In 1989 Philips introduced a new financing structure that required Natlab to secure two-thirds of its budget through contracts with Philips' product divisions. This marked a major change from its prior model, where funding came directly from the corporate board.

Anything that wasn't "commercially viable" according to the penny-polishers with MBAs was abandoned. The dumbest move ever. Fundamental research can't be outsourced, and never has immediate commercial value.

Yes the original plan was great. No, we didn't need a plan that great. No we couldn't "downgrade". With the bigger income suddenly gone, coming up with $2800/mo in cash was a huge problem. COBRA is useless for many/most, unless your coverage is shite and the cost to the employer low.

Most users have 40-80 apps installed and use 9 a day, 20 a month(1). The shitty iOS subscription trend killed off the hobby of 'app collecting'.

Have I created large commercial Ai-coded projects? No. Did I create 80+ useful tools in hours/days that I wouldn't have otherwise? Hellz yeah!

Would I publish any of these on public github? Nope! I don't have the time nor the inclination to maintain them. There's just too many.

My shovelware "Apps" reside on my machine/our intranet or V0/lovable/bolt. Roughly ~25% are in active daily use on my machine or in our company. All tools and "apps" are saving us many hours each week.

I'm also rediscovering the joy of coding something useful, without writing a PRD for some intern. Speaking of which. We no longer have an intern.

(1) https://buildfire.com/app-statistics/

Americans who travel to Europe (have a passport) are rarely the 'T%%' shirt or 'Maggi' Cap-wearing kind. If anything, traveling Americans have always been known for their ample smiles, friendly nature, unbridled enthusiasm, and positivity/sunny outlook.

[Recent actions by the current administration did help unify Europe, but they mostly feel sorry for us. Anyone part of the group stuck in the 'faux news' bubble may have a bad time, because nothing they've been told turns out to be true...]

If anyone else is so inclined, I'll save you the search: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/donate/

(unaffiliated with the author, admire old-fashioned people who don't switch from free to paid)

(for those familiar with The Netherlands, it's located in Helmond)

Interesting quotes:

"

The study found that []longer[] time spent in bed (TIB) was associated with significantly []increased[] dementia risk. Those in bed for more than 8 hours were far more likely to show a cognitive decline during a Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE)

[...]

The time individuals went to bed was also highlighted by researchers as a critical contributing factor [...] The research paper stated that “every 1 hour advance in bedtime [before 10 pm] was associated with a 25% increased risk of dementia.”

"

On-topic: I'm starting to see a trend. Digg was big before Reddit. VC-imposed 2010 "upgrades" ruined Digg's simple interface and 60% fled to Reddit (as did I). StumbleUpon had it's own redesign disaster in 2011. Both replace a simple, fast, efficient interface, ideal for content consumption, with "design" and room for advertising.

Reddit made the same mistake in 2018, but was smart enough to retain old.reddit.com Third party reddit apps saved it from a swift demise, but the API charges and associated forced closure of "competitors" must have had a detrimental effect on their traffic as well.

What's next?

Are the answers GPT3.5?

For your entertainment, ask a question in another language, it will actually understand and respond in said language, but pronounces every word as a native English speaker (e.g. Parlez-vous français ou italien)

https://www.homecomputermuseum.nl/en/#intro

A Dutch non-profit, staffed by volunteers and people in need of practical training. Visitors to the museum get to touch and interact with most of them. I've 'adopted' a few machines there that introduced me to computers and programming as a kid (the language switch features on this site are a little glitchy, google translate is your friend). If you're in the neighborhood, it's definitely worth a visit.

Their LinkedIn page has a proper introduction in English:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/homecomputermuseum/about/

"The HomeComputerMuseum is a museum about (home)computers based in the centre of the Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg), in the technical region of the Netherlands, close to airports like Eindhoven and Dusseldorf and easy to reach by train and car. The museum is 500m2 and has around 400 computers in stock. From the early Commodore PET2001, Altair 8800, Tandy TRS80 and Apple II all the way up to early 2000 pc's with Windows XP and Mac OS X 10.5. Since computers will break when they're not used, all computers are prepared to stay on during opening hours and ready to be touched by anyone who wants to. Even printers, modems, scanners and other additional hardware is connected and ready to use. We also have our own repair lab when something breaks. All computers are set up in a environment that's styled in the correct era. It's not a museum, it's an experience!

At least once per 3 months we do a big LAN-party where the newest computer is a Pentium 4. Meaning we do only old school gaming with games like Duke Nukem 3D, Red Alert, Wacky Wheels, Unreal Tournament and anything we fancy to do.

We are a non-profit organization that gives chances to people with autism and teaches young children how the old computers work. We strongly believe that in order to understand the future, one must know the past. That's what we're doing.

See, feel, try, play & learn!

We also love to show these old, sometimes forgotten, computers on Youtube and on social media. We need funds to keep this museum up and running and that's where you can help!

We're based in Helmond, conveniently placed between big airports (Eindhoven and Dusseldorf), easy reachable by train, enough parking places and right next to the city centre of Helmond. So make sure to visit us and consider a donation or any other form of support."

Stories Snopes fact-checked from that 'Christian Satire Site': https://www.snopes.com/tag/babylon-bee/

At least half of them would be believed by those who trust the Federalist.

This nonsense has been going on for a while. It's also happening in banking [huge fines for foreign banks], in car manufacturing [diesel scandal, airbag recall] etc. etc.

[1] https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/01/technology/huawei-apple-iph...