@VoteDukakis He left the pursuit of physics in college to pursue programming. He retained his diamond on Chem. He wrote a goodbye letter.

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Ugh, lazy morning...

dammit... I fixed mbq on CV, but not Physics

Also broke both election pages until the cache expired. Due to a fix added for comment highlighting. Programming is a hell of a drug.

I enjoy programming and was great at it in high school (decades ago) but there simply wasn't the jobs available. I became a technician instead, assembling computers. The pay skyrocketed as computers were realized for their indispensable usefulness, but right before DotCom the pay crrashed as everyone and their dog (yes, they brought their dogs to work) wanted to work as a tech. Then the manufacturing of computers went offshore (from North America).

What happened to the star wall... I see 4 starting with "What"...

Back then a computer cost a small fortune in today's dollars, now they are so inexpensive that watches have computers in them, and everyone with a cellphone owns a computer (unlike the dumb brick Motorola phones of yesteryear).

@NoDistractionWizard I see 9 total, what is 3rd. @VoteDukakis Yup, he'll be a winner in the election.

@Rob computers are 'simpler' now in a sense though

they're monolithic disposable slabs

Way back then you could buy parts from Radio Shack and repair your own computer by pulling a chip off of the board, nowadays there's no chance of that. Also I used to know the bytecodes for the instructions set and could type short programs in opcode with the debugger, that also can't happen today.

yup

though you can literally get a fully functional PC for under a hundred dollars though

Yes, about a month ago someone was saying that they were happy enough with their two hundred dollar cell phone, while mine cost 4x as much. Still my camera, display, and CPU / GPU are much better than theirs - all things that the Motorola brick phone didn't have.

@VoteDukakis - I can do retrocomputing on my cellphone. Just install an emulator. I can also install MAME and play all the old video games that I spent 1000's of dollars in quarters on. A modern phone is much more powerful than computers built decades ago, cheaper too.

Nanomachine intensifies...

@VoteDukakis so spend the 20 quid on a controller...

@Shog9 Out of curiosity, why restore the old flair, rather than add the "departed" symbol like was done before?

I'm lazy

I had one of those.

@Shog9 For sameness's sake, plus the fact that account deletion now effectively wipes the username out as well (in fact, a recent change was made to remove it from more places), I suggest that you change it to the "departed" symbol.

@Rob What parts of that can you sympathize with?

Do you really think "old computers did it better"?

The opening the box and seeing that the present contains a computer.

The cartridges were great too.

Thing is, that video wouldn't fit on all those disks, nor could it be displayed on the monitor.

Ah, the unboxing...

@VoteDukakis True, a phone is nothing like the standing console, that you can punch and kick.

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog they did have proper power switches.

Everybody wants to see an unboxing of a server farm...

@NoDistractionWizard it would be a very big box...

PAGING MR CRISTO!

@NoDistractionWizard Check Nick Craver's Twitter

It's possible to build your own standing console, and use Raspberry Pi for the emulator: instructables.com/id/…

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog I dont see nick tweet about that much

his blogs though...

and SE has a suprisingly small server farm

(though, they do/have started running some stuff on azure)

Build your own "SE On-The-Go"!

@NoDistractionWizard in theeeorrryyyyyyy

You might eventually be able to run a SE instance on a raspi, though I suspect someone would need to be very drunk to do it.

and it will probably perform like a pig with lead shoes.

(since they're moving to .net core (which is FOSS)...

Db would be doubleplus fun...

last I saw MSSQL on linux is... odd

in the "It will ONLY RUN in this specific configuration"

nvm, I am talking garbage

falls over

you sure aren't drunk? :)

Naw

Just not been sleeping well

Years ago Micheal Larabel posted a photo of his 'server farm' and here's a tiny portion of Patrick's (of STH fame) server: mobile.twitter.com/ServeTheHome/status/1042958293419741184

@Rob MAME is really good but its emulation for a lot of processors is not ideal.

Especially for shootemups.

@Rob That is true, but at that time software compatibility was non-existent. Each system even had its own dialect of BASIC, and common hacks (addresses to POKE to change system behavior) would even change between models.

