The "Hyper" part of HyperCard is the same meaning as "HyperText" as in "HyperText Transfer Protocol" (aka HTTP).

Hyper in this context means links, and HyperCard is basically a stack of cards that are linked together in some fashion so clicking on something on one card can take you to another card. Just like with the web, clicking on a link can take you to another web page. That is what it is in a nutshell.

Now, HyperCard card links can do a lot of things, especially when you add a bit of code behind it. It can serve as a rudimentary database - except instead of the traditional MVC architecture, or forms, the data is basically stored in a card. You can create a new card with a template and use that to be a database record, the hyper part being what links the cards together or enables functionality to find a card in the stack.

Alternatively, it can be a stack of cards linked together like a game (say, Myst) where you click around and it whisks you away to another card representing another room in an adventure. The code lets you change the state of the cards so clicking a spot can link you to one card or another depending on the current state. Note that saving is bit tricky since you can't store the state in the stack (it's on a CD-ROM), so you have to manually save all the volatile state and the current card to a file.

Myst extended HyperCard to include lots of extra media - HyperCard had support for graphics and sound, but videos were an extension (using QuickTime), as was having color. I'm not familiar with Myst enough to know how it was ported to PC since there is no PC equivalent of HyperCard. However, there were many competitors, one of which was SuperCard that did what HyperCard did, though with better programming, support for color built in, etc., and the ability to run on Windows., But HyperCard itself was not ported to Windows.

Microsoft is doing the Sega play. Remember when Sega made hardware? Eventually they got out but gave Microsoft an "in" as the Dreamcast was heavily advertised in supporting Windows CE.

And the current console generation is basically a PC again - Sony and Microsoft are competing on what are basically the same CPU codes and GPUs.

Microsoft has also pivoted into "everything's an Xbox" mentality - you can play on a dedicated hardware box, but you can play on anything else - your PC, your PlayStation, your Nintendo, your phone, etc. Either through direct game ports, or via streaming.

And of course, by selling Game Pass subscriptions to help reinforce the revenue. Basically, Microsoft decided competing on custom hardware boxes that were really just PCs wasn't going to cut it anymore, so they decided to rewrite the rules and transform console gaming.

Given what's out there right now, a portable Xbox really doesn't make any market sense - why buy a portable Xbox, which would be a cut down locked down PC handheld which wouldn't be substantially cheaper than a Steam Deck or one of the many other PC handhelds out there. Just partner with one of those makers and create a special branding on it.

In other words, Xbox is everywhere. It's on your PC - you can get it rhrough various stores including Steam, it's on your console, it'll soon be on a handheld, but it's also on your phone, etc.

10 years from now we'll be hurting, and not because AI replaced humans in so many roles. We'll be in bad shape because it didn't replace humans in various areas we expect it to. In addition to that we'll have to deal with cleaning up the messes from, and maintaining the crap that was spat out by, various AI models.

I'll give you a perfect example of something AI screwed up without actually having done anything whatsoever. Starting about 10 years ago, and peaking about 8 years ago, it was all over the various news and tech headlines that AI image recognition had gotten so good that it could read various X-ray, CT, MRI, etc scans and detect various problems. That it would soon replace radiologists. So guess what happened? Some small percentage of medical students considering the field of Radiology chose something else. Now, nearly 10 years later, we have a serious shortage of radiologists, as there has been a deficit between those retiring and the new radiologists finishing up school. It's getting worse, and will continue to get worse. Now we actually *need* AI to do what was claimed, and help read images so that the radiologists that are still working can be more efficient.

We're going to see this exact same thing in many other fields, as young adults avoid various careers most threatened by AI. Then there will be a shortage several years from now when we truly realizes the limitations of (and probably more important, the legal liabilities resulting from) AI.

Just a few articles going back 5+ years regarding radiology:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubtlemedical.com%2Fai-i...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.healthcarefinancen...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.medtechdive.com%2Fne...

The games we play to get our cheese...

Yes, I've worked at a company that basically said you had to have 40 billable hours a week. That is, all hours had to be billable to a client.

Come performance review time, and hey, no charge code. No one did it unless they worked overtime, because it wasn't billable. They quickly relented and changed it to everything had to have a charge code. This meant every time someone worked on something new or novel, project managers had to scramble to create a charge code for it because it ended up being the first thing people asked.

I'm sure it was to fulfill some executive's wankery on the subjwct that everyone was working on billable things.

