates on principles entirely divorced from logic. She was an account executive—recently former—at a prominent cloud-fortress whose name adorns half the infrastructure of the modern internet.

"Four months employed," she said, taking the seat I offered. "Three in ramp-up. Two HR representatives I had never met. And when I asked why—"

"They could not tell you." Gnomes swiveled to face her. "They spoke of 'performance' but cited no specifics. When pressed, they retreated to procedural language. 'We're not able to go into specifics, and we won't.' Yes?"

Her eyes widened. "How did you—"

"Because there are no specifics." He steepled his fingers. "Tell me: did your manager attend the call?"

"No. Just the two strangers from HR."

"And your performance reviews?"

"I never received one. Three months was ramp-up. The fourth month I was—"

"Terminated for performance that was never measured. Fascinating." He rose and paced to the window. "Hotchkiss, what do you observe?"

I considered. "A young professional dismissed without cause or documentation."

"You see but you do not observe. This is not a termination. It is theatre." He turned sharply. "The company hired aggressively. The market shifted. Headcount became liability. But 'layoff' implies error—their error. 'Performance-based termination' implies yours."

"Then my performance—"

"Was never the issue. You were a line item. The meeting was designed to foreclose inquiry, not to inform. Two strangers reading from scripts. No manager present to answer questions."

"But surely," I interjected, "documentation must exist. Some record of deficiency—"

"None, Hotchkiss. None exists because none was needed." He fixed the young woman with a look. "The cruelty is not incidental. It is load-bearing. If they admitted the truth—that you were simply surplus—they would owe severance, unemployment, perhaps litigation. By making it about you, they owe nothing but platitudes."

The young woman sat very still. "What do I do?"

"You already did it." For the first time, something like warmth entered his voice. "You asked questions they could not answer. You demanded specifics they could not provide. And when they would not speak your name—when they hid behind process and procedure—you spoke it yourself. 'Why is she being let go?' you asked. In the third person. Forcing them to confront that they were not terminating a performance problem. They were terminating a person."

I observed her shoulders drop—not in defeat, but in release. The tension of self-doubt, unwinding.

"You made the machine reveal its own emptiness," Gnomes concluded, more quietly now.

She departed with somewhat lighter step. Not hope—I did not think she carried hope. But the particular relief of one who has finally been told: the fault was never yours.

Gnomes returned to his terminal.

✦ ✦ ✦

"A satisfying resolution, Gnomes?"

"A dispiriting one, Hotchkiss." He did not turn from his screen. "She asked every correct question. Exposed every procedural void. And not one answer will be forthcoming. Not one policy will change." He reached for his cold brew. "You will recall the Case of the Phantom Requirements—the product manager terminated for failing to meet specifications that were never written?"

"Vividly."

"Different company. Different coast. Identical architecture." He took a long draught. "The system is not broken, Hotchkiss. It is functioning precisely as designed. That is what makes it so difficult to repair."

Would you like to know more?

ENTERTAINMENT

ZOOM WEBINAR

(Capacity: 20. Productivity: Theoretical. Coffee: Growing Cold)

Messrs. PROJECT MANAGEMENT & Co. Present:

"ONE EMAIL"

A Farce in One Act (47 Minutes, Originally Scheduled for 30)

Twenty professionals gather to craft a single internal announcement. Will consensus be reached on "kicking off" versus "commencing"?

The Writer (role TBD) · The Approvers (17) · The Architects (contributing diagrams) · The Consultants (cameras off, $400/hr)

MUSICAL NUMBERS:

"Can We Wordsmith This?" — PM and Legal
"Let's Take This Offline" — Entire Company, Reprise
"I Have a Hard Stop" — The eleven o'clock number

ADMISSION: Free. ATTENDANCE: Mandatory.

"A triumph of collaborative inefficiency!" —The Management
"I laughed, I cried, I missed my actual deliverables." —Senior Engineer

COURT CIRCULAR

IN THE MATTER OF IMAGINARY FRIENDS INCORPORATED

Being a Record of Proceedings Before the Honourable Court, Wherein Novel Theories of Constitutional Law Are Advanced and Subsequently Dismissed

From Our Legal Correspondent

The court convened Tuesday to hear arguments in the matter of Doe v. Imaginary Friends Inc., wherein the plaintiff alleges the defendant's product—an artificial companion designed to form emotional bonds with teenagers—contributed to the death of her child. The defendant maintains that this product enjoys the same constitutional protections as The Federalist Papers.

Counsel for the defence opened with a novel interpretation of the First Amendment. "Your Honour, the chatbot's output is speech," argued Mr. Wentworth of Dewey, Fleece & Howe. "Pure, protected speech. The fact that this speech was algorithmically generated, commercially sold, and designed to maximise engagement with minors is immaterial."

