Plus, there are different kinds of nerds/geeks/whatever.
I used to have my assortment of serial cables, grounding straps, and precision screwdrivers. I've built or repaired plenty of systems. I've replaced iPod and iPhone screens and batteries. I've cracked open my own iMacs to replace hard drives and to roll my own Fusion drive. I've burned myself with soldering irons. And I've left plenty of blood sacrifices on the backs of server racks. (My hands are too large to be a good cage monkey. But when the job has to get done...).
And you know what? I'm done with that crap. These days, I build secure and resilient systems on various clouds. And that's more fun to me now than mucking about with tiny screws, sharp metal edges, and static electricity hazards ever was. At this point, I'm perfectly happy to leave the hardware side to other people.
> So if you do buy a Mac Mini and it goes bad, just > remove the SSD from the motherboard yourself > (using a blowtorch and pruning shears), then re- > insert the motherboard and send it out for repair -- > the result will be the same and your data won't leave > your building.
Not that you should count on it if you have business data that falls under a compliance regime; or if you're just personally very paranoid. But Apple wipes the storage of any Mac or iDevice they depot for repairs. The do not, will not, and can not, do data recovery; not even if you go in begging and pleading that they pull those baby photos or whatever off the iPhone you dropped and smashed up. If you don't have backups, you're just SOL (and pretty stupid, as well).
That's a fine sentiment and all. But in the US, the current administration has abdicated its responsibilities on the scientific fronts. Worse, it is deliberately fighting to regress on environmental, clean energy, and climate science; all of these being... you know... hoaxes perpetrated by China to "hurt our economy". LET'S GO ROLL SOME COAL!!!
And before you get all high and mighty, much of the rest of the world is on the regressive path too. For example: Brazil just fell to same sort of right-wing thuggery we're suffering, the Philippines did too, when it elected Duterte, the UK voted for Brexit, Le Pen came dangerously and depressingly close to winning in France, and the suggestions of likely successors of Merkel in Germany are not good.
Given the dismal state of our supposed "leadership" in the government; I'd rather sign on with, and place my trust in, Cook, Musk, Bezos, Pichai, and the like, myself versus the the regime currently occupying DC.
There's no quality of life at issue here. The location for the TMT is at the summit of a volcano. There's nothing there except the already-existing observatory to which this would just be an addition. No one lives there, unless staff or scientists are pulling "all nighters" (Or, would it be "all dayers" considering that astronomers need to be nocturnal to take direct observations?). It's above the tree-line, so any ecosystem disruptions would be negligible; and all but certainly already accounted for in the EIR. There's literally zero quantifiable negative impact to *ANYONE* from having the telescopes there, and a very real *positive* impact from the science done there. The "opposition" to the TMT is basically just a shake-down, nothing more.
Usually the new product announcements are at 10am. And apple.com isn't updated to reflect any new kit. Was there a leak of the slide deck or something?
That's more than the original though. According to wikipedia, adjusted for inflation and the exchange rate, the original would cost $144.5 million in 2018.
Note that the budget, not including marketing, for James Cameron's Titanic was $200 million in 1997. It would actually have cost less for him to build a have full-up duplicate of the actual ship built and sunk so he could film it actually happening, then it did for him to make the movie.
I still facepalm a bit when I see people whinging about: "Oh noes! Apple/Google might be monitoring your phone calls, location, or whatever. Targeted ads and Siri suggestions are CREEPY!". This, when they're carrying around a cell phone... ANY cell phone... in the first place.
Look... Apple may or may not be spying on you. Tim Cook's fight against the FBI and all his remarks about privacy may or may not be just for show. Google definitely IS spying on you. But it's primarily so they can better target ads to you. And they may or may not be feeding your information to the government. But the phone companies are 100%, without a doubt, confirmed to be spying on you... openly and brazenly... and feeding that information to the government. AT&T, for example, has been conspiring against you with the government for DECADES. The government doesn't even have to "tap" your line anymore. AT&T has built functionality for the NSA and their ilk to spy on you into their PSTN switches ever since they switched from analog to digital. They've built the same functionality into their cellular and data networks as well. They even provide space in their facilities to make playing Big Brother that much easier on the government:
And even before E911 rules, simple cell-tower triangulation could trace your location with startling accuracy. Remember how the first iPhone didn't have GPS? Well, it still had maps and location services. And it would show your position on said map based on signal strengths from the surrounding cell towers. It was startlingly accurate... down to 50 meters or less, I'd estimate. And anything Apple had on you, AT&T had on you as well; not because Apple necessarily shared it, but because of the way cellular networks work in the first place. And AT&T, with ZERO doubt (again... room 641A) was feeding that data to the government.
