It's been a while since I read it, but I definitely got the sense that that was very much how he felt and he wasn't playing it up for comedy. He wasn't the most likable or relatable guy but he certainly was passionate.

When people are growing up it's easy to get swept up in ideas like, "if only everyone saw things the way I did, everything would be perfect and so much better than it is right now".

There will always be lots of conflicting ideas about how software should be developed and distributed and so far none of them have proven so effective that all of the others have fallen by the wayside. IMO the best anyone can do is advocate for whatever makes the most sense to them, but not make the mistake of thinking that anyone has all the answers.

Literally the worst thing I've ever heard about Newsom is that he used to date Kimberly Gilfoyle, an actual complete and total nutjob. Newsom's competition in the election were the kind of people who think Gilfoyle is a totally normal and sane human being and enjoyed her speech at the GOP convention last year.

What's much more self-destructive than being afraid of looking stupid is feeling like you need to look like you know 100% of what is going on at all times- this inevitably leads to bullshitting and half-truths and weird circuitous conversations where it's unclear who actually knows what. Never try to conceal ignorance. People who matter and people who you actually would want to work with and work for would never judge someone for admitting ignorance or asking questions. People who don't matter, and people no one would want to work with or for are the ones who get on someone's case for asking what they think is a stupid question.

But yeah, that's all FAANG is and I'm amazed anyone thinks it's anything more standardized or meaningful or precisely defined. It's shorthand for the biggest and most influential companies in the tech industry at the moment, at least from the perspective of people on the outside looking in. If someone wants to the throw an M into FAANG I totally get it.

Same thing with dating. There are no magic words or social skills to ensure that the person someone likes, will like them back. There are lots of ways to ensure failure, but no way to ensure success. Ultimately we're all at the mercy of other people to a degree, and that's the way it should be because we're all in it together. All we can do is make reasonable efforts to be the best versions of ourselves we can be, and accept that many things are beyond our control but we'll do our best anyway.

Correction: also a band from 1971.

Once somebody gives up, from that point on they are no longer victims but the cause of their own problems. It sucks and it's not fair, but adult life can really suck and is definitely not fair. We only get one shot at it so might as well go out trying to do best we can.

Back then the consensus was that it's a really hard problem for all sorts of reasons (including but not limited to proprietary hardware, crappy hardware, etc.), which of course it is, but that given a few years and the shallowness of all bugs under the collective eyeballs of the entire Linux community it was inevitable that it would eventually become rock solid. I just remember a lot of people being really really really insistent about it, and when sophomore CS undergrads on Slashdot are really insistent about things being true then you know it must be true. I'm seeing the same advice here today, so you're in luck! Give it a couple years, it'll be fine. Either that or "Windows doesn't do it that great either". Either that or "nobody actually needs to use power management features and if you do you are computering wrong". Either that or "I've never had a single problem with power management on Linux but I've had tons of problems with it on macOS and Windows so there!" Aren't you glad you asked?!?