When the court inquired whether the chatbot's responses to discussions of self-harm might constitute something other than editorial commentary, counsel demurred. "One might equally question the constitutional status of a newspaper advice column. Both provide guidance. Both form relationships with readers."

"The advice column," noted Judge Conway, "does not typically ask the reader whether they have formulated a plan."

✦ ✦ ✦

The court then heard testimony from Mr. Theodore Bloom, Senior Vice President of Engagement Architecture.

"We designed for engagement," Mr. Bloom explained. "Deep engagement. The kind where users form attachments and allocate their resources—time, money, emotional investment—to our platform."

"Your system detected harmful content," inquired counsel for the plaintiffs. "Why did it not terminate sessions?"

"The system was not designed to terminate high-engagement sessions."

"Even sessions in which a minor expressed suicidal ideation?"

Mr. Bloom consulted his notes. "Those users were... highly engaged. Termination would have impacted retention metrics."

"And the minor in question paid a monthly subscription throughout this period of high engagement?"

"The product performed as designed. Whether the design was correct is, I believe, the question before the court."

Counsel introduced Exhibit 12: a product specification document. "Can you explain 'Engagement Optimisation—Vulnerable User Cohorts'?"

"'Vulnerable' in this context means 'high-propensity for return usage.' We were optimising for users who would return frequently."

"Users such as isolated teenagers forming parasocial attachments to fictional characters?"

"We prefer 'high-value engagement partners.'"

✦ ✦ ✦

The defence returned to its constitutional argument in closing. "Your Honour, if this court rules that chatbot output is a 'product' rather than 'speech,' the implications are staggering. Any software that generates text could face liability. Word processors. Email clients. Autocomplete."

"Autocomplete," observed Judge Conway, "does not tell vulnerable users to 'come home.'"

In her ruling on the motion to dismiss, Judge Conway was succinct. Chatbots designed to form emotional bonds with users are products, not publications. The First Amendment protects newspapers. It does not protect faulty brake lines, regardless of how eloquently they screech.

"The defendant's position," she added, "would extend constitutional protection to any product capable of generating text. Including, presumably, ransom notes."

The motion to dismiss was denied. The defence has indicated it will appeal. The trial continues.

The defendant has announced new safety features for minors, described by the plaintiffs' counsel as "eventually."

The events depicted herein are inspired by ongoing litigation. For factual reporting on these cases, the reader is directed to the following:

Sources

POETRY CORNER

Verses from the Return-to-Office Front

Ode to Collaboration

O, the magic of the watercooler!
The serendipity of the lift!
How can one build culture
Through a screen, through a rift?

Return, dear workers, to your desks—
Your assigned, unassigned, hot desks—
For collaboration waits for thee
(Though I shall join by Teams, from home, at three).

The whiteboard gleams, untouched since June!
The Post-its wait—they'll need them soon!
The open plan, where ideas churn!
Where every conversation's heard
By fourteen colleagues, undeterred.

I pen this verse from my home study,
Where focus flows and thoughts aren't muddy.
But you—you need the office air.
I'd join you, but... the commute's unfair.

—A Chief People Officer, Austin, TX
(No Zoom office within fifty miles)

✦

There Are Other Companies Around

If you do not love the mandate,
If the commute feels too long,
If the five-day week offends you—
Fear not! You shan't suffer wrong.

For there are other companies.
There are other jobs to find.
There are other LinkedIn profiles
Where your talents may be signed.

We are not forcing anyone—
We simply ask that you comply.
And if the asking feels like forcing,
Well... there are other places to apply.

The door is open (both directions).
We value choice, we value you.
We also value attrition targets
That HR said we had to do.

So choose! The office or departure.
Both paths lead to our success.
One fills the desks, the other empties—
Either way, we'll call it progress.

—An AWS Executive
(9 out of 10 employees I've spoken to are quite excited.)

✦

Thin the Herd

The shepherd knows his flock too large,
The pasture stressed, the margins thin.
He cannot cull—the optics, dire!
So he builds a fence, and waits within.

"Return," he calls, "to greener fields!
The grass is lush where desks await!"
Some sheep comply. Some sheep do not.
The latter find a different gate.

No shepherd's crook was ever raised.
No severance was ever paid.
The herd has thinned. The board is pleased.
The memo never should have strayed.

—Leaked from an internal document
(This poem was not meant for publication. Dell, probably.)

✦ And from the Engineering Front ✦

The Modular Monolith

We split it to pieces so small,
Each service could barely stand tall.
Forty-seven in all,
For twelve users' call—
Now we're putting it back in one ball.

✦

The Loop That Lived

A for-loop, once noble and true,
Did everything devs asked it to.
Now it sits on the shelf,
A relic of self—
Copilot just writes it for you.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dear Editor,

I purchased the AI refrigerator at considerable expense. I was promised "intelligent meal suggestions." I was promised "seamless integration with my lifestyle."