It's tough to match the feel, and the fist smashing ability, of a standing console on a phone no bigger than the joystick.

So hardware was better (a little old Z80 can survive a lot more abuse than a modern Intel chipset), but software compatibility was still crappy.

The days of peeking and poking, to play music.

Software and hardware was a lot more clever back then. :P

@Rob A phone can't really emulate MAME at sufficient speed for many consoles simply because it's not powerful enough. As much as smart phone users love to say it, their mobile phone is not more powerful than a desktop (or even laptop), regardless of the CPU clock speed or number of cores.

@forest Laptops were not invented back then.

So?

I'm referring to the overhead of emulation.

So, my phone is more powerful than a type of computer that didn't exist. One core in my phone is more powerful than the CPU in a Arcade Console; that's what we've been discussing for the past hour. We haven't been discussing if my phone is more powerful than an i9 purchased recently.

Yeah but MAME won't be able to emulate many older computers well on a phone. (Naturally the phone itself is way more powerful than any older computer)

I've just been bitten hard by MAME's poor performance before. :P

The first "portable" computer wasn't a "laptop". It was a huge hulk. Notice that the CRT (TV tube) is smaller than the floppy disk drive:

Hmm, might be interesting for you, Meta'ers...

Approximately 10 years before that Microsoft didn't exist, neither did keyboards. See those switches, you had to flip them up or down (correctly) and then toggle the switch on the end to program a single memory location, it took hours to write a tiny program. Since the computer had a 4K memory a small program was all you could write.

@forest, my phone has 6 GB / 4096 = 1,464,843 times larger memory than 4K.

@Rob And yet emulating a 4K machine can take gigabytes. :P

(depending on the machine)

Atari 2600 emulators are particularly fat, despite that machine having 128 bytes.

MAME performance and memory usage is 16 bits (and banking is allowed).

The 128 bytes is scratch memory, it actually supports 32K cartridges.

:PP

@Shog9 mbq? Multi Bug Queue?

My Buggy Question?

:D

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I feel Community is being less aggressive in post bumping...

Do some questions on SO have weird whitespace for more people than just me?

Like that?

Most look normal, but I've been clicking and seeing it on stackoverflow.com/q/56037079/6380541 and stackoverflow.com/q/56042065/6380541 for example

Without knowing the specific, I'd blame invisible ads...

@NoDistractionWizard Since when does SE put adds in that space? :/ Still white if I turn off addblock though...

Oh wait..

Since... long time?

Might be ads.

@NoDistractionWizard Never seen it before, nor did I ever notice the weird whitespace that it makes when there's an adblocker active.

Although the ads took quite a bit time to load for me

just set your adblocker to block the containing element rather than just the ad

@ArtOfCode just :P

most adblockers have a "pick element" thing in the menu

@ArtOfCode Heh. I'll look closer at it when I feel like it :P

one to be picked: class="everyonelovesstackoverflow everyoneloves__top-leaderboard"

@Tinkeringbell just get some rep, will you ... ;)

@rene Nah :P If I get rep, I get responsibilities :P

@Tinkeringbell You have them anyway!

@JourneymanGeek I know...

coffee shop gift card ... that is for coffee I assume?

@rene Or a mug :)

Or cookies

@rene yes, its not a special dutch coffee shop

Just checking ...

A little like steamstresses in ank morpork

:D

You could revisit their exams saying you got suspicious after receiving the gift and then give them an F and return their work with the gift card.

Left... a gift card... as a tip

I expect that news will travel fast I assume

@VoteDukakis 0! :P

Seriously, you all even have to tip when buying a coffee to go?

@Tinkeringbell Don't have to. But it's a social pressure to do it.

Because North America is strange when it comes to actually properly paying your employees.

I've even had people argue that if you can't afford to tip when you go to restaurants, you shouldn't be going out.

@VoteDukakis I don't. Very strongly.

It's not my job to subsidize crappy business models.

