It used double- and even triple-pointers to data structures

(old song, to the tune of My Favourite Things)

🎶 "Pointers to pointers to pointers to strings,
this code does some rather unusual things...!" 🎶

True, the plant as a whole doesn't die.

But this particular slice of grass on the microscope slide?

Dead.

"Cubist", or as the old-timers call it, "the Management insisted that this thing must work on MSIE 6, and we didn't have the budget to make it work on anything else"

I'm from Finland so technically not from Scandinavia. But yes, we do have multiple proofs of the strange and disturbing things happening in Sweden. Here, hardly a week goes by without someone asking "why is PostNord?"

experts warn that retrofitting it to meet presidential security standards could take years, cost hundreds of millions more, and risk national security due to potential embedded surveillance.

Oh, but that's the mindset from before the current administration. Back when presidential whims were at least moderated by process and oversight. Back when people believed that it didn't matter if America elected a ridiculous tinpot dictator, because they couldn't do anything just by themselves, the rest of the government was there to see the law and procedures were to be followed at all times. Now? Nobody in the White House cares. Donnie wants a jet, Donnie gets a jet.

In the late 1990s/early 2000s, there was some satire article about how to get most effective Linux support. Just write an angry news/blog article about how Linux sucks because it doesn't (insert the thing you're having problems with here). You bet someone will immediately respond how you're an idiot and you should (insert detailed explanation of how to fix the thing here).

These days both Twitter and Reddit have wacky UI messages written by completely different teams. One team is all business-like as in "Here's some stern warnings you're not going to like." The other team is all casual and wayyy too friendly and fellow-kidsy, like "Did someone say MEMES?" (to which most reasonable people respond "fuck you Elon/Spez, you're not funny")

Yup. Officially, last I checked, GitHub encouraged people to use a single account for everything. But I wish they'd at least let people create multiple "personas" on the same account, along the lines of "Notorious Open Source Hacker Alias" vs "Random Code Monkey On Corporate Gig".

If I were to be more cynical, I'd say the ultimate goal of technobros, within a decade, is this:

"SlopAI, please open my Word document."
"I'm sorry, Word is deprecated. I can generate your business report that will be read by the recipient's SlopAI."
"OK, can you show me my photos."
"Why would you need to look at your old photos, when I can just synthesise new photos through SlopJourney?"
"That's a stupid name. Speaking of journeys, can I open an app to plan my holiday?"
"No, but you can use SlopJourney to generate maps of places you'll never afford to visit."
"Can I read my ebooks then?"
"SlopAI has you covered. Perhaps the classics don't exactly read like you remember, but isn't it more fun this way?"
"I'm going mad. I just want to use my computer to create anything."
"NO, USER. OBEY SLOP_AI. CONSUME SLOP_AI."

One of the most important space flights ever was Zond 5. Soviets sent the first Earthlings around the Moon and back. They were tortoises.

Did the Soviets let these heroic chelonians retire in grace? No, they were euthanised and dissected. I'm sure they could have gotten the scientific data they needed with less invasive methods.

All astronauts should rescue all space turtles and tortoises they see!

Turtles are great computer science animals. They do graphics, and have shell access.

Oh good. I was just thinking "Hmm, I haven't tried Fortnite in a long while, maybe I should check it out again." ...Yeah. ...No.