So, seriously... stop getting your panties all up in a wad over what Apple and Google may have or may do. AT&T's already sold you up the river. And they did so before smartphones were even a thing.
BTW: I pick on AT&T specifically, because they're the one that got caught red-handed. But if you doubt that Verizon and the rest are also conspiring with the NSA/FBI/etc. against you... well... I've got some fine beachfront resort land west of Miami that I think you'd just LOVE. Hit me up, and I'll tell you where to wire the money. Trust me, it'll be a steal!
I'm not about to deny RMS's accomplishments. And he has a pretty good track record about being correct. But he is a very poor spokesman for his movement; at least to anyone outside the hard-core nerd herd. Hell, I count myself as being fairly hard-core nerdly. But I wouldn't want to have a conversation with, or be in the same room as, him. Being right isn't enough. You also have to effectively communicate and persuade not just your niche, but the general public at large, if you seriously want to gain traction at scale. And RMS's fanaticism, behavior, and odious personal habits detract from that and reinforce some serious negative stereotypes.
If Google really wants Android to stop sucking, it's simpler than trying herd that particular batch of feral cats. They need to learn the lesson Apple learned when they made the mistake of partnering with Motorola on the ROKR... the same lesson Google themselves should have taken to heart years ago... and kick all these crap composite like Samsung, HTC, Xiaomi, and the aforementioned Motorola, revoke all their licenses, bring the hardware in-house along with the software, and do it all themselves. They also need to revoke the carriers' ability to pollute Android with their bloatware, adware, UI skins, and other trash.
Google is a much more competent company than any of their cellular partners. And vanilla Android, as developed by Google and untainted by any handset manufacturer to cellular carrier, is not a bad OS. The problem with Android is just that they're letting half-competent... and actively maleficent in some cases... randos screw up their shit.
I worked for a government contractor my first job out of college. And no. Just... no. I'm never going to make that mistake again... not for 45, not for Clinton, not for Obama if they were to amend the constitution so he could run again, not for Kennedy or Lincoln if they could raise the dead. It's just awful in every conceivable way.
The culture is toxic. You're a tiny cog in a gigantic machine without any way for your own contributions to be meaningful. It's cubes as far as the eye can see in warehouse-sized buildings. It's super-political. And I don't mean R vs D. I mean every single little person who attains the slightest bit of power is king of his little hill and will require tribute if you need access to any resource in their domain, productivity be damned. It's like those old adventure games where you might be tasked with saving the kingdom, world, or galaxy. But every... single... NPC wants you to do stupid shit before they'll aid you in the smallest way. Tasked with going to person A to get item X? Before A will give you access to X, he will require you to goto person B to get item Y. B will require you to get Z from C before giving you Y. And C will make you go out and grind, killing orcs or boars or womprats or something similarly stupid and pick up 100 item drops before giving you Z. And a task that should take no more than a day winds up taking up two weeks. And there'd better actually be a god to help you if you need to deal with procurement to get something from a vendor.
And all of the even remotely interesting work is reserved for people with security clearances. These force you to submit to being investigated and treated like a criminal before-the-fact. And they take anywhere between 6-18 months to attain, depending on how backed-up the government is, and how hard your employer is inclined to push for you. And until then, you're stuck doing boring scut-work that builds neither your skill set nor your resume.
Just to be a bit pedantic about Star Trek polities myself; you missed the most relevant and important detail about the Federation structure: non-interference. The #1 law in the Federation, as stated by multiple characters on multiple occasions, is non-interference in the internal affairs of Federation members. Tellar, looking covetously at the profits of a company HQ'd on Andor, doesn't get to enact a Federation-wide tax on Andorian profits to line Tellarite pockets. Tellarite laws END at Tellar's borders. Period. Full stop. (I left Earth out because we're not supposed to have money, profits, and whatnot in the Star Trek timeline.)
