TeochewThunder: 2026

Tuesday, 22 September 2026

Web Tutorial: The List View (Part 1/4)

List views are a classic way to present data. I used to work with them in PHP, back in the 2010s. As my experience accumulated, I got a better sense of what worked, what didn't, what scaled, and what sounded like a good idea and just wasn't in practice.

With the help of jQuery, I'd like to walk you through some of the regular features of a list view that I worked over and over with.

To facilitate this Web Tutorial, I have also created a database of sample records in Oracle APEX and created an API endpoint to retrieve those records. It's a collection of records from a hypothetical library, with imaginary titles, authors and people. The categories, though, are real - they're from BISAC.

Here's what a sample of the data looks like in CSV. At least, this was what I imported into Oracle APEX. In this Web Tutorial, we wont be dealing with the API endpoint creation at all - we'll just call the endpoint and grab the data.

Title,Category,Author,Name,BorrowDate,ReturnBy,ReturnDate,Fine
Help my program just crashed,Computers,RJ Neville,Olive Yao,2025-03-01,2025-04-01,2025-03-22,0
The Saraville Murders,True Crime,Lillian Yang,Faith Wentz,2025-03-01,2025-05-01,2025-04-21,0
The Moon's Reflection in the Padi Fields,Fiction,Rudy Ismail,Charles Wong,2025-03-01,2025-04-01,2025-03-30,0
It's Now or Never!,Young Adult Fiction,Kara Leow,Lin Yiheng,2025-03-01,2025-04-01,2025-04-02,0.1
Dreaded Doberman: Man's Best Friend... or are they?,Pets,Selina Perez,Teo Teng Hwee,2025-03-01,202

...

Here's a sample API endpoint for these records. In this URL, "2026" and "3" are the year and month that the books were borrowed. Do note that we're not doing security for this - it's a purely display feature.

https://oracleapex.com/ords/teochewthunder/borrowing/2026/3

Here's some boilerplate HTML. We want to include jQuery, and the starting object, lv. In the styles, the outline of divs has been set to red. This will help us with layout until we're ready to turn it off.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>List View</title>

    <style>
      div {outline: 1px solid red;}
    </style>

    <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.7.1.min.js"></script>

    <script>
      const lv =
      {

};
    </script>
  </head>

  <body>

  </body>
</html>

In the body tag, we have a div tag with the id listContent. Within it, here are four different divs with the ids listFilters, listHeader, listRows and listPaging. The first and last div tag have a hr tag within. You may not think much about it now, but that horizontal rule will be a Godsend later.

listContent is a thousand pixels wide, with the height property set to auto. We center it using the margin property, and set a font. The other divs within will just inherit their parent's width.

Now for every column we'll have, we add a div...

...and insert a button with that column's name in it. Note that there is one more button at the beginning - that is just a column header for serialization of records. Note that each of these buttons, save the first one, has an unique id.

<div id="listHeader">
  <div><button>No</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortTitle">Title</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortAuthor">Author</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortCategory">Category</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortName">Name</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortBorrowdate">Borrowed</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortReturnBy">Return By</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortReturndate">Returned</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortFine">Fine</button></div>
</div>

Now you see a bunch of buttons. These are supposed to be clickable headers.

So let's style them accordingly. Each of these buttons is styled using the sortButton CSS class. Only the first button uses noButton.

<div id="listHeader">
  <div><button class="noButton">No</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortTitle" class="sortButton">Title</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortAuthor" class="sortButton">Author</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortCategory" class="sortButton">Category</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortName" class="sortButton">Name</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortBorrowdate" class="sortButton">Borrowed</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortReturnBy" class="sortButton">Return By</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortReturndate" class="sortButton">Returned</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortFine" class="sortButton">Fine</button></div>
</div>

Here's the styling. Visually, sortButton and noButton share the same visuals. No background or border - it just looks like black text wth a fixed height.

#listPaging
{
  width: 100%;
}

.sortButton, .noButton
{
  width: auto;
  padding: 0px;
  height: 1.5em;
  font-size: 1em;
  background: transparent;
  border: none;
  color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
}

Now they no longer look like buttons.

Time for a bit of layout magic. Add the CSS class listViewColumns to the listHeader div.

<div id="listHeader" class="listViewColumns">
  <div><button class="noButton">No</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortTitle" class="sortButton">Title</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortAuthor" class="sortButton">Author</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortCategory" class="sortButton">Category</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortName" class="sortButton">Name</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortBorrowdate" class="sortButton">Borrowed</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortReturnBy" class="sortButton">Return By</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortReturndate" class="sortButton">Returned</button></div>
  <div><button id="btnSortFine" class="sortButton">Fine</button></div>
</div>

In the CSS, we set the display property to grid, and then specify the widths of 8 columns, with a 5 pixel gap between columns.

#listRows
{
  width: 100%
}

.listViewColumns
{
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: 1fr 10fr 6fr 6fr 6fr 5fr 5fr 5fr 3fr;
  gap: 5px;
}

#listPaging
{
  width: 100%;
}

There, it's in one line now.

