Sure..put it in Kalshi while your at it and we can all bet on it.

I'm pretty sure he could grow one plant with someone in the know prompting him.

It only works if you tell Claude..."grow me some fucking corn profitably and have it ready in 9 months" and it does it.

If it's being used as manager to simply flesh out the daily commands that someone is telling it, well then that isn't "working" thats just a new level of what we already have with APIs and crap.

Considering what these LLMs bring to the table, I think a little tolerance for their cringe phrases is in order.

For context, this was early 1982. That 599 would cost 1,900 today — still a lot for a modem, but not quite the "gazillion" I remembered. Still, it illustrates just how far we've come.

Since then, I've written software professionally for over 40 years (with varying degrees of success). I've owned well over 200 computers — roughly 90% Wintel machines and 10% MacBooks. I've built them, repaired them, debugged them, and occasionally, after particularly frustrating days, set them back together again. I like to think I know my way around a PC.

Six months ago, I decided it was time. "This is the year of the Linux desktop on my machine," I declared, and I meant it. I installed over 20 of the most popular distributions from DistroWatch and used each one for at least two weeks. I was on a mission to rediscover the joy of computing.

For a while, it was genuinely fun. The sheer number of options was overwhelming in the best way possible. Customization everywhere I looked. All those incredible free software packages waiting in the repositories. In the beginning, I didn't even mind that I found myself doing full reinstalls every two or three days due to random instabilities. I was living the dream. Desktop effects and visual flair? Bring it on. Why does Compiz get so much criticism these days? What's more satisfying than a beautifully animated window?

Six weeks in, things changed. The Linux installations started to degrade — subtle at first, then undeniable. Random slowdowns. Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15 seconds. The kind of frustration that makes you stare at the screen and wonder what's happening under the hood. It was consistent across distributions, which suggests this wasn't just a bad package here or there. Something fundamental was happening.

And yes, I'm aware of the irony. The system celebrated for its stability and reliability was the one leaving me longing for a responsive desktop environment. But that's exactly what I experienced, and I gave each distribution a fair shot.

There's also the practical reality: I'm a heavy Ableton Live user, and dual-booting has become increasingly grating. The Linux audio ecosystem has made real progress, but for my specific workflow, it's not there yet. Maybe in another year or two.

So I'm back on Windows 11. It works. It doesn't surprise me. After four decades, I'm okay with "it works" as a primary criterion.

Will I try Linux again? Maybe. The ecosystem continues to improve, and who knows what the next wave of AI-assisted tools might change. But for now, I wanted to share an honest account of what I encountered — because I genuinely wanted Linux to win.

Thanks for the laughs my friend.

Yes there will tons of garbage, but of course there will be the 1% of the 1% who spend the time and efforts to, perhaps, create something of equal and perhaps better quality than what has come before.

Shameful.

My guess? Most of the cash is socked away in BTC or some such wealth sink just waiting for the individuals to clear their bothersome legal issues.

Of course human ownership is preferable, but it's also crazy expensive and since the point of all corporations is to "increase shareholder value" (not "gainfully employ workers"), well then all your talk of responsibility-here-and-there is quite touching but absolutely misses the point.

Economics is driving this bus, not quality and most certainly not responsibility.

Uhhh...why not use AI to start controlling the airports and airplanes? Talk about an app that, to me at least, seems an almost trivial use of its abilities and I'm sure that an AI could be trained in a very short period of time that could outperform a roomful of overaged, distracted humans...right?

Yes of course there is no way I'm the first to think of this...but just the fact that here it is day 3 or so, and literally NOT ONE MENTION ANYWHERE in the media about the potential for AI to safely land and direct all these flying things.

You attack the problem like blackjack card-counter would. You assess the rules, make mathematical odds projections when possible and logical ones when not, and keep a keen eye on what you are up against as to judge how to best attack the money.

Thanks for the smart write-up...its been a big inspiration for me.

I still love futzing around in C...It was the original langauge I learned and God did I struggle with it for years. Like the OP mentioned, C is awesome because its such a concise language but you can go as deep as you like with it.

Thanks for all your efforts and the writeup...the game has a throwback Commander Keen-type vibe to it and I loved that franchise for a minute back in Carmack's pre-3D days.

I'm 100% sure that once I left that the devs went back to remote server crash and burn FTP development...they couldn't be bothered with the "hassle" and unneeded headaches of git.

OMG the crazy headaches that setup gave me...of course if you didn't actually press PLAY on the unit at the right moment after you typed LOAD in BASIC, the thing would hang...and to be honest...it loaded so slow that it often seemed like it hung when it didnt, thereby AT LEAST quadrupling the fun (not).

One thing good did come of it...I never once cursed at 5 1/4 floppies as they were a godsend compared to the cassette drive days

...and while your at it, get THE HELL OFF MY LAWN!