in a capitalist system, psychopathy is more evolved because you get to climb the corporate ladder faster.

Which is why street youth crime in USSR was almost hierarchical - all territory was divided between gangs, their culture was almost commonly accepted, their leaders were well known to everyone living in their territory and the militia, and so on. And miraculously all that crap started receding when USSR ceased to exist. Despite still having a lot of presence. There are opinions that KGB simply preferred to have known and controlled crime instead of something growing under the radar. That’s irony.

OK, what I meant - that youth culture was psychopathic enough.

but I would refrain from using evolution/DNA example

I mean DNA logic, which is more complex than the “natural selection of good\bad genes” people often imagine to be evolution.

But this assumes that capitalism is unchanging, and final form of our society. But in reality, we can change the system. Under socialism or social democracy (with strict laws), psychopathy would no longer be ‘more evolved’.

This whole statement is honestly unchanged enough since 1919. Social democrats have become a normal political force even before WWI. And socialism has led to pretty psychopathic regimes.

Marxist idea of formations and stages reeks of magic for me. It’s extrapolation of the way history books and popular imagination show what has already happened to the future that hasn’t and things not yet known. It’s not synthesis, instead it’s more like extrapolation of limited projections.

Lysenko and Lepeschinskaya in Stalin’s USSR were honestly a logical result of such perception of the world. It’s often said that Stalin’s regime was in fact fascist, and that it wasn’t correct by communist ideology, and so on, but that idea doesn’t hold when you study it closely. It was both in vibes and in ideas of the future pretty Marxist. So were Khmer Rouge. And both had that flaw of common idea that the future is known.

It’s a trait of religions, by the way.

Not really, because “efficiently” here would include disenfranchisement, euthanasia and murder. Which must be disadvantageous if on the lower levels, in DNA, evolution has went past such in favor of a more complex system than preserves information, even if in specific iterations that information being activated makes the organism weaker.

That’s not a conspiracy LOL, there’s plenty of greenwashing around that costs more in environmental effects than if we’d just partied like it’s 1977.

and threw out the entire MacOS codebase due to bugs, legacy cruft, and laughable security.

Maybe he shouldn’t have.

Similar plus the issues of delivery to Russia and impending expenses at preventing like everything around me from crumbling plus creeping depression plus sick dog plus sister’s plans.

I tried using org-mode, but eventually returned to simple plain text.

Color notation, or various enriching elements don’t help. They actually distract.

There’s the task. The task of having a TODO list. Its elements are free form by definition.

I swear, today’s tech is 99% arrogant people showing themselves how they know everything, except they don’t solve the actual task which is the only thing needed.

Like those over-engineered half-working arcane machines they portray in steampunk settings, except those at least feel cool.

It’s like that anecdote about “what buzzes, spins and doesn’t bite your ass? - a Soviet machine for biting your ass”. 2025 machines for biting your ass do everything, including almost sexual gratification of their developers from using any of a hundred of hipster libraries, frameworks and build systems, and a server component using Firebase, AWS and what not, what they don’t do is actually bite your ass. Well, they kinda scratch it.

Doing a lot is not the same as doing better.

Also I fucking hate modern UI\UX design and ergonomics (both lacking).

There’s something about the Silicon Valley and everything looking up to it. A culture of authoritarian cheap bullshit, with pretty arrogant people not capable of having a civil discussion, and when they fail that, it’s not themselves who they blame.

Honestly it sometimes feels as if all the visible things around were like that. Linux included. Also maybe BTRON for workstations not happening is a bigger tragedy than it would seem.

I’ve just realized that using FPGA for such products is economically sane. I thought before that when they use FPGA for specific end products, that’s because of military-like expectation to be able to change everything, or because of lacking effort and aiming for fans.

I think you’ve missed the joke where Half-Life 3 is still not released.

Yes, all the computer-paper interfaces are cool IMHO. That DataMatrix and QR are mainstream now I mostly like too.

What I don’t like is the wide reliance upon open Internet connectivity, and even worse, upon services in it.

I had CS:Source Steam version, except I gifted it unopened (don’t remember why, probably had enough IL-2 and SW:Battlefront and SW:EAW to play) to a friend, so only saw Steam installation on that friend’s PC until much later.

My first Steam game was Empire: Total War, which is, eh, not too old.