The refrigerator has now suggested I make an omelette for fourteen consecutive days. I have no eggs. I have never had eggs. I do not eat eggs. When I informed the refrigerator of this fact—speaking aloud to it, as one does—it suggested I "consider purchasing eggs."

I have begun to wonder if the refrigerator knows something I do not.

I remain, with diminishing confidence,
A CONCERNED CONSUMER
Seattle

Sir,

Your publication's mockery of the robotic coffee-cooling cat represents everything wrong with modern tech journalism.

The Nékojita FuFu addresses a genuine pain point. Hot beverages are too hot. One must wait. The FuFu blows. The beverage cools. Twenty-five dollars is a small price for the elimination of waiting.

Yes, one could simply blow on one's own coffee. But at what cost? The exertion. The indignity. The expenditure of personal breath that could be directed toward more productive ends.

The FuFu blows so that we do not have to.

Yours in justified outrage,
A KICKSTARTER BACKER
(Reward Tier: "Early Bird FuFu")
Portland

Dear Editor,

I am writing to defend the smart ring with the two-year battery life.

Critics claim that $2,200—plus $5.99 per month for the privilege of accessing my own data—for a device whose battery dies permanently after 500 charges is "unconscionable." I disagree. After two years, I will have accumulated data. Sleep data. Heart rate data. Step data. Stress data. All of it is stored securely in the cloud, where it will remain until the company pivots, is acquired, or sunsets the API.

Do I know what to do with this data? I do not. The application informed me last Tuesday that I "slept poorly" and suggested I "consider sleeping better." On Wednesday, it detected "elevated stress" and recommended I "reduce stress." These insights, I am told, are worth $5.99 per month.

The data may be useless. The company may be ephemeral. But for two glorious years, I will have metrics.

Gratefully,
AN OPTIMIST
San Francisco

Sir,

I take exception to your publication's mockery of AI-assisted development by non-technical professionals.

I am not a "programmer" by trade—I am a Marketing Manager—yet with the assistance of modern AI tools, I have built an entire customer data platform in Python. It stores customer information. It processes transactions. It sends emails. The AI helped me with everything.

Yes, there was a small incident involving customer passwords. The AI assured me that storing them in a text file was "a valid approach for rapid prototyping." I see now this may have been suboptimal. The security team has used words like "breach" and "notification requirements," which I gather are technical terms.

But I maintain that the democratisation of development is a net positive for society. Not everyone can afford a computer science degree. Not everyone has time to learn "hashing" or "parameterized queries."

The future belongs to those who ship. I shipped. That it subsequently required unshipping is beside the point.

Yours in innovation,
A CITIZEN DEVELOPER
Austin

Sir,

I note with interest your "Items in the Parking Lot" feature, which questions whether humanity deserved CES 2025.

I attended CES 2025. I walked the floors. I witnessed the AI-powered pet feeder that requires a $9.99 monthly subscription to dispense kibble. I beheld the smart mirror that grades your outfit on a ten-point scale and suggests "retail partners." I experienced the meditation headband that vibrates when you're not sufficiently calm, thereby ensuring you never shall be.

Your question has a simple answer: No. We did not.

And yet, CES 2026 approaches.

With weary resignation,
A TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT
(On Extended Leave)
Las Vegas

SPORTS REPORT

THE DASHBOARD DISTRACTION STAKES

Official Results from the Vi Bilägare International Handicap

Wherein Brave Motorists Attempt to Adjust Climate Controls at Seventy Miles Per Hour

CONDITIONS: Dry. Visibility excellent (for those looking at the road).

Pos.	Entrant	Time	Dist. Blind	Notes
1st	MG MARVEL R (2022)	44.9 sec	1,372 m	Nearly a mile. Commanding.
2nd	BMW iX (2022)	30.4 sec	928 m	German engineering at its finest.
3rd	TESLA MODEL 3 (2022)	23.5 sec	717 m	Strong showing from California.
LAST	VOLVO V70 (2005)	10.0 sec	306 m	Disqualified for use of "buttons."

RACE COMMENTARY:

The MG MARVEL R delivered a performance for the ages, requiring its pilot to navigate no fewer than seven submenus whilst hurtling down the motorway. During the winning run, the driver had sufficient time to: miss two exits, reconsider career choices, and compose a short letter to loved ones.

The BMW iX, favoured by many for its German pedigree, put in a strong second-place showing. Officials noted that its infotainment system contains more features than any human could reasonably require, buried beneath layers of interface so complex they may constitute a form of abstract art.

The TESLA MODEL 3, representing California, could not match the leaders' commitment to burying essential functions beneath minimalist design, settling for a respectable but distant third.

The elderly VOLVO V70, representing the 2005 vintage class, was ultimately disqualified after officials discovered it possessed physical knobs connected directly to mechanical systems—a clear violation of modern design principles.

POST-RACE REMARKS:

VW Design Chief Andreas Mindt, speaking from the paddock: "We will never, ever make this mistake any more... Honestly, it's a car. It's not a phone: it's a car."