The next company I worked at, they still had timesheets, but it was far more general and used just to track R&D hours tor tax credits.

My current company, no timesheets at all. It feels weird.

Considering it happened the day before the announcement, I was surprised it wasn't even mentioned in the summary. Every other site that covered the announcement also included the detail of Johnathon Joss' (voice actor of Redcorn) murder.

This was because the return was special in featuring the original voice actors, and it seemed rather newsworthy to note that just on announcement day there would be missing, not because he was holding out, but because he was killed.

Even though most programming is mental, there are situations where typing is crucial.

First is documentation - everyone has to write some eventually, and sometimes you need to do longer writeups.

Second is using the keyboard to navigate - if you use a vi-style editor, touch-typing makes it easier to enter in the commands to navigate through your file. Lots of vi commands are designed for easy touch-typing.

Exactly. Usually when you analyze algorithms you care about runtime - because that affects how fast it runs. But there are other considerations as well - including space - some algorithms may run very fast, but consume a lot of memory, while other algorithms to do the same thing can have a longer runtime but use less memory. What you choose depends on your situation.

And there's also the case where simple is better - even bubble sort is fast if your n is small. If you have a well constrained list of items that need to be sorted that's small, you might implement bubblesort just because it's easy to derive it from first principles.

And sometimes, maybe running the slower time algorithm can be better if you are running in the background so you can use less memory and give more to the foreground task.

These are tradeoffs that one needs to balance when selecting algorithms. Sometimes the worse algorithm might be better - if you need to add an item to a sorted list, you could use quicksort, but insertion sort is faster despite it being N^2. If you're adding to a sorted list, inserting the 1 item is an N operation versus having to use quicksort which ends up re-sorting the whole thing.

So Who'll keep the oil rigs running, who will resurface roads or fix plumbing in a world where people will still need to do the tough jobs. And why should they do those tough jobs when they can do what others are doing - nothing?

UBI isn't about doing nothing. It's about having enough to survive. If you can live in a tiny shoebox apartment and have enough for basic food and water and utilities, that's what UBI is about. With some roommates.

Now, you might find I didn't say anything about private bathrooms, or a kitchen, or more living space. Or luxuries like a TV, computer, etc. All that stuff is attached to a nice shared living quarter - so you and 3 other people who sleep in 2 bunk beds have a room, and everything else is shared. That's UBI. You'll survive, you'll live. You're not on the street in a tent.

But I'm sure you probably want more. UBI allows for that - that's why you go to work. You earn money, so you can spend it on better things - perhaps a private apartment so you can have your own bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and living space. Your own TV, your own computer. Gaming consoles.

Perhaps you want a car. UBI gives you bus passes. Perhaps you want a NICE car, or SUV, or truck.

So your oil rig worker could do nothing - but then he'd lose all the lifestyle he has - sure he's used to living in a dorm and such, but he's also used to going to a private house and driving a car and other things.

UBI won't affect that end of the economy at all. What it would do is disrupt the lower end - where your waiters and waitresses who ear $3.25 an hour (plus tips) who already live in a shoebox with 3 other roommates already live.

AI is coming after the low end - the entry level stuff. The stuff that pays for the low end of living, so either everyone graduating today can't get a job and we end up with fields of tents of homeless people who can't get a job because there are no jobs, or you provide those people with basic shelter and survival. And maybe the opportunity to work on something because they want to own a house someday as well.

If I took you from your comfortable house into a single room with nothing in it but a bed with the expectation you can be a slob and live like that, would you take it? Or would you want to be able to live in a nice private accommodations and such?

UBI doesn't means living in luxury, it just means having the basics. And last I checked, most people would prefer having more than the basics - whatever those may be.

Your high paying jobs of trades and such? People still want those - you aren't going to convince me that a CEO making half a billion a year would rather give up all that just to do nothing.

Except some of those legacy workarounds are pretty good in the end.

NAT, for example. There is NATv6, but few implement it. Why? No idea.

It's useful in that it removes dependence on an upstream IP address - when your prefix changes, all hell breaks loose. Sure we can blame poor software or hardware for this problem, but it happens. Renumbering an IP network has never been a fun process, and things don't always work. After all, I know every time my ISP gives me a new IP address because connectivity breaks - the router sees a new IP address, but the cable modem refuses to accept it, forcing me to power cycle it.