And that's the way it needs to be here and not as well. Jurisdiction matters; or at least it should. This trend of nations exporting their laws beyond their own borders needs to end. And "because... the internet" is no excuse. As a US citizen, laws in Germany should never impact me in any way until and unless I set foot in Germany; and vice-versa. (Yes, I'm aware of the fact that the US if a serious offender in this regard as well. But the EU countries are doing their best to be just as bad.)
They sealed their fate when they laughed W. E. Deming out of town and country for having the temerity to suggest that maybe they should build cars that don't suck. Deming, however, found an audience for his theories on statistical quality analysis and management in... you guessed it... Japan. Not only did the Japanese accept Deming's notion that building quality products is a good thing. They took it to heart and built on it and applied it not just to their automotive industry, but their industrial base in general. Japan named Deming a "Sacred Treasure" to the country and established a prize in his name to be awarded for achievements in total quality management.
And thus, my first Japanese car, a Subaru, lasted me 14 years, outlasting every Detroit car I ever owned before, twice over and then some. I'm up to 6 years now on my Mazda, with zero issues and only the routine scheduled maintenance. (And Subaru and Mazda are smaller niche brands that don't even quite hit Honda's or Toyota's standards.). Detroit's reaction to Japanese cars being superior? Put bigger fins on it, launch a campaign of "buy American" yellow-scare xenophobia, and shovel ever-larger bovine pickup-trucks-with-a-box-on-the-back trash onto the road. Well, screw that and screw them. Detroit made their bed and it can lie in it. My rule now is that the VIN must start with the letter J, or no sale. And it's their own damn fault.
Honestly though... If *I* were cooped up in one building for six years, with torture and murder at the hands of the CIA awaiting me should I ever set foot outside, I would probably be pretty deranged by now too.
Get off your high-horse about "intended experiences" and other such crap; and just put the cheat codes back into your games. Then people won't bother to waste time hacking at your code so they can race up & down Vice City Beach in the tank, with recoil of the back-facing gun making you zoom along faster than the Vice cops' Infernus, before they actually unlock all of the other islands.
Not everyone enjoys games in the same way. The way some people enjoy the game you develop will not be the way you envision. And THAT'S OKAY! Hell... I'm not sure I've *ever* not used the money cheat in a Maxis game. I have more fun building cool cities, neighborhoods, and houses than I ever care about the day-to-day lives of my sims. The GTA games, I'd always play through once before exploring the cheats. But even if I hadn't; I've already paid. And how I get the most fun out of the game is none of your damn business.
The closest thing the US has had to a viable third-party candidate, in my lifetime at least, was Ralph Nader in 2000. And even then, there was no realistic chance of his actually winning. It was just assumed that, with the exemplary Clinton economy and given the thoroughly dismal performance of the previous Bush administration, there was no chance of enough people being daft enough to vote to regress back to another Bush economy and warmongering. So a lot of us voted Nader in the hopes of pushing the Green Party over 5% in the general, so as to send a message to the Democratic Party to correct the unfortunate list to the starboard that it had picked up.
Well... that endeavor worked out catastrophically badly. And it's a mistake I, for one, intend never to repeat.
The US *CLAIMS* to be a democracy, or sometimes a republic, and not a theocracy. But despite that notional claim or goal; in >200 years, we're STILL unsuccessful in the expunging influence of religion from the government. Until we finally and successfully make that advance for ourselves... until people like Mike Pence, for example, have ZERO chance of every attaining anything even resembling political power at any level; federal, state, or local... we're at least partially theocratic as well, in fact if not in name.
As the saying goes: "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."... especially apropos in this context, because Saudi Arabia is plagued by both ills.
Well... in fairness, Boeing is way up in Everett. Amazon, on the other hand, has actually taken over large swaths of downtown Seattle itself. So I can understand the concern.
Oh, I've seen plenty of online whinging from the "nerds get out" and "ZOMG gentrification" brigades.
But in real life I have a few friends who work for Amazon. Plus I've gotten to know a handful of the staff at their SF Popup Loft And while it's certainly not the most laid-back company; they have generally positive things to say about their work environment. And they are paid competitively for their positions and skill sets. Hell, Amazon's periodically thrown recruiters at me. And if their timing ever lines up with mine, I'm pretty sure I'd be happy to work for them.