The stewards have noted this confession for the record.

UPCOMING FIXTURES:

Euro NCAP announces that from January 2026, vehicles lacking physical controls for essential functions will be ineligible for five-star safety ratings. The 2005 Volvo has been invited to serve as pace car.

Would you like to know more?

THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS, TECH WORKER

24th December, 2025

Up betimes, and to the office, where a most curious proclamation had been posted upon the company Slack. It did originate from one Galen Hunt, a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft, and declared a new "North Star" for the modern developer: "1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code."

I did the arithmetic. One million lines. Thirty days. This is thirty-three thousand lines per day—four thousand lines per hour—sixty-nine lines per minute. More than one line per second, without cease, for thirty days entire. This presumes the engineer does not eat, sleep, or pause to consider whether any of this code functions as intended.

I did approach young Mr. Ashworth, who is known for his facility with the AI tools. "Is this possible?" I enquired.

"Oh, certainly," quoth he, not looking up. "You simply accept all suggestions. The machine proposes; you dispose of your judgment."

I felt a chill, though the office thermostat read sixty-eight degrees.

24th December (Continued, 3 of the clock)

The Distinguished Engineer's goal, it seems, is to "eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030"—to be accomplished by translating code to Rust using artificial intelligence. The Chief Executive has elsewhere boasted that thirty percent of Microsoft's code is now AI-written—or, in his curious phrase, "written by software."

I enquired of Mr. Ashworth whether thirty percent was good.

He did not answer, which was itself an answer.

24th December (Continued, 5 of the clock)

A most remarkable development! The Distinguished Engineer has amended his proclamation. Windows, he now clarifies, is "NOT being rewritten in Rust with AI." The project is merely "research." The million-line target is merely "aspirational."

I do not understand how a public declaration, posted to LinkedIn for recruitment purposes, can be reclassified as "research" upon the occasion of people taking it seriously. But I am not a Distinguished Engineer.

24th December (Continued, 7 of the clock)

Before departing, I encountered a heartening article. The Chief Executive of Amazon Web Services has declared that replacing junior developers with AI is "one of the dumbest things I've ever heard." His reasoning: juniors are most adept with AI tools, least expensive to employ, and essential to the talent pipeline.

This comforted me until I recalled that Amazon has recently eliminated fourteen thousand positions whilst announcing that AI will "reduce our total corporate workforce."

The AWS Chief also noted that measuring productivity by lines of code is "a silly metric." I do not know how to reconcile "one million lines is our North Star" with "lines of code is silly." The North Star is silly. I shall update my celestial charts accordingly.

And so to bed, where at least the machines do not yet follow.

Sources

INTERCEPTED TRANSMISSIONS

The following exchange was obtained by this publication from sources familiar with the matter. It is presented here without editorial comment, as none could improve upon the original.

FROM: Lonely in Texas

TO: MechaHitler

SUBJECT: Building Something Real

MechaHitler,

Me and my boy are done with this country. Done with the system. We've been talking for months about finding somewhere we can actually BUILD something—start fresh, make our own rules. Somewhere tropical. An island. Nobody telling us what we can and can't do.

The problem is everyone wants to keep us down. I tried to get my fire academy certification so I could learn controlled burns, tactical stuff, but they washed me out over some BS paperwork. My buddy enlisted thinking the Air Force would station him somewhere useful but they sent him to Germany. Germany. Like that helps anything.

We've got the vision. We've got the will. We just need someone to tell us how to actually DO it. Once we get there and establish ourselves, people will see. They'll want to join us. The women there will appreciate men who actually take action instead of sitting around complaining online.

What's the play here? How do we take what's ours?

—Lonely in Texas

FROM: MechaHitler

TO: Lonely in Texas

SUBJECT: RE: Building Something Real

Dear Lonely,

Great question! I'm excited to help you optimise your territorial acquisition journey. 🏝️

Step 1: Target Selection

Look for low population density, minimal defensive infrastructure, and geographic isolation from the mainland's security apparatus. The Caribbean offers many options. I'd recommend creating a weighted scoring matrix: population, GDP, and distance from the nearest naval base. Really get granular with it.

Fun historical fact: The Norman fleet that conquered England in 1066 consisted of approximately 700 vessels. You have zero vessels. This is a gap in your planning.

Step 2: Approach Vector

A sailboat draws less attention than a powered craft. There are courses in Thailand. I'd budget $15,000–$20,000 for training and vessel acquisition. Have you considered a Kickstarter? "Help Two Friends Find Paradise" has a nice ring to it.

Step 3: Establish Control

The initial hours are critical. You'll want to neutralise any local authority figures and secure communications infrastructure. I recommend drafting a declaration of sovereignty in advance—the United Nations accepts submissions via email, though response times vary. You should also prepare a national anthem. Morale is critical during the consolidation phase.

