My point is that if the US, which at the time was one of the world's leaders in technological innovation, had put time and resources into developing renewable energy, the whole Free World would have weaned itself off burning fossil fuels for power. There would still be other uses for petrochemicals, plastics especially, but the Middle East's stranglehold on the world economy would have been well and truly broken. Looking back at the history of the last half century, including the environmental impact of continued fossil fuel use, it's pretty obvious Carter was right.

I've been wondering for many years before the first traffic camera appeared, why the toll-roads aren't enforcing the speed limits automatically. The time you enter and exit the highway is recorded down to a second. The distance between these two points is known — your average speed could be computed on the spot even with the early 90-ies technology...

The polite police officers would be standing right behind the toll-booths issuing tickets without the drama of hiding in the bushes, then chasing you at highway speeds...

And, yeah, you could lower it by stopping at a rest area — but it'd still be a tremendous disincentive to speed.

I was and continue to hope, that such universal enforcement, affecting all voters, would cause the limits to go up to reasonable figures — or even be abolished completely...

I've run into these people, they're the worst

When have you last checked your compiler's output?

Excellent point!

Imagine where the US would be today if politicians had been just a little less greedy and corrupt in the 1970s, and embraced Jimmy Carter's commitment to renewable energy. Probably not a wholesale conversion, but during times like these, all of us across the Free World could just sit back with zero f^cks given and a bag of popcorn, and watch a bunch of religious fanatics burn the whole Middle East to the ground.

Everybody wins.

Anyway, how is ol' Boris doing?

We had the good sense to not put him back in again. He's relegated to being some TV personality on crappy entertainment channels, not senile dictator in chief.

And yours is a monarchy

Yes and?

We also have a national anthem with a lightly veiled threat against said monarch. A threat we've executed before of you will excuse the pun! Keep Britain weird, that's what I say eh what.

Thing is your constitution doesn't mean Jack diddly squat when it comes down to it if no one's prepared to actually enforce it. Democratic laws are only as good as democratic norms. Lots of places have marvellous constitutions, and hey Putin still holds elections! You've not got widespread gerrymandering, special protections for corporations with no restrictions, open, legalised bribery of supreme court judges, a president prosecuting his political enemies, armed thugs murdering and deporting American citizens, and so on.

Yeah I'm happy to criticise my own country but I'm not going to take shit from an American who's trying to make his own shit show off a country seem somehow less bad. Especially when your only idea of how the country works is culled from right wing Americans who also don't understand anything.

Your country voted in Trump so you don't really get to be on a high horse about the quality of American voters.

He's got congress and the supreme court in his pocket, so they won't lift a finger.

Don't undersell it. Only 57% of the population (that's only a little over half) actually disapprove of Trump. 36% still actually approve. 7% are somehow undecided.

He's got congress, the supreme court and a really substantial fraction of the population either cheering him on or standing aside.

Regardless, I've long advocated for removing party affiliations from ballots.

That would just result in Aaron Aardvark getting elected.

You missed the part where as a cyclist you are most likely to die due to a car accident, and with less cars on the road (and less peak hour stress causing less anger among motorists) your trip becomes safer. So sure *you* may not benefit since you have a segregated path, but other cyclists would.

Look don't get me wrong: fuck cars. Anything that gets angry, reluctant drivers off the road is good, but frankly I can get behind Sadiq's Londonistan (as supported by er... Boris?). My current route in is on mostly LTNs, which forbid through traffic, and without the ability to go anywhere useful drivers mostly avoid it.

And this is precisely why you didn't understand the premise being made. Small companies are not the cause or even a contributing factor here. The problem is corporations.

I use to work for a big company. I fought long and hard against RTO when I was a manager there with about as much success as you may expect. So, fuck you I understand on a visceral level. We offered *new hires* flexible working which the company reneged on. I fought as much as I could then quit. Not over that specifically in isolation (lol there was more lololol), but it was a contributing factor. I do not like tome made a liar and I will not countenance that. I suppose that's why I can count many former coworkers and reports among my good friends now.

And yet.

Some people, well, quite a lot of people don't work effectively without someone looking over their shoulder. That's a big company thing by the way. At a small place you can hire well. At anywhere big, you won't brat the average by much. Pay can push the mean slightly, but even with that it's tough, and that's ignoring all the incentives to hire bad hire quick. And also despite the relenetless whining from the peanut gallery, yeah ther eis use in time spent pair programming or around a white board. There is use in teaching and learning.

If you can't, or won't work from home, having work from home still benefits you.

I'm not claiming WFH is always bad or anything. But the "WFH is only a problem because of evil real estate owning bosses" are full of shit.

First, if people around you are working from home, suddenly rush hour stops being such. You benefit because the roads are less busy so you get a smoother commute. Less traffic on the roads means you get to your destination way quicker and time spent commuting goes down.

Second, if you have to fight for parking, well, less people to fight with which means you probably can find a parking space much quicker or it's just less packed overall so you're not hunting for that one empty space.

Missed the part where I ride a bike to work? :)

Having fewer people on the road is a benefit in terms of less pollution and better buses. But traffic doesn't affect my ride at all,since my ride in is pretty much separated from through traffic. Also, I'm usually in by 10:30, I am not a morning person.

Third, if you're packed in the office, fewer people means more space.

I mean this is true but only a bit. I'm at a very small company. We have one fully remote employee (different country), so obviously he doesn't have a desk. This means we need to spend less money on office space which is nice at this point.

All this means everyone saves on gas - working from home people save on gas. Everyone having to go into the office means gas isn't wasted in traffic jams of hunting for parking as well.

None of use drive in. The entire building (we sublet space) has maybe 5 parking spaces tops.

It's just like how improving public transit options helps those who have to commute by car as well - someone taking the bus means one less car on the road. A full bus means several blocks worth of cars are taken off the road making the road less congested overall.

I am all for this.

Many of us don't want to work from home.

Can't stand it myself. Even when I was flying solo as a contactor I hired a desk in a co working space because I liked having someone else to work with other people around. I gained useful info there too.

Plus WFH doesn't work well for R&D jobs other than maybe a very rarified few. Nothing quite like a real whiteboard. Plus I now have constraints of physical equipment that preclude remote work.

IME quite a few (though not all) remote workers just want to be left alone to quietly do their thing. That only works if their thing aligns with the company and there's enough lone work. I've encountered too many software engineers who end up just fiddling with peripherally related stuff that kind of looks like real work but is actually mostly useless. Frankly once you are a big enough company (I'm not thank the gods) you can't rely on hiring above average so you need to deal with those people somehow and get work out of them.

Ok ok ok yeah sometimes I fuck around on the lathe a bit in lieu of doing actual work. One of the perks of being in work I suppose.

Anyhoo where was I?

Oh yeah life choices. What fuel costs? I ride an acoustic bike into work. I live somewhere where I'm not constrained to drive to live my life.

In short, Java was invented for a reason, and while it has become a victim of legacy cruft as well, the underlying concept of truly portable apps, with a minimum of fuss to jump from platform to platform, still ought to be the preferable path. The problem is that that true platform neutrality/ambiguity pretty much kills Microsoft in all but a few niches, like gaming, but only because hardware vendors put less effort into drivers for other operating systems.

Yes, Office is still king, although I think that crown is beginning to slip, and it may end up being Excel, with its large list of features, that may last the longest. But it isn't 1990, or even 2000 anymore. Developers have multiple ways of developing portable applications, and while MS may (for the nth time) update or swap out its toolchains, the real question is will developers really care?