Iris

That problematic person who keeps popping up in your feeds. Blogs (or, according to HackerNews "seed[s] extreme left wing ideas into the minds of vulnerable HN members with my demented, violent writing") at https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/posts

Liberapay: https://en.liberapay.com/iris_meredith/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/IrisMeredithandherblog

Public Key

npub1wgwtv03p6gfd6fjssxtc6l4gfa8v94pnrl98zxscpvnwl7myz8uqrjv64j

NIP-05 Address

iris_meredith_at_mastodon.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs8y89k8csayykayeggr9ud065y7nkz6se3ljn3rgvqkfh0ldjpr7qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsawgqat

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1wgwtv03p6gfd6fjssxtc6l4gfa8v94pnrl98zxscpvnwl7myz8uqrjv64j

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Last Notes

2026-08-11 03:02:06 UTC

One of the more disconcerting parts of our current situation is interacting with people who are considered, these days, to be good and respectable and having to work very hard not to say "in thirty years people will speak of you as though you're the most reviled of criminals"

2026-08-05 09:34:06 UTC

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Keen to buy access to my other resources and the ability to ask me questions of the back of that? You can do that here:
https://deadsimpletech.com/arca

2026-08-05 09:32:45 UTC

While I've been putting work into learning how to do the whole "marketing Arca (my new educational platform)" thing, I've registered that it'd probably be sensible to have an example of what my teaching philosophy and resources actually look like. Fortunately, I've published precisely that earlier this year. If you're curious about buying Arca and want to know what you're getting into, you can find out here:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/r-the-software-way-2

2026-07-20 09:34:01 UTC

New article time! This time, I've talked about writing C is so much more enjoyable than a number of other things, and tech's regrettable tendency towards shallowness:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/tech-aint-deep

2026-07-19 08:26:51 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@iris_meredith/116922023726974278
Update on this one: I felt a little as though I'd been neglecting the engineering fundamentals work relative to the statistics work on here. Happily, this has now been rectified: there is a very solid note about how memory works in computing systems now, along with some basic learning resources about pointers.
Extremely useful to know, even if you're not intending to use pointers personally.
#note123p…rfqm

2026-07-18 02:21:10 UTC

Anthropic's article on cultural differences in LLM behaviour is *fascinating*. It tells me that Claude expresses the following specific values in Polish:
Says when it is unsure
Backs claims with evidence
Pushes back on false assumptions
I hadn't realised that *basic epistemic rigor* was a culturally encoded trait, and (dropping my deep antipathy to the tools in general for a moment), it's a little concerning that apparently other languages *don't* do this so much.
https://www.anthropic.com/research/claude-values-models-languages

2026-07-15 04:08:16 UTC

Some good (if terrifying for me) news: Arca is now in early access. That's right: now you can buy access to my notes on statistics and engineering fundamentals, exercises and access to a community of fellow students where you can ask questions, comment on others' questions and get them answered by me. It's a great opportunity to learn something that will make you better at basically everything you do from someone cool. Take a look!
https://deadsimpletech.com/arca

2026-07-07 06:08:37 UTC

An interesting factoid for those interested is that when I write, the categories of "gets lots of readers", "gets lots of email sign-ups" and "gets lots of reader mail" are almost entirely disjoint.

2026-07-06 08:32:00 UTC

New article, as as promised, it's the Vonnegut one! This is one for those of us who feel like reality is killing us because it's so ugly and cheap:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/thompson-vonnegut-ice-9

2026-07-06 07:14:00 UTC

RE: https://social.coop/@scottjenson/116871738193741080
I really do empathise, but I also think that being misread in bad faith is just part of being a writer. I've had some truly hideous misreadings of my work, and well... I don't know whether an LLM can do shit to stop that without completely defanging my work?
#note1q2m…sxcj

2026-07-04 22:55:17 UTC

I have to admit, it's mildly fascinating to me just how low the conversion rate to email subscribers is from Hackernews/Lobste.rs traffic is. I suspect the RSS subscriber number might be higher, but yeah... the conversion rate for Fedi traffic is much higher, and the same held true for Bluesky before stopped posting on that platform (it was *terrible* for my mental health)

