Even Windows 98SE gave me a long habit (only somewhat receded after moving to Linux) to, as much as possible, not even move the cursor without a clear purpose. Every event could be the last before everything hanging. Probably not as often as with 95 or plain 98, but.

1980s?

Unions were over 40% of workforce in the 1970s.

Industrial workers and in general employees of big companies subject to constant scrutiny can unionize more easily. So much of that is not due to politics other than moving industries abroad.

Linux is glamorous.

While what’s said here is true, it can also be said about old cast iron pipes or 50s brick buildings with bitum and asbestos, and such.

That’s fine. People don’t work for free. People who work on Linux development are employed in supply chains involving Linux, with commercial incentive.

And another reason I really like this is that apparently they didn’t become crap in the decade between 2010 and 2020, they were playing the long game. LOL.

And also this would mean a rapid change from Apple being overpriced stuff for overly stunning girls (honestly something is strange with my life, I know more than zero such, actually more than non-stunning girls, and the even stranger fact is that only one of them uses Apple things, but eh, the metaphor), to it being almost/sometimes/occasionally underpriced stuff for everyone. They are already close to that honestly.

And at this point I (eh) got tired of tinkering, and while FVWM and using Linux or FreeBSD is wonderful, probably macOS with some programs like Emacs could do. And it would be a commonly supported OS, and there would be all kinds of “click-click-double-click” software for it.

Not that Apple criticisms are all wrong, but their build quality also becomes attractive as years pass by, because my laptops from ABS plastic become something barely holding together, used very carefully and with mechanically ruined ports in a couple of years each. Bad movements coordination, carelessness and such.

Something is really wrong with that country, doing sadism to employees simply to not appear lazy.

And even in bloody USSR such conveniences were mandated first, despite, eh, Soviet people not living very rich lives.

When I lived in my own house in the woods (literally no neighbors), I could bike ~10 minutes to the nearest small farmer’s shop, or ~20 minutes and get to a bigger grocery store. The fact that you must drive to buy groceries is, frankly, insane.

I live in Russia, dachas are common enough here (mostly summertime and not heated houses on small plots of land, used for gardening and sometimes growing food). So, we have one. When I’m there, I only bike for fun. I can literally walk to the neighboring town with a cinema and a mall and plenty of conveniences in 40 minutes on foot. I mean, people who have cars do drive to that kind of distances, but it’s not necessary. It’s the kind of place where in like 1 in 20 houses people live most of the time. And still.

and threw out the entire MacOS codebase due to bugs, legacy cruft, and laughable security.

Maybe he shouldn’t have.

A nuclear plant is not a nuclear bomb. And 5000 years is outta your ass.

And, the most important thing - military targets are usually protected worse than nuclear stations and big industrial plants. A nuclear station doesn’t move anywhere, it just sits on one place armored so well that it’ll likely survive the town being nuked (pun intended).

There are pollution dangers and complex logistics of rare and expensive materials. And the stations themselves are very expensive. But the danger of a nuclear station giving out a nuclear explosion is nonexistent.

I leave the 8-story building (with an elevator), walk 5-10 minutes (one road crossing with lights), buy groceries, in 30 minutes I’m back home.

Something is wrong with that murrka thing.

Do people not realise that von der Leyen is a right-wing fan of totalitarianism? What she supports cannot be good for us.

She might just be defined by her connections in her actions, the person not mattering. I’ve heard that this person is just not very bright in some things outside of the bulk of their experience and knowledge. In general might be true for politicians. Their stakeholders need to have perspective. They need to keep faces, show good sense of humor and negotiating talent, and don’t show what they think.

Not even totalitarianism, just power held by small elites, and this is a natural attraction for any human who got into rare places (also UvdL is notably a member of elites). See any sci-fi or fantasy universe, their plots often involve main characters and their small groups of acquaintances, traveling over all the world, solving millennium-old riddles, making color revolutions, and what not. All by a small group of heroes, all knowing each other. That’s just natural. Humans always strive to monopolize decision-making for their group, without outsiders.

So - that person might not even understand they are evil. Maybe they are not. At the same time it’s often really hard to tell which layer of a personality is the true one.

Long story short - yeah, I wouldn’t trust judgement of people like UvdL or maybe Kallas (elites too, just ex-Soviet), and I wouldn’t let them near power. But they themselves might not be malicious agents, just people thinking they are some sort of princess Leia in the New Republic, while the world is completely different and, notably, isn’t comprised of NPCs in a game.

As to the point - it’s a good technology to encourage critical thinking. It teaches you to trust nothing and nobody. The older generation, though, and even mine, show the opposite reaction, but anyone growing in a world where anything can be drawn believably by a computer will be used to think before believing.

It’s good long-term. Short-term it’s a catastrophe. They could use that investment for making a Xanadu-like EU-wide information system, plus cryptography as reinforcement, to counter the catastrophe, instead they are adding to it. Somehow with tech everyone tries to climb up and up faster, instead of fixing the foundations of towers they climb. Hypertext with reverse links and changes notification and global object identities and replication could solve so many flaws of WWW, that we wouldn’t need a lot of what’s been built on top of it.

Similar plus the issues of delivery to Russia and impending expenses at preventing like everything around me from crumbling plus creeping depression plus sick dog plus sister’s plans.

Barbwire is not as easy to find. But taking a bat, making a crown of construction nails and tying it together with a lot of glue tape (otherwise, ahem, the nails will make the bat shatter) - the classic way is always the best.

You can also bite off nails’ heads with metal scissors, and use a good enough pipe, and make a very basic and close-range firearm. But that takes some experience and awareness of the dangers (like killing yourself occasionally when the thing blows up).

The only way I’ve ever learned anything is by having a real-world problem that I can solve.

Same thing here except I’m still not a developer. Just from time to time can do something if it’s less boring than going another way.

I’ve even played through the “Turing Complete” game once, because I can’t force myself to repeat it. And it was very interesting, absolutely cool, except that gun has fired. It appears the game changed enough though, maybe it’s a sufficiently different gun to fire again. It’s a game for entertainment, not even talking about real life.

And when there’s a direct incentive, nothing is hard, for real. The hardship is in eyes tiring, time passing, time to render (in case of POV-Ray), migraines. But the task itself just takes it all as a payment, not as an effort.

And I sincerely don’t get why my diagnoses are ASD and BAD despite describing this many times, that is, that happens with ASD too, but honestly ADHD seems the most intuitive abbreviation here.

I’ve just realized that using FPGA for such products is economically sane. I thought before that when they use FPGA for specific end products, that’s because of military-like expectation to be able to change everything, or because of lacking effort and aiming for fans.

Honestly their “great” laws were also missing the point (or not, it’s just a different point from what there should be).

The problem is almost untouched, they just mandated nicer looks. GDPR included.

Yes, all the computer-paper interfaces are cool IMHO. That DataMatrix and QR are mainstream now I mostly like too.

What I don’t like is the wide reliance upon open Internet connectivity, and even worse, upon services in it.

(And Russian)

Nah, just a glitch in my memory

Memories rot over time. Apparently he’s not. Well, South Africans have Shuttleworth and de Raadt for this to not be a final nail.