My ancient macbook has a cd drive, but it stopped recognizing the drive years ago and of course there’s no physical eject button. It Just Works!

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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?

Nothing drives me as crazy as my phone constantly putting in “thus” instead of “this”. Nobody fucking ever uses the word “thus” in a text message.

Take WWII for instance, being neutral kind of says yeah we are cool with both sides.

Being literally surrounded by the Third Reich meant their choices were neutrality or actually joining up with Hitler, so they really can’t be criticized for choosing neutrality. They can be criticized for their actions during and after the war in helping the Nazi leaders squirrel away the wealth they stole from the Jews, something that was not necessary for a neutral nation to do.

I’d rather rip on Sweden which at least had some possibility of joining the Allies but instead supplied Germany with the high-quality iron ore they absolutely needed to keep their war machine running - the exact same thing they did in WWI. They also supplied Germany with much-needed ball bearings, but at least they sold them to the Allies as well.

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

My memory is all fucked up too and I have to look this shit up. I could have sworn Security came out in 1984, and it was probably my favorite album of the 80s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKGY2ABHP7c&ab_channel=FoundationINTERVIEWS

Nirvana always gets credit for putting the nail in the coffin of hair metal, but I think it was more Beavis and Butthead’s shtick of mocking 80s videos that did it.

Kids in The Hall

My favorite sketch show of all time, believe it or not. I’m squishing your head.

The Real World

Even the first Real World was a lot better than later years of MTV. I think one thing that MTV never gets credit for is helping to normalize homosexuality in US culture, which they did by always having a gay cast member in the show.

My family didn’t have cable TV growing up, so I had to watch MV3 which was a half-hour syndicated MTV knockoff out of Los Angeles where the videos always had a studio full of kids dancing superimposed over them. I was always self-conscious about dancing back then, but if you watch videos of 80s kids dancing you’ll realize that everybody danced like shit back then.

Back in spring of 1982

I think your memories are off a little date-wise. Bowie’s Let’s Dance was released in 1983 and Peter Gabriel’s Security was released in late 1982.

Martha Quinn

I’m still in love with her.

They look awful in promotional photos, but it’s shocking how much more bizarre they look IRL when surrounded by normal vehicles.

One Boeing 737 MAX = 6.5 million avocado toasts. You’d have to go without avocado toast for … uh … two weeks?

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.

“When life gives you lemons, jam them up life’s tailpipe.”

I don’t remember if she was still married to Bruce Willis at this point, which was 2006 or thereabouts, but she was hanging out with Ashton Kutcher in Shreveport because I kept encountering the couple at restaurants and bars. Also had dinner with Ted Danson one evening because he was sitting alone at the table next to me and my friends reading a paperback book and looking sad and lonely so we invited him to join us - he’s actually a nice, normal, friendly guy.