THENATHE

The only thing I really don’t agree with is SaaS. There are numerous benefits to the end consumer as long as you phrase your thinking in the right way. Take Adobe, what most people consider to be the most gratuitous SaaS. I want photoshop in 2006, so I buy elements for $100 and get a shitty outdated version for the rest of my life. Or, I spend $8/mo on something that is constantly improving and adding new features, and get other programs too!

My workplace uses indesign, illustrator, and photoshop. But because the whole package was made available, we started messing around with premier and after effects and ended up adding a couple of skills to our design repertoire that we never would have fucked around with otherwise.

Plus, games that have SaaS last longer. Granted, skins are kinda lame. But think of a game like Helldivers 2, where the “battle pass” is earnable by in game play OR you can skip ahead with money. Great game, option to support the developers leads desire to keep development going instead of abandoning a game right after launch because “their work is done”.

Quality user experience in things that are core functions of use, and specifically them not getting bogged down (or potentially “bricked” by) the need for luxury, or ads, or ease of use.

In a car, the driver seat should, in my mind, be manually adjusted. Why? Because if the motor breaks because it has to adjust each time you sit down, and the last person to use the car is my mother or girlfriend, I literally cannot drive my car until it gets fixed because I am too tall.

But something like heated/cooled seats is perfectly fine to have as a luxury, because if my seat cooler fan breaks, I just have a sweaty back as if I didn’t have a seat cooler.

Same with manual transmissions: if I ever have my transmission start acting up and I don’t have the money to bring my car to the shop, I could probably fix it, albeit with a lot of difficulty and cursing. But an automatic? No way in hell.

Plus, my manual lasts longer, stays cooler, tows more, is more fun, provides more control, keeps me more aware and focused while driving, and is a theft deterrent.

You can apply this logic to anything: if the object becomes useless without it, it should be as basic, durable, strong, resilient, and/or foolproof as possible, but when the object would not break without it, it can have as much luxury as desired.

I know nothing about the fundamentals of “old computing” like what Mr. Atkinson worked on as I am only 27 and have much more contemporary experience. That being said, I still very greatly mourn the loss of these old head techs because the world of tech I use today would not have been possible if not for these incredibly smart and talented individuals. To learn to code without YouTube is truly a feat I could not imagine, and the world will be a lesser place without this kind of ingenuity. Hopefully he’s making some computers in the sky a bit better!

In the modern sense, this is very much a “I don’t want to do labor” issue. If all of the WFH jobs get sent overseas, the only thing left to do here is stuff that cannot be done on a computer from home, like construction, fabrication, forestry, food service, etc to name a few. A lot of us coder/designer/techy types are somewhat privileged in the idea that we can get paid a reasonable to high wage for doing something that is physically non-demanding and essentially only commands its price tag because of schooling and brainpower.

I can imagine a lot of us are going to get very angry if we suddenly have to haul Sheetrock for a living.

My boss recently sent me from 5 days in office to 3, and on those two days WFH I get basically nothing done. Not because I don’t try, but my position in a small company is structured in such a way that I essentially work with my boss as her right hand, so if she isn’t there to guide me or give me tasks I essentially don’t work.

I am not sure if that is a failing of her management, the job we are doing, or the industry we are in, but the lack of being able to bug her about things is essentially cutting into my bottom line.

I love work from home, but I can’t help but feel like its only real benefit is removing a lot of the overhead from jobs that are already considered overhead. Agree with this next part or not, it isn’t really debatable: to the average person (which we aren’t), basically anything that can be done on a computer from home is overhead.

Coding in the office? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Finance department? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Basically anything HR related? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Middle managers? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Graphics designers and the like? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Basically every job that has been moved to WFH should have been that way since computers became widespread, and it is essentially a problem that they weren’t WFH already. If it can be done entirely on a computer, it should be done from home. Leave the office space for housing and jobs that can’t be done from the comfort of one’s underwear.

If anyone else wants to do this, coin silver is nominally cheaper and is significantly more durable, and about as easy to melt.

I view things like a furnace or nice blowtorch as an investment into future projects that may otherwise not even be viable (in my mind) without the knowledge that I have said tool, so a small furnace for melting, while being more expensive, might expedite the process or increase quality, while also opening doors to future potential endeavors.

