Hades didn’t really seem like my kind of game, so I torrented it to try it out. Then I bought it, and later Hades 2, too.

I’ve also bought some comics I’d previously read on the computer, too, if they were good enough and I’ve come across a nice edition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6y8cqayjQI

Thinking about C# and Dapper here 'cause they’re what I’m used to, but, for example…

result = await connection.QueryAsync<ResultType>(QUERY); (where ResultType is a statically typed record, class, or struct shaped like the data you want returned.)

Given a query that doesn’t return something that matches any of ResultType’s constructors, the code’ll throw an exception at runtime complaining it needs a constructor that matches whatever it’s returning, whereupon you’ll notice it isn’t asking for it to have a date parameter, so the query must not be returning it.

That’s when rubber duck debugging comes in handy.

first time you use it the language automatically makes the variable and default value

Now, that’s just evil. 😨

The difference between experienced devs and non experienced devs is that when seeing “the experience that made me hate programming” and “date” in the same post experienced devs just stop reading (mostly due to the PTSD hit) and assume it must have been some date format issue or shudder timezone shenanigans between the database and the programming language…

I will always cherish my bones, too. They give me support.

Why rename the files when you could just categorise and index them…?

This seems unnecessarily destructive.

I remember installing Windows 3.0. (Or possibly 3.1…?)

It came in exactly way too many disks. (Like, a dozen or so, maybe…? Though it felt like at least double that…)

Reversi was nice, though…

It’s scary as fuck, yeah, but, to be fair, it’s only intended to be used by code generators, and it’s quite awkward to use outside of them.

Huh. Maybe it’s NoScript, then.

Looks fine on Firefox on Android with uBlock Origin. 🤷‍♂️

Forget about goto, the latest version of C# introduced what’s essentially comefrom.

*Bing

They didn’t pivot.

The search engine was just a side Idea What Needs Doing the CEO had, that just happened to make the startup famous because of being somewhat less bad than the enshittified crap other search engines have become, then they lost interest (to be fair they seem to be about fifteen to twenty-something people, plus whoever they’ve got in Germany making free T-shirts, only half of them working full time, so there’s only so much they can focus on) and went back to their main thing (which is apparently very bad but very fast AI).

At this point they’re probably just keeping the paid search engine to try and pay back the taxes they owe due to having apparently forgotten taxes were a thing, though it was operating at a loss even before the tax thing (and before they wasted a third of their investment cash on free T-shirts), so they’ll be having to raise their prices…

Small AI startup makes somewhat working search engine (as opposed to the enshittified crap other search engines have become) because CEO has Ideas What Need Doing (e.g., a search engine, an Apple exclusive browser, investing a third of the raised capital on establishing a company in Germany to make twenty thousand T-shirts to give away for free, without even the company’s name on them), becomes famous for said search engine (it’s slightly less bad than the others — even if it’s really just repackaging their results —, so people not only are willing to pay for it, but will evangelise for it any chance they get), they lose interest in said search engine (though, to be fair, they seem to be ~fifteen to twenty-something people — plus whoever they’ve got in Germany making free T-shirts —, only half of them working full time, so there’s only so much they can focus on at a time) and focus back on AI (new CEO Idea: fast AI! Doesn’t matter if not good! FAST!), news at eleven.

Oh, and they apparently forgot VAT was a thing (maybe their accountant is one of the half working half time?), and even then were operating at a loss (the free T-shirts might also have something to do with that), so now they have to raise prices from just absurd to outright offensive, to try and pay back the taxes they owe…

(And speaking of the CEO, he not only had Ideas What Need Doing, he also seems to have Ideas, period… like the Idea that email addresses are not personal information protected by the GDPR, the Idea that Kagi doesn’t have to abide by the GDPR because their payment processor already does, or the Idea that only ~100 people in the world really needing anonymity anyway; also his whole approach to privacy seems to boil down to “trust me bro, I don’t want your data, I just want your money… but if you do anything illegal I will report you”).

it’s like checking it out from a library’s collection

Yes, exactly. But better, because by “checking it out” you’re not preventing anyone else from also enjoying it at the same time (on the contrary, by nature of the bittorrent protocol you’re improving the availability of said cultural work, helping to preserve it, and culturally enriching society to a greater extent than libraries can unless they don’t artificially restrict access to digital works).

Is that moral?

When copyright holders can remove access to paid content on a whim, or destroy already finished works because it’s somehow more profitable than selling them, or simply don’t care about preserving the works they claim to be responsible for, archiving them even against their wishes is not only moral, but a moral imperative.

Culture is more important than profits. And if preserving culture is illegal, the law is wrong, and must be ignored until it’s been corrected.

Piracy has always been stealingᵢ. Violently. Using ships, or boatsᵢᵢ.

What you’re calling “piracy” — falling into the “intellectual property” mafia’s trap by borrowing their malicious misnomer — is just plain old sharing.

Copying what we like (sometimes changing and adding our own ideas to it) and sharing it with other people, so they can like, share, and change it too.

It’s how human culture works and has always worked!

Copyright (another intentional misnomer, since all it does is restrict the right to copy — and share, and modify — cultural works) is, at least in its current form, not only detrimental to culture (and its spread and preservation) but an attack on human nature itself.

Sharing, in these dark times when destroying cultural works seems to have somehow become more profitable than commercialising themᵢᵥ, has become not only an essential part of human nature, but a moral imperative for anyone who cares about art, culture, and social progress.

As for the hypothetical profits we are supposedly “stealing”, paraphrasing Neil Gaiman, sharing not only doesn’t cause a loss on profits, it increases themᵥ. It’s free advertising.

It’s not about profits. It’s not about authors’ rights. It’s never been. It is, and has always been, about control. About deciding who and when can have access to culture, and who can’t. When we can be human, and when we are not allowed to.

I — Well, sometimes mostly murdering, I suppose, if there was not enough to steal; and of course there was the whole letters of marque thing, which made it political and complicated. But mostly stealing, OK?

II — It being on navigable water is what distinguishes it from pillaging, if I’m not mistaken.

III — In the borrowed words of Sir Terry Pratchettᵥᵢ, “The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens (‘wise man’). In any case it’s an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.”; sharing stories, and any other form of culture, is what distinguishes us from other species. It’s what makes us human.

IV — And even before. “IP” wranglers have a long history of not being reliable custodians of the cultural works they claim responsibility for, and sharing has many times been the only way to preserve said works after their (often malicious) mismanagement.

V — There’s studies, too, if Gaiman’s account is too anecdotal for your liking.

VI — GNU

An 'idden.