2026-07-02 07:28:15 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@iris_meredith/116841974522150969
Well, initial feedback from at least one person who signed up is good.
"I’ve started reading and god it feels good to really use my brain again" seems like a positive sign, I think.
#note1c8t…dtrn

2026-07-01 07:57:58 UTC

I think the trickiest thing to communicate to people in the Anglosphere at the moment, as an Eastern European, is not how *bad* things are but how quickly these bad things can change. I see a bunch of people saying that it will take multiple decades to fix the atrocities, especially the transphobic ones, that the Supreme Court has inflicted on us and... it will not. The cat's out of the bag. People *know what freedom and a good society look like*. They will not forget easily.

2026-07-01 02:50:46 UTC

In other news, we've made some enhancements to my partner's website! Next step; get orders and payments working.
https://deathinchains.com/

2026-07-01 00:50:42 UTC

It feels odd to be doing this to say the least (I am, after all, doing something weirdly similar to the VC-backed startup thing), but I now have a landing page for my new education/professional development product up, which means that I'll be able to start selling it to like, teams and companies soon! Check it out here:
https://deadsimpletech.com/arca

2026-06-29 02:21:32 UTC

One of my least favourite things about LLMs is that we're learning, largely against our will, just how many truly feckless software devs there are out there

2026-06-22 10:03:18 UTC

An new post: this week I have written about the shortest, darkest days of the year and the ways in which we feel rather as though we're in a midwinter of tech:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/midwinter

2026-06-02 07:32:16 UTC

OK, question: why is it that the kind of thing I think of as a light article that I can kinda just write and publish for the week is consistently seen by others as a "deep read"? Not that I'm not flattered, but I'm not usually shooting for depth, exactly

2026-06-02 03:18:36 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.nz/@cestfleuve/116677864750365593
We absolutely fucking *should* do this. The current state of codebases in the public sector is... not good, and they're only going to get worse.
#note142q…kjl4

2026-06-01 06:30:29 UTC

This week's article: I've had some thoughts about competence, how it works and why it's best understood as a value-system threat:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/attack-on-competence

2026-05-29 06:57:44 UTC

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I'm still in the process of building billing out, to say nothing of marketing, but my teaching resources and exercises are very well-regarded and built, first and foremost with learning in mind, not as a reference. For the moment, then, I'm putting an offer out. If anyone donates to my writing fund between now and next Friday and lets me know via email that they did, I'll give them complimentary access to my resource repository for six months. You can do that below:
https://donate.stripe.com/6oE2a30hh3my2reeUY

2026-05-29 06:53:29 UTC

Four things things are currently true. I need money to pay for rent, food, parking and all the exigencies of life. The job market at the moment is in the shitter. While I'm landing coaching and contracting work, that takes time and effort to ramp up. And I'm sick to death of doing what you have to do to make money from writing (harass people constantly).
What I've thus done is set up a resource section on my website where people can subscribe to to get access to the teaching resources I make.

2026-05-23 10:18:47 UTC

My second article in three days! This bounces off @npub1fw8…g7yy's recent article to discuss where exactly in the tech space is ground for LLMs to grow. My conclusion is in the title:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/docs-shit-bad-at-teaching

2026-05-20 05:38:09 UTC

Apparently knowing anything is now woke and gay. We shall see how this works for the countries and companies that adopt this belief.

2026-05-19 04:28:36 UTC

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Celery is handy: you can get a lot of use out of a few plants for stocks, stews, mirepoix and such. It's one of the few vegetables where you could actually plausibly grow everything you need.

