Yeah...

The good ones are designed for repairability, because that's done by field service technicians.

Not only is literally every part replaceable, they provide a detailed list of which parts will and won't void the warranty and the warranty ones are a surprisingly small list. Things like replacing our even removing the SSD don't do if you don't have on site repair, or are very untrusting, you can return the laptop without the data on it for repair and reinsert they SSD when you get it back.

Oh also, and this is a really nice touch, the back has captive screws so they're really hard to lose during a repair.

I suppose there are some other crap models but I've not encountered them.

I always dislike the nostalgia for the Classic. When brand new, it was already nostalgia bait and seriously under specced for the price. The original 9" Macs I really like, worked with and owned as a retro computer (I owned a contemporary LC). The Classic I always thought was a cash grab.

Colour Classic...yeah maybe, and again as a retro machine I like them. As a contemporary machine though they were way overpriced for what they were.

So...noscript then.

The 80186 existed, but the problem was the 80186 integrated various components such as the clock generator and interrupt controller directly into the CPU, but did so in a way that was incompatible with how IBM built the IBM PC. So the 80186 found its way into some not-quite-IBM-compatible computers like some Tandy models and a few other oddballs including some early PDAs. Otherwise, it it was used mostly for embedded applications.

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.

Can confirm Bazzite. 85/90% there I'd say, which means there's still a bit of "tread carefully" for people. I'm very happy with the running, but I'd be less than truthful if I said it was completely frictionless.

For example, 90% of my gaming is on Elder Scrolls Online, the 'play' button on Steam runs the Zenimax launcher not the game itself and there's also an annoying recent'ish (few months) bug where it seems games launched from a 3rd party launcher don't know they've got the foreground focus. Steam thinks the launcher has the foreground., andn ESO this manifests as not autoswitching to the main game window after you've gone through the Zenimax launcher, no sound and sometimes stuttering frames because the ESO game window still thinks its in the background somehow. Random'ish alt-tabbing and clicking will bring it back, but it means there's a a) a small bit of friction where there was previously none and b) some change or regression because all this used to run fine without that issue.

I played Rez:Infinite. Great game, but it has an "Attack" mode which will crash after the third level or so. Again, friction.

I play Skyrim. Setting both Skyrim and ESO up for modding, including running some Windows binaries required by the mods, was a relatively painful learning experience.

I have a friend who wanted to switch but didn't because of kernel DRM in some of the Windows games. Once again, friction.

I'm very happy with the switch and wouldn't go back, but I'm experienced with Linux (Slackware 0.9 alpha being my first distro, and I'd installed before distros like that existed as well - anyone for Minix on an Atari ST?). I can see people not quite as annoyed with Windows as me not really seeing the benefit. For me, it was one giant Co-pilot advert too far that made me say "right then, done". After I'd told it no god knows how many flaming times, Windows popped up some "Let's get ready in your new Co-Pilot account!" thing that literally just had me hard power off and wipe the OS away. My PC is purely for gaming, I use a Mac laptop for my desktop work, so I get that luxury.

(as an aside, I do wish Steam would ban using launchers when it itself is the launcher. There's no reason for that Zenimax launcher to exist in the Steam version of the game, and it's annoying as hell because it prevents me from using Big Picture mode and just treating the whole thing like a console. That's true for either Windows or Linux, this is a 3rd party launcher thing and not an OS thing).

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.

If the clone is AI-generated, I donâ(TM)t think it can be copyrighted, based on [Thaler v. Perlmutter, 2023]. Calling the clone âoeproprietaryâ is a slight misstatement. It could be protected as trade secret maybe, but I donâ(TM)t think itâ(TM)s copyrightable, based on what courts have ruled so far.

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.

I didn't really use Works, but I supported enough PCs that had it that I had a lot of exposure to it. I didn't use it because the file formats for it were annoying when I had access to Office.

It was pretty common OE software on new computers too.

If I didn't have access to Office, I tended to use WordPad. It was nearly always good enough honestly.

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.