burningChrome

Worked at a Fortune 200 company. Any govt project you worked on, you had have to have a basic civi security clearance. Any govt contract we got specifically stated you couldn't have off shore folks working on any of the code. Not sure how MS got around those requirements.

>> I've long suspected Amazon's search is so crappy because it makes their ads necessary to actually surface a product.

I thought it was just because they were forcing third tier Chinese knockoffs for everything I searched for. After a few months, I gave up completely. I now look for product reviews on YT, THEN go back to Amazon and search for exactly what I'm looking for. Even then? The search results are still jammed with cheap knockoffs.

>> If I had to compile all the resources I had consulted for something like C programming, they wouldn't amount to a single shelf.

Serious question - with something like a programming language where there is a sort of finite information available about the language and how to use it. I've found once you start moving into areas where this isn't the case like metaphysics where there is a lot more ambiguity, does the sourcing and information then become more valuable? Or are we going to finally be ok with ambiguity as humans?

I can see what you're saying and agree, but are there areas where sourcing does in fact become more important?

Gaming laptops they've never competed at all. Windows laptops offer far more form factors with easily upgradeable hardware. One of the only places Apple has an advantage is their chipsets. However, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips have significantly closed the gap on Apple's ARM based M-chips.

I just got a 16" MacBook Pro with an M5 pro chipset and its total pig compared to my 15.6" HP ZBook Power G8.

The only area I can see where Apple is still holding their own is their UI/UX has always been buttery smooth compared to Windows or Linux. Not a fan the new liquid glass, but its still a very smooth running UI regardless.

As a personal vendetta against Jani Patokallio (a Finnish cybersecurity blogger) who was trying to unmask the person who ran the site - which goes back to 2023.

>> This leads to overemphasis on the visual aspect of the UI and not enough on its functional and usability aspects.

Accessibility has been left in the dustbin as well. You go to all these sites extolling these beautiful, innovative sites and they're completely useless with a keyboard or screen reader.

I wonder if people will ever go back to Diaspora and host their own pods. For about $40/month you can host up to about 1,500 users. I did it for a little while on a basic package for like $15/month and the directions to install are fairly straight forward and the community is really helpful.

The issue I ran into wasn't cost of hosting, it was getting people to move off whatever platform they were already on - regardless of how much better it was for controlling their own data and privacy.

And now with their popularity, they're almost everywhere now. Mcdonald's, Krispy Kreme, Cinnabon, Auntie Anne's have all had Biscoff partnered products.

Kind of cool to the explosion of popularity and them taking advantage and partnering with other brands to expand their markets.

Trying to fight it takes an enormous amount of time and energy. I carry two phones now - since I have my "privacy" enabled phone that basically has nothing on it. Email, messages, weather app and a few privacy enabled browsers. My other phone has all my "faux" google stuff on it. Maps, gmail, banking apps, my authenticator apps, music apps, etc.

Even then, these can all be tied together fairly easy, but just trying to make it harder to keep my data private is such a battle; and friends always ask me why I spend so much time trying to keep myself anonymous when in 2026 its virtually impossible to do so.

I always tell them: “Bene vixit, bene qui latuit.” (To live well is to live concealed.)

>> Many people doubt. And we know that they do all sorts of funny book keeping shenanigans like SPVs and delayed deprecation.

Every time I see Anthropic and other AI companies getting ready to go public, I cannot stop thinking about the entire Enron debacle and all of their "unique" book keeping shenanigans that has far reaching impact, even to this day.

People keep telling me, "Nah this is totally different man, you can't compare the two!" But is it really??

Interesting that everybody is going after Deloitte, but why are we giving Abramovich, a known Russian oligarch and close personal friend of Putin a pass? Shouldn't we be more upset about Abramovich evading taxes? Isn't he and his lawyers more to blame because I would assume they're the ones telling Deloitte to do it?

Seems to me there's a lot of misplaced outrage here.

Back in the day when I was doing contract work and hopping around a lot, I often had to switch between windows and mac. One of the issues I always ran into was the not necessarily the keys, but where they were positioned.

Doing something basic on a mac like Copying (Ctrl + C) and Pasting (Ctrl + V) had to be done with ⌘ Command. So instead of using my pinky in natural resting by simply shifting my palm down which I was used to. Using the ⌘ Command, I had to use my thumb instead and it was always a weird shift. Having used Windows most of my life, I always had to look down to make sure I was on the right keys on a Mac.

I've tried a few times to go back, but its always been such an unnatural feeling that I just avoid it now like you do.