gramie

That's kind of how Nintendo worked the Wii (with "worse" hardware) against the PlayStation and XBox.

I don't find Costco necessarily cheaper than anywhere else. For example, if I'm careful and search flyers, local supermarkets will often have better prices.

For me, Costco has good prices, an excellent return policy, and reliably excellent quality. I don't need 15 choices of peanut butter, just a few (smooth and chunky, natural and sugary) good ones.

I also appreciate that Costco employees are always busy, but they seem positive and friendly. Most Costcos I go to, I look for the board that highlights long-term employees. The one nearest me has 8-10 people who have been there for 30 years or longer.

As the article said, Costco pays higher hourly wages than most other people. They also provide extended health benefits (in Canada, so basic health is already covered), paid sick days, paid vacation days (one woman I talked to had been working there for 25 years and had six weeks of annual vacation!), and more.

A few years ago I visited a small coffee plantation in Panama. The owner told us that Costco was the best customer for coffee growers by far, in terms of fair price, reliability, and prompt payment.

There has been a vaccine for dogs and cats for a while now, not sure why it hasn't been released for humans yet. Lyme can be really horrible. Some people we know have a 30-something son who was very active (camping, hiking, rock climbing, etc.) until he was bitten by a tick. Now he's quadriplegic.

I learned to love WordPerfect. I still miss the ability to "Reveal Codes" and see exactly where it had placed the non-printing codes to turn on/off bold, italics, to change margins, etc. When MS Word screws your entire document's formatting by typing a single letter, or moves stuff around the page seemingly randomly, your only option is to undo or reload the document.

You can read an insider's story of WordPerfect by Pete Peterson, one of the earliest WordPerfect employees. The PDF version is freely available on his website (https://wepeterson.com/almostperfect/).

Not to mention raising local temperatures by as much as 16°F

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/30/climate/data-centers-are-...

It used to be a thing in India, I have read, that people would want to associate themselves with a prestigious university, even if they dropped out. It would be written like this (made-up example):

B.A. Political Science, Bangalore University (failed)

In Canada, I have to report my (small) self-employment income.

The other thing I have to do is enter deductions like moving expenses, tuition, charitable donations, medical expenses, etc., which the government doesn't have direct access to.

I went to their website. They have four things in their online shop, and all are "sold out" (never available?). Looks cool, but are they actually producing anything?

As far as I can see, the cameras are not live. Timestamps on the video seem to be off by many hours (12 hours for a camera in Taiwan, 1:40 for a camera in Calgary, 15:30 for a camera in Wisconsin).

Not complaining, just noting in case anyone is hoping for live feeds.

Not really related, but worth repeating: there's an old saying, "A gentleman is one who knows how to play the accordion, but doesn't".

When I was a volunteer in Africa, my school's English teacher was furious because none of the students in his class had done the homework. His solution: to bring them into the staff room one by one, have them hold their hands in a "chef's kiss", fingertips pointing up. He then whacked their fingertips ten times with a short wooden rod (laughing as he delivered the final blow, "and one for Caesar!).

These were tough, hardworking teenagers, but very few of them were not in tears when they stumbled out of the room.

The next day we found out that he had forgotten to assign the homework.

So why should corporal punishment ever be considered appropriate?

(I'm not arguing with you, but agreeing with you.)

I would suspect that the vast majority of bullying ends when the victim is able to escape from the bully -- by changing schools, etc.

We hear about victims snapping and beating up their bullies because that makes a good story. How about victims who snap but then are beaten up (because the bullies are often bigger and more used to violence) even more? Probably much more common.

such cases were easily resolved

Hah!

In any case, it is a curious argument that, in order to show that stronger people should not hurt weaker people, you think it's okay for stronger people to hurt weaker people.

You are correct (source: I was a volunteer in Lesotho many moons ago).

If you enjoy The X-Files, you really should check out Millennium, by the same creator (Chris Carter) and broadcast at roughly the same time.

It's very intense, with an Emmy-deserving performance by star Lance Henriksen (whom you may remember from the movie Aliens). It mixes Christian theology and eschatology, mythology, horror, and serial killers, leavened with delightful humour.

The first season is mostly "serial killer of the week", but is important to establish the characters and long-running story arcs.

The second season is a delight, with some of the best writing of any TV show I know, and a lot of complex situations with no easy answers.

The third season changed (and cheapened) everything, and is only worth watching for completists.

I would bet that you can find used calculus textbooks quite easily.

I did chemical engineering long ago (how long? Computerized process control was just being introduced into the curriculum, and we learned to program in Fortran). I did several calculus courses, but it was always just a matter of memorizing techniques.

