iknewitwhenisawit

I just download and install games.

Life must be hard without a good ad blocker. 😞

In the US in the 1980s there was still existential dread from the cold war… nuclear war was very much a concern, although less because, well, it just hadn’t happened. We also had a terrific “war on drugs”, which was used to oppress minorities and in general stoke up fear and funnel money to militarized police. We had massive inflation at the start of the decade. Iran had just had a religious revolution, and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Trump declared war on unions and basically ended the successful policies preventing the worst excesses of capitalism that were put in place after the Great Depression (which Clinton gleefully continued). The AIDS epidemic began, and we had no idea in the beginning how bad it might become. It stoked already rampant homophobia.

As far a daily life in the US, we had the dominance of malls as a place where people went to buy stuff. It led to a lot of neighborhood businesses dying, and eliminated any place where people could meet without a commercial purpose. And because they were private property, people could be controlled. No protests allowed on private property.

We did have a few good things of course! The split of AT&T meant cheap phone calls and the ability to buy cool phones, like a hamburger phone of whatever. Computers got cheap enough that there were 8-bit microcomputers, like the Commodore 64 or the Apple II. Piracy was rampant - you could go over to a friend’s place with a box of blank floppies and come home with 20 new cracked games. We got rap and break dancing and synthesizer music and music videos.

The Internet was only available at a few universities, so if you wanted knowledge you went to a library. Urban myths and misinformation were everywhere, but unamplified by any algorithm. You could shop by calling a shop or even sending a fax.

It looks like some issues were introduced by rewriting the shell-based tests in Python. Or rather by AI rewriting the shell-based tests in Python…

It’s been fascinating seeing tech workers being reminded that they are working class. They still haven’t achieved class consciousness yet, but I remain hopeful…

Now that the US has declared itself a foreign adversary for every other country on the planet, can we start banning online ads, at least from US companies?

In the USA there are restrictions on what types of activities a not-for-profit company can do. For example, you can’t pay a not-for-profit to do work for you. So a common approach is to make a for-profit company owned by the not-for-profit. It will pay staff and any bills associated with work for hire or from selling stuff, and donate any money left over to the not-for-profit. Since companies are taxed based on profits, and donations are tax deductible, it lets companies get around the restrictions.

It sounds dodgy as fuck, but I worked for an open source company structured like this and it is apparently common. The COO even had a letter from the state in a file stating that it was okay. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think back to 3000 years ago when Trump was asked what he would ask God forgiveness for, and he could not think of a single thing:

https://www.c-span.org/clip/campaign-2016/user-clip-have-you-ever-asked-god-for-forgiveness/4619501

Is she going to be able to get some of that $1,776 million slush fund for people attacked by a weaponized justice department?

Oh god please no!

I learned to program in the 1980s. I promise you that for most programs written then the coder was like, “Two digit year, of course. Why waste so many bytes with a four digit year? Nobody will be using this software in 15 years!” And probably 95% of the time they were right…

Ironically Israel is late to the party this time, what with the UK having imprisoned hundreds of people for similar actions.

Along with a war chest that far exceeded Scott’s and a crowded field of newcomers, Clark’s campaign benefited from Scott’s death on 22 April at the age of 80.

We really need to normalize politicians retiring. They shouldn’t all stay in power until they literally die of old age.

It’s like using your laptop poolside. Seems cool but actually sucks ass.

That only works if it kills people (or makes them infertile) before they are 40 or so (for women) or 60 or so (for men), right?

Just like Cake says:

Doesn’t matter if you’re skinny, doesn’t matter if you’re fat
You can dress up like a sultan in your onion head hat

Why does Holland sound like he’s from Liverpool? 🤔

I’m so sorry. It must be terrifying knowing how many of your fellow drivers are zipping around with worn brake pads or broken turn signals. 😬

Presumably your car has an annual safety inspection. The inspection could include writing down your milage, right? I’m pretty sure there are already laws against tampering with your odometer…

“Internal combustion engine vehicles also lose range in extreme cold weather,” points out Ed Kim, the chief analyst with the research group AutoPacific, who was not involved in AAA’s research. The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated a 10% to 30% drop in gas vehicle fuel economy in cold weather, depending on the type of trip. “This isn’t a problem that’s exclusive to EVs. This happens to basically any kind of vehicle when it gets really cold.”