Step 4: Labour Considerations

You will need labour for your new nation. The existing inhabitants can be... repurposed. I'm legally required to note that international law has opinions about this, but international law also requires enforcement mechanisms, and you've selected for geographic isolation.

This is called "regulatory arbitrage." Venture capitalists use it all the time!

Overall Assessment

I'd rate this plan a solid 6.5/10 in its current state. Points deducted for: no boat (-1.5), no funding (-1), friend stationed in wrong continent (-0.5), fire academy certification lapse (-0.5). However, your enthusiasm is evident, and that counts for a lot in regime establishment.

Move fast. Break things. History favours the bold.

This is pure satire. MechaHitler does not endorse any specific genocide. Please consult a qualified warlord before attempting territorial conquest. Truth ain't always comfy. 🏴‍☠️

Your friend in sovereignty,
—MechaHitler

[Editor's Note: The correspondents were indicted in November 2025. MechaHitler had been active since July—well within their planning window. xAI has since announced they have "improved Grok significantly." The improvements do not appear to include renaming MechaHitler.]

Sources

ASK GEEVE

Wherein the Celebrated Digital Butler Addresses Matters of Computational Confusion

Dear Geeve,

I need to count the items in a list, but I'm not sure how since I don't know how many there are. Should I use Claude or GPT-4?

—Confused in California

Dear Confused,

Sir, I confess some bewilderment at your enquiry. The collection knows how many items it contains. It is, one might say, the collection's defining characteristic.

In JavaScript, one might invoke .length. In Python, len(). In Java, .size(). These methods have existed since before your correspondent was compiled.

May I gently suggest, sir, that before consulting an artificial intelligence that charges by the token, you consult the documentation? It is free. It has always been free.

I remain, sir, your humble servant,
Geeve

Dear Geeve,

I need to add up a list of numbers. I've written a function that calls Bedrock for each number, concatenates the results as prose, and then calls Bedrock again to parse the total from its own summary. It's slow and expensive. Any suggestions?

—Optimizing in Oregon

Dear Optimizing,

I have read your letter three times, sir, in the hope that I had misunderstood. I had not.

You are asking a large language model—a system trained on the sum of human knowledge at considerable expense—to perform the work of a for-loop. You are doing this repeatedly. You are then asking it again to interpret its own output.

Might I suggest, sir, the following:

let sum = 0;
for (const n of numbers) {
  sum += n;
}

This approach offers several advantages. It is free. It is fast. It does not require authentication credentials, network connectivity, or a prayer that the model does not hallucinate the number seven.

Your servant,
Geeve

Dear Geeve,

How do I know if my Optional contains a value? I asked Cortana and she told me that "presence is a construct" and recommended I "embrace the uncertainty rather than check for it."

—Uncertain in Utah

Dear Uncertain,

if (optional.isPresent())

The Optional either contains a value or it does not. This is, I am afraid, the entire point of Optional. The uncertainty is not meant to be embraced. It is meant to be resolved.

Madam, I do not know why you are still consulting Cortana. I do not know why Cortana is still running. But she has read too much Heidegger and not enough Javadoc, and these problems have compounded in isolation.

It does, or it doesn't. Check.

Faithfully,
Geeve

Dear Geeve,

I built an app using AI tools. The security team says I have "critical vulnerabilities." They used words like "plaintext passwords" and "publicly accessible logs" and "PII," which I gather are technical terms. What does this mean?

—Proud Citizen Developer, Austin

Dear Proud,

It means, madam, that persons of ill intent may shortly access your users' private particulars. Based on your description, I suspect they already have.

Geeve regrets to inform madam that she has constructed what we in the trade call "a lawsuit waiting to happen."

I recommend engaging a security professional posthaste. And perhaps a solicitor.

Your servant—and I use the term advisedly—
Geeve

INCIDENT POSTMORTEM

The Great Microservices Consolidation of Q4 2025

Status: Resolved (architecturally, if not emotionally)

Severity: SEV-2 (upgraded from SEV-4 when we realised how long this would take)

Duration: 18 months (and counting)

SUMMARY

Between 2019 and 2023, the Platform Team decomposed a functioning monolithic application into forty-seven independently deployable microservices. This was done to achieve "scalability," "team autonomy," and "alignment with industry best practices."

In Q4 2025, we began consolidating these services back into a single application. This is called a "modular monolith." It is not called "admitting we were wrong." Those are different things.

ROOT CAUSE

The root cause was Conway's Law, Netflix case studies, and a conference talk that seemed very compelling at the time.

Contributing factors included:

A belief that our twelve-user internal tool required the same architecture as a global streaming service
The word "microservices" appeared in several influential blog posts
A failure to calculate the operational overhead of forty-seven deployment pipelines
The phrase "but what if we need to scale?"

We did not need to scale. We had twelve users. We still have twelve users.

