I'd go back to the office in a heartbeat provided it was an actual office. And not an "open-office" layout, that people are forced to try to concentrate with all the noise and people passing behind them constantly.
The agile treadmill (with PM's breathing down our necks) and features getting planned and delivered in 2 week-sprints, has also reduced our ability to just do something we feel needs getting done. Today you go to work to feed several layers of incompetent managers - there is no room for play, or for creativity. At least in most orgs I know.
I think innovation (or even joy of being at work) needs more than just the office, or people, or a canteen, but an environment that supports it.
Personally, I try to under-promise on what I think I can do every sprint specifically so I can spend more time mentoring more junior engineers, brainstorming random ideas, and working on stuff that nobody has called out as something that needs working on yet.
Basically, I set aside as much time as I can to squeeze in creativity and real engineering work into the job. Otherwise I'd go crazy from the grind of just cranking out deliverables
We have an open office surrounded by "breakout offices". I simply squat in one of the offices (I take most meetings over video chat), as do most of the other principals. I don't think I could do my job in an office if I couldn't have a room to work in most of the time.
As for agile: I've made it clear to my PMs that I generally plan on a quarterly/half year basis and my work and other people's work adheres to that schedule, not weekly sprints (we stay up to date in a slack channel, no standups)
the new Defender got to be the worst Land Rover ever built. It has terrible off-road capability even compared to the other (non Defender models like the Range). JLR alienated their entire existing Defender drivers where hardly any of them would buy this new model.
Granted, they also alienated their user base when the traditional TDI was replaced with the TD5 and then more alienation when they introduced the TD4.
But the latest thing (L663) has nothing in common with any of the previous models. (probably due to pedestrian safety laws becoming more strict)
> the new Defender got to be the worst Land Rover ever built
No it isn't. I own a 2022 D90 P300 with 18" wheels, coils, front jump seat, everything. It's been great for ~40,000 miles. I'm constantly on dirt and rocky roads here. It's never let me down.
They're used by tons of people for offroading and modified heavily as well, with companies like Sarek, Lucky8, etc.
The only people who hate on new Defenders are the ones that love the ~25 year old versions with 200,000 miles, tons of rust, a diesel engine that can barely make it to highway speeds, and spends more time in the garage every weekend than "exploring." But hey, they're cooler than us because they work on their cars and have a manual transmission.
Same. My in-laws are Toyota Land Cruiser people, heavily involved with the local clubs. FIL even runs their driver training programs. Was very anti us getting a Defender and said we'd regret it. When we did the training the main problem we had was getting it stuck, because part of the training was learning how to use a winch or straps to get yourself out when you're bogged. We were able to drive out of anything. Now his only criticism is it's not as much fun to drive because it takes less skill (which is exactly what I wanted. I want to get places, not necessarily challenge myself to get there though). It's also a much better finish than the Toyotas. It's not much more expensive than their latest fully optioned Land Cruiser, but everything about the inside of LC feels like it's not been updated since the late 90s. And plenty about it that actually feels cheap (and before anyone weighs in, not in a way that is designed to wear and tear. Just cheap and lazy).
The few annoyances we've had LR have resolved for us at zero cost, even when we were out of warranty.
Yup, the new Defender is amazing. I use mine as a daily driver and love it. You can drive 4,000 miles across country in comfort/luxury and then still have advanced off-roading capabilities in mud, sand, rocks, etc. It's the best of both worlds. All with a warranty.
What's funnier is most of the "new" Defender owners I meet love the old ones (including me, I miss driving manual.) It's the old owners that still seem to have an attitude (calling them "Pretenders", etc.)
The problem I see, is that while the electronic assists and auto gearbox are great in general and win over the older generation everytime in comparisons, having a mild electrical problem or a malfunction in any electronic module would render it basically unusable.
My father told me many stories about the old Land Rovers they had in the military service in Spain. One time, he successfully climbed a hill with two captains after snapping the back axle (the one coming from the transfer case), by locking the differential. These new machines rely too much on electronics without backup, I believe.
Also, and this is fully my opinion, I would never take an automatix off-road.
> The breach was enabled through stolen Jira credentials harvested via Infostealer malware, a known hallmark of HELLCAT’s operations. The exposed data includes development logs, tracking information, source code, and a large employee dataset with usernames, email addresses, display names, and time zones. The presence of verified employee information from JLR’s global workforce raises significant concerns about identity theft and targeted phishing campaigns.
then
> the JLR breach escalated when a second threat actor, “APTS,” appeared on DarkForums on March 14, 2025. APTS claimed to have exploited Infostealer credentials dating back to 2021, belonging to an employee who held third-party access to JLR’s Jira server. Using these compromised credentials, the actor gained entry and shared a screenshot of a Jira dashboard as proof. APTS also leaked an additional tranche of sensitive data, estimated at around 350 GB, which contained information not included in Rey’s original dump, further amplifying the scale and severity of the breach.
reminds me of the time, a Malaysian newspaper mentioned him in a story an converted his name to local currency: 1.50 Malaysian ringgit https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3915
would be nice to stream this to a screen on the wall in my home office
I once toured an elementary school in one country that was "twinned" with another elementary school in another country.
One of the classrooms (4th grade, maybe?) had one wall that was entirely a projection from a camera set up in a classroom of the other school. The other school had the opposite setup.
The effect was of one large classroom, though the projected one was naturally a little dimmer, fuzzier, and de-saturated. But I was told that even though there was no audio link between them, the children of the different classrooms got to know each other on sight, and formed social bonds.
We did this in a project where, due to reasons, we used a windowless, dull, claustrophobic meeting room for 6 months. Every now and then our daily was interrupted by the sight of an elephant on the screen
I had exactly this thought looking at this camera's feed. Put it on a huge screen in a classroom BUT only turn it on as a reward. Otherwise no one would ever get anything done.
what makes Latin difficult in your context? My focus isn't Math and fwiw found many very good, free, entry-level[1] self-study[2] books (Hans Orberg and others), and even Latin podcasts. There is even a fun Latin track on some of the popular language learning apps.
As for difficulty, well, even English is not my first language. So Latin would be quite a stretch for me.
What makes things more difficult (this is not specific to Latin) is that Maths, Physics has its own language. Domain specific words, such as curvature, torsion, divergence, curl, force, power, action, moment, momentum do not translate in a way that is linguistically obvious.
The agile treadmill (with PM's breathing down our necks) and features getting planned and delivered in 2 week-sprints, has also reduced our ability to just do something we feel needs getting done. Today you go to work to feed several layers of incompetent managers - there is no room for play, or for creativity. At least in most orgs I know.
I think innovation (or even joy of being at work) needs more than just the office, or people, or a canteen, but an environment that supports it.
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