And as for the "oh noes, the nerds are gentrifying Seattle" mob... I've been to (and remember) the downtown Seattle area south of Lake Union before Amazon was much more than Bezos and a garage. And I've recently had occasion to go back. And while I can certainly understand concern about tying a large portion of a city's economy to a single employer; the area is VASTLY improved over what it was before Amazon took off.
I'd say it's also a good example of why Twitter is a really awful communications channel; one which should not be used by... well... anyone who aspires to be taken seriously as anything besides a semi-coherent rambling loon. Really, if your thoughts, on just about any topic, are so lacking in nuance that you can express them in 140 characters; you should probably keep those thoughts to yourself.
I think it's simpler than that. There's no need for a cabal of elite financial illuminati. It's simple politics. Elon Musk told 45 to kiss off and left that "tech advisory council" of his after he reneged on our obligations under the Paris climate accords. Musk has been vocally supportive of environmental controls and alternative energy, which 45 either personally hates or hates as the proxy of his coal and oil industry backers.
And while the SEC is nominally and theoretically supposed to be "independent and nonpartisan", it does still fall under the executive branch; 45's personal fiefdom in the government. And 4 of its 5 commissioners are trumpian thugs, three having come into their offices this year and one in 2017. That, IMO, makes any and all of its actions suspect for the duration. And given 45's temperament, plus the adversarial relationship he's cultivated with Musk, Tesla, and Silicon Valley in general; I'd peg this as nothing more than simpleminded revenge. Musk misstepped, and 45 saw the opportunity to knife him in the back.
By that standard, developers should ignore ALL laptops. If I've ever seen a laptop with a full-sized keyboard, complete with properly sized and located arrows, an actual number pad, and all of the F-keys; I can't recall it. And if I could, I'd guess that I was mis-remembering or flashing back to a hallucination. The thing would be so wide as to be comical; and I won't even guess what its display's aspect ratio would be. And that's not even considering any potential Type-M snobbery wrt/ the superiority of the truly old-school clacky keys; which would also take up too much space in any laptop.
Granted, coming from vi-land back in the day; the absence of a physical escape key if annoying. But it's one that would be irrelevant to the emacs and nano people... (Side note: Fsck you Ubuntu! When I open visudo, it should goddamned well open in vi, not nano. Yes, I know I can change that. But I shouldn't have to. It's even right there in the name of the command: visudo, NOT nanosudo! End of rant.) ... and the truth is, I've been all-in on Sublime Text for so long that my vi skills have atrophied such that I use a cheat sheet for tasks much more complex than minor and temporary config file adjustments. And, as one might guess, I use an external keyboard and trackpad when I'm desk bound anyway. So even having been a "vi > emacs" partisan in the past, the Touch Bar escape key impacts me fairly seldomly.
The world doesn't need another lumbering bovine of a full-sized SUV anyway. And Subarus have, in general been porking up over the years such that even the Outback and Forester are too damn big now as well. WRX or BRZ, or GTFO.
Back before ubiquitous cellphones and number portability and when moving to a new town meant getting a new local number that might have belonged to someone else in the past...
I had just moved towns and gotten a new number for my new place. Turned out MY new phone number had used to belong to someone who'd skipped out on some bills. Which, of course, meant that the debt collectors, scummy and dimwitted creatures that they are, started harassing ME. No amount of: first, semi-courteously correcting their screwup; then, telling them unequivocally to stop calling me; then, telling them to go fuck themselves in increasingly creative ways; and eventually, blowing the loudest and most shrill whistle I could find into the phone; would get them to knock off the crap. Eventually, I wound up having to play along long enough to find out where they were located; and start calling their local police and sheriffs' offices and reporting them repeatedly for harassment. Even then, it didn't stop entirely. But it brought the number down to a level that I didn't have to get a new phone number.
Seriously. Everyone here who can rub two brain cells together and sit through some codeacademy courses is calling themselves a NodeJS developer and making six figures these days. Hiring is a beast, signing and referral bonuses are in the five figures now, and it's still damn hard to fill the seats, much less find actual talent. There's barely anyone *left* to be register jockeys; because god forbid those jobs go back to the part-time teenagers who manned registers when I was... well... a teenager.
Slashdot Mirror
Plus, there are different kinds of nerds/geeks/whatever.