IPv6 has only one thing going for it - end to end connectivity. And that was broken decades ago because we have firewalls and other fun things designed to break connectivity because it's just not safe to have true end to end connectivity anymore.

So beyond that, IPv6 doesn't offer much.

And with broken connectivity, the benefits of NAT are apparent - it separates the "inside" from the "outside". I can number my devices however I well please. Maybe I want my IPv6 internal network range to be 1234::something. Which will be better than the 16 characters of random gobbledygook that my ISP gives for a /64 prefix. (I can type out 1234::1, 1234::2, even do easy VLANs with 1234::1:1 and such. And that makes life easy for me. And having seen real IPv6 deployments, that's what people do as well. Oh, I know with IPv6 there's a many-to-1 relationship (you can have unlimited IPv6 addresses bound to an adapter - link local, SLAAC are often automatically assigned, as well as assigned IPs), but still, it's nice to not worry so much about those things, or worry that the "funny looking address" is working because the ISP decided to change the prefix again.

Which is probably another question - why isn't there a way to reference IP addresses without a prefix? Can't we have a "default prefix"? Then we can just worry about the lower 64 bits without caring what the upper prefix was.

I'm sure the music and movie industry are strongly pushing for it - because one of the big reasons the lawsuits ended on copyright was because a judge ruled you cannot identify a person from an IP address.Which is true from a IPv4 perspective.

But IPv6, now you can identify devices - and if someone is torrenting movies on their personal PC which has a somewhat fixed IPv6 address, well bingo, lawsuits begin anew. So IPv6 has that going for it.

So the main issue is the main reason for IPv6 is long gone. We have firewalls these days. They are a reality. End to end connectivity is likely never returning.

"software that doesn't allow you to shoot yourself in the foot if you're determined"

I can think of some: Retail video game console operating systems.

Paint's not permanent either, but it will last a whole lot longer than just removing discoloration, especially if you use PU.

Paint doesn't last if it's a continually touched surface - each touch rubs a bit of the paint off so no matter how much preparation you do, it will degrade and flake off.

Lots of examples of painted plastic things that degrade over the years as the devices were used.

This store reflects a retail model that is simply dead now. You don't go in to a surplus store looking for something specific, as you likely won't find it. You go in with general ideas and you see what you find along the way.

Unfortunately very nearly nobody shops like that any more. We have a chain of surplus stores where I live, and the last several times I've gone in I've walked back out empty handed as they didn't have anything I wanted. They had plenty of things that other people want, but nothing I was looking for at the moment. 500 feet of rope in 12 different diameters? Yep they have it but I'm not looking for it. Cartoon character umbrellas? Yep they have it but I'm not looking for it. Firewire cables? Yep them have them but I'm not looking for them. Strange animated movies I've never heard of? Yep lots of those too. The list goes on and on but if they don't have anything I'm looking for then they won't get any money from me.

Three words whose first consonant sound is /r/ and refer to subjects taught in primary school are reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The list of 6 speed manual cars sold in the USA is very, very short. If you drop the ones sold by Porsche you cut that list in half. If you then drop the ones from VW (yes I know Porsche is a part of the VW corporate empire but we'll acknowledge them separately here) after that you end up with about 3 vehicles, and you find that even those only offer manual transmissions in very specific configurations.

The bigger news is that this isn't really news, as the manual transmission has been dying a gradual death for decades here. People don't learn it, and they don't want to drive it. On the plus side it makes it a theft deterrent technology for those who do drive it.

One big reason is manuals are usually restricted to 6 speeds, which is 5 plus overdrive. Automatics are coming with 8 or more gear ratios they can engage, which means they have way more gear ratios to choose from.

This results in a manual transmission where the engine is running inefficiently near the shift points because the next gear is too tall for the engine, while the current gear is too short and the engine has to rev fast.

Basically, the manual has to have 6 ratios whilst the automatic can have 8 to 10 which mean the engine can be kept in the optimal efficiency range much longer since there's a greater chance of finding an ideal ratio for the current speed and the next gear is not too tall out of necessity.

It's resulted in a number of cars with manual options to have worse gas mileage as well as relatively poor driving experiences since the engine is always having to rev high or lug on shifts which isn't good for a nice ride. This problem also translates into the manual car inevitably being slower on 0-60 because even with fast shifting, the engine lugging kills time.

At least it's going to be that way until car makers start putting in multiple gearboxes like semi trucks in order to get the 10, 12 or 18 speed gearboxes. (Though, many trucks are automatic as well).