I was 100% C=64 before I transitioned to Apple ][ before I went IBM-PC DOS, briefly Windows/OS2 Warp, then MacOS, then 100% linux, and added Android later.

(sprinkle in some brief CP/M, BeOS, and NetBSD sidequests)

I'll deal with the shift to the next phone platform OK, I think.

I should probably dust off my Pine64 and try the latest builds again. It's been a few years since they were unusable as a daily driver.

Folks, this might be a huge opportunity if you correctly pick the successor and are the first developers.

Which is unreliable in many situations. I worked on several projects that had issues involving intermittent data loss on a DB9 port, and every time the culprit turned out to be a USB/DB9 adapter. When we'd install dedicated RS232 cards, the problem went away.

For laptops, the answer to this kind of thing should be a standard space where a customer can specify what ports he wants... you get X number of standard ports, and then you can choose what goes into one or two available spaces. But you're just not going to see that happen with manufacturers, even if the customer is willing to pay a greater cost.

Except that I spent some years growing up in dense, street-centric areas, and kids simply played in the streets. Every day. Our substitute for baseball (so as not to damage cars or windows) was "whiffle ball", with hollow plastic balls and bats. In the summers especially, we spent literally all day outside. In the streets. For kids who did this too much, the criticism was literally that "you let your kids run the streets".

Being car-centric has nothing to do with kids activity. The spread of video games and Internet connected culture had everything to do with the modern dearth of outdoor activity by kids. All of my youngest's friends are online in distant places. There are other kids in the neighborhood, but very few of them play outside that I can see. Online is where all the action is. Maybe the answer is for parents to literally kick kids out of the house, they way they used to do ("out, and I don't want to see you back inside until lunch" was a common summer refrain from parents). Maybe if all the kids are turned out, they'll start doing the natural thing, and make their own fun, which is all "outside" is.

I love these retro stories from 2012.

What a blast from the past!

This is a retro story from 2012, right?

If I knew that, I'd be a tech billionaire inventing them.

The best part of innovations is that they are NOT obvious, but once they are in the world, you can't do without.

> Python isn't perfect with its syntactically meaningful whitespace nonsense

I know a programmer with a visiospatial disability.

Braces are fine. Python is literally impossible.

I looked at a few 'Python with braces' preprocessors for her but they all seemed to be half-done and not really usable.

I'm not quite sure why.

It's a dumb reason to shut someone out of an entire software ecosystem. Almost every other language is accessible to her.

Or information on the murder of their whistleblower.

Tipping is great in good service jobs. You tend to make good money in mid-to-nicer restaurants as a waiter or waitress. Where tipping sucks is when you work in cheap joints with cheap customers. Or delivering pizza, like you did in college, where your customers tend to be either poor or cheapskates. Poor people can't afford to tip, and cheapskates simply won't. And then there are the groups that simply refuse to tip because they don't see labor or service as a value at all. "If I can't hold it in my hand, I ain't payin' for it".

> username checks the fuck out

Can't see the forest for the trees, or, more accurately for [$CURRENT YEAR], the fire for the flames I guess.

Quite so. It's been how many years since something really new came out of Cupertino? Granted, Apple is more profitable than ever, but the company clearly shows what the result of placing a supply-chain expert as the CEO does.

The really sad part is that there's nobody ELSE, either. Microsoft hasn't invented anything ever, Facebook and Google are busy selling our personal data to advertisers, and who else is there who can risk a billion on an innovation that may or may not work out?

It's odd how every time I need to look at a Vimeo it stutters and buffers like it's 1997 no matter what device, OS, or network I'm on.

Literally the only video site that this happens to me. I thought it was my DSL line back in 2009 but home gigabit has been a thing for a while and oddly similar results.

If I understand what TFS is saying, check out The Why? Files for an example of what people like in a show with good production values (it did have a Midjourney rough patch).

"True Crime" seems lame to me but I'm not a chick so that doesn't matter.

"The Telepathy Tapes" is an investigative series that blew up the Internet.

This sounds like the NPR dweebs realized that their product was popular due to scarce distribution. Now distribution is democratized and listeners have choice.

People have long reported that taking a B vitamin supplement keeps mosquitoes away.

Beer drinking is well known to deplete B vitamins.

Consider that you might be dietarily or genetically deficient in B's. It's probably not your haircut or magnetic personality. ;)

I like Life Extension's Two-Per Day. Good blend, cheap for the potency.

Did Climate Central grind out their flooding projections on a Beowulf cluster or something?

That's wrong. I stopped using wrist watches 25 years ago and haven't looked back a single day. I don't want shit on my wrist. Try living without for a year and you'll realize why. It's hard to express in words. It's like having a chain removed.

Headphones, on the other hand, I use occasionally. For phone calls or for music on the train, plane, etc. - and especially for the plane if the noise cancellation comes close to my current over-the-ear Bose I'd take them on the two-day business trips where I travel with hand luggage only and space is a premium.

Do I want a heartbeat sensor? No idea. I don't care. But if there's any use for it than at least for me that's not a replication. I'm pretty sure many, many Apple users don't have a smart watch.