The gym where I work out has Sirius XM as their background music, variously Hits 1 or The Pulse. If you told me it was all pre-recorded loops and/or AI I wouldn't doubt it.

The gym's soundtrack has nevertheless introduced me to some neat new music, duly added to my workout playlist. In that sense it's served its purpose. It's also exposed me to some truly dire excuses for music. People buy this garbage?!

The radio-friendly versions of songs are sometimes inadvertently amusing. "My give a craps are on vacation" "I'm a real tough kid I can hannnndle it"

...laura

Hubble has provided a spectacular return on its investment, both in science results and in PR (i.e. pretty pictures).

Is it worth additional refurbishing? Is it worth bringing back to Earth? Both decisions are way above my paygrade. In many ways JWST is "better", but will it capture the public's imagination the way Hubble did? I doubt it.

...laura

Nobody has any issue with legal immigrants. Nobody ever did.

It's the other kind that people have issues with. Not to mention efforts to erase the distinction in the first place.

...laura

I'm doing Android development at work and have a couple of test devices that are on Samsung's upgrade list. I was looking forward to having Android 15 hardware to play with. Then Samsung went dark so I bought a cheap Brand X Android 15 tablet from Amazon. It does what I need to do.

...laura

Somehow it seems like every crisis can only be solved by abolishing capitalism. Over-population, ozone hole, incipient ice age, global warming, uh, sorry, climate change. You name it.

...laura

I'm seeing lots of misleading advertising these days. Get our credit card and you too can be a high-roller. The world is your oyster, as one campaign puts it.

WRONG

Credit cards aren't free money. They're a short-term loan. They give you convenience and financial leverage, but do not automatically make you wealthy. The money you spend on your card must be paid back. And then some.

FWIW I have two credit cards, Visa and (Platinum) American Express. Visa is handy for online shopping. I use my Amex almost exclusively for travel. I must have done something right, they've invited me over the years to upgrade from Green to Gold to Platinum.

...laura

Exactly: Pong introduced the very concept of video games.

...laura

If it's successful, it's the experience of a lifetime.

If it's not successful, it's still the experience of a lifetime. Just a somewhat shorter one.

Where do I sign?

...laura

I can see this working if the program isn't too heavy on external controls. There is only so much you can write in VB4 (or any version of VB, for that matter). That "only so much" still includes a lot of useful programs.

I recently saw the results of decompiling an Android app I've been working on. The decompiled source code was uncannily similar to what I had typed in to Android Studio. What's on the Play Store now is obfuscated: you can see the algorithms (sort of) but no variable or class names.

...laura

I've been involved with several legacy systems. We scrapped a couple and started over. We ported a couple more to new technology. The decisions involved several factors. How critical is this system to our business? How much work is involved in creating a new system? Are there dependencies we can't do anything about? What happens if we don't do anything?

Of the projects I've been involved in, we scrapped a couple of legacy systems and started over. One was core to our business but ran on bespoke abandonware. We threw out a hideous hideous excuse for a network management system and made a new one from scratch.

A closely related application wasn't as big a part of our business as the original developers thought it would be, so I ported it from VxWorks to Linux. No business case for doing anything more. Another biggie was porting device firmware from Sun Programmer's Workbench to Linux and gcc. No business case to change the hardware (core to our business), so the software had to adapt.

Some the new systems are over 15 years old now and almost qualify as legacy systems themselves. They've served us well.

...laura

EVs are being pushed hard, but are they displacing the installed base of combustion engine cars?

I looked at an EV when I was last in the market for a car. No model on offer filled my needs, so I didn't buy one. This situation hasn't changed in the nine years since then.

...laura

I've been involved in the development of a couple of secure messaging apps with my employers. At the very beginning of development one of our decisions was "how secure is secure?"

We considered three levels: secure against casual snooping, a determined hacker could find their way in, or an app to make the authorities nervous. We decided on the middle level, implementing best current practice with OpenSSL. If somebody wants to steal our customers' secrets that badly they can do it, but it would take some work. We're comfortable with that.

...laura

A Masters degree is highly saleable for advanced positions. A PhD isn't unless you want an academic or research career.

Academia in general has been highly oversold the last couple of decades. At one time post-secondary education was for the academically keen. It's not job training and never was. A generation are now finding that out the hard way.

My Masters paid for itself in about six months, BTW.

...laura

The phone company "upgraded" their network and bricked my old (Android) phone. So I bought a new one. It also has to have reasonable battery life. This was starting to be an issue with the old phone.

I recently bought an antique iPhone (iPhone 12) to support some mobile development I'm doing at work. I'm damned if I'm going to spend that much on a new one, but the price was right on the old one. It too works.

...laura

Our biggest customer bought what was left post-implosion. Mainly for the intellectual property that went with their core business, plus a select few to keep things working. Eventually that meant just me.

...laura