The only thing that kind of bothers me about libraries is that, as a tech focused individual, basically every book I read or whatever is either an ebook or a audiobook, and I don't want to have to go to the library to pick it out. I understand if I were getting physical books the need to go to a physical location to grab them, but if I'm getting something digital I don't want to have to go to the library. My library doesn't really offer an online catalog that you can just download from, only look at to see what you want to get in the library, and the free library services that they offer like the big ebook repositories don't have any books that I feel like I want to read, so it is just far easier to torrent things or have an audible subscription. Most libraries don't have really cool extra stuff like maker spaces or aquariums or anything remotely interesting other than books and maybe some computers for homeless people to use or whatever, so unless you're physically going there for a book, they're kind of pointless.

I'm not saying I don't appreciate and respect libraries, but they really just didn't change with the times around where I am, and it makes them far more inconvenient to use for someone in my particular position than it does to make them convenient. I will still support them as a public access, and I think it would be tragic if they went away, but I wish they would spend a little bit more of whatever budget they get investing on making it. Not a terrible experience to get shit online.

I really liked The Windows 7 theme and kept it on on every computer that wasn't a gaming PC, because I'm gaming computers. I want to squeez every last frame. But my dad always turned off the theme on all of his computers because it reminded him of Windows 98, and frankly, I am very sad that you cannot just get the old windows 98 theme in Windows today as a default feature. I know they're a third party apps that do that, but I wish it was still just a feature that they had because it really wouldn't add that much development time. I kind of am just over it with all of the extra bullshit in Windows, like I want an operating system with a file browser and a built-in web browser that I probably will never use, I don't want telemetry, I don't want recommended files, I don't want widgets, I don't want a news center on the side of my computer, I don't want any baked in AI bullshit.

I wish I could literally just get Windows 7 with all of the security and performance and compatibility improvements of Windows 11. Also a functioning search bar, which would be really nice.

For me, the part that is most wild is that I have never heard a Japanese onomatopoeia that sounds remotely close to what I would actually assume the sound to sound like. when I was a little kid and I was studying Japanese, it always made me think that Japanese people had different ears than I did, because if they're hearing all of these sounds the way they are and I'm hearing them all the way I am, there's no possible universe where we are describing them the same way, which would mean that we have to hear them differently. I now realize it's likely more of a societal thing, but it's still interesting nonetheless

I think the problem with open source in today's day and age is that old school programmers were all about making the landscape better, because they enjoyed computers where they had a passion for it. Modern-Day programmers, as a general statement, want money. Open source software is generally a terrible way to make money, but modern-day programmers believe that they can just create a really nice program and then make money from it. From a financial perspective, open source software is basically terrible for the people that make it, but really really great for the people that use it. That kind of goes against capitalism, almost, because basically every other capitalist-based business rapes all of the benefits for the person that develops the thing, so coming from a very american-centric perspective, it seems kind of wild to think that I can develop something that is really the backbone of a bunch of different stuff and very good, and make absolutely no money from it.

Yes. Hosting it for personal use would not be a crime, but distributing it would be. Additionally, even if people were to get it from you without you getting in trouble, they would all have to use a VPN to even begin to see anything, which is past the capabilities of most of the populace currently, which would make hosting it and distributing it via sneakerware basically useless.

The reason it is kind of wild is because a company being forced to sell basically the only thing it has in order to stay relevant in the second most major region of the world is kind of big news, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they just took the ban and then only started working in Europe and China. Is bytedance even known for anything other than tiktok? What do they do other than provide the service for tiktok?

The thing about China banning stuff is that it is sponsored by the whole government, so every ISP in China is forced to comply with the ban. In the US, unless all of the ISPs are forced to ban tiktok at a network level, the ban will essentially be on new downloads I'm sure.

If the ban is on new downloads, it will mean that the ban doesn't hit particularly hard, except for there will be no more platform growth, which would mean that the company sees all of the issue with it, but the users do not which would stagnate the platform and lead to its eventual death. Frogs in a pot of water turned up to a boil, instead of dropped in at a rolling boil kind of thing.

If it is banded in ISP level, there is essentially no real chance that anybody will put any effort to get around it. I see big statements all the time about how people slightly younger than me don't even know what command prompt is, which is frankly a wild statement because even people I know my age that are not techy. Like I am still know how to do almost all of the basic commuter commands and know how to download a VPN and similar. We are either going to see a Renaissance of tech people opened up because of the ban on tick tock and them learning about technology to try and circumvent it, or we are going to see the total death of the platform because most people don't really know how to do anything technical on a phone or computer anymore.

Either way, it's going to cause some fairly large shifts until something is done, and if nothing is done, maybe the main shift will be just to a different platform rather than a different societal state of mind.

It is wild to me how it seems like every blight or environmental disease or pest I hear about comes from Asia, Chestnut blight, Bark beetles, wildly invasive tree species where I live, carp, Burmese Pythons, that orange disease like 10 years ago, COVID, bird flu, etc.

