Ah, so that's where Fred Saberhagen got the gimmick for his first Berserker story - "Without a Thought" / "Fortress Ship", 1963.

(A spaceman uses a pet that plays with beads to simulate not being temporarily incapacitated by a 'mind beam' attack.)

Thank you.

> I designed a font called “Parts List”

... that just screams "green plastic stencil ruler"

I both read the Soul of a New Machine book and used the Data General MV8000 hardware depicted there - a purchase of DEC VAX machines was being considered, but meanwhile an MV8000 and a bunch of blue and white terminals snuck in ...

The hardware was pretty solid, although I'm not sure anyone got around to doing custom microcode that was a selling point. The operating system (AOS/VS, was it?) was OK, but had some edge cases - I remember the filesystem had ACLs (access control lists), but you could create files owned by non-existent users (promptly used for a prank).

Thanks for the tale, it made a dent.

If we're going feudal, it would be a good idea to provide justice to the commoners like feudal lords were obliged to do.

I.e. all these "tech companies" that want people to have accounts (and be heavily invested and/or dependent on them) should not be able to cancel those accounts without due process. This should be a legal requirement for them to operate at all.

That one puzzled me, probably makes sense if there are "serving chopsticks":

"""

Jikabashi

To use one’s own chopsticks instead of serving chopsticks to take food from a large serving dish.

"""

> no one I know worries about such things

It went underground - those who know just note that you're nekulturny, and move on.

They don't bother telling you about it, nowadays nothing good would come of that.

> Windows touches more people’s lives than almost any technology on Earth.

You could skip the "almost" if you had stuck to your guns on Windows Phone. It was a good phone OS, and we could have done without the iOS/Android duopoly, but MS chickened out.

Those LeMonde guys are pretty sharp, it was on Twitcher only yesterday ... https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/2034734061613129740

> you get a 10x increase porting to Rust (and the AI does it for you)

So, you keep reading/writing Python and push a button to get binary executables through whatever hoops are best today ?

(I haven't seen the "fits your brain" tagline in the recent past ...)

The Intel MacBook Air battery was very easy to swap, just opening the bottom lid. Amazon has kits for about 40 bucks with the two necessary screwdrivers included.

Don't buy lithium-ion batteries on Amazon.

Especially not very large ones like in a laptop.