I bought a 386 motherboard that needed a patch. Not software, but by soldering a wire between two pads. You just basically figure it out and went from there with a soldering iron.

Build the computer from parts? Sure. Soldered it like it came as discrete components? Also sure.

Tech savvy is often in context of when you were learning in your teens to early twenties and then what of that skill set is still applicable today.

Desktops: Linux (Mint)
Laptops: Linux (Mint)
Phones: Linux (Android)
Servers: Linux (Debian)
SBC: Linux (Armbian / Raspberry Pi OS)
ESP32/ESP8266: Arduino (I’ve never really taken to MicroPython)
ATMega 328P/etc : Arduino

I had to scroll way too far down for this one, but it was the first one I thought of.

Another one would be Gary Indiana

For a loose definition of “me” and more “my parents when I was young” was a mid-70’s Fiat. I have lots of memories where we waited in some parking lot or by the freeway for a tow truck or some other help to arrive.

It was quite early for me. I shouldn’t post when delirious.

That doesn’t make them correct. The strength of the belief has no bearing on reality unless it’s combined with evidence to warrant that belief.

We’re entering the ‘blockchain for every need’ stage. Expect massive money to flow into scams, poor ideas, and outright dangerous uses for a few years .

Before Blockchain we had ‘the web’ itself in the dot com era. Before that? I saw it in basic computing as a solution to everything.

I had a student came into office hours asking why their program got a bad grade. I looked and it didn’t actually do anything related to the assignment.

Upon further query, they objected saying that the CI pipeline built it just fine.

So …yeah… You can write a program that builds and runs, but doesn’t do the required tasks, which makes it wrong. This was not a concept they’d figured out yet.

woke Marxist liberal critical race theory.

Any more smooth brain buzzwords we can throw in there?

Video games. I used to play 4-6 hours per day (or often more), every day. It was kind of my default activity when I wasn’t forced to do something else. If I ran out of steam trying to focus on work or family I would drift into playing a video game. The result was a MASSIVE sink of time into something that left me with little afterwards. I didn’t learn new things, I drifted away from my kids, and I didn’t take care of my home.

Video games are fine. They’re entertaining, but they’re also potentially life consuming. I watch people who want to do more with their lives, but instead they just put more time into some game or another.

I managed to kick the habit and it’s been a great 10 years since then where I play very little and only in very short, controlled bursts when I can play with my kids for a bit (they usually destroy me these days). With all of that saved time, my career started flying, my home is in better shape, and I actually don’t drift away from family events like I used to.

I’m not hugely invested in the 3D printing world, but here’s my setup:

Printer: Creality Ender 3 pro v2 Filament: Mostly Matchbox Upgrades: just stiffer springs for the bed holder to help keep it level longer

Software: Cura for slicing FreeCAD for part design My kids also use Blender for making designs

As long as you check the bed leveling every so often (I don’t have an auto leveler) it does just fine. I make all kinds of technical parts and models along with other stuff for fun.

What can I say? It works and it’s a reasonably low maintenance setup.

Requiring someone to provide evidence to back up a claim is not the same as taking a position that the claim isn’t true. This is the root component of the burden of proof and the stance many people have towards a god claim: they aren’t convinced the god exists due to a lack of evidence provided by the person claiming the god does exist. Until there’s actual evidence it’s rational and reasonable to withhold judgement.

The unicorn (or other mythological beings) are used as a similar case to illustrate to a theist that they have the same kind of attitude towards the idea of a unicorn existing as an atheist does to any gods. They’re both neat concepts, but without evidence showing they actually exist, they’re nothing more than an idea for stories and art.

The crazy variety of weapons and their interactions was great. Almost everything was dangerous in the right situation.

Blob gun? Charge it up! Blue laser thing? Shoot the ball form and shoot that for a huge boom! Double pistols? Max DPS in the game with no bullet curve!

The best maps too for CTF. Yeah, I loved that game, especially for in person LAN parties.

If the PoE is stable, then it’s a nice and relatively unique board. Not sure about the NPU support. There’s a ton of boards and chips coming out with those claims, but I’d like to be able to get clearer info on drivers and library compatibility.

Our US city (pop 180k, metro 600k) is just about to lose the last downtown grocery store.

Generations of city councils have allowed (or encouraged!) the demolition of all housing in the city core to replace it with parking lots.

There’s almost no one left downtown so the city itself is dying. It’s just kind of rotting away. There’s currently at least some effort to reverse the trend, but the vice grip that car oriented everything has on people is terrifying to politicians.

I had a similar experience, but managed to hold it together long enough to make it out in 4.5 years (with some summer classes). Knowing how to do things, but not really able to stay steadily on track to achieve goals is a rough combo.

We’re moving to more of this for the whole household (there’s a couple kids at home still). They’re all able to generate meals and do chores. The requirements are being ratcheted up across the board. My wife and I are busier than ever trying to make ends meet, so the work is trickling down to the whole household one way or another.

Interesting strategy, and likely one that has some merit. Though, I’d point to similar problems in Japan where it’s not rare to have incredibly tiny homes/apartments, but a very high rate of youths staying at their parents’ places well into adulthood.

The US has reached around 50% of young adults continuing to stay with their parents beyond school. It’s up to a similar rate as the Great Depression era. We’ve priced our kids out of independence to try to satisfy a few billionaires’ desire to be ever richer.

It’s still early days on them being in a position to afford a place, and in the US healthcare is a fucking abomination, so it’s going to take some real effort to reach a point of independence.

We’re in no hurry to move anyone out. It’s still early enough that we planet of time to wire in work on skills and such. I’m mostly worried about the general attitude more than individual skills though. His sense of what it takes to keep yourself afloat in the world and little open desire to achieve independence is just worrying at this point. Likely I’m being too worried at this stage, but I’d rather turn the ship in a positive direction earlier and easier rather than later and with more difficulty.

Oh hell no. My partner and I are in no way interested in just kicking anyone out. The reason we’re trying to work on the attitudes and trajectory now is to have time to set goals and work together to build up his skills & resources to enable independence, which is a far cry from a kick out.

I’m sorry to hear that I happened to you even once. We’ve had some friends of our kids end up being treated that way, so the kids ended up at our place briefly while they found their feet.