Time for JavaScript!

Now we're going to populate those rows. We'll first need to flesh out the lv object. We first have some properties.
- pageSize: How many records are shown on a page at any time. We'll set it at 50 as a default, but this won't affect anything right now.
- pageNo: The current page being shown. The default is 1. The value may change as pages are gone through.
- sort: An array which we'll use to carry out sorting later. Leave it empty for now.
- search: A string that will be used for searching values. Leave empty for now.
- records: An array of the current records being worked on. Leave it empty for now.

The next two are methods which will be relevant immediately. getRecords() will populate the records array. By default, it will fetch records in March 2025, so its two parameters, year and month, are set accordingly. filterRecords() will display the contents of records.

In getRecords(), we have a jQuery AJAX call.

getRecords: function(year = 2025, month = 3)
{
  $.ajax(
    {

    }
  );
},

In it, we specify the URL and that it will be a GET operation. The URL is basically a template string that incorporates year and month.

getRecords: function(year = 2025, month = 3)
{
  $.ajax(
    {
      url: `https://oracleapex.com/ords/teochewthunder/borrowing/${year}/${month}`,
      method: "GET",
      success: function(data)
      {

      },
      error: function (xhr, status, error)
      {
        console.log(xhr);
      }
    }
  );
},

On success, we set records to the items array of data, and then run the filterRecords() method.

getRecords: function(year = 2025, month = 3)
{
  $.ajax(
    {
      url: `https://oracleapex.com/ords/teochewthunder/borrowing/${year}/${month}`,
      method: "GET",
      success: function(data)
      {
        lv.records = data.items;
        lv.filterRecords();

        return;
      },
      error: function (xhr, status, error)
      {
        console.log(xhr);
      }
    }
  );
},

We begin the method with a return statement at the end. At the start, we clear the contents of the listRows div. Then we declare filtered. It's an independent copy of records, using the structuredClone() function.

filterRecords: function()
{
  $("#listRows").html("");

  var filtered = structuredClone(this.records);

  return;
},

Then we iterate through filtered using a forEach() loop. x is the element and i is the index. If you're wondering why the array's named "filtered", that's because later on we'll be putting it through filtering.

filterRecords: function()
{
  $("#listRows").html("");

  var filtered = structuredClone(this.records);

  filtered.forEach(
    (x, i) =>
    {

    }
  );

  return;
},

Here, we create a div element, row. It will be styled using the CSS class listViewColumns, which means it will be a single-line grid just like the header! Then we append row to listRows.

But before that, we declare col. Repeatedly, we define col as a div element, use the text() method to insert that element's data, and append it to row. We begin with the serial number, which is just 1 added to i so we don't have the 0 value at the start. The 0 would make sense to programmers. To everyone else, not so much.

filterRecords: function()
{
  $("#listRows").html("");

  var filtered = structuredClone(this.records);

  filtered.forEach(
    (x, i) =>
    {
      const row = $("<div></div>");
      row.addClass("listViewColumns");

      let col;
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(i + 1);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.title);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.author);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.category);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.name);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.borrowdate);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.returnby);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.returndate);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.fine);
      row.append(col);
      $("#listRows").append(row);
    }
  );

  return;
},

Note that for all numerical and date data, we'll also style col using the figure CSS class.

filterRecords: function()
{
  $("#listRows").html("");

  var filtered = structuredClone(this.records);

  filtered.forEach(
    (x, i) =>
    {
      const row = $("<div></div>");
      row.addClass("listViewColumns");

      let col;
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(i + 1);
      col.addClass("figure");
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.title);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.author);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.category);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.name);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.borrowdate);
      col.addClass("figure");
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.returnby);
      col.addClass("figure");
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.returndate);
      col.addClass("figure");
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.fine);
      col.addClass("figure");
      row.append(col);
      $("#listRows").append(row);
    }
  );

  return;
},

figure is just setting the text to align right.

#listPaging
{
  width: 100%;
}

.figure
{
  text-align: right;
}

.sortButton, .noButton
{
  width: auto;
  padding: 0px;
  height: 1.5em;
  font-size: 1em;
  background: transparent;
  border: none;
  color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
}

After the lv object, set getRecords() to run as soon as the document loads.

          col.text(x.fine);
          col.addClass("figure");
          row.append(col);
          $("#listRows").append(row);
        }
      );

      return;
    }
  };

  $(document).ready(
    function()
    {
      lv.getRecords();
    }
  );
</script>

You see here, we have the records! But the dates look weird...

No matter. Let's run all the date values through the prettifyDate() method.

filterRecords: function()
{
  $("#listRows").html("");

  var filtered = structuredClone(this.records);

  filtered.forEach(
    (x, i) =>
    {
      const row = $("<div></div>");
      row.addClass("listViewColumns");

      let col;
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(i + 1);
      col.addClass("figure");
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.title);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.author);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.category);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.name);
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(this.prettifyDate(x.borrowdate));
      col.addClass("figure");
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(this.prettifyDate(x.returnby));
      col.addClass("figure");
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(this.prettifyDate(x.returndate));
      col.addClass("figure");
      row.append(col);
      col = $("<div></div>");
      col.text(x.fine);
      col.addClass("figure");
      row.append(col);
      $("#listRows").append(row);
    }
  );

  return;
},

Create this method. It basically just cleans up the value by using the split() method to divide up the string by the "T" character, and then returning only the first element of the resultant array.

          col.text(x.fine);
          col.addClass("figure");
          row.append(col);
          $("#listRows").append(row);
        }
      );

      return;
    },
    prettifyDate: function(dt)
    {
      var arr = dt.split("T");
      return arr[0];
    }
  };
</script>

Now it's looking much better.

