the barrier for getting Linux to work is too high right now for a very large part of the population

My elderly (late 80s) parents have Windows on their laptops and it would be impossible for them to use it without my regular intervention. I might as well take the plunge and set them up with Linux.

So cynical … what makes you think “a startup aiming to broker paid licensing deals between publishers and AI companies” can’t be trusted implicitly?

They don’t even have a duty to know what the law is.

I feel like that’s the same underlying issue: The requirements are not understood upfront.

Actually on most of these failed projects the requirements of the original customer were pretty clear. But the developers tried to go far beyond those original requirements. It is fair to say that the future requirements were not well understood.

the alternative is building a prototype, which you’re allowed to throw away afterwards

Lol I’ve done many prototypes. The problem is that management sees them and says “oh, so we’re finished with the project already? Yay!”

I witnessed a huge number of failed projects in my 25-year career. The cause was almost always the same: inexperienced developers trying to create a reusable product that could be applied to imagined future scenarios, leading to a vastly overcomplicated mess that couldn’t even satisfy the needs of the original client. Made no difference what the language or framework was or what development methodology was utilized.

6 cans of Coke (Sam’s cola ftw) a day

Damn, that is 960 calories a day of soda. If you’re an average-sized man, that represents 40% of your daily diet (around 2500 cal per day).

British coins really seem absurdly overly-beefy for the monetary value they represent. I think it’s a way of saving up metal for the next time the Germans need sorting out.

I (white boy) visited India in the early '90s and brought back a bunch of rolls of half-Rupee coins as souvenirs. Turns out they were the exact same weight and diameter as US quarters (even down to the number of ridges, which makes me suspect India bought a bunch of used US minting machines to make them), so I started using them at laundromats. The exchange rate at the time was 35 Rs to the dollar, so a load in the US that normally cost $1 was costing me less than 6 cents. I do feel bad for the harassment that actual Indian customers probably ended up receiving, although possibly the owners never noticed or cared.

There’s something I don’t understand that maybe other unicycle riders can explain to me. I can ride a unicycle and I can even juggle while riding one, but I cannot go more than 200 feet or so before my thighs completely burn out and I fall over. How do people use these things as actual forms of transportation?

go to live shows

Live shows not put on by Ticketmaster! Shit …

My small tech company (which I really liked working for) had < 100 employees. We struggled through a few near-death experiences because of slow sales and panic from our original investors, then we got saved for a few years after being purchased by a larger company (with around 1000 employees). Then that larger company (a small player in the networking equipment genre) got bought by probably the largest player in that space, and within six months everybody from the 1000-person company (excepting a few c-suite types) were laid off - the company had only been acquired in order to eliminate a very minor competitor. There is no safety in small.

I love when owners show off how “practical” that truck bed is - when it has about the same carrying capacity as my roadster’s trunk.

I saw my first cybertruck in person the other day. It looks incredibly dumb in promotional photos, but it’s astonishing how much stupider it looks in traffic surrounded by normal vehicles.

For a while in the programming world “why are manhole covers round?” was a common question to be asked in interviews. I had no fucking clue the first time I was asked, but subsequently I would put on my deep pondering face and reason through it out loud and arrive at the correct answer, which never failed to impress the interviewer. After a few years I started owning up to the fact that I (and everyone else) had already heard that question.

Its like having to live two lives

Ha ha exactly. I’m a school bus driver IRL and I constantly have dreams where I drive my bus into a wall or a line of waiting children and stuff like that. It takes me a few minutes after I wake up some mornings to process that I haven’t actually lost my job (or gone to prison).

I dunno, I was a wake-and-baker for thirty years and never had dreams at all. I quit completely about three years ago and now I have vivid dreams all the time. I actually don’t like this aspect of sobriety very much - the dreams aren’t nightmares or anything but they’re a lot more intense than I would like them to be.

earnest reviews of their employers (which is literally the core of their business

I don’t understand the need for a site like this. I just assume that my employer is going to suck in standard corporate suck fashion.

Diana Rigg from The Avengers. Also from the best Bond movie of all time. Also from Game of Thrones, I suppose, although I’ve never watched that.

I found one local house for $70K that had a huge number of problems, like cracks and rust showing through the stucco exterior, broken fascia boards, upstairs that was only 6’ high, stairway that came up into the upstairs bathroom etc. etc. (the house dated from around 1850 or so). I passed on it, but I was surprised to see that it sold just a few days later, and even more surprised when it was re-listed less than two months later for $195K. I went to see it again and it was a classic lipstick-on-a-pig flip: just grey paint and those nasty grey fake wood vinyl floor planks everywhere. I’ve never been so flat out offended by a flip before - and the thing sold almost immediately for the asking price. I feel sorry for the schmucks who bought that thing, although they probably turned around and sold it for $300K.

I think OP meant to say “highlight marker”.