There is a scene in "Thick of It" where ministers, in a cash-strapped government, are brainstorming laws and policies that cost nothing in terms of budget.
The latest Tory proposals sound just like that. Banning floating bus stops, crackdown on "rainbow" lanyards, dangerous cycling. Perhaps in the future people will only be able to have yellow flowers in their gardens or bake bread on odd numbered days.
In a time where big infrastucture investment is needed they are like the middle management that changes the Jira workflow every 3 months just to appear to be doing something.
I'm honestly amazed that people seriously compare an 8bit machine with no network to a smartphone with Internet and social media.
The Internet, amazing as it is, it's also the home to the worst possible content imaginable and believe it, kids always find a way to neutralize parental controls and the like.
Also, I don't understand this notion that "tech" (in the most vague definition possible) actually brings any future advantage.
It's like teaching kids Excel or Python and hope they will win a Fields medal.
If parents teach them critical thinking, reading books and love math and logic, they'll pick up any problem, language or "tech" easily when they're older and run circles around other kids that "know programming".
Unpopular opinion, perhaps: I find them ugly and slow, but not soul-crushing.
Granted, I only use WD to book PTO. If my whole work was around it, I would probably hate it too. My work _is_ around Jira, but my opinion is just a strong "meh". Companies should definitely find better alternatives, but the hyperbole is a meme at this point, e.g. "I'd rather be unemployed than use Jira"
So many great movies mentioned here, I won't repeat them.
I'll just add Hitchcock's The Birds.
I saw it as a kid and it made an impression on me on several levels. For instance, a scary movie doesn't have to be about monsters. And made me realise that other living beings aren't in this planet just to be either food or pets, they're our neighbours.
Setting aside the gravity of the situation, I'm 100% gripped by the "mystery novel" side of this. Seeing the internet piecing together the Who? the How? an the Why? is fascinating.
I don't have time to properly go through the entire list, of course, but the first paper that I've opened seemed to use ChatGPT to format a table of values, presumably not in tabular format originally. It didn't _seem_ like any of the ideas or conclusions were GPT-created.
I'm perfectly fine with this usage, although it is very sloppy if the authors and reviewers didn't pick the "certainly" in the final text.
I lived in one the buidings mentioned in this article.
Pros: It was the most spacious flat I've lived on. I'm not talking about area, but the layout itself, it was amazingly well architected. Massive windows too, great lighting (but see cons).
Cons: Single glaze windows (and a protected facade) meant eye-watering energy bills. Poor quality subfloor (with carpet) meant 24/7 creaking when walking over it.
I'm no expert in design, but it's really interesting to see the signs that a design "won". That is, when you see echoes and influnces of it everywhere.
Hijacking the topic: I don't use Wayland. But I have a lot of Mac hardware running Fedora with GNOME X11. What's the status of Wayland to configure input hardware, namely keyboards (ie xmodmap, xkbd)?
Perhaps I'm overreacting, but I had my personal site on Netlify and decided to move it. I don't need anything more than a dumping ground for HTML, and Netlify was "good enough" (I wasn't aware that this issue existed)
What brought it closer to home was the characteristics of the recently affect site (same number of daily visits, not popular (a bit niche), etc) where similar to mine.
Moving is easy enough, mostly requiring a DNS update, since I prefer to build the HTML locally and then just dumping it somewhere.
What struck me as odd, when looking for an alternative is that almost none of the popular solutions Netlify, Vercel, Cloudfare (AFAIK) actually implement a spend limit.
This is very interesting and I can see how it can produce good results.
What I can't do is square this with my own observations of the current generation of parents. In my particular social and geographic circle, most parents tend to let the children do whatever they please. This almost produces "feral" children that can't even eat and sit properly (and I don't mean the Victorian Properly, I mean without dumping a full plate of food on their head or throwing cuttlery against the wall) or observe the basic rules of social interation.
If the "throw me the pebble" was applied to these children they would just think it would be OK to throw pebbles at strangers on the street.
What's the missing element in our society (honest question)?
The latest Tory proposals sound just like that. Banning floating bus stops, crackdown on "rainbow" lanyards, dangerous cycling. Perhaps in the future people will only be able to have yellow flowers in their gardens or bake bread on odd numbered days.
In a time where big infrastucture investment is needed they are like the middle management that changes the Jira workflow every 3 months just to appear to be doing something.