Most of their history was out. The Adventure one may have been the first game Easter Egg but it certainly wasn't the first by any stretch.

Yep. I was a Classic Traveller player and it seemed GW went from having literally hundreds of different games/game systems to Warhammer and White Dwarf only over a very short period of time. I too stopped going. There was another local shop that covered Tunnels & Trolls, all the mini game systems, Star Fleet Battles etc but even they finally folded last year.

I thought they were already recording and keeping pretty much every byte of the Internet and other comms in the UK anyway. Even thought I missed a major IRA bomb back in the 90s by about 20mins, I can still safely say I'd much rather have my privacy and take my chances on the tiny risk of injury/death by terrorists. Crossing the road or getting in my car is way more riskier. Heck, doing the decorating at home is more risky. Privacy please. Get out my business.

I'd have thought most people are just getting on with whatever the preferred toolset is at their company and never give this mythical war a second thought.

This is the UK Government, they want everyone to be monitored 24/7 and everything they do recorded and kept safe 'just in case'.

we can only multitask via task-switching

That's my day. Jumping from crisis to even more urgent crisis and back again over and over. It's expected. If anyone was only able to do one thing at a time, they'd not last long here. Priorities shift, often by the minute. You could be halfway through analysing half a million rows of data diagnosing an issue then dropping that, diving into source code for something else, drop that to have a quick meeting to agree a design point, back to the source code then back to the data, and that's within a 30min window. I'd say I have a lousy memory but I'm still expected to jump about and pick up where I left off.

I'm in my fifties, I've been programming for ~35 years and I've never used a whiteboard. I've sat there whilst others do but it's rarely programming related, usually tuning requirements. If I need to plan something out I use paper. If it's big, I grab a bit of A3 off the printer.

I'm in the UK and I've only ever workd in open plan offices. Never seen a cubicle in my life. We have entire open floors with maybe 500 people per floor. Everyone is on banks of desks, 4 each side facing each other, row after row. Quite often it's all hot desking anyway so very few people customise their space in any way. I did once, briefly but my stuff got pinched (prob cleaners or 'security'). We have breakout rooms for instant meetings but personally I find myself far more productive when I can just wander over and ask someone a question rather than wait for an IM or email to be responded to. Almost no one uses headphones and absolutely no one has audible music. Even having a ringtone is frowned upon, vibrate only. As I've never been in any other environment (and I'm now in my fifties) I really can't see the issue with concentration, you either tune out the chatter or find a breakout room for the rare times you really need to focus.

Chances are the fake films are better than the one you thought you were getting.

Certainly true that compressed (as in dynamic range) audio is far more tiring to listen to. Puts me off buying new music to a large extent. I tend to buy stuff from indies which outside EDM is rarely buggered like this.

Have a virtual mod point. That is very interesting and quite surprising. Still working through the comments.

A lot of this argument IMO hinges on when you grew up/got into music. I'm quite happy to accept (as an old git) that high resolution digital audio beats an album on vinyl hands down in terms of true fidelity. However, to *my* ears, because I grew up with vinyl, I find that sound more appealing and enjoyable. I have albums on everything from cassette, vinyl, CDs, MP3s to FLAC. Even some 24bit high res files. Yes, there's some incredible detail in there with modern formats. However, for whatever reason, I just don't enjoy listening to it as much. In many cases it's because they're mastered too hot and have stupid waveforms with almost no dynamic range, although the high res formats are better in that respect. I find vinyl just more enjoyable and relaxing to listen to. Plus of course there's the well worn stuff about the cover, reading the lyric sheet without a magnifying glass etc. As far as crackles/pops/wear and tear goes, I've got records that are nearly 40 years old but still more enjoyable to my ears/brain. It beats me how people's records get so beaten up, are they tracking too heavy? Pouring grit down the sleeve? Maybe 5% of mine from 30+ years ago have anything more than a little surface noise when the stylus hits the lead in groove. After that, no pops or crackles.

Not sure where all this revisionism is coming from. The Loudness Wars and the move to very hot mixes was driven purely by the demands of the record companies wanting their tracks to stand out on commercial radio stations, who were already doing the same thing themselves anyway. Anything that can make your song stand out (and loudness works) was deemed a Good Thing.

My old Technics SL-B2 (http://www.vinylengine.com/library/technics/sl-b2.shtml) was belt drive and has the strobe and adjustment. Quite a few manufacturers had the same on belt drive. Not seen it on an idler driver deck though.

What could possibly go wrong...