It’s great to be prepared… But I don’t think you have to prepare a stash sufficient for an alcoholic.

For anybody new to this, perhaps assume 3-4 standard drinks/person, plus some factor to account for surprise extra guests, and then add a buffer of 20% or so of your good alcohol

Then it never hurts to have a 12 or 24 pack in the bottom of the fridge of something cheaper.

ZIP drives were a game changer at the time. We had no other (fast) way to move larger amounts of data in one shot without compressing / archiving over multiple disks.

Last year I dug a couple hundred zip disks out of my parents attic and bought an old zip drive off eBay so I could read them. They all still worked. My old data got moved to the cloud and the zip discs + drive went back to the attic. Perhaps in another 20 years I’ll dig it out again if we still have USB ports on our systems haha.

Anyways, the USB thumb drive business killed iomega overnight.

I have a laptop and a handful of desktops between my office and home. Some run Windows and some run Linux. I simply choose which one matches my task best.

Systems where I’m writing server-side code are going to be Linux. Systems that run jobs in the back end such as my self hosting stuff are all Linux. Systems where I’m doing email, documents, and general web browsing are going to be Windows.

Of course, my Windows systems have WSL, and my Linux systems can run Windows apps in virt. These days the line is super blurred and it would no doubt be possible to use only one if I were willing to give up some native app running.

No conversation about UBI is complete without also discussing the source of the funds and how other government programs might be effected.

I think UBI sounds great on the surface but I worry that it could alter our basic survival incentives which may have unintended consequences for the group of people who aren’t needing UBI.

Should UBI replace existing food and housing programs? Should UBI replace other things that are designed to mold the economy such as subsidized public transportation or small business loan guarantees? What about income tax incentives designed to encourage saving and growing money carefully versus consumption (capital gains versus income tax, tax-deferred retirement savings accounts).

I suspect there’s a fairly significant carry-on effect from shifting resources away from these types of programs to a UBI program. But what I’m not clear on is how that might impact other behaviors from well resourced people who may start to play the game, so to speak, by a new set of rules.

For example, do we see inflation around inelastic needs such as rent prices and grocery bills? If we did, UBI is not much more than a grocery store/landlord stimulus program. It’s hard to imagine that we wouldn’t see this unless controls are placed on those businesses which in turn, removes incentives to own and grow businesses.

It seems like a UBI program would promote an economy based on consumption and not on savings and investment. Why save your money if you’ll get topped up again next month, and every month for the rest of your life? By investment I’m not talking about Wall Street, I’m talking about finishing college degrees, investing in new ideas, chasing startup ideas, those people who stay up late at night working on inventions that they think could bring them rewards.

Perhaps the most fundamental question to be answered is this:

To what degree do we, as the human race, find benefit in helping the less capable of our species survive. Potentially at a cost - not to the strongest and most capable - but instead placed mostly on the shoulders of the slightly-more-capable.

That’s pretty much how it’s going in that industry too

After shovels were invented, we decided to dig more holes.

After hammers were invented, we needed to drive more nails.

Now that vibe coding has been invented, we are going to write more software.

No shit

Should have been Jeemail. Lost opportunity…

A lot of FOSS projects are freemium based which seems viable for larger more complex projects.

In these projects it’s common to see the developer get paid for adding features on top of the core version, for a SaaS version, for custom development, or for offering support.

Other projects with a lot of community interest - and a good “community manager” style organizer can attract contributors in the form of pulls, bug testing and reports, and widespread use which generates valuable marketing. These projects only exist because of the labor of love from the whole community.

The problems of the group of people whom we call “homeless”… has it ever really been a lack of homes?

There are homeless shelters with empty beds at night. Some people who probably really need them refuse to go there and instead sleep outside because they don’t want to be sober.

It’s amusing to think that if we just assign one empty home to each homeless guy - thus eliminating homelessness - all would be right. In the world. But I don’t think it works that way.

A full width split screen zombies mode, and a full lobby of people who want to play Kino Der Toten are pretty much the only thing that would interest me in another COD BLOPS title.

I just can’t imagine who these titles are for now. I appreciate they’re trying to make the graphics and sound amazing, but these online experiences, as imagined by the developers, have taken away more than they’ve given.

The last modern warfare title I bought was MW2, that bizarro named one. I opened it a few weeks ago and the whole game has become a loader to other COD games and its multiplayer lobbies are empty. So stupid and I wish I could get a refund.

I used Waymo half a dozen times or so when traveling to San Francisco this year.

The experience was actually quite good. The cars arrive within a minute or two, they’re clean and high-end (for what amounts to a taxi), and you can set up the atmosphere according to your mood. The driving was smooth and uneventful.

Unless they raise the prices significantly, I would continue to choose Waymo over human drivers.

This is something travel agent websites do too.

If you’re logged out, they’ll show you a price that’s really attractive. But if you log in with an account that’s got some history, they’ll suddenly say that price is no longer available now you need to pay the higher price.

Agoda.com I’m looking at you

I’m not against ads in principle. The advertisers are paying the bill for stuff I consume. Great.

For that effort, they get a chance at my wallet. And to be honest, making me aware of a business or product is indeed a way to get me interested in what they sell. I do prefer the ads to be relevant instead of always useless.

That being said, it’s currently preferable to use a blocker and let the people who don’t know how to use blockers subsidize my ad-free ways.

Regrettably there are not too many high quality researchers who endeavor to put their names on such studies.

It hasn’t been like that for most of human history, and the standard of working conditions that I am guessing you’re thinking of is not even experienced by most humans alive today.

I think ideal working conditions should be society’s aspiration and would hopefully pay for itself through superior output. But if businesses can compete unfairly this may not be true. For that reason we should break up companies that get so large as to control entire markets and force them to compete again.

Sadly

Unfortunately for labor, absent of regulation, that’s how it’s been since the beginning of time. B2B dealings are similar… Add value in excess of cost or be replaced.

While possibly true, in reality an employer doing this struggles to keep reliable and quality staff. They would likely calculate that hiring and training expenses, poor output, and other issues are a higher cost than the cost of offering 15 minute breaks and some amount of benefits.

At least that’s how it should work.

I’m certain a lot of employees are hanging around open AI until this happens.

Not long until the boats start shooting back

AI companies believe the market will give the best rewards for a winner-take-all strategy.

They believe now is the time to accumulate customers.

Their future financing rounds very likely depend on being able to show growth.

Entrepreneurs, CEOs, investors all know it’s not everything it’s cracked up to be (yet). They hope another few billion in cash will get it there. And hope you don’t notice until they already won the market.