It's a small thing, but let's get this out of the way. Create CSS class shade. Its background color is a very translucent black.

.listViewColumns
{
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: 1fr 10fr 6fr 6fr 6fr 5fr 5fr 5fr 3fr;
  gap: 5px;
}

.shade
{
  background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);
}

#listPaging
{
  width: 100%;
}

Then in filterRecords(), when styling row using the listViewColumns CSS class, we check to see if index i is even, using the modulus operator. If so, also style row using shade.

const row = $("<div></div>");
row.addClass("listViewColumns");
if (i % 2 == 0) row.addClass("shade");

let col;
col = $("<div></div>");
col.text(i + 1);
col.addClass("figure");
row.append(col);

Saturday, 19 September 2026

Five Funny Tech CEO Nicknames

Insults. Perjoratives. Pet names. Nicknames. I love these, especially the really witty ones. Today let's go through some of my favorite nicknames for tech CEOs. These are notable not just because they're (arguably) good puns, but because they actually describe perception of that person. Whether or not I personally agree (and make no mistake, there are instances where I'm enthusiastically on board), there's no running away from the fact that these are pretty awesome nicknames.

Also, these images were generated by Meta AI, because... well, what else is it good for, really?

1. Scam Altman

This is the CEO of OpenAI. And why, one might ask, is this fine fellow called "Scam"? "Sham" works just as well, but I have a certain fondness for the former because it was coined by no other than Elon Musk, who, quite fittingly, is the next entry after this one.

Slimy AF.

Fairly or otherwise, Altman is widely associated with AI hype and overpromising. You say "Snake Oil Salesman" and immediately I see this guy's face in my mind.

To be fair, tech isn't just tech. A commercial angle has to exist in order to justify its existence. So having a "salesy" tech CEO isn't necessarily such an outrageous thing. It's more Altman's constant overpromising of what OpenAI can deliver, that irks people. I mean, how many times do people have to hear from this guy's mouth that AGI is coming in a few months?

2. Phony Stark

Not an instant classic unless you're also a Marvel fan. But if you are, you'd be familiar with Elon Musk's predilection for styling himself after a certain fictional genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist.

SpaceX-hole.

Too bad all he's got is the money. The requisite charm and wit to be an actual Tony Stark is squarely in the minds of his fevered fanboys.

And let's not act like Musk didn't do his darnedest to earn that nickname. His constant cringy posturing on X, that insufferable grin and the superfluous attention-seeking antics (because if you're already the richest person on this planet, why do you need that attention?) completely nail the performative tech CEO stereotype.

Hey, if the shoe fits...

3. Zuckerborg

This made me spit-take, because both the target and the reason for the name, are instantly recognizable.

Cringy robot.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has long been famous for looking robotic. Which is probably unfair because he talks pretty naturally.

It all started during the Cambridge Analytica debacle, where he showed up looking less lively than a wax replica. It's almost no exaggeration to say that an entire generation was brought up on memes of Zuckerberg looking like a, well, Zuckerborg.

4. Jeff Beelzebos

Jeff Bezos, owner of tech giant Amazon, is conflated with the Devil for good reason. Which makes this one pretty clever.

Modern-day slave-owner.

Bezos is infamous for Amazon's widely-criticized treatment of their warehouse workers, said to border on the inhumane. Timed bathroom breaks, unreasonable work quotas, low wages and unsafe working environments - these issues have been mostly discussed and dissected by the general public.

Come on now, if this is what you're known for in addition to being insanely rich, why wouldn't people associate you with Beelzebub?

5. Tim Crook

I'll be honest - I have no idea why former Apple CEO Tim Cook is seen as so unethical as to warrant this nickname. I looked it up. Apparently, violating antitrust conventions and using ~~child~~ cheap labor in China. Basically, typical big-company CEO shit.

Bad guy?

I get why these would make him unpopular. Just not sure this makes him a crook. Did this guy actually break any laws? Maybe I'm the problem and I should stop interchanging the terms "crook" and "criminal".

But hey, if we're just looking for good witty nicknames, this one surely qualifies.

What's in a nickname?

There were some other options which I left out precisely because they're so obvious. I mean - calling Jeff Bezos, "Bozos". Or Mark Zuckerberg, "Zuckface". Really?! That's not witty, that's just juvenile. There's a difference.

