Thank you, came here to say this. This is so obviously the solution. Have a proper RAID set up, update failing discs, and you're all set for the future.

This being slashdot, I'm surprised that no-one mentions downloads/rips and keeping the media on a NAS or equivalent. Seems like the obvious technical solution. If you keep upgrading discs every couple years, you can keep you stuff indefinitely.

Having said that, I believe I bought Star Wars about 5 times now for the full price (Cinema, VHS, DVD, BluRay, Streaming). Once for the IP and then a minor fee for each copy would be preferable. Same goes for books, by the way - a Kindle version and the paper copy each contain the IP costs. Why?

There is nothing "weird" about this. From your post it sounds like you were very well off and able to afford, and been able to buy, the latest stuff. Nothing wrong with that, but many of us didn't have any money and had to beg their parents for purchases, who went for used stuff. So we got stuff late.

I just remembered that I actually got caught in French class (I was based in Germany at that time) writing code. This must have been early 1990s.

The teacher was pissed, I can tell you. How dare I write "stuff for your computer" in class. Well, she was right.

I'm 44 now and still write code, so it did not hurt.

This article makes it sound like they knew, at the time, the challenges of coding on an Appple IIgs. Spoiler: They did not.

Jeez. There were thousands of us at the time trying to code stuff on any of the availabe PCs at the time. I did a vertical scroller at that age for an 8088. Others had Ataris or even Commodore hardware. We had no clue about what else was out there. We just used what was available to us.

I get the pain, I really do. But don't try to sell this up as "I got handed an Apple IIgs at that time... booooooo... I was so bad off!".

The general idea, i.e. that applications be programmable, is laudable. I'd wish there was some way of making this happen "in principle", I really do. There is actually sci-fi which makes this a reality - a common programming model - but this is not, currently, reality.

Unfortunately, software being what it is as of now, achieving a general solution to this is impossible. ATLAST is no exception to this, being a component targeted at a specific language and system. There are hundreds of such implementations - I did some myself - but each one is just the n+1 implementation of said concept.

Honestly? The headline says "it rivals", and the first sentence says "it mimics"? I was under the impression that we here at Slashdot are somehow "better" than this...

I somehow doubt that an AI would be able to fashion boys' and girls' genitalia - including completely missing breasts in girls, and inability to retract foreskin in boys - from adult men/women and clothed children. But this "I somehow doubt" is precisely the issue here, since very few of us have seen any of the outputs - and noone at all sees any of the inputs.

Well. After some Googling, it seems the origins of tipping are not as clear-cut as it might seem.

It seems [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity] to have originated before America was even discovered, though, so no, no American thing.

What I recalled was the "TIP" was in "To Insure Promptness" as laid out in this article: https://www.foodwoolf.com/2010...

I seem to recall that the very origins of tipping were in ensuring prompt service. You gave the bar man an extra to ensure that he'd deliver your drink first. Based on this, DoorDash seems to do exactly what tipping was invented for.

Having said that, I really think tipping should be illegal everywhere, for various reasons. First, it relies on a "guilty conscience" type of incentive for customers which I think is just ethically wrong. Second, where applicable (i.e. in the US) it allows companies to pay less because "tips will happen", which in turn makes employees expect them, etc. - which leads to Third, I now always tip exactly xx%, with 2 decimal places, regardless of how the service was because I just don't want to feel bad.

It's stupid, overall.

That sounds strange. Tipping is quite common and expected in Germany. Must have been some other factors at work here. Though there are countries in Europe where tipping is really frowned upon (Iceland comes to mind).

AFAIK, nothing of at all that Lem has written has been included in the Hugo Awards.

This doesn't mean that you are wrong though - stuff can, and will, get old.

But I think that bodies such as the organization behind the Hugos should explicitly watch out for this, ie. exclude titles that have problematic references to the current world. I do think they mostly did a good job of this.

...I increasingly find myself in trouble in where to turn to for new fiction. I've read through all the Hugo and Nebula winners and follow-ups, and I've been mostly happy with what I've read.

However, there are some issues with the Hugos at present.

The one thing is the conflagration of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. It seems that many people think the two are either synonyms, or closely related, or at the very least "made of the same stuff". I couldn't disagree more - I think Sci-Fi is a completely different thing from Fantasy. The Hugos have leaned heavily towards SF in the past, and this no longer seems to be the case. This saddens me.

The second thing is more controversial. I think the quality of the novels in the Awards is declining, or getting more irrational. This might be politics - I did not follow the whole "rabbits" debate in its entirety, but "The Calculating Stars" - Winner in 2019 - was a really bad piece of fiction. I mean really bad! I read some stuff from self-published authors on Amazon, and this compares. I'm really unhappy that this made it into the Hugos.

So, Nettle & Bone. Not SF. But I can recommend "The Kaiju Preservation Society" which is a runner-up and is definitely SF.

You want a tool which

* runs on a PC (since "not Linux geek")
* is not Vim, nor KeePass
* isn't based on Java or JavaScript
* does not involve an "external website" (which I assume to mean doesn't use 'cloud' storage)
* doesn't have too many features (?!)
* doesn't have an installer (?!!!!!)
* isn't rejected by Windows Defender (reasonable)

This is the point where you manage with KeePass, or you just give up. Honestly, what the fuck more could you ask for?