Some of us aren't looking for a "path to leadership". We just want to get work done.

Most software types I know don't object to some face-to-face time. In fact, it's beneficial in many situations. What that 40% are objecting to (and I would include myself in that 40%) is a mandate that you have to show up, regardless of whether it's going to help or hinder your current project and your teammates.

A company that trusts its employees to get together when they need to, and stay home when they don't, won't have any problems. A company that mandates in-the-office time with no consideration for circumstance or situation deserves to have the desperate and the ladder climbers, if they end up with any engineers at all.

After "enablers" and "abuses of power", I was hoping for some really juicy story of corruption and abuse. Imagine my disappointment that it was apparently all about a non-recusal for a Meta acquisition. Even if I had any sympathy for Meta, this would be basically a yawner.

Let's see. Something that provides information, with anywhere from 0 to 100% of the result made up out of whole cloth, and delivers it with a show of authority.

Where have we seen that before?

(And yes, you can probably include whatever "news" source you love to hate on the most. It's mostly a question of degree.)

I don't get this fascination with chatbots. If I want made-up shit, I'll open a volume of Grimms'.

This is ridiculous. If we're going to suspend driving privileges because of lack of (or poor) sleep, why are any medical residents still driving?

I can maybe see being worried about people with narcolepsy. Sleep apnea isn't the same thing by a long shot.

I have no idea why wasted blank screen space is considered a good thing. I certainly had no trouble reading the old design, which I switched back to after about 5 minutes. (It would have been 10 seconds but I wanted to give the new shite a chance.)

I find that I comprehend more and am fatigued less if I can actually SEE the fucking article more than a few lines at a time without having to scroll. Also, I find the blank space to the left to be distracting and annoying.

The only good thing here, as others have observed, is that it's easy to put the old format back.

So very true.

And, even before requirements change, you find out that they were mis-stated. I can't tell you how many times I sat with a customer and had exchanges like this:

Customer: The remote site can never change anything in the order.
Me: So, if something has to be voided, it has to be done at the primary, not the remote:
Customer: Well, no.

Or,

Customer: Parts always flow directly from the lehr to the grader.
Me, paraphrasing: So the lehr never sends parts anywhere except the grader.
Customer: No.

and I know I'm not catching everything. The ones that are missed get into the system and cause rewrites, redesigns, etc.

... for every time someone hawking program generators has proclaimed the End of Programming over the last 40+ years of my career, I'd be spending the holiday on my private island.

If it's a really really good program generator, it transfers the workload from writing code to trying to figure out where the requirements were wrong or incomplete. Otherwise, it's not a lot better than cut-and-paste.

For on the fly note-to-self stuff, pen scribbles on paper.

Anything else, plaintext. I'll use BBedit (just because I have it around) on the mac, or vi on linux.

If my terminal emulator starts doing weird crap like that, I can assure you that it will find itself in the trash can as fast as I can type rm.

When I use a terminal emulator, I want scrolling text. If I want pointy-clicky stuff, I'll use the appropriate file manager, browser, or other app.

Someone misspelled "will have little or no effect at all".

That might be the idea. It's not how it actually works in any restaurant I know of. Fast-food might be different, I don't consider KFC "eating at a restaurant".

I refuse to use QR code menus. I'm not obnoxious about it, I just ask for a paper menu please, and if they balk, I don't have a phone. If they still can't help, then I don't eat there, simple as that. (I've only had to leave a place a couple times, and both times I politely asked to see the manager so that I could register my disappointment.)

First computer I saw / used was the GE Timesharing system that an uncle had access to, back in the mid-60's. I think the actual hardware was a GE-600 series machine.

First computer I did more than play tic-tac-toe or write trivial BASIC programs on was the TSS-8 system at CMU that ran on a PDP-8. A couple days later, I was doing CS101 homework on the Comp Center's WATFIV subsystem, running on a 360/67 with a TSS-360 supervisor.

First computer I owned was a Heathkit H-89.

I suppose there might be people who care, but I certainly don't. All I need on my linux desktop is a half-decent terminal emulator and ideally a way to manage a bunch of them with virtual desktops or the like.

I'll get back to my typing now.

Late 2013 Retina Macbook Pro that's been used mostly, although not exclusively, for web / email / office-y stuff says 2,684,313.