Sticks and stones may break my bones...
T___T

Monday, 14 September 2026

Artificial Intelligence and Its Effect on Entry-level Hiring

Artificial Intelligence, despite not being fully-formed, is no longer merely threatening to shake up the labor market. By most accounts, it has already happened. Even if one takes "AI-washing" (where companies use AI disruption as a convenient scapegoat rather than a genuine reason for layoffs) into account, the fact of the matter is that two classes of tech workers are currently facing extinction.

The first are the leetcoders or hackathoners, who have spent their entire careers training to be the fastest code typers and problem-solvers possible. Entire movies have been made about these rockstars... and now they're finding out that they'll never produce code faster than a machine. I'm trying to find it in my heart to produce some sympathy, but honestly they should have seen this coming. This industry automates so many things; why not coding?

Very screwed.

And if your entire value proposition has been speed, I don't know what to tell ya, son, you're more screwed than a plank at a carpenter's convention.

The second class, of course, are entry-level tech workers.

Entry-level tech workers

The moment LLMs started being capable of churning out subpar code at light speed, at a fraction of the cost of hiring ~~cheap slave labor~~ fresh-faced geeks, the position of these tech workers was in jeopardy. And the LLMs aren't even all that subpar at the time of this writing. I have significantly more sympathy for this demographic than for the leetcoders, due to the simple fact that they never asked for any of this. They didn't make the conscious career mistake of maximizing for typing speed. They learned the fundamentals and did the work, but their careers look dead in the water before even being given a chance to pay their dues.

The bigger concern - one that's already been repeated ad nauseam, but bears repeating nonetheless - is that if entry-level workers aren't even given the opportunity to level up, they aren't going to grow into senior-level workers. And the senior-level workers won't be around forever.

Space to grow.

Entry-level workers should be given the space to make mistakes and grow. Already, "civilians" with LLMs are finding out that being able to build "working software" isn't quite the same thing as a qualified software developer producing something with a baseline level of engineering rigor. For example, I've come across civilian-produced apps that lack Cross-site Request Forgery protection or even expose database ids right in the URL. To provide non-technical readers the proper context, CSRF hasn't been in the OWASP Top Ten for years, but that doesn't mean it's no longer a threat - it just means that enough people have guarded against it that it's no longer a popular successful attack vector. Thus, this represents a step back. Civilians and entry-level workers alike, make mistakes; but unlike civilians, entry-level workers are professionally interested in improving.

Think about it - why is someone like me occupying this niche in the food chain? Because I'm so damn special? There is nothing special about me. I started life as a stupid kid like most of you schmucks reading this, and figured my way out over time. I spent years making mistakes and learning from them, and learning the right questions to ask. I have the scars that neither the entry-level tech worker or the non-tech worker do. More importantly, I was allowed to make those mistakes, in addition to performing the countless (entry-level, often repetitive) tasks that LLMs can now do... but precisely due to having developed that muscle memory, I'm now qualified to validate the LLM's output. If entry-level workers don't have even these tasks, how else will they grow?

Employers will say that it's not their responsibility to train the next generation of developers. Their primary responsibility is to their organizations. That's completely fair.

Who's the bad guy in this story, then?

Well, it's not AI. AI exists, but AI is not the one making the decision not to hire young developers. AI merely makes that decision more of a no-brainer.

It would be easy to paint employers as the bad guys here. Lazy too, and that's why I'm not going to do it.

Sure, they're the ones opting to adopt AI at the expense of entry-level (and even more senior) workers... but it's mostly in response to what their competitors are doing. Some of these employers don't have the luxury of thinking ten years into the future and investing in youth now. They're in the position where they know it's a bad idea, and they have to go ahead anyway. Shit, even some giants in Silicon Valley have to make moves that mirror the competition; what chance do the rest have, really?

The bad guy.

No one is the bad guy. It's just evolution. Insisting there has to be a bad guy is like calling the meteor that deleted all the dinosaurs way back then, the villain.

From where I sit, LLMs are the latest in a long line of evolutions in tech history. Significant? Of course. World-shattering? Whose world, exactly? People like me are on our way out. We don't exactly have much skin in the game.

Crap advice

In these times of uncertainty, the only certainty there's to be found seems to be from the voices of older workers, with a great deal of confidence as to how these new treacherous waters should be navigated. Toughen up. Pivot. Find your spine. Work hard and grow your network.

Excuse the fuck out of me. Toughen up? That's like telling people to learn to swim when a tsunami is crashing onto the beach. Sound advice under most circumstances, but useless for immediate survival.

Learn to swim!

One of the things I really can't stand about older tech workers like myself, or even just older workers my age in general, is that they seem to think that their age makes them intrinsically superior to the younger generation. Don't get me wrong; older and experienced workers come with a good deal of advantages, but it doesn't make us automatically qualified to advise the next generation on how to conduct their careers.

I mean, do you have experience as a young adult trying to find work? Sure. Do you have experience as an older worker trying to find work in 2026? Maybe. Do you know what it's like to be a young adult, trying to find work in 2026? No, pal, you don't fucking know. Obviously, you can't have firsthand experience. And unless you shut your mouth and listen more, you're not likely to have secondhand experience either.

