I was there, three thousand years ago...

Ok, well it was only ~35 years ago, but I well remember cobbling together installable floppy images from Usenet to get Linux running on my 486DX with a bunch of GNU utilities. This took many hours of downloads and preparation over a dial-up connection, but this was the only way to install because even SLS hadn't come out with a coherent Linux distribution yet.

My 486 system had a whopping 4MB of RAM with a 200MB hard drive (my first). I massively overpaid for it and charged it all on my shiny new Circuit City credit card while I was still in college.

At my student job, I had an awesome, monochrome DECstation 3100 running Ultrix 3.1, so the thought of being able to run UNIX at home was just awesome.

Those were the days. :)

I was in Beijing twice back in 2007-2008 for work and got to experience their monstrous, 6-8 wheel, diesel trucks belching smog everywhere. It was such a clean city at ground level, but the worst smog. You couldn't see more than a couple of blocks on most days, and it wasn't fog.

I recall running diskless Unix workstations in the late 80s and early 90s. Nothing to see here

So I've always been an Android user, and never owned an iPhone except the one that work made me carry for a year.

To be honest, I hadn't even noticed or heard of the whole green vs blue bubble thing until this came up in the news recently. The major complaint my wife, a dedicated Apple person, has is that she can't Facetime me. To me this is a feature, not a bug. :)

Far, far more important to me is the usurious fees charged by both Apple and Google via their respective app stores. I'm all in favor of the government cracking down on that BS.

- Necron69

This happened just a few miles from my house. This kid and his friends burned an entire family to death over an allegedly stolen iPhone. They had the wrong address despite their use of Google. Lock them up forever.

Necron69

US user here who uses Google maps frequently. I have no idea what this guy is talking about. While there are a few more things on Google Maps these days, my experience with it is nothing at all like what he describes.

Yes. Newer EVs are all moving to an 800v charging system, like my new Hyundai Ioniq 5. While I mostly charge overnight at home, I have used the Electrify America stations (2 years of free charging with the vehicle) a few times, and it hasn't taken more than 30 minutes to get it back up to 80%. With an ideal 350kW charger, it would take about 15 minutes.

While I've only had it a couple of months, I freaking love this car. Way better and more fun to drive than any ICE car I've ever had.

And what would be an objective amount for 'X'? The value of a company is generally measured in market value, but that's a highly volatile measure that has more to do with investor's belief in a company, not necessarily their 'size'.

Different industries have far different capital requirements, and different market values. There is nothing simple about trying to create a legal maximum size for businesses.

Unless you are headed into a tech/STEM field, learning email, Word, Excel, and maybe PowerPoint is more than enough for most high school graduates. It doesn't really matter if it is Google Docs instead, just learning the basic concepts of these types of applications is all that is really required.

Trying to cram programming down most high school kids' throats would be as successful as mandatory calculus.

- Necron69

There's really no reason to not continue using Earth UTC, just like they use on the ISS right now. Arguably, the Chinese would probably prefer China Standard time.

Arguing about relativity is just silly, IMHO. Until there is a large enough population on the Moon to care, staying coordinated with _some_ time zone on Earth is the most practical solution. Given that a day on the Moon lasts 28 Earth days, there isn't really any natural day/night cycle that fits with human biology. Plus, most people on the Moon are going to be indoors most of the time. By contrast, Mars has a ~26 hour day, which might lend itself to a more natural Martian calendar/time)

Necron69

Tofacitinib/Xeljanz keeps me halfway healthy and able to function after 15 years of progressively worsening rheumatoid arthritis. I've tried the cheap stuff - plaquenil (sun rash and sensitivity) methotrexate (daily cramps and volcanic diarrhea). They stop working after a while and you have to move on to something else. My only real complaint is how much it cost, but otherwise tofacitanib had been a wonder drug for me.

Necron69

I'm pretty skeptical about Amazon using Roomba data for anything useful. I have a ~3 year old Roomba, and at least from what it shows you in the app, the data it collects is pretty minimal. You get a 2D outline of the areas it covered. That's it.

Could a future, super-Roomba get enough hi-res images to do some AI object recognition on them? Maybe, but existing Roomba vacuums are not going to be doing this. I'm happy to keep using my Roomba for now. Nothing else can keep up with the dog hair so easily.

- Necron69

Oh please. When economists and bankers talk about the 'Fed' they mean the US Federal Reserve System, which was created by the Congressionally approved, Presidential signed, and entirely legal, Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

The members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors are nominated by the President and must be approved by the Senate. While enjoying relative independence compared to other government entities, the Fed is created and owned by the United States government.

VMware is more of a potential golden goose than a real one. For all their revenue, they have an pretty low profit margin - only about 12.65%. You start to wonder what those ~30k employees are actually doing, and it becomes obvious why they are a takeover target.

Expect some serious layoffs when the merger completes, in an attempt to improve that margin. I've lived through the Broadcom acquisition process, and it isn't fun. Broadcom runs _insanely_ lean, but if you survive, the compensation is really, really good.

It's true, I'm not paying attention to yet another meeting that should have been an email. I'm trying to get actual work done, not worrying about my TMT (Total Meeting Time).

Almost nobody except the managers turn their cameras on at my company.

- Necron69