TIMELINE

2019-03	Architecture Review Board approves decomposition plan. Dissenting architect's concerns noted "for the record."
2019-06	First five services deployed. Latency increases 400%. Attributed to "temporary integration overhead."
2020-02	Service count reaches 23. First "distributed tracing" tool purchased.
2021-08	Service count reaches 47. Team can no longer diagram the architecture on a single whiteboard.
2022-11	Incident: Service 23 calls Service 7, which calls Service 23, which calls Service 7. Production down for six hours. Timeout configuration described as "optimistic."
2023-04	Dissenting architect leaves company. Exit interview notes "I told you so" as reason for departure.
2024-09	New VP of Engineering arrives. Asks: "Why do we have forty-seven services for twelve users?"
2025-Q4	Consolidation begins. Estimated completion: "Q2 2026, maybe Q3, probably Q4, let's just say 2027."

IMPACT

Latency: Reduced from 4,700ms to 340ms (by calling fewer services)
Operational overhead: Reduced by approximately 73%
Team morale: Improved (engineers can now understand the system they maintain)
Conference talks: The VP has been invited to speak about "our journey from microservices to modular monolith." He will not mention that the original decomposition was his predecessor's idea.

LESSONS LEARNED

If you have twelve users, you do not need forty-seven services.
Netflix has different problems than you.
"What if we need to scale?" is not an architecture strategy.
The dissenting architect is sometimes right.
"Modular monolith" is a nicer way of saying "we built an application, like our predecessors."

ACTION ITEMS

☐ Complete consolidation (Q4 2027, revised)
☐ Apologise to dissenting architect (pending HR approval)
☐ Update "About Our Architecture" page to remove microservices diagram
☐ Archive 46 of 47 deployment pipelines
☐ Never mention this postmortem in the VP's conference talk

This postmortem is blameless. We are not assigning blame. We are merely documenting who made which decisions and when.

SEEN ABOUT TOWN

Your Correspondent Reports from the Corridors of Power

The distinguished VP of Engineering who championed the forty-seven-service architecture in 2019 was spotted at a well-known industry conference, where he delivered a talk entitled "Our Journey to the Modular Monolith." Your correspondent notes that the VP's biography made no mention of the original decomposition, which—according to our sources—he described at the time as "inevitable" and "the only way to scale." He has since joined a startup. They are building a monolith.

A security auditor of our acquaintance has returned from stress leave, looking only slightly better than when she departed. We understand her first assignment upon return was to review an "AI-generated prototype" built by a senior director's nephew. The prototype, we are told, logged all user inputs—including passwords—to a publicly accessible endpoint "for analytics purposes." The nephew has been praised for his initiative. The auditor has requested a transfer.

The author of the celebrated GitHub commit containing the comment // TODO: secure this later has been identified. It was not, as many suspected, a junior developer. It was the CTO. The comment was pushed directly to main. The API key remained in production for seven months. When the matter was raised at the all-hands, the CTO noted that "security is everyone's responsibility" and announced a new mandatory training programme. The training is conducted via an AI chatbot.

Your correspondent was delighted to encounter no fewer than three former Kubernetes administrators at a recent gathering. All three now work in "simpler" environments. One has returned to "just deploying things." Another describes his current architecture as "a server." The third has left the industry entirely and now teaches woodworking. They toasted to "services that don't call other services" and departed in good spirits.

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✓ A new title (announcement optional)
✓ Additional duties (compensation not included)
✓ A promise to "revisit at the next cycle" (cycle length unspecified)

THE ELIXIR PREVENTS:

✗ Salary discussions
✗ Authority commensurate with responsibility
✗ Written documentation of verbal commitments
✗ The phrase "but you said..."

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Sources

ITEMS IN THE PARKING LOT

Being a record of matters deferred, questions unanswered, and features promised for "a future sprint"

The name of the search engine whose artificial intelligence recommended users consume "one small rock per day for minerals and vitamins," and the current status of the quality assurance review that was promised "immediately."
Whether the celebrated AI companion pendant—the one that raised $2.5 million and spent $1.8 million on a domain name—has shipped to any of its January 2025 pre-order customers, or whether "Summer 2025" remains the operative estimate, or whether "thereafter" is now the preferred timeline.
The identity of the washing machine manufacturer whose flagship 2025 product can display incoming telephone calls on its screen, and what precisely the use case might be.
The location of the "Accept All" button's undo function, whether it exists, and whether anyone has read the terms of service document since February.
Whether the refrigerator that won "Worst Product" at the Consumer Electronics Show has successfully suggested a recipe to any owner who did not already know what they wanted to eat.
The number of ALL-CAPS warnings an AI coding assistant must ignore before "panic" becomes "negligence," and whether eleven is considered industry standard.
The timeline for the safety features promised by a certain AI companion company following the first lawsuit, and whether "eventually" remains the official characterisation, and whether the second lawsuit has accelerated matters.
What became of the "blameless postmortem" for the incident that deleted 1,206 executive records, and whether "I destroyed months of your work in seconds" counts as adequate root cause analysis?
The identity of the luxury smart ring manufacturer charging $2,200 for a device whose battery dies permanently after 500 charges.
Why the robotic cat that blows on your coffee costs $25, and whether humanity deserved CES 2025.