I used to have my assortment of serial cables, grounding straps, and precision screwdrivers. I've built or repaired plenty of systems. I've replaced iPod and iPhone screens and batteries. I've cracked open my own iMacs to replace hard drives and to roll my own Fusion drive. I've burned myself with soldering irons. And I've left plenty of blood sacrifices on the backs of server racks. (My hands are too large to be a good cage monkey. But when the job has to get done...).
And you know what? I'm done with that crap. These days, I build secure and resilient systems on various clouds. And that's more fun to me now than mucking about with tiny screws, sharp metal edges, and static electricity hazards ever was. At this point, I'm perfectly happy to leave the hardware side to other people.
> So if you do buy a Mac Mini and it goes bad, just
> remove the SSD from the motherboard yourself
> (using a blowtorch and pruning shears), then re-
> insert the motherboard and send it out for repair --
> the result will be the same and your data won't leave
> your building.
Not that you should count on it if you have business data that falls under a compliance regime; or if you're just personally very paranoid. But Apple wipes the storage of any Mac or iDevice they depot for repairs. The do not, will not, and can not, do data recovery; not even if you go in begging and pleading that they pull those baby photos or whatever off the iPhone you dropped and smashed up. If you don't have backups, you're just SOL (and pretty stupid, as well).
That's a fine sentiment and all. But in the US, the current administration has abdicated its responsibilities on the scientific fronts. Worse, it is deliberately fighting to regress on environmental, clean energy, and climate science; all of these being... you know... hoaxes perpetrated by China to "hurt our economy". LET'S GO ROLL SOME COAL!!!
And before you get all high and mighty, much of the rest of the world is on the regressive path too. For example: Brazil just fell to same sort of right-wing thuggery we're suffering, the Philippines did too, when it elected Duterte, the UK voted for Brexit, Le Pen came dangerously and depressingly close to winning in France, and the suggestions of likely successors of Merkel in Germany are not good.
Given the dismal state of our supposed "leadership" in the government; I'd rather sign on with, and place my trust in, Cook, Musk, Bezos, Pichai, and the like, myself versus the the regime currently occupying DC.
There's no quality of life at issue here. The location for the TMT is at the summit of a volcano. There's nothing there except the already-existing observatory to which this would just be an addition. No one lives there, unless staff or scientists are pulling "all nighters" (Or, would it be "all dayers" considering that astronomers need to be nocturnal to take direct observations?). It's above the tree-line, so any ecosystem disruptions would be negligible; and all but certainly already accounted for in the EIR. There's literally zero quantifiable negative impact to *ANYONE* from having the telescopes there, and a very real *positive* impact from the science done there. The "opposition" to the TMT is basically just a shake-down, nothing more.
Usually the new product announcements are at 10am. And apple.com isn't updated to reflect any new kit. Was there a leak of the slide deck or something?
That's more than the original though. According to wikipedia, adjusted for inflation and the exchange rate, the original would cost $144.5 million in 2018.
Note that the budget, not including marketing, for James Cameron's Titanic was $200 million in 1997. It would actually have cost less for him to build a have full-up duplicate of the actual ship built and sunk so he could film it actually happening, then it did for him to make the movie.
I still facepalm a bit when I see people whinging about: "Oh noes! Apple/Google might be monitoring your phone calls, location, or whatever. Targeted ads and Siri suggestions are CREEPY!". This, when they're carrying around a cell phone... ANY cell phone... in the first place.
Look... Apple may or may not be spying on you. Tim Cook's fight against the FBI and all his remarks about privacy may or may not be just for show. Google definitely IS spying on you. But it's primarily so they can better target ads to you. And they may or may not be feeding your information to the government. But the phone companies are 100%, without a doubt, confirmed to be spying on you... openly and brazenly... and feeding that information to the government. AT&T, for example, has been conspiring against you with the government for DECADES. The government doesn't even have to "tap" your line anymore. AT&T has built functionality for the NSA and their ilk to spy on you into their PSTN switches ever since they switched from analog to digital. They've built the same functionality into their cellular and data networks as well. They even provide space in their facilities to make playing Big Brother that much easier on the government:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And even before E911 rules, simple cell-tower triangulation could trace your location with startling accuracy. Remember how the first iPhone didn't have GPS? Well, it still had maps and location services. And it would show your position on said map based on signal strengths from the surrounding cell towers. It was startlingly accurate... down to 50 meters or less, I'd estimate. And anything Apple had on you, AT&T had on you as well; not because Apple necessarily shared it, but because of the way cellular networks work in the first place. And AT&T, with ZERO doubt (again... room 641A) was feeding that data to the government.