Not making any kind of statement really, just that the only type of invasive species I know of from NOT Asia is climbing ivy

Yes, we would. That's why most of us are okay with proxies. But the fact of the matter is that when all of the good cards cost a lot of money, and you need to play good cards to win tournaments, and you cannot use proxies in tournaments, spending money to win nothing at all feels really bad.

If all the cards were free and we were competing for $500 instead of decks cost $2k and we're playing for a $600 card I wouldn't care. I probably would enjoy it. But we live in a society and as it is, I would rather modern cards have more value than none.

I spent a lot of time looking at these a while back (early 23) and found that they all are a far worse value than a modded iPod, especially when you consider that iPod DACs are widely considered to be fantastic.

This happens in every industry once that business is opened to the stock market. Larian is great because its private. Steam is great because it's private. Facebook used to be great then it went public and went downhill fast. Same with basically any company that doesnt have 2 vectors of VERY solid competition (AMD v Intel v ARM, nvidia v AMD v Intel, Micro v Samsung v hynix, Ford v GM v Dodge, etc). Companies that exist only to drive profits will do shit to ruin their brand in the name of profits, because stock profits make more money than being a good company.

I do almost exclusively by singles. That doesnt mean that a) winning packs from tournaments and LGS FNM doesnt feel satisfying or fun or valueable, and b) it wasnt fun to gamble on getting good value out of all pre-Throne of Eldraine sets, or c) that draft doesnt feel like a complete waste of money considering it is usually $30-50 buy in and winning gets you like 3 packs ($50 for 6 packs of cards each worth under a dollar feels bad). There used to be a lot of fun to be had in paying $10 for an FNM entry, getting a pack from entering, paying an extra $10 to get 2 more packs and rolling the dice. Sometimes you got trash, other times you got $50 worth of cards, but it was at least fun because there was a chance of good cards. Now, even if the card is very playable it still has no value.

He is somewhat exaggerating, as most of the MOST espensive cEDH decks peak at around 10k, which is frankly a TON of money but comes from 2 or 3 cards. Take Urza for example: the best Urza Poly Kraken deck (uninterruptable combo deck reliably wins turn 3) is like 9k because it has timetwister, tabernacle, and mox diamond, among other $200+ pieces. This deck is a solid 7 cEDH deck, which places it among the best decks ever. However, drop it to a cEDH 5 and the price drops to 2k because you can cut those crazy cards and make other subs. Drop it to a solid budget cEDH deck and you can get it to $500. Each extra insane piece adds only a nominal amount of power.

I mean, I wouldnt care if all of the cards were worthless as long as all of the packs are free. Winning tournaments (esp local ones) currently feels bad and unrewarding because a pack of cards is $5 to buy but contains $0 value. Investing implies buying and selling for the sake of profitmaking, whereas I really like the idea of cards fluctuating in value due to organic changes in the game so that you can trade a doubling season for 2 tutors, and then if for some reason one of those tutors goes for a long time without a reprint, you may be able to trade that tutor for a doubling season and another tutor! Like, Im not gonna go on to TCG player and buy cards for the sake of speculatively investing and holding value, but it doesnt feel good when packs are $5 a piece and contain $0.50 of cards. It feels even worse to draft for $40 and walk away with $3. ON AVERAGE a pack of magic cards should hold its value, and over time eventually go up.

Meaning if I spend $500 on packs of cards, I should get $500 worth of cards on the secondary market immediately (or even slightly less, like $300 would be reasonable), and then if I hold that for 5 years, it should be like $700. This is how it has been for all of magic's history pre-Throne of Eldraine (nothing particular about that set, but that is the last set that I really see this happening on)

Has anyone actually tried the network multiplayer? I won't have a chance to try this out for a while, but if there is now a great way for me to play actual commander with the MTGA rules engine (for speed and accuracy) with friends I would love this so much. Can anyone share their experiences?

I really miss 2016 MtG. I remember when full art lands and full art promos were RARE and with money for no reason other than their collectability. I really liked when cards were rare because of the fact that they were good and uncommon and maybe because they were the same as the regular card but foil, not because they were arbitrarily a different type of shiny, or like when that one card from Kamigawa had a different color neon border that made it spike to 3k for a while, let alone the new serialized cards.

I wish we could go back to that, because I was so excited about collecting cards back then. Nowadays I feel like unless I open a pack with a crazy reprint or a REALLY lucky list card, there are essentially no cards worth anything. I remember pulling some shock lands and even when they were only 8 bucks it felt really great, like it was gambling. Now, I only ever get packs of remastered sets, and standard sets are wholly uninteresting. I do a $40 draft and get $3 worth of cards, and it is to be seen if these EVER go up in value.

