LaserDiscMan

That meme is likely a reference to “Button, Button” a short story by Richard Matheson that was later adapted into a Twilight Zone episode and the 2009 movie “The Box”

“There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=V9XeyBd_IuA&t=25s&pp=ygUUbmV0d29...

I once worked on an in-house ERP system which had been developed over about 15 years by various developers. It was the engine of the entire company, everything passed through it. The CFO and some senior leadership erroneously blamed it for their shortcomings/used it as a scapegoat. When new management took charge, an initiative was started to replace the system with an industry standard solution. Both myself and the CTO (my boss) made it clear that we strongly felt this would not only go way over budget, but ultimately fail as a project.

Having no understanding as to the technicalities involved, the project was given the go ahead by the directors after several meetings with a vendor. After the CTO and I expressed our concerns about the scale of the project and the sheer amount of functionality involved, the vendor gleefully assured us that they were experienced with "migrations of this scale" and were more than prepared, which was music to the ears of the CFO.

Daily 2-3 hour meetings followed (for many months) to define the scope of the project. Within each meeting I sort of zoned out because it became very obvious that no only did the vendor not understand the scale of the work involved, but had started cutting corners everywhere/leaving out crucial functionality, and this was just the scoping stage, no development had even started yet.

I eventually departed the company but kept in contact with the CTO and learned that after 5 years (project was scoped for 2), the migration was abandoned costing multiple millions of dollars with nothing to show for it.

This reminds me of Kim Peek (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek) the inspiration for Rain Man. Peek supposedly memorised thousands of books, including phone directories, sports score publications etc...

Reminds me of the Maury Travis case. Documented in the Forensic Files episode "X Marks the Spot". "Shear Luck" is another memorable episode about a suspect who cut up a floppy disk containing evidence.

Edit: Just remembered the episodes "Ticker Tape" and "Hack Attack", which are of a similar theme.

They're not cheap or large, but broadcast monitors can be an option here. Very expensive unless bought used though. Lots of lesser known manufacturers in the space, and some great deals can be found. The largest size most manufacturers will do is around 32 inches.

CRT Broadcast monitors are somewhat of a collectors item for retro game enthusiasts.

I once worked in a small company developing niche but expensive Windows software. The company enjoyed (probably still enjoys) relatively limited competition in it's space. During start up, the program checks for the version of Windows which it's being run on and refuses to boot if it's different to the one specified for that version.

This software was mainly sold to mid-large size companies, so although it could be trivially defeated with minimal reverse engineering, I doubt this was ever a real issue.

Every new version of Windows that Microsoft released would coincide with many customers purchasing the latest version of our software.

I wasn't aware of this at the time, but apparently INC "leaked" a game to The Humble Guys which was modified to search for a modem and dial 911, supposedly leading to some police visits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Network_of_Crack...

I wonder how countries will attempt to deal with declining populations. Immigration isn't really a solution, as the countries with positive fertility rates (falling fast) are not producing enough children to balance the decline. I find the geopolitical implications fascinating to think about. If a country is declining and cannot tempt migrants, does it perhaps become a tax haven? Is it absorbed by a larger country (either willingly or by force)? Does it join a union of other countries to form the start of a global government?

Economically, could the deflationary pressures of a declining population lead to low/negative interest rates and hyper QE?

It's going to be interesting to see.

In the earlier days of my career, I was tasked with automating a large daily accounting task. Essentially, a team of accountants was copying and pasting values outputted by the company ERP system into a spreadsheet. The ERP used an in-house database, and without intense reverse engineering it was only accessible via the internal programming language. Whilst the language did allow for File IO there was no real way to access the ERP without opening the GUI, so I wrote a dreadful little VBA script which invoked a logon for a dedicated user as a background session on a company server. When this user logged on, another little batch file opened the ERP GUI, opening the GUI triggered an action in the internal ERP language which checked to see if the username matched the special user. If so, the ERP began a vast series of complex calculations, spitting out the results to a series of files which were then read back by the VBA and populated the spreadsheet. The batch file on the background session would automatically log the session off after a pre-set time. Whilst this was all going on, the user in the spreadsheet was presented with a progress bar. If memory serves, I even had some primitive locking mechanism to prevent multiple people running this process at the same time.

I think it ranks as the most hilarious (from a technical perspective) piece of work I've ever done. To my surprise, the solution was quite robust, and was being used on a daily basis by the CFO and other accountants. Even more surprising is that it carried on working for years, even long after I'd departed the company. Thinking back to that still makes me smile :)

The result of this on-shoring craze (modulo automation) is that we're likely to see very significant inflation, basically taking us back to the cost structures we saw in the 1980s. No more cheap Chinese or Vietnamese goods at Amazon or Walmart; if we have to Buy American, expect to pay the differential between Vietnamese and American wages, roughly a 30-40x increase.

I theorise that it might also lead to a reversal of planned obsolescence and products with a short lifespan. Companies might compete by designing goods based around longevity to justify the higher cost. Household appliances, for example, might be a once in a decade (or longer) purchase as opposed to the throwaway approach.

