Can't we at least celebrate some progress? No, the job isn't done, not at all, but can't we be happy that we're at least moving a little in the right direction?

I'm not saying there's no problem any more, of course there is, but why does everything have to be 100% gloom and doom and disaster and condemnation?

I'm bad at Go (about 19k AGA, which is quite bad), but I really enjoy it. The Go community differs radically from the chess community. My experience (yours may vary) is that the Go community is more supportive, understanding, and genteel. There's a lot of tradition and protocol in Go and I think it means something.

You can be a clueless beginner (the writer raises his hand), go to a club (or online) and almost always find someone willing to give you a teaching game. If there is a club in your area, meeting some other players is a giant plus, but there are many great online sites.

I play for fun, which is the best reason, and I enjoy it immensely. Will I improve? Of course. Will I ever excel? No, but that's not the point for me.

Yes, there are many stereotypes and the stereotype today seems to be that all white males are evil and ought to feel bad and guilty just because they are white males. As someone who tries hard to do the right thing and treat everyone the right way, I resent that stereotype, and that's true even though none of us are perfect and none of us succeed 100% of the time.

The study quoted may well be valid, but if the motivation was another case of "proving whites are bad" then it raises real questions.

Maybe you think so. But my remarks were pretty straightforward. Especially compared to true audiophile nonsense, the kind where the listener thinks he can hear the purported acoustic qualities of Monster Cable.

I said that fit is important for isolation. I said that headphones sound more open. I said that some earbuds are decent.

Is that pretentious? Or is it that I used the word "audition" --- which is the right word, but whatever?

I've auditioned some pretty amazing earbuds. Admittedly, they don't stand up to something like Sony Professional headphones, but there are some good ones, superior to numerous trashy and even mid-range headphones.

With proper fit (referring generally to tip size) earbuds will give a LOT of acoustic isolation, enough to make them really dangerous if walking or jogging in any kind of traffic. I've never gotten headphones to isolate as close to 100% as properly fit, well-designed earbuds.

Of course, earbuds have issues. Sound stage can be one; you don't get the openness you get with headphones or of course speakers. Hearing damage can be another if you don't use them sensibly. Sanitation, too, if you don't wipe the tips with a little alcohol after use.

I've heard that earbuds are also responsible for global warming.

To the OP: I don't have advice on what to put in your videos, but I can only say that when my time comes, I hope to have a fraction of the courage, grace, strength, and selflessness that you do.

Your greatest legacy will be in the memory of the person that you are. Just by making your posting here, you've changed people for the better. I know you have changed me and I thank you for it. Perhaps the words are trite, but you're what I think of when I think of "hero" or "real man."

You're leaving an indelible gift behind, the gift of having helped others.

I was a technically literate manager, having done lots and lots of programming myself. My job was simple: run interference with the client so that my team stayed funded. The team was very happy to let me do that job, which required a lot of travel and unpleasant politics.

In turn I trusted the team. I asked them for realistic estimates to give the client. If the team thought they weren't going to make it on time, I asked them for a heads-up as far ahead as possible, and I would take the news/new estimate for the client. I did not criticize the team, either to them directly or to the client.

They knew they were asked to do their best but software being what it is, they were not held to preliminary estimates. (The only issue was with downright incompetence or negligence, which was very rare.)

It's interesting that I was considered a good manager by the staff and the client, but not by my own management, who said I wasn't hard enough on the staff. Well, sorry, I got results and I kept us funded.

So, was I a "useless manager"? I hope not. I didn't produce anything tangible, and that bothered me, but I hope I played a useful role.

A corollary sort of thing happened where I once worked. There had been a major change of upper management, and they "fixed" a bunch of things in the way that executive management sometimes does. A year into it we were asked to provide a memo telling executive management how things had improved, even though things had degraded so much that anyone except out-of-touch executive management couldn't possibly miss it.

When we told them the truth, they replied, "This isn't what we asked for."

This is actually much better than I expected. I'll have to (shudder) give Microsoft due credit!

I think it also causes global warming.

You've succinctly described the real issue here, since machine translators are still not very good.

Preserve the language? Not really.

I believe they are also responsible for global warming.

Change 'downside' to 'upside'. I'd rather work with Google Docs any day. Yes, there may be a little retraining. Yes, Google Docs is missing features that you very likely don't need and are just time wasters. The only real downside I've found is that it's slow with very large documents.

Google Drive sort of offers version control for non-Google-docs. Previous versions are merely saved (which you can argue is not really version control, I suppose). However --- be careful --- they are only saved for 30 days unless you actively go in and retain them. I lost 7,000 words of a novel I was writing partly because I didn't realize this (and admittedly, partly because I overwrote the working copy).

A Google Doc has much better version control.