I also started with Yggdrasil. A CD-ROM in the back of a massive book (printouts of all the man pages, I think).

YouTube has just notified me that my family subscription, which cost under USD $3/month because I used a VPN to buy it in Argentina, is about to be canceled, and I have to pay the local amount, about USD $17.

It was good for the 2 years or so while it lasted, but I’m done with YouTube. In any case, I was finding the videos being shoveled in my face were irritatingly uniform and clearly chosen to reinforce my prejudices rather than challenge them or even give me an even-handed selection.

And fuck, I am just tired of all the reaction videos and clickbait “content” by talentless hacks who are just trying to profit off of other people’s creativity.

I don’t think that Trump is anti-LGBTQ+. For that, he would need to have some kind of principles.

Fact is, all he cares about is what other people can do for him, and how much they massage his prostate with their tongues.

Likewise, he will screw over out heterosexual white male just as soon as he will screw over anyone else.

I’ve been a Linux user on and off since 1996, and there are still times when I give up trying to install software because of cryptic error messages.

Yes, I had my parents using Linux Mint for about 5 years, but eventually my brother who lived near them switched them to Windows because if there was a problem with Linux he couldn’t help.

Don’t worry, this is definitely the year of the Linux desktop.

Even more irritating is when they give you the option to opt out, but you have to select every company individually. So you either give up on the article or let them steal your life.

I got a Wii with the Wii Fit balance board for my dad to work on his balance and coordination as he aged. He never really got into it, but I think that could be an absolutely killer “game” for elderly people.

“Gay panic” was actually used as a defense.

I’m surprised his defence wasn’t based on “gay panic”.

New countries typically don’t start without a significant percentage of their population dying in conflict. Certainly a place that has as many guns as the US does not have a good chance for a peaceful transition.

Not that I actually believe a new country is even remotely possible. There will be decades if not centuries of decline.

There were guardrails, but most of them are just litter on the side of the road now. The supreme Court has essentially justified any action he takes, Congress will not dare to oppose anything he wants, and he is appointing toadies and lickspittles to the highest offices of the land. Oh, and he is reclassifying all the major bureaucrats as political appointees so they can be fired at will.

It really is as bad as it seems.

You are talking as if the US is ever going to hold elections again.

Back when the X-Files was ruling the airwaves, in the 90s, there was a companion show called Millennium. The first season was a bit weak, focusing on serial killers and gore. Second season went completely off the rails in the best way possible. The third season was a lackluster attempt to regain a wider audience.

I would recommend watching the second season for sure. It has religious satire (you will know exactly who they are skewering when you see it), the occult, end of days, mixed in with humor and solid human drama. The season finale, when they thought that they weren’t going to be renewed, is extraordinary.

I have done pair programming with a junior partner, and I found it extremely beneficial. Taking the time to talk out my ideas and logic invariably helped make them clearer in my mind and realize pitfalls much sooner than I otherwise would have.

I had to explain things clearly and logically, and he was bright enough to ask good questions and point out typos as I was coding.

One of the teachers at my high school was a Catholic priest. He had been accused of molesting a young boy when he was in a parish so the bishop, in his wisdom, moved him to an all boys boarding school.

He was later found guilty of molesting the original boy and the parish, as well as a boy at my school. From what I know now, he was definitely grooming one of my classmates, so there were probably many more victims.

He was given 3 years probation, and died a year or two ago, more than 40 years since I had him as a teacher.

In Ontario, any organization that receives provincial money must reach a certain accessibility level on its website, or risk having its funding removed.

Even as a 13-year-old, I could see gaping holes in the plot and inconsistencies. The aliens were hardly alien.

Even more so, I could see that the writing was clumsy and the dialogue was stilted. I could see how the writer was developing the story, and so I was not pulled into it at all. I was actually thinking to myself that I could write something like this. And I was 13!

I haven’t seen the movie, but from the sounds of it many of the problems with the book are also on screen.

The database app in LibreOffice, based on the Firebird database engine, can do all that.

I don’t know if this counts, but when I was about 13I was very excited to find an enormous book in my favorite genre at the time, Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.

It was the first book I ever put down in disgust without finishing. In the almost half-century since then, there are under a dozen that I haven’t finished. Shows you just how bad it is.

I started with a book too. But it was 1996, and the distro was Yggdrasil, and the book was a printout of all the man pages. I used it for a Prolog programming course, so that I didn’t have to go to the university and use their computers. Of course, then I discovered the joys of different flavors of Prolog.

I haven’t done it, bit I believe that with a pressure cooker you don’t need to soak the chickpeas.