I use it a lot for code improvements. “I’m doing XYZ in my code. This is not efficient. Is there an algorithm to improve this?” Often times, there is.

I haven’t tried W11 LTSC. Even if you cut out the bloat, I just can’t stand the interface. Hopefully 12 is better, but I’m not hopeful.

Ah, bikes. Driving is a necessity. I’m not going to commute 30 miles to work on a bike, and I’m not going to haul a pallet of drywall on a bicycle.

Off-road bikes are great, and they’re good machines for exercise. Bicycles should not be allowed on public roads. They’re a hazard.

I switched all of my Windows systems over to Windows 10 LTSC a few months ago, and it’s been a game-changer. I still get security updates, but no advertisements, bloat, or new “features.” I believe it’s supported until 2032.

After that, I’ll probably switch my remaining systems over to Linux, but until then, it’s not half bad.

I’m not disagreeing necessarily (I know nothing about city planning), but wouldn’t a smaller highway just force people onto the side streets and city roads? How does a superhighway make traffic worse?

I’m going to break with what most people are saying and offer the suggestion that search engines are actually doing a decent job. If my mother searches Google for the phrase “Can you please show me a recipe for apple pie?,” she’s probably going to get a recipe for apple pie. If I search google for “c++20” “std::string” “constructors”, after I skip over the ads, I’m most likely going to get a web page that shows me the the constructors for std::string in c++20.

Ad-sponsored pages and AI bullshit aside, most search engines do still give decent results.

If you have to “cut a deal” with your spouse, you are not in a healthy relationship.

I tend to agree, but I would set the age lower. A person can graduate high school at 18, get a 4-year degree, and still be 3 years away from “adulthood” by your definition. There are plenty of professionals in the first 3 years of their career who are contributing members of society. Shouldn’t they be able to drive to work, sign a rental contract, etc? I’ve been in my career for over 20 years, and I have always worked with young people who may be lacking experience but are still productive employees. I think you’d be cutting out a significant portion of the workforce by excluding those in early adulthood.

$3.4M is too low of an estimate. If you assume someone works from age 18 to 65, that’s 47 years of employment at an average of $72,300-ish per year. Now assume time for college, plus people make less early on in their careers. You’re looking at a $100k income.

$100k is probably enough to support a mortgage, two kids, insurance, essentials, bills, and retirement savings in some LCOL areas, but not in many places. In many parts of the US, that might cover a modest house and monthly bills, but there won’t be much left over; forget retirement.

My old brain still looks at a 6-figure income as “you’re rich.” In 2024, you’re not even close.

People really underestimate how bad a cold can be. When I’m sick, it’s so hard to function mentally that I can barely do my job.

I believe he was sick, and I believe this was just a case of unfortunate timing. What matters in politics is perception, though, and the perception isn’t good.

It’s certainly possible (and probably even likely) that you’re correct. Most of the people I’ve spoken to about that are somewhat tech-inclined and probably much more likely to be using an adblocker than the average person.

So many years of ad-free media has just ruined me on ad-supported content. I sat down in front of a public TV tuned to a cable channel the other day, and it was absolutely unwatchable.

The problem I have always had with cable TV, and now with streaming, is the advertisements. I understand why free services inject ads into their video stream; they have to make a profit somehow. I don’t like it, and I’ll block the ads, but I understand it.

Having experience what ad-free entertainment is like, be it from Netflix years ago, renting movies online, or Youtube with Adblock, I will never pay for a service that’s going to show me ads. Either make the service free and cash in on ad revenue or sell the service for an appropriate price that you can afford not to show ads. Sticking to the old model of “pay for cable TV and watch commercials” is never going to work, be it cable or streaming. I don’t think I’m in the minority here, either; I’ve heard this sentiment from plenty of others.

Even when I’m by myself, I often get the feeling like I’m in a “bubble,” and everything I’m looking at outside of myself is some other reality different from my own. It’s not a positive or a negative feeling, just kind of weird.

So to answer your question: Yes.

I was actually thinking about something similar today. We’ve already had an actor as president, then with Trump, we had a reality-TV star. Social media is the new “TV” for the younger generation, so it’s only a matter of time before we have an influencer or a YouTube creator as a candidate, right? Let’s see MrBeast go toe-to-toe with Trump.

I don’t consider myself a Republican or a Democrat, although unless things change drastically in American politics, I can’t see myself ever voting Republican by the time I’m dead and gone. With that said, I mentioned to someone yesterday that if I didn’t have the experience of living through Trump’s time in office, this debate would make me seriously consider voting for him.

I really don’t believe that this debate is going to sway many undecided voters toward Biden. If you compare their performance at face value, Trump was unusually well-spoken, and Biden seemed like he belonged in a nursing home. Half of what Trump said was complete bullshit, but how many undecided voters are actually reading articles that show how full of it he really is?

What you have is a person who stated lies as fact and did a decent job of being convincing and a person who was generally truthful but seemed like he “wasn’t all there.” Undecided voters who “don’t follow politics” are going to see this and say “You know, I think I understand why people support Trump.” That’s a very scary prospect.

I don’t dislike Biden, but my personal opinion is that the best thing he could do for the country is step aside and let a different Democrat take the nomination. Geriatrics like Trump and Biden need to retire, do whatever they feel like in their golden years, and let someone else take the reins. A competent politician in his 50s or 60s would absolutely destroy Trump, and that’s exactly what we need right now.

The specs say it replaces a traditional 500w-1500w light source with a 200w LED fixture. I’m honestly surprised at how low that is overall. I would expect that a lighthouse would be using at least 10kw of power or more, especially in areas prone to fog. I can only assume that there are lenses to focus it down to a tight beam.

For comparison, I recently installed LED lights in a moderately-sized industrial area. Total power consumption is a little over 2kw, or 10 lighthouses.

In the US at least, most equipment (unless you get into high-and datacenter stuff) runs on 120V. We also use 240V power, but a 240V connection is actually two 120V phases 180-degrees out of sync. The main feed coming into your home is 240V, so your breaker panel splits the circuits evenly between the two phases. Running dual-phase power to a server rack is as simple as just running two 120V circuits from the panel.

My rack only receives a single 120V circuit, but it’s backed up by a dual-conversion UPS and a generator on a transfer switch. That was enough for me. For redundancy, though, dual phases, each with its own UPS, and dual-PSU servers are hard ro beat.

I probably should have specified I’m using libcurl, but I did try the equivalent of what you suggested. I even tried setting a list of user agents and having it cycle through. None of them work. A lot of anti-scraping methods use much more complex schemes than just validating the user agent. In some cases, even a headless browser will be blocked.

Speaking from experience, be careful you don’t become over-zealous in your anti-scraping efforts.

I often buy parts and equipment from a particular online supplier. I also use custom inventory software to catalog my parts. In the past, I could use cURL to pull from their website, and my software would parse the website and save part specifications to my local database.

They have since enacted intense anti-scraping measures, to the point that cURL no longer works. I’ve had to resort to having the software launch Firefox to load the web page, then the software extracts the HTML from Firefox.

I doubt that their goal was to block customers from accessing data for items they purchased, but that’s exactly what they did in my case. I’ve bought thousands of dollars of product from them in the past, but this was enough of a pain in the ass to make me consider switching to a supplier with a decent API or at least a less restrictive website.

Simple rate limiting may have been a better choice.

Is Creative Cloud a requirement for using Adobe products these days? Surely someone can just save data locally instead. Media files (especially raw video) can be enormous.