So, seriously... stop getting your panties all up in a wad over what Apple and Google may have or may do. AT&T's already sold you up the river. And they did so before smartphones were even a thing.
BTW: I pick on AT&T specifically, because they're the one that got caught red-handed. But if you doubt that Verizon and the rest are also conspiring with the NSA/FBI/etc. against you... well... I've got some fine beachfront resort land west of Miami that I think you'd just LOVE. Hit me up, and I'll tell you where to wire the money. Trust me, it'll be a steal!
Unhinged and correct are not mutually exclusive.
I'm not about to deny RMS's accomplishments. And he has a pretty good track record about being correct. But he is a very poor spokesman for his movement; at least to anyone outside the hard-core nerd herd. Hell, I count myself as being fairly hard-core nerdly. But I wouldn't want to have a conversation with, or be in the same room as, him. Being right isn't enough. You also have to effectively communicate and persuade not just your niche, but the general public at large, if you seriously want to gain traction at scale. And RMS's fanaticism, behavior, and odious personal habits detract from that and reinforce some serious negative stereotypes.
If Google really wants Android to stop sucking, it's simpler than trying herd that particular batch of feral cats. They need to learn the lesson Apple learned when they made the mistake of partnering with Motorola on the ROKR... the same lesson Google themselves should have taken to heart years ago... and kick all these crap composite like Samsung, HTC, Xiaomi, and the aforementioned Motorola, revoke all their licenses, bring the hardware in-house along with the software, and do it all themselves. They also need to revoke the carriers' ability to pollute Android with their bloatware, adware, UI skins, and other trash.
Google is a much more competent company than any of their cellular partners. And vanilla Android, as developed by Google and untainted by any handset manufacturer to cellular carrier, is not a bad OS. The problem with Android is just that they're letting half-competent... and actively maleficent in some cases... randos screw up their shit.
I worked for a government contractor my first job out of college. And no. Just... no. I'm never going to make that mistake again... not for 45, not for Clinton, not for Obama if they were to amend the constitution so he could run again, not for Kennedy or Lincoln if they could raise the dead. It's just awful in every conceivable way.
The culture is toxic. You're a tiny cog in a gigantic machine without any way for your own contributions to be meaningful. It's cubes as far as the eye can see in warehouse-sized buildings. It's super-political. And I don't mean R vs D. I mean every single little person who attains the slightest bit of power is king of his little hill and will require tribute if you need access to any resource in their domain, productivity be damned. It's like those old adventure games where you might be tasked with saving the kingdom, world, or galaxy. But every... single... NPC wants you to do stupid shit before they'll aid you in the smallest way. Tasked with going to person A to get item X? Before A will give you access to X, he will require you to goto person B to get item Y. B will require you to get Z from C before giving you Y. And C will make you go out and grind, killing orcs or boars or womprats or something similarly stupid and pick up 100 item drops before giving you Z. And a task that should take no more than a day winds up taking up two weeks. And there'd better actually be a god to help you if you need to deal with procurement to get something from a vendor.
And all of the even remotely interesting work is reserved for people with security clearances. These force you to submit to being investigated and treated like a criminal before-the-fact. And they take anywhere between 6-18 months to attain, depending on how backed-up the government is, and how hard your employer is inclined to push for you. And until then, you're stuck doing boring scut-work that builds neither your skill set nor your resume.
That's government work.
No.
Thank.
You.
Just to be a bit pedantic about Star Trek polities myself; you missed the most relevant and important detail about the Federation structure: non-interference. The #1 law in the Federation, as stated by multiple characters on multiple occasions, is non-interference in the internal affairs of Federation members. Tellar, looking covetously at the profits of a company HQ'd on Andor, doesn't get to enact a Federation-wide tax on Andorian profits to line Tellarite pockets. Tellarite laws END at Tellar's borders. Period. Full stop. (I left Earth out because we're not supposed to have money, profits, and whatnot in the Star Trek timeline.)
