I’ll take laptops over a Punch Card System (PCS) any day!

Welcome to the future! I believe this is how the next world war starts?

You say that because you don’t realize the benefits:

• Better support for Linux with any new PC hardware on day 1. This includes things like USB devices, monitors, KVMs, UPS, everything.
• Better support for all commercial software in general. More software will become available and it’ll be higher quality.
• Vendors will be forced to test all their stuff on Linux which means it’ll all become more reliable and less glitchy.
• There will be more diversity in software and distros which means widespread attacks (aka hacking, worms, viruses, etc) will have less success and smaller impacts.
• The more Linux users there are the more Linux developers will result. It’s also much easier to start learning how to code on a Linux desktop than it is in Windows.
• Better security for the entire world. Linux has a vastly superior security architecture than Windows and a vastly superior track record. The more Linux users there are, the harder it will be for malicious entities to break into their PCs which translates into a more secure world.
• It’s much easier (for experienced users) to troubleshoot and fix problems in Linux than in Windows. This will lead to support teams everywhere getting frustrated whenever they have to deal with Windows users (this is already the case for many software vendors, haha). Therefore, it makes support people happy and easy going. Who doesn’t want to reach a happy, helpful person for technical support instead of the usual defiant/adversarial support tech? 😁
• The worst sorts of hardware vendors won’t be able to get away with their usual bullshit. For example, if there were enough Linux users HP wouldn’t be offering extremely invasive 2GB printer “drivers” because their Windows customers would know enough Linux users that they’d be rightfully pissed and not depressively submissive like they are now.
• When you do have a problem it will be easier to find a solution because the likelihood that someone else already had it and posted a solution will be higher (though admittedly this factor doesn’t seem to do much for Windows currently because of how obtuse and obfuscated everything is in that OS).

There’s actually a lot more reasons but that’s probably enough for now 😁

Any day now a Republican will propose they solve this “bureaucratic inefficiency” by switching to ovens.

I’d love to see more adoption of… I2C!

Bazillions of motherboards and SBCs support I2C and many have the ability to use it via GPIO pins or even have connectors just for I2C devices (e.g. QWIIC). Yet there’s very little in the way of things you can buy and plug in. It feels like such a waste!

There’s all sorts of neat and useful things we could plug in and make use of if only there were software to use it. For example, cheap color sensors, nifty gesture sensors, time-of-flight sensors, light sensors, and more.

There’s lmsensors which knows I2C and can magically understand zillions of temperature sensors and PWM things (e.g. fan control). We need something like that for all those cool devices and chips that speak I2C.

To be fair, you are always on the cusp of being fired/laid off. Even if you’re the backbone of the company, the best employee, etc.

Also remember that expectations of young people in a lot of businesses are very low. That’s why they pay the young so poorly 🤷.

If you seem to be getting work done and your boss isn’t bitching then you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. Don’t worry about it.

Also, when you’re young change jobs every year or two! It’s the best way to make considerably more money over time and no, it will not hurt your resume in the slightest. It merely shows initiative and the fact that everyone wants you (i.e. you’re competent).

The tower on the left is home to the Tea Wizard who uses parts of the lower floors for the nation’s biscuit reserves. The one on the right is host to a princess that’s been waiting for rescue by a prince for a very long time now.

I’m failing to see the problem. As long as one of the languages isn’t PHP they’re still probably better off 🤷

The AI clone wars have begun.

The point of the law is to prevent things like someone surreptitiously changing their name right before they run for office. E.g. to the same name as another candidate.

It’s all about transparency and preventing dirty election tricks. It was probably created long before the current slate of right wing transphobia

A woman who gets divorced and changes her name is exactly the type of situation that could be artificially manufactured in order to swing an election. For example, if she had the same name as a popular candidate/person (even elsewhere in the US!) before she got married.

It’s not the cable that goes bad it’s the connectors on the ends: They wear out.

My biggest complaint about self checkout at Walmart (specifically) is that I still have to wait in line! There’s 20-ish self checkout machines of which 15-20 will be working and like fucking forty regular checkout lanes with two cashiers working. So of course there’s going to be a long ass line for the self checkout!

It’s lane upon lane of wasted space. If you’re only ever going to have 3-4 people working then you should only have 3-4 non-self checkout lanes!

No no you don’t get it. The point is to hoard the movies. Not to watch them!

