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Interesting side note: Coleco had a version of Slither for their gaming console which shipped with a "Roller Controller" which was pretty innovative at the time. ColecoVision crashed and burned, too, of course.

A relative worked there and so my family had access to many prototype games that never made it into stores. But I know for a fact "Slither" was on the shelves as my copy was a retail package. I enjoyed playing it at the time, especially with the track ball.

I fight the left because of Venezuela, Cuba, and every place else where Marxist ideas have infected the minds of the masses to give assent to dictatorship. To me, the left will never conjure anything other than the ideas of misery, starvation, political violence, and destruction of life on a massive scale. The Soviet Union, the gulags, China, North Korea. Not one single success story.

This article is genius is the way it depends on layers upon layers of propaganda. It's freaking brilliant--the underlying assumption that only leftist ideals are "correct" and "good" and thus everyone who voted against such ideals must have somehow been manipulated into doing so or is not in their right mind. That's the too-clever communist brain right there--write an article to promote leftism by rejecting all the intellectual challenges to it and then accuse the right of manipulating technology against the only true good in the world. Never mind the true track record of leftism!

Brexit--the people have had enough of unelected EU demagogues telling them what they can and can't do in their own country. The problem is, the UK is probably 30 years too far gone, but we'll see.

US--Trump bested an ethically compromised internationalist after 8 years of Americans suffering through a different ethically compromised internationalist. There's no tricks there, it's just that Americans finally woke up to the fact they they were being sold down the river and getting zero in return. Plus, anyone who has been paying attention knows that the Clintons are like Bond villains in that they have succumbed to influence peddling via their foundation and they are implicated in many questionable deaths whose timing could only have helped their cause. In short, the Clintons are criminals, clever ones, but still criminals.

On the matter of Reddit--I don't think the centipedes are paid shills. I have no evidence to back that other than the fact that I have been involved in other grassroots movements and I can tell the difference between astroturf and the real deal. The people on The_Donald are the real deal, and they fought hard to even have a voice at all, what with the owners of reddit always manipulating the underlying tech to marginalize them. That the The_Donald even still exists on Reddit is because if it got banned, approximately half of Reddit's user base would migrate elsewhere overnight. The_Donald is followed by more people than nearly the rest of Reddit combined, although the people who run that site have done their best to cover up the facts. And yet, The_Donald doesn't get the ban hammer because to do so would put them in extremely hot water with their advertisers and investors. Reddit needs Trump supporters far more than Trump supporters need Reddit, however--and that's something that everyone in smug Silicon Valley would be wise to remember--I'm looking at you, Apple, Facebook, and Google--you know you tried to influence the election outcome, too. We all know. So beware.

As far the allegations about Jews running the world--I have no idea who runs the world. I grew up in NY State and I can say with some certainty that Jews and Jewish interests have an undue influence on politics and commerce which is outsized compared to their overall numbers. It's not some grand conspiracy, it's just that like all groups, the insiders would rather deal with like-minded folks versus non-liked minded folks because it guarantees their own success while diminishing competition. It's a mind-set as old as civilization. It's not anti-semitic to observe this, it is only anti-semitic to bring up the fact that certain Jews are far-left and that they, like Soros, are promoting a far-left agenda that runs against the political and economic interests of literally everyone else on the planet. You can't say that global internationalism is anything but anti-democratic at the local level. Just look at Agenda 21, or at any globalist initiative, and you see what I'm talking about. It all looks benign, but slowly and surely, individual rights are being removed as the ownership of everything of any real value is being trickled to the very top. All the while the left proclaims that they are doing this for the people--which is the big lie the left has always used while robbing regular people of everything.

Again, I don't think this is some Jewish conspiracy--there are plenty of good Jewish folks who are caught on the wrong side of it like the rest of us. Maybe it's an inner-circle kind of thing amongst billionaires? There are many rings, many facets and many competing interests, I'm sure. But the one common trend is the continued disenfranchisement of the regular citizens both politically and economically. We simply can't have any more of that.

43 here. You might think you still want to be coding into your 50s, but I am here to warn you that the matter is highly subjective. I'm noticing that each subsequent job search after 40 is a little tougher and rejections are for silly reasons now (because you're old isn't ever one of them). The laws won't protect you, so forget about that.

No matter what you think, you won't be as employable in your 40s and 50s as you were in your 20s--being young in the tech industry means you can be exploited and exploitation is the #1 factor. They know young people will work a ton of extra hours for no extra pay to gain experience, to try and prove themselves, or whatever.

I recently talked to a colleague who is 62 and still coding. He is worried about the next seven years as he is not ready to retire (not financially ready, that is). His department is going through downsizing and he is trying to position himself in another area that isn't likely to drop people. He rightly realizes that finding a new developer job at 62 will be next to impossible. It's all a big chess game after 40 so be prepared.

Unlike the codist, I'm sure I don't want to be doing this work after 50. I have a plan for getting out. This year, because of a family obligation, I took some months off. During that time, I did a trial run of how to 'retire' from software development. There were quite a few surprises for me and it didn't look like I had expected. Finding an alternative career after 20+ years as a developer is do-able: There are roles that require attention to detail and analytical skills, but that don't require coding, for example.