And that's the way it needs to be here and not as well. Jurisdiction matters; or at least it should. This trend of nations exporting their laws beyond their own borders needs to end. And "because... the internet" is no excuse. As a US citizen, laws in Germany should never impact me in any way until and unless I set foot in Germany; and vice-versa. (Yes, I'm aware of the fact that the US if a serious offender in this regard as well. But the EU countries are doing their best to be just as bad.)
They sealed their fate when they laughed W. E. Deming out of town and country for having the temerity to suggest that maybe they should build cars that don't suck. Deming, however, found an audience for his theories on statistical quality analysis and management in... you guessed it... Japan. Not only did the Japanese accept Deming's notion that building quality products is a good thing. They took it to heart and built on it and applied it not just to their automotive industry, but their industrial base in general. Japan named Deming a "Sacred Treasure" to the country and established a prize in his name to be awarded for achievements in total quality management.
And thus, my first Japanese car, a Subaru, lasted me 14 years, outlasting every Detroit car I ever owned before, twice over and then some. I'm up to 6 years now on my Mazda, with zero issues and only the routine scheduled maintenance. (And Subaru and Mazda are smaller niche brands that don't even quite hit Honda's or Toyota's standards.). Detroit's reaction to Japanese cars being superior? Put bigger fins on it, launch a campaign of "buy American" yellow-scare xenophobia, and shovel ever-larger bovine pickup-trucks-with-a-box-on-the-back trash onto the road. Well, screw that and screw them. Detroit made their bed and it can lie in it. My rule now is that the VIN must start with the letter J, or no sale. And it's their own damn fault.
Honestly though... If *I* were cooped up in one building for six years, with torture and murder at the hands of the CIA awaiting me should I ever set foot outside, I would probably be pretty deranged by now too.
Get off your high-horse about "intended experiences" and other such crap; and just put the cheat codes back into your games. Then people won't bother to waste time hacking at your code so they can race up & down Vice City Beach in the tank, with recoil of the back-facing gun making you zoom along faster than the Vice cops' Infernus, before they actually unlock all of the other islands.
Not everyone enjoys games in the same way. The way some people enjoy the game you develop will not be the way you envision. And THAT'S OKAY! Hell... I'm not sure I've *ever* not used the money cheat in a Maxis game. I have more fun building cool cities, neighborhoods, and houses than I ever care about the day-to-day lives of my sims. The GTA games, I'd always play through once before exploring the cheats. But even if I hadn't; I've already paid. And how I get the most fun out of the game is none of your damn business.
Bullocks.
The closest thing the US has had to a viable third-party candidate, in my lifetime at least, was Ralph Nader in 2000. And even then, there was no realistic chance of his actually winning. It was just assumed that, with the exemplary Clinton economy and given the thoroughly dismal performance of the previous Bush administration, there was no chance of enough people being daft enough to vote to regress back to another Bush economy and warmongering. So a lot of us voted Nader in the hopes of pushing the Green Party over 5% in the general, so as to send a message to the Democratic Party to correct the unfortunate list to the starboard that it had picked up.
Well... that endeavor worked out catastrophically badly. And it's a mistake I, for one, intend never to repeat.
> the US is a Democracy, not a theocracy.
No.
The US *CLAIMS* to be a democracy, or sometimes a republic, and not a theocracy. But despite that notional claim or goal; in >200 years, we're STILL unsuccessful in the expunging influence of religion from the government. Until we finally and successfully make that advance for ourselves... until people like Mike Pence, for example, have ZERO chance of every attaining anything even resembling political power at any level; federal, state, or local... we're at least partially theocratic as well, in fact if not in name.
As the saying goes: "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."... especially apropos in this context, because Saudi Arabia is plagued by both ills.
Well... in fairness, Boeing is way up in Everett. Amazon, on the other hand, has actually taken over large swaths of downtown Seattle itself. So I can understand the concern.
Oh, I've seen plenty of online whinging from the "nerds get out" and "ZOMG gentrification" brigades.
But in real life I have a few friends who work for Amazon. Plus I've gotten to know a handful of the staff at their SF Popup Loft And while it's certainly not the most laid-back company; they have generally positive things to say about their work environment. And they are paid competitively for their positions and skill sets. Hell, Amazon's periodically thrown recruiters at me. And if their timing ever lines up with mine, I'm pretty sure I'd be happy to work for them.
