You know, I'm used to people pushing their own internal conflicts into their assumptions about me on the internet. It's what we do. But that was breathtaking. :)

I've been using DAWs since 1997, and I have a very nice one today. I fought the Alsa/jack battle back in the day on Linux. That's why I mentioned it.

Don't assume so much. My post was about consumers in general. I am as technical as they come.

Why are you assuming this about me? I've run Linux servers for two decades. :)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sy...

Oh for sure. There are people that want particular things, and care about those tools. I'm one of them. Yeah, my complaint is that one of the barriers to adoption is a mental perception of complexity.

Well... not just "mental". Mostly mental, though. When it comes to day to day use, most people simply wouldn't need to know anything about SystemD. The idea that they might have to is destructive to the cause.

No consumer should ever have to give one second's thought to Wayland or SystemD. Nor to KDE, Gnome, X11... all this technical blather is straight up in the way and stupid. If I want to run a DAW, I shouldn't be concerned with ALSA/JACK. Having to know anything about any of this is a barrier to entry.

Until that shit fades into the background, desktop linux is doomed to single digits. And rightly so.

I understand that jewelry has deep, deep roots in culture. I certainly don't object to it. But diamonds have always been at the top of my list of the greatest illogical marketing successes of all time. The dollars-to-impact ratio of diamonds is so skewed that it's simply bizarre. Those marketers are kickass. They planted and nurtured a multi-faceted (see what I did there?) attack of expectations. They tied romance into it, the suggestion that being a good provider entailed paying large amounts for this rock of "ownership", they glossed over atrocities, and managed to hold on to that for a very long time.

Even aesthetically, I think diamonds are just boring. Coloured diamonds less so... but white ones? Meh.

If we can disconnect the bridal expectation, we can let the decorative side of this industry slide into history.

Don't read too much into my point... that's not what I intended. I accept disruption during protest.

However... if protection is granted over disrupting business from within the company by those employed in it on the grounds of moral objections, the list of companies affected is very, very long.

- Pharmaceutical companies
- Tobacco / marijuana producers and distributors
- Homeopathic businesses / holistic services
- Religious organizations
- Anything touching military supply chains
- Chocolate companies
- Diamond mining and distribution
- Palm oil producers
- Fast food chains
- Corn oil producers
- Renewable energy companies
- Non-renewable energy companies

I'm not saying protesting isn't right and reasonable. Even if it is disruptive, I get it, and I support it.

My point is very narrow. Make a choice. But it's ridiculous to be surprised or offended when you are fired for taking the fight right into your cubicle.

And it's not some character defect. It's the ecosystem you grew up in. You're probably what... 32? The diversity of media you've been inundated with since birth has meant you are not wired for reading in the same way as people 10 years older than you are.

I will say - and again, this is not a condemnation, but an observation - that Gen Y/Z have less developed imaginative capability. I do not know how that extends into any other part of capability... but I have a lot of theories. I think if you jam a brain full of one-way high-intensity input, but don't demand that the brain itself contribute by filling in gaps (imaginative or otherwise), you end up getting... less... out.

I buy cookbooks. Love 'em. Exclusively hardcover. Sometimes I buy them when they're new releases, but more often than not I go to brick and mortar stores and check out the discount sections. Often I can get great ones in the $10-$15 range. I use LibraryThing to keep track and prevent picking up duplicates.

Technical books? Never. I threw out probably several thousand dollars of them back in the day... certification guides, technical manuals, product how-tos... but I long ago gave up buying those. Even if the book I needed was sitting on the shelf one meter away from my chair, I would still search online for the answer to my technical question. I have only one reference book I keep handy... Sed/awk by O'Reilly.

Other than that, though... I might pick up one or two other books a year.

Go ahead. Block roads. Disrupt work. But don't collect a paycheque from the company you're disrupting. If you do, you're opting in for the blood money, so maybe you should shut up.

The idea that they could rebuild the torched code in working, available ram and then change the addresses in code to point to it is... just top notch. Hats way, way off to the designers.

My guess is that the bias is due to the first artifacts to be graded have no baseline, and so they are graded the most generously. The more you grade, the more you see what's better and what's worse. What was a good paper if you saw it first might descend to the middle of the pile when you read nuances that others have introduced.

So randomizing the order would help spread around who goes early. But hiding the names without randomization still means the first papers get graded easier - and the same people still get their papers read first.

Was going to post something silly, like, "Well, as the ruler of my detached single family home, I declare Putin to be a convicted felon, and if he sets foot in my home he'll be arrested.

But then it occurred to me that one of us has access to polonium, and possesses both the willingness to deploy it, and the people to make it happen in other nations... these circumstances are not equivalent!

Well, you chose to push those two halves together. The business between Google and Israel is above board and legal. What Israel is up to? Not so much. And I'm not disappointed that there will be a reckoning.

There you go.