And it's not like that kind of thing never happens, like look at General Magic and its through-lines through the tech industry up until 2015 or so, but it just happens too conveniently in the show. Particularly Bosworth's role seems far-fetched to me. He's already at the end of his career in season 1, and somehow he remains relevant through the internet age?

The "Phoenix" monologue in the last episode evokes nostalgia for everything Donna and Cameron have been through, but it also breaks suspension of disbelief by pointing out just how much of history these two people have been involved with firsthand.

I know, that's a pretty specific "hypothetical," but that experience taught me that copying for the sake of consistency only works if you actually understand what it is you're copying. And I was also lucky that the senior engineer was nice about it.

1. Is this working around friction due to a lack of interoperability between tools? For example, is this something that would be more efficient if the owner of the website exposed a REST service? Will the existence of this tool disincentivize companies from exposing services when it makes sense?

2. If there is a good reason for the lack of a service endpoint, perhaps for security reasons, will your automation workflow be used to bypass those security measures? Could your tool be used by malicious actors to disable major services? Are you that malicious actor yourself? Will your tool be used by scalpers to prevent consumers from buying high-demand products?

3. If this is being used to work around deferred maintenance with internal tools and processes, will the existence of these kind of tools be used by management to justify further deferral of that maintenance? Will your tool become a critical piece of the support staff's workflow?

4. If your tool is being used in good faith to work around anti-patterns in website design, will the owner of the website be incentivized to break your workflow? Is your use case just a step in an arms race?

These are the thoughts that go through my head whenever I hear about software being laid on top of complicated processes, where instead of simplifying the underlying processes, we add another layer of complexity to sweep it under the rug. I'm sure that people will find your project useful, but I wonder what the longer-term effects will be.

Would it have been better if I'd talked these things out with my parents? Maybe, but would I have? Or would I have just self-censored my dreams rather than face that conflict?

I guess maybe as a middle ground, maybe keep watching while she's young but pull back as she gets older?

If you ever find yourself in that part of the world, I highly recommend visiting the textile pavilion there. They basically show you 1000x throughput improvement developed over the course of a century, demonstrated in about an hour.

The real argument being made isn't that we should give all our secrets to the government, but that we should trust that the government will comply with our 4th Amendment protections and avoid gathering this data without a valid warrant issued by an impartial judge. If you're reading this, I'm guessing that like me, you don't believe a word of that. But that's the argument that's being made, and that's what needs to be debunked loudly and publicly.

I've certainly read theories that it's a malicious strategy of the police union to make the city council look bad, and the SPOG president has made some pretty shocking political statements, so it honestly wouldn't be that surprising.

I'm guessing it's a mix of both, but I can't really prove anything.

As a result, the term "broken windows" now carries a ton of baggage, and is sometimes used as a racist dog whistle.

Think about it with Marvel or Star Wars movies. There are some really good ones, and some really boring ones, and although you can definitely say "Thor Ragnarok" was better than "Iron Man: Age of Ultron", that doesn't change the fact that when you zoom out, it seems all we're getting is superhero and Star Wars movies, and maybe it would be nice to watch something else now and again.

We want more than just good craftsmanship. We need people of mediocre skill to be making things that are weird and interesting.

I always get a warm feeling when a game I'm interested in has an itch.io link, but I'm not gonna delude myself into thinking it'll ever replace Steam, even if Steam had to stop calling itself a store. Steam is just far too established, and the network effect is just way too strong.

This is separate from the discussion about tradeoffs between flexible design patterns and low-level performance.