@fbueckert I can agree with that too, because the same thing holds here: You shouldn't be eating out if you can't afford it. And over here that means paying for the dish and service in 1 amount, over there it means taking both into account.

If they'd add fair wages immediately to the price, you still shouldn't be eating out unless you can afford it ;)

@Tinkeringbell Ideally, they should be making at least basic minimum wages, so tipping shouldn't even be an option.

But capitalism says waitresses get tips, so owners shouldn't have to pay them more than $2/hour, in some places.

You tip for service, how much there is for to-go/takeout is micromal, then the employer decides how it's divided; rather than simply paying the people enough in the first place, so they don't have to perform or beg.

So now the duty for paying your server properly is off-loaded to someone who doesn't own the business.

I'm socially awkward, and I usually don't get a clue on when I should tip or not.

I know a few people whom had waitress girlfriends. Once they found out how much they lathered the drunken customers for a better tip that was the end of the relationship.

If your business is unable to properly pay your employees...that's not a business model. That's taking advantage of your employees and your customers.

@VoteDukakis interesting question though

why is everyone else here?

other than the guy who can't afford a coffee

@fbueckert Oh, sure. I agree on that. But it's still your responsibility to make sure you can affort to go and eat out ;)

@Tinkeringbell Yep. Pay the bill. That's responsibility, for sure.

The part I have issues with is the assumption that it includes tipping.

@JourneymanGeek So that I can show off my vast knowledge about gaming (and inference I have no life) to others.

@fbueckert pretty close to why I started on SU ;p

That, and tinker with data to make pretty graphs and spend waaaaaay too much time on what was supposed to be a simple question.

Which, really, just reinforces that I have no life.

Many people working in the US and Canada are one financial problem (less than $1000) away from bankruptcy and living in a tent.

@Rob A lot of that is due to the big push to live the American Dream.

So lots of people are house rich, and cash poor.

A lot of employers pay so your living with your parents, or hand to mouth with your roommates. Makes it difficult to save for college and pull yourself ahead.

@fbueckert tbh

Some days I have no idea why I'm on meta ;p

@JourneymanGeek For the popcorn.

SU... Sure. Especially when I'm not in a rut and doing cool things

And the occasional tidbit that teaches you something new.

@JourneymanGeek to waste my time other than watching random YouTube videos

@fbueckert there's not much in meta that's helpful in the real world ;p

Yep. Definitely sugar hormone rush.

@NoDistractionWizard that's last week at work

You learn not to ask questions in the wrong place. GTK!

@JourneymanGeek It's fun to argue, sure, but not much helps you in the real world.

Regarding meta... yeah, I also wonder... looks like there's ocassionally a subliminal message to visit the meta site back then...

I've learned to be more pragmatic about disagreements, though. Don't have to win every argument, and not everything is worth arguing about.

Except when the next person wants comments for downvotes. Then I break out the torches.

Happy Hour: free unlimited upvotes...

@NoDistractionWizard Only if we have Dreary Duration: free unlimited downvotes.

Maybe as a Halloween special? Please??? I'd use all of them!

@Tinkeringbell I guess you're about to be hired by Stack Exchange:

How about unlimited delvotes, Purge style?

Definitely green parrots.

@MEEthesetupwizard nah, they're just gossiping ;)

@VoteDukakis by using the 90's theme on their site, they could make Stack Overflow looks more modern...

Hmm... it feels strange from suddenly realizing there's no activity on the Anime.SE since more than 10 hours ago...

All of them have been busy watching 10 hours of anime on YouTube. At the same time.

Lesson: playing in production data results in headaches.

You didn't know that already?

Thought maybe it was the non-coffee

I've only had about a half cup today.

slightly less blood spatter in teaching?

@NoDistractionWizard There's not much activity on SO in Japanese outside of waking hours in Japan (this led to the homepage being cluttered with Community bumps in mornings daily, so a feature was implemented where if the homepage consisted of [x]+ Community bumps, no more bumps would take place after a period).

jaSO is understandable. But Anime.SE not getting a single NAA or off-topic question in 10 hours is kind of surprising...

@Shog9 Depends on the teacher.