I won't go into detail, but I will say I rejected downshifting to a non-developer role even though I had a couple offers at 80-90% of what I was pulling down as a developer. Instead, I'm headed back to doing development for another 5-7 years, but with more knowledge about how to proceed in later years. I want to retire around age 50 and am working on having the passive income to do so. I may need to work part-time in odd jobs as well, but I predict I won't be a developer in my 50s.

If you're older, you had better understand that the next downturn could very likely take your job and getting another one will be hard. For all the happy talk about how great the job market is and how age doesn't matter, I beg to differ. That "great" can change insanely quickly. There is more competition in our field than ever before and the only thing that creates job security for us is being able to actually write code and get crap done and even that is of thin value because companies don't care: they see us as another commodity. To management, it doesn't hardly matter how good a coder you are, companies are happy to accept fungible, mediocre people as long as the systems sort of work.

The last thing I will leave you with is that you don't know how long you're going to live. If you have any ambition to do anything in life besides work, you need to get going on those plans right now. Dropping dead from a sudden heart attack or stroke does happen to a lot of people.

If you read about "Yellow Journalism" and how newspapers were used to accomplish things rich people wanted to happen, you will realize that Americans, and humans in general, have been subject to mass manipulation via the media for centuries.

Yeah, well, here's the thing about that: If you don't explain your lifestyle to some people most just assume you're a broke bum, which is very annoying after awhile. I'm actually going to find some job to do because I can't stand sitting at home and I don't have quite enough money to be fully retired at 43 but it's like --->.<--- that close.

Well the whole article came off as a humble brag, so there's that.

He should just start collecting Porsches or flying airplanes or something. Jeez.

My personal opinion about the weeks and months leading up to 9/11 is that the neocon Bush Administration wanted it to happen. That is not the same as orchestrating it, but they quashed certain investigations at certain times, made it hard for intelligence agencies and the FBI to do their jobs, etc. They did this because the "peace dividend" would have been upon us and they needed a new enemy to fight. There is too much money in military and security contracts to ever let the US actually wind down the machine. Or maybe they did it because the nation was on the cusp of a financial collapse due to the "dot com" collapse that was taking place. Either way, the reasons were economic.

For every privacy invading technology you see, I will show you a company that lobbied for it to exist. You want examples? Level III systems and those idiotic naked body scanners at the airports. The Real ID Act is another--nothing wrong with most state issued driver's licenses, they just weren't expensive enough.

If you want to be free then you have to accept certain dangers in life. It's not like the tech put in place is doing anything to make you safer, anyways--it's only purpose is to suck billions of dollars out of taxpayers and concentrate that wealth in the hands of those who know how to go out and force it in their direction. When we inevitably suffer more attacks, it's all "we did our best."

I hold out very little hope for any of this to change, but we as citizens need to keep resisting anyways. Gut some government agencies, cut the budgets, stop the revolving door of lobbyists.

I'm not sure if I should upvote this or not... I mean, I went to a "less competitive" college to start out with, then ended up at a major university for a masters and then another major university for a PhD. I have definitely been upwardly mobile due to my education and it didn't cause me much debt. No, I'm not a 1%er, but my station in life improved greatly from the humble place I started from. That's the American Dream, right? No guarantees, just maybe a chance at something better.

I would stress about all these legacy rich folks--a lot of them don't amount to much. They party, do drugs, flame out young.

And then again, in some ways I totally agree with what you're saying--it isn't fair to tell a kid they can become a CEO when in fact the people who become CEOs are picked from a very select, elite group.

Identity politics are garbage. Nobody really cares about your status as a transgender--it doesn't give you the special right to break the rules or to say stupid things about journalism and journalistic integrity. In essence, your firing is a moment for reflection, a chance to grow up and learn to be objective because that's what we expect of journalists, not this partisan schlock that masquerades as news.

You should at least treat Trump fairly--he's putting the people of the United States first and foremost, a concept that hasn't happened in decades. I'm not sure why that has been labeled 'racist' since it is quite clear there is racial inclusion going on. But the left just can't stop with its idiotic "literally Hitler" bs long enough to see that, or they don't want to see that because it flies in the face of statism, collectivism, and a bunch of other stupid 'isms' that are long past the point of needing to evaporate.

The whole "this is crazy" bit is a matter of opinion only, you understand that, yes?

What tech companies are so upset about is being cut off from their cheap source of exploitable labor. The rest of the huffing and puffing is just a smokescreen to make you forget what they are guilty of.

This is a dumb idea. The whole matter is too subjective to be easily quantifiable. In a free country, no one dares to attempt to hold some kind of claim to what is true and what is not true. Any such behavior is akin to what China, East Germany, and the Soviet Union did--they attempt to manage reality for people. It never worked, it doesn't work today. Only the willful foolish are ever tricked by state propaganda.

It's sad that we live in a nation that is so broken that disinformation is a daily problem for each of us, but it is and it is not going away. Your best bet is to remain skeptical of all information at all times.

