bigtech

Finally!

As with Mars (and Silo) we need a very deep pit to protect humans from the radiation.

This has me thinking that fiber optic drones using this technology might be able to discover the location of signal-jamming equipment. But only for the good guys.

This does look better! :)

Not that the author needs my defense, but that image says to me, 'hey, I'm just a guy who wrote a book and there's no budget for art' -- which fits a DIY aesthetic in 2026

I bought an N100 mini that looks just like the Ars picture, but it's branded from Beelink as an S12Pro -- it does all of this and more. Mine is in the living room with the HDMI attached to my TV, but I RDP into it for most things. I installed WSL and and initially ran Plex from Docker, but switched to Windows native as it is simpler to setup and maintain.

Middle class is shrinking; people in tighter economic situations can't afford hobbies?

Seems possible from the technical side, but not so sure about the money part. if I'm following you correctly, XYZ.com would have shown an ad on their site and received, say 1 cent. With your service running, you visit XYZ.com, ad is replaced by a white box, and they receive, let's say 2 cents? If so, seems like efficient microtransactions will be a challenge.

There's a way to work in such an environment and not go crazy, but it will take time to get used to it. Think of it system with big asynchronous methods. You need to arrange your work to put in the slow running requests early, then focus on other things while waiting.

My nicer one is in the living room for end of the day games and such, but my older one is an always-on weather display.

I see agile as the problem here. Before agile, I would essentially 'own' pieces of the code, so I was committed to making it maintainable. Now, it's all just pieces and parts, and I'm not responsible for nearly as much, which make me fungible, and in general is dispiriting.

As a side note, I question the author's appeal to Marx as an authority.

Well, it's 8 bigger, isn't it?

I would have though SAG-AFTRA require all on-screen talent to be paid.