DaoVeles

This is the only reason I have any experience with these apps. When MS sunset Money and compatibility started to get wonky, my in-laws were at a loss at what to do. We never did find an alternative. They do however have a seperate Win 7 PC just for Money, which at there age isnt a huge problem but for others that is not viable long term.

It is charming in that it has that mid 90s utility design.

It is absolutely frustrating because it has that mid 90s utility design.

I don't think I have seen any other utility hasnt really progressed on interface design like GNUcash. Like they built a prototype went "Nailed it!" And then moved onto back end stuff while ignoring all input from users.

This is boarder line a 'choose your own adventure' style thing. It is so stupid it had to be done!

That is a very fair assumption nowadays. I was not raised by the internet simply because I could not afford to even have it in the home until I was in my early 20's. Still remember the weeks after youtube being launched! The internet was that thing I had 30 minute chunks of from the local library. So it was always at arms length. Something that felt like a negative then might have been a positive in a way. The internet was this very positive force, a tool not an obsession for many.

I do worry about those nowadays that are "raised by the internet". I see the stream of influence that social media is having and I have to remember than for many people, this is all they have ever known of the internet. There is no other context. Many viewing this stuff are smart folks, but when that stream of media becomes like the air, many can be tugged in all manner of directions and now even realize it.

In the same manner of drugs, try not to turn them into a diet. The internet is a wonderful tool but a questionable 'way of life'.

I have seen efficiency figures vary from as low as 0.1% upwards of 10% but it seems difficult to quantify.

My shoot from the hip intuitive thought is that the massive amount of plant matter it took to make petroleum demonstrates how inefficient it is to get energy in that chemical state. A fools errand to try and do it over.

It has been said that Coal/Gas/Oil is a half billion years of stored solar energy. That is wildly inaccurate for many reasons, but even if we are using a few thousand years of stored energy, that is still a wide gap to cover.

Pretty much. The only pipes in the arctic tundra are oil pipes actively trying to stop this freezing process.

I guess playing this on the Mega Drive/Genesis I already knew I was being short changed. Also to have that much storage back then would have been life changing. I remember having a 120MB HDD in 1991 (?) and it felt like you would never run out of space. That was until you had both Doom and Doom 2 on it a few years later and combined took up about 30% of total storage.

I have said it many times before. You could fill a library with all the problem that BASIC leads too. But at its core is a message that is missing a little from modern computing - the ability to jump in and just get something simple built quick. The idea that you control the machine even if it is slow and sludgy.

This also goes a lot for the leap from command prompts to GUI's. You trade off control for functionality and that is not necessarily a bad thing. I just wish it was easier to get back to a middle path on this. Many have tried but it all seems a little too fragmented.

I had not thought of that. That is probably very likely. They can keep their public mantra of "privacy" to keep people coming to them but without the burden of tech development. Higher ups like that equation.

It is probably inevitable, I mean if even Microsoft couldnt fight off Googles browser dominance, what hope does Mozilla have long term.

Yep, despite the best intentions, once you have a funding stream it can become a controlling force on the overall direction of a project.

The alternative is to either have the user pay for it or have little to no funding which is a dead end in its own fashion.

Can we just appreciate the 3rd grader humor of the name.

Like a calculator app a friend made called the 'Crapulator'. It lived up to the name but not in the same fashion as the 'wrongulator'.

While I can see Mark stepping away from direct action in politics simply because it is exhausting. Unfortunately his wealth is an indirect means of politics.

Money is a token of power, billions in the bank influences politics.

These are all a very fair points. Of note at least there is no giant leap on possibility. By that I mean there isn't a step with '?' in it.

But there is a big gap between what is technically possible and what is economically possible. Yes, with a limitless budget, they could probably over come the technical issues. But can it be done within a budget limitation.

I am with you however, I am very skeptical we will see this happen but more than happy to be proven wrong. It is easy to say something, it is the doing that matters. Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.

As an aside, immunotherapy is pretty neat stuff. My fathers bladder cancer is in remission thanks to it.

Yes, there are still some issues being worked out (possibility to cause diabetes) but it is just neat to see in action. The medical field is one that still seems to be making these kinds of leaps. It is wild seeing some diseases that only a decade ago were a death sentence or had extreme solutions now becoming treatable.

I do worry about the future of IA. Simply because of some of their reckless moves with their book lending policy, they have opened themselves up to being bleed dry financially. That plus the amount of copyright infringement openly available on the site is just waiting to be attacked.

I am waiting for Nintendo to get wind of the huge ROM dumps on there, it is not going to pretty. No manner of 'moral high ground' will defend against lawyers.

Death by thousand paper cuts in action.

I love Firefox (fork) it is my only browser but you can see the long term trend and I do wonder if it will even be a thing in a decades time. Unless there is a sudden shift towards it, is will eventually be relegated to the last of the most devoted geeks as we watch it wither away at the hands of the tech giants running the net.

A big thing was when they cut the Servo team that was when I knew they had sort of given up on trying to push forward but merely follow.

