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I've got a coin that answers questions. You have to give it a heads or tails query, then flip the coin, and it returns an answer. It's incredible. Now, it doesn't get the right answer every single time, but we're all learning how to use the new coin technology, and this is only the first generation of coin. The next model of coin is going to be even better. Soon we're not going to need humans any more, for any question we have, we'll be able to use the coin.

Pacman can escape more easily now that there's only one ghost.

It's illegal for us to steal from you, so we won't invite you inside.

The problem with anyone using my face to identify me is that it's hard for me to leave home without it.

I've noticed that the apple news ads target sensitive issues. The retirement one is a good example of that. I've seen ads that appear to already know my financial status and health conditions. I tried the option to reset my advertising identifier, it doesn't seem to make much impact.

I did, I don't want the hassle of anything being blocked, and I don't want to upload identity details as they have the potential for misuse.

I notice that some tech companies claim they are "trusted" or have "trusted third parties", I don't trust them at all, I'm not sure why they think I do.

This is a good moment to try to take Microsoft customers, as they're putting a lot of machines out of support.

The interfaces look like they wanted to be graphical, as they have windows and drop down menus, and they wanted to have multi-tasking, as they implemented the overlay tools in Borland Sidekick. They wanted those things but they were limited to staying in text mode because widespread adoption of any real graphical interface was slow.

It seems a little humorous now that professionals were stuck for several years doing their day to day word processing, spreadsheets and databases in text mode, where getting different sized text or different fonts was almost impossible. This also wasn't just in the 80s, it was still somewhat true in the early 90s, not very long before the beginning of the internet as we know it.

Still, I wonder if things are really any better now, as we're all using software interfaces built on something else that's not really appropriate for the job. HTML.

The world-wide-web is becoming more and more only-your-country-web.

I noticed that some of his choices contributed to his problem. I haven't been forced into accepting AI (so far) while I've been using duckduckgo for search, libreoffice, protonmail, and linux.

I've always wondered if the burning batteries and electronics in the drones have any significant environmental impact when compared to conventional weapons.

Any self respecting alien would send the signal every 42 minutes.

I think it worked as defined, it hogged the POST requests?

I think I heard that moving from 99.99% unavailability to 99.999% unavailability costs ten times more.

Do we lack a captcha here?

On the website there is a demo, when you spin the wheel, it scrolls a screen on the right. The demo may be blocked by an adblocker.

I tried a similar phone app years ago but it crashed almost every day, which made it impractical. I'm not sure why it should work now as phones aren't designed to run continuously for long periods without attention from a user.

I bind mine to virtual desktops, but I have the same applications on each desktop all time, so the workflow is quite similar.

That looks really cool. I'd need more help for the next steps - a game loop that runs the game at a consistent speed on different processors, and a sound library.

I like gnome: it works, its easy to use, it looks pretty, it's free, and it doesn't feel like it's being run by a corporation that wants to control what I do. Sure there's some design things that aren't right, but I don't feel that it matters a lot, a certain other OS is popular while having a zillion design things that aren't right.

It is valuable, you can tell because companies like Google and Facebook have no intention to automatically forget old data, instead they are intent on keeping it forever. I expect they see data=money.

One thing to think is that new ways to use data will be created in the future.

Some companies (e.g. Google) by default will capture multi-gigabyte decades-long records of information about us. We might let them do it thinking that it is not much threat to us.

But new technologies can be invented, for example things like widespread use of facial recognition, or deepfakes, or AI, which could make the trove of data we gave away become more dangerous in the future.

I don't know the answer, but here's some of my thoughts:

Identify the things you can help with, and the things you can't. Reserve your energy for the best opportunities to make a difference.

Also, you could do your own personal project for a while. I did some of those and realised that I'm almost 100% happy with the personal project, and I think I'm happy not because it's perfect, because I control everything to my satisfaction. Now at work I think "I've already proven that I can do something that I feel is perfect, so it doesn't matter that this is (very) imperfect, it's just outside my control."

Finally, another thing I've been thinking recently, is "find the fun in everything". Work is part of my life and I want to enjoy my life, so for any task I think about what parts of the task are enjoyable as I'm doing the task. Just thinking about and identifying what is fun about any task makes it better.

I get this. We never know when the company is going to forecast that it needs a round of redundancies. When they do so, they would send a meeting request saying something like "important company status update" with no other information, because they don't want to divulge anything before the meeting. After going through the redundancy selection and surviving it, any future emails that say things like "important company status update" are quite worrying. And they send things like that all the time, because they don't think it's important to tell us why they're calling a meeting.

The second one looks ergonomically terrible. The chair has no adjustments, the desk is a writing desk and not a computer desk, and there's no proper keyboard or mouse. Surely nobody can work like that for a long time without getting injured.

If you don't renew a domain name, someone else can buy it. Is this much different?

Democracy should produce an acceptable result in the end, but in the short term allows terrible things to happen. I guess that is worrying, as we can't always wait for things to get better, the terrible thing might kill us before then.

If I ever feel an urge to try out test cases on banking apps, hopefully I'll think of this story and stop.

I think it is market forces. Fanless laptops can be made, but the bulk of the market seeks reasonable performance at the best price.

I think it doesn't matter much, as you can take a standard laptop and restrict the clock speed, and the fan will never turn on.

I like to use "software developer" because it's the most straight forward description of what I do. When I need to describe my role to people who don't work in the software industry, it's useful to have a simple title.

Development is more than programming, as it includes other aspects of creating software. I'm not sure we should use the words engineer or architect, as both have strong meanings in other professions, which might not completely fit.

Another reason I like the word "developer", is it implies that there is an ongoing process of "development" - a process which changes direction as it progresses and develops continuously. That fits perfectly with the agile practise I use.