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 ;-). The chocolate came from the Herman Goering Chocolate Factory ("Herman Göring Schokoladenfabrik") ... because of course it did.

This news sounds quite similar to be honest.

The more land we preserve along the waterways, the better. NJ is an OLD state, which was founded by people going up the waterways and working their way inward. Over time, we have learned that we need to give the rivers, marshes, and estuaries space to do their thang. If it means paying a little more in taxes, so be it. Money is not more important than the well-being of the planet.

You sound like the people in my /r/southjersey subreddit lol. My hometown is one of the most at risk towns of sinking into the water in the state. It's already an island (in southwest nj no less) and most of the land is preserved already. The buying up of the land and marshes really helps protect the land, animals, and people. Boohoo, taxes. Without paying them, you'd be living in a cesspool like Mississippi.

Or like this situation, where the cops killed the kidnapped girl they were trying to rescue. Great job guys!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world...

Sure, let's totally dispense justice based on mainstream media reporting of the alleged crime. No way that could go wrong!

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.

... but given that these days MP3, FLAC and audio players the size of a matchbox that can store and play back a lifetime worth of premium grade audio content and cost less than a meal at a diner, I consider someone yearning for 70ies style cassette tapes to be a little coocoo in the brain.

Disclaimer: European here.

This nonsense has been going on for too long already. Going all EU GDPR with fanfare and then the authorities themselves go and host their stuff in the US cloud that couldn't give a rats ass about GDPR. Yeah, just effing great you effing dimwitts.

Gladly there are enough EU FOSS advocacy groups making noise and the politicians here are slowly catching on. Some good news at last.

M$ tools undercut IT efficiency? You don't say.

It's M1cr0s0fts entire business model to undercut efficiency. Otherwise the Wintel coalition couldn't sell you new hard- and software twice a decade like they've been doing since going into business.

That of all Amazon noticed this just now is quite hilarious. After all, they run similar business tactics.

... don't say they can't be (really) useful.

... running at 180hz?!?? Aside perhaps from some high performance VR setup that probably costs 50k of it even is available for regular people.

4k at 60hz is luxurious. At a regular living room distance humans can't even make out single pixels with 4k.

Honestly, at this point I'd be waaaay more interested in edging up color bandwidth and brightness contrast than increasing resolution by yet another iteration. There is still room there and while my cheap ass 27" 1080p business display is perfectly fine for me I do like the experience colors and contrast on my Samsung tablet with AMOLED display. They should work on making that larger and cheaper.

... can have the occasional advantage, I guess. Not sure if I would want to live in one though.

Trump has long disdained wind farms for "sullying" the views from his golf course near Aberdeenshire. It's completely a personal vendetta.