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Comment Re:Is SJVN getting forgetful? (Score 1) 70

Universities here are starting to tell CS and STEM students "you are on your own" when they get Macs. Because, as it turns out, a lot of stuff is more difficult on a Mac. For example, there are massive issues to get VMs runnign reliably for the students. Yes, I had one student with a Mac in my IT security class that just used GCC and GDB for the buffer overflow analysis on the Mac commandline and while the results were a bit different, they were fine and we discussed the differences. But 4 others did not manage. And that is a serious problem. Apple is doing way too much "different for the sake of being different" and that just does not cut it in quite a few scenarios.

I'm not a CS type, but I work in STEM, and having tried numerous times to bring obscure scientific stuff over from Unix or Linux and get it to build on MacOS, I absolutely agree with what you just said above. That sort of stuff is better left to experienced developers who focus on MacOS. I do use Linux, Windows and MacOS every workday, but I don't use Windows on weekends. I'd pick a Mac laptop 10 times out of 10 for general use, presuming I had access to networked Linux systems.

Comment Even USAs own rating agencies ... (Score 3, Informative) 247

... are having a hard time justifying their favorable ratings. With one the US has moved from AAA to AA a few years back and even that was seen as being nice and kind. I hope the US doesn't squander trust beyond the Trump era, lest you guys be sitting on a pile of money that the world has finally noticed not being worth the paper it's printed on.

It is my opinion that you could have a true revolution, a bottom-up redo of the US constitution and fixes for the most glaring broken parts of the US system up and running within months without even a single bullet fired. AFAICT from across the pond basically _everyone_ agrees that the current state of things has become untenable. You don't need to be a bunch of Trumpists storming the Capitol to see this.

Comment Scammers are ahead of the curve (Score 4, Insightful) 8

For at least five years now, I've seen scammers leaving fake customer service numbers for major brands all over the web. Q&A sites, open comments, wherever. The usual tip-off is that they list the SAME number as customer support for Microsoft, Apple, and Google. Or for CoinBase, PayPal, and whoever else. Obviously, call that number and you're getting scammed.

I had thought they were just trying to game search results -- put a number enough places and some non-zero number of people will find it. But in a world where AI bots are scraping the web, this approach is even more effective, because the AI bots aren't going to think critically about what they're sucking up.

Wonderful, just wonderful.

Comment Going bust soon. (Score 1) 27

Disclaimer: This is a repost from a while back and I'm a senior webdev and part of the target customers.
>>>>

Figma barely has a business case. Anything still left is being snacked up by AI or will eventually be replaced by open source software.

With UI design tools it's just like with Editors or Web Toolkits. There is always some hype-cycle that pushes the tool that then quickly gets replaced by the next fad: Sketch - Adobe XD - Invision - Figma ... whatever. Meanwhile folks who have chosen and stayed with Inkscape and Object Libraries or Penpot will do so until the end of their days and save the money and hassle.

I don't even use UI designers anymore, I build right in the web these days. The UI libs are all there already and you can integrate them just as quick as drawing the element. I might copy the occasional SVG object into my components, but that's because Inkscape is a neat vector drawing tool for the custom stuff. For everything else I don't even need it anymore.

Comment Is SJVN getting forgetful? (Score 1) 70

A few years back, I wrote in these very pages that Microsoft didn't want you so much to buy Windows as subscribe to its cloud services and keep your data on its servers. If you wanted a real desktop operating system, Linux would be almost your only choice.

Almost. Like, there's only one "real desktop operating system" that's not Windows, is Unix-based, focused on the desktop and userspace, and has about 15% of worldwide desktop OS market share, compared to 6% for Linux.

But pay no attention to that, this is clearly a binary choice between Windows and Linux. Carry on.

Comment You missed out. Watch it. (Score 2) 29

"The Social Network" is to a notable extent a work of fiction and construes a Zuckerberg that doesn't really resemble the real one rather than an amalgamation of nerd-rage projected on to a fictional Mark Zuckerberg.

The movie is ever so slightly flawed in that way and does stretch the one or other trope a little too hard when observed in isolation ("crazy bitch", "angry wounded nerd", "loudmouth silicon valley investor" etc.) but those are _all_ placed and played in service of the story and its telling and that is flat-out epic. Every single part right down to single-scene appearances are cast to the T and deliver an unbelievable performance, the pacing is flawless, the character dynamic is a masterpiece, every single word of dialog punches above its weight, the score is breathtaking and the camera-work is top tier.

It's definitely a masterpiece of a movie and Fincher (and Sorkin) knocked this one out of the park and into geo-stationary orbit, there is no two ways about that.

One of the penultimate scenes is a rage scene that Fincher shot 99 (ninetynine!) times and edited it out of 114 different adjacent takes. It's flat-out epic and one of the iconic scenes in movie history and generally regarded as the "best rage scene ever". This just to illustrate the obnoxious attention to detail and borderline autistic aim for perfection by Fincher. It shows in the entire movie.

It only won two oscars because the reviewers where overwelmed by the topic, otherwise it would've scored higher.

You definitely missed out. Watch it. As a special occasion. You won't be disappointed, that's a promise.

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