Much later, I came across Calculus Made Easy on Project Gutenberg, a textbook from 1914 that actually helped me to understand why calculus works, instead of just treating it like magic.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf

Compute! was very much aimed more at the home market that Byte (which appealed more to IT professionals). At the time, though, Compute! and Compute's Gazette (for Commodore computers) were great for me.

The most amazing magazine of all, though, was The Transactor. Exclusively Commodore, and for programmers. Very few ads, too. Their "Inner Space Anthology" was an incredible resource for everything technical. Memory maps, ROM listings, and much, much more.

https://csbruce.com/cbm/transactor

I was in Lesotho, a small country completely surrounded by South Africa (when the White farmers were expanding and taking all the Africans' farmland, they left Lesotho because it was all mountains, but with no minerals).

From 1988-91, I was a volunteer teacher in Africa. I lived in a hut without running water or electricity, and I had a subscription to Byte.

There was also almost nothing to read, so when my monthly issue of Byte appeared (2-3 months later than most people would receive it), I devoured that thing. I would read it literally cover to cover, including all those ads, several times.

I wasn't (then) working in IT, so a lot of the content (like Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar) went way over my head but it didn't matter, I read it anyway, often by the light of my kerosene lantern. I learned a huge amount: object-oriented programming, this new thing called the Internet (capitalized back then, and before the WWW), and how Jerry Pournelle was a self-important jerk (but boy, did I envy the toys he got to play with!).

This was the age of big, fold-out Gateway 2000 ads, 20MB hard drives, and Turbo Pascal kicking other compilers' butts.

I would read the magazine, then write out programs (in BASIC, the only language I had learned at that point). On my monthly trips to the capital city I would go to a local NGO and in exchange for helping with their IT issues they would let me play (i.e type out my programs and try to get them working) on their computers.

If you click on a city's name, you can see a list of all flights arriving and departing. Some of the arriving ones will be in flight, and you can click on the flight number to view it, then "Cockpit" view to see (roughly) what the pilots are seeing.

That sounds wonderful. Our experience with an Ioniq 6 has been less spectacular. First of all, in winter the range drops from 520km to about 350km, and charging takes about 50% longer.

Then when we took a long trip we only found one or two charging stations faster than 10kW every 300km. Many of the chargers were not functioning, some were on private property (e.g. car dealerships) and closed on Sundays, and none of them were rated at more than 100kW (and typically charging at about 70kW). The ones that were 100kW often had one or more cars waiting for them, so our 90-minute charge could have taken double that.

The only exception was a Tesla supercharger station, but my wife refuses to support Elon Musk in any way, so that was out.

This is in Southern Ontario, outside the Greater Toronto Area.

There was a Toronto Commodore magazine called The Transactor that was my absolute favourite. It covered everything from the CBM 4032 and 8032 through the various Amigas. The magazine was very much programmer oriented, from assembly to BASIC and C.

It also published the Commodore Inner Space Anthology, containing full memory maps, ASCII tables, BASIC reference, and much, much more.

https://www.commodore.ca/commodore-gallery/the-transactor-ma...

Earlier on, when I was first using our VIC-20 and C64, I learned a great deal from Compute and Compute's Gazette.

Lots of people have bad feelings about things. If it all turns out okay, they generally forget about the premonitions. If it goes bad, then they believe that their gut instinct is reliably correct.

When I was small, I used to have bad feelings about my parents getting in a car accident every time they went out. It never happened, and they lived into their 90s.

For a different method of learning Arabic (or several other languages), check out https://www.languagetransfer.org. It teaches Egyptian Arabic, explaining that the entire region knows this dialect because Egypt is the TV and movie hub of the Arabic world.

It's all audio (MP3s or streaming) and completely free, and (IMHO) the best language learning system out there. I have used it to learn Spanish, my sixth language and can't recommend it highly enough.

The annual consumption of ice cream in Japan was 6.7 litres per person in 2021 (compared to 10 litres/person in Canada and 20 litres/person in the U.S.). For all dairy, Japanese people each ate 94 kg in 2022.

They eat less dairy, but hardly none. I have heard people say that a scoop of ice cream or a glass of milk each day is not a problem, but more can be. Intolerance also seems to increase with age, so younger people can consume more dairy.

A 1975 study in Japan puts intolerance (unable to drink 200ml of milk comfortably) at 19% of the population. I would suspect that massive exposure over the past 50 years has lowered that percentage significantly.

doesn't have that problem by construction

Well no, but it does have other significant construction problems! https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/japans-20b-kansai-airport...

I don't believe that there is a single case in world history where increased family income did NOT reduce the number of children per family. Likewise with improvements in child mortality.

Are you saying that something about this product is suspect? But it has "Beautiful Craftsamnship"!

https://img-va.myshopline.com/image/store/1731468034215/1dd4...

What fraction of Americans are capable of reading a book (i.e. not functionally illiterate)?