They’re like Steam games: You collect more than you play.

Oh come on! They’re software developers! The code they wrote three years ago is total shit and you (we) know it, haha.

Take the time to learn something new, today. It’s practically what makes a software developer a software developer. If you’re not learning a new language, engine, or technique pretty regularly you’re going to have a hard time (eventually).

The reason why software developers reinvent the wheel so often is because we know that the old wheel is garbage. It at least, the way we used it was. After being a software dev for a few decades, looking at your old code should always give you a feeling of, “I could’ve done that better.”

Yeah! Everyone stop using Microsoft products today! I’m serious.

I took this same advice in 1999. Been using Linux on my desktop ever since 👍

Just like with unity: You have to learn some new skills if you switch to something else but the benefits outweigh the costs. It’s so much easier today than it was back then and this seems to be a universal truth: The sooner you switch off of any abusive platform the more quickly you’ll reap the rewards.

Even better: Later, after everyone who didn’t switch is bitching about the latest nonsense from their abusive vendor of choice you can rub it in their faces and be like, “I switched to Godot ages ago and I am so glad I don’t have to deal with this kind of shit anymore.” Just like how Linux users say similar things about the latest bullshit from Microsoft whenever it comes up in the news (which is often, which is why it’s become a trope).

Even when the stock market crashes the rich don’t get poor. They can seemingly lose ungodly amounts of money exceptionally quickly but even after all that they’ll still be rich because being rich is a comparison: If everyone on a mountain falls down the ones at the top will still be there.

I’ve been working in information security for many years now and this is standard practice all over the world. I’m sure the State Department is happy to have Asian Americans working for them. This is not that kind of discrimination.

It’s a practical thing: It’s basically impossible to tell if a person has a secret loyalty to another country. So how do you prevent spies from infiltrating your organization(s) from any given county? You take basic precautions like preventing people who have very direct ties to a country from working for you in that country. It’s basically best practices because there’s not much else you can do.

If I were a 2nd generation American Chinese citizen (e.g. my parents immigrated there) living in China and I applied to work for the Chinese embassy in the US do you really think the Chinese government would allow that? Hell no!

Would they let me work in Africa or other areas of Asia? Maybe! But the US would be a no-go zone for sure. There’d be no way the Chinese government would trust me not to have a secret loyalty to the US.

Not only that but if someone still has family living in a foreign country that’s a big red flag as well. It can get you reassigned regardless of your ethnicity.

Let’s say you’ve been working in the US embassy in China and your sister married a Chinese man who has family in China: You would would have to report that change in family status to the State Department (it’s part of the rules). Then they’d make a determination as to whether or not you could keep working where you are.

This has got to be the most boring dystopia thing I’ve ever read (so far).

As you get older the existential dread of not getting things done fades. I’m fact, I’m now proud that I blew off putting things away for so long that I’ve moved five times and I still have stuff from those boxes I packed during the first move still in the same boxes 👍

Obviously those things will come with me to the next home. I can’t just throw away old cables! They don’t go bad! Some day I’m going to be the hero that still has the proprietary cable that connects a specific model year, early 90s vintage mini video camera to RCA and composite connectors!

Assuming you’re in the northern hemisphere: For this winter it’s fine. It’ll gently heat your home while you game like it’s 1999. No worries 😁

However, once it starts to warm up you’ll want to send that motherboard+RAM+CPU to your local HAZMAT trash pickup/facility and get something newer. Might I suggest a nice 2020-ish desktop CPU? With a motherboard that supports Coreboot, of course!

https://doc.coreboot.org/mainboard/index.html

…and get yourself a nice Nvidia (sadly, because AMD and Intel are still far behind) GPU with at least 12GB of VRAM so you can have fun with the open source AI stuff (it’s a blast!). The more VRAM the better though so if you can pick up a 4060 Ti with 16GB cheap this spring that’ll be your best budget buy (endless uncensored fun) 👍

Seriously: If you haven’t got the hardware to run Stable Diffusion locally you’re missing out! It’s as fun and addicting as a really good game. Running it on some cloud service isn’t the same because at best they’ll be running stuff that’s weeks or months out of date (which is like a million years in AI time) and they don’t give you the same level of control/possibilities that you get when running your own stuff locally (run whatever models/LoRAs you want, whatever extensions you want, generating images without having to worry about overbearing censorship because it is that bad on public AI services–paid or not!).