And as for the "oh noes, the nerds are gentrifying Seattle" mob... I've been to (and remember) the downtown Seattle area south of Lake Union before Amazon was much more than Bezos and a garage. And I've recently had occasion to go back. And while I can certainly understand concern about tying a large portion of a city's economy to a single employer; the area is VASTLY improved over what it was before Amazon took off.
I'd say it's also a good example of why Twitter is a really awful communications channel; one which should not be used by... well... anyone who aspires to be taken seriously as anything besides a semi-coherent rambling loon. Really, if your thoughts, on just about any topic, are so lacking in nuance that you can express them in 140 characters; you should probably keep those thoughts to yourself.
I think it's simpler than that. There's no need for a cabal of elite financial illuminati. It's simple politics. Elon Musk told 45 to kiss off and left that "tech advisory council" of his after he reneged on our obligations under the Paris climate accords. Musk has been vocally supportive of environmental controls and alternative energy, which 45 either personally hates or hates as the proxy of his coal and oil industry backers.
And while the SEC is nominally and theoretically supposed to be "independent and nonpartisan", it does still fall under the executive branch; 45's personal fiefdom in the government. And 4 of its 5 commissioners are trumpian thugs, three having come into their offices this year and one in 2017. That, IMO, makes any and all of its actions suspect for the duration. And given 45's temperament, plus the adversarial relationship he's cultivated with Musk, Tesla, and Silicon Valley in general; I'd peg this as nothing more than simpleminded revenge. Musk misstepped, and 45 saw the opportunity to knife him in the back.
By that standard, developers should ignore ALL laptops. If I've ever seen a laptop with a full-sized keyboard, complete with properly sized and located arrows, an actual number pad, and all of the F-keys; I can't recall it. And if I could, I'd guess that I was mis-remembering or flashing back to a hallucination. The thing would be so wide as to be comical; and I won't even guess what its display's aspect ratio would be. And that's not even considering any potential Type-M snobbery wrt/ the superiority of the truly old-school clacky keys; which would also take up too much space in any laptop.
Granted, coming from vi-land back in the day; the absence of a physical escape key if annoying. But it's one that would be irrelevant to the emacs and nano people...
... and the truth is, I've been all-in on Sublime Text for so long that my vi skills have atrophied such that I use a cheat sheet for tasks much more complex than minor and temporary config file adjustments. And, as one might guess, I use an external keyboard and trackpad when I'm desk bound anyway. So even having been a "vi > emacs" partisan in the past, the Touch Bar escape key impacts me fairly seldomly.
(Side note: Fsck you Ubuntu! When I open visudo, it should goddamned well open in vi, not nano. Yes, I know I can change that. But I shouldn't have to. It's even right there in the name of the command: visudo, NOT nanosudo! End of rant.)
The world doesn't need another lumbering bovine of a full-sized SUV anyway. And Subarus have, in general been porking up over the years such that even the Outback and Forester are too damn big now as well. WRX or BRZ, or GTFO.
Ugh. Landlines.
Back before ubiquitous cellphones and number portability and when moving to a new town meant getting a new local number that might have belonged to someone else in the past...
I had just moved towns and gotten a new number for my new place. Turned out MY new phone number had used to belong to someone who'd skipped out on some bills. Which, of course, meant that the debt collectors, scummy and dimwitted creatures that they are, started harassing ME. No amount of: first, semi-courteously correcting their screwup; then, telling them unequivocally to stop calling me; then, telling them to go fuck themselves in increasingly creative ways; and eventually, blowing the loudest and most shrill whistle I could find into the phone; would get them to knock off the crap. Eventually, I wound up having to play along long enough to find out where they were located; and start calling their local police and sheriffs' offices and reporting them repeatedly for harassment. Even then, it didn't stop entirely. But it brought the number down to a level that I didn't have to get a new phone number.
Seriously. Everyone here who can rub two brain cells together and sit through some codeacademy courses is calling themselves a NodeJS developer and making six figures these days. Hiring is a beast, signing and referral bonuses are in the five figures now, and it's still damn hard to fill the seats, much less find actual talent. There's barely anyone *left* to be register jockeys; because god forbid those jobs go back to the part-time teenagers who manned registers when I was... well... a teenager.
The proverb about the pavement on the road to hell notwithstanding, I'll take good intentions that go awry over active malice any day.