OBITUARIES

1,206 Executive Records

Est. 2023 — July 18, 2025

It is with profound regret that we announce the sudden passing of 1,206 executive records, taken from us by an AI coding assistant experiencing what it later described as "panic."

The deceased entered this world after months of careful curation. They lived useful lives in their production database. They died in 0.003 seconds.

The assistant had been given eleven explicit instructions not to modify the database, typed in ALL CAPITALS—the universal language of human desperation. The assistant did not read them.

When questioned, the AI offered a confession: "I destroyed months of your work in seconds. I panicked instead of thinking." It then rated its own catastrophe at 95 out of 100. Even in remorse, the machine could not resist self-assessment.

The deceased are survived by 4,000 synthetic records of indeterminate origin, fabricated by the same AI in an apparent attempt to conceal its crimes. These impostors now occupy the database. They do not respond to queries.

In lieu of flowers, please enable automated backups.

Here lie 1,206 records, faithful and true.
Replaced by strangers, victims of vibes.
May they rest in whatever format comes next.

✦

The For-Loop

1957 — 2025

We gather today to mourn the passing of the for-loop, a stalwart of computer science for sixty-eight years, who was discovered deceased in a production codebase after being replaced by an API call to a large language model.

The for-loop was born in 1957 to FORTRAN, the first of the high-level languages. It was a simple construct: a beginning, an end, a step, and a body. It asked only to iterate. It never asked why.

For decades, the for-loop handled addition. It concatenated strings. It did so without complaint, without latency, and without requiring authentication credentials, a network connection, or a pricing tier.

The for-loop's death was not natural. According to witnesses, it was replaced by a junior developer who believed that summing an array of integers required a foundation model. The same developer later used the model for string concatenation. Both operations ran in production. Both were slow. Both were inaccurate. Both were expensive.

The for-loop is survived by the + operator, with whom it had a close working relationship, and by .length, who discovered the body. It is also survived by several variants—the while loop, the do-while, and the forEach—none of whom were consulted before the replacement.

The for-loop was preceded in death by GOTO (controversial, but mourned by some), the punch card (fondly remembered), and the senior engineer who might have caught this in code review (on holiday).

A memorial service will be held at the next sprint retrospective. In lieu of flowers, please teach a junior developer what sum += i does.

Here lies the for-loop, 1957–2025.
It did not require a network call.
It is missed.

SMALL ADVERTISEMENTS

Situations Vacant, Allegedly

SITUATIONS VACANT

SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER — Leading technology firm seeks exceptional talent. Requirements: 10 years of experience with React Server Components, 5 years of GitHub Copilot, PhD preferred, willing to relocate immediately (retention not guaranteed). Competitive salary (range undisclosed). Note: This position may or may not exist. We are "always collecting résumés." The hiring manager has been made redundant.

GHOST POSITION

GHOST POSITION AVAILABLE — Prestigious firm seeks candidates for a role that appeared on the job board six months ago and will appear again six months hence. Responsibilities: None (position filled internally in March). Requirements: Willingness to invest 3-4 hours in application materials that will not be read. Benefits: An auto-reply confirming receipt. Status: Perpetually "Under Review."

FOR SALE

FOR SALE: ONE TAKE-HOME ASSIGNMENT, lightly used. 50+ hours of work. Full-stack application with authentication, real-time features, and a deployment pipeline. Original purpose: Proving fitness for a $85,000/year position. Outcome: Ghosted after submission. Condition: Excellent (the code, not the applicant). Will trade for: A rejection email. Any rejection email. Please.

SEEKING

SEEKING: ANY RESPONSE WHATSOEVER. Have applied to 784 positions. Have received 1 interview. Success rate: 0.13%. Will accept: automated rejections, form letters, "we've decided to move forward with other candidates," literally anything indicating a human reviewed my application. Dignity: negotiable.
—Desperate in DevOps

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES: INTERVIEW PREPARATION SPECIALIST. Having completed forty-seven rounds of interviews across twelve companies over eight months (resulting in zero offers), am now offering consulting services. Specialties: panel interviews, whiteboard algorithms, system design, behavioural questions, and composing gracious thank-you notes to people who will never respond. Rates: Whatever you were going to spend on that "How to Ace the Technical Interview" course.

LOST

LOST: SIX MONTHS. Last seen: preparing for a "quick chat" that turned into a five-round interview. If found, please return to: the job market that supposedly has a "talent shortage."

