Who says I didn't have the money to do so? I didn't go into that at all. But since you're curious I'll explain: Yes I had the money to buy one outright, but an interest-free loan was available and I took advantage of it. Had I purchased it outright, then had an expense outside of that like a car-repair, THAT would have had to come out of my interest-charging credit card and
I went to an Apple Store purchase an iPad with an Apple Card last year, I wanted to take advantage of paying it off within a year no interest. At the moment of checkout Goldman declined me and wouldn't tell me why. After two days and several scattered phone calls they claimed that it was unusual activity on my account. I pointed out to them that I had successfully purchased and paid off 3 other items on the same payment plan, and that their assertion that my activity was unusual was absurd.
I'll spare you the blow by blow because I know it's boring, but ultimately Goldman Sachs held to their position that they did the right thing, and Apple had to come to the rescue. They talked to each other a bit and I finally got my device on the payment plan I wanted.
I'm greatly looking forward to Goldman getting out of the picture. They really did try to spin it to me like the inconvenience they caused me was somehow something I should be happy about. "This happens because we're diligent about catching fraud!" "But, you didn't."
EOM
But it will definitely keep you from getting laid!
Not really, no. I've been balding since age 21 and was half bald by age 27. I still have some somewhat embarrasing pictures of that era. I started shaving my hair down to 5mm and less at age 29. My string of epic sex and affairs started almost a decade later at age 38 when I was basically bald and already had been for more than 10 years. It carries on until today.
If you're in shape, dress well, keep clean and your home stylish, wear some fitting and fashionable beard, got your attachment wounds healed and your hetero-male red pill swallowed, get good at game/pick-up/seduction/whatever-you-want-to-call-it and some latin american close-embrace social dance (Merengue, Bachata, Kizomba, Forro, Argentine Tango, etc.) ladies couldn't care less wether you have full hair or not. They'll be all over you like a cheap suit and you'll have your pick of the litter.
One personal point in case of dozens: My current gorgeous sweetheart is horny like a sack of rats with me (as am I with her). Right now I'm literally getting ribbed and feel my tummy muscles building up from all the shagging we've been doing in recent months and I can barely keep up. We're a few days apart just now so we actually get some work done instead of being all over each other 3x a day. And it certainly isn't that she can't get enough of me because of my epic hair-do. She did however get hooked on my embrace when we danced the first time and immediately responded, no verbally. Barely 4 weeks in we were a couple. That's how this works. Hair on your head has nothing to do with it.
Likewise if you're a fat slob or a dork you can have He-Man hair and women will still avoid you like the plague.
... of most of not all written human formal interaction. This is what's happening right now.
Prepare for incoming.
... AFAIK. Which isn't that surprising. It's a glorified IRC with audio and video. This will go the way of Skype I presume.
... and full-body cyborg mods right away? And then hack those. Imagine getting your cyberbody infected with GoblinMode by LOLCR3W and then hopping around all day, naked with a steel boner histerically giggling without the ability to shut it off.
On second thoughts, Razor can keep their AI headphones. And their cyberware.
Nice. Good stuff. Keep going.
Stack Overflow was awesome, but now I have an API and documentation expert on _everything_ about software development sitting in a chatroom giving me expert answers and advice right when I ask for it. It's like Linus Torwalds and an army of software project leads are just sitting there waiting to answer when I come with my problem. I don't even search anymore, I ask the question, add layers and "if not, then how" and "how would you do this specific thing" and buddy AI spits out an essay on how to do it and how my function is meh and is called a "footgun" because it makes safe things hard and dangerous things easy and I'm like: "Ok, I've been doing software for almost 40 years now but I never heard of that anti-pattern but double-checking show's me that AI is spot on".
Given, the AI can talk total gibberish and I do need to double-check sometimes. AI is quite very human in that it sometimes doesn't even finish reading the details of my question and spits out code that ignores my singular variables and puts them in plural and I have to change that after the fact. Stuff like that.
But it's an entirely different league than searching Google and Stack Overflow and I suspect Stack Overflow is basically done for. Casualty #1 of AI I'd say. My productivity has 5xed at least, I can now start real world projects right away without having to do weeks of dives and spikes into new APIs and work on an entirely new level and I wouldn't want to go back.
We're waaaay past the steam-age of microcomputers and even further past proprietary software of this kind even being a thing. There is absolutely _nothing_ left on this sort of OS (and hardware) that can't be replaced by some rasberry pi and way superior FOSS in less than an hour two orders of magnitude cheaper and 3+ orders of magnitude more performant. My cheap-ass 200 Euro smartphone has 12 GB of RAM and can run circles around this dinosaur of a microcomputer "workstation" in power-saving mode. That UI looks like it was uncovered from the tomb of tut ench amun. The last iteration of the Amiga looked better at that was a time when hammer pants were still 5 years away.
... this is somewhat hilarious, having the country run by a stuff peddling somewhat l00ny Showmaster and fraud? Given, I'm looking from the outside (Europe) so it's easyer for me to laugh at this right now but it _is_ funny, with the right dose of humor, don't you think?
I just hope you guys don't totally collapse into a banana Republic. I'm not too worried, but you never know.
Bank Teller was a respectable job until the ATM came. The ATM ushered in more but worse banks and tellers. I assume ( and observe that ) it's the same with software development.
The Panzer divisions of the Wehrmacht got issued "Panzer Chocolate". Bars of chocolate laced with meth, to keep tank crews going longer. They became quite popular. No idea why
This news sounds quite similar to be honest.
Point in case: Installed the Dire Wolf Digital Boardgame Companion(!) app last night. 333 MB. It's a neat app and it looks cool, but 333 MB for this is insane. Basically every piece of software is like this these days.
Part of this is due to cross-platform and cross-version development, but a larger portion of it is that devs don't need to care and memory efficiency isn't a priority anymore.
Lack of people is. This is also the global demographic collapse slowly kicking in.
Point in case: I've stopped buying IT and software development literature and in recent years started actively working on behavioral economics, mindfulness, social skills, attachment theory and modern avant-garde Interpersonal psychology. Relationships are quickly becoming waaay more important and powerful than tech skills.
In 2026 I'll still be developing but I'm going to focus 80% of my energy on social integration, interaction and mental and physical health. This is where the party is in the upcoming future, especially with AI taking over and people becoming more scarce. The stock market is noticing this too.
To write good code is a worthy challenge, and a source of civilized delight. -- stolen and paraphrased from William Safire
