... going balistic in a society that is 110% dependant on digital systems and networks up and running 24/7.

Nice. I like it.

And somehow I get the inkling that Visa and Mastercard won't be able to ignore this or brush it away.

Because it's not free: it was bundled with the purchase of my PC and the manufacturer paid a hefty sum for that privilege. Why do we tolerate abusive behaviors from the products we buy?

No one? I'm disappointed in y'all.

> There's not much taught in a college class that can't be learned from books. Yes, but how do you know which books, and which chapters, and who do you get clarifications from, and what projects do you undertake to get beyond book knowledge, and what tools (labs, software, specimen, etc) do you use, and who struggles thru the learning with you providing mutual support, and what group do you discuss literature and philosophy with, and who provides expert perspective, where do you find a community of fellow scholars, and how do you evaluate your progress, and how do you signal to the job marketplace at large that you've acquired some skills and are capable of holding a professional position? You might be able to figure out or stumble upon some of these answers (hard to do since you're starting from a position where you don't know much), but a University can answer all of them.

The things holding back Linux for the unwashed masses have diminished to minor annoyances in the last 15 years, especially when compared to the nonsense wintel still puts its users through. It finally has gotten through to ords that there are solid reasons why experts don't even consider Windows as an option when doing mission critical stuff these days. ChromeOS and Android are signs of the things to come and Windows isn't even on the radar with those usage patterns.

Looks like linux has finally gotten critical mass for regular end users. I certainly wouldn't mind. My last Windows was Win2k and that's been a while. I occasionally bump into poor bastards using whatever the newest Windows is and always experience a bizarre throwback into distant and long gone times messing with ultra proprietary systems and their bullshit. Very strange. Personally I fundamentally do not get why M$ even has a business case with their system. And I even am a well paying customer who is quite happy with his XBoxes.

... Blender just piling on to it's already solid critical mass of professional functions and features after finally gaining wide-spread industry recognition a few years back. I'm an early Blender user and even have an original commercial license from NAN more than 20 years ago, before Blender was liberated into open source. Back then it was a curious underdog that had full OpenGL UI rendering (a first), a fully configurable UI (also a rare feature) and it fit on a 3,5" disk (absolutely unique).

25 years later Blender has finally taken the industry lead with other 3D kits keeping up by lowering their prices and emphasising special features and optimized workflows. Good to see the laughed-at FOSS underdog in this state of things.

Bullshit. It's the duplication that's the "crime". There is no law against running unauthorized copies. And you completely overlook OP's about Nintendo enjoying anti-competitive secondary effects from the aggressive enforcements of their "rights". Personally, I think remote bricking a machine without the explicit content of the owner should qualify as hacking under CFAA.

Could this be due to stress and cortisol reduction caused by the drugs effects? Not unlikely, right?

Let me get this straight: A little desktop sized cutesy robot that looks like a crippled Wall-E, doesn't have arms and can't even move besided nodding it's head in 4 directions is going to "disrupt the AI robot industry"? Nonsense.

LOL! I know Fisher-Technik robot arms from the freakin' 1980ies that were driven by a C64 homecomputer that are more useful than this thing.

... are having a hard time justifying their favorable ratings. With one the US has moved from AAA to AA a few years back and even that was seen as being nice and kind. I hope the US doesn't squander trust beyond the Trump era, lest you guys be sitting on a pile of money that the world has finally noticed not being worth the paper it's printed on.

It is my opinion that you could have a true revolution, a bottom-up redo of the US constitution and fixes for the most glaring broken parts of the US system up and running within months without even a single bullet fired. AFAICT from across the pond basically _everyone_ agrees that the current state of things has become untenable. You don't need to be a bunch of Trumpists storming the Capitol to see this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Disclaimer: This is a repost from a while back and I'm a senior webdev and part of the target customers.
>>>>

Figma barely has a business case. Anything still left is being snacked up by AI or will eventually be replaced by open source software.

With UI design tools it's just like with Editors or Web Toolkits. There is always some hype-cycle that pushes the tool that then quickly gets replaced by the next fad: Sketch - Adobe XD - Invision - Figma ... whatever. Meanwhile folks who have chosen and stayed with Inkscape and Object Libraries or Penpot will do so until the end of their days and save the money and hassle.

I don't even use UI designers anymore, I build right in the web these days. The UI libs are all there already and you can integrate them just as quick as drawing the element. I might copy the occasional SVG object into my components, but that's because Inkscape is a neat vector drawing tool for the custom stuff. For everything else I don't even need it anymore.

If only half of it is true, we are soooo screwed.

"The Social Network" is to a notable extent a work of fiction and construes a Zuckerberg that doesn't really resemble the real one rather than an amalgamation of nerd-rage projected on to a fictional Mark Zuckerberg.

The movie is ever so slightly flawed in that way and does stretch the one or other trope a little too hard when observed in isolation ("crazy bitch", "angry wounded nerd", "loudmouth silicon valley investor" etc.) but those are _all_ placed and played in service of the story and its telling and that is flat-out epic. Every single part right down to single-scene appearances are cast to the T and deliver an unbelievable performance, the pacing is flawless, the character dynamic is a masterpiece, every single word of dialog punches above its weight, the score is breathtaking and the camera-work is top tier.

It's definitely a masterpiece of a movie and Fincher (and Sorkin) knocked this one out of the park and into geo-stationary orbit, there is no two ways about that.

One of the penultimate scenes is a rage scene that Fincher shot 99 (ninetynine!) times and edited it out of 114 different adjacent takes. It's flat-out epic and one of the iconic scenes in movie history and generally regarded as the "best rage scene ever". This just to illustrate the obnoxious attention to detail and borderline autistic aim for perfection by Fincher. It shows in the entire movie.

It only won two oscars because the reviewers where overwelmed by the topic, otherwise it would've scored higher.

You definitely missed out. Watch it. As a special occasion. You won't be disappointed, that's a promise.