You comment inspired this thought: The older I get, the less I have faith in psychological support making us whole. I still think it should be part of work like this but the damage can be as permanent as losing a limb. What is that worth in money? (hypothetical)

I like this take. Payment processors provide a service to both customers and businesses and should get paid, but, the MBA crowd never stops short of anything they COULD get, so they gamify consumers (rewards) and threaten business (nice revenue stream, would be shame if anything happened to it). As a layman l, that’s how I see it. Someone in biz can probably give better detail.

You made a good observation to which I put observations. Probably should have been put somewhere else.

Your project would be a reach for me. Linux as as daily driver is pretty easy if you don’t dial boot and don’t use Apple hardware. I have Ubuntu on an Intel NUC and everything works just fine. Sound, camera, printer, graphics. Haha. You’re going to scare the lazy.

The parties I went to in the 70’s had a dirty pool table and a large confederate flag pasted over dark fake paneling. A tub would be for bodily fluids.

Vendor lock-in. Accessibility to many tools for “non-technical” users. Groupthink. Bundles and anti-interoperability (see vendor lock-in). Fright of open source. Non-technical executives who trust the wrong people. That’s just off the top of my head.

Yes, web developers don't use straight HTML because for anything that is not trivial, it's not sufficient The web today is a place to DO things, not READ things. Even if you are displaying "static" data, Javascript frameworks and libraries can help you write code once and then offload browser compatibility and desktop/mobile presentation formats.

If you add all the interactive elements, it gets even more complex. HTML is powerful and provides transparency, but it's not just the MBA crowd moving away from it.

Also, as desktop applications are quickly being deprecated for browser-based apps, there is more movement to frameworks, and libraries.

You had me at “Internet Explorer”

This is awesome.

And I’m sorry autocorrect did that to you.

Ironically, I started using signal because SMS wasn’t working for a contact that I had in another country. It was that or WhatsApp.

This is how I got through my youth when I had to work in the sun (wet bandana) Anything that gets you wet with some air flow. It’s like sweating without to electrolyte hit. Works better in low humidity, of course.

I’m lucky now because I have AC and can just stay indoors through the hot part of the day. I still make the house a dark cave after trapping the coolest air I can from overnight.

For me, it’s about context and scope. The wide open wonder of my youth has been replaced by little epiphanies of experience. A bite of really good food, or music, or a great joke can bring me a startling amount of joy. A lot of my awe has also been replaced by satisfaction and appreciation. Getting old sucks undeniably, but there are compensations.