Oh, we’re on the same page there. I’m complaining about that too. Things are shifting from “make the environment easier for some people” to “painstakingly chisel out an expert mode like you’re escaping from Shawshank.” and I do not like it.

It has been pretty depressing to me that the tech literate have been so easily lulled into accepting such things in the name of “cool toys” and “security” virtually everywhere in modern life besides the PC/laptop/server spaces.

From my exposure to supporting said folks with PC related problems, its easy to see the reality here. Phones provide a streamlined experience with zero frills. They don’t want super flexible computing devices, they want appliances. More to the point, the level of care and maintenance needed to have a top-shelf PC experience is time and effort most people would rather not expend. Doing this right was inconvenient to begin with, and left the field wide open for anything that would be easier.

I’m at the point where I’m maintaining three classic thumbball mice with a bag of replacement microswitches. I wouldn’t consider that viable for the typical consumer, but it works for me. Also these particular bluetooth models come with their own USB-A receiver, so I don’t rely on software updates either.

That said, the ploopy thumbball may be my next daily driver.

Think about it like a diamond-encrusted mouse.

Oh good grief. Do they really think they can adopt the subscription-for-heated-seats model, and get people to use their high-end computer peripherals as some kind of flex? I just don’t see people holding their “Logitech^tm Gamer PC Lease” over anyone else’s head.

My optimism has me thinking that this CEO is deliberately tilting at windmills in order to appease shareholders, because Logitech has been around long enough to be steady-state (not growing much) at this point.

It’s gotta piss them off.

That’s not unusual, sadly. Sometimes, someone brings in a contractor in attempt to foist change, as they’re not tainted by loyalties or the culture when it comes to saying ugly things. So anger and disruption is the product you’ve actually been hired to deliver; surprise! What pains me the most here is when I see my fellow contractors walk into just such a situation and they wind up worse for wear as a result.

Edit: the key here is to see this coming and devise a communication plan to temper your client’s desire to stir the pot, and get yourself out of the line of fire, so to speak.

That’s nothing. Show them the cloud bill for all this. They’ll probably ask you to slow down.

Honestly, this sounds like the analysis uncovered some managerial failings and so they buried the results; a cover-up.

Also, and I have yet to understand this, but selling “people space” solutions to very technically/engineering-inclined management is incredibly hard to do. Almost like there’s a typical blind spot for solving problems outside their area of expertise. I hate generalizing like this but I’ve seen this happen many times, at many workplaces, over many years.

But I don’t like using Argparse!

I feel like zip disks would have been a worse investment, so maybe they dodged a bullet here. Those drives were not built to last, and there might actually be more 8" media around than zipdisks these days. IMO, this article would have cropped up a long time ago were that the case.

Hell, Simone Giertz showed us with “Truckla” that an El-camino/Brat inspired pickup made from a Tesla sedan is more than enough. So the answer isn’t all that far from business as usual.

Edit: or just mod a car from 1968 instead: https://www.evbuildersguide.com/electrifying-transformation-of-a-1968-chevrolet-el-camino-beloved-baby/

I like your style. I went looking and found “switchbar” which kinda/sorta eases this bouncing between browsers idea:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/open-with-switchbar/klgpknafjlhnpkppfbihchgfebbdcomd

It’s not elegant, but it supports the workflow you suggest. I kind of like the idea of using Edge for google.com and Chrome for microsoft.com. I’m not optimizing my experience (it may in fact be very sub-optimal), but I’m also using competition to neutralize potential shenanigans.

Just automatically started uploading everything on my hard drive to an account I didn’t set up

Wait, what?

Real question here: has anyone else had luck side-stepping the Live365 signup during/after install? I’ve done this, and I’m very confused that more people haven’t.

Hate that my government is apparently dead set on all of us driving massive trucks and SUVs spending thousands to money lenders, auto manufacturers, and dealerships over realist vehicles.

Doubly so if those parties are campaign contributors. Always follow the money.

Yes, but let’s keep the good parts. This is a great start.

Do Sports by Brooks models count?

can also get a gun and blast these things before it gets out of hand

Honestly, I get the distinct impression that everything in the hunting section at your local Walmart is going to be woefully ineffective. May I recommend a defensive position with difficult to traverse stairs?

More like: it’s eventually going to break your weekend or even your whole week, but you don’t get to pick which one.

Edit: To put that in perspective, there are 260 working days in a year. Let’s say that you have just one of these hardware failures in a five-year career with the MTA. That’s roughly 1/1000 odds. If the lottery had chances like that, you’d play it every time.

My theory: the system they purchased was based on an older and proven design for railway automation and control. Add to that however said company/contractor was set up to support their customers (e.g. OS only ships on floppy). That said, I agree that ten years without so much as a drive upgrade is a bit long in the tooth for something that can kill people or become a logistic and/or political disaster if it malfunctions.

This is interesting. The longevity of this legacy tech may be secure if they use the right channels.

SoCal happens to have a very active retro-computing scene right now, much of which is in the bay area. If they can breathe life into an Apollo Guidance Computer, bog-standard floppy drives will be a piece of cake.

On the other hand, the same scene has modern emulation for just about every (popular) legacy media format imaginable. Upgrading the drives to use SD cards and USB thumbdrives is something they could buy off the shelf today: Apple II, C64, Tandy, misc. So there’s no reason to suffer through hardware failures when more reliable tech is available.

There are even commercial options out there. Example: https://www.shopfloorautomations.com/hardware/floppy-connect/

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_hardware_emulator

Does this mean that if we always mention pixelfed or @pixelfed we can effectively block Meta from leveraging our contributions to the Fediverse?