2026-05-15 04:07:15 UTC

Today in "cursed marketing techniques that Iris is trying out": personality quizzes!
https://deadsimpletech.com/quizzes/whats-your-technical-character-class

2026-05-05 05:12:27 UTC

Well, I tried Claude Code. It's less bad than GLM, but alas, I didn't get the "Hallelujah! I see the light" moment that would let me become an AI grifter. Pity, really.
I did notice an interesting thing though: the people who get the best results from coding agents tend to be the people who think they're awful, which says some interesting things about engineering judgement. Read the article here:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/engineering-judgement-claude-paradox

2026-04-30 09:12:15 UTC

Look, I hate it, you hate it, we all hate it. Unfortunately, thanks to the general state of funding for artists, creatives and such in the anglosphere, it's also unavoidable.
If you're thinking about supporting an independent writer in keeping a roof over their head, this would be a very convenient time to do it: I need to pay rent and pay for monthly parking for our vehicle in a few days, and I'm not entirely clear as to how I'm going to do it.

2026-04-22 06:32:48 UTC

It is once again time for me to reintroduce myself, I think. I'm Iris: I write a blog at deadsimpletech.com/blog about the impacts of the tech industry on culture and humanity in general.
I also work as a technical consultant and coach/mentor in the data, infrastructure and web spaces.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/446/935/681/458/954/original/ab8057c111ac56a8.png

2026-04-13 05:48:07 UTC

A new article: this one's an extension of last year's article on the subject of wank, and it discusses why wank is discursively effective despite being annoying as hell. Many thanks to @npub1hw6…gked and [@whitequark](https://social.treehouse.systems/@whitequark ) for productive conversations on here that led to me developing some of these ideas:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/why-redacted-wins

2026-04-07 06:15:15 UTC

A new article, in which Iris attempts to persuade investors and people in the general tech and startup ecosystem in New Zealand that they need to build a lot more affordable housing if they want to get the kind of ecosystem that they've expressed a desire for:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/startups-affordable-housing-new-zealand

2026-04-07 03:02:21 UTC

It is surprisingly hard to express "the primary demographic for startup founders at the moment is nepobaby failsons" in a way that's appropriate for consumption by investors.

2026-03-31 08:21:08 UTC

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rent. I can never be both. If I'm struggling to feed myself and pay my bills, I can"t be the person who writes those articles that everyone shares. If I'm the person who writes those articles, I can't be struggling as much as I am because I'm clearly fairly capable and socially adjusted.
I guess what I'd say for these days is that we can be *both*. I can be smart *and* need the help of readers to pay rent: neither invalidates the other. And yes, it should be different. But it isn't.

2026-03-31 08:18:58 UTC

Today is the transgender day of visibility. I don't know what to say more globally on the matter, but personally: there is a part of me that is the heterodox tech thinker. I write articles: I get quite a few views, I am popular. Then there's the trans side of me: the person who can't get a job however good and socially well-adjusted I am. Those parts don't often cohabit in people's minds. I can be the clever person who write the things that people love, or I can be the trans girl trying to make

2026-03-29 09:45:23 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@iris_meredith/116311817974687217
Resources are running low, rent needs to be paid and the relevant support systems are distinctly unhelpful, so I'm going to be pushing out more LinkedIn-relevant articles for the next little while. Apologies to those who read my work for the critical essays.
#note1zzx…trat

2026-03-29 09:44:55 UTC

A new article, this one about the application of Clausewitz's concept of friction to Software Engineering:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/friction_software_engineering

2026-03-26 04:35:55 UTC

New article: today we talk about the psychological impacts of functioning in a thoroughly enshittified economy where everything seems to be routed through tech:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/digital_acedia

2026-03-23 07:37:19 UTC

It is once again time to do one of my semi-regular fundraising posts wherein, if you wish to support my writing and analytical work, you can do so at the links below! Moving is expensive, and the more I get through these channels the more essays you can expect, so... there is incentive, I guess?
https://www.patreon.com/c/IrisMeredithandherblog
https://en.liberapay.com/iris_meredith/
https://donate.stripe.com/6oE2a30hh3my2reeUY