It has been said that "Publish or Perish" would make a good tomb stone epitaph for a lot of modern sciences.

I speak to a lot of people in various science fields and generally they are some of the heaviest drinkers I know simply because of the system they have been forced into. They want to do good but are railroaded into this nonsense for dear of losing their livelihood.

Like those that are trying to progress our treatment of mental health but have ended up almost exclusively in the biochemicals space because that is where the money is even though that is not the only path. It is a real shame.

Also other heavy drinkers are the ecologists and climatologists, for good reason. They can see the road ahead and it is bleak. They hope they are wrong.

It is also frustrating when a papers summary says one thing, you pay for the full thing only to see it is a complete opposite of the claims. Waste of time and money, bleh!

I suspect eventually Elon is going to sell Twitter to Tesla under the guise of combining their AI research. Cue Obama awarding Obama a medal meme.

Just a shoot from the hip theory based on him stooping to new lows.

I have been trying to find an article I saw years ago that I have not been able to find since. It was about the folks who are trying to grab as much of the stored CompuServe data from peoples computers. It cached some of its stuff on the HDD and they are hoping that get as much of it as possible before it hits the rubbish tip or the drives die.

Cannot have PTSD if you have full blown Tetris effect and can only see falling block everywhere. ;)

That or they played 2018 Tetris Effect and had a full blow Non-dualist realization through it. Either way, a great outcome!

A bit more seriously, this is cool to see and it is fascinating to know what the pathway this taps into. Is it a case of merely distracting the mind from past experiences? As with a lot of things, more study is required.

This is no surprise. Look up how Scott Kelly described his experience coming back after a year on the ISS.

https://www.snexplores.org/article/how-year-space-affected-s...

This one thing that I love about GNU/Linux - giving older hardware a life time WAY beyond what was originally intended. Typed on a 2009 Core 2 Duo Thinkpad.

This was inevitable as the 2010's were very beneficial to their local tech industry. With the mandate to do as much tech internally there was a mother of all booms to take advantage of.

“Even a pig can fly if it stands at the fengkou, as long as the wind is strong.” Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun. Fengkou = Air Vent

Essentially, even if the business wasn't that great, there was still the possibility to be successful.

But as Warren buffet said "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.". The wind has stopped, the tide has gone out and now we are seeing the blow back of this. This can be a good thing long term as it can show what has a viable long term future but it hurts a lot in the interim.

Reminds me of how casinos in Vega hate when there are conference events on for science heavy crowd or skeptics groups. The guests know that gambling is a bust so they spend almost nothing on gambling and just use the hotel rooms and restaurants.

All gambling relies on folks not being familiar with mathematical odds combined with a little sense of being more lucky and/or smarter than the gambling system. Many in the space like to say it is "just entertainment" and that people should be free to do what they want. but at a certain point it is just exploiting peoples ignorance of what is being presented.

"Vegas is the only place where a 98% return is considered a good deal" - Penn Jillette.

Here in Victoria, Australia there have been many calls for changes to the system but for those in power, the tax revenue from gambling is so high that they wouldn't date cut it. A grave predicament in action.

There is a level of annoyance when these things pop-up after about 10-15 seconds due to, what feels like, an entire OS of Java script coming along for the ride to make it happen. But other than that it is a very minor inconvenience.

The one that has change my browsing habits is the EU need to tell you how many companies are using your data. Going to a fairly plain site only to have the pop-up say "Your data is being sold to 734 vendors" - that is obscene! Makes you think twice about going to a site like that.

Thank you for actually advocating for the most rational and realistic response to this situation. While one cannot expect peace from this, it is better to be in open communication than to be left to create images of what they think they are up against.

While there are many that argue against this point and I am sympathetic to them, Mutually Assured Destruction is a very powerful deterrent.

One of the reasons why many treaties came a long after WW2 was because for the first time ever, we had weapons on a scale that could truly cause civilization ending events. There is talk about strategic strike capabilities and from the little bits that trickle out from within, it is considered a potential path forward. But it is a path forward that is both political and literal suicide.

A scenario played out in the book 'Decline and Fall: The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America' by John Michael Greer makes a decent point. Say the US decides to strategically strike an opponent. They manage to take out 199 of 200 potential retaliatory strikes - a great success in terms of the ratio. But that one missile that gets through detonates over San Fransisco becoming the single most deadly event in US history. It just isn't seen as a viable path forward.

Luckily those in power are there because of those below them, you cannot be too loose of a cannon at the top but even that doesn't put ones mind at ease as you just do not know on what could happen. Maybe the lunatics to get control of it all. Strange things can happen.

I always appreciate these stories about how very specific observations that most people would miss can give away far deeper details of the universe that many wouldn't even consider. Eratosthenes using shadows and figuring out the size of the earth within a few percent is another well known one.

I bought a 42 inch TV for just under $300 AUD a few weeks back. I would suspect the panel isn't even the most expensive part any more on a TV, logistics for that thing have to be one of the biggest parts nowadays.