Also, consider this: whatever know-how you may have accumulated over your years of experience has now been commoditized with a correctly-worded prompt. Knowing the right questions to ask is a whole other matter, of course. In fact, that is possibly the only thing separating you from the tech cosplayers with their LLMs pretending that they're the equivalent of fully-trained engineers (some of whom might actually even believe it, poor bastards). But at some point, these young tech workers are going to figure out the right questions to ask. They'll have your know-how, but they have youthful energy and enthusiasm. You have high cholesterol levels and creaking knees. Do the math.

What lies in store? Damn if I know.

I wouldn't want to be a young tech worker in 2026. Not only is the ground shaky, you've got people with the sheer audacity to tell you what you should be doing, in an arena they haven't fought in before. An unenviable position.

I have no answers, not even bad ones. If I did, people would be paying me for my opinion, not reading it for free on this blog.

Have an AI-dealistic day!
T___T

Tuesday, 8 September 2026

With Great Functionality Comes Great Legal Responsibility

It's unclear to me how many of you were actually old enough to use the internet back in the late 90s, but if you were, you might remember this charming little search engine called Ask Jeeves. It had a friendly cartoon butler, Jeeves, ask you what you wanted, and delivered you links, with a witty quip or two. It wasn't extremely powerful, but boy did it have personality!

Good old Jeeves.

Good old Jeeves has been retired for the last couple decades, but Google saw fit to try something in the same vein.

Google's version

It used to be that when you searched for something, Google would act like a normal search engine and give you a series of links to what you searched for. At most, it might suggest that you had mistyped your search, or aggressively promote content that people had paid them money to promote.

Relatively harmless run-of-the-mill stuff, as it were.

Then they started giving us an AI Overview, where an LLM would summarize the results of the search without you needing to visit those sites personally and draw your own conclusions. Which the site owners, understandably, weren't too thrilled at due to the decreased user traffic.

Google summary
on a platter.

At some point, the LLM-generated summary would even appear on top of all other searches (sort of like Jeeves serving you information on his silver platter) giving users very little incentive to do anything other than read that convenient summary. And that's where the trouble began.

In Munich, a regional German court took Google to task over two cases where the AI overview had gone wrong, with disastrous results. Apparently some publishing companies had been erroneously tied to scams and shady business practices due to a hallucination in the LLM. Not something completely unheard of, to be fair.

Google argued that they had explicitly stated that AI overviews could be wrong, they had included the original links, and users were able to click on those links for verification of the AI overview. The court tore that apart with the assertion that very few people ever did (kind of like reading a EULA and then clicking the "I have read the Terms and conditions" checkbox at the end) and that AI Overviews constituted Google's own content which it was legally liable for.

I'll concede that Google's AI Overviews are largely directionally correct, and the odd hallucinations are the exceptions that prove the rule. Unfortunately, due to Google's massive scale and reach, even a 0.1% chance of something going wrong represents a really bad day at the office for an unacceptable number of people.

A case I was reminded of...

Back in the day, Social Media platforms like Facebook and TikTok were being raked over the coals legally for misinformation of users. It's not the exact same case, but there are interesting similarities.

These platforms argued that they were mere content-displaying platforms and could not be held to the same standards as publications. However, the unfortunate fact was that they were implementing algorithms that largely dictated what users saw first. As long as they were doing this, the courts argued, they were effectively publications in their own right.

TikTok as a publication?

That does make sense. After all, don't publications also put their most compelling stories on the front page?

How are these cases similar, though? Well, in the original form of the services, all these companies did was, as claimed, display content provided by other parties. It was the value-added service by the companies themselves, which put them at legal risk. Also worth noting is, in both these cases, the offending mechanism were the default states. Meaning, they weren't configurations that the users could opt into. Therefore, the argument can't be made that "the users chose this", because they quite literally didn't.

Conclusion

User consent factors quite heavily into these lawsuits. It's often not enough to serve users something and then belatedly seek permission to do so. I could be wrong, but I suspect that none of this legal action would have happened if Google had gone with the classic display and only served the AI-enhanced version upon request.

Talk about courting trouble!
T___T

Saturday, 5 September 2026

Great Expectations and how to manage them, redux

Almost exactly a year ago, I spoke about great expectations, and managing them. The examples I provided were in a professional context. Often, however, the most relatable examples aren't professional, but personal.

It was 2024. I had just moved house, and that was another big item off my list. Actually, that was the final big item off my list. I went back to the WhatsApp groups that I had muted over the past year so I could concentrate on doing my thing, and found that in one of those groups, only a handful of them were left. Which was weird because I distinctly recalled them being close friends. What had happened in all the time I'd been minding my own business?

Spilling the tea.

Now that I had (relatively) more time on my hands, I made it a point to find out. Reaching out to those who were no longer part of the group, we met up for food and coffee, and with each of them, spoke at length about all the drama that had transpired during my absence.

The deets, sort of

Before I begin, let's get one thing out of the way. Aside from certain facts, everyone's view of the entire thing diverged in some wild way or other. And I have no reason to suspect that any of them was outright lying to me - after all, it's not like my opinion of them affected anything at all. Like I always say, no one is the villain in their own story. Not even the villains. Very few people have the honesty or humility to think of themselves as the bad guy.