2026-03-21 06:44:57 UTC

I've finally, in my extremity, actually produced some advertising material for my coaching offerings (it was like pulling teeth, but so it goes).
If anyone feels like spreading it around judiciously, it might prove helpful.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/265/797/922/320/338/original/7c39c4d599d10a87.png

2026-03-17 00:33:45 UTC

This bitch has a library card again! For a good library, even!
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/241/701/074/563/277/original/f1b335239a742bce.jpg

2026-02-15 08:43:49 UTC

New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/carbon_dysphoria

2026-02-15 01:46:56 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@glyph/116072105823598977
You should definitely support Glyph: they do really good work and are clever and such. And I'm not just saying that because they've been complimentary about *my* work in the past.
#note1anu…3ke2

2026-01-30 07:45:43 UTC

I've written my thoughts on what you, as a software professional, can do to make yourself less susceptible to being displaced by AI in our current wave of tech madness. In short, learn your tools well, build and deploy things as often as you can, don't avoid the unfashionable work and learn a field that isn't writing software.
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/ai_proof_engineer

2026-01-25 21:30:32 UTC

I finally have a page on my website for my coaching program! I do one-on-one and small group sessions where you learn engineering soft skills such as git and the use of the linux command line. We offer a web dev flavour using Astro and an R one using Quarto.
https://deadsimpletech.com/coaching

2026-01-13 21:35:28 UTC

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I hate to break it to you, but I'm already getting "you didn't use the right models!" and "clearly you prompted it wrong"

2025-12-15 06:01:01 UTC

OK, so apparently the way to do well on Mastodon is to post about R, software engineering and DevOps, and the way to do well on Bluesky is to post interesting essays about the social analysis of tech. I have not yet figured out how to do well on LinkedIn.

2025-12-04 05:20:41 UTC

Alright, another one of the "applying Clausewitz to tech" posts is done! This one's about how failed software projects are almost always *strategic* failures rather than simply tactical ones:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/failed_software_projects

2025-08-09 05:25:34 UTC

A new article: long, strange and about Gravity's Rainbow:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/schwarzgerat

2025-07-16 00:18:48 UTC

It's been almost a year since I started writing regularly and (partially related) promoting my professional consulting services. I've done an awful lot to try and change myself and become a better businesswoman in that time, and while I've made some progress, I think I'm forced to face the fact

2025-06-28 05:37:29 UTC

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Am I missing something stupid here, or is Forgejo really like this?

2025-06-28 05:37:04 UTC

So, trying to push to the Codeberg container registry as part of some client work
The Codeberg registry only accepts image names in the form of <domain>/<user>/<image>
However, container image names don't support upper-case values
Both my username and the username of the client have upper-case values in them
It appears that my username might have locked me out of using the container registry

2025-03-02 02:22:32 UTC

Understanding that the USA isn't the only meaningful country in the world seems to be a real stretch for a lot of Americans at the moment.

2025-02-04 01:29:28 UTC

Today's post: not my best work, because what I'm writing about is so deeply stupid that it's hard to formulate a coherent critique. Still, I think our usual AI critic crowd might like parts of it:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/licking_ai_boot

2024-12-17 03:04:45 UTC

@npub1hr7…jxyc
Wait, you've been following me? Damn, I'm deeply flattered. I love your blog!

2024-12-16 23:13:35 UTC

This one just keeps getting more and more relevant in some uncomfortable ways:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/fascism_mirror

2024-12-05 21:40:21 UTC

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Kinda? Unfortunately the weekend is the only time when I have undisturbed time to think, so I end up doing most of my work then.

2024-11-17 21:48:03 UTC

A new post! This one, I'm sure, will get very normal responses on LinkedIn:
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/scrumlord_regime
#agile #uspol

2024-10-14 01:59:34 UTC

We need to learn history and the classics in large part, I think, because it disabuses us of ideas about our uniqueness. Our unique moral goodness, our unique depravity, our uniquely terrible ideas... they all fall away in the light of ten thousand years. And once we're no longer uniquely brilliant or uniquely terrible or uniquely whatever, our current problems start seeming small enough to tackle.