I still love the game, and I play it more than ever. But there are three groups of people: investors, people that realize it is a TCG, and people that think all cards should be worthless. The first is greedy, the middle is realistic, and the latter is idealistic. But I am solidly in the middle, and there is so much pushing on both sides that the middle group is demonized for wanting to play a game and have cards have relative value too.

I would really like to see a guide, mainly for parts, where I can get this above USBC and bluetooth kit, as well as a m.2 solid state and a bigger battery all in one.

I would really like a music player that is very detached from my phone that has all of these nice features, has a crazy good battery life, and is reasonably modern in function. I feel like the only way to get that nowadays at a reasonable price is to make one, and universally the iPod deck is considered the best value for what you get, especially at used prices.

My big complaint with NMS was that it does some things SO WELL that I want to play it despite all of the things it does so poorly. The player combat feels awful and clunky, but ship combat is amazingly fun and exciting! Exploring is great, but having to constantly find the same resources over and over in order to get off the fucking planet, or have a massive stockpile, is really boring. I also don't like being forced to build bases, like if I wanted to accomplish something by shooting and making money, I would rather do that than play a half baked survival crafting game.

I really wish that a game would come out that mixes all of the space and exploration of NMS but with the polish of a rockstar game like RDR, with the immersion of being a space explorer. I want fun combat with cover mechanics, I want trade and crime with NPCs, I want story (even if it is procedural), I want all of these things that NMS doesn't have. I look forward to this game because presumably they will have to focus on player combat and immersion more simply because there isn't a ton of space combat or similar. It looks a lot more "grounded", both literally and metaphorically, than NMS

Everyone knows don't shit where you eat, but what about "don't work with your passions"

If you enjoy doing computer stuff (coding, repair and building, management, etc) don't work in that industry. I've had this thought for a really long time about how if my work is sitting down and my hobbies are all sitting down, it is really hard to maintain a good schedule of forcing yourself to stay in shape and commit to a lot of exercise because frankly I don't really enjoy it and it just takes time away from what I actually want to be doing. If I were to just work a job that forces me to get exercise, like the forest service or a construction worker or anything that is very manual labor focused, I get all of my exercise needed as part of my job, and then I also get to do whatever I want at home without feeling guilty and I don't get burned out.

I think the world really needs to stop telling people that they need to do what they love, I think you really need to do something that you can tolerate doing for 30 years. Even my job was doing drugs and having sex all day, I still probably wouldn't love it after a while, if my job was playing video games I wouldn't love it, if my job was doing community service but paid, I wouldn't love it. But I enjoy all of those things outside of work, probably because they aren't work!

If you're going to spend all of your days coding, you're clearly going to lose interest in coding because that's just how work is: you don't want to do it!

I literally never experience this issue. Except for a couple of actually lost packages, my prime has had EVERY package come in 2 days or less except holidays. I live in a 250k town tho, so I am not sure if there is some level of size that plays into it. Perhaps I am the perfect size to have enough infrastructure to get reliable deliveries, but small enough that I don't have to worry about all that comes with a massive city.

Yea, I would be okay with spending all 30k of those on just YouTube ads, and pihole for the rest. Google is the biggest advertiser, so logically their ads would go first or close to the top

The main argument is privacy, both with Google as a whole as well as facial recognition and private moments being logged in Google photos.

One could argue that they are telling the truth about whether or not they ever look at your data and keep it encrypted and this and that and the other, but the simple fact is that unless it is open source or audited multiple times by independent third parties, there is no way to confirm that all of your data actually is private.

However, most people are beginning to realize that because of the overreach that all of these different tech mega corporations have, it is almost impossible to stay private, even if you do sacrifice your products for more private, generally less feature rich ones. A good example is proton mail: it is a great email service, it is truly private, but you also don't get a lot of the really nice features that Google has, like an actually good suite of integration with meetings, calendar appointments, shipping tracking, reminders, file sharing, the works.

There is a trade-off, and a lot of the tech focused people believe that the lack of features warrants the more privacy, so it is really a difference of ideology more than anything.

Can't say I didn't see this coming... Omegle today is very different than historically. I remember when I was much younger I would find a bot or a person just looking for sexting maybe once in 5. Now it seems that the genuine "wanna make a friend" people are 1-100. It is wild how it turned into just a horny site, and it makes me sad that it never had the opportunity for a resurgence.