Theft of both food and desk items was a huge issue at two different large office jobs I had. In the second one, HR and management didn’t care until someone stole the electronics from the break room and they finally put up cameras. I think the correlation is that those big offices had large phone sales and support staff that works in the building. Those roles underpaid, under-appreciated, and have high turnover. I can definitely see some of those people being on their last rope and not giving a shit about stealing from either the company or people they feel have “cushy” jobs.

Making inedible or spicy food to catch a food thief is a trick as old as time and I have even done it myself. There is no other way to catch them out usually.

Me too, but considering how many questions had AI in it…

I wish there had just been a single answer that said “Focus on Firefox and not AI”.

I’m not sure I’d stick to calling it the worst version “ever” since MS is trying really hard to out do themselves.

That sucks, I guess I have been fortunate that my I haven’t had any major issues with either of my Nvidia cards using the proprietary drivers. Are you using the 4000 series cards? I haven’t tried them as my 3070 is still doing fine and has been since release.

This is for real. I have never been so disappointed in a video game, and I had E.T for the Atari 2600 as a kid.

I’m not sure I consider myself a “veteran” since I still used Windows most of the time back then, but I used it in the late 90s. This is all anecdotal from my perspective, but the late 90s Linux experience was pretty rough on the desktop side, especially installing it. I actually rarely saw Debian in use, it was usually Red Hat for the sane people or Slackware for the lunatics. There were a few notable Linux game ports, but generally speaking, gaming wasn’t something most people did or even expected to do in Linux. I think I had a small handful games that weren’t terminal roguelikes: Doom, Quake, Tux Racer, and Alpha Centauri ( this one might have been early 2000s, hard to recall ). I can’t say I personally saw anyone openly using it at the university level in almost any form when I attended, I saw a lot of Unix though. Everyone I knew that was using Linux was younger and did have a slightly hobbyist leaning, with the more serious people usually using OpenBSD or FreeBSD.

Malls were dying in the US well before Amazon and online shopping itself was meaningful. Big box stores did a number on them. Best Buy and Circuit City had nearly the same selection of music that mall music stores did for much lower prices. Stores like Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million eviscerated the smaller more expensive mall book stores. Walmart, Target, and the like hit everything else.

Once that decline happened, I noticed that many malls started going after the kids that just hung around malls and weren’t in constant spend mode. Teens were treated like pests that were not wanted. Guess who got the message and didn’t come back a few years later when they had jobs and money?

Malls in the 80s and early 90s were pretty awesome, but malls told us to fuck off so we did. They can rot.

Sadly agree, I’ve been looking for a proper successor with no luck.

I am far from unbiased as I just switched back to my pixel 4a from my new Sony Xperia. I think the Pixel 4a is a flat out GREAT phone, full stop. It is perfectly sized IMO, has been very reliable, good battery life (though at this point I should look into replacing the battery), and it has a headphone jack. That being said, picking it as a new phone now essentially means going with a custom rom and hoping it stays supported. That’s fine and all, but it’s not something most people want. Just to be clear, the xperia isn’t a bad option per se, I only switched back because the phone came carrier locked when it was supposed to be unlocked and the carrier it was locked to was uncooperative so I refunded it.

It is exactly that. Some people really like them, others do not (me included). You usually need to go a little out of your way to get a font that supports ligatures for your editor.

I know a guy that did exactly this. I am living vicariously through him.

Most of the programmers I know (including myself) use Linux or BSD, but that all depends on who you associate with. A lot of companies are purely Windows shops and others just throw their programmers mac books and call it a day. At my last company I was only briefly allowed to use Linux until they decided it was no good as I couldn’t use whatever resource intensive corporate garbage security software of the year they bought.

I am the opposite. When I was younger, I have significantly more free time and certainly better reflexes.eye-hand coordination. I doubt I could come close to beating any of the more challenging NES games that I did when I was a kid (not that Mario Sunshine was in that era).

Your experience mirrored mine, except that I also played the original. The game had some good ideas and mechanics, but it was frustrating and one of the few Super Mario games that I didn’t even want to finish.

It worked as of six months ago, but it is possible that was patched in this recent “fix”.

The W11 installer sadly doesn’t allow that anymore with the current versions. If you have that older installer, keep it safely archived.

Most of the newer CPU’s have an NPU already, Microsoft just set a higher performance requirement for NPUs to be officially labeled an “AI PC” which they are pushing hard.

Agreed