I don't have soda (or sweet food) very often, but I do miss the taste (and rush) of real sugar. I've never tasted a reformulated product that comes close to the real thing.

I watched that shortly after release. Very memorable. It was quite bizarre to hear someone freely discuss his day job of murdering people in such a casual context.

Not sure if 7 years is going back too far, but I'll go with: Only The Dead

Does not make for easy viewing at all. Essentially a narrated compilation of Australian journalist Michael Ware's footage (first and second hand) from his time in Iraq throughout the conflict.

The Page Boy was a project which would have allowed for the GB Color to wirelessly send/receive email, read news/sports results, get weather reports, use a "search engine", send GB camera photos/animations to other users, and even stream live video. Mario was to deliver small voice samples throughout usage which would be updated by Nintendo.

The product was pitched by a small firm called "Wizard" to senior Nintendo executives in 99. Nintendo responded enthusiastically, but the project was terminated in 02 due to the immaturity of the telecoms infrastructure at the time.

Although different in many ways, I think Event Horizon shares some similarities with The Black Hole. The Gothic style of the ship, the setting, the plot etc...

I distinctly remember being mesmerized by this scene at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kyiQzc4134

Super Mario 64 was a similar experience of "wow, this is new!".

In terms of indexes, I find this chart quite comforting myself: https://www.ftportfolios.com/Common/ContentFileLoader.aspx?C...

They're not cheap or large, but broadcast monitors can be an option. Very expensive unless used though. Lots of lesser known manufacturers in the space, and some great deals can be found. The largest size most manufacturers will do is around 32 inches.

Reminded me of another:

John Chowning - FM Synthesis

The lines blur between creation/discovery for some of these. Additionally, the historic nature makes it impossible to determine if these were all the work of a single individual, but I'll go with:

Joseph Shivers - Lycra/Spandex

Albert Hoffman - LSD

Anton Köllisch - MDMA (was killed in WW1)

John Pemberton - Coca Cola (significantly different to the modern drink)

John Baird Glen - Propofol

Percy Spencer - Microwave Oven

I much prefer original hardware, but not necessarily in the original state. My consoles are RGB modded, and I make use of flashcarts and things like PS-IO.

This is exactly why I miss IMDB's "I need to know" board. You could post a partially correct memory snippet from decades ago and someone would chime in with the answer. I had memories of movies I'd watched on TV as a young child. I had no name or context, but simply little moments stuck in my brain, and someone was able to resolve those to a title.

The closing of the IMDB message boards was a terrible loss IMO. You could visit an obscure actors message board, and you might run into someone who knew them. You could discuss a movie's intricacies with someone, and share theories, etc, on the specific board for that movie. It was a goldmine for movie fans, and I still miss it.

This isn't really the same thing, but in art form, a company called "American Multiple Industries" published pornographic Atari 2600 games in the early 80's. The most infamous of which was Custer's Revenge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custer%27s_Revenge (Possibly NSFW)

As well as a time sink, code review can be detrimental if it's used as a KPI gaming mechanism or for passive aggressive one-upmanship.

100% agree with this. The FIRE movement (or the equivalent before it gained this name) was about average people using frugality, investing, sensible leverage, and luck to get ahead and (semi) retire much earlier than usual. It has since suffered an influx (at least in popular online circles) of high earners scoffing at the idea that anyone could achieve financial independence with a frugal lifestyle. This despite the trivial mathematics proving it is indeed very possible for average earners, perhaps even more so recently given the bull markets.

I've worked with some very intelligent, brilliant people, who simply cannot comprehend how their own financial spending is foolish, or more likely, know this and choose to play ignorance. I've always found it fairly bizarre, almost like an addiction. It's fascinating how some people can be so skilled in one domain, but so lacking in self-control, especially when obtaining said skill requires enormous self-control in the first place.

A compilation of news reports at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBOhFGmbSIs

"Captain Midnight" jammed HBO for almost 5 minutes in 86: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_broadcast_sig...

La Haine also contains a fairly nice use of the "mirror set extension" trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okQJPUTQMqA

"Oh boy!"

The same technique of using an extended set to fake a mirror was frequently used on Quantum Leap.

Since other users are posting their favorite Synthwave songs, I'll add some of mine:

FM Attack - Dreamer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ88xK3XmpQ

Mitch Murder - In The News - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz7rK3Eks4s

Mitch Murder - Television - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_h7AM9UeaA (Contains clips from Videodrome, possibly NSFW)

Miami Nights 1984 - Ocean Drive - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC42MRmiAt0

Droid Bishop - Stunner - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YEk5iD2dUk

iamMANOLIS - My Future Girlfriend Video - (WARNING: Video contains some strobing) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TuiZMrHMiU

Arcade Summer - Ocean Break - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXdXywI4-qM

Miami Horror - Bellevue - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZFCmZZKB70 (the most popular video is better but NSFW)

I've been into Italo disco for much of my life, it's similar but usually relentlessly positive/upbeat in comparison with some Synthwave tracks.