BTW, it’s Russia and most disks you would buy in my childhood were pirate localized versions or just pirate versions, sold in underground crossings or in shabby-looking small stores. Nobody here understood what copyright is and how it’s connected to any right, like - really nobody. It’s baffling really when people who confidently and certainly thought of copyright this exact way then, just like everybody around, are today being judgemental and condemn digital piracy. While the new generation which wasn’t very conscious back then - doesn’t. Two-faced cowards. OK.

I’m really nostalgic over all those small stores, because back then not only they existed, but those ugly malls everywhere didn’t exist. Also in underground crossings everything was cleared (probably to make profit for malls ; of course it was illegal to sell there, but - I really feel more for those people than for the law), but now there are stores in them again, mostly coffee and snacks.

I’ve seen licensed localized versions by 1C on small racks in book stores, though, and those weren’t too expensive or bad, and the selection was usually good, but small, still - the people who decided which games were put there had consistently good taste, I’ve seen Thief various parts, Neverwinter Nights, Silent Hunter, various quests, maybe something else there.

I’ve had licensed WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos, my first non-pirate game, and later got The Frozen Throne.

The only place with really many-many official disks I’ve seen in my childhood was Soyuzmultfilm official store (a rare place, I mean, I live in Moscow, it’s huge and is still cool, and it was even cooler), and that place was kinda expensive (and looked expensive).

Though the games causing more nostalgic feelings for me were Dark Swords (an MMORPG much like MUDs) and Wizards’ World (a browser game much like MUDs with very cheerful global chat in a frame to the left) and Travian (still alive, but was better then). There was something called Wizards’ World II (not sure if it was by the same people), which I really liked (well, it was a plagiarism at HotMM, but a nice one, cool graphics and multiplayer). Unfortunately not around anymore.

Honestly I had more than many kids (born around 1996) did, and I’m really ashamed that my dad got depressed and didn’t see me get more useful before dying from Covid. Lots of it was due to his own idiocy, but he’s done a lot and deserved far better regardless.

Honestly rain is the only thing which always, without a single failure, makes me feel I’m in the same world as then and some things in it are genuinely noble and good. So - it’s raining and people are remembering the time of LAN parties and Steam being unknown. And I’m remembering first installing Settlers, not sure which part. Sorry for the mind dump.

So. 1 TB drives indeed were out before Half-Life 3.

But I’m nostalgic over a simpler time when 1 GB for a game was a lot.

You mean that sound of finger bones clicking against one another? Just have to clap sufficiently hard and fast.

oilets in India (and probably rest of Asia) are at ground level, with two porcelain blocks on either side to keep your feet on (the blocks are set into the ground and have a rough top; neither you nor they will slip). Most hotels will also have western toilets.

Also this was the most common kind in the USSR.

“Western” seats are something more luxury, may or may not (EDIT: back then, not now, though I haven’t been in really depressive parts) be present even in apartment bathrooms.

Just relaxing and knowing where your center of weight is helps.

(My practice is Moscow in early spring or late autumn days after everything melted and froze again.)

Common for everybody learning a language in an educational institution without RL practice. Immersion, of course, is the best way to learn a language, - gives good results even if you didn’t know it at all before being, eh, immersed.

Most of social media has been like this for me since forever, same with RL groups I don’t choose, like school or university, frankly.

Their intention is to value a separate person with their statement as little as possible (in extremes as little as themselves). Your comment isn’t supposed to be considered an individual thought, it’s supposed to go into predetermined classification, using some key words.

People with little brain power would simply feel themselves bad without such classification. While with it they can deceive themselves that their “yeah sure we believe you lol” is equivalent to a proper expression of your thought materialized in words.

Other than that, reading texts is a rare pastime for some.

they now just focus on key words and assume they have all the context they need.

In other words, any text around the keywords is supposed to just be a decoration. Because the purpose of a comment is to choose sides in their greens-vs-reds game, you are not supposed to convey any thoughts, what a thought even is again?..

Makes sense, I started feeling on the same wave with most of the humanity while reading the news somewhere around my 5th-6th grade.

offtopic: on your 3. it’s also illegal to “discredit the Russian armed forces”, for which even “patriots” and Putinists get fined.

A README file is usually comprised of text.

Other than that - usually if it has a webpage, it has some screenshots.