Anyway...

One friend had put another friend up at his place, rent-free, when she was in need a few years ago. He complained to me that she was a nightmare - leaving the airconditioning on and racking up huge bills, not doing the housework, and so on. And I'm not saying that his complaints were illegitimate - if someone's living at your place for free, they should be considerate about racking up huge electricity bills and cleaning up after themselves.

At the same time, though, what the hell was this guy thinking? Why put himself in this position in the first place?

Look, being friends is one thing. But we all need to be conscious of the flaws of others (and ourselves, while we're at it) even if - especially if - these people are your friends. And consider the distance between you and those people carefully.

...your friends are my friends,
and my friends are
your friends...

Distance is healthy.

I'll be the first to admit that I can be an asshole with severe personality flaws. At the same time, I'm not putting anyone in a position where they have to put up with those flaws daily. (Except Mrs TeochewThunder... sucks to be her, I guess.) I recognize that it is far easier for people to stay friends with me if there's a healthy distance between us. My friends constantly annoy me by giving me unsolicited (and worse, ~~garbage~~ unqualified) advice, self-righteously pontificating about ridiculous causes I couldn't give less of a shit about, projecting their insecurities onto me... and I'm sure I annoy them in equal measure in a myriad of ways.

However, with distance, and freedom from expectations, we're all afforded the space to be ourselves without getting in anyone's way.

The lesser the distance is, the greater expectations become. In a way, this makes perfect sense. You wouldn't for example, feel betrayed by someone who wasn't a friend because you would have zero expectations of that person. You would never accuse a total stranger of "selling you out", because that is a deeply personal thing, and personal is the last thing you would associate with a stranger. If you were in a pinch, you would turn to friends or relatives for help, especially those who'd helped you before. It's human nature.

I never put my friends in a position where they can let me down. In that sense, I expect them to let me down given half a chance, so I don't give them the opportunity.

What all this means

Expectations were unrealistic.

Remember I said before, employers sometimes have unrealistic expectations? That they hire you to do one thing, but out of the blue they suddenly decide that they need you for some unrelated task? And then have the sheer audacity to be outraged when you don't magically become good at that unrelated task just because they expect you to be?

For example, if you were hired to be a software developer but your employer needed a lightbulb changed and decided you were the person for the job. Because there's probably this line in your employment contract that says your duties aren't limited to those stated, and that your employer can decide if there are new duties they can add. Or some bullshit like that.

And then when you ended up breaking the lightbulb, they acted like you just killed their entire family.

Oops!

Well, that's because there are their expectations, and then there is reality. And sometimes they just don't meet. If you hire someone to develop software and but ask them to screw in lightbulbs instead, and they end up breaking the lightbulb, whose fault is it, really? If a screwdriver got damaged because you tried to use it like a hammer, whose fault is it? Yours. Don't look elsewhere. You're the idiot in this story.

My buddy had expectations of our mutual friend, but she just wasn't the person he wanted her to be. As reasonable as he thought those expectations were, perhaps the reality is that she's a dog that shits everywhere it pleases.

You meet people where they are, and stop trying to change them.

Permission to be Imperfect

Some say my standards are too low. I disagree. In fact, my standards, both for myself and others, are ridiculously high. But my expectations aren't. The problem isn't standards. The problem is that I think I'm better than everyone else. None of you reading this will ever be half as awesome as I think myself to be.

See, I have standards that I strive to live up to. But I often fail because, as mentioned before, my standards are high to an absurd degree. Recognizing that I'm only human, I often forgive myself for that failure and try to do better. I expect to fail because I'm not perfect and I've made my peace with that. But if I'm not perfect, and I still consider myself better than the rest of you, it would be monstrously unfair of me to expect better from everyone else. If I'm not perfect, nobody has any business being perfect.

A flawless diamond.

Therefore, you are all excused for being imperfect. His Teochewness has decreed it.

The only time one can expect perfection is when writing a program. And even then, unless it's overly simple, it can only be perfect to a point. The more moving parts a programmer introduces into any given system, the greater the likelihood that the system will break in an extreme use case.

Guess what else is full of moving parts? Human beings.

People expect software to be perfect given that it has no feelings and that it's basically ones and zeroes. What they forget is that software is made by imperfect human beings. Even if, in the future, software is created by Artificial Intelligence, don't forget where AI learned all that from - imperfect human beings.

Oh wow, look at that. I managed to insert a rant about AI in here. Way to go, old man.

The Expectant Conclusion

Know when to stop. That's a lesson that can be applied to almost everything in life. Where friends are concerned, it's not a matter of "the closer the better". Understand that there is such a thing as too close, because people suck.

In relation to the above, understand when expectations are being unreasonably raised. Every time you declare that someone's your bro and you'll take a bullet for him, you raise expectations that you'll do so when the occasion arises. Every time someone asks for a favor and you oblige, you raise expectations that you'll help again when needed. You have to think about whether or not you can afford to raise those expectations. Remember previously I told you that how people treat you is a matter of how you train them to treat you? Well, start training others... and yourself. Establish that distance. Enforce those boundaries.

And yes... temper those expectations.