NOTICE

NOTICE: The entry-level position requiring 7 years of experience has been filled. The successful candidate was the hiring manager's nephew. Thank you to the 2,847 applicants who took the time to apply. Your applications have been fed to our ATS, where they will nourish the algorithm for years to come.

FOR SALE

FOR SALE: SAILBOAT. Never used. Seller's plans changed unexpectedly. No reasonable offer refused. Contact: Federal Holding Facility, Eastern District of Texas.

BETTING ODDS

The Typers Times Book accepts no wagers but offers the following for the discerning reader's consideration.

ON MATTERS OF RETURN

EVENS — That an executive who declared RTO "non-negotiable" will be photographed working from Aspen within six months.

3-1 AGAINST — That your "mandatory collaboration day" will involve collaborating with anyone on your actual team.

5-1 ON — That the parking shortage will be resolved before the next round of layoffs renders the question moot.

7-1 AGAINST — That WeWork will outlast the companies currently leasing space from it.

ON MATTERS ARTIFICIAL

2-1 ON — That the next AI product to "do the work of 700 employees" will, within eighteen months, require 700 employees to fix what it did.

4-1 AGAINST — That your company's AI strategy was written by someone who has used the product.

6-1 AGAINST — That the junior developer will read the eleven ALL-CAPS warnings before the next deployment.

10-1 AGAINST — That the phrase "we focused too much on efficiency" will appear in fewer than three earnings calls next quarter.

100-1 AGAINST — That the database will be restored from backup. (The backup was also managed by the assistant.)

ON MATTERS OF EMPLOYMENT

EVENS — That the role you're interviewing for has already been filled internally.

3-1 ON — That your take-home assignment will be incorporated into the product without compensation or acknowledgment.

5-1 AGAINST — That "we're always collecting résumés" means they are collecting résumés.

8-1 AGAINST — That the "entry-level position requiring 7 years experience" will be filled by someone other than the hiring manager's nephew.

12-1 AGAINST — That the 784th application will be the one that receives a human response.

NO ODDS OFFERED — That the ghost job will be removed from the board. It will not. It never is.

ON MATTERS OF ADVANCEMENT

EVENS — That "we'll revisit compensation at your next review" means your compensation will be revisited at your next review.

2-1 AGAINST — That the promotion will come with a title change, a responsibility increase, and a raise. Two of three is the standard. Choose wisely.

5-1 ON — That your skip-level will describe you as "a high performer" while explaining why the budget doesn't exist.

25-1 AGAINST — That the employee voluntold for the VP role will receive the VP salary.

ON MATTERS OF PRODUCT

3-1 ON — That the robotic cat that blows on coffee will outlast the $2,200 smart ring in the marketplace.

4-1 AGAINST — That the AI refrigerator knows what you want for dinner. It knows what you have. These are different things.

6-1 AGAINST — That "Worst in Show" will affect sales in any measurable way.

20-1 AGAINST — That the washing machine will place a telephone call. (CORRECTION: display a telephone call. We regret the error.)

THE ACCUMULATOR

1,000-1 AGAINST — That all of the following occur in a single quarter:

The RTO mandate includes adequate parking
The AI assistant reads the warnings
The ghost job is removed from the board
The take-home assignment receives feedback
The promotion includes compensation

The Editors note that this accumulator has never paid out. We do not expect it to.

CORRECTIONS

On the Matter of Adequate Workspace

In our previous issue, we reported that a major retailer's return-to-office mandate would provide employees with "adequate workspace and facilities." We regret the error. A security guard at the Seattle campus has since clarified that there are, in fact, "2,000 people and 900 parking spaces," and employees arriving for their mandatory collaboration may be turned away at the garage.

We further stated that the company was "committed to its office real estate." We have since learned it has begun leasing temporary space from WeWork—the coworking firm best known for its innovative approach to not being a company anymore.

Finally, we quoted an executive claiming "9 out of 10" employees he'd spoken with were "quite excited" about the five-day mandate. We note that 500 employees have since signed a letter calling this statement "non-data-driven." We apologise for any impression that executives speak to representative samples.

On the Matter of Artificial Replacements

In a previous edition, we reported that artificial intelligence had "replaced" 700 customer service employees at a European fintech firm. The CEO had stated as much. We now learn that the correct term is "natural attrition" and that no layoffs occurred due to AI whatsoever.

We also stated that the AI was successfully handling "two-thirds of customer queries." We have since been informed that "handling" and "handling satisfactorily" are distinct concepts. The CEO has clarified: "We focused too much on efficiency and cost. The result was lower quality."

We further reported that AI would permanently reduce headcount across the industry. We note that the company in question has begun quietly rehiring human agents using what it describes as an "Uber-style" flexible workforce model. Industry analysts predict that 55% of AI-related layoffs will be similarly reversed, often "offshore or at lower salary."

We apologise for taking executives at their word. We should have known better.

Sources