Web browsers are absolute hogs, and, in part, that's because web sites are absolute hogs. Web sites are now full-blown applications that were written without regard to memory footprint or efficiency. I blame the developers who write their code on lovely, large, powerful machines (because devs should get good tools, I get that), but then don't suffer the pain of running them on perfectly good 8 GB laptops that *were* top-of-the line 10 years ago, but are now on eBay for $100. MS Teams is a perfect example of this. What a steaming pile of crap. My favored laptop is said machine, favored because of the combination of ultra-light weight and eminently portable size, and zoom works just fine on it, but teams is unusable. Slack is OK, if that's nearly the only web site you're visiting. Eight frelling GB to run a glorified chat room.

The thing that gets my goat, however, is that the laptop I used in the late 1990s was about the same form factor as this one, had 64 MB (yes, MB) of main memory, and booted up Linux back then just about as fast. If memory serves, the system took about 2 MB, once up. The CPU clock on that machine was in the 100 MHz range. Even not counting for the massive architectural improvements, my 2010s-era laptop should boot an order of magnitude faster. It does not.

Why? Because a long time ago, it became OK to include vast numbers of libraries because programmers were too lazy to implement something on their own, so you got 4, 5, 6 or more layers of abstraction, as each library recursively calls packages only slightly lower-level to achieve its goals. I fear that with AI coding, it will only get worse.

And don't get me started on the massive performance regression that so-called modern languages represent, even when compiled. Hell in a handbasket? Yes. Because CPU cycles are stupidly cheap now, and we don't have to work hard to eke out every bit of performance, so we don't bother.

Not a lot against the guy, but he should be #5 .. he merely continued the trajectory set by the others.

For nearly 15 years.

Jobs passed in 2011. Tim Cook has been at the helm for 15 years since then. Even if he was coasting, Apple has done remarkably well in those 15 years just coasting alone. Most companies falter and die out by then. Heck, after Apple ousted Jobs as CEO, they were struggling by the time Jobs came back and he wasn't gone nearly as long as he is now.

Even if Tim Cook did absolutely nothing for the 15 years he was CEO, the fact that Apple is still around and still going strong is already a huge credit to his (non-)leadership in managing to keep the ship steady.

Tell me how many other CEOs are like that - because history is littered with failed companies whose leadership wanted to make their mark and then their companies imploded. Like Apple nearly did 20 years ago.

Tim Cook, by "doing nothing", managed to keep Apple on the up and up, and history reveals this isn't usually what happens.

The last time, it was likely Intel buying up AMD CPUs and dumping them. As well as forcing Microsoft and Sony to use AMD chips.

AMD has its ups and downs, and Intel was riding high, but Intel needed AMD to survive to avoid antitrust activity as well. Getting rid of fabs was one thing as they are expensive.

But Chipzilla is still very big and making a lot of money. And they released new chips that are surprisingly competitive. They're not fast against the top end 9860X3D CPUs, but are very cost competitive when compared to the midrange parts, or even faster than them. At the same price or lower.

They've also seen a bump in sales in chips supporting DDR4. So going into 2025 it was doom and gloom for Intel, but for 2026 so far, Intel is holding its own and maybe even starting a comeback.

And even after all these years there are still plenty of idiots who don't understand what the word "average" means. I always see them slowing down for a camera then speeding right back up again afterwards. How do people this dumb get a license?

There was a comedy troupe that posted 3 people along the first. The first one carried a sign that read "Speed camera ahead".
The second one carried a sign that read "Just kidding".
The third one carried a sign that read "Sorry".

The thing was, there was a speed trap between the second and third person. They'd slow after the first, speed way up for the second and get caught, then the third sign apologized.

There's a YouTube video of them driving and what you'd see and it's been reported a few times.

Also, many toll roads especially in Asia do this as well - you get a ticket when you enter the toll road, then you'd hand it in when you exit and they'll charge you the toll based on distance travelled. Problem is, they also note your average speed.

Though I do remember at least one having a rest stop with a restaurant on it - so stopping for a break and/or food would lower your average speed considerably.

Honestly, that's a pretty good spread for a small crew. And is much higher than any other population sample you could take. It only happened because these things are planned out so far in advance, that Trump's anti-DEI couldn't have taken effect without delaying it for at least a couple more years.

And the moon is not an easy feat - if you want a rough idea of scale, put a half inch sized circle on one of your wrists, Then put a dot on the other wrist. Then stretch your arms wide and you have a near scale representation of the Earth, the Moon, and the distance involved. Yes, it's that far apart and likely a lot further than books and school would have you believe. Or likely you would even believe.

How are you going to host a game server on a home computer if you share your IPv4 address with other subscribers to the same ISP in the same neighborhood,[1] and the combined modem and router that your home ISP requires all subscribers to use lacks an option for port forwarding? Both of these are true, for example, of T-Mobile US Home Internet.

[1] Many home ISPs apply carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT) to conserve IPv4 addresses since the worldwide exhaustion.

You don't. Because home internet connections, even the multi-gigabit ones, are terrible for things that need constant ping.

It's why people have been hosting services where they can get a dedicated IP, or likely one shared with similar services. Those hosting servers tend to have guarnateed connectivity.

Because direct IP connections sucked, and it's why booter services aren't so common nowadays. Because that's what happened in the past - if you got angry, you started pingflooding the host IP and making everyone's game terrible.

These days, you still have booter services, but they're services you pay for, and they're not used as much because the hosting server often hides the IP of everyone else.

I don't disagree with local servers, but maybe let's leave them on the local LAN plan. If you want to expose it to the Internet, then you can, and if you do, better have the expertise to know how to host it yourself.

And no, IPv6 won't fix this - because IPv6 only guarantees everyone gets a globally unique IP address. It doesn't guarantee that end-to-end connectivity will work. Thanks to firewalls and such which are a practical necessity these days.

The popularity of online multiplayer competitive play is driven in part by centrally hosted servers where there are people who do protect them against attacks meant to spoil the fun of everyone involved. Only a huge data center really has that ability. But if you want to host a small scale server on your own for you and a few friends, you should have the option as well

That one failing sysop that chases everyone away for posting things he's not interested in, then blames the users for not being a bunch of bland suburbanites who blames their poverty on rich people not getting enough tax breaks.

It's like Doonesbury for people stupid enough to believe Charlie Kirk or Rush Limbaugh, but furry for some reason.

Recent graduates tend to be stuck with hourly food service and retail jobs. These tend to treat availability outside 9 to 5 as a condition for hiring, not to be doable from home, and not to pay enough for a taxi. Even a cyclist needs a backup during bad weather.

I take what I made at my previous position and add twice the rate of inflation to it.

This graph doesn't take into account that Americans largely think basics like healthcare are optional/disposable expenses.

Being a grownup doesn't mean being anti-labor. It means having a backbone enough to refuse a lowball.

Anarcho-capitalism isn't really a thing. Or at least, it isn't anarchism. It's essentially end-stage libertarianism. If you want to see what it looks like, Somalia is currently in such a situation. It ends up being less freedom and more feudalism with petty warlords all fighting for dominance. It's not unlike the Crips, Bloods, the Mafia, etc., just with everything instead of just with illegal vices.

This is all to say that this kind of anarchy would not be pleasant. Only teenagers, idiots, and assholes actually want it. Actual anarchism, by the way, is the end-stage of Communism. Totes different things.

If someone happens not to have this privilege, then how would they go about traveling to or from work at night or on Sundays, when all the bus drivers are at home with their families? (Source: Citilink in Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA)

I imagine that most gamers are unwilling to pay for business-class service if business-class service is the only "real" service offered at their home address.