"Hey, we're collecting donations for local businesses you know and love, but they may not be, um,,, aware of it,
and for some reason it's possible that whatever money we collect might not ever actually get to them...
-but anyway click here to donate"

Python (in general) is primitive compare to Visual Studio/VB.

Python's lack of variable type declaration and checking makes it bothersome to use**** and Python has no IDE available that even comes close to the drag-and-drop UI designer that VB has.
(GUI coding for any PC language should all be mouse-clicks by now; there is generally no reason to be hand-coding that stuff at all... -And the arguments for hand-coding anything else are getting thinner and thinner...)

Another not-insignificant advantage was that even the free online VB help pages (on the Microsoft site) were excellent. I rarely ever had to look anywhere else for VB info.
There's 'lots' of Python help online but it is a train-wreck of versions and OS/environment differences that don't work right elsewhere.
There's always more than one correct answer but you have to keep looking until you find the one that will work for your circumstances.

VB was my favorite hobby language for years but I wanted to get off MS stuff.
I also wanted to do GUI-style cross-platform programs for an eventual change to a Linux/FOSS PC.
Python is easiest for that (I think, if you stick to tkinter or some other win95-era GUI setup) but it definitely isn't VB.



****Did you know?... Visual Studio/VB had 'lazy' variable declaration a long time ago, and they introduced an IDE option to get rid of it because overall it cause much more problems than it was worth.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...
...Why did Python's creators ever think this was a good idea?

Because building something has nothing to do with code, but with understanding the application domain. ...

And that requires typing out code, because why?...


A computer should be able to generate perfect code, if only you could provide the instructions how. For all this talk of design/architectural systems, there is still a lot of ambiguity involved in software development.


I notice that there is lots of love for "layers" and "reusable code", but the only justifications for that is because writing that code took a lot of time and effort for humans to do... (-it's almost as if we are justifying wasting even more time by all the time we've already wasted-)

If you could just update a flow chart and the computer could re-write it, who would give a shit about layers or re-use? Who would care if the final code was spaghetti? The computer ain't got no problems with it, and nobody else would need to read it?

Granted that I have no idea of the details of this whole process,,, but,,,,

Why did they need to have USED cooking oil?
Last time I saw, the grocery store sold brand-new oil for a lot less than $500 a liter.
And if you go to restaurant supply places, you can get it in 5-gallon carboys for cheaper than the grocery store prices?

Nobody cares too much about video game cheaters getting swindled, but there is a larger problem that is occurring here: in online business, it is quickly becoming more profitable to be deceptive than it is to remain honest.

The main reason that a lot of people switched to buying online was because they could read online reviews--but those can be faked a number of different ways now.
If you are an online merchant, you can buy reviews either way: good reviews for your own stuff, or shitty reviews for the competition.
If you are using an online marketplace site, you can buy poor reviews to get your competitors kicked off the platform entirely.

To top it all off, major online sellers are racing to the bottom of commodity merchandise sales, leading to the issues like counterfeit goods, serf workers and demolition-derby delivery drivers.


For some reason I doubt that the solar panels on the HQ roof are going to make this business model sustainable...

It's at least three different reasons, most of which owners won't like:

1. You can have a roadside assistance program that for most people, works most of the time.

2. The car can be repossessed easily if you stop making payments, because (there is significant evidence that) it reveals it's location regularly to the car company. If the car gets stolen is often "not their problem" however...

3. If you abuse the car by doing things such as driving hard or at high speeds, the car company gets informed of that and uses it as evidence to deny warranty claims.

#2 and #3 is the main reasons that car companies like to push "in-car wifi" as an add-on feature.
If you don't pay for it then they have to pay for the connectivity themselves.
If you pay for it, then their spying system gets to use it for free.
...-Not that you were actually informed of that usage, , , , -but you agreed to it, since it was in the fine print somewhere.

...8chan is still gone.