Also, there is more at play than just reporting of so-called facts. The NY Times will typically run a story and for no reason at all, there will be a paragraph bashing Trump in some way, right in the middle of an otherwise unrelated article. They just find ways to inject stupid editorial opinions into otherwise "clean" news articles.

This is a good thing--these companies should not be helping the Chinese government subjugate people.

I don't think there is a "right" or "wrong" company providing the labor. I just think that by exploiting vulnerable non-citizen "guest" workers and promising to sponsor a green card, these companies have been able to suppress wages to an extent that I am not comfortable with. Also, H1B looks a lot like indentured servitude to me. I have watched close friends suffer through this process.

Foreign workers need full payment of competitive market rate wages as well as the ability to fully maneuver in the marketplace so that they can act in their own best interest. It's already hard enough for them coming to the US with less competitive skillsets, but if they could bargain freely, they could at least earn market-rate wages in their skill range and grow their careers organically.

How did you get "higher than average salary?" All the H1Bs I have known, and I have worked with hundreds of them over the years, have all been underpaid compared to market rates. Some were outright exploited by ridiculous middle man consulting arrangements consisting of multiple levels taking a percentage of the hourly from the actual workers.

I have nothing against foreign workers, but if they are going to be allowed to work in the states they should be paid market rate or above. I consider this protectionism for my own livelihood and those of my US-citizen colleagues. The typical bill rate for software development work has not risen since 2000. Think about that.

I get what you're selling, and I agree to a point, especially about the "being dependable" part, which is why I have been that. On the other hand, my experience with my own creativity is that it peaks around midnight. I wrote my doctoral dissertation over many, many nights. I was never creative in the morning, and I think many people are just like me and don't even realize it. Thus, if you really want the best I have to offer, you would allow me to set my own schedule.

Maybe try not using drugs as a crutch? It reminds me of a perverse version of what athletes use steroids for. Be your own man, not some chemically altered monster.

Wow, I feel like I wrote this myself. Unfortunately, I have had very little success being "remote only." Maybe I'll keep trying.

NY Times is arguably an unreliable source of information. They can't help but inject opinion or cant into every article. They have cheapened their brand, so can I trust their reporting?

The question I have is: Would SV be so pro-immigrant if they were forced to pay everyone a competitive wage? The H1B thing has been a scam for depressing wages for decades now. All of my H1B friends are exploited workers with no rights and no recourse. Ugly, ugly, ugly!

Google's political grandstanding is a turn off. I can no longer trust that they aren't censoring search results based on their political leanings. It's a deal breaker, sorry. They best tread carefully or other companies that cater to a more moderate crowd will win out.

There is nothing in the Constitution that supports your assertion. You have been tricked--a radical, violent ideology, wrapped in a religion is out to harm all those who will not submit to it. How many Christians, non-believers, and generally alternative people have to be murdered until you figure this out? Also, Islam is not a race.

And please, un-American? Our self-preservation is now un-American?

A lot of us are on this journey. Apple blew it. They lost me as a customer when I had to hurriedly replace my 2012 mac mini with a 2014 model and came to find out the RAM is soldered to the board making my 16GB DIMMS worthless. No forgiveness for cheapening their product and their brand.

There was once "broad consensus" that the world was flat. I am not at all comfortable when there is so much consensus. There needs to be debate, disagreement, and healthy skepticism at all times.

This. Although I don't think your allergy flare-ups have a direct causation there--it could just be you're aging. There's ten million variables.

I'm tired of the whole "you're a denier" shibboleth--there very well may be very strong negative human impact on the climate. I'm sure there is. Whether it is global is another question and whether it is stoppable is yet another. But what I most disgusted by is how the issue is used as a political weapon to basically implement a far left, collectivist agenda worldwide. It's like the old-school soviets found a new angle on justifying their desire for total control over populations. It will not stand.

I still suspect something will come out about that. It may be that "honey pot" operation the FBI was running got misconstrued, but I still bet there is some grain of truth to what was uncovered because all the other issues brought up by "anonymous FBI" pretty much came true, so that means it was someone on the inside feeding basically rumors from that organization, most of which were corroborated.

Exactly. The thing that everyone is shitting their pants over is a nothingburger. NOAA once had a verifiable mission. The problem with government agencies is mission creep--they all got on the "climate change" bandwagon because that's where the bucks were. That is now over.

You talk about facts like you don't live in a post-positivist world! You have no idea what you are talking about. "Facts" and "truth" are part of philosophy, but bear very little value in the real world. Just get used to it.

That process was too heavy for most business needs and far too expensive as a result. It could never last. I do think developers were more respected back then. Today, developers, like all non-managerial (and to a lesser extent HR) people are completely fungible. For various reasons, we let our expertise be commodified. And as a result, we cheapened the entire field.

The way to get it back is thus: No non-developers ever manages a developer. This is how doctors keep their scam going.

In my personal take on all this, it is those people who have wrecked this entire country. They bear incredible blame for many massive failures that cost billions of dollars and millions of jobs. It is that level of a tragedy. But somewhere, some few people pocketed billions of dollars.