I'm old enough to remember Atari when it was new. Playing a video game at home was quite something, no quarters required! But it also had somewhat limited replayability. Doesn't matter how good you are, eventually Defender is going to beat you.
The NES was a radical departure in how games were played and how good they were. You'd never spend all day in front of the Atari, but you could with the NES.
Add to that the steady increase in the availability and affordability of cable tv, then VCRs and video rentals, and now the TV is even more central to the ordinary person's life. Then came computers, the Internet, etc.
I think there is definitely something to kids just not being as interested in going outside. Why would they be? All their friends are in the magic box in their pocket. Outside is where you get sunburn and ticks that make you allergic to meat.
>But “education” as a public, taxpayer supported activity is about the economy
It sounds harsh and maybe a bit gauche, but it's true. A literate and numerate citizenry helps the nation advance. That's the selling point for widespread public education. Airy ideals sound great, but that's also how ideology slides into the public school.
It also blocks IPs from states with age verification laws. I mean, okay, I respect the principle, but since there's very little I can do about the laws, and since there are exactly zero politicians who are going to fret because they can't visit aphyr dot com, it's a bit pretentious. So I guess I'll just k-line all aphyr dot com links in my filter and move on with my life. Everybody blocking everybody is how we win.
You fool! The WF-1000XM5 is the worst model of the line! You should buy the WF-1010XN5, it is far superior!
Apple tends to name things in an odd way, e.g. sometimes you need to remember whether your laptop came out in "early" 2014 or "late" 2014, but they have a remarkably flat, but consistent, product line.
I mean, honestly, if somebody just tossed you a random Macbook from the Apple store, it may not be the exact model you want but you wouldn't complain. All of them are pretty good, even down to the bargain basement Neo.
Yeah tho most customers never even encounter that level of detail. Most people just know there’s a ‘new one’ and an ‘old one’. If they have an old one, they come in and get a new one. Everyone replaces on their own replacement schedule, and every year there’s a new one, so it kinda just works for everyone.
Apple at its best makes its product like so legible people only need dim awareness of what they’re buying. That’s only possible if you build a ton of trust with consumers, which is why Apple is so so focused on their brand value.
Somewhat related, in 1943 German POWs built a scale model of the Mississippi River basin to use for modeling of flood control methods. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River_Basin_Model) It's not in great shape now, but it's still walkable. Efforts are periodically made to rehab it.
Models are such a great tool, artistically, culturally, and scientifically. Joe's NYC model really helps put the scale of the city into perspective.
I do this as well. I have a decent number of domains in my control, but not hundreds, so editing a text file and updating a hidden master is a perfectly reasonable workflow.
I built a ruby cli (back when Thor was a thing) that does most of the stuff, but I still edit the zone itself using vim („dns edit <zone>“ launches vim). PowerDNS has nice cli to deal with DNSSEC and bind (file) backend so I don’t have to deal with it by hand.
Of course I am the only user. But YAGNI works for me.
>I abort when I see things like “just type c-C dingle bob to do x thing.”
I used nothing but emacs for several years (well, xemacs, but close enough), because I was using an old Thinkpad, and long-term use of the trackpoint gave me RSI in my finger. Being able to use nothing but the keyboard was nice.
Eventually I went back to BBEdit and have remained there. You can make it mostly keyboard oriented if you want, but sometimes using the mouse is easier/faster, and I have a lot of reps inside of BBEdit. It just seems more like home to me. A nice balance between GUI and keyboard-focussed IMO.
>They've totally lost the plot with iPads IMO. It's a fantastic device to consume media, gaming, and some niche areas like drawing... but other than that
Every construction admin, supervisor, field inspection guy, etc. has a top of the line iPad Pro, in an Otterbox, with a kind of sling that helps you hold it with one hand, and an Apple Pencil, and they spend all day in Plangrid.
This setup has completely eaten the entire market.
Just to clarify, my point was that the construction usage is not niche.
But anyway if you continue along your path of reasoning and discount all use cases one by one you end up with no product at all… or maybe a photo/video player and messaging device. But as proven by the construction and many other use cases the iPad is more than that.
Can't speak to ditching a preferred text editor for this one, as text editors are one of the most highly personal preferences in computing.
But as a guy that teaches kids about computing and system administration, having another option to demonstrate is excellent. For many things something like nano is fine, but for something a bit more robust? And is available for many platforms? And is small and self-contained? It's a great option. The Lua extensibility is also a bonus.
Teaching teenagers how to use vim or emacs is, not surprisingly, a bit of a chore.
The NES was a radical departure in how games were played and how good they were. You'd never spend all day in front of the Atari, but you could with the NES.
Add to that the steady increase in the availability and affordability of cable tv, then VCRs and video rentals, and now the TV is even more central to the ordinary person's life. Then came computers, the Internet, etc.
I think there is definitely something to kids just not being as interested in going outside. Why would they be? All their friends are in the magic box in their pocket. Outside is where you get sunburn and ticks that make you allergic to meat.
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