It is morally fashionable to say one doesn't care "because they were bad people", but the day that 8chan got kicked offline by a decision made internally by a totally-private company (with no legal or economic repercussions) was a watershed moment for the internet.



8chan was the canary you wanted, and the canary is dead.

With the last Android phone I bought a couple years back, on the very first web search I used it for, I found out that the default Android web browser only looks for Google results that have videos.
I was looking for a text representation of a basic food recipe, but only getting all kinds of bullshit amateur-youtube-cooking-show search results that were videos, trying to figure out what setting was wrong... and there was no wrong setting.
There was no setting to change?
Apparently that is what it was supposed to do now? It favors "web media" in the search results?

So then I downloaded Chrome on it, and tried that.
And when I went to visit a site I frequent, I found out that because of some temporary weirdness with the site's SSL certificate, Chrome WOULD NOT ALLOW ME TO VIEW THAT SITE.
It didn't merely give a warning, it TOTALLY REFUSED to go to the site at all.

So then I installed Firefox Mobile, and now I have a normal browser again. Firefox went to the site I wanted, even with the wonky SSL. And a couple days later the site's SSL went back to normal again...

??? I don't know who the fuck is in charge of this stuff, but I question their decision-making abilities to a significant degree.
At the current time, any Google browser is my last choice on mobile.

, , ,Google tech wonks reinvent Flash, shortly before dropping support for Flash in Chrome. :O

(...but this time it's even better, because the new ones can automagically stop and show Google ads every 30 seconds. No more of that annoying "play through" like in the old days...)

Sounds like trying to sell crap jobs with silly titles, TBH.

I am well into middle-middle-age now, but I could have sworn that years ago the general theory of any Earth-like planet would need a very big moon orbiting very closely (probably big & close enough to be tidal-locked, just like ours is) because the moon was the source of churning the Earth's iron core, that caused the magnetic poles, that shielded Earth's surface from lots of rather-not-healthy space radiation. There was no other theoretical force within a planet that would cause anywhere near as strong of a magnetic field.

You could always have microbes of course, but complex life needs a low-radiation environment... -And "underground" isn't going to work for everything.

We have seen this story pop up occasionally for several years now--about how fuel tax was the major way that most US states paid for road maintenance--and how (in order to encourage EV adoption) EVs weren't paying anything in that regard, despite the fact that hybrids and EVs were higher-priced than comparable fuel-burning vehicles.

I think the only thing surprising here is how fast these states changed their tune regarding EV taxes. It would appear that the one thing that government is most proactive about is protecting their own budgets....?

I am constantly amazed at how many startups (even famous ones) are just burning investor money, waiting for a buyout.
(-this would seem to be dishonest at the least and skirting fraud at the worst, but I'm not rich so maybe that mentality is my problem?...)
Their core idea isn't always bad, but it's often nothing special and they have to give it away below cost to gain users.
Many don't seem to really have any product other than their stock price.

I looked on the National Geographic site and didn't see one. And I tried searching Google also and couldn't find any pictures there either. Granted it may be a restricted-access island, but I'd have thought that as significant as the last tree left was, there would be a photo of it somewhere?

Also: National Geographic site says "you have only two free articles left, subscribe now..." ,,, and there's so many fucking video ads that even Chrome is running slow.... Thanks, but no sale.

When I first started off at a local community college years ago, many of the instructors gave very similar first-day introductions. They said something along the lines of "Some of you are already employed in the field and already know all this material, and you don't need the lectures. Some people are just here taking courses to make job qualifications... So I print a schedule of all the assignments and tests for the whole course in advance, and if you just complete those assignments and those tests, you get the grade. You don't need to come to class every day, just on those days."

By the time I left there ~2 years later, all the instructors gave the same speech also, but it was different: "The government requires that we take attendance now, since people on grants must be counted to make sure they're showing up. And the college doesn't want to discriminate against people for being on grants. So now regular attendance is required of everybody even if you don't need to hear everything."