Staying true to the centuries-old library concept, only one patron at a time can rent a digital copy of a physical book for a limited period.

So sad that we solved the problem of knowledge scarcity, and because of greed we need to add it back artificially.

I thought the same. Definitely the same vibe.

There’s was a scanner app that I loved, for Android. Turned into a subscription, even though most people use it less than once a month and even though the app was basically complete and never got updates.

Singular they has been used for something like 7 centuries.

I worked for a startup that had as main investor a company called InterTrust. Our office was inside their building.

InterTrust was a patent portfolio that belonged to Sony and Philips. All they did was sue people. One day they were able to sue Apple on some stupid patent, and there was much rejoicing at the office.

It depends on what you mean by better. Faster? More user friendly? More versatile?

ffmpeg is written by Fabrice Bellard, who’s one of the most underrated programmers in the world (he also wrote QEMU). It’s probably the best tool out there, still actively maintained, and most commercial apps are probably using it under the hood for any kind of conversion.

Yep, that’s pretty much it.

Unlimited PTO is only good if you’ve proved yourself indispensable to the company, and can leverage that. Of course if you’re indispensable then it’s hard to take a lot of vacation!

I replied to the wrong comment, sorry, I was replying to the person asked if the 3 weeks were paid.

Brazil, Spain, Egypt, Denmark, Argentina…

Not OP, but probably yes. Unlimited PTO is not uncommon in tech.

Of course if you try to do some shenanigans like taking two months off they will simply fire you.

You hire more people.

That’s just for colorectal cancer. It also affects other types of cancer (like breast cancer) and increases the chance of dying from heart disease considerably.

• Ethical reasons: hundreds of billions of animals are killed every year (not counting fish), after living a miserable and short life.
• Environmental: greenhouse emissions (CO2 and methane), deforestation for pastures, water pollution, are all caused by animal agriculture. If everyone went vegan we’d need only 25% of the land we currently use for agriculture.
• Health: there is some evidence that meat causes cancer, and convincing evidence that processed meat causes cancer. Also, the use of antibiotics for animals can lead to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Cow farts are methane, which are a more aggressive form of greenhouse gas, though with shorter lifespan.

Here’s more info about meat and the environment.

Related: every time you shuffle a deck of cards you get a sequence that has never happened before. The chance of getting a sequence that has occurred is stupidly small.

I think so! I think at some point all my friends switched to WhatsApp and Messenger.

I used it, I actually ran my own server under my domain. It was nice to be able to talk to people using Gchat from my account.

know about it? We even added your secret directories to our tape backup.

That’s the hacker ethos right there! Love it! ❤️

Love this!

I also have a MUD story… back in 1993 I lived in Brazil, and there were no commercial ISPs, so you couldn’t have internet even if you wanted to pay for it. Only universities were connected to the internet.

A friend of mine was in college studying computer science, and he had a “special number” that he could dial to get access from home. The number was unlike any other I’ve seen before. He shared the login (“students”) and password (“students93”) with me, and told me I could use it sparingly.

I was 15 at the time, and I started playing a MUD. The first day I played for 30 minutes. The second day, for a couple hours. Soon I was spending 8 hours a day playing MUD, and I started dreading the phone bill. Long distance calls where super expensive back then in Brazil, and even a landline would cost as much as a car!

After a month, no bill came. I waited another couple weeks, and I finally decided to call the phone company and ask how much it would cost to call the “special number”.

“Sir, this number doesn’t exist”, was the answer.

Well, it worked for me! I kept using it, playing that MUD for 8-12 hours every day. Eventually, when 1994 arrived, my password stopped working. I tried “students94” and I was in. I only had telnet and ftp access, but that was enough to play MUDs and discover a whole new world.

Eventually in 1995 the password stop working again, and trying “students95” didn’t work. I started using BBSs, and eventually ran my own for a few months. In 1996 I went to college, and the first commercial ISP opened in the city where I was. I was one of their first clients.

I assume they run upgrades and backups?