Permission to suck, granted!
T___T

Tuesday, 1 September 2026

A Baffling Encounter with a Tech Poseur

Social Media has never held all that much attraction for me. At some point, the novelty of interacting with people online turns into the drudgery of interacting with people, period. It was mid 2022 when this random encounter happened on the Clubhouse app, with some dude from Canada.

I introduced myself as a software developer, which seemed to signal to this fella that I needed to be challenged. He asked what I knew about Kubernetes, and when I honestly answered "not a lot", he then openly questioned how I could call myself a software developer and followed up by asking what I knew about SQL.

Again, seeing no reason to even attempt to impress a total stranger online, I said I wouldn't call myself an expert and just used as much as I needed to. This was totally subjective, of course. I know how to perform CRUD operations and database joins, and normalize database structures even if I've long forgotten the formal definition of BCNF. To some people, that would absolutely count as expertise, though I feel obligated to hold myself to higher standards.

In response, he started questioning my dedication to my craft, and this made me suspect that I wasn't speaking to someone who actually worked in tech... because genuine tech workers, even if they lacked humility, would probably have the experience to avoid simplistic (and frankly not terribly clever) snap judgments like these.

Why that was completely stupid

A couple reasons. First of all, Kubernetes isn't what I would call a mainstream tech thing. It's more of a DevOps thing, which still makes it a software tech discipline, just not first on everyone's to-do list.

A DevOps engineer would totally learn it.

A back-end engineer? Almost definitely.

A full-stack developer? Maybe.

A Data Analyst, Front-end engineer or Network Manager? Doubtful.

So acting like a techie is somehow deficient for not knowing much about it, tells me more about the person making that statement, than the one being judged. This would be as absurd as me mocking back-end engineers for not knowing HTML and CSS. Because, really, why would they? What next? You aren't a real musician if you can't play the zither? You're not a real doctor if you can't extract a tooth?

Real doctors can pull teeth!

Now SQL would be a more mainstream tool than Kubernetes. Regardless of which layer of the stack a tech worker is operating on currently, they would almost be guaranteed to have been taught SQL in school. And even then, plenty of tech workers don't deal with SQL professionally. Even I only really use raw SQL when I'm performing joins in database consoles - for actual software development, it's too much of a security risk and the accepted tools abstract away SQL for library functions.

Also, can I just mention that using Kubernetes and SQL together as a flex, is just kind of odd? Not pineapple-on-pizza weird. Maybe spinach-on-pizza weird.

Genuine Questions...

My industry isn't a circus, so why are we attracting these clowns? We were known as nerds in school. Why are people now so anxious to be be associated with us?

Why these clowns?

Oh, well. It's now 2026. With all the tech layoffs going on, perhaps my industry would have lost enough mystique to no longer produce these groupies.

Also, why does every tech poseur I encounter, feel the need to namedrop Kubernetes? Does it even sound that impressive?

I'm dead serious. Every other guy who tried to impress me with his tech cred, has cited Kubernetes. One even took the pains to explain Kubernetes was a upscaler in cloud infrastructure, as if we couldn't just read that up on its Wikipedia page. I'm not even that offended by the posturing. It's more the low-effort posturing, like I was some noob who can't tell when someone's full of hot air.

There are three situations where Kubernetes might be brought up casually as a subject.

One; DevOps engineers dissecting a scaling problem. Two; backend engineers deep in infra discussion. Three; tech performer using tech buzzwords as a big stick to hammer home the illusion of being technically experienced.

As far as I could tell, this did not fall under the first two categories. The irony is, in his eagerness to perform tech experience, he ended up demonstrating something that few actual software engineers would exhibit - ignorance of tech stacks.

So... what is it about Kubernetes specifically? This stumps me.

Finally

Of course, I don't mind being told I'm not much of a tech. I already don't consider myself exceptional. Although, the judgement might have stung more coming from someone who obviously knew his shit. As it was, it left me somewhat bemused. As a generalist, I didn't feel personally disrespected. But someone who actually spent the sweat and sleepless nights mastering Kubernetes and working with it, might feel quite differently.

It's been four years. Why am I even talking about this now? In truth, I wanted to talk about it way back, but more interesting stuff kept coming up. Plus, I am one hell of a procrastinator. It's a slow news week, so there you go.

How's your Java and JavaScript?
T___T

Tuesday, 25 August 2026

Web Tutorial: Pill Puzzle (Part 4/4)

We've developed the ability to place pills on either side of the scale, and return them to their original positions if required. Time to work on using the scale. For that, we ensure that the weigh() method is invoked when the button is clicked.

<div><button id="btnWeigh" onclick="pillgame.weigh()">WEIGH</button></div>

Then we work on this method. We begin with that return statement at the end. Then we exit early if playerStatus is not "ill".

weigh: function()
{
if (this.playerStatus != "ill") return;

return;
},

We also run setWeightTimes(), as we should.

weigh: function()
{
  if (this.playerStatus != "ill") return;
  this.setWeightTimes(this.weighTimes + 1);

  return;
},

Next, we define leftWeight. What we do is use the map() method to iterate through all the values of pills_left, which are indexes into the pills array, in effect making a new array based on all the weights of the pills that are in pills_left.

weigh: function()
{
  if (this.playerStatus != "ill") return;
  this.setWeightTimes(this.weighTimes + 1);

  const leftWeight = this.pills_left
  .map((x) => this.pills[x])

  return;
},

Then we use the reduce() method, totalling all the values.

We do something similar for rightWeight. And after that, we have three If blocks to handle the various outcomes.

If leftWeight is heavier than rightWeight, pnlWeighPillsContainerLeft should go down and pnlWeighPillsContainerRight should go up, thus the justify-content properties of both need to be adjusted accordingly - pnlWeighPillsContainerLeft to flex-end (to sink to the "bottom") and pnlWeighPillsContainerRight to flex-start (to float to the "top"). The opposite is true for if rightWeight is heavier than leftWeight. And if both are equally heavy, both pnlWeighPillsContainerLeft and pnlWeighPillsContainerRight sink to the bottom.

weigh: function()
{
  if (this.playerStatus != "ill") return;
  this.setWeightTimes(this.weighTimes + 1);

  const leftWeight = this.pills_left
  .map((x) => this.pills[x])
  .reduce((sum, weight) => sum + weight, 0);

  const rightWeight = this.pills_right
  .map((x) => this.pills[x])
  .reduce((sum, weight) => sum + weight, 0);

  if (leftWeight == rightWeight)
  {
    $("#pnlWeighPillsContainerLeft").css("justifyContent", "flex-end");
    $("#pnlWeighPillsContainerRight").css("justifyContent", "flex-end");

    return;
  }

  if (leftWeight > rightWeight)
  {
    $("#pnlWeighPillsContainerLeft").css("justifyContent", "flex-end");
    $("#pnlWeighPillsContainerRight").css("justifyContent", "flex-start");

    return;
  }

  if (leftWeight < rightWeight)
  {
    $("#pnlWeighPillsContainerLeft").css("justifyContent", "flex-start");
    $("#pnlWeighPillsContainerRight").css("justifyContent", "flex-end");

    return;
  }

  return;
},

Let's try this! Place pill 1 on the left and pill 2 on the right.

Then click WEIGH button. See that it now indicates that the scale has been used once! In all likelihood, both pills are equal in weight, so both scale bowls should sink.

Refresh. Now place pill 1 on the left and pill 2 on the right... and then add pills 3 and 4 on the left.

Now weigh. The left side will sink and the right side will rise! And now the display says you have used the scale once.

Now place the rest of the pills on the right side...

...and weigh. The right side should sink and the left should float. The display should say you have used the scale twice, and the button should disappear.

Now for the final part!

Feeding any given pill to the mouth. For this, add a click action to the face. It should call placePill(), with "mouth" passed in as an argument.

There are only two scenarios here - success or failure. That depends on the weight of the pill selected. We derive that by using the value of pill_selected as an index into pills. And this leads into the two If blocks.

if (slot == "mouth")
{
  if (this.pills[this.pill_selected] == 1)
  if (this.pills[this.pill_selected] == 10)

  return;
}

If the pill is light, we use setPlayerState() to set the player state to "well". If it's a heavy pill, then it's poison and you just killed the patient. Either way, we run gameOver() because the game is effectively over at this point.

if (slot == "mouth")
{
  if (this.pills[this.pill_selected] == 1) this.setPlayerState("well");
  if (this.pills[this.pill_selected] == 10) this.setPlayerState("dead");
  this.gameOver();

  return;
}

Now for the final method, gameOver(). We basically return stuff to factory settings, visually.

gameOver: function()
{
  $("#btnWeigh").hide();
  $(".pnlWeighPillsContainer").css("justifyContent", "center");
  this.pills_middle = [];
  this.pills_left = [];
  this.pills_right = [];
  this.renderPills();

  return;
}

Now remove the red lines and we're all set.

div {outline: 0px solid red;}

Final test!

It's easy to fail. Select any pill at random and click on the face. There's an 87.5% chance that you kill the patient.

But to cure the patient is the crux of how this puzzle is solved. Place pills 1, 2 and 3 on the left. Pills 4, 5 and 6 go on the right.

Weigh. You see that Pills 1, 2 and 3 are lighter, so the cure is definitely in that group.

Return pills 4, 5 and 6.

Return pills 2 and 3.

Place pill 2 on the right side of the scale, and weigh. Looks like pill 2 is still heavier.

Which makes pill 1 the cure. Feed it to the face, and you win!

We're done! Not too shabby, eh?

Fare "well",
T___T

Disclaimer

All opinions expressed on this blog are mine, and mine alone. Deal with it.

All technical information and code are written at my current level of understanding and may be incomplete. Some of it has been deliberately kept simple for clarity. Don't hesitate to correct me.

My experiences may be limited, and as such there may be blind spots in my reasoning. Feel free to disagree.

I'm not being paid to write this blog. This is purely a leisure activity. Keep your expectations low.

This being the Internet, someone is bound to take offense. The Web's a big